IT Services
Gartner, 10/20/03: Services Value Chain Reshapes IT Services Industry
The IT services value chain model offers a view of how the IT services industry is changing, and how providers must adapt to deliver the business value of IT.
The services value chain, a concept that describes a new business model and service delivery mechanism for IT solutions, will progressively develop in a maturing IT services marketplace. The services value chain reconciles two conflicting, but concurrent, requirements from clients: to leverage economies of scale and to deliver solutions to their specific issues.
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Gartner, 10/16/03: New IT Services Buying Patterns Will Alter Service Delivery
Recent changes in enterprise buying behaviors have triggered new, heightened expectations for IT service improvements. These changes will make the services value chain a more-attractive delivery model for enterprises.
Enterprises are trying to reduce the time it takes to source and deploy IT solutions. At the same time, they are relying on external service providers (ESPs) to support them in deploying, optimizing and operating technology.
From 2001 through today, the dominant outsourcing driver has been to take costs out of operations, which has contributed to a shift in enterprise thinking about customization. Customization had been viewed as the way the enterprise delivered its competitive differentiation. Today, as enterprises look for practical, proven ways to take costs out of operations, they have been forced to evaluate the competitive advantage that has truly been delivered via customization. In many cases, they have found that process differentiation delivers more differentiation than does technology, and, in some cases, even custom processes can be standardized without compromising differentiation.
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Gartner, 10/20/03: The Time Is Right to Implement the Services Value Chain
The services value chain addresses much of the IT industry’s dysfunction, which is
largely responsible for the current slowdown in spending.
The IT services market has always been opportunistic. Historically, IT services suppliers have done well reacting to prospective clients’ immediate and particular requirements by doing, in most cases, anything and everything (within reason) to satisfy client demand — with the ultimate goal of winning repeat business.
Clearly, this reactive approach has hit “a brick wall.” Demand during this post-Internet phase is still sluggish. Discretionary spending is still locked down among many previously free-spending enterprises. With the few opportunities that are left, another approach — proactive beyond simply increasing an account executive’s cold calling ratios — is now required.
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IT Management
Giga, 10/10/03: Time Tracking Best Practices: Start at the Top and Keep It Simple
Margo Visitacion
Are there other IT organizations working on time tracking? What are the sets of methodologies and best practices? What are the commonly used enterprise tools? What is the best way to architect categories and data?
Many companies attempt to perform time tracking. However, its success depends on internal process maturity, and unfortunately, inconsistency is commonplace. Departments or organizations that are more service oriented require formal time tracking for billing and/or chargeback purposes, while internal organizations often don’t track time outside project-related activities. And with the majority of work being considered non-project work, companies have a difficult time knowing exactly what their resources are doing.
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Computerworld, 10/21/03: CFOs cite poor alignment between IT, business
Some of the gap is caused by personality clashes and divergent visions
Story by Thomas Hoffman
OCTOBER 21, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - CHICAGO -- Although CIOs traditionally rank alignment between IT and business as a top priority, reactions from chief financial officers in a recent survey indicate that little progress has been made in closing the gap.
According to the survey, published this week by Boston-based CFO Publishing Corp., 44% of CFOs cited weak alignment between IT and business strategies, with another 4% saying there's no alignment between those groups at all.
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Gartner, 10/17/03: Linux: What Major IT Vendors Are Doing
Businesses regard Linux as a worthy alternative to Unix and Windows despite copyright issues that threaten momentum. In response, vendors are expanding Linux activities with hardware, software and integration services.
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Security
Wharton School of Management, 10/03: System Alert: You’ve Got … Worms
As anyone who has an e-mail account knows, the past few weeks have seen unprecedented virus attacks on computers around the world. With names like Sobig, Blaster, and Welchia, these viruses are the bane of many an IT department – not to mention an “I-was-here” calling card for their nose-thumbing authors. No longer confined to e-mail attachments, the latest worms can spread through the Internet, wreaking havoc as they take advantage of vulnerabilities in exposed computers. A company’s entire network can be brought to its knees in minutes – and many recently were – as infected machines become mass-mailers that cause the virtual equivalent of clogged arteries.
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Backup / Restore
Internetnews.com, 10/21/03: Veritas Adds Protection for Desktops, Laptops
By Clint Boulton
Veritas Software (Quote, Chart) brought its "Project Shadow" into the light Tuesday when it unveiled a new backup and recovery option to provide always-on data protection for corporate PCs such as desktops and laptops.
The Mountain View, Calif. maker of storage management software, in the midst of a company-wide evolution toward becoming a utility computing provider, is taking aim at protecting data that resides on the thousands PCs in small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises.
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Mobile
C|net, 10/21/03: RIM to support Microsoft Exchange Server
By Richard Shim
Research In Motion on Tuesday announced support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 software on its BlackBerry service and devices. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company also supports Microsoft's Exchange and Outlook applications. The move is meant to increase the BlackBerry's appeal to information technology managers of large corporations.
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Microsoft
Internetnews.com, 10/21/03: Office Goes to Work in the Enterprise
By Bob Liu
NEW YORK -- In the biggest product launch in the company's history, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Tuesday rolled out the Microsoft Office System and immediately did his best to address the greatest challenge the Redmond, Wash., software giant faces -- convincing the 400 million worldwide users to upgrade to the Microsoft Office 2003 System.
"Today we are introducing more software products on a single day than any day in our history," Gates told the overflow crowd in the auditorium of the Millennium Broadway Hotel.
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The Register, 10/22/03: Ballmer on why Windows is more secure than Linux
By John Leyden
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer yesterday defended the company's record on security, arguing that, contrary to popular opinion, Windows was easier to secure than its open source rivals.
During a showpiece Interview with analysts during Gartner's ITXpo in Orlando, Ballmer went as far as suggesting data from security clearing house CERT supported his controversial assertion that Windows was subject to fewer vulnerabilities than popular Linux distros, such as Red Hat.
According to Ballmer, four critical vulnerabilities were discovered in the first 150 days after the release of Windows 2003, compared with 17 found in the same time following the release of Win2000.
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