Gartner Group, 4/15/02: IT Services Sourcing Goes Strategic
Continued tactical outsourcing will cause significant degradation of productivity and customer retention. The agile organizations of the future will skill up to the challenge of strategic IT sourcing.
Introduction
For more than 30 years the high-tech industry has experienced a series of long stretches of promising productivity, interrupted by moments of harsh reality. In this “post-e” era of uncertainty, user organizations are re-evaluating initiatives and attempting to define the elusive business value they desperately seek from their IT assets. Service providers are re-inventing their companies to take advantage of the massive adoption of the Internet and prepare for the next battle of value propositions that are being constructed around business process and vertical industry solutions.
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Network Computing, 4/15/02: Let's Make a Deal
By Sean Doherty
Negotiating a contract with an outside service provider does not follow the usual protocols for IT. But knowing the benefits and risks of outsourcing services provides a strong foundation that can help ensure good service and protect the future interests of your enterprise.
A good contract benefits both the enterprise and the service provider. Start with a clear idea of the benefits and goals both parties hope to achieve in outsourcing, then carefully consider detailed, measurable objectives to meet them. The products and services you seek should be clearly defined, and there should be no questions as to the scope or level of service. And as with any relationship, the contract should allow room for growth and should contain an exit clause if the mutual benefits of the agreement are not being met.
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c|net, 4/17/02: Survey: Passport required--not appealing
By Joe Wilcox
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Microsoft has doubled the number of people signed up for its Passport authentication service, but the majority of people are doing so because of product requirements rather than the allure of new features, Gartner said Wednesday.
The number of Passport users jumped to 14 million from 7 million between last August and February, according to the research group. Passport authentication, which is a central element of Microsoft's .Net software-as-a-service strategy, offers a single sign-on that gives people access to Web sites without the need for multiple IDs and passwords.
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PCWorld, 4/16/02: Portable Computing? You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Microsoft's vision: retrieve desktop data from anywhere, rent applications, and travel light.
Matt Berger, IDG News Service
From the front seat of her sport-utility vehicle, a woman enters her password into an in-dash computer and downloads her collection of digital music files to the car stereo. A man in a grocery store gets an automatic call to his cell phone that a package he is expecting is about to be delivered to his home. A sales executive turns to her handheld device to close a deal, first checking whether inventory is available, then processing the order with the click of a few buttons.
These scenarios are part of a vision shared by many software developers, especially those attending Microsoft's annual Tech Ed developer conference in New Orleans last week. Now in its tenth year, the event is one of Microsoft's premiere events for teaching computer programmers techniques to turn emerging technologies into reality--and those vignettes are examples of the reality Microsoft has in mind.
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Computerworld, 4/17/02: Microsoft's Allchin updates timelines for future Windows releases
By CAROL SLIWA
The Windows .Net Server operating system probably will reach customers' hands sometime next year, and its successor will go "beyond 2003," Jim Allchin, Microsoft Corp.'s group vice president of platforms, said yesterday.
Allchin told attendees to the company's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2002 in Seattle that he expects Windows .Net Server to be released "later this calendar year, from at least a manufacturing perspective" -- in line with the company's most recent predictions issued early last month.
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eWeek, 4/16/02: Microsoft Pushes Back XP Upgrade Roll Out
By Peter Galli
SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp. has pushed back the release of the next version of the Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, until 2004.
In an interview here at its 11th annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, WinHEC, Jim Allchin, the group vice president of platforms at Microsoft, told eWeek that Longhorn was unlikely to ship before 2004.
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c|net, 4/16/02: Start-up shrinks PC to palm size
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
First there was the pocket calculator. Then there was the pocket organizer. And if start-up OQO gets its way, the next big thing will be the pocket PC.
The Seattle-based company is showing off a full-fledged "ultra personal" computer this week at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, or WinHEC 2002. The computer is slightly thicker but roughly the same size as handhelds currently coming out from Palm or Hewlett-Packard.
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TechWeb, 4/18/02: Big Changes Challenge IT Managers
Welcome to the modern age of IT management. No longer is the job just a matter of maintaining machines and making connections. These days, IT pros are expected to do a lot more.
For one thing, users are more sophisticated than they used to be: They know what they want, and they know the IT department is supposed to give it to them. For another, revenue-hunting CFOs now expect IT to contribute to the bottom line.
Staffing on a shoestring. Managing change. Dealing with in-house politics. Justifying the department's role in the business. Those are just some of the skills today's IT pros need—on top of their tech expertise. No one says it's easy. But these days, it's the least you're expected to do.
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