Outsourcing
Gartner, 1/2/04: How Deal Size Matters in IT Infrastructure Outsourcing
Aside from the number of digits to the left of the decimal point, what are the differences between large and small IT infrastructure outsourcing contracts? Some of the answers may surprise you. This User Wants and Needs report examines the differences and similarities between deals at opposite ends of the contract value spectrum.
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Giga, 1/4/04: Perot Systems: An Emerging Leader in the SMB Segment
William Martorelli
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Perot Systems?
Nearing $1.5 billion in annual revenues, Perot Systems is emerging as a force in the small- to medium-sized business segment (SMB), particularly in the health-care market, where it registers roughly half of its revenues. Perot Systems’ emphasis in the SMB segment includes companies with up to $5 billion in annual sales, where it can avoid withering competition with larger contenders, where the role of transaction intermediaries is less pervasive, and where few viable alternatives exist.
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Businessweek, 1/12/04: Commentary: Shifting Work Offshore? Outsourcer Beware
Quality and security woes can eat expected savings
Like a lot of companies, Intentia International, a $430 million business-software maker with operations in Stockholm and Palo Alto, Calif., was looking for ways to cut costs. So two years ago, it farmed out a software-programming project to a small outfit in India, expecting to cut expenses by 40%. But the savings never materialized. The main reason: The code the Indians delivered was riddled with errors. Intentia's own engineers had to re-do it from scratch. "Indian companies are very aggressive," says Linus Parker, president of U.S. subsidiary Intentia America Inc. However, leaders of this Indian company, which he would not name, "overstated their technical skills."
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Utility Computing
Giga, 1/6/04: IBM’s Variable Priced Services Expand, but Adoption Remains Measured
William Martorelli
What is IBM’s range of variable-price, variable-consumption service models?
Giga recently attended an update by IBM Global Services on IBM’s emerging On Demand services program. What we learned is that IBM’s portfolio of variable-price, variable-consumption services is continually expanding, although customer acceptance is emerging slowly. Principal elements in IBM’s portfolio include:
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IT Management
Gartner, 1/6/04: Designing the Agile Organization: Design Principles and Practices
The design principles of organizational agility help IS organizations strike a sustainable balance between change and order. Pursued collectively, they help CIOs and IS organizations adapt to multiple constituencies, multiple choices, changing demands, new services and high expectations. This report explores the organizational design principles of IS agility.
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Security
Computerworld, 1/6/04: Cisco integrates security
Story by Carly Suppa,
JANUARY 06, 2004 - Enterprise network threats are escalating in both speed and magnitude, and IT staff, no matter how able they may be, cannot respond quickly enough to today's attacks. In response, Cisco Systems Inc. has developed a new program that the company says will protect computer networks from attacks better than point solutions like intrusion detection systems and firewalls.
John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco, last month outlined the Cisco Network Admissions Control (NAC) program, whose aim is to prevent the mass destruction of threats like the recent Blaster worm and Slammer virus by scanning devices when they attempt to connect to a corporate network.
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ZDNet, 1/7/04: Microsoft seeks to stamp out persistent worm
Robert Lemos
Microsoft has released a removal tool for the Blaster worm, saying many PCs remain infected and are causing network congestion
Microsoft released a removal tool for the MSBlast worm on Monday after Internet service providers complained that home users' PCs infected with the malicious program are still causing network congestion.
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Otherwise
The New York Times, 1/1/04: The Time We Thought We Knew
By BRIAN GREENE
It was an unlikely place to be at 4:30 a.m., since I'm not much on celebrations and take minimal notice of most every holiday. Yet, a few years back, on a rainy Dec. 31 morning, I stood in Times Square, together with a handful of other early revelers, awaiting images on a giant screen of festivities on Kiribati, the first inhabited place on earth to welcome the new year. I was, as I recognized through the fog of exhaustion and the hazy steam billowing from manhole covers, re-enacting a struggle I'd been engaged in for decades.
Time dominates experience. We live by watch and calendar. We eagerly trade megahertz for gigahertz. We spend billions of dollars to conceal time's bodily influences. We uproariously celebrate particular moments in time even as we quietly despair of its passage.
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