Outsourcing
Gartner, 4/2/04: Huge IBM Deal Shows Indian Outsourcing Is a Two-Way Street
A major agreement between IBM and Bharti Tele-Ventures highlights the outsourcing opportunities in the Indian market. In a true paradigm shift, most of this business will go to non-Indian vendors.
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CIO, 3/17/04: Desperation Outsourcing
Did you just stand by and let it happen?
We've all seen desperation outsourcing rationalized under the guise of strategy. But these "strategic initiatives" really are ham-handed attempts at rectifying larger ills. The changes are made, different symptoms of the underlying problems emerge and the root causes remain unresolved. Deployed in this way, outsourcing is a waste of time and harmful to the productivity of the enterprise and the lives of the people involved.
That doesn't mean that outsourcing (or its varieties of extended staffing, co-sourcing, shared sourcing and offshoring) is necessarily a bad thing. It's a powerful tool—but one that is dangerous in the wrong hands. My assessment is that the executives sponsoring hurried, across-the-board outsourcing initiatives are desperate—busy, scared, frustrated, tired and naïve.
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IT Management
Forrestor, 4/5/04: Client Systems Management Tools Update
Consolidation Will Continue Through 2004 And 2005
by David Friedlander
with Thomas Powe
Over the past six months, the client systems management (CSM) market has consolidated rapidly. Microsoft’s launch of Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 last fall, which offered significant improvements over the previous version, has sent waves through the market. Several vendors including Novadigm, ON Technology, and Wise Solutions were acquired. Other vendors are establishing partnerships with potential competitors or with security, help desk, and patch management vendors. It is increasingly difficult for vendors to stand out without a bundled suite for client management. Market consolidation is likely to continue, but larger vendors with deep pockets may become more aggressive and acquire direct competitors for the market share. Customers could be affected by acquisitions if products are discontinued or bundled together, or if pricing and licensing terms change.
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Forrestor, 4/1/04: Nine Tips For SOA Implementation
Takeaways From A Forrester Roundtable Discussion
by Randy Heffner
with Carey E. Schwaber
Forrester conducted a roundtable discussion on service orientation with 12 application architects and technology leaders. The discussion highlighted nine best practices for implementing services and service-oriented architecture (SOA), including ensuring a strong connection to business processes; pursuing services and Web services as two separate goals; using services to unify duplicate applications and to integrate packaged applications; ensuring control is maintained over outsourced development of services; and having a strong service invocation framework that supports version resolution and other needed features.
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eWeek, 4/5/04: Sorting the E-Mail
By Brian Fonseca
April 5, 2004
Archiving products are bringing order to unstructured data.
E-mail archiving products from vendors such as KVS Inc. and Connected Corp., which reduce the cost of expensive disk storage, are climbing business IT managers' priority lists, as pressure mounts for regulatory compliance and the cost of electronic discovery for legal cases rises.
Users have come to rely so much on e-mail, instant messaging and other forms of electronic communication that these technologies have become a repository for sensitive information. This has fueled the need to add more stringent record-keeping controls and management, in case data needs to be accessed during an audit, an investigation or a legal proceeding, experts say. The recent sanctions against Bank of America NA, including a record $10 million fine by the Securities and Exchange Commission for stalling or failing to produce documents and e-mail, signify how e-mail is fast becoming the DNA of modern corporations.
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Security
Sophos, 4/5/04: Police blame virus for publishing "wanted list" on internet, Sophos reports
Sensitive data leaked from police officer's personal laptop
Does your company allow you to do business work on your personal computer? If so, ensure it is properly protected.
The police force in Kyoto, Japan, have suggested that a virus might be responsible for sensitive information regarding criminal investigations being leaked onto the internet.
A total of 19 documents, including investigation reports and a list of "wanted" suspects, prepared by a police officer on his private laptop computer have appeared on internet peer-to-peer file-sharing systems.
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eWeek, 4/5/04: Worm Masquerades as Microsoft Patch
By Dennis Fisher
A new worm purporting to contain a patch to defend against MyDoom is attacking Windows machines throughout Europe and parts of North America.
Sober.D appeared last week and began spreading in Germany and the United Kingdom. The worm arrives in an e-mail message with a subject line of "Microsoft Alert: Please Read!" and carries a sending address with a Microsoft domain. The domain extensions on the messages are typically from Germany, Israel, Switzerland or Austria.
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Computerworld, 4/7/04: Windows to remain security risk for years to come
News Story by Matthew Broersma
APRIL 07, 2004 (TECHWORLD.COM) - LONDON -- Microsoft Corp.'s efforts to limit the ongoing damage from worms such as Blaster will not pay off for several years, according to security experts.
New Windows PCs will begin shipping with security switched on by default for the first time, with the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 this summer, but it will take five or six years before such basic protections are common on the installed base of PCs, according to a Symantec Corp. executive.
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Computerworld, 4/7/04: Cisco warns of wireless security hole
The default username and password in some versions could give attackers complete control of the devices
News Story by Paul Roberts
APRIL 07, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is warning customers about a security hole in two products used to manage wireless LANs and e-business services in corporate data centers.
The company said today that a username and password coded into some versions of its Wireless LAN Solution Engine (WLSE) and Hosting Solution Engine (HSE) software could give attackers complete control of the devices. Attackers could use the default log-ins to hide rogue wireless access points on WLANs, create and modify user privileges or change configuration settings, Cisco said. The vulnerability affects Versions 2.0, 2.0.2 and 2.5 of the WLSE and Versions 1.7, 1.7.1, 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 of the HSE. Cisco posted software patches on its Web site for both products.
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C|net, 4/8/04: The spyware that loved me
By John Borland
The IT department finally came for my computer last week.
For weeks I had been investigating companies that claimed to offer spyware-fighting software but secretly distribute spyware or other advertising apps along with their products . Because I wanted to put myself in the shoes of the average computer user, I deliberately let down my protections to load the applications in question.
Not the swiftest decision, I was told by the IT technician who hauled away my machine to reimage the hard drive. After weeks of headaches that got worse and worse, the machine started surreptitiously pumping viruses onto the corporate network.
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Utility Computing
Network World, 3/22/04: Vendors make the utility computing grade
Summit Strategies issues a report card on vendors' dynamic computing initiatives
By Denise Dubie
Dell this week joined the likes of HP, IBM and Sun, at least according to Summit Strategies, which Monday released its dynamic computing report card in which Dell now features.
Summit in July 2003 started its assessment of HP, IBM and Sun and how those vendors proposed to deliver dynamic computing to customers. Summit defines dynamic computing as: "IT's architectural shift toward shared, pooled and dynamically allocated IT solutions, managed by automated, policy-based systems."
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