Outsourcing
C|net, 7/14/04: HP lands $500 million in outsourcing
Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday announced three services contracts totaling $500 million.
The Palo Alto, Calif., computer maker signed a five-year, $112 million contract with MCI; a seven-year, $320 million agreement with global financial services firm TD Bank Financial Group; and a five-year, $53 million contract with document software firm Standard Register.
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C|net, 7/14/04: Study: States doing plenty of offshoring
By Ed Frauenheim
At least $75 million in U.S. state contract work has been captured by 18 companies that specialize in offshore outsourcing, according to a new study.
The report, released Wednesday by tech professional advocate group WashTech, found that so-called offshoring is going on to some extent in just about every state government. But the study, which focused on information technology and food-stamp call centers, said the total amount of state contract offshoring cannot be estimated, because most states don't know where the work is performed.
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Gartner, 7/14/04: Management Update: Multisourcing Is the New Norm for Sourcing IT Services
Although multisourcing has become the preferred way to acquire and use IT services, a new approach to implementation and management is required for this model to be successful.
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Gartner, 7/13/04: Infrastructure Support Services Growth Is Slow to Rebound
While spending for infrastructure support services reaches $135 billion in 2004, worldwide growth rates continue to decline through 2005 in the most recent forecast (see Table 1). Infrastructure support services include hardware maintenance and support services and software support services.
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Help Desk
Gartner, 7/13/04: BMC’s Remedy Buys Service Partner Viadyne, Adds Functions
BMC Software’s Remedy unit is expanding its service provider solutions with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. As outsourcing grows, vendors must add functionality to remain competitive.
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Security
eWeek, 7/14/04: Jaded Users Roll Their Eyes at IE's Latest Security Debacle
By Lisa Vaas
The most recent of a spate of Internet Explorer crash and burns is drawing the user reaction, "So, what else is new?"
"At what point do we need to shift the focus here and start posting Slashdot stories when they find some code in IE that actually works?" This post, by D-Cypell, was the first of many exasperated posts on Slashdot following Tuesday's advisory that four new IE security holes had been found by Danish security firm Secunia.
…
In separate news, antivirus company F-Secure Corp. proved that when it rains security problems, it pours. The Helsinki, Finland, company on Monday reported a new mass-mailer worm called Atak that plops itself into a file and then deploys a host of anti-debugging tricks to throw antivirus sniffers off the track as it churns out spam.
Cluley described Atak, which hides in a file called HINT.EXE in /WINDOWS/SYSTEM32 directory, as a minimal irritation. "It's not spreading. It's not a big deal. We've received no reports from our honeypots around the world," he said.
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Microsoft
C|net, 7/14/04: Microsoft delays some security updates
The already-delayed Windows Update Services won't be ready until 2005
News Story by Carol Sliwa
JULY 14, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - TORONTO -- Users who have already endured delays for security-focused product and services updates that Microsoft Corp. pledged would be ready by now will have to wait a while longer.
At its Worldwide Partner Conference here this week, Microsoft officials disclosed that the already-delayed Windows Update Services (WUS), won't be ready until the first half of next year. WUS, which was formerly known as Software Update Services (SUS), can be used to automate patch distribution to employees on a scheduled basis and will be available for free.
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Collaborative Computing
C|net, 7/14/04: Be my friend? Only on my turf
By Esther Dyson
"Are you a member of LinkedIn?"
I get asked that a lot, but it's the wrong question. The questioner is assuming that LinkedIn is a social network, when in fact it's a hosting service for its users' social networks, some of which overlap. The proper question would be: "Are you a member of Juan's social network on LinkedIn?"
Yet somehow, people are confusing the two concepts. In part, that's because the message is blurred: It's not just "use our service to communicate with your own network," but (implicitly) "join our service to make new friends and valuable contacts."
That may be a more compelling proposition, but it's one that will be hard to deliver, especially if too many people join and the value of a link goes down. In the end, the value isn't how many people you can link to, but rather how strong those links are. (There's a difference between business services such as LinkedIn, where the focus is mostly on increasing efficiency and limiting contacts to valuable ones, and the more social and would-be portal sites, such as Friendster or Orkut, where the focus is more on increasing the number of contacts. And, of course, some people use either kind of service for the opposite purpose, which only confuses things.)
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