Week in review: August 22, 2003

In the News... Sixty-one percent of 126 respondents are more concerned with identity theft than they were a year ago, according to a poll conducted by Teradata. When asked, "Are you as concerned about identity theft as you were a year ago?" 46 percent said they were somewhat more concerned and 15 percent said they were much more concerned. Thirty-one percent of respondents felt improvements have been made, and eight percent said they were never concerned about identity theft. Customers are looking for better integration between applications, information systems, and portals, according to a recent Vignette survey of 400 IT executives. The study reveals that 80 percent of respondents prefer a consolidated management console for all Web applications and portals. Blackwell Consulting Services has joined with Northern Consulting, a firm specializing in the equipment leasing and finance industries. The move will increase Blackwell's employee base and expand its vertical industry expertise, the company says. Research by Topcall Corp., a specialist in business communication systems, has found that 43 percent of companies do not have a disaster recovery plan in place if their mission-critical communications systems experience an infrastructure failure or disaster. Of the 54 companies polled, 17 percent had a completely redundant system in multiple locations and an additional 17 percent relied on an on-demand redundant system at a hosted location. A fraction (7 percent) had a mobile recovery center in place. The report suggests that recovery programs in general are still behind the curve, Topcall says. iPhrase Technologies and Venetica have announced a partnership whereby iPhrase will integrate Venetica technology to allow iPhrase customers to expand self-service to a broader set of enterprise content management resources. By using this technology, iPhrase says, its customers will now be able to search and pull information from different repositories of content, including Lotus Notes, Documentum, IBM Content Manager, FileNet, And Open test. Executive Changes... The Aberdeen Group has named James L. Bedard as its new CEO. Bedard previously served as president and COO of professional services firm GEN3 Partners. Extended Systems has named Charles Jepson CEO and president of the company. Jepson has served as the company's vice president of worldwide sales and marketing since February 2003. The Allant Group has promoted two associates: Jim Maratea has been named vice president of its Teleservices Business Unit, and Connie Hall has been appointed vice president of product management.