IT Management
Infoworld, 11/7/03: Upgrade glitch downs AT&T Wireless' CRM system
European customers primarily affected
By Stacy Cowley
AT&T Wireless Services Inc. this week faced the software nightmare every IT administrator fears: An application upgrade last weekend went awry, taking down one of the company's key account management systems.
AT&T Wireless, based in Redmond, Washington, was working on an upgrade of its CRM (customer relationship management) system, but a glitch in the process caused a break. For much of this week the company's GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) service customers, primarily in Europe, have been unable to make changes to existing plans or to activate new ones, according to spokesman Mark Siegel. AT&T Wireless Services' TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) network customer accounts are tracked on a different CRM system and are unaffected, Siegel said.
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Silicon.Com, 11/6/03: Users opt for 'selective but effective' patch management
by Will Sturgeon
It needn't be like painting the Forth Bridge... just paint those girders most in need a lick of paint...
Businesses are favouring a 'selective but effective' approach to patch management - rather than frantically trying to be up to date with every patch released.
A poll among silicon.com readers revealed that 49.5 per cent of respondents believe they patch everything they need to, while not necessarily worrying about every patch which they hear about.
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Microsoft
Internetnews.com, 11/10/03: Microsoft Floors the Pedal For Sales Force
By Bob Liu
For years, marketing teams have been rallying their troops behind the all-important sales proposal process, which has relied heavily on Microsoft Office tools like Word and PowerPoint for the creation of those pitches. But with the new release of the Office 2003 System, Microsoft is trying to alter the workflow landscape and bring in new tools that will help re-engineer the process.
The latest tool, Microsoft Office Solutions Accelerator for Proposals, is to be unveiled on Monday. With it, the Redmond, Wash., giant hopes sales professionals will begin to embrace the concept of online collaboration -- a central theme behind the new Office 2003 System. In doing so, Microsoft is hoping to help its customers increase their "win" rate on those sales pitches.
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Steve Jobs on Longhorn
The Seattle Post Intelligencer, 11/7/03: Steve Jobs on Longhorn
Jobs' Longhorn comments came after he was asked if Apple investors should be worried that once the competition "gets it good enough," it would be able use the economies of scale of the Wintel (Windows operating system and Intel processor) architecture to outpace Apple's innovations in the long term. Here's what he said, in part:
No, because there's hardly anybody investing a lot of energy in engineering on the Wintel platform outside of Microsoft and Intel, right? Dell doesn't spend much on engineering. Gateway probably spends zero. These guys don't engineer anything anymore. What you're really asking is, can we out innovate Microsoft? And I would give you a resounding yes. I think we are, in almost every category of software that we're in. ... Way more now [than in the past]
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Collaborative Technologies
Business 2.0, 11/03: The Technology of the Year: Social Network Applications
There's valuable information locked up inside your web of relationships. Who holds the key? The answer is now just a few keystrokes away.
By David Pescovitz, November 2003 Issue
In the beginning, there was the Oracle of Bacon. A playful website created by grad students at the University of Virginia in 1996, the site showed how Kevin Bacon's relationships with other actors placed him at the center of the Hollywood universe. Then came a doomed dotcom-era startup called SixDegrees. Launched in 1997, the site invited users to incorporate friends, family, and business contacts into an online community to help members find jobs and pals.
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Many-to-Many, 11/7/03: Knows and Memes
Posted by Ross Mayfield at 12:08 PM
The rise of social networking gives greater credence to the saying Its not what you know, but who you know. This inherently undemocratic notion concerns some, and, indeed, the Network is the Market. Within a power-law distribution, preferential attachment implies that the rich get richer, especially as transaction costs for making connections fall. Knows is a power of diverse options the latent potential for search, distribution or action.
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Optimism
Infoworld, 11/7/03: The IT economy looks brighter
A prediction made earlier in this column may finally come true
By Chad Dickerson
Now that I've been writing this column for well over two years, I can look back and reflect on times that I've been a little off in my occasional prognostications. A column in particular that sticks out in my mind is one I wrote in January 2002 urging CTOs to prepare for a better economy: "Now pick up any business publication and a growing number of analysts are beginning to see some light at the end of the economic tunnel. Sure, there are still discouraging signs in the economic picture; but to keep ahead of the curve, CTOs must now reckon with the distinct possibility of an imminent economic upturn. CTOs: Are you ready for an upswing?"
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