Business, finances, forex

Microsoft responds to questions on TCO, indemnification, and the value proposition of Linux.

Companies such as KeyCorp are evaluating the impact of the Firefox browser.

The hows and whys of integrating Inter-Institutional Transfers (IITs) into online banking.

Reg NMS was just re-released last week and the document surprised everyone, notes Larry Tabb, CEO of the Tabb Group and Contributing Editor to WS&T. Tabb offers his perspective on the regulation, pointing out its winners and losers. “While this may sound tame, it has the teeth of a shark,” he says, “and for better or worse it will shred many current market practices.”

The SEC voted yesterday to publish its reproposed version of Reg NMS for public comment. The revised regulation limits price-protection to automated quotes; prohibits sub-penny pricing; promotes uniform inter-market access via private linkages; and authorizes market centers to distribute their own data independently of the joint-industry plans.

The NYSE is giving floor brokers new wireless handheld PCs to participate in a hybrid market subject to SEC approval. The project is a big win for IBM.

Oracle plans to port its database software to IBM’s iSeries server in a bid to keep J.D. Edwards software users in the fold.

After years of relative autonomy, senior IT executives at insurance companies are finding themselves increasingly under the thumb of tech-savvy CFOs charged with reducing costs. To succeed in this new environment, CIOs must prepare to address tough questions that go beyond the traditional IT domain.

Providing the people who sell policies with tools that enhance their effectiveness is essential to carriers’ success. And because these improvements make possible a higher level of customer service, they can also help to ensure increased customer retention and loyalty.

Does failure in Barcelona augur poorly for Copenhagen?

THERE is an odd crowd on my late-afternoon flight from London to Barcelona. Peeking at the reading material of my seatmates, I notice that most of us seem to be heading for the UN climate-change talks in Barcelona—the last before a larger gathering in Copenhagen this December. For the last two years, most of the world’s nations have been negotiating a deal that is supposed to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change. It is somewhat ironic that the negotiation has involved so much airline travel by so many people. The gentleman next to me, while checking out women on his mobile, is definitely shuffling UN paperwork. Thousands are expected at what has been breathlessly called “humanity’s most important meeting”. …