Michael Hickins

NEW YORK — The sun finally broke through for Vonage today, and the company can only hope the clouds stay away for a while. The newly public provider of VoIP services introduced a softphone device that it hopes will answer Skype, Cisco and others trying to hone in on the consumer market it has made […]

NEW YORK — NetSuite gets 150 sales leads a day, mostly from online keyword searches. Hungry for more, it is reaching out to a new off-line partner in the hopes of driving even more revenue. Zack Nelson, CEO of the provider of on-demand ERP systems, announced this week at the C3 Expo here that the […]

The 2008 presidential election could be interesting. After four years, more than $3 billion taxpayer dollars, and an alphabet soup of newly created bureaucracies, electronic voting isn’t safe. Key members of the Technical Guidance Development Committee (TGDC) that drafted federal guidelines for designing and testing electronic voting machines admit that significant flaws in the machines […]

People in New York no longer have to wonder if their local hospital is worse than others, or if they’re paying too much for their health care. The New York State Health Accountability Foundation (NYSHAF) today released an interactive report on the performance of the state’s health plans and hospitals. Funded by a $60,000 New […]

IBM isn’t giving up an inch on the desktop. Big Blue is unveiling parts of Lotus Sametime 7.5, promised in January of this year, with upgrades allowing integration between its collaboration tools and Office. But it’s making sure that Office users don’t have to send rival Microsoft  so much as a farthing to upgrade from […]

Knowing how your products are selling can be a lot like waiting for results on election night. Exit polls can indicate general trends, but you won’t know exactly how many votes you got until all precincts have reported. In a similar vein, companies can get an idea of sales trends from their in-house sales force, […]

Microsoft has been seen as slow in reacting to the advent of the Internet and mobile computing. But it’s not going to be caught napping where robots are concerned. In fact, the company is determined to lead in this area, not follow. The company today unveiled the community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Studio […]

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? You might say in this case. In what is clearly an extension of a strategic agreement signed last fall between EchoStar and AT&T, the telephone giant has launched Homezone, a service that will allow customers to download movies and other content via the Internet and watch it […]

Verizon (Quote, Chart) is claiming in a suit that Vonage (Quote, Chart) has stolen its patented voice-over-IP (VOIP)   technology and is asking the court to prevent Vonage from continuing to do so. The filing is the latest legal headache for Vonage, coming in the wake of class-action suits from customers who claim Vonage violated […]

NEW YORK — The word “commoditization” strikes fear in the heart of Fortune 500 companies — and well it should. Geoffrey Moore, a futurist and consultant who practically invented the term “disruptive technology,” said Thursday that most large U.S. companies are losing their edge. The world economy has been dominated by European and American companies, […]

UPDATED: Microsoft announced today its chairman Bill Gates will step down from his role as chief software architect, tabbing chief technology officer Ray Ozzie as his immediate successor. During a joint press conference that was at times emotional, Gates was particularly effusive in his praise for Ballmer, whom he called “the best CEO that I […]

Innovation is being increasingly recognized as the key to growth, yet most senior executives give their research and development organizations little credit for generating it. IBM , which has just launched a new R&D Management consulting practice, believes that companies can get their R&D organizations to help them innovate by having them align themselves more […]