Baseline articles from March 2004

Baseline archives from March 2004

March 2004 Online Extras.
March 1, 2004... 24/7 SERVICES Case Dissection "We Did Nothing Wrong": Why Software Quality Matters PLANNER: Calculating Costs of a Software Error-Prevention System If you want to start avoiding software-development problems, here's how: A five-step plan...

The Uncounted Costs of Insecurity.
March 1, 2004... A world that runs on software is a dangerous place. If you're Microsoft, it's no small matter when even a subset of the source code of your widely used operating system becomes openly available. It's a potential hacker's delight. That, in turn,...

The Pieces of the Puzzle: Some Assembly Required.
March 1, 2004... I spent several years as chief information officer at Video Monitoring Services of America, which monitors and captures every piece of news or advertising on television, radio and the Internet. Data collection was unbelievable: collecting...

Bank Rolls.
March 1, 2004... PNC Bank's information-systems team wasn't thinking about compliance with the Patriot Act when it started a cleanup of customer files in 2000. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the federal legislation that quickly followed hadn't...

On Target.
March 1, 2004... Happiness is a warm gun, said the Beatles, but what people really want is a warm gun maker. "Firearms are a lifestyle product," says Sam Grecco, vice president of e-business and e-commerce at Remington Arms, the world's largest manufacturer of...

Screening Rooms.
March 1, 2004... Stepping into the Advance Auto Parts store in Alpharetta, Ga., customers are greeted by the usual assortment of motor oil, body fillers, windshield wipers and chrome-plated car accessories. But as they roam the aisles, a voice coming in from...

Voice on Data Networks: A Sound Move?
March 1, 2004... Telephone systems are shuttling down a one-way track toward Internet technologies. But most companies, unless they're chucking out archaic voice systems, are adopting Internet Protocol telephony gradually rather than upgrading all at once....

Voice of Experience: Call Overhaul.
March 1, 2004... Stan Adams SouthTrust Group VP, Network Services Birmingham, Ala. www.southtrust.com Manager's Profile: In charge of data and voice services for the bank holding company, which has $52 billion in assets and operates 717 branches in nine...

Cisco: Reinventing the Phone.
March 1, 2004... Cisco, the foremost evangelist of pure Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, has recently been growing its flock fast: The company says 14,000 customers worldwide now use more than 2 million of its phones, about half of which were rolled out in the...

Avaya: Grandchild of Ma Bell.
March 1, 2004... Avaya is a second-generation spinoff with a spotty financial record. The company was divested in 2000 by Lucent Technologies, which itself was unleashed from AT&T in 1996; only last June did Avaya manage to post its first profitable quarter....

Nortel Networks: Old Dog, New Tricks.
March 1, 2004... Nortel, stung by the dramatic drop-off in telecom spending, has been slow off the Internet Protocol (IP) telephony blocks. In October 2003, for example, the company finally released common software for its IP-only Succession and legacy Meridian...

When to Stuff Voices Into Packets.
March 1, 2004... Your company may not be making calls using Internet standards now, but it will--eventually. So far, though, the cost to switch from conventional phone systems often outweighs savings. Internet Protocol (IP) telephone systems convert the sounds...

Primer: Storage Partitioning.
March 1, 2004... *What is it? A set of digital instructions that makes it easier to manage the increasingly large amounts of data found on farms of inexpensive disk drives. At its simplest, it's an administrative technique for dividing a disk or an array of...

Calculating Returns: Put Time on Your Side.
March 1, 2004... Getting the best return on your technology project means understanding when to spend--and when to save--money. The way to see this is by calculating the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of your project. This calculation balances all savings and...

By the Numbers: March 2004.
March 1, 2004... How to Get Your Money's Worth Fewer than half of U.S. and Canadian companies have written technology plans, and even fewer believe their plans are in line with the goals of their business leaders, according to a study from the professional...

Primary Concerns.
March 3, 2004... The early returns are in and no voter fraud has been discovered in the wake of Maryland's first statewide use of touch-screen electronic voting machines, which took place during the Democratic primary on March 2. That's a good thing...right?...

RFID: An Offer You Can't Refuse.
March 3, 2004... Justifying the purchase of new technology is usually a highly individual process: The acquiring company has the final say whether to adopt or not. That will not be the case with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. If you work with...

Automated Security Management.
March 3, 2004... What is it? A system that collects data from security- and systems-management tools, then automates the process of fixing holes or vulnerabilities in the security of servers, workstations and network infrastructure. Why should I care?...

Six Degrees of Project Management.
March 3, 2004... From the Columbia space-shuttle disaster to the IRS’ painful attempts to replace its 1960s-era computer systems, network difficulties are a hallmark of technology projects. In those cases, however, human networks cause more problems than...

Tool: RFID Set-Up Costs.
March 3, 2004... Getting any benefit out of radio-frequency identification requires not just information-technology costs, but also the cost of changing a distribution net. The example below assumes there are five readers per warehouse dock door and only one...

Microsoft's Tipping Point.
March 5, 2004... As hackers continue to take shots at Microsoft business software, you'd think companies would analyze what it would cost to move other operating systems, such as Unix, Solaris or Linux. But calculating the expense of such a move costs money...

Cigital: Bug Zappers, A Dossier.
March 5, 2004... Cigital chief executive officer Jeffery Payne likes to deliver good news to his customers first, when possible: that their systems are 100% secure. But, sometimes, he has to deliver bad news as well. That the software is totally unreliable....

Code of Honor.
March 5, 2004... It’s time for a change or two. Or six. Fundamental problems with the way organizations develop software go, if not ignored, largely unaddressed for far too long. Instead of refusing to employ flawed software, buyers accept bugs,...

Calculating Costs of a Software Error-Prevention System.
March 5, 2004... You’re the nation’s sixth-largest bank, with 70,000 employees, $300 billion in assets, $12 billion in revenue and $3 billion in income. So that pesky little $2 million bug in your transaction-processing software is a drop in the...

Tough Sell.
March 5, 2004... What did Jeff Cohen do when he learned his company was planning to have its technology department report to sales and marketing? He left. Cohen, the former chief information officer for JetBlue Airways Corp., left the airline last...