Outsorcing
C|net 1/7/04: IT buyers lay out new plans for 2004
By Dawn Kawamoto
Linux will expand its presence in key markets, while offshore outsourcing will continue at a brisk pace in 2004, analysis firm Forrester Research predicted Wednesday.
Forrester, which based its forecasts on several reports and a survey of 528 information technology buyers, also predicted that PC pricing and dial-up subscriptions will continue to feel the pain in the new year, while companies that develop RFID (radio frequency identification) technology for the consumer goods market will reap investments.
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Security
Investor’s Business Daily, 1/6/04: E-mail Disruptions More Painful
BY DOUG TSURUOKA
You never know how much you need it until it's gone.
That's not the title of a new hit tune. It's the finding of a recent survey gauging worker reliance on e-mail in the wake of blackouts, storms, wildfires and other glitches that rocked Internet service in 2003.
The big events were the Northeast power outage of Aug. 14, Hurricane Isabel in September and the October wildfires in California.
The disruptions cut e-mail service at some sites anywhere from a few hours to a few days by downing phone and power lines. Hacker worms also disabled some corporate e-mail systems. The survey — conducted by the TNS marketing research group for business e-mail service vendor MessageOne Inc. — found over 51% of U.S. workers lost e-mail up to four times in 2003 due to such outages.
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Computerworld, 1/7/04: It's 'flu' season: Is your PC inoculated?
Advice by Douglas Schweitzer
Several years ago, I got the flu. My doctor's advice: Get a flu shot next year, because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The same maxim applies to computers. While 2003 proved to be a busy year for malicious code, some experts feel that 2004 may be worse. Now is a good time to take a proactive security stance and prepare for the onslaught of viruses, worms and Trojan horse programs we're likely to see in coming months.
One overlooked area of concern may be those computers that you received as holiday gifts. A warning issued by Sophos PLC says that "many PCs available on the high street come with software which was produced many months before, so their security patches are out of date. Similarly antivirus software, often bundled with a home computer, is unlikely to provide out-of-the-box protection for recent viruses." With hundreds of new viruses appearing monthly, outdated antivirus protection (even just a few months) can allow a virus to attack your shiny new PC, reducing it to a $2,000 paperweight.
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IT Management
Computerworld, 1/7/04: Major IT vendors release policy agenda
IT industry CEOs want a renewed focus on U.S. growth and competitiveness
story by Dan Verton
A group of influential high-tech CEOs today issued a report that calls on Congress and the Bush administration to support a broad range of training and education efforts and to avoid protectionist trade measures that could hurt the industry's global competitiveness and lead to a further loss of U.S. jobs.
The executives from the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), which includes Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell and Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO and Chairman Carly Fiorina, next month plan to urge the government to support three specific policy recommendations that they say are critical to bolstering the U.S. IT industry's global competitiveness.
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Microsoft
C|net, 1/7/04: Gates unveils new MSN
By Jim Hu
Mcrosoft on Wednesday unveiled updated versions of its MSN family of Web sites and services in the hope of attracting the growing number of consumers with broadband connections.
Company Chairman Bill Gates presented a new version of MSN.com's home page and demonstrated a new online video service during his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday evening. Gates also gave a tour of MSN Premium, Microsoft's Web software pack that it hopes will attract customers who access the Internet through a high-speed connection.
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