Help Desk
Giga, 7/16/03: Overall Support Costs Rise When Help Desks Use Departmental Chargebacks
John Ragsdale
Are departmental chargebacks for IT help desk support costs a good idea? Are there any drawbacks?
When the help desk calculates the cost of support only for use in departmental chargebacks, help desk management may stop looking for ways to reduce calls or cut costs. If this happens, overall support costs go up. Companies should track support costs by department to identify problem trends and training opportunities, and if a decision is made to charge departments for help desk services, specific help desk management should be designated to continue viewing all interactions objectively with an eye toward cost cutting.
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Off-Shore Outsourcing
Gartner, 7/23/03: CIO Alert: U.S. Offshore Outsourcing Leads to Structural Changes and Big Impact
As offshore outsourcing ramps up, the dislocation of IT jobs in the United States is becoming real. CIOs must anticipate loss of talent, knowledge and performance. As offshore outsourcing ramps up, the dislocation of IT jobs in the United States is becoming real. CIOs must anticipate the potential loss of talent, knowledge and performance.
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The New York Times, 7/22/03: I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
With American corporations under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks, two senior I.B.M. officials told their corporate colleagues around the world in a recorded conference call that I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees.
During the call, I.B.M's top employee relations executives said that three million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 and that I.B.M. should move some of its jobs now done in the United States, including software design jobs, to India and other countries.
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Security
ZDNet, 7/24/03: Cracking Windows passwords in seconds
By Robert Lemos
If your passwords consist of letters and numbers, beware.
Swiss researchers released a paper on Tuesday outlining a way to speed the cracking of alphanumeric Windows passwords, reducing the time to break such codes to an average of 13.6 seconds, from 1 minute 41 seconds.
The method involves using large lookup tables to match encoded passwords to the original text entered by a person, thus speeding the calculations required to break the codes. Called a time-memory trade-off, the situation means that an attacker with an abundance of computer memory can reduce the time it takes to break a secret code
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Support
The New York Times, 7/24/03: Techies by Necessity, Not by Choice
By KATIE HAFNER
As consumer electronics proliferate and consumers grow increasingly disenchanted with technical support operations (which routinely charge for calls), many people are discovering that whether they want to or not, they are developing more than a little technical proficiency. Some, like Mr. Marcuse, become virtual experts. But many of these accidental techies learn only as much as they absolutely must.
"People are getting more proficient because they have to, not because they want to," said Steve Cousins, manager of the Advanced Systems Development Laboratory at the Palo Alto Research Center, known as PARC, a subsidiary of Xerox.
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Mobile
Computerworld, 7/21/03: Sprint jumps into public-access Wi-Fi
It plans to offer access through 2,100 wireless hot spots by year's end
By Bob Brewin
Sprint Corp. has announced plans to climb aboard the Wi-FI bandwagon and offer public-access Wi-Fi service at over 2,100 locations by the end of the year. The move follows similar efforts by carriers such as T-Mobile USA Inc., Verizon Communications and AT&T Corp.
The majority of the "hot spot" locations it will turn on this year will be through roaming agreements with Wayport Inc. in Austin and Airpath Wireless Inc. in Toledo, Ohio, according to Jason Guesman, director of business marketing at Sprint PCS Group in Overland Park, Kan. Both Wayport and Airpath are established Wi-Fi network operators.
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ZDNet, 7/24/03: Sybase unit takes mobile software lead
By Ben Charny
A Sybase subsidiary has unseated Research In Motion as the No. 1 seller of software that companies use to let employees wirelessly access corporate networks, according to a recent report.
The subsidiary, iAnywhere Solutions, wrangled 12.7 percent of the $700 million that companies spent last year on so-called mobile middleware, according to the report from market analysts IDC.
iAnywhere just slipped past former first-place company RIM, maker of the Blackberry pager, which wrangled exactly 12 percent of last year's mobile middleware revenue, according to those familiar with the IDC report.
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Microsoft
Giga, 7/22/03: Microsoft Office 2003: A Fundamental Shift in Office Planning
Ken Smiley and Julie Giera
Giga Position
In May, Microsoft announced sweeping changes to the licensing and packaging of its Office 2003 suite. These changes will affect customers’ business processes and IT budgets for years to come. Microsoft has decided to offer six different Office 2003 packages, or SKUs, two more than previously offered. Consequently, organizations will be facing a complex, and potentially costly, upgrade decision within the next two years. If organizations do not align their long-term strategic business plans with their Office strategy and product choice, they will run the risk of losing key financial, strategic and productivity gains that Microsoft Office can deliver to the organization.
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