Stories by Galen Gruman

Vista deployment secrets

Vista adoption in business has been slow (and at this writing more than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely). Nonetheless, thousands of businesses worldwide have already adopted Vista.

Why people hate Vista

You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.

75,000 demand Microsoft keep Windows XP going

More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition in the three weeks since it was launched -- many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change.

The real reason Microsoft wants Yahoo

At first blush, Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo for US$46.6 billion is about growing its consumer advertising and portal business to better compete wit Google. And that's certainly part of the mix, but perhaps lost in the discussion is how such an acquisition could help Microsoft execute its software-plus-services strategy for delivering business apps over the Internet faster and better, said several analysts. That strategy could help Microsoft compete with Google's own business-apps initiative, they said.

Bigger budgets go to strategic IT

After years of hearing that investing in IT was a smart strategic plan, business executives seem to have gotten the message, according to a new Gartner CIO survey released Wednesday -- but only when the dollars are going to technology efforts that have visible benefits for the bottom line, primarily externally facing initiatives involving customers or partners.

Study shows SOA worries systems integrators

Although SOA efforts are still early-stage at most organizations, systems integrators who work for government agencies are concerned that SOA efforts might put them out of a job.

Five ways to roll out SOA

Back when SOA first started getting traction, the goal was simply to make application functionality available as a shared service. Companies made up their architectures as they went along -- and of course, they're still doing that. The difference today is that, in the last couple of years, the business side has a better sense of the strategic value of IT, while IT has learned more about the competitive pressures business must endure. As a result, SOA now offers the possibility of greater alignment between IT and business than ever before.

The well connected distributor

Back in 1999, Avnet's senior managers realized things had to change. A series of acquisitions had left the electronic components distributor with a glut of applications and platforms whose lack of interoperability was complicating operations. That problem stood directly in the way of the company's new goal of providing e-commerce services to its clients and expanding the company beyond traditional order management and delivery. Making good on the e-commerce promise required consistent results for clients, no matter where they might be or what channel they used.

Virtualized storage, real rewards

As senior director of enterprise technology operations at Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a prison management firm that handles more than 60 facilities, Brad Wood faces several challenges. His group manages approximately 100TB of data -- including inmate medical records, operational records, e-mail, and so forth -- across four Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) storage arrays in two datacentres. Because of federal and state rules, much of the company's data is mirrored three or four times to keep it accessible in case of failure. Adding to the complexity, Wood buys his hardware based on current price and performance, so he has a mix of suppliers.

Health care: Doctors without desks

No industry has as many mobile knowledge workers as health care. That poses real challenges to hospital IT departments trying to help improve patient treatment and maintain employee efficiency. As a latecomer to technology adoption, the health care industry typically builds on the lessons learned in other industries. But when it comes to mobility, hospitals lead the way.

Hospitals excel in wireless, mobility operations

No industry has as many mobile knowledge workers as health care. That poses real challenges to hospital IT departments trying to help improve patient treatment and maintain employee efficiency.

Making PCs manageable with desktop virtualization

Managing PCs has always been painful, but the job has gotten considerably nastier thanks to an endless parade of application upgrades, operating system patches, and anti-threat updates. Even with network-based installation and patch management tools to ease the burden, IT spends far too much time at the desktop itself, dealing with shenanigans involving personal software, multiple versions of Java or ActiveX controls, driver or DLL conflicts, malware infections, misconfigured hardware, and more.

Racing to market with SOA

Oded Noy had faced challenges before -- when he co-founded an application management startup, for instance, or when he participated in war game simulations for the Israeli Air Force. But this was unique: Create a scalable platform that would transform the online car shopping and financing experience for consumers -- in six months.

Enterprise mashups

They're all the rage in the Web 2.0 crowd: mashup services that typically combine maps with all sorts of data from a variety of Web sources. In the past year, we've seen a host of much-discussed sites pop up, from Zillow.com for real-estate value estimation, to AuctionMapper, which presents eBay search results on maps to help locate the nearest sellers.

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