CenterBeam
Infoworld, 9/20/02: Calling the shots
By Chad Dickerson
RECENTLY, I MODERATED a panel discussion in Silicon Valley about the IT decision-making process from the CTO/CIO perspective. The audience consisted primarily of sales and business development people, so a lot of the discussion centered on the way IT decisions are made by individuals in organizations. Being on the receiving end of dozens of sales pitches and proposals every week, I was interested to hear how the other CTOs (and one CIO) on the panel view the process.
It's apparent that vendors need to more clearly explain their value propositions. I picked up a tip from Glenn Ricart, CTO of CenterBeam (and a member of InfoWorld's CTO Advisory Council), on how to deal with sales "cold calls" and still keeping yourself open to new companies. It's very simple: When a salesperson calls and asks for a few minutes of your time, say, "I get a dozen calls a day from people just like you. Tell me why I should listen to what you have to say." Glenn noted that his statement is often greeted with dead silence, and that's the end of the call. If the sales person on the other end delivers a compelling reason to listen to the product or service pitch, Glenn listens to it. This is my new strategy.
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IT Management
Giga, 9/23/02: Criteria for Selection: Enterprise Service Provisioning Tools
Jean-Pierre Garbani and Adria Ferguson
Contributing Analyst: Richard Fichera
Performance and capacity processes result in the deployment of new infrastructure components, such as servers and networks, or in the migration of existing ones. Since a computing environment is in a state of constant change, the configuration or maintenance of a large number of devices is a time-consuming and resource-intensive part of IT operations. The source of the problem is complexity, magnified by the diversity of hardware and the multiplicity of software platforms. Operating system management, enterprise integration, workflow management and J2EE or Microsoft .NET application servers are just a few of the everyday challenges that are increasing in complexity and could benefit from automation. Juggling all these items is not only labor intensive but is also extremely error prone and requires a great deal of skill.
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Giga, 9/23/02: A Network Administrator’s Work Is Never Done, but Help Is on the Way
Jean-Pierre Garbani
Keeping track of router and switch configuration for today’s networks is an increasingly daunting task, and one that may keep network administrators awake at night. Like many administration tasks today, it is still mostly manually done through a tool set provided by the device vendor. This has a high potential for error, and network configuration errors are very unforgiving, making automation of change management and network configuration one area that has a high return on investment potential.
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Microsoft
ZDNet, 9/24/02: Ballmer: We'll outsmart open source
By Peter Judge
LONDON--Although Microsoft cannot compete against Linux on price, the company will use its community of professionals to outsmart the open-source movement, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told an audience of Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) in London on Monday.
"Linux is a serious competitor," said Ballmer. "We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way. We cannot price at zero, so we need to justify our posture and pricing. Linux isn't going to go away--our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace."
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