Stories by Galen Gruman

Determina beats intruders to application hacking

Malicious hackers are constantly exploiting software vulnerabilities. Vendors and IT staff alike spend countless hours racing to update protection signatures and install patches before their exposed systems can be compromised. It's a never-ending battle that favors the hackers.

The virtues of open source in your enterprise

Early adopters of open source blazed the trail for enterprise users of this new software model, even though they didn't know where the journey might lead. Some of the territories they pioneered -- such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl -- are now well established. But in other areas, open source is only beginning to make inroads: CRM, portal management, content management, and reporting, for example.

Change is good for BZ Results

Fast-moving technology that works is what BZ Results wants in its IT tools. That's why CTO Rob Lackey's policy is to make sure there is at least one open source bid for each project. "Commercial software can't compete with the open source development effort," Lackey says. He cites the frequent, fast security updates available for Apache servers as an example of how the open source community delivers faster than traditional providers.

Finding a home for metadata

Working with data across an enterprise -- especially in an SOA environment -- requires understanding its context and semantics, not just its format and field attributes. And that means metadata. For developers as well as services to track that metadata, a repository would be useful. Theoretically, they would provide the intermediary services, but with today's technology, "this is just too hard to do," says Paul Patrick, chief architect at BEA Systems. "No one has assembled the pieces yet."

Scale up to enterprise class

Every business wants to grow. But if a budding enterprise expects to scale effectively, its IT systems must be able to scale as well. That means taking control of your organization's technical infrastructure early on to be ready for the inevitable expanded roster of customers, suppliers, and employees that growth brings.

Wetherhill Associates revs up growth

As automotive electrical components supplier Wetherill Associates saw its staff grow and sales boom, IT Director Ralph Presciutti wanted to reduce complexity to balance growth.

SOA ensures Guardian gets it right

Five years ago, Guardian Life Insurance decided to rethink the basic structure of its application silos, which had been developed with little attention to business goals, says Jaime Sguerra, chief architect at Guardian. "There was no standard way to build or connect applications, or any habit of reusing code," he recalls.

SOA ensures Guardian gets it right

Five years ago, Guardian Life Insurance decided to rethink the basic structure of its application silos, which had been developed with little attention to business goals, says Jaime Sguerra, chief architect at Guardian. "There was no standard way to build or connect applications, or any habit of reusing code," he recalls.

Supply on demand

Manufacturers dream of a finely tuned supply chain, with finished goods landing softly on distributor and retailer loading docks at exactly the right time in precisely the right quantity. That can't be done, of course, without accurate demand forecasting -- which still tends to be based on intuition, last year's sales numbers, and spreadsheet war games between sales and marketing groups. For most, the dream remains distant.

802.11e adds QoS to Wi-Fi networks

The largely unsolved hurdle of contention for access-point capacity keeps voice-over-wireless systems vulnerable to poor-quality calls, as well as calls marred by dropouts if too many voice or data users are trying to connect to the network simultaneously.

Next challenges for wireless LANs

LAN managers and CIOs can breathe a little easier, now that solid security standards are available for WLANs. This summer, the IEEE released -- and many vendors have already implemented -- the 802.11i authentication and encryption standard, bolstered by the WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) interoperability certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group.

The right information, right now

Ask any corporate executive the secret to success and there's a good chance you'll hear that the management team must work on the same goals using the same assumptions and facts -- with transparency to the CEO and board. Yet most companies don't work that way, setting the stage for missed opportunities, hidden problems, and political gaming that uses siloed data and its analysis as a departmental weapon rather than as an enterprise asset.

Mac-Disk Mounters

The latest release of Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous PC operating system, Windows 2000 Professional, doesn't support many common drivers and consumer-oriented applications. That's bad news for PC users, who will find themselves doing some serious software upgrading if they make the switch to the new OS. The good news for Windows 2000 users who interact with Mac users is that two packages for cross-platform file exchange have been updated, and you really can't go wrong with either one.

Adobe PressReady

Professional graphics and publishing programs, Macs, and ink-jet printers haven't been the best of friends, due to the printers' nearly universal lack of built-in PostScript capability. You need a PostScript printer if you want to produce EPS files from Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, or QuarkXPress-and Adobe's new InDesign software won't print on anything other than a PostScript Level 2 or PostScript 3 device. Many graphics pros have also found that inexpensive ink-jet printers often fail to reproduce colors accurately.

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