Each year, "CIO" magazine surveys its readers about the security of their information assets. In the latest report published September 2002, 84% of the survey respondents acknowledged that their organization had suffered a security breach or crime, including viruses and hoaxes, which resulted in damage or loss in the past 12 months. Moreover, a majority of the respondents (62%) feel their organization is at moderate to high risk for a future security incident that will result in financial harm to the company.
Way back in 1998, IBM assigned a team of engineers to reevaluate the security architecture of PCs. Essentially nothing had changed in the architecture since the PCs were first designed in the early 1980s. However, with the onslaught of ubiquitous networking and Internet access, PCs have become a very vulnerable link in a company's enterprise network. Clearly, a new design was needed.
Every year, Certification Magazine conducts a survey to determine the effect of technical certifications on an IT professional's salary and career. During the economic boom, certified professionals could boast of huge salary gains that were higher than their noncertified colleagues. Salary disparities between the "haves" and "have nots" often reached 20 percent and more. It was easy to say, then, that attaining a technical certification was worth the time, cost and effort.
Although Microsoft has been talking about its sweeping .Net strategy for at least a year now, many companies are still trying to determine what .Net means to them. In fact, many IT professionals have trouble articulating what .Net even is. That's because it's less of a specific product or tool than it is a "set of technology architectures and products, and a renewed developer and partner initiative," according to Aberdeen Group. "Simply put," says Aberdeen in its report 'Microsoft .Net: A Foundation for Connected Business,' ".Net is software that connects information, people, systems and devices."
Although Microsoft has been talking about its sweeping .Net strategy for at least a year now, many companies are still trying to determine what .Net means to them. In fact, many IT professionals have trouble articulating what .Net even is. That's because it's less of a specific product or tool than it is a "set of technology architectures and products, and a renewed developer and partner initiative," according to Aberdeen Group. "Simply put," says Aberdeen in its report 'Microsoft .Net: A Foundation for Connected Business,' ".Net is software that connects information, people, systems and devices."
During my 20-plus years in the IT industry, single sign-on has been the Holy Grail for people who use multiple disparate systems and applications. There are separate passwords for the PC, the mainframe, the accounting application and the sales-tracking application. Because I'm the same person, you'd think I'd only have to sign on once and my identity could be passed among them.
Last year, I made a not-so-bold prediction in this column that the nascent application service provider (ASP) market was about to take off. It did, in fact, so I'm feeling pretty smart about my prognostication. It wasn't hard to see then that a model that would save the customer money, get his application up and going in short time and allow for scalable growth would become a mainstream way to get IT functionality delivered.
As technology becomes more complicated, systems integration gets tougher. You can choose to do it yourself and spend months to fully deploy a new application or system. Or you can hire a professional services group to set up the system for you and get your company a quicker and possibly higher return on the technology investment.
A lifetime ago in the mid '80s, I helped set the desktop computing standards at Johnson Space Center. One top requirement was that all PCs be IBM-compatible. What this really meant is that the PCs had to adhere to all internal architectural standards that IBM Corp. had defined with its original PC. Now, two decades after the start of a phenomenal personal computing revolution, the venerable ISA bus standard and its companions known as serial and parallel ports may be pushed into well-deserved retirement.
International Data Corp. has dubbed 1999 the watershed year between "the age of e-commerce pioneers" and "the age of diffusion and competition."
My friends at the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) briefed me a few weeks ago on their latest initiatives. The DMTF -- the unsung heroes of the network industry -- are working toward making your life as a network manager easier. In an age and time when lawsuits fly at the drop of a hat and competition is killed in the name of innovation, it's refreshing to see a consortium of hardware and software vendors working together for the betterment of all.