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Discusses the arrival of a single European currency, the European Monetary Union currency, called the euro. Effects of the planned change to information system managers working in European and United States companies; Reason for the companies' delay of assessing the cost and difficulty of converting their financial systems; Impact of the adoption of the euro on the computer technology industry. INSET: Euro help on the way, by Bob Violino, et al.

Focuses on the outsourcing of the information systems (IS) services of computer firms in the United States. Approaches in outsourcing; Importance of strategic outsourcing agreements; Network outsourcing vendors; Relations of computer firms with outsourcing vendors. INSET: ISSC has telcos' numbers..

Reports on the increasing number of people who are calling for the certification of information resources management (IRM) staff. Computer vendors' sponsorship of training courses for the certification of IRM workers; Advantages of hiring certified IRM workers.

This article discusses the role of chief information officers (CIOs). CIOs who fail to understand the new reality may find themselves both over-promising and under-delivering. They may well be setting themselves up for high-profile failure. The business and technology contexts surrounding the CIO are substantially different than ever before. The job has become far more complex at the same time that the critical nature of information systems has gone up. IT organizations are facing enormous pressure to accelerate the delivery of services. Every other functional area in business has become more dependent on IT.

The article reports on Informatica Corp.'s plan to introduce a set of connector designed to combine application data held by its Salesforce with an enterprise's in-house applications in the third quarter of 2006. The said connector set will be known as PowerCenter Connect for Salesforce.com. The connectors are add-ons on the company's PowerCenter data integration applications which provide in-house data integration.

Features the products rolled out by Dell Computer Corp. in March 2005. Four-way PowerEdge 6800 tower and 6850 rack-mounted server systems; OpenManage 4.3 system management software; Data-center environmental-assessment service to help evaluate power and thermal requirements; Oracle Competency Center to improve the use of Oracle's 10g database on Dell servers.

Presents several charts regarding marketing and management of information technology (IT)products and services in the U.S. Use of customer data management; Development plans of IT products and services; Sales-force automation.

Describes Brady Corp.'s approach in managing its product-information-management systems. Brady's use of FullTilt Solutions Inc.'s Perfect Product Suite software which helped the company in updating product in its online catalog; Brady Corp.'s plans in upgrading to a newer version of FullTilt's Perfect Product Suite software; Brady Corp.'s plans in creating custom catalog views for different distributors and product managers.

Predicts the effects of making computer systems comply with the year 2000 date-compliance and European unified currency on information systems departments. Early retirement of information managers; Complexity of dealing with currency conversion; Positive issues for year 1998.

Opinion. Presents the author's view that the operative system of standards in the computer industry causes problems on the nonconforming system developers. How information system (IS) found a way to control personal computers (PCs); Basis of company's selected office applications.

Presents advice to information systems managers on how to cope with the computer industry's frantic pace. Pragmatic approach to information technology as the best choice; Prevalence of planned obsolescence in the industry; Frantic pace of the technological evolution.

Discusses a study commissioned by the US Labor Department that proved that training employees before reengineering pays big benefits, and considers what this means for information systems (IS) operations. How IS operations can help employees become better knowledge workers; Why tools, including software, should be selected by users; IS training at Federal Express Corp.

The article focuses on the significance of aligning information technology (IT) capabilities with the business units. This approach can become more integrated in everyday systems and works best to achieve enterprise goals. True alignment means IT and the business units together define the best direction for the organization to go. This will require a lot of programming work, even when establishing simple business intelligence tools. In the long run, this will provide some knowledge about how to best handle business transactions.