Network World articles from August 2006

Network World archives from August 2006

Is the value of IT in the WAN? * Questioning where the value of IT is in organizations.(wide area networks)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Steve Taylor,aJim Metzler In late June, Network World held its IT Roadmap seminar in Chicago. At this seminar, there were tracks that covered a wide range of IT topics and Jim moderated two of these tracks. While moderating,...

A-IMS: Industry, or procurement standard? * Verizon Wireless' A-IMS proposal.(advances to internet multimedia subsystems)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy Is Verizon Wireless' A-IMS proposal a genuine standards proposal? Or a customer-specific RFP... Verizon and its five vendor task force are offering Advances to IMS, or A-IMS, in an effort to fill in the "white space,"...

Desktops: The final frontier; * How do IT execs support and manage the delivery of enterprise apps to their branches?
August 1, 2006... Byline: John Burke One point often discussed in this column is the fact that most people (about 90%) now work somewhere other than their corporate headquarters means that most people are using enterprise applications across the WAN....

MS-ISAC continues useful Webcasts; * More Webcasts from MS-ISAC.(Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center)(Column)
August 1, 2006... Byline: M. E. Kabay Back in April I wrote about the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) organized by the Computer Emergency Readiness Team of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The MS-ISAC provides...

AEP adding clustering and load balancing features to its SSL VPN gear; * AEP works with Zeus to beef up its SSL VPN offerings.(AEP Networks)(secure socket layer virtual private network)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Tim Greene SSL VPN vendor AEP is lining up support for clustering, load balancing, application firewalling and application assurance. Via a licensing agreement with Zeus Technology, AEP will initially make it possible to tie...

Standing up for GroupWise; * GroupWise users are not stranded.(Novell Inc.'s workgroup software)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Dave Kearns There's a well-known phenomenon of relationships that makes the police wary of answering calls about a domestic disturbance. Domestic partners who can be arguing tooth and nail one moment will join together and...

The high-price of using RAID 5; * A RAID primer.(redundant array of independent disks)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Mike Karp There are many levels of IT hell. Surely, one of the worst of those involves coping with the looming torture of RAID 5. RAID has been with us for more than 20 years, and during that time has saved the corporate...

Preparing future leaders; * Survey finds many CIOs are actively involved in staff development.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Amy Schurr Many CIOs make it their job to help groom future IT leaders, according to the results of a recent survey from Robert Half Technology. The staffing firm polled 1,400 CIOs from a variety of U.S. companies with 100...

IBM launches grid for insurance industry; * IBM rolls out Grid and Grow for Actuarial Analysis.(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Deni Connor IBM last week launched a grid-computing package for actuaries in life insurance companies that lets them perform analysis faster and more cost-effectively. The IBM Grid and Grow for Actuarial Analysis consists...

HP blade switch evaluated; * Tolly Group measures HP blade switch performance.(HP BladeSystem PC Blade Switch)(Product/service evaluation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Jeff Caruso Last month the Tolly Group evaluated the HP BladeSystem PC Blade Switch, which is a Layer 2 device that provides communications for 20 blade PCs in the HP BladeSystem PC Blade Enclosure. As usual with Tolly...

Virtualization hides differences in hardware; * Another benefit of server virtualization.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Andreas M. Antonopoulos One possible use of virtualization technology is as a hardware-abstraction-layer to hide the differences between servers in a data center. Even if you buy servers in batches of hundreds of thousands,...

Why is the healthcare industry slow in adopting messaging technologies? * Messaging in the healthcare industry.
August 1, 2006... Byline: Michael Osterman We all know that the healthcare industry, relative to many other industries, has been fairly slow to adopt a variety of communications and related technologies, including e-mail, instant messaging, Web-based...

Client software poised to speed up apps delivery for mobile users; * Client software: The next generation of acceleration technology.(AcceleNet 3.0 Enterprise)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Denise Dubie Telecommuters and mobile workers may soon be able to take advantage of the acceleration technologies that make serving applications from a centralized data center tolerable for branch offices. Software...

CDW consolidates storage.(CDW Computer Centers Inc.)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Deni Connor When users talk about consolidation, they normally mean consolidating servers through use of virtual machines or larger, more CPU-intensive servers. When K.C. Tomsheck, senior director of IT operations at computer...

Qwest posts profitable Q2.(Qwest Communications International Inc.)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy Qwest this week posted second quarter net income of $117 million on revenue of $3.5 billion. For the same period a year ago, Qwest recorded a loss of $164 million. Sales were driven by high-speed Internet,...

Vodafone to stay in Verizon Wireless, sizes up A-IMS.(advances to IP multimedia subsystems)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy Vodafone is unlikely to part with its minority stake in Verizon Wireless, Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg said in an earnings conference call this week. Verizon had reportedly offered Vodafone $38 billion for its...

Microsoft ships high-performance Windows OS.(Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003)
August 1, 2006... Byline: John Fontana Microsoft Tuesday released Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, its first high-performance operating system. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which rose from a Microsoft Research project introduced in 2000, is...

SMC, Asante pump out low-cost Gigabit Ethernet gear.(SMC Networks SMCGS24-Smart)(Asante Technologies Inc. introduced IC3624 and 3648)
August 1, 2006... Byline: Phil Hochmuth While wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, MIMO, et al) grab industry attention, a good cheap Ethernet switch is still the building block for most networks. SMC and Asante this week added new products to the...

Is ITIL training for you? * There's a lot of buzz surrounding ITIL, but is it in your future?(Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Linda Leung A couple of newsletters ago, I pointed you to a story in Network World about the career pressures network execs are faced with today. The article says there are many advances that net execs find unpalatable,...

Juniper teams with Mu Security to test Juniper's products; * Juniper to test its gear with a vulnerability analyzer from Mu Security.(Juniper Networks Inc.)(Brief article)
August 2, 2006... Juniper teams with Mu Security to test Juniper's products By Tim Greene Juniper has a new way to test its gear before shipping it to customers - a vulnerability analyzer from Mu Security. Introduced last spring, the device throws a...

GEMS aims to make large-scale Gentoo Linux management easier; * GEMS strips out unwanted packages and modules of Gentoo Linux.(Gentoo Enterprise Management System)(Brief article)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Phil Hochmuth Users interested in deploying the increasingly popular Gentoo Linux distribution should also get familiar with an open source project called GEMS - Gentoo Enterprise Management System. Many users are finding...

Teaching your TV to phone home when it's not feeling well; * Web services could enable remote diagnostics of consumer electronics.
August 2, 2006... Byline: Julie Craig Today's newsletter is in response to a reader request (you know who you are, Mike!) to discuss some emerging management standards specifications and how they relate to products based on service-oriented...

IVRs vs. offshore call center operators - which would you rather deal with? * Getting your problems solved over the phone is sometimes not as easy as it should be.(Interactive Voice Response Systems)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Dan Twing There has been much discussion over offshore call center outsourcing. Sometimes the focus is the effect on jobs, other times the focus is the quality of customer service. I wrote about customer service issues back in...

China's grand outsourcing ambitions could be scuppered by its politics; * China wants your outsourcing dollars - is it worth going there?
August 2, 2006... Byline: Dan Twing China wants to be like India...a major destination for services outsourcing. A Shanghai paper recently ran a story on the 25th anniversary of Infosys, the first global outsourcing company in India. This sort of...

JAlbum is quite possibly the tool of the year; * JAlbum assembles galleries on your PC as uploadable HTML presentations.(Product/service evaluation)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Mark Gibbs We've covered a few image gallery systems in the past in this newsletter, but today's product is perhaps the best album creation tool I've ever seen (and quite possibly the best utility software I've seen this year)....

Web companies becoming mobile-friendly; * Web apps for a mobile world.
August 2, 2006... Byline: Steve Taylor,aLarry Hettick For those of us who use a mobile device to get e-mail and to access the Internet, few things are as irritating as looking at a small screen of five-line URLs, accompanied by multiple minutes it takes...

An inconvenient truth about IPv6; * The Social Security Administration has yet to find one concrete benefit of the upgrade to IPv6.(Intenet Protocol version 6.0)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Carolyn Duffy Marsan IPv6 has long suffered from the perception that it is a good solution looking for a problem to solve. The Social Security Administration's hands-on experience with this upgrade to the Internet's main...

Making ID mgmt. convenient to users - no matter what device they're using; * Consider users when thinking of identity management.
August 2, 2006... Byline: Dave Kearns The end of the firewall is something I've talked about before in this newsletter as well as, more extensively, in the Windows Networking newsletter (see "Time to rethink the term 'firewall'"). When the network...

NameScape helps healthcare group deploy AD across a disparate IT infrastructure; * Microsoft case study features NameScape; NetPro begins shipping GPOADmin.(Active Directory)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Dave Kearns It's been a couple of years since I've talked about NameScape, the company Randy Bradley founded after he left NetPro, but a recent case study released by Microsoft highlights NameScape's rDirectory product and it's...

Bane of net administrator's existence remains security; * Security is biggest WLAN worry, though confidence improves.(wireless local area networks)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Joanie Wexler The 2006 Webtorials "WLAN State-of-the-Market" report shows that wireless security remains the primary thorn in WLAN administrators' sides. The third annual report, available now free of charge, is based on a...

XO boosts network capacity.(XO Communications is upgrading network capacity)(Brief article)
August 2, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy XO Communications this week said it is upgrading the capacity of its intercity links to 100Gbps. XO said the upgrade will allow it to more than double network capacity and offer 10Gbps services for content providers,...

IBM introduces processing monsters; * IBM's latest servers use gaming consoles technology to soup up performance.(International Business Machines Corp.)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Deni Connor IBM last week launched two monster servers, the IBM System p5 590 and the 595, a 64-core machine capable of processing 4 million transactions a minute. Faster than HP's Superdome, according to IBM's claims, the...

New Mac updates available from Apple; * Patches from Intel, Apple, McAfee* Beware Internet banking Trojan that looks to steal user login/account information* Black Hat: NAC solutions vulnerable to attack, and other interesting reading.(McAfee to issue patch for vulnerability)(Apple Computer Inc. updated its Mac OS X operating systems)(Intel issues patches for wireless vulnerabilities)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Jason Meserve Today's bug patch and security alerts: New Mac updates available from Apple A new Mac OS X update is available from Apple to fix flaws in AFP Server, Bluetooth, Bom, DHCP, dyld, fetchmail, gunzip, Image ...

Who in your company first notices when apps performance starts to degrade? * End users are often the first to shout when apps have slowed.
August 3, 2006... Byline: Steve Taylor,aJim Metzler Last time, we discussed the perceived value of IT based on feedback that we got at the recent Network World IT Roadmap seminar in Chicago. In this newsletter, we are going to discuss the feedback that...

My backup stupid penalty; * Too many PC gotchas still getcha.
August 3, 2006... Byline: James E. Gaskin My office looks like a computer hospital. If you believe strongly in karma, you may think I brought this on myself by complaining about Microsoft and other vendors. The problems I was having with my video...

Latest Linksys VPN router for small businesses is a cut-above the consumer boxes; * Linksys releases two small-business VPN routers priced at $130 and $200.(Virtual private networks, Linksys Group Inc.)(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Tim Greene Linksys, which is known for making inexpensive networking gear, has two new small-business VPN routers that are remarkably inexpensive. At $130 and $200, these devices offer secure remote access or site-to-site...

Novell systems engineers: You are sorely missed (unless you're a big customer); * Where have all the systems engineers gone (to visit with the big accounts).
August 3, 2006... Byline: Dave Kearns A few weeks ago in a newsletter about Avanti Technology's TaskMaster and its CEO, Steve Meyer, I wrote: "Meyer adds that Novell reps (and when's the last time you saw one of those?) have recommended TaskMaster..."...

Larger disks poised to change the RAID playing field; * RAID 5 rebuilds and other horrors.(redundant array of independent disks)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Mike Karp Today, we continue our discussion of RAID 5. When it comes to RAID 5, rebuild times are affected by four things. The first parameter is the number of drives in the array: the more drives you have, the longer the...

SMC upgrades 'smart' switch; * SMC's newest switch.(SMC Networks Inc., EZ Switch 10/100/1000 )(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Jeff Caruso SMC Networks this week announced that it has replaced its SMCGS24-Smart with an upgraded model, the new EZ Switch 10/100/1000 SMCGS24C-Smart. The new switch has 24 ports of copper-based Gigabit Ethernet, just...

Capex climbing; * Worldwide telecom capital expenditures increase for third year in a row.(capital expenditures)(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy For the third year in a row, worldwide telecom capital expenditures increased and will continue to do so for the next three years, according to Infonetics Research. Service provider capex topped $202 billion in...

Research details common customer-application performance pain points; * Why is the app performing so badly for end users?
August 3, 2006... Byline: Denise Dubie Could you be a candidate for application acceleration technology? The products available today could help IT managers deal with a spectrum of performance problems. Forrester Research Senior Analyst Robert...

Ohio University coping with information breaches; * Ohio University's response to security violation.
August 3, 2006... Byline: M. E. Kabay In May, Ohio University (OU) announced that a security violation was discovered in which "The computer system contained biographical information for more than 300,000 individuals and organizations, including the...

How much does e-mail really cost in your organization? * Messaging decision-makers don't know how much it costs their organizations to provide messaging systems.
August 3, 2006... Byline: Michael Osterman We're about to publish the results of a major new study on hosted messaging. As part of that study, we asked messaging-oriented decision-makers about the cost of providing messaging capabilities within their...

Juniper researcher Michael Lynn crashes Cisco party at Black Hat.(Juniper Networks Inc., Cisco Systems Inc.)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Ellen Messmer The invite-only party last night that Cisco held at a nightclub for Black Hat conference attendees was crashed by security researcher Michael Lynn, who last year was sued by Cisco for revealing a serious flaw in...

VCs pour $3 billion into network start-ups; Wireless, software among biggest winners, quarterly venture capital survey finds.(venture capital companies)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Carolyn Duffy Marsan Venture capital firms continue to make a steady stream of investments in network start-ups, particularly software, Internet and wireless technologies. During the second quarter, VCs invested just under...

Cingular decides to charge customers that choose to use its legacy networks.(Cingular Wireless L.L.C)(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Denise Pappalardo Cingular Wireless will start charging millions of legacy customers a $5 per month fee in September for using the service provider's old networks. While the majority of Cingular's customers use its GSM...

Nortel posts Q2 profit.(Northern Telecom Ltd.)(Brief article)
August 3, 2006... Byline: Jim Duffy Nortel this week posted a second quarter profit of $366 million on revenue of $2.74 billion. Sales were up from the $2.62 billion for the second quarter of 2005, and $2.38 billion for the first quarter of 2006. Nortel...

The five worst states for start-ups.
August 4, 2006... Byline: Carolyn Duffy Marsan Inventors, beware. If you've got an idea for the next big thing in networking, you better get the heck out of Dodge if you live in one of the states listed below. These states have not received any...

Black Hat attendees: Protecting corporate assets is first priority.
August 4, 2006... Byline: Tim Greene Why do people throng to the Black Hat conference Las Vegas in August? To protect their key business assets from attackers, according to a survey conducted Wednesday at the show. The survey commissioned by...

Storage week in review: New storage products roundup; Product news from Copan Systems, Topio, Exabyte, and TeraCloud.
August 4, 2006... Byline: Deni Connor Copan Systems this week added data encryption and other security features to its Virtual Tape Library (VTL) products. The company's Revolution 220T and 220TX allow customers to protect their data during both...

MIMO, 'draft n' gear blazes near 100Mbps, but vendor interoperability remains an issue.(multiple-input multiple-output)
August 7, 2006... Two years after the first multiple-input multiple-output-based wireless LAN products appeared, we're finally at a point where a wide array of systems are available for residential and small and midsize business markets (and at least one,...

Making corporate security second nature; It's more about reducing risk in everyday practices than fighting threats.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Denise Dubie Second in a four-part series on the toughest security issues affecting the enterprise.Read part 1 here. Enterprise security executives need to make practices such as safe USB use and discreet handling of patient or...

New ultraportable laptops.(Gateway E-100M, Fujitsu LifeBook Q2010)(Product/service evaluation)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Keith Shaw Ultraportable notebooks continue to impress me, making advancements in features that make me forget about their heavier brothers on the "normal" notebook front. Here are two of the latest I've had the joy of testing...

How we tested MIMO router; New ways of benchmarking WLAN systems.(multiple input multiple output)
August 7, 2006... Benchmarking wireless products in any form is notoriously difficult, especially in comparative tests. The primary culprit is the behavior of the radio channel itself. This is the element of the physical universe that carries the radio...

Middle of nowhere; The burden of the Midwestern network start-up: "How good can the software be if it's made here?".
August 7, 2006... Byline: Carolyn Duffy Marsan Elyria, Ohio, population 56,000, has a history of innovation: The padded bicycle seat, colored golf ball and rubber heel were invented here. Now this Rust Belt city 10 miles west of Cleveland is home to a...

Cymphonix device watches users, traffic, but hits a few bumps; Network Composer's strength lies in monitoring traffic, weaker in security.(Cymphonix's Network Composer DC30X)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Joel Snyder Cymphonix's Network Composer DC30X is a security appliance designed to sit quietly between users and the Internet, blocking viruses and spyware, reporting on user and application bandwidth, and shaping traffic. It's...

NAC, VoIP security draw questions at Black Hat; Jericho Forum of enterprise customers to issue white paper on network access-control concerns.(network access control)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ellen Messmer LAS VEGAS - At the Black Hat conference this week, security researchers drew attention to shortcomings in network access control and VoIP products, voicing criticisms that rang true to some enterprise network...

Linux event shows move to mainstream; Fifteen years after the introduction of the Linux kernel, open source offering finds acceptance.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Mears,aPhil Hochmuth Fifteen years after the introduction of the Linux kernel, next week's LinuxWorld conference will focus not on whether to use open source software - the market has answered that question - but on...

Sybase previews data-integration suite; Product combines data federation, replication, event handling, search with common development, administration tools.(Data Integration Suite 1.0)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ann Bednarz Sybase this week is expected to take the wraps off a new suite of tools aimed at helping companies combine data from heterogeneous sources. At its user conference in Las Vegas, Sybase plans to preview its Data...

The draft-n controversy; It's possible to claim compliance with any specification, whether approved by a major standards body or not.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Keith Shaw Someone once said the best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. But what happens when there's no formal standard, and vendors want to develop products that are compatible with a "work in...

More GPS.(global Positioning System)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Mark Gibbs So we were discussing our wobbling office last week, which we discovered with the help of Microsoft MapPoint 2006 with GPS Locator. This curious phenomenon was caused by a continuously changing GPS positional error...

Active Directory,Working on Active Directory from an XP workstation.(Microsoft Windows XP)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Steve Blass In our Active Directory domain, we'd like to manage users and groups from a workstation rather than from the server. How can I get the Active Directory Users and Computers application into my XP workstation...

Why buy a MIMO PC card now?(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Most new notebooks today come with at least 802.11g built in, so why add a PC card wireless LAN (WLAN) adapter? In the case of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology, we find it useful to go the aftermarket route when one requires...

A MIMO primer.(multiple input multiple output)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless uses different waveforms on typically two, but sometimes three or more transmitting antennas inputting to the channel carrying radio waves from Point A to Point B. Multiple antennas and radios...

Microsoft looks for ways to combat Blue Pill, code-signing bypass.(in Microsoft Windows Vista)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ellen Messmer After security researcher Joanna Rutkowska Thursday demonstrated how it's possible to circumvent security in Microsoft's Vista beta software and install a rootkit called Blue Pill, Microsoft said it intends to...

Data reduction speeds WANs.(wide area networks)
August 7, 2006... Various technologies have emerged aimed at improving application performance over enterprise WANs. Though helpful, solutions such as compression, QoS and wide-area file services don't offer large enough performance gains across a wide...

Array gear protects healthcare provider; Gateways simplify architecture and streamline layered security.(Humana Health Care Plans Inc. contracts with Array Networks)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Tim Greene Humana Health Care used to rely on a mix of remote-access methods but wanted a single, flexible technology that would reduce the number of network entry points for malicious activity. As a result, it is standardizing...

AT&T looks to extend SBC's hold on SMBs; Carrier essentially repackages hosting, security and VoIP offerings.(SBC Communications Inc.)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Denise Pappalardo AT&T is trying to find the right mix of services to better serve the small-to-midsize business market and leverage some of the successes legacy SBC has seen in its 13-state region. The carrier is...

How we tested JabberNow.(Instant messaging software)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... We connected the JabberNow appliance to a local Fast Ethernet network containing Windows, Linux and Mac clients along with a variety of file, Web and database servers. We also tested JabberNow's integration with AOL Instant Messenger...

What's behind the slowing of IT job losses?(Information technology industry)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Thomas Nolle Remember the glory days of IT spending, the late 1990s? Obviously, they're gone, killed off by a combination of a post-Year 2000 slump, the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble and Sept. 11. Recently, there's been some...

Outsourcing gets homey; Homeshoring provides call center alternative to offshoring.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Jennifer Mears It's not surprising that 1-800-Flowers.com sees its business spike around Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas. What might surprise you, however, is that the company meets its increased call volume with...

Flexible licensing plans gain momentum; Bentley program lets customers turn in user licenses they don't want in exchange for seats of a different product.(Bentley Software licensing agreement with Architects Design Partnership)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ann Bednarz Bentley Software is going against the grain with a new licensing program that lets customers turn in user licenses they don't want in exchange for seats of a different product in Bentley's portfolio of architecture,...

How to shrink a wide digital divide? Governments playing a new role that could benefit ISPs and their customers.(internet service providers)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Scott Bradner The core problem in the network-neutrality debate is an economic one. Once upon a time, ISPs thought they could make money by offering connections to the Internet. Most of the larger ISPs also made some money...

Making the transition from technology to business; The right skills can help you move from IT to a different department.(Tasty Baking Co.)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Cara Garretson Three years ago, Autumn Bayles was brought in as a part of a management-turnaround team to rebuild Tasty Baking, a 90-year-old family-run public company in need of restructuring. Bayle's task as CIO was to revamp...

It's better than the Energizer bunny.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Christine Burns As we find ourselves at about the halfway mark in a summerlong process of pounding on vendors to fill out our technically meticulous product surveys that drive the Network World Buyer's Guides, I can't help but...

Personal computers on company network pose security risk.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Ron Nutter I head the board of directors for a small nonprofit organization. Our network uses DSL to connect to the internet. I recently found out that one of our employees installed Wi-Fi and uses his personal laptop to...

Enterprise privacy strategies, tactics.(data security)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Johna Till Johnson Last week I wrote about privacy challenges that can affect companies, particularly those doing business globally. Here are some best practices for ensuring that your company stays on the right side of those...

The 'me' in team, and what it means.(team motivation)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Chuck Yoke Motivation is a primary factor in whether goals are missed, met or exceeded. Motivation determines whether people can't wait for their feet to hit the floor in the morning to get to work - or hit the snooze button...

Jabber appliance IMpresses with ease of installation, use.(Instant messaging)(JabberNow)(Product/service evaluation)
August 7, 2006... Instant messaging is technically the storing and forwarding of notes that people type to each other. From a business perspective, however, IM is fast becoming an essential medium for communicating between employees and between companies....

10 IT brand names that just won't die.
August 7, 2006... Byline: Paul McNamara Here's a dirty little secret from the inner sanctum of the journalism business: Sometimes we start with a headline - say, "10 IT brand names that just won't die," or "Five dirty little secrets from journalism's...

How we tested Cymphonix appliance.(Network Composer)(Brief article)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Joel Snyder We installed Network Composer and tested it for three weeks in our production network between a set of remote offices and their upstream Internet connection. Because there is no "report but do not interfere" mode,...

Microsoft's services picture becoming clear; Microsoft starting to tune its services message for corporate customers.(software-as-a-service)
August 7, 2006... Byline: John Fontana An image of Microsoft's future - delivering software-as-a-service to corporate customers - finally is starting to develop, although the company and observers agree there are many challenges ahead. That...

Net infrastructure for the long run.(desktop and server systems)
August 7, 2006... Byline: Kevin Tolly When we make major infrastructure purchases, we like to know that the choices we've made are smart ones - good for the long run. But the long run in my headline refers to another issue - the capability of a device...

Microsoft takes first step toward standardizing management modeling language.(Service Modeling Language)
August 7, 2006... Byline: John Fontana Microsoft Monday said it was working with a set of partners to create a standard modeling language designed to help corporations better manage their infrastructure. Microsoft and its partners released the draft...