InfoWorld articles from July 2002

InfoWorld archives from July 2002

Fitting the bill - Work Theory deftly marries Web-based projects and invoice control.(from Net Theory)(Evaluation)
July 8, 2002... COMPANIES THAT BILL for their employees' time are often burdened by resource-intensive activities that require close supervision. Otherwise those companies would end up losing control over deadlines or billable time. Many project-control...

Project meets Web - Microsoft Project 2002 expands on cross-team collaboration.(Evaluation)
July 8, 2002... PROJECT MANAGEMENT software is invaluable because it can transform a confusing mass of activities, deadlines, and objectives into neat diagrams, which helps managers use company resources more effectively and deliver results within budget and...

Focusing on integration - Microsoft Project 2002 pushes beyond the desktop to challenge PSA vendors.(Product Announcement)
July 8, 2002... WITH THE SHIPMENT of Project 2002, Microsoft shifts the focus of its project management offering from the desktop to the enterprise and in the process steps up to meet new competitors in both project management and PSA (professional services...

Banking on outsourcing - Financial services chief technologists are spending millions to outsource their companies' noncore functions in an effort to gain a competitive edge and focus on what they do best.
July 8, 2002... CTOS AND MARKET analysts took note early this year when American Express announced it had agreed to pay IBM's global services division $4 billion over seven years to take over provisioning and management of the credit card giant's noncore IT...

Out of the park - San Francisco Giants CTO John Wilborn oversees technology that enhances the fans' experience.
July 8, 2002... FOR A GUY WHO started out of college taking tickets at stadium events, helping drive the San Francisco Giants' IT operations is a dream job. "It's always fun to get up and go work at the ballpark," says John Wilborn, Giants CTO and MIS...

Choosing a vendor.
July 8, 2002... CTOs take several key factors into account when evaluating a vendor's products and services. Copyright (c) 2002 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.

Next-gen enterprise apps - Collaborative applications bring existing apps together to enable more intelligent, complex, and efficient interaction.
July 8, 2002... THE NEXT GENERATION of enterprise applications is promising to shed traditional shackles, spanning functional silos to link data seamlessly among customer, supplier, financial, and other applications both inside and outside company firewalls....

Collaborative challenges - Developing collaborative application platforms means keeping tabs on a host of evolving standards and data transformation issues.
July 8, 2002... VENDORS FROM BOTH the integration world and the application development world are tackling the collaborative applications challenge, building new middleware layers they hope will become platforms for the development of these next-generation...

IBM pursues security agenda - Standard-based APIs emerge to address critical Web services security needs.
July 8, 2002... DETERMINED TO EMBED its technology at the core of emerging Web services standards, IBM is set to unveil a set of APIs designed to address critical security and third-party integration needs. Due for inclusion in WebSphere Version 5.1 later...

IBM ramps up utility services - Linux strategy accelerates as IBM delivers computing resources on demand.
July 8, 2002... PUSHING BOTH ITS computing-on-demand initiative and Linux ambitions, IBM has rolled out an Internet-based service that allows Linux users to access the processing power and systems resources they need on a utility basis. By tapping into...

BPMI pushes process spec.(Business Process Management Initiative)(Brief Article)
July 8, 2002... The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) has made available the first public draft of a specification aimed at providing a standard way to model business processes across heterogeneous systems both inside and outside the firewall. BPML...

Microsoft unveils J#.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 8, 2002... Microsoft has released J#, the successor to its aborted Visual J++ tool. J# provides a transition for Java developers into Microsoft's XML Web services development effort, Microsoft said. The arrival of J# marks the availability of all...

Oracle partners to automate 11i testing.(with Mercury Interactive)(Brief Article)
July 8, 2002... Oracle has teamed with Mercury Interactive to develop a test kit designed to ease enterprise migration to Oracle's 11i e-business suite. The new Test Starter Kit, which is based on Mercury's application performance management software, offers...

P-to-P digs into the desktop - Vendors build hybrid end-user apps around peer-to-peer technology.(TrueDisk's Extempo)(Product Announcement)
July 8, 2002... SEVERAL TECHNOLOGIES that exploit peer-to-peer-based infrastructures are gaining traction on the enterprise desktop, enabling functions such as secure collaboration and thwarting unwanted e-mail messages. The complexity of applications...

Sharing the wealth - Opening up data to individuals, groups eased with Extempo.(from TrueDisk)(Evaluation)
July 8, 2002... WHEN I LIVED in a two-story house, it seemed everything I needed was on the other floor. Many people who use more than one computer recognize that feeling -- where is that file I need? On the desktop at work? On my computer at home? On my...

ABOVE THE NOISE: Software tailored to business needs - A new generation of applications holds the promise of adaptability with a focus on value.(Editorial)
July 8, 2002... THE TROUBLE WITH enterprise applications is that they are expensive, inflexible, and no two deployments are the same. None of this comes as a surprise to anybody in IT, but in this economy these are not attractive attributes to business...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Questionable terms.
July 8, 2002... AFTER WAITING ON Amber hand and foot, I needed to head down to the pub for a break. I ran into one of my friends down there. "That woman has you wrapped around her finger, doesn't she?" my friend grilled me. One little letter What is...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 8, 2002... Outsourcing security I JUST WANTED to express some support for Bob Lewis' common-sense approach on when to and when not to outsource (see Survival Guide, June 17). I don't think Lewis' philosophy is currently fashionable,... but then...

THE OPEN SOURCE: Return of Cobol? A blast from the past: Cobol is transformed into souped-up, multiplatform, and affordable Kobol.(theKompany's Kobol)(Product Announcement)
July 8, 2002... ONE TOPIC that few people write about these days is Cobol. Aside from the slew of Y2K articles a couple years ago, Cobol has not mustered much attention in recent times. Although Cobol won't be mistaken for the next hot thing in computing, it...

WINDOW MANAGER: A searching look - Readers are more than happy to critique the development of a new tip-searching tool.(Column)
July 8, 2002... I WROTE IN my June 6 column that I'm developing a specialized search engine. It will enable you to find Windows tips at reliable Web sites, as opposed to "helpful hints" on the Internet that can actually harm your PC. (See "Now search this,"...

SECURITY ADVISER: Faulty foundation - Fixing SNMP will take more than a makeover -- its shaky foundation calls for an overhaul.
July 8, 2002... THE FOUNDATION of a house is important; I know this as well as anyone in earthquake country. One of my neighbors is replacing his foundation without moving the residents of the house. When you think about it, this is relatively easy: Jack up...

STORAGE INSIDER: Deceptive drives - Should the portable power of solid- state microdrives be a cause for concern?
July 8, 2002... LET'S STEP OUTSIDE the enterprise-storage glass house this week and focus on a lighter subject: solid-state microdrives. Lighter subject, indeed. Weighing only about 6 ounces, this tiny device may look like a charm on a key chain but don't...

WIRELESS WORLD: Survey says ... A recent study reveals the corporate community is divided on extending existing apps to wireless.(Evans Data Research)(Statistical Data Included)
July 8, 2002... IN MY CONTINUING efforts to keep readers informed, here are the latest survey results from Miami-based Evans Data Research's biannual survey called The Summer 2002 Enterprise Development Management Issues Survey. Evans surveyed exclusively...

ENTERPRISE STRATEGIES: Believe it or not - Microsoft's latest strategies are aimed at getting something it never had: the enterprise IT market's respect.
July 8, 2002... INFOWORLD WAS invited to Redmond a few months ago to talk with Microsoft executives. The execs spoke of chief Steve Ballmer's planned changes in broad terms, using image-building phrases such as "Windows Security Initiative" and "Strategic...

CTO CONNECTION: Big iron vs. Linux - The choices your vendors make can offer glimpses of their future and your costs down the road.
July 8, 2002... RECENTLY, I accompanied one of my colleagues on a trip to visit two companies competing to provide back-end services for InfoWorld. One of the companies has been doing business with InfoWorld for several years, and the other wants to win that...

SURVIVAL GUIDE: IT battle plans - Should IT leaders focus on logistics or on strategy and tactics when they try to implement change?(Column)
July 8, 2002... MAYBE IT'S JUST semantics. A bunch of readers commented on my recent column asserting that CIOs and CTOs should spend most of their energy dealing with strategic and tactical matters while delegating infrastructure, which I equated to the...

THE GRIPE LINE: Compaq runaround - Readers report frustrating warranty troubles with Compaq as the company got ready to merge with HP.(Column)
July 8, 2002... DENIALS OF WARRANTY service by computer manufacturers are standard fare on The Gripe Line, but we may have touched bottom during Compaq's last months as an independent company. Let's hope so. Readers have recently reported some of the...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Out of order - The WS-I resorts to term limits dirty tricks to try to stifle Sun's voice in the ongoing Web services standards battle.(Web Services Interoperability Organization)
July 8, 2002... THE WEB SERVICES Interoperability Organization (WS-I) is out of order. The technical term is broke, busted, clueless -- and now, term-limited. And Norbert Mikula is the Jack Valenti of the Web Services community. What am I saying -- a stooge of...

Orchestrate services - Three proposals describe how Web services can model and combine business processes.
July 8, 2002... FOR YEARS THE INDUSTRY has dreamed of modeling business processes in software and combining them like Tinker Toys. Web services orchestration, the new term for that old idea, becomes more interesting as raw services multiply behind firewalls....

WSOS tunes up services - Web Service Orchestration Server imposes reliability on the naturally unreliable realm of distributed Web services.(Collaxa WSOS 1.01 SP2)(Evaluation)
July 8, 2002... WEB SERVICES AIM to reduce the complexity and cost of business processes automation. But using application components distributed beyond the control of any single IT department raises serious reliability concerns. Knowing that CTOs must better...

Integrators see the light - Web services are opening doors for wider EAI processes.
July 8, 2002... AS THE FIRST generation of Web services gains steam as a simpler way to link enterprise systems, SIs (system integrators) whose bread-and- butter projects involve manual application integration coding may soon be at a crossroads. ...

Getting Traction - Traction's enterprise Weblog system gets a grip on corporate KM.(Evaluation)
July 15, 2002... THERE IS STILL NO sure-fire recipe for KM (knowledge management) success, but the ingredients must include the staples of the knowledge worker: e-mail, the Web, and Microsoft Office. With Traction Software's KM solution, content flowing through...

Settlement supplier - Xign CTO's company helps smooth out financial interactions between buyers and suppliers.(Sunny McRae )(Interview)
July 15, 2002... AS THE CTO of Xign Payment Services Network, Sunny McRae has built an online subscription-based service for processing transactions. Most recently, Pleasanton, Calif.-based Xign signed an alliance with SAP under which the Xign network is linked...

Vertical expertise.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... The nearer a vendor's services are to the CTO's customers, the more a CTO will scrutinize the vendor's expertise across his industry. Copyright (c) 2002 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.

InfoWorld Readers' Choice Awards 2002.
July 15, 2002... YOU, OUR READERS, have spoken, and the message is loud and clear: Big Blue is back with a vengeance, Research in Motion's BlackBerry is the wireless device of choice, and Microsoft may be suffering a slide in the enterprise. From servers...

Technologist of the year - Irving Wladawsky-Berger -- Vice president of technology and strategy, IBM Server Group.
July 15, 2002... CONSISTENTLY HOPPING BACK and forth over the fence that separates deep technical research and the commercial marketplace for the past 30 years has made IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger the sort of practical visionary who can visualize and shape...

SAML and WS-Security lead the way.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... THE SUCCESS OF Web services will depend on federated, interoperable, and secure identity management. The good news is, specifications and standards for achieving this are taking shape, as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems come to agreement on...

Liberty trumps Passport agenda - Alliance unveils specification to drive adoption of federated identity management.
July 15, 2002... REIGNITING THE DEBATE over federated identities for Web services, the Liberty Alliance and Microsoft have locked horns again over emerging standards for online authentication. At The Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Francisco this...

Web security makes headway - Vendors rally around SAML authentication spec at Catalyst 2002.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... PROGRESS IS BEING MADE in the industrywide push to establish a single authentication standard for the Web. At The Burton Group's Catalyst 2002 conference in San Francisco this week, Web access management and security vendors will announce their...

IBM ships 146GB drive.(IBM Ultrastar 146Z10)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... IBM announced this week that it shipped 5,000 units of its Ultrastar 146Z10 hard drive for evaluation by OEMs. The new drive is the company's third generation of its 10,000-rpm disk and is equipped with a new technology that IBM claims dampens...

Net attacks up in 2002.(according to Riptech)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Cyberattacks are up 28 percent for the first half of 2002, according to a report released this week by Riptech. The company tracked security data from more than 400 companies in more than 30 countries from Jan. 1 to June 30. In that period,...

Safety in numbers: Web services security standards -- including identity management specs -- take shape as vendors agree.
July 15, 2002... WHO YOU ARE, what you're allowed to see, and how much you can spend: That's what identity management is supposed to take care of. Although the idea of a monolithic ID management scheme appeals to some -- even the most paranoid can see the...

SAML frames ID debate - Vendor collective addresses identity, authentication for Web services.
July 15, 2002... DETERMINED TO AGREE on a unified approach to Web services interoperability, a consortium of vendors this week will rally behind SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) during a public demonstration of the specification. Taking center...

THE OPEN SOURCE: Looking into Lindows - Once hyped as a Windows- compatible Linux OS, Lindows pales in the light of Mandrake.
July 15, 2002... LINDOWS IS GETTING a lot of buzz recently. For those who haven't heard, LindowsOS is a Linux-based operating system focused on the consumer desktop market. Lindows made headlines after claiming it would run Windows software, but that focus...

WINDOW MANAGER: Cross your fingers - Your palmtop may need a helping hand to connect with Windows 2000 and XP.
July 15, 2002... I WROTE RECENTLY about problems synchronizing handhelds to Windows 2000 and XP (see "Palm reading in XP," June 24, page 24http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/06/24/020624opwinman.xml) . Palm's USB-to-serial adapter won't work in some...

SECURITY ADVISER: Hold the hype - Mainstream media's coverage of anti- virus issues tars others with the brush of overkill.
July 15, 2002... I DON'T KNOW about you, but I'm tired of reading in industry journals about how awful it is that anti-virus vendors try to drum up hype whenever there's a new virus. To read some of the stuff cropping up across the Web, you'd think that...

STORAGE INSIDER/CTO TEST CENTER: Bracing for the storm - Fibre Channel will soon be deluged by IP, but not until connectivity issues are resolved.
July 15, 2002... TODAY THE SUN is still shining on FC (Fibre Channel), but there are unmistakable signs that a storm -- a whirlwind of IP storage networking products -- is approaching. How IP storage will impact storage networks is, at the moment, anyone's...

WIRELESS WORLD: Democratized wireless - MOTERAN technology will eliminate the need for dumb, but powerful, middleware pipes.
July 15, 2002... THE BRIEF DESCRIPTION of the technology sounds like something from a science-fiction movie where the robots take over: Mitsubishi says it will offer a wireless LAN technology that is self-organizing, decentralized, and capable of reconfiguring...

ABOVE THE NOISE: The enemy of my enemy is IBM - Big Blue extends the hand of friendship to all, but its loyalties are questionable.
July 15, 2002... WHEN IT COMES to power politics, Machiavelli was an amateur compared to IBM. Just about everywhere you look, IBM is making gains on its competitors. In fact, in this week's issue of InfoWorld you will find a reader poll clearly showing IBM...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 15, 2002... Wireless security I READ "The wireless security dilemma" (see Above the Noise, June 24, page 8) and thought I might throw in my two cents. It seems to me that the real dilemma is that everyone is treating wireless like it's special. If...

SURVIVAL GUIDE: The IT rust belt - For a prognosis on the future of programming, take a look at what happened in manufacturing.
July 15, 2002... OF ALL THE requests for advice I receive, the hardest come either from college graduates and career changers wanting to know how to break into IT or from older programmers who want to write code until they retire but can't even get an...

CTO CONNECTION: Clarifying the mission - A CTO must make sure IT staffers understand they work in partnership with the business as a whole.
July 15, 2002... WE'RE BEGINNING our annual planning process at InfoWorld, and as I look forward to our next fiscal year, I have paused to think about a mission statement for my department to put our work into the context of the business. A number of themes...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Tears of rage - Mourning the loss of a young innovator who knew that collaboration spurs great achievement.(Gene Kan, inventor of Gnutella)(Obituary)
July 15, 2002... "I READ THE news today, oh boy." For most of us, John Lennon's "A Day in the Life" anchors the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album with its wistful acoustic guitar and melancholy lyric. When I read the news of Gene Kan's death in the San Francisco...

THE GRIPE LINE: Microsoft manipulation - Business owners are still confused about how the Software Assurance maintenance program is supposed to work.
July 15, 2002... IT HAS BEEN more than a year since Microsoft announced its "Licensing 6.0" changes, including the Software Assurance maintenance program. As the July 31st deadline for customers to decide their volume-license strategy approaches, however, the...

ENTERPRISE STRATEGIES: License to plunder - Dear customer, we remotely crippled your servers for suspected license violations. Love, Microsoft.(Editorial)
July 15, 2002... MICROSOFT RAISED THE ire of critics and customers alike by sneaking a new EULA (end-user license agreement) into a critical security patch delivered in June for Windows Media Player. The EULA grants Microsoft the unrestricted right to...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Rambunctious acts.
July 15, 2002... APACHE HAD TO spend his first stint in the kennel when we brought the pooch to Amber's mother's place and he was nothing short of rambunctious. Judging by his reaction, Apache felt like he was going to jail. "That thing has got to go. You must...

Intel touts RISC alternative - Itanium 2 resumes fight to break ground in high-end server battle.(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... DETERMINED TO revive interest in its high-end server ambitions, Intel's Itanium 2 launch has reopened the door for enterprises to migrate away from expensive RISC-based servers. Targeted at database environments, ERP systems, scientific...

Broadband horizon - Proposed Ethernet standards promise higher speeds, lower costs.(Ethernet in the First Mile Alliance's new Ethernet standards)
July 15, 2002... MOST INTERNET CONNECTIONS that claim to be broadband are really pretty lame. For example, ISDN, which is usually considered the low end of broadband, is barely twice the speed of an analog modem. DSL is just eight to 10 times faster than an...

App server free-for-all? Vendors push features as debate over future strategy heats up.
July 22, 2002... THE FREE APPLICATION server writing is on the wall as Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Macromedia seek to downplay the value of specialized application servers and spur debate over the technology's strategic future within the enterprise. ...

Comshare, Microsoft team up to bolster BI.(business intelligence)(Brief Article)
July 22, 2002... Comshare has joined forces with Microsoft in a partnership that will combine Comshare's CPM (corporate performance management) software with Microsoft's BI (business intelligence) platform to help companies bridge the gap between top-level...

iPhrase steps out with new search software.(iPhrase Technologies' One Step)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 22, 2002... iPhrase Technologies last week unveiled the latest version of its One Step search and navigation software. The new version promises users the ability to rapidly search a broader range of documents with result relevancy of 95 percent. The...

MSN software gets a price tag.(Microsoft's MSN 8.0)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 22, 2002... Microsoft is readying the release of MSN 8.0, its password-protected Internet software that allows users to access MSN e-mail accounts, news and entertainment content, and browse the Web. MSN 8.0 will be available for free to MSN Internet...

For the public good - CTOs with stellar private industry experience join nonprofit organizations to create high-profile vendor partnerships and to deploy emerging technologies, and in the process find more meaning in their work.
July 22, 2002... WHEN ED GRANGER-HAPP sold his IT management and consulting business and joined the nonprofit child assistance organization Save the Children two years ago as CTO, he had no regrets about leaving private enterprise. "When I sold the business, I...

Leading with ideas - CTO keeps AT&T Labs' spirit of innovation alive, looking for ideas that make good business sense.
July 22, 2002... HOSSEIN ESLAMBOLCHI, CTO of AT&T Labs, faces a challenge that might have been familiar to Thomas Edison, the lab's spiritual guide. What did the inventor of the lightbulb know about marketing his new product? With undergraduate degrees in...

Industry expertise.
July 22, 2002... CTOs continue to factor in industry-specific experience when choosing vendors, particularly in the areas of content and data management and security solutions. Related Articles:CTO Pulse: Vendor expertise Copyright (c) 2002 InfoWorld...

Established standards go unnoticed Infiniband and CompactPCI are backed by the industry's largest vendors, but they may be too intent on locking customers in to proprietary solutions to focus on standards adoption.(server balde standards)
July 22, 2002... CONFUSION ABOUT SERVER blade standards abounds -- due in no small part to brand-name vendors' unwillingness to take a stand -- and it's getting in the way of blades finding widespread adoption. The 2002 InfoWorld Server Blade Survey makes this...

Server blades - These compact, resilient, and affordable servers could revolutionize enterprise computing -- but only if IT leaders steer the technology toward open solutions with ongoing expandability.
July 22, 2002... IF YOU ASK IT buyers whether they most desire performance, a small footprint, low power consumption, reliability, easy manageability, or scalability in a server, the answer is going to be yes. Blade technology promises to satisfy all these...

Fencing over blades - Are blades already casting a shadow over the corporate workhorses of clusters, mainframes, and large-scale servers?
July 22, 2002... SERVER BLADE TECHNOLOGY reaches into the domain of clusters, mainframes, and large-scale enterprise servers. Figuring that the initial buy-in is approximately $5,000 and that blades cost as little as $1,000 each, you could build one heck of a...

Systems management revolution? Server blades turn up the heat on manageability, the linchpin of widespread adoption.
July 22, 2002... IT'S BEEN SAID that server blades represent a strange and unusual challenge for IT departments because they somehow require a complete rethinking of management and support processes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although certain...

Microsoft embeds HailStorm into .Net - HailStorm technology, XML are integrated into .Net core as SharePoint 2.0 extends collaboration capabilities.
July 22, 2002... CONTRARY TO REPORTS that Microsoft has abandoned its HailStorm technology, company officials have revealed plans to embed components of the XML schema and data-access technology throughout its .Net application, server, and client stack. ...

Tools target app speed - Performance-monitoring software extends self- healing.(Proactivenet's bAware, Mercury Interactive's ProTune)(Product Announcement)
July 22, 2002... AS WEB-BASED applications proliferate and gain mission-critical status, a clutch of companies are vying to provide new types of tools that better monitor and manage application performance across a distributed infrastructure. This week,...

RouteScience nabs Google - Announcement may boost adoption of optimization technology.
July 22, 2002... AFTER MORE THAN a year of evaluating PathControl, RouteScience's networking device that automatically improves the performance of ISP connections, Google on Monday signed on as a RouteScience customer. The move gives credence to the concept of...

Monitoring health - NOCPulse keeps a close eye on network infrastructure's vital stats.
July 22, 2002... THE PROBLEM WITH mission-critical networks is that they meet their mission-critical requirements only while they're working. Keeping them working, however, means dedicating a staff to that process -- after all, these things don't run without...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: The WorldCom factor.
July 22, 2002... AMBER HAS BEEN unable to reach her mother since our little visit, and she cannot help but wonder whether her mother is still mad about the way Apache was acting up. "Knowing Mom, she will probably try to blame the whole thing on WorldCom,"...

To the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 22, 2002... Looking beyond price WHILE I AGREE with much of what Chad Dickerson says, I think he didn't get it quite right in his column "Big iron vs. Linux" (see CTO Connection, July 8, page 38). It's not really about cost per se but about risk....

THE OPEN SOURCE: Pondering Palladium - Microsoft's latest effort to secure the PC is another control tactic despite claims to the contrary.(Column)(Editorial)
July 22, 2002... THIS IS ONE of those columns I really wish I didn't need to write. Whenever I mention Microsoft I inevitably hear from someone who thinks that I am just Microsoft-bashing. Frankly, I'd love to avoid the subject of Microsoft altogether, but...

WINDOW MANAGER: Descan your network - A new, free program detects malicious scanners in time to do something about them.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 22, 2002... A SMALL COMPANY is about to go live with a big idea that you can greatly benefit from. The company is Descan.net, and the idea is to identify and halt the "script kiddies" who are infiltrating and subsequently attacking our computer...

SECURITY ADVISER: Playing percentages - SANS survey results on IT security offer some food for thought -- with a doggie bag.(System Administration, Networking, and Security (SANS) Institute )(Statistical Data Included)
July 22, 2002... IT'S SUMMER SURVEY time again, and the folks at the System Administration, Networking, and Security (SANS) Institute recently sent me some numbers that were food for thought. Back in April, SANS asked 1,220 security professionals to list the...

STORAGE INSIDER/CTO TEST CENTER: Empire strikes back - Recent announcements indicate that Big Blue is once again serious about storage.
July 22, 2002... HOPING TO REGAIN its place in an industry it practically invented, IBM is making all kinds of noise in the storage arena by announcing that it has sold off its Mylex division, is forming an alliance with Hitachi Data Systems, and is rolling out...

WIRELESS WORLD: Analyze this - Emerging protocol analyzers monitor everything from quality of service to unauthorized access on WLANs.(Column)
July 22, 2002... AS WLANS (wireless LANs) evolve from departmental phenomenon to being part of the corporatewide infrastructure strategy, managers have to make IEEE 802.11x a complete member of the network family. Companies offering protocol analyzers used...

ENTERPRISE STRATEGIES: No free cycles - Learn the secret to making money from all those underutilized IT assets: conservation.
July 22, 2002... MOST OF THE available CPU cycles in a company are wasted. That's the logical basis of grid computing, but it promotes the fallacy that unused computing resources cost nothing. Just one midrange server can consume as much electricity as all the...

CTO CONNECTION: On the road - Wireless wanderings, telco troubles, and assorted thoughts from a CTO as ambassador at large.
July 22, 2002... IN THE PAST FOUR WEEKS, I have logged over 20,000 miles in the air, and when I'm flying that much there is a lot of time to think. Traveling can be a good time for reflection on lots of different things, so forgive me for not having a single...

SURVIVAL GUIDE: Darwinian logic - Help evolve your communication skills by using clear, simple arguments, as opposed to simplistic pandering.
July 22, 2002... WHY IS TENSION between IT and business executives so common? No less an authority than Dr. Richard Paley, teacher of divinity and theobiology at Fellowship University reveals the answer...

THE GRIPE LINE: Back to school - Microsoft's request for a software audit from public schools backfires, offering lessons for businesses.(Column)
July 22, 2002... THIS WEEK OUR examination of Microsoft's licensing practices takes us to school -- in Microsoft's own backyard, in fact. It appears that school districts in the Northwest have some lessons they can teach us all. Earlier this year a number...