Navigating the shoals of global commerce
GLOBALIZATION HAS fundamentally changed the way business is, or can be, conducted around the world. IT's central role in the New Economy is taken as a given and holds out promises: A rising tide lifts all boats, and everyone can profit from the ability to operate anytime, anywhere.
But the fresh opportunities also open up new pitfalls. The international telecommunications infrastructure is not seamless, and companies get caught in the cracks. Companies rushing headlong into international expansion often hit unexpected cultural and legal barriers. As technology makes cross-border communications instantaneous, there is no room for error, and IT professionals need to learn to play an ever more important role in the enterprise.
The Web itself has spawned a whole ecosystem of companies that provide services to help businesses deal with international commerce.
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Globalization and the IT revolution make doing business a vastly different game than it was several decades ago. But it's a new game for which the rules still have to be written. The stakes are high. Competitors fear that rival groups will twist policy and standards to suit their own needs. Nevertheless, there is a growing realization that countries need to harmonize regulatory, legal, and technology policies -- from differing tax systems to standards for next-generation wireless networks. And globalization is bringing these complex issues to the fore. The spate of corporate megamergers over the past five years has brought antitrust review into the international spotlight. Because companies of any size are international, even mergers among U.S.-based companies are vetted by non-U.S. entities -- witness the European Union's approval, with strings attached, of America Online and Time Warner and EMI and Time Warner, and its blocking of the Sprint-WorldCom merger. The reality of multiple filings to different regulators weighed heavily on Jacques Bougie, the CEO of aluminum producer Alcan. His firm's three-way merger with Swiss firm Al Group and France's Pechiney was blocked by the EU earlier this year. "We had to notify 16 competition regulators. More than 35 firms provided advice [for the blocked deal]," Bougie says. Over 400 boxes of printed material were generated in the Montreal office alone. "It follows as the night the day: As markets become more global, the number of countries having a legitimate enforcement interest in a particular merger will increase as well," said then-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein, the United States' top antitrust watchdog at the Department of Justice, at a Brussels conference right before he left his post in September. The problem is, he said, that what is anticompetitive in one region may not Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery. Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss. Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most. Geeks are not traditionally imagined as romantics or smooth operators, but we know they can reach the same heights of passion as anyone else -- they just express it differently. And so we offer this resource to help you better understand the love between two geeks, or between a geek and a non-geek, or between a geek and ... some toys. Get a broad understanding of important regulations and how you can make sure your site is in adherence. Learn how VeriSign SGC-enabled SSL Certificates can help improve site security and customer confidence in the free white paper, "How to Offer the Strongest SSL Encryption." In this paper you will learn the differences between weak and strong encryption and what they mean for your site's performance. Get VeriSign's free white paper: "The Latest Advancements in SSL Technology" and learn about the benefits of strong SSL encryption, Extended Validation (EV) SSL and security trust marks and what these SSL offerings can do for your site. Now with Extended Validation (EV) SSL available from VeriSign, you can show your customers that they can trust your site. Learn about EV SSL benefits in this free VeriSign white paper. |
