IT Management
Infoworld, 6/13/03: An uncertain future for the IT workforce
Job market could remain soft unless the trend changes
By Loretta W. Prencipe
It’s the million-dollar question: “What is happening in the IT job market?” The question that often follows is “When will it get better?”
Don’t expect improvements any time soon. Respondents to the InfoWorld 2003 Compensation Survey believe IT staffing levels at their companies are not likely to rise in the near future. Only 12 percent of respondents say their companies increased internal IT staffing in 2002, and only 15 percent expect their companies to increase staffing this year (see “Better Job Market Ahead?” below).
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Infoworld, 6/13/03: IT feels the squeeze
IT salaries are down, the job market is still soft, and the term 'expense center' has returned
By Heather Havenstein
In a year when it seemed the entire industry was holding its breath waiting for global uncertainties to play out and for the economy to come back to life, few professionals have been immune to the financial pressures put on IT.
For the third year in a row, IT professionals have seen a soft job market and compensation in decline. Of the 2,884 respondents to the 2003 InfoWorld Compensation Survey conducted in March, 182 reported having been unemployed for an average of 12 months. Raises are limping along in the 1 percent to 5 percent range. And monetary bonuses have been slashed by 12.5 percent (see “What Are You Worth?” below).
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Computerworld, 6/13/03: HP users welcome expanded OpenView line
Most of the products will be available within three months
By MATT HAMBLEN
Hewlett-Packard Co. will take some of the vapor out of its "adaptive enterprise management" strategy with the introduction on Monday of more than 30 new and enhanced OpenView management products and services.
The products are being announced at the HP Software Forum in Chicago, where users will gain exposure to concrete examples of HP's adaptive enterprise initiative. That initiative mirrors strategies from competitors such as IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Computer Associates International Inc., which variously describe such technologies as "autonomic" or "on-demand" computing. The aim is to enable businesses to reduce IT complexity and cost by creating an infrastructure that changes with business demands.
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Information Week, 6/16/03: IT Doesn't Always Make The Grade June 16, 2003
By Eileen Colkin Cuneo
While IT has increased the strategic business value it provides, gaps remain in how well technology performs relative to expectations, according to a study by the Hackett Group, a research firm owned by IT and business-consulting firm AnswerThink.
Three out of 10 major IT projects fail, and only 21% of companies rate their IT organizations as being able to react quickly to changes in business goals and market conditions, Hackett says. Only a quarter validate business cases after projects are done, a step that Hackett says is critical.
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Security
The New York Times, 6/16/03: Hobbyist Wins a Patent for PC's
By SABRA CHARTRAND
LIKE many people, Claude M. Policard has a day job that is strikingly different from his hobbies. He works for a banking service company, where he is a technician helping to maintain check-processing computers. But he devotes his spare time to music — playing piano and synthesizer, acting as a disc jockey at parties and building a digital archive of music on his personal computer.
A few years ago, his work and his hobby converged in a moment of casual thought. His company had been hit by a nasty computer virus, and Mr. Policard remembers feeling glad he did not have to worry about virus-infested e-mail contaminating his home computer.
"I had two computers at home," Mr. Policard, who is 65 and lives in Newark, Del., remembered last week. "My sister used one, and I used one. My personal computer I used only for my music, so it will never be attacked by a virus.
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IDG News Service, 6/13/03: GroupShield problem flares up on Exchange
Paul Roberts
A flaw in Network Associates Inc.'s GroupShield antivirus product is causing problems for some users of Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange 2000 e-mail server, including server crashes, according to Vincent Gullotto, a vice president at AVERT, Network Associates' antivirus research group.
The problem affects organizations running the Exchange 2000 product with GroupShield version 5.2.
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Social Technologies
Business Week, 6/10/03:
The Wild World of "Open-Source Media"
Web logs, or blogs, offer everyone a platform for political commentary, diary writing, and sharing links. And the best are truly influential
As U.S. troops moved into Baghdad in early April, the media moved with them. Some 600 reporters, camera operators, and producers were there -- to beam every move, every explosion, and an occasional death back to the U.S. But people who really wanted to know what was happening on the ground turned away from their TVs to the Web log -- the online diary -- of a young Baghdad resident who called himself "Salam Pax."
…
Salam Pax is the most striking recent example of a brand of individual publishing that has lifted global social interaction to a new plane. Blogs are essentially one person's take on the world. Some, like Salam Pax's, feature mainly the writings of their creator. Others, such as BoingBoing (tagline: A Directory of Wonderful Things) are basically a compilation of links to other sites that the blogger finds interesting. Yet others, such as drudgereport.com, are combinations of the two. Nearly all of them inspire the type of enthusiastic -- and sometimes, indignant -- interaction that the Web's creators envisioned a decade ago.
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The Boston Globe, 6/16/03: Companies get into weblog act
By Hiawatha Bray
It was bound to happen: Corporate America has discovered the blog. The proof was at hand during last week's ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies 2003 Conference & Expo. The sponsors had set aside a smallish conference room at the Sheraton Boston, and ended up having to knock out the collapsible rear wall and lug in more tables and chairs.
Too bad they couldn't also have called in an electrician to install more power outlets. A goodly percentage of the guests were toting laptops equipped with WiFi ethernet cards. The organizers had the good judgment to set up a wireless broadband router, so these well-equipped guests spent pretty much the entire conference updating their own blogs. At least until the batteries ran out.
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