Outsourcing
Infoworld, 12/12/02: NEC, HP team for global outsourcing services
By Kuriko Miyake
TOKYO -- NEC and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have allied to jointly provide outsourcing services to companies in China, Japan and the U.S., expanding to South East Asia and Europe in a year, they said Thursday.
The companies will establish one or more joint ventures to provide a range of services up to full outsourcing where they take over a customer's IT assets and staff. A joint marketing team to develop and promote these services will be set up in January, they said.
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Gartner, 12/6/02: SMBs: It's Time to Shift From Tactical to Strategic Sourcing
Small and midsize businesses must invest now to develop governance standards, analysis, selection, negotiation and relationship management skills to prepare for the emergence of new outsourced service provider solutions.
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Gartner, 12/6/02: 4Q02 Update: IT Services Forecast Scenarios, 2001-2004
Abstract: With no clear signs of recovery in demand growth and additional indications of further discretionary budget constraints, Gartner Dataquest has slightly reduced the IT services forecast.
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Gartner, 12/4/02: Key Issues Lead to New Growth for IT Services Providers
Focusing on key issues is imperative for companies to survive in the changing IT services marketplace.
During this period of fundamental change when old tricks no longer appear to be working as well as they once did, and new technologies, catalysts and attitudes are urgently needed, companies should take stock of the last few (good and bad) years and ask some basic questions.
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Gartner, 12/5/02: Attention SMBs: Will Your IT Vendors Be Around After 2003?
Many vendors view small and midsize businesses as new revenue sources to help offset a poor economy and saturation of the large enterprise market. SMBs must determine which vendors will exist when the economy improves.
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Harvard Management Update, 7/02: How To Think Strategically About Outsourcing
Outsourcing was once a ho-hum tactic for reducing the costs of back-room functions such as payroll or IT. But by the 1990s, it had morphed into a critical management tool. Then came the backlash: companies were outsourcing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Today, many companies are asking if outsourcing is worth the trouble. According to most experts, it is worth it. But for your company to get real strategic value out of your third-party relationships, you have to throw out much of what you thought you knew about outsourcing. The article includes the sidebar "What to Outsource: How to Tell Core, Noncore, and Strategic Activities Apart."
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IT Management
Giga, 12/5/02: The Balanced Scorecard: An IT Perspective
Craig Symons
Norton and Kaplan’s Balanced Scorecard (BSC) method of measuring performance has been around since the early 1990s and appears to be gaining momentum in many companies. In fact, recent research suggests that 45 percent of US-based companies and 40 percent of European companies claim to be using the Balanced Scorecard approach.
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Systems Management
Giga, 12/5/02: Should HP OpenView Service Assurance Be Unix- or Windows-Based?
Jean-Pierre Garbani
Hewlett-Packard’s HP OpenView Service Assurance has a typical architecture based on distributed data collectors reporting to a central management server that supports a management data repository and the reporting interface. The management server can be now implemented on Unix or Microsoft Windows. While Unix is the traditional management server of choice, the OpenView implementation has now been certified by Microsoft on the Windows 2000 Datacenter operating system and is a valid alternative for enterprises deploying service assurance functions.
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Mobile
Gartner, 12/6/02: SMB Infrastructures Take a Step Toward Mobility in 2003
Demand from customers and business partners, coupled with price decreases in key technologies, will drive small and midsize business IT spending in the areas of application servers and mobility.
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Wireless
Gartner, 12/5/02: Many Challenges Remain for Mobile Communications
Abstract: The marketplace for mobile services, terminals and infrastructure has been affected by the economic slowdown and the high cost and minimal return on investment in 2.5G and 3G network launches.
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The New York Times, 12/12/02: So Many Nodes, So Little Security
By GLENN FLEISHMAN
WHILE driving along any Manhattan street, you would not expect strangers to fling their private correspondence and even their credit-card numbers at you as you passed by.
A recent survey of Wi-Fi networks, however, revealed not only the extent of Wi-Fi adoption - covering more than 14,000 business and personal networks - but also the apparent laxity of users about Wi-Fi's built-in security. Nearly 70 percent are using the networks in ways that, without other security measures, could expose every word and digit sent or received to potential interception and allow others to piggyback on their Internet service.
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The New York Times, 12/12/02: The Wi-Fi Boom
By ADAM BAER
ON a brisk autumn day in Portland, Ore., Paul van Veen was soaking up some sun as he logged on to the Internet - from a spot in bustling Pioneer Courthouse Square. Mr. van Veen was looking for a job, and he was surfing the Web over a free wireless connection.
These days, Pioneer Courthouse Square is but one of some 140 public spots across Portland with free Internet access using a high-speed wireless technology known as Wi-Fi. The network of such Wi-Fi "hot spots" throughout the city was developed by Personal Telco, a grass-roots, nonprofit group devoted to blanketing the city with free access points.
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The New York Times, 12/12/02: Tapping Into Public Wireless Networks
By JOHN R. QUAIN
THE chances are good, and getting better every day, that you have seen someone at a cafe or bookstore or in an airport lounge using a laptop computer to surf the Web, check e-mail or chat by instant messaging - all without plugging anything in. If you are ready to pull your own computer out of your bag and join in, take heart. It is easier than you might think.
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The New York Times, 12/12/02: Wireless? You Bet. Compatible? Well, Maybe.
By GLENN FLEISHMAN
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- AT present, the most popular form of wireless networking can be described with a single word: Wi-Fi. And equipment with the Wi-Fi seal is certified to work with every other similar piece of gear.
As impressive as the recent adoption of Wi-Fi has been, engineers and manufacturers say it is only a first step. On the horizon are advancements in the technology aimed at providing truly reliable security, network speeds up to four times faster, and the potential for voice calls or streaming audio and video over a Wi-Fi network.
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Microsoft
The Register, 12/12/02: MS puts the squeeze on new Win2k PC preinstalls
By John Lettice
Microsoft may have relented on switching off mainstream support for Windows 2000 next year, but that doesn't mean it isn't serious about pushing users away from the OS. According to Extremetech, PC manufacturers are to be barred from selling dual boot WinXP and Win2k systems from next year.
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The Register, 12/12/02: MS talks smartphone -developer support follows 'soon'
By John Lettice
The Register's spies at a Microsoft "Smartphone Application Security" chat earlier this week give us the impression that the company might just have been caught a little flat-footed by the development/application signing issue. Because the answers to 'when' and 'how' currently seem to be, um, soon, but er, it'll be great.
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Giga, 12/9/02: Market Overview 2003: Windows Server Platform Management
Thomas Mendel
In 2002, the Windows server platform management market will generate about $1.25 billion in revenues and is set to grow to around $1.75 billion in 2003 and to $2.25 billion in 2004. There are two main drivers for this expected growth: The fact that the NT4 Server is now reaching the end of its life cycle, as well as the release of Windows .NET Server 2003 sometime in 2003, will result in a large number of migration projects. Windows management has been an afterthought for a long time since the servers were typically deployed for local applications and often managed by local administrators. This became expensive over time. Migrations to both Windows 2000 and Windows .NET Server 2003 in the future will typically lead to an increased focus on more centralized platform management, thus elevating the need for management tools. At the same time, the growing maturity of the server platform has led Microsoft to emphasize the need for management of the Microsoft server environment.
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Future of the Internet
New.Com, 12/12/02: Perspective: IPv6, the Net's next frontier
By Uri Rahamim
The number of Internet addresses available using the current generation of Internet infrastructure built on IPv4 technology will run out by 2005, jeopardizing the continued development of both fixed and wireless Net-based services.
Considering that IPv4 is 30 years old, is it really surprising to learn the Internet Protocol (IP) address system is cracking under the strain of dramatic surges in demand for access? The situation is only going to get worse as 3G applications and services start to eat into the addressing sector.
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