Info-Tech Advisor Newsletter articles from April 1999

Info-Tech Advisor Newsletter archives from April 1999

Internet Shopping: 1-in-10 Buy & Rising.
April 6, 1999... (An Ernst & Young Study) In the new millennium, the impact of the Internet on consumer shopping habits will be just as dramatic as the advent of the shopping mall and chain stores in the 1960s. Not only will customer's shopping practices...

Bandwidth of the Future: Wavelength Division Multiplexing.
April 6, 1999... (A Technology Review Article) Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), also known as dense WDM, is an emerging transmission technology that's set to have a big impact on your organization. Basically, WDM is a technology that lets separate...

On the Web "Cool" can = Results: Check out Avatars.
April 6, 1999... (A GartnerGroup Executive Edge Article) Avatars could be the next "cool tool" that will help your company increase its online sales. Listed by GartnerGroup as a technology to watch, avatars are graphical representatives of people that...

Thinking About Outsourcing Your Apps?
April 6, 1999... (A Data Communications Article) Outsourcing applications can make a lot of sense considering that IT departments are notoriously overloaded and sometimes lack the full range of in-house expertise needed to manage today's growing array of...

The Ten Commandments of E-mail.
April 6, 1999... (Harvard Business School Publishing) With all e-mail's pros, there is a growing stack of cons surrounding its appropriate use that haven't been addressed. Beyond its obvious impact on our ability to manage our time and information influx,...

Evaluating - Web Caching.
April 6, 1999... (Data Communications and NetworkMagazine.com Articles) Until recently, Web caching has been used mainly by ISPs, but vendors have started reworking their products in earnest to meet growing enterprise-level demands. Web caching works by...

Smart Cards 101.
April 6, 1999... (An InfoWorld Electric Article) Smart cards have yet to make a big impact on North America, but they're on their way. Similar in appearance to a credit card, a smart card is essentially a piece of plastic that contains an embedded chip,...

Create Your Own Community & Improve Customer Retention.
April 6, 1999... (A ZDNN Tech News Article) People have a general desire to communicate with their peers. Developing a moderated online community that facilitates this interaction is an excellent method of building mind share within your industry and...

1999 Mid-Year Salary Survey.
April 6, 1999... (A Computerworld Survey) The personnel shortages in IT have forced many IT managers to fork out significant salary increases, promotions, and signing and retention bonuses to bring qualified staff on board and keep them from defecting to...

Defend Your Network...
April 6, 1999... (CERT Coordination Center Resources) If the Melissa virus has achieved some good, it's in how it has put a spotlight on the need for a robust security infrastructure In the future, if you're looking for reliable up-to-date information...

Expect More from Directory Service Vendors....
April 6, 1999... (An Aberdeen Whitepaper) Before you commit yourself to a directory service infrastructure or platform you will want to consider Aberdeen's report on "The business case for Directory Guided IT". In this report, Aberdeen makes a case for...

Comparing Remote Access Servers.
April 6, 1999... (Network World Fusion and Network Computing Online Articles) Considering the maturity of remote access server (RAS) technology, "vendors today have to go the extra mile to distance themselves from the competition." This healthy competition...

A Few New Y2K Resources...
April 6, 1999... (A Computerworld Article and Microsoft Product Announcement) If you haven't been keeping pace with the status of your state's Y2K legislation, you'll want to start now. New laws are popping up across the country designed to protect the...

"Drive a HARD Bargain" - Your Telecom Costs Should Drop Every 6 Months.
April 6, 1999... (A NetworkWorld Fusion Resource) Given the costs associated with your telecom bill and the cost-saving opportunities in light of the constant downward trend in local and long-distance prices, you likely have someone within your...

SOFTWARE : Appvisor 1.0 for Microsoft Exchange.
April 6, 1999... A. Appvisor 1.0 for Microsoft Exchange (Appliant, Inc.) Appliant has released the first in its new series of application performance monitoring and reporting tools that take a unique business activity approach. Instead of focusing on...

SOFTWARE : Transactionhouse.
April 6, 1999... B. Transactionhouse (Quadstone Ltd.) Quadstone has announced the release of Transactionhouse, a customer analysis tool that structures raw transaction data about customers for analysis without the need for extensive custom coding, and...

SOFTWARE : Incentive Tracks Employee Compensation.
April 6, 1999... C. Incentive Tracks Employee Compensation (Incentive Systems) Incentive Systems, a company that focuses exclusively on sales force compensation solutions, has announced the release of its new "enterprise wide incentive tool for...

DEVELOPERS TOOLS : Lucent Announces Jini Competition.
April 6, 1999... A. Lucent Announces Jini Competition (Inferno) Inferno, an offshoot of Lucent, has developed a Jini-like technology for building distributed computing applications called InfernoSpaces. InfernoSpaces basically allows any network device...

DEVELOPERS TOOLS : Symantec VisualCafe Enterprise Suite.
April 6, 1999... B. Symantec VisualCafe Enterprise Suite (Symantec Corp.) Symantec has added an Enterprise Suite version to its family of VisualCafe Java development solutions. The VisualCafe Enterprise Suite is an ideal tool for high-end distributed...

DEVELOPERS TOOLS : Developer Training for Java.
April 6, 1999... C. Developer Training for Java (MindQ, Inc.) If your in-house Java expertise isn't where you need it to be, MindQ's Developer Training for Java is a solid alternative to sending staff out for training. Developed in conjunction with...

Y2K TOOLS : Time Machine Release 3.
April 6, 1999... A. Time Machine Release 3 (SolutionSoft Systems) Time Machine from SolutionSoft Systems allows you to test systems and applications for Y2K compliance without having to take systems offline. Time Machine achieves this by running a...

NETWORKING : Altiga's VPN Concentrator Series.
April 6, 1999... A. Altiga's VPN Concentrator Series (Altiga Networks) Altiga's newly released VPN (virtual private network) Concentrator Series - including the C50, C20, and C10 - offers a range of flexible, remote access VPN solutions for large-and...

NETWORKING : Internet IronWare Load Balancing Supports Layer 7 Switching.
April 6, 1999... B. Internet IronWare Load Balancing Supports Layer 7 Switching (Foundry Networks) Foundry's Internet IronWare load balancing and cache switching software brings new application layer (Layer 7) functionality to its award-winning...

PORTABLE COMPUTING : CrossPad XP.
April 6, 1999... A. CrossPad XP (A.T. Cross Company) CrossPad XP is a 6" x 9" portable notepad that lets you take handwritten notes with regular ink on regular paper while electronically storing them for transfer to your PC. This solution is ideal for...

LEISURE : Home Networking is Coming...
April 6, 1999... (Intel Corporation) Intel is leading the charge to network the home, hoping to solve the problem of having multiple people share a single Internet connection and the hassle of running your home printer from computer to computer. ...

Thin Servers?
April 20, 1999... (A Data Communications Article) You've heard of thin clients, but have you ever heard of thin servers? Thin servers are pre-configured network "appliances" that are dedicated to a single network function, such as handling Internet...

An Online Advertising Update.
April 20, 1999... (An Adknowledge Report) For those involved with or considering online advertising, this report from Adknowledge provides facts and figures about "trends in the number of web sites, advertising rates, and ad format and size." Consider...

Give Your Web Server a Break: Think "Cryptographic Accelerators".
April 20, 1999... (A Network Computing Online Article) Security is the main way to build trust on your e-commerce Web site. Yet in order to live up to today's security expectations, Web servers are taking on the high-stress job of performing complicated...

The State of Knowledge Management.
April 20, 1999... (An InformationWeek Study) To date, knowledge management (KM) initiatives have received a half-hearted treatment in many organizations. Because KM sounds like a fantastic idea that should have been put in place yesterday, everyone is...

Prioritizing Network Traffic.
April 20, 1999... (DCI eBusiness News, Data Communications, and Tolly Networking Journal Articles) Many new network technologies talk about supporting traffic prioritization, the process of tagging certain network traffic types that are time sensitive or...

E-Billing: A Status Report.
April 20, 1999... (A Datamation Article) The adoption of electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) - or e-billing - has been slow. In fact, according to market research firm Killen & Associates, "of the 7,500 major billers worldwide that account for...

Configuration Management: A Way to Take Control.
April 20, 1999... (An InformationWeek Article) Changes to applications and their supporting technological infrastructures can result in annoying service interruptions and unnecessarily long periods of downtime. By practicing configuration management (CM),...

What Exactly is an Application Server?
April 20, 1999... (The Yankee Group, Webreview.com, and Intelligent Enterprise Articles) The definition of "application server" has been a muddy one largely due to the diverse range of products that have adopted the name. In essence, an application server...

Intranets: A Complete "How to" Guide.
April 20, 1999... (An Intranet Journal Feature) "Intranets are poised to become the standard infrastructure for communication and collaboration in organizations." Given that an intranet is one of the best opportunities for a clear technology win, consider...

Comparing the Costs of Servers: NT - UNIX - AS/400.
April 20, 1999... (An IDC Research Bulletin) In a direct comparison between IBM AS/400, Microsoft NT, and UNIX platforms, IDC Research calculated an average cost of ownership for each platform based on a study of 500 medium and large organizations. The...

The Ultimate 10/100 Switch Buyer's Guide.
April 20, 1999... (A Network Computing Online Article) Sooner or later, you'll be buying switches either as part of a network expansion or as replacements for older switches going into retirement. Either way, a switch shopping expedition could be more than...

Business Recovery and Continuity.
April 20, 1999... (Summit Online and Deloitte & Touche White Papers) Twenty four hour a day availability is a growing business driver. Considering this, can you really afford to be nothing less than 100% prepared to handle any disaster that might come your...

Build up Your E-Mail Policy.
April 20, 1999... (Windows Magazine and NetworkMagazine.com Articles) Since the Microsoft antitrust trial, e-mail's talent for rising from the dead and haunting the courtroom has become a very hot issue. Establishing and enforcing an e-mail policy is a must...

Customer Relationship Management Software.
April 20, 1999... (InfoWorld Electric, NetworkWorld Fusion, and Intelligent Enterprise Articles) You've heard about the importance of high-quality customer service, automating the sales force, and the leveraging of customer information for generating...

SOFTWARE : Get "Insight" into Your Customers.
April 20, 1999... A. Get "Insight" into Your Customers (Accrue Software, Inc.) Accrue Software has announced Insight 3.0, an update on its eBusiness analysis software. Insight 3.0 is ideal for handling customer behavior and demographic data on...

SOFTWARE : Ease Content Updates with WebDB 2.0.
April 20, 1999... B. Ease Content Updates with WebDB 2.0 (Oracle Corp.) Oracle has released an update to its WebDB, a database-to-Web development tool that helps eliminate the bottlenecks associated with chronic content updates. An add-on to your...

INTRANET/INTERNET : Marimba Upgrades Castanet.
April 20, 1999... A. Marimba Upgrades Castanet (Marimba, Inc.) Marimba has released an upgrade to its application deployment software system, Castanet 4.0. Castanet lets administrators distribute, update, and manage applications over the Internet,...

INTRANET/INTERNET : Tap All Your Intellectual Assets with Dataware and Autonomy.
April 20, 1999... B. Tap All Your Intellectual Assets with Dataware and Autonomy (Dataware Technologies and Autonomy, Inc.) The Dataware II Knowledge Query Server and Autonomy's ActiveKnowledge help employees more effectively tap into resources on the...

UTILITIES : GoBack Brings Hard Drives Back From the Dead.
April 20, 1999... A. GoBack Brings Hard Drives Back From the Dead (Wild File) GoBack protects you from computer accidents brought on by virus attacks, system crashes, or clicking "yes" when you should have clicked "no" by monitoring every change in your...

UTILITIES : Lower Printing Costs with FinePrint.
April 20, 1999... B. Lower Printing Costs with FinePrint (Single Track Software) You can never have too many cool utilities, and Single Track Software is offering up a winner. FinePrint helps you better manage your printing costs by letting you easily...

UTILITIES: ControlIT, ARCserveIT, and InoculateIT meet Midrange Needs.
April 20, 1999... C. ControlIT, ARCserveIT, and InoculateIT meet Midrange Needs (Computer Associates) Computer Associates has released a trio of products that fill the midrange gap: ControlIT, ARCserveIT, and InoculateIT Advanced Editions. ControlIT...

SERVERS : Sun Helps Solaris/NT Interoperability.
April 20, 1999... A. Sun Helps Solaris/NT Interoperability (Sun Microsystems, Inc.) Solaris/NT interoperability has made great inroads with the arrival of Sun's Solaris PC NetLink software. NetLink capitalizes on Solaris servers' reliability by...

BACK-UP DEVICES : Tape Libraries for the Midrange...
April 20, 1999... A. Tape Libraries for the Midrange... (Plasmon Data Inc.) The Magstar MP family of automated tape libraries is challenging the rest of the mid-range market. Sporting a speedy data transfer rate of 7MB per second, the Plasmon Magstar MP...

SECURITY : Active Security Intelligently Detects Breaches.
April 20, 1999... A. Active Security Intelligently Detects Breaches (Network Associates) Network Associates has launched its "next evolutionary step" in enterprise network security, Active Security. By linking security enforcement to actual network...

LEISURE.
April 20, 1999... Have you ever been curious about what job you would have held if you lived in medieval times? Now you can find out with the Kingdomality Personal Preference Profile. Go to http://www.cmi-lmi.com/enterppp.html, answer the Kingdomality...