Topic: Business

On BioTech Nation, Dr. Gurinder Shahi, the Director of the Global BioBusiness Initiative at USC's Marshall School of Business, talks with Dr. Moira Gunn about their on-line biotech courses and special executive sessions, for just about anyone.

Imagine a one-stop shop where you can use one consistent interface to arrange any service--airline reservations, shipping packages, appliance repair--through any supplier. Amazon.com lets us buy almost any product, but where can we go to order services? Rearden Commerce's Mark Orttung says he has built such a "Services on Demand" application, and it has been called the killer app of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Businesses should book software not as an asset, but as a liability. That's just one of Ed Amoroso's provocative ideas. Like medicine, software engineering should require "years of tortured residency." Homeland Security should work with hackers to fight terrorism. We should discard our firewalls and let broadband carriers filter attacks in the cloud. In this interview with Sondra Schneider, the AT&T CSO also describes AT&T's 24x7 TV network for security professionals.

Thanks to the internet, people have access to maps like never before: you just point and click. The data contained within the maps, however, can be much harder to acquire. This panel discussion, moderated by Simon St. Laurent of O'Reilly Media, brings together five leaders from diverse sources to talk about the challenges inherent in the collection of mapping data. [Where 2005 audio from IT Conversations]

Owning 34 Internet brands offers as many opportunities for failure as for success. In a freewheeling and provocative conversation, Barry Diller - legendary media mogul, chairman of Expedia and CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp - explains his own recipe for success and speculates about the future of business on the Internet. [Web 2.0 audio from IT Conversations]

Thomas Barnett argues that globalization is a force for good, bringing hope of an end to both war and poverty. Connection to the global economy reformats societies in positive ways and helping the disconnected world to integrate is a key challenge. In this conversation with Phil Windley, Dr. Barnett describes the new world order and America's place in it. [Phil Windley's Technometria audio from IT Conversations]

Digital photography has taken over the overall picture market as well as the revenues of Kodak. Mike McDougall from Kodak discusses the current trends across this market and some unique elements Kodak is bringing to consumers. [Larry's World audio from IT Conversations]

Some controversy surrounds the concept of blogging for business; many businesses are either unaware of blogging as a business tool or think there is no value in the time and effort spent in blogging. At the 2005 BlogHer conference, Lisa Meyers Brown of the American Cancer Society, Susan Getgood of Getgood Strategic Marketing, Mary Smaragdis of Sun Microsystems, and Christine Halvorson of Stonyfield Farms discuss the value of blogging to companies of all types and their experience with blogging at these widely diverse companies. [BlogHer 2005 audio from IT Conversations]

"Microsoft in the enterprise" has been considered an oxymoron for many enterprise IT strategists. Despite these barriers, Microsoft has gone ahead and finalized key initiatives such as new model-driven tools, Indigo, Avalon, and Windows Longhorn. Peter O'Kelly assesses Microsoft's strategy to become an enterprise superplatform contender by leveraging the potential of the .NET platform initiative. [Catalyst 2005 audio from IT Conversations]

Trent proposes crafting and implementing an enterprise security architecture over a two- to three-year period. But he points out that an architecture is a living thing that must adapt, for example, to a merger with another organization with different principles or to a change in the regulatory environment. [Burton Group Catalyst audio from IT Conversations]