Computerworld articles from November 2007

Computerworld archives from November 2007

Using women.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
November 5, 2007... IF YOU attended the Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2007 in Orlando last month, perhaps you saw something that you haven't seen at a high-profile IT conference for a while: provocatively dressed women being used to attract attention to a vendor's...

So long to e-mail.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 5, 2007... I agree with Mark Hall that the writing is on the wall for internal installations of messaging software ["History Revisited," Oct. 8]. But the challenge isn't technical; it's our own petrified attitudes that keep us from moving to hosted...

Take this job and love it.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 5, 2007... The subject of Don Tennant's Oct. 8 Editor's Note, "Job Acquiescence," is a testament to how blessed we are to make a living in this industry and this country. Others are just trying to survive and pay the mortgage, but we in IT are reflecting...

Intel chips away at data center costs.(DATA CENTERS)
November 5, 2007... AN IT manager at Intel Corp. says that the chip maker wants to run its data centers "like an Intel factory," a strategy that includes a plan to consolidate 133 existing IT facilities into eight data center hubs. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Wachovia looks to map out its data centers.(ANALYTICS)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Wachovia Corp. is working to create 3-D maps of its data centers, a project that company officials hope will enable them to run visualizations of IT assets and predict the business impact of local power outages and other scenarios. The...

Microsoft ties Oslo 'road map' to modeling.(SOFTWARE)
November 5, 2007... MICROSOFT CORP. last week took the wraps off an initiative that it hopes will expand the use of model-driven design techniques and ease the process of developing composite applications within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The...

Cisco Systems Inc.(Short Takes)(Wipro Ltd)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Cisco Systems Inc. and Indian outsourcer Wipro Ltd. have agreed to jointly create a services program for corporate users in India, the Middle East and Africa. Cisco also launched a joint venture with Wipro rival Satyam Computer Services Ltd. to...

Iron Mountain Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Iron Mountain Inc. has agreed to purchase e-discovery services provider Stratify Inc. for $158 million in cash. Stratify will become a division of Iron Mountain Digital.

To our readers.(News Digest)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Scot Finnie was named Computerworld's editor in chief last week. Finnie, formerly online editorial director, will manage a newly integrated team that is responsible for the editorial content on Computerworld.com and in the weekly print...

HHS ups payments to e-health adopters.(E-HEALTH)(United States Department of Health and Human Services)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... THE U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week unveiled a new five-year initiative that will provide higher Medicare reimbursements to physicians who use electronic health records (EHR). The agency said the increased...

Feds' e-mail snafu exposes addresses of whistle-blowers.(PRIVACY)(House Committee on the Judiciary)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... THE HOUSE Committee on the Judiciary last week apologized to would-be government whistle-blowers for accidentally exposing their e-mail addresses to other individuals who, like them, had used a committee Web site to secretly submit tips about...

Between the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
November 5, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Dell Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Dell Inc. restated its financial results from fiscal 2003 through the first quarter of its 2007 fiscal year, bringing the hardware vendor back into compliance with the Nasdaq Stock Market's listing requirements.

President Bush.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... President Bush signed into law a bill that extends the moratorium on Internet taxes for seven more years. The ban had been due to expire last Thursday.

One year ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Microsoft Corp. agreed not to sue Novell Inc.'s Linux users over patent issues in return for a share of Novell's open-source revenue.

Cisco set to invest $16B in China.(Global Dispatches)(Cisco Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... BEIJING -- Cisco Systems Inc. plans to invest $16 billion to boost its presence in China over the next few years, CEO John Chambers said in a speech here last week. The company's latest round of spending in China will begin this week with...

African officials endorse cable plan.(Global Dispatches)(New Partnership for Africa's Development)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- African IT ministers have endorsed a $2 billion undersea cable project of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). The cable will run around Africa's east and west coasts and extend to India, the...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... The Australian Department of Defense has poached a senior officer from the Australian Tax Department, Second Commissioner Greg Farr, to fill its chief information officer position, which has been vacant for more than six months. Darren...

Microsoft set to renew IT storage push: corporate users are split on whether the upgrade meets their needs.(STORAGE)
November 5, 2007... AS MICROSOFT CORP. readies the launch of a second version of its Data Protection Manager storage technology, users disagree on whether it will boost the vendor's position among corporate storage administrators. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

OpenVMS still has road ahead of it, HP says: the vendor calls the 30-year-old OS a 'key product.' But will software makers continue to support it?(OPERATING SYSTEMS)
November 5, 2007... HEWLETT-PACKARD Co. is marking the 30th anniversary of the release of its OpenVMS operating system by telling users that the software still doesn't have an expiration date on it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To deliver that message, HP has...

Face social networks' risks.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... STARTING THIS MONTH, Skype Ltd., the voice-over-IP division of eBay Inc., and MySpace, News Corp.'s popular social networking site, will begin a service that will let the 110 million MySpace members who have Skype accounts call one another with...

KM could KO compliance.(On the Mark)(knowledge management)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... With the first baby boomers trundling off to retirement, companies are using knowledge management (KM) systems to capture their wisdom for the future generations of workers, says analyst Jim Murphy at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. That will help...

Oracle users embrace open-source systems.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... At next week's gathering of Oracle aficionados at OpenWorld in San Francisco, Ari Kaplan, president of the Independent Oracle User Group in Chicago, will present some interesting data about open-source usage culled from the group's annual...

Darl McBride: SCO's beleaguered CEO talks about how it feels to take a pounding, plan a comeback and be labeled the 'most hated man in the industry.'.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
November 5, 2007... Nine months after Darl McBride joined The SCO Group Inc. as president and CEO in June 2002, the company filed a $5 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging that it improperly contributed some of SCO's Unix intellectual property for use in Linux....

The recovering complexaholic.(OPINION)
November 5, 2007... THERE'S A STANDING joke that business people never have to ask IT how long something will take and what it will cost because they already know the answers: It always takes a year and costs $1 million--and that's just for the simple stuff. ...

How to boost your career in'08: seven steps to start elevating your prospects now.
November 5, 2007... DREAMING of ringing in the new year with a new job under your belt--either at your present company or with an entirely new employer? That might not be realistic; a successful career change takes time, sometimes lots of time. But if you want to...

In the heartland: these Best Places to Work in it mix the best of small-town America and big-time technology.(BEST PLACES SHOWCASE: NORTH CENTRAL)
November 5, 2007... FORBES MAGAZINE'S 2007 list of Best Places for Business and Careers includes six North Central U.S. cities in its top 50--Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Lincoln and Omaha, Neb.; Springfield, Mo.; and Indianapolis. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] ...

Open Grid Services Architecture: OGSA puts Web services and SOA on the grid.(QUICKSTUDY)
November 5, 2007... GRID COMPUTING has intrigued the IT world for years. The notion of harnessing the processing power of multiple computers--whether within an organization, supplied by volunteers or provided as a broadband, metered computing utility--is...

Wells Fargo's free ride: a cooling tower outside and a heat exchanger inside are expected to save the bank $450,000 annually.(DATA CENTERS)
November 5, 2007... BOB CULVER generated $150,000 in free cooling last year by using water-side economizer technology in the air conditioning system serving Wells Fargo & Co.'s Minneapolis data center. Culver, vice president of technology information group...

New tool pays for itself within days: he's skeptical, but our manager pilots a data loss prevention deployment--just in time, it turns out.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)(Product/service evaluation)
November 5, 2007... OUR intrusion-detection sensors give us about 40% coverage of our network, but we lack the manpower to pay proper attention to them. With only two network engineers--whose time is consumed with managing firewalls, the virtual private network,...

Wildfires and rogue users.(OPINION)
November 5, 2007... AS I WRITE THIS, the Southern California skies over my home are brown with the smoke of more than a dozen wildfires. Luckily, none of my family and friends has been affected so far, but as many as half a million people have already been...

Circle of doom.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... IT organizations' involvement in the academic sphere is a welcome development, but internship programs require follow-through and commitment. Forrester Research Inc.'s white paper "Recruiting IT Talent: Adjusting to a Hot Market" offers up this...

Negotiation: look behind the positions to the parties' needs, wants and concerns.(CAREER ENHANCER)
November 5, 2007... During my 27 years as a consultant, I've watched IT professionals continually lose in negotiations with clients. As a result, they are chronically understaffed, lack the right resources and often need to meet unrealistic deadlines. Rather than...

Mothers' natures.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Over the past 10 years, the percentage of working mothers who would prefer to work full time has dropped 11 points. Mothers with children under age 18 were asked, "Which would be the ideal situation for you?" Working...

Yes, no, no ...(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Pilot fish gets an opportunity for a week of training, room and board paid for by the training company. All he needs is money for travel and approval from his boss. "I sent an e-mail to the boss asking for his approval to apply," says fish. "I...

What else?(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... It's way back when, and this engineer is working on programming some warning lights and buzzers for an unloading system in a manufacturing plant. "He worked late one night, and when we came in the next morning, the lights were flashing and the...

Twofer solution.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Data entry worker regularly complains about being hot and says that her computer screen flickers when the mercury rises, too. "I respond while she's at lunch and can find no apparent problem," says a pilot fish. "CPU, hard disk, graphics card,...

Rake time.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 5, 2007... Pilot fish gets a second call from a remote user to restart her network printer after a jam. And this time, she's a little more forthcoming about what's wrong. "It seems the plant manager likes decorative plants in the office," fish reports....

Wishes fulfilled.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)
November 5, 2007... INDESTRUCTIBLE mobile phones and a two-minute warning for e-mail are a reality. A truly smart credit card? Not so much. Two weeks ago in this space, I listed a dozen user-level tools I want--and, I suspect, many of our users do too. As usual,...

Getting old, indeed.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
November 12, 2007... LAST WEEK'S column struck a chord with a lot of readers, but not the one I thought it would. When I wrote about the embarrassing practice of using women as eye candy being revived at last month's Gartner Symposium/ITXpo 2007, I thought most...

The pros and cons of removing online posts.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
November 12, 2007... I do not believe that either comment removed from the story "Data Centers Get Religion" was off topic ["Under the Covers," Editor's Note, Oct. 15]. Instead, I believe that the title was worded to offend seriously religious people, whether...

Responses to: ethics in IT.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
November 12, 2007... Oct. 29, 2007 It is not Bryan's responsibility to make sure this person is fired or prosecuted; that is the responsibility of other people. His job is to notify management. If the management, FBI, prosecutor, judge, or anyone else in the...

Responses to: no more optimism.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
November 12, 2007... Oct. 29, 2007 TJX's experience is a good argument against instant breach notifications. It's taken them almost a year of digging to find the root cause and ultimate depth of the breach. However, no PR person who wants to stay employed, nor...

Responses to: no more Mr. Nice Guy.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
November 12, 2007... Oct. 29, 2007 Unfortunately, my career of 35 years presented all the scenarios presented in this article. At one time, minimal politics and IT managers with backbone existed, but FUD has blown away those solid principles of good management...

Response to: phishers nearly pull off $10m scam of grocer.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
November 12, 2007... Oct. 29, 2007 "Due to our internal controls and processes, we were able to quickly discover and report this to the FBI." Too bad they didn't have an internal control and process that said "Don't blindly obey random e-mails." *...

Botched data center move takes out 165k Web sites.(INTERNET)
November 12, 2007... ACASCADING SERIES of problems with a data center consolidation project at Web hosting company NaviSite Inc. left about 165,000 Web sites offline last week, with some of the sites remaining unreachable for six or more days. [ILLUSTRATION...

Problem-driver DB ticketed for security flaws.(PRIVACY)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION isn't adequately protecting personal information stored in a database that state motor vehicle departments use to identify problem drivers, according to a report issued by the DOT's inspector general. ...

Microsoft fires CIO for policy violation.(MANAGEMENT)(Chief Information Officer Stuart Scott )
November 12, 2007... MICROSOFT CORP. disclosed last week that it had fired CIO Stuart Scott after an internal investigation found that he had violated company policies. Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, announced Scott's termination in a memo...

Microsoft Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Microsoft Corp. plans to issue two software updates tomorrow as part of its monthly release of security fixes. One of the updates is rated "critical" by the company; it addresses a remote code-execution flaw affecting Windows XP and Windows...

Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute announced a set of best practices for IT purchasing. Supporters of the standards, which are based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration framework, include General Motors Corp. and the...

DuPont.(Short Takes)(Gary Min sentenced to 18 months in prison )(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Gary Min, a former DuPont research scientist, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for illegally downloading thousands of confidential documents while he worked at the company.

Google Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Google Inc. and a group of mobile computing vendors announced a Linux-based software platform for use in mobile devices. Phones based on the Android technology are expected late next year.

Salesforce.com warns users after taking phisher's bait.(SECURITY)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Some of Salesforce.com Inc.'s users are being targeted by e-mail messages containing fake invoices and malware--a problem that began when one of its workers was tricked by a phishing come-on into divulging an internal system password. The...

Marines look for a few less servers, via virtualization.(SERVERS)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... THE U.S. MARINE CORPS plans to take server virtualization software into war--literally--as part of an effort to improve the way it deploys IT on the battlefield. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The Marine Corps has always packed stuff up and...

Betweem the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
November 12, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Dell Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Dell Inc. said it will make its most expensive acquisition thus far, a $1.4 billion cash purchase of EqualLogic Inc. EqualLogic is a vendor of iSCSI-based storage-area network products.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers tapped Peter Den-gate Thrush, a board member from New Zealand, to be its chairman. He replaces Internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

10 years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Rivals WorldCom Inc. and MCI Communications Corp. announced a $37 billion merger, the largest deal in U.S. history to that point.

Online ticket sales for Olympics halted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... BEIJING -- The organizers of next summer's Olympic Games gave up on plans to sell tickets to Chinese residents online, admitting defeat after a crush of would-be buyers crashed the ticketing system. The Beijing Organizing Committee said...

Microsoft to build Irish data center.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... DUBLIN -- Microsoft Corp. last week said it plans to spend more than $500 million to build a data center in Ireland. It will be the company's first major IT facility in Europe. The 550,000-square-foot data center will be located at an...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... EMC Corp. formally opened a research and development center in Beijing, its second R & D lab in China. Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC said that it now plans to invest a total of $1 billion in China by 2012. That is twice what the storage, security...

Feds prescribe more money for e-health push: new incentives for using EHR systems are on the way. But more may be needed to spur adoption.(HEALTH CARE)(electronic health record )
November 12, 2007... THE COST of installing and maintaining electronic health record (EHR) systems in doctors' offices has long been described as one of the biggest barriers in the way of President Bush's executive order that "most" Americans have EHRs by 2014. ...

Whole Foods handcuffs execs on Web postings: stung by a furor over anonymous comments by its CEO, the grocer adopts an online gag order.(NETWORKING & INTERNET)
November 12, 2007... WHOLE FOODS Market Inc. has changed its code of conduct to ban company officials from posting anything business-related on external Web sites without permission--a decision that came after its top executive was caught bashing rivals and talking...

VM bliss creates I/O pain.(On the Mark)(Virtual Machine)(Input/Output)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... BEWARE OF unintended consequences. Take virtual machines, for example. They're ideal for taming server sprawl, reducing power consumption in the data center and keeping IT management costs down. But demand for server I/O skyrockets as multiple...

Use Ethernet mesh for your I/O woes.(On the Mark)(Input/Output)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Derek Granath, vice president of marketing at Woven Systems Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., agrees with the Gear6 folks that virtualization is increasing I/O demand. But he argues that other data center problems, such as the growth of unstructured...

Monitor the deluge of virtual servers.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Another vice president of marketing, Ken Klapproth of Marlboro, Mass.-based Entuity Inc., sees the VM phenomenon as indicative of bigger problems confronting IT: the number of "ever-expanding applications now using the network" and end users'...

Ray Kurzweil: the futurist and inventor talks about pervasive computing, augmented reality, and storage as a philosophical issue.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
November 12, 2007... Ray Kurzweil is a futurist and author whose book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Adult, 2005) predicts advances in computing technologies and biological research over the next four decades, culminating in the...

Apple makes a big leap with Leopard.(OPINION)(Product/service evaluation)
November 12, 2007... LEOPARD, the latest release of Apple's Mac OS X, lays the foundation for the next generation of personal computing. It offers a better user experience as well as the reliability inherent when you are able to integrate hardware and operating...

Back from the brink: after a big tumble in 2002, IT salaries have been climbing steadily. But for IT workers trying to regain their financial footing, a string of 3% increases makes the going tough.(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... JASON KENT is in a tough spot. As an assistant information systems analyst at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in Corcoran, Kent splits his time between providing help desk support to 400 to 500 end users and...

Are you the complete package? Nine nontechie skills that hiring managers wish you had (and how to get them).(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... WHEN it comes to technical skills, you either have them or you get them. This year's hiring survey shows that there's demand for a broad range of skills, many of which have been hot for several years (see charts, next page). But what else makes...

Get the job you want.(OPINION)
November 12, 2007... RESULTS FROM Computerworld's recent jobs survey and the Q3 results from the Yoh Index of Technology Wages are a must-read for anyone in the IT industry. The surveys show some common trends, in both salary and hiring data. Armed with this...

Women in it: a lopsided pay scale; Men continue to make more than women for the same IT jobs.(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... ACCORDING TO Computerworld's annual Salary Survey, male IT professionals continue to out-earn their female counterparts. At the highest level of IT, male CIOs and vice presidents made on average $179,026 in total compensation this year, while...

Speedy hires: a little prep work helps speed IT hiring to fill growing talent gaps.(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... WHY IS IT TAKING longer than ever to find--and land--IT professionals with the right stuff? In Computerworld's most recent hiring survey, more than two-thirds of the respondents said they expect their companies to be bringing on new IT staffers...

Tech for teens: camps use cool gadgetry to attract middle-schoolers to future tech careers.(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... FACED WITH dwindling enrollments in university computer science and IT programs, the Society for Information Management has taken a novel approach to engaging America's youth in potential IT careers: It is partnering with public libraries and...

Tech campuses bustle with recruiters: recent computer science grads get higher salaries, but midcareer IT workers may face perils.(JOBS REPORT 2007)
November 12, 2007... COMPUTER SCIENCE graduates and others with IT skills appear to be in demand: Starting salary offers are up, according to a recent report, and university officials say IT recruiters are crowding campuses. But if you're a high-tech worker in...

Turn the uptick to your advantage.(OPINION)
November 12, 2007... IT's BEEN a good year for IT workers. Computerworld's annual salary survey shows IT pay is on the upswing, and, equally encouraging, salaries are expected to continue to climb in 2008. The just-released Robert Half Technology 2008 Salary Guide...

What gets you through the workday?(Career Watch)(Table)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... What Gets You Through the Workday? * Caffeine 83% * Gum 28% * Salty snacks 25% * Candy bars 19% * Cigarettes 10% SOURCE: WORKPLACE MEDIA INC. SURVEY OF 1,200 U.S. EMPLOYEES, FEBRUARY 2007; MULTIPLE...

Golden years.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Because the populations of many countries are aging, Manpower Inc. last year asked over 28,000 employers in 24 nations and Hong Kong whether they had developed strategies to recruit older workers and retain them past retirement age. ...

In need of 12-step program?(Career Watch)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Statistics Canada recently examined workaholics' life-styles. In an August report titled "Time Escapes Me: Workaholics and Time Perception," Leslie-Anne Keown, an analyst at the government agency, wrote that workaholics "are very dissatisfied...

59%.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... 59% Percentage of workaholics who are male. SOURCE: STATISTICS CANADA

Business meets academia.(Career Watch)
November 12, 2007... * HOW U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO DEVELOP NEXT-GENERATION IT LEADERS * School: University of Denver Daniels College of Business * Does it have an IT advisory council? No, but IT and e-business...

The value of a degree.(Career Watch)(Table)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Average pay for selected job titles, by educational level and years of experience. BACHELOR'S MASTER'S DEGREE DEGREE Computer hardware 5-9 years $84,200 ...

What could go wrong?(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... Pilot fish takes a new job as an IT business process manager. "One of the first things I noticed was that we have no process for escalation and communication paths if our incident management system goes down," says fish. "Since this happened my...

Aha!(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
November 12, 2007... User calls the help desk saying his printer has "a small leak." "He said it had been going on for a while now, but he just never got around to calling anyone," says the pilot fish who takes the call. "When I went to look at the printer, I was...