Baseline’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2006

Baseline readers have cast their votes: Here are the 10 most popular stories on our Web site this year.

1. How Google Works
For all the razzle-dazzle surrounding Google, the company must still work through common business problems such as reporting revenue and tracking projects. But it sometimes addresses those needs in unconventional—yet highly

2. Computer Security: Your 5-Step Survival Guide
New threats to your computer infrastructure emerge every day. Baseline‘s Security Survival Guide provides tips and techniques to help you safeguard your organization.

3. 50 Fastest-Growing Software Companies for 2006
Baseline ranks the 50 fastest-growing business software companies, based on year-to-year growth. Most of those at the top of the list don’t actually sell software in the traditional sense—they offer software as an on-demand service.

4. Compliance: How BearingPoint Lost Its Way
The consultancy, touted as a Sarbanes-Oxley expert, failed to report earnings for 18 months and may be de-listed from the Big Board. One reason why: missteps implementing a financial software system.

5. I.T. Procurement Fraud: How Tech Insiders Cheat Their Employers
A number of information-technology managers stand accused of ripping off their employers, allegedly using “shadow companies” and inflated or bogus invoices—in some cases, stealing tens of millions of dollars or more. The scam? It’s called procurement fraud, and it’s more prevalent than many people realize. Here’s how it works.

6. What’s Driving Toyota
Behind Toyota’s assembly line are sophisticated information systems supporting and enabling the business processes that help the automaker eliminate waste, limit inventory buildup and continually improve production.

7. E-Mail Retention: The High Cost of Digging Up Data
When encountering legal or regulatory action, technology managers who fail to get corporate data fast or vouch for its completeness can cost their companies millions of dollars. Learn what happened to WestLB, an investment bank, when it had to exhume 650,000 e-mail messages and documents after it was hit with a sex discrimination lawsuit.

8. Prescription for an I.T. Disaster?
In 2002, the British government embarked on a $12 billion effort to transform its health-care system with information technology. But the country’s oversight agency now puts that figure at $24 billion, and two Members of Parliament say the project is “sleepwalking toward disaster.”

9. Christie Hefner: How Playboy Protects Its Assets
Playboy’s CEO discusses how the media company protects 50 million photographs, 11 million art images and other content.

10. How Bank of New York Uses ITIL to Troubleshoot
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library helps the bank define, measure, track and investigate service outages. But does it improve service?