The IT department is often at the forefront of an organization's technology innovation -- but not always. When it comes to the concept of a standard desktop -- every employee's core install consisting of an operating system, applications, hardware drivers and a security suite -- IT has moved at a snail's pace.

A bad global economy, poor market conditions and confusing management moves combined to create a perfect storm that slammed into Hewlett-Packard and staggered the PC maker in its first fiscal 2012 quarter.

With new CEO Rory Read at the helm for about six months, Advanced Micro Devices has turned its attention to the lucrative and burgeoning tablet market.

In the vacuum between Hurricane Irene and Labor Day weekend, a major focus of the tech universe this week is on VMworld in Las Vegas.

IBM's latest mainframe, the zEnterprise 196, was released last summer as a cross-platform management system that could work in mixed processor and operating system environments. In pursuit of that goal, the company continues to roll out new components.

The HP/Dell bidding war over storage vendor 3Par is shaping up to be a repeat of last year's high-profile battle between EMC and NetApp.

An economy that continues to stagnate could prove a boon to an increasing number of providers of on-demand supercomputing capacity.

NEW YORK -- IBM's zEnterprise system has an expansive yet still limited role. This "system of systems," as the company calls it, is still operating in a mainframe-centric universe, although a larger one.