Smartphones, cell phones capable of e-mail and Web browsing, are the phone of choice for people who want to stay connected even while out of the office; however most businesses dole them out without first thinking through the role of the smartphone in the organization's IT plan or its business strategy. Here are applications that can help organizations take advantage of the technology's capabilities.

A new OpenPages survey shows that IT risk management practices are moving in a promising direction. Sixty-six percent of respondents reported that their employees can speak openly about IT risk and 80 percent indicated that their IT environment is well-maintained and that they have a business continuity plan in place.

Virtualization is a hot IT trend, but like every other technology, it has drawbacks. Those thinking of pursuing a virtualization strategy in 2010 -- a good idea overall -- also need to be aware of the gotchas, the things that can undermine a virtualization investment. Here are five to note.

Organizations are being swamped with a flood of data while their own practices cause them to repeatedly store and back up multiple copies of the exact same data. Deduplication cuts down on this waste by eliminating redundant data from storage, especially from backups. The revolutionary part: Deduplication allows weeks or months of backups in a small amount of disk space so suddenly disk, which is more expensive than tape, becomes cost-effective for primary, large-scale backup.

Efficiency is a lost cause when organizations fail to derive value from their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. What is preventing maximum usage of ERP? Read Ventana Research's "Enhancing the Value of ERP" in the BPM Resource Center to find out.

The International Accounting Standards Board has ambitious plans to facilitate the convergence of local and country standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). This white paper identifies the many challenges companies face when implementing IFRS in corporate reporting and explores tightly integrated solutions that together centrally manage data and metadata on a unified platform.

When it comes to tracking the success of your company's business performance applications, what you don't see can hurt you. In this on-demand webcast, you'll hear how performance management technology is capable of eliminating costly BPM blind spots. We'll reveal the findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting that examined the potential return on investment that enterprises may realize by deploying Tagetik 3.0 performance management software.