IT Management
Infoworld, 5/28/04: Smart IT budgeting
By Chad Dickerson
Every CTO wants more to spend. But aligning with business needs may yield greater rewards
By Chad Dickerson
At Infoworld, it’s that time of year again, when fear and loathing haunt the hearts of CTOs: budget season. Along with the usual grinding pressure to do more with less, CTOs are confronted like never before with a surge of books and articles in the business press challenging the value of IT. After riling up the IT world a year ago with his infamous “IT Doesn’t Matter” article in the Harvard Business Review, Nicholas Carr is back with a book-length version of the very same argument ingeniously rephrased as a question: Does IT Matter? (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
Carr is scarcely alone. Not too long ago, I happened to pick up the spring 2004 issue of the well-respected MIT Sloan Management Reviewand was confronted with Andrew McAfee’s provocative piece, “Do You Have Too Much IT?” McAfee quotes a Morgan Stanley study that estimates that between 2000 and 2002, companies threw away $130 billion of the IT they’d purchased.
With numbers like those, CEOs and CFOs have reason to be skeptical about IT spending. But CTOs have an opportunity to re-earn the respect of the business side. As I delve into next year’s budget, I’m observing a few principles to keep me on track.
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Security
Internetnews.com, 5/26/04: Korgo Worm Targets LSASS Flaw
By Ryan Naraine
Anti-virus firms have detected yet another worm exploiting the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) vulnerability that was patched by Microsoft (Quote, Chart) in its April batch of security updates.
The appearance of the W32.Korgo.B worm (also known as Padobot) spreading through the LSASS flaw is a clear indication that PC users have not yet applied the MS04-011 security fix issued by Microsoft on April 13.
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C|net, 5/26/04: Will code check tools yield worm-proof software?
By Robert Lemos
When Microsoft needed help in taming the large number of flaws that had crept into its Windows operating system, it looked to technology known as "static source code checkers" and a company called Intrinsa.
Nearly 4,000 security flaws have been found in software during each of the last two years, but software developers still don't routinely do automatic checks for such vulnerabilities. Legal ramifications, however, could change that.
Intrinsa's product, known as PREfix, analyzed the code created by developers and flagged potential errors. The software giant found the program so helpful, it bought the company for $60 million in 1999. Today, a handful of other developers of similar products hope to convince customers that they should be using their programs to spot-check security.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Watch, 5/26/04: Microsoft To Step Up Server Product Release Schedule
By Mary Jo Foley
Microsoft seems to be moving to upgrade more frequently the other members of its Windows Server System.
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Infoworld, 5/25/04: Microsoft exec talks about Exchange plans
VP David Thompson provides details of release
By Joris Evers
SAN DIEGO -- Microsoft Corp. will dump the "Kodiak" code-name that had been tagged to the next release of Exchange Server e-mail and calendaring product and will deliver functionality that was planned for the release in pieces, the company said at its Tech Ed conference in San Diego.
IDG News Service sat down with David Thompson, a Microsoft corporate vice president who has been in charge of the Exchange Server group since early this year.
Thompson provided more details about the next release of Exchange, which he said could come before the release of a server version of Longhorn in 2007. Longhorn is the next major release of Windows. A client version of Longhorn is expected in 2006. Thompson also discussed how Microsoft plans to incorporate SQL Server database technology in Exchange.
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eWeek, 5/25/04: Microsoft Releases Exchange SP1, Updates Roadmap
By Dennis Callaghan
Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for its Exchange 2003 messaging server, offering updates for e-mail security and administration.
Chief among the new features in this release is Microsoft Exchange Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) for Exchange Server 2003, which uses the SmartScreen heuristics-based content-filtering technology deployed at Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Hotmail services as another tool to screen out spam messages based on content. IMF is designed to work in combination with other third-party anti-spam products.
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Optimism
C|net, 5/26/04: PC market to enjoy healthy growth, report says
The global PC market will experience double-digit year-over-year growth in 2004 and 2005, according to a report Piper Jaffray released Wednesday.
Growth in worldwide PC sales is likely to reach 15 percent in 2004, with the shipment of 177 million units, the company predicted. In 2005, shipments will grow by 12 percent to 197 million units, the company said. The PC market, as Piper Jaffray defines it, includes desktops, notebooks and PC servers.
The company's hardware analyst, Les Santiago, said the key factors driving the growth are lower prices, the desire of companies to replace aging systems and the recovery of major European economies, like those in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The growing use of desktops in China and India will be yet another driver.
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