When I wrote about the DatAdvantage data governance solution from Varonis Systems last summer, I mentioned that a UNIX version of the solution would be forthcoming. Well, it’s now available, and any company that keeps any sort of data in unstructured formats in a UNIX environment should have a look. It’s one more way to protect the assets you hold in unstructured data. Read more
Forget eBay. Have you discovered Dovebid yet? I just did, prompted by a notice that Hewlett-Packard is clearing out some of its surplus computer products, electronics, office furniture and other equipment. Next Monday and Tuesday, November 5 and 6, 2007, you can bid on a wide range of goods from HP’s various sites around the U.S. (If you miss this scheduled date, there’s another one in January.) Read more
I just read the worst article ever on the Wall Street Journal Online edition. The July 30, 2007, edition of the Office Technology column tells non-IT workers how to get around the limits and policies that IT sets for office workers. The article is called Ten Things Your IT Department Won’t Tell You.
You’ve got to read the article to believe it, and when you do, you will be angry…very angry. Why? Because the author is advising WSJ readers to do the following things:
1. Send large company files using free consumer file transfer services. Never mind that these services use unsecured peer-to-peer networks to do the job. What’s a little shared corporate data among friends?
Don't ask me to get LinkedIn to your network of friends.
I get lots of emails that request that I join someone's social network, usually on LinkedIn. I mostly ignore those requests while politely informing the person who sent the request that I don't like to join social networks. I have always been skeptical of giving away too much personal information, especially to an application that is not under my control.
Since my column “Broadband policy is vital to U.S. economic future” appeared online, I’ve received comments from several readers who concur with my opinion that the U.S. needs a national broadband policy. Without one, this country is at the mercy of the telcos and ISPs, who decide -- based on what is best for them, profit-wise -- which customers get what kind of service, and at what price.
A story by the Associated Press reports that Google Maps has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina maps of the Gulf Coast region with pre-hurricane maps. All the devastation is seemingly gone, and everything appears to be back to normal.
What gives? Why would Google intentionally post old information that is so wrong for today's environment? Is China not the only place where Google censors its data? Read more
Linda Leung's newsletter on IT careers and training has been covering the value of certification quite a bit lately. Read her numerous articles on the topic. All this discussion about certification got me thinking about the scandals a few years ago when it was discovered that people were cheating on paper-based IT certification exams. Now that high stakes exams tend to be computer-based, I wondered if cheating is still a problem.
Apparently it is. Read more
It seems that sending work offshore to India isn't as great as it was once cracked up to be. The costs are going up, and the quality of work might be a little dubious.
Now it looks like companies that have outsourced work to India have another concern: social unrest. Many of the largest Indian tech industry companies were forced to close this past Monday for a general strike over water resources. This points out the risks of doing business in countries with occasional political, religious and economic strife. Read more
I take a lot of briefings from technology companies so I can learn more about the products they offer. I generally focus on companies that offer solutions for business (as opposed to consumers), but lately I’m finding that there’s a lot of overlap between solutions for business and solutions for consumers. In some cases, I find myself asking the technology companies to please offer a consumer version of their business-oriented product, or a business version of their consumer-oriented product.
What I see offered for businesses, I want for my home, and vice versa. Let me give you a recent example. Read more
So, there have been a few changes at Dell Inc. in the past week. Founder Michael Dell has stepped back into the role of CEO. Many analysts are calling this a good thing, saying that Mr. Dell can bring the focus back to his namesake company. The company has lost its magic these past few years, and certainly someone needs to get the company back on track.
Let me start out by saying that I’m rooting for Mr. Dell. I have to applaud anyone who can start a business in a dorm room, drop out of college at 19, and eventually create a multi-billion dollar business. His success really did revolutionize the computer industry. Read more
It’s mid winter, and the country’s mid section is freezing. Quite literally, the roads are frozen and there’s no way to get around, except on the “information superhighway” – IF you have power. Unfortunately, I’ve found that parts of that highway are frozen (in time) as well.
I live in southeast Texas, on the fringe of where the ice storms are delivering a real blow this week. On Monday night, the news stations were abuzz with the warnings that icy roads could develop overnight, and with that there obviously could be school closings. “Could” is the operative word here. Read more
As I was chatting with my friend Mike the other day, we were swapping stories about the perks we have enjoyed by helping someone with a computer problem. Mike told me how he came to meet the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin several years ago.
By sheer accident, Mike discovered a bad page on the Australia Zoo website. He emailed the site's webmaster to let him know of the problem. The webmaster wrote back to say it was a suspect Java problem. Since Mike knows Java, he offered to help debug it. Long story short, Mike solved the problem and the grateful webmaster offered to introduce Mike and his family to Steve Irwin if they ever ventured to . Well, they did make that trip, and the webmaster made good on his word. Soon Mike's whole family had some quality one-on-one with the Crocodile Hunter himself. And better yet, Mike's daughter spent the rest of her vacation "working" at Australia Zoo, greeting guests and helping with the baby animals. All for debugging a bit of code as a favor to a fellow techie. Read more
Earlier this week I published an article in the Technology Executive newsletter about Web accessibility. The article talks about the importance of an accessible Website, even if there is no law mandating that a company make its site accessible.There are legitimate business reasons for accessibility.
A reader of this article sent me her comments, which I want to share with you: Read more
As the IT industry matures, the vendors are consolidating. We’ve seen this in systems management, in enterprise applications, and in telecommunications. One area that stills seems a bit fragmented is security. Over the past year, I’ve worked with dozens of niche security solution companies, each one addressing one aspect of what needs to be a holistic approach to computer security. I predict that soon, we will see enterprise buyers ask their prime security vendors to offer more integrated solutions and services so the buyers won’t need to cobble together independent products. Read more
The popular website for young adults, Facebook.com, just infuriated its 10 millions users by stepping over the bounds of personal privacy. That’s ironic, given that Facebook is all about letting college students reveal personal information to each other in the hopes of creating an online community. So what could make the users cry “foul!” when they, themselves, post images of frat parties, spring break vacations and wet T-shirt contests? Read more
There’s no doubt that the outsourcing of technical jobs is a real sore spot for many American IT professionals. Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) threw fuel on the outsourcing fire.
According to a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, CSC is announcing a “restructuring plan” to be carried out during the company’s fiscal years 2007 and 2008. The plan includes the mostly involuntary elimination of approximately 1,800 jobs in North America by FY08, and even more jobs in
Europe. At the same time, CSC will be adding about 2,000 jobs in low wage countries like India. The company doesn’t try to hide the reason with convoluted euphemisms; it comes right out and says that one of the objectives is to “leverage the increased use of lower cost resources.” Read more
I owe Bill Gates a public apology. In my recent Cache Advance column, I suggested that high tech companies should put their money where their mouths are with regard to developing the next generation of highly skilled workers. I specifically pointed out the whines of Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik when he said his biggest problem is recruiting. He used this "problem" to justify Red Hat's propensity to hire employees outside the country.
I suggested that companies like Red Hat should take a bit of their profits and create scholarships to help educate more people for those hard-to-fill jobs at Red Hat and elsewhere. Read more
Gartner Inc. recently released a list of technologies that it believes will have the greatest impact on business over the next 10 years. One of the technologies on the list is “social network analysis” which Gartner defines as using the information and knowledge gathered from people's personal networks to identify target markets, create project teams and discover unvoiced conclusions.
Call me cynical, but I suspect the “social network analysis” will be used to get my personal information to sell to more advertisers who want to sell me “targeted” stuff I don’t want to buy. In the wake of the revelation that AOL search data can be used to precisely identify a specific user, I’m growing more and more leery about voluntarily giving any of my personal information to companies that compile it and analyze it for nebulous reasons. Read more
There's a story in the Houston Chronicle today that really troubles me. The article talks about two teenaged girls who vanished from their homes just outside Houston nearly a week ago. The girls are thought to have left home on their own accord, possibly to travel to California to meet a person or people they met over the Internet. The girls' parents and the police have pieced that much together based on remnants of digital conversations still on their computers. (The girls deleted any other conversations that could be used to trace them. Computer forensic experts are digging deeper to see what else can be learned.) Read more
I first told you about StreamServe’s enterprise document presentment technology last October. StreamServe provides the linkage between your back office and front office applications. For instance, in order to send a customer invoice, you might need to bring together data from multiple sources. “Connectors” draw the data from the individual sources into the StreamServe engine and assemble it into a meaningful format. From there it can be sent to the customer via printed document, email, fax, or whatever distribution method you choose. Read more
Musthaler is a principal analyst at Essential Solutions Corporation. She also writes Cache Advance and the Tech Exec newsletter.
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