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Got problems with insider threats? Need help securing your wireless LAN because of employees bringing their own devices on to your network? Know how to protect your Android device?
There's nothing coincidental about the way grocery stores display and price their merchandise. Focus groups used to be the go-to resource for such market research, but today manufacturers like beverage behemoth PepsiCo find virtual simulation...
Just as all politics is local, so are supply chains local. If one of your key manufacturers in Asia or a big IT service provider in South America goes down after a disaster, you might, too.
The customer is always right, but how would you know? Few CIOs truly understand what external customers want and why they act the way they do. Running IT can all too easily keep CIOs internally focused, making sure fellow employees have the...
R.K. Anand, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Networks' Data Center Business Unit, was employee No. 12 of the network startup back in 1996, leaving a job as a microprocessor designer at Sun Microsystems. Years later he left...
Just when you got used to Windows 7, Microsoft is threatening to ship Windows 8. The first public beta is slated to be released at the end of this month, with a final ship date rumored to be in October. So, what does Windows 8 mean for you?
IBM reversed course on networking in 2010 when it acquired Blade Network Technologies, one of its key network suppliers. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix and Managing Editor Jim Duffy recently caught up with Vikram Mehta, founder of BNT and...
Freelance writer Susan Perschke recently sat down with Cisco Vice President and Chief Security Officer John N. Stewart for an in-depth discussion of the state of enterprise security.
IT execs know they will have to deploy IPv6 at some point, but where to begin? One approach that establishes some IPv6 capability without spending a lot of time or money is to start at the perimeter.
We are in an awkward point in the history of the Internet. IPv4 address depletion has occurred yet we expect to use IPv4 for the next 15 to 20 years. Organizations see two paths before them. One alternative is to use continue to use IPv4 and expect...
If you're like most enterprises, you have data everywhere. It's in line-of-business applications. It's in directories. It's in various departmental servers. It's in your e-commerce platform. To manage all this, most shops use...
Change can often be slow. It took many years for the Mac to begin to even threaten the PC in the enterprise. It is still a slow process, but Apple is making up ground on Microsoft.
We take a comprehensive look at the new green-IT metrics for measuring data center efficiency and productivity from The Green Grid and other industry groups. Insider, registration required.
Cole Hanson's career goal is to become an information security executive. Currently, he serves as a high-level information security professional with the U.S. Army. In February, Hanson, who is also a reservist with a rank of Lieutenant, will...
Underwriters Laboratories' CIO Christian Anschuetz discusses UL's recent transformation from a non-profit to a for-profit organization and how IT shaped and supported that change. He weighs in on the consumerization of IT, offers advice for...
As Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie step down as co-CEOs at Research in Motion, the company is at a cross roads. Thorsten Heins steps into the CEO chair with many daunting obstacles ahead of him and RIM.
When TD Bank Group made a lot of acquisitions a few years ago, executives knew they needed to find a way to help employees span international borders and work together.
Intel moved to defend its turf -- and possibly its future stability -- by inking deals to supply next-generation Atom chips to smartphone makers Motorola and Lenovo. (Insider, registration required.)
Deputy Commissioner of Technology and Support Services John A. Benanti and Assistant Commissioner Donald Stanton talk about how technology fits into the operations at the New York City Fire Department, one of the largest fire departments in the...
Vendors are touting solid state replacement drives as a way to protect corporate data in the event of a laptop being lost or stolen, and to boost performance at the same time.
As technology conferences go, CES this year reached new heights of stardom, with its own television show on Spike TV and big entertainment names like Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson and Ryan Seacrest.
To keep pace with a fast-changing business environment, these companies are ditching inflexible legacy systems in favor of software as a service and cloud computing. Are they getting the speed, flexibility and cost savings they thought they would?...
Despite economic uncertainty at home and abroad, enterprises IT budgets grew in 2011, although not by very much. So, what’s on tap for 2012? In this package of stories, Network World and IDG News Service reporters provide a roadmap for the new year.
Anonymous had a busy year in 2011 pushing its hacker-activist agenda on companies around the Web, to the point where just the sound of the hacker group's name can send shivers down the spine of many a CIO.
After more than two years of work, the city of Los Angeles has abandoned its effort to migrate its police operations to Google's hosted email and office application platform because it says the service cannot meet FBI security requirements. Insider...
The explosive growth in smartphone usage and the growing adoption of tablets means that a mobile communication strategy -- or the lack of one -- could make or break a candidate in this year's presidential election. (Insider, registration required.)
Indranil 'Neal' Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Healthcare System, is helping to communicate the benefits that technology can bring to healthcare and shape public policy on the issue. Insider (registration required)
HTML5 developers might want some help in dealing with a steep learning curve. We review three applications that can help. Insider (registration required)
Mozilla on Thursday said it will kick off a slower-paced Firefox release schedule for enterprises at the end of this month. Insider (registration required)
Two recently-published books, "America the Vulnerable" by Joel Brenner, a former official at the National Security Agency (NSA) and "When Gadgets Betray Us," by writer and security analyst Robert Vamosi, have one theme in common: We've come to...
Cloud computing poses unique security challenges. Here's how cloud-specific 'security incident-response teams' could help governments and large enterprises respond to malicious activity and make the cloud more trustworthy. Insider (registration...
2011 could be described as “The Year of …” many things. The tablet market heated up beyond the Apple iPad. 4G wireless took off with the emergence of big-time LTE networks. Governments and hackers screamed for attention by taking down networks,...
The sheer number of cloud players - or companies that claim to be cloud players -- is staggering. By some estimates there are more than 2,000 software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies alone. At this early point in the cloud revolution, there are...
In an exclusive interview, Polycom CEO Andrew Miller talks about the impact of mobility on the visual communications market and about Polycom's move to the cloud
Carlton Lassiter began looking for a new job five months ago, after being passed over for a director of strategic planning position with his current employer. Lassiter, who asked CIO.com to use a pseudonym to keep his job search a secret from his...
Intuit CEO Brad Smith has deftly steered what was once only a shrink-wrap software company into the cloud and mobile worlds and has led a re-engineering of Intuit's IT organization into a customer-focused, driver of innovation and value.
IT professionals have been through the wringer when it comes to managing their careers. They've had to keep up with ever-changing technology, endure the often painful aftermath of offshoring and outsourcing decisions, and learn new skills --...
Chipita America has become almost serverless over the past six years by moving its ERP, EDI and BI systems, Office and Exchange applications and file servers to the cloud. (Insider, registration required.)
Retailers are going out of their way this year to integrate holiday season sales efforts with social networking sites to boost bottom line profits. Insider (registration required)
Some cloud computing vendors outsource parts of their services to subcontractors, who may in turn outsource to others. Here's how to know who has your company's data and how secure it really is. Insider (registration required)
Tablets are a tricky proposition for many IT departments since they have many of the content creation capabilities of laptops but lack mature security software.
Network World's own Indiana Shaw goes through more than just the temple of doom to find gifts suitable for you or other techies on your list. Just like his more famous archeologist cousin who digs up ancient artifacts and treasures from around the...
Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ device includes storage for up to four 1TB hard drives along with three levels of RAID synchronization. Insider (registration required)
If you have tech skills and experience, odds are you're going to get a call from an IT recruiter in 2012. That's because IT departments are ramping up hiring at the same time that more IT professionals are ready to leave behind employers offering...
As part of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, William McCracken, chief executive officer of CA Technologies, spoke at the recent CA World conference to IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant about how the concept of 'business service...
Systems monitoring and management may be headed to the cloud as management-as-a-service. Nimsoft CEO Chris O'Malley explains what that means and how it will affect IT in this Q&A -- part of the ongoing IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series.
For the past 25 years, a war has waged between malicious programmers and the researchers trying to make computing safe for the enterprise. The battle has shown no signs of subsiding — once a new countermeasure is deployed, the hackers find new ways...
Small company, big ambitions. Sounds like the classic entrepreneurial dream--but what if it means you bear the burden of big-company regulatory or standards compliance?
Even though it now appears there was no terrorist attack on a pump at an Illinois water utility, the SCADA infiltration scare was a reminder that data breaches can come from any number of angles.
To get the most out of business intelligence projects, companies need a top-down commitment that permeates the entire organizational culture. At 1-800-Flowers.com, for example, achieving pervasive BI has been a 10-year commitment. (Insider,...
Security looks at operational risk, but most big companies have officers called risk managers who actually buy insurance policies for the company. What's on their minds? If you run a security operation, you should know, because your work and...
Puma simplified its cloud strategy and saved money by consolidating from using four cloud vendors down to just one. Here's what they did and why they did it.
Unified communications isn't easy or cheap, but for companies that want to differentiate their customer service, it's becoming a must-have. Insider (registration required)
Whether you're a small business relying on Google Docs for document sharing or an enterprise moving your global ERP system to the cloud, you should demand that some common security and compliance requirements are met by vendors providing...
While standing around the water cooler in the IT department, perhaps you debate with a coworker about whether LinkedIn is better than Facebook. Or you argue with an end user about whether they can use their own device on the corporate network or can...
The consumerization of IT trend's leading wave is the use of personal mobile technology, so a smart BYOD strategy lays the groundwork for a complete consumerization approach
There's heightened interest in agile BI, a rapid development methodology for creating BI systems that involves the end user as early and as often as possible -- and thus saves time and effort. Insider (registration required)
With BlackBerry and Apple still leading the pack, and tablets and Android rising in the ranks, CIOs surveyed by CIO magazine are widely supporting employee-owned devices
Henry Cole has held his position as an IT manager with a global life sciences company for nearly eight years. Like all ambitious IT managers, he wants to move up to the executive level. Cole believes he's ready to step into an executive-level IT...
Questions remain about whether or when enterprises will start widely deploying voice-recognition technology on mobile devices, partly because internally developed, specialized apps would have to be built to overcome issues like background noise that...
If you're ready for a technical deep dive in a book, the Cisco Networking Technology Series provides that in its collection of volumes on topics that include Cisco firewalls, Cisco Unity Connection voice-messaging platform, Cisco Contact Center,...
The simplicity of Apple's OS X development tools, if not their price, is enticing enough to cause some developers to leave Linux behind. Insider (registration required)
One of the biggest trends in IT is how consumer products have crept into the enterprise, and the trend extends to Internet services. The ingenious thing about social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn is that these consumer-oriented sites have...
In any business organization, the need to effectively communicate and collaborate in a timely manner is very important. Contending with mobile workers and shifting schedules, many businesses look toward enterprise content management (ECM) systems...
Doug Cutting, the creator of the open-source Hadoop framework that allows enterprises to store and analyze petabytes of unstructured data, is bullish on the future. Insider (registration required)
In opting not to get rid of its PC division, HP -- and new CEO Meg Whitman -- offered some insight about what type of company they think HP should be. Insider (registration required)
Like the cloud, the concept of 'big data' is the subject of a lot of hype and means different things to different people. Here's what it really means, who's really doing it, and what it could mean for the future of data mining. Insider (registration...
Wireless routers are always something of a mystery. They combine a number of features into a single box and are usually complex to set up, but require little attention after that.
It used to be easy journalistic shorthand to write 'database-giant Oracle Corp.', but that labeling no longer fits a company that's now a key player in applications, appliances, servers, development tools, operating systems and, yes,...
Workers plan to do more online holiday shopping this year while on the job, with many using their own smartphones and tablets. That's got IT managers worried, a survey shows. Insider (registration required)
Chris Russo, deputy fire chief in the Massachusetts coastal town of Hull, launches ELERTS, an emergency communication system that uses smartphones and social media to communicate with first responders and other emergency personnel.
There's a wealth of data out there companies can use to better understand customers and identify emerging business opportunities and threats. But how to access and work with all that data? An emerging type of service called data as a service, or...
Looking for inspiration? Want to learn a few new ways to elevate your security game? Can you spare five minutes to think strategically and long-term instead of just putting out another fire?
There comes a time in many IT consultants' careers when they decide to exchange the trappings of their jet-set professional lives for a corporate IT job with more stability. For Sevin Straus, an IT consultant based in Chicago, that moment came...
The term "cloud" connotes things floating around freely – which is not something you necessarily want your data doing. That is the common perception of cloud computing today, leaving many leery about trusting that their business-critical information...
The path to better projects may be for software developers to become better people. An organizational psychologist contends that the source of project dysfunction is generally a project manager. Insider (registration required)
In an experiment that began in January, decommissioned Trinity Health servers, networking gear and storage systems have been running outdoors in a simple shed without failure. Takeaway: IT equipment appears to be a lot tougher than conventional...
Tech lovers have been flocking to the iPad 2 and other tablets in order to watch movies, read books, surf the Web and make video calls on the latest, greatest, thinnest, lightest, coolest devices. But where do tablets fit within the enterprise?
Business Intelligence tools, mobile apps and cloud application platforms are areas that will evolve and create significantly more business value between today and 2014, according to a new Forrester report on enterprise technology trends.
Apple founder Steve Jobs' death earlier this month brought forth an outpouring of remembrances from fanboys, industry leaders – even people who didn’t seem to realize they were fans of Steve Jobs.
To get the most out of business intelligence projects, companies need a top-down commitment that permeates the entire organizational culture. At 1-800-Flowers.com, for example, achieving pervasive BI has been a 10-year commitment. Insider...
Plug it in and turn it on? Next-generation firewalls just aren't that simple. Here's advice from the experts on choosing the right device and getting the most it.
Have you come to Microsoft Excel 2010 by way of Excel 2007, or did you skip directly from Excel 2003 or an earlier version? Those in the former group are likely to have a very different upgrade experience from those in the latter group.
Apple's iPad 2 continues to dominate the tablet market, a market it essentially created on its own, though many competitors have arisen to try to knock off the king of the hill.
Among the 84,000 open tech positions currently listed on Dice.com, there are roughly 1,400 job listings that say an MBA is preferred, and they come from a variety of industries
In this latest installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, SUSE president and GM Nils Brauckmann shared with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant his views on the future of open source, his strategy for competing against Red Hat, and...
Attacks against the Mac are on the rise, and users need to know what they're up against to mount an effective defense. Here's a survival guide that will help.
If you ask IT execs why they're hesitant about moving to the public cloud, security comes up at the top of the list. But security vendors are responding to these concerns with a raft of new products. Here are four interesting cloud security tools...
How's this for a challenge? The CEO dies suddenly and you're tabbed to take his place -- on the heels of your network infrastructure company entering into a major new strategic partnership and in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the...
IPv6 is on the minds of every network professional these days, and rightly so. While some vendors and service providers are woefully behind, others are leading the charge. We asked well-known IPv6 expert Ed Horley to name these leaders. Horley is...
Apple has unwittingly become an enterprise player, says Edward Marczak, author and executive editor of MacTech magazine. The company is leading the trend toward IT consumerization as users become attached to their iPads and iPhones and IT...
Companies throughout the financial services industry are engaged in massive changes on the technology front -- they're embracing mobile systems, social media, real-time processing and more. The smart ones see the shifts as ripe opportunities for...
Novell, which was acquired by The Attachmate Group in April, wants to regain its status as an IT icon and will try to do so by focusing its efforts on its core assets and rebuilding relationships with its huge installed base. Network World Editor in...
There's heightened interest in agile BI, a rapid development methodology for creating BI systems that involves the end user as early and as often as possible -- and thus saves time and effort. Insider (registration required)
In this PDF guide, we’ve collected the most insightful IT job search information from across our sister publications. It examines what skills are in demand and looks at where tomorrow’s IT jobs may be.
Vivek Ranadive is not only the chief executive officer of TIBCO Software, Inc., he's a New York Times bestselling author (of works like The Power of Now, The Power to Predict and the recently released The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by...
Not all IT pros are feeling a compensation crunch. In the highest echelons at some of the largest public companies in the U.S., CIOs and senior IT leader are making millions. Just how much? Enough to rank among a company's most highly paid...
Google’s Android platform in a short time has become a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone world, and its success raises all sorts of questions for IT professionals.
In the enterprise, the iPad seems to have a liberating effect on the way people work, and how they engage with each other. It has less to do with CPU cycles and RAM and more with the touch UI, dimensions and weight, and battery life. Here's why.
Backing up servers and workstations to tape can be a cumbersome process, and restoring data from tape even more so. While backing up to disk-based storage is faster and easier, and probably more reliable, it can also be more expensive.
As the executive director of the Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin is frequently asked to forecast the future of the IT industry. While he's happy to do so, he's the first to admit that he could be wrong. He joked in his opening remarks at LinuxCon 2011...
Not familiar with the terms "session border controller" or "session delivery network"? Don't worry. Andy Ory, CEO of fast-growing Bedford, Mass.-based Acme Packet, is more than happy to share his passionate vision of how SBCs and SDNs -- and the...
Migrating to the next version of Windows can be a painful exercise for enterprise IT departments. That said, with support for Windows XP ending and with hardware refresh cycles kicking in, the move to Win 7 is unavoidable for most enterprises.
Generic drug maker Ratiopharm, now part of Teva Canada, turned to social networking tools to solve communication problems that choked its supply chain and made it difficult to respond to fluctuations in customer demand.
Outgoing federal CIO Vivek Kundra believes that concerns about cloud security have been exaggerated in part to discourage cloud migrations that would take business away from traditional IT vendors. Such fears haven't stopped the Department of...
Microsoft guru Rand Morimoto has come to the rescue with a comprehensive series of technical articles covering everything on setting up an IPv6 network with Windows and other Microsoft products, from the basics to the details.
The spring of 2011 has seen some of the largest Microsoft Patch Tuesdays ever. In April, Microsoft tied its all-time record with 17 updates that fixed 64 vulnerabilities. In June, the company issued another biggie, with 16 updates that fixed 34...
Grady Health Systems recently installed a cloud-based version of Microsoft Exchange to update an email service that had become a huge headache for the company's medical staff and IT team.
The cloud is everywhere today, offering the possibility of all manner of IT functions on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis. In this test, we looked at three companies that provide WLAN management services in the cloud, and we came away impressed.
The cloud is revolutionizing networking, and this overhaul presents enormous challenges for IT managers who are used to being able to see, monitor and control their networks and systems.
When it comes to cloud computing, management software can no longer be an afterthought – it has to be a part of the implementation, part of the very decision on how best to integrate cloud capabilities into your IT architecture. This guide...
While WiMax has lost the battle to be the 4G technology of choice for most U.S. consumer handsets, it's still alive and kicking in the enterprise market.
From Japan's triple disaster to tornadoes in the United States, catastrophe can strike anywhere. And when it does, your leadership will matter more than the specifics of your business-continuity plan. CIOs who have been through earthquakes and more...
Two types of cloud computing - software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) – promise to bring great changes to the role of IT in the enterprise. IT professionals really need to learn how to talk the talk when it comes to SaaS...
We all worry that there's some lurking security problem in our servers. We do what we can, patching, following best practices, keeping up-to-date with training and news. But wouldn't it be great to have an automated tool to check our work? That's...
We tested FusionVM in its software-as-a-service configuration, giving us a portal-based vulnerability analyzer with off-site and on-site scanner capability. (Critical Watch offers other packagings which are entirely on-site if needed.)
Customers will judge your company's competence according to how well you protect their data, says Don Peppers, co-founder of customer relationship advisory firm Peppers & Rogers Group. CIOs are on the front line.
Ensuring the strongest possible security is one of Pitney Bowes main priorities -- and challenges -- in implementing Volly and planning the infrastructure that will support it.
Volkswagen is realigning its IT operation so it can play a bigger role in the automaker's effort to build a new generation of cars that are infused with intelligence, connectivity and many other new capabilities.
You've heard of OpenFlow. You may have heard it's going to revolutionize routing. But do you know anything about it, really? Get the scoop in this Insider report.
Managing mobile devices entails a level of complexity unheard of in the traditional enterprise world of Windows desktops. MDM software needs to control devices from multiple manufacturers, running different versions of as many as five operating...
Orange Business Services, a unit of France Telecom that provides communications services for multinational customers around the world, recently found out just how vital business continuity is.
IDA Ireland, the state agency that is soliciting cloud providers, touts the country's youthful, well-educated and skilled labor force, attractive tax policy, business-friendly climate, access to markets throughout the European Union -- and its...
When manufacturing firm Cinram International migrated from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps, the company saw 'a night-and-day difference' in the cost of the systems and the vendors' customer service.
The days-long partial outage of Amazon.com's EC2 cloud service has heightened fears that the technology doesn't meet the security and performance needs of large businesses.
More than two-thirds of respondents to Computerworld's recent open-source survey reported that they don't have a written open-source governance plan. Yet experts say that, without one, hidden costs can multiply.
This chapter discusses the following: Internet evolution and the need for IPv6, IPv6 in the IETF, Enterprise IPv6 deployment status, and IPv4 Address Exhaustion and the Workaround Options.
When employees have technology they like, they'll make themselves productive in ways you never dreamed. So let them have their iPads and Android tablets.
As the market for cloud services grows, big enterprise IT vendors are moving swiftly to develop cloud offerings that can attract the attention of large enterprises that have so far been slow to embrace the technology.
Don't sign a cloud computing contract until you consider five areas that are fraught with risk in the cloud. The red flags include not only data security and privacy, but also e-discovery, search warrants and jurisdictional issues.
Facebook is sharing some of the secrets that help make the custom-built servers and power systems in its Prineville, Ore., data center among the most efficient in the world.
Internet2 has been around for 15 years, but it’s roots go back to NFSnet, which was officially turned on in 1986. Here are some other key moments in the history of Internet2.
LANDesk Software CEO Steve Daly says success in managing and securing your IT environment means managing from the 'end user in,' not from the data center out.
In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, Meru President and Ihab Abu-Hakima speaks with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant about what sets Meru apart from bigger competitors with broader networking product lines such as...
Oracle's decision to stop developing software for Itanium-based machines could force IT managers to launch expensive hardware and/or software upgrades.
Some companies are starting use new tools to analyze so-called big data to find ways to better keep track of the activities, habits and whereabouts of their online customers.
Vyatta wants to turn the network hardware world on its head by delivering Layer-3-and-up network functions on standard Intel x86 hardware, achieving breathtaking cost savings.
Business users often watch as IT deploys costly, complex BI programs that take months to arrive -- then fail to deliver the needed insights. QlikTech CEO Lars Bjork says you don't have to take it anymore. In this Q&A, he explains how his company's...
Cloud computing providers can take enterprise e-mail off your to-do list, but how can you ensure a smooth transition? Forrester Research shares seven best practices.
Carpathia Hosting Inc., a provider of managed hosting services, recently added support for Vyatta software network appliances in its cloud service. The Vyatta net tools introduce an interesting new dimension to cloud computing because they can be...
The types of devices you give your colleagues and the way you deliver data have an impact on how they understand information. Business-focused CIOs learn how people in their organizations think, so they can apply the right technology to spark better...
Many businesses have begun embracing the Apple iPhone and other smartphones, either supplying workers with the devices or enabling employees to hook up their personal phones to the corporate network. With the iPhone 4 now available from Verizon and...
A small-business NAS with Big Iron roots, Netgear's ReadyNAS is full-featured and flexible, with options for SOHO users up through enterprise workgroups
Symantec Corp. CEO Enrique Salem outlines why 03 is such a critical initiative for the company, and how cloud and virtualization changed the security threat landscape and the business opportunities for Symantec.
For everything from finding connections at specific companies to applying for a job that meets all your criteria, here's how you can get the most form LinkedIn's people, company and job search capabilities.
Concerns about latency and questions about legal and regulatory issues aren't stopping CIOs from moving key systems to the cloud, even if it means using applications that are hosted in data centers located overseas.
Price optimization software, which helps calculate demand for products or services at different price points, is maturing, with off-the-shelf options and easy-to-understand dashboards.
As enterprises move towards virtualizing more of their servers and data center infrastructure, the security technologies that are plentiful and commonplace in the physical world become few and far between.
SonicWall once focused on small and midsize businesses, but its introduction earlier this year of a next-generation firewall line dubbed SuperMassive leaves no doubt that the company is now taking aim at larger enterprises. In fact, the...
Developers of mobile, social media and collaboration apps. Business experts. Cloud-vendor managers. Masters of unstructured data. Why these IT professionals are essential to maintaining your company's competitive edge.
IT executives at Chevron and TD Bank are testing whether tablets like Apple's iPad and the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook can be used to improve decision-making processes in their companies.
Microsoft's affordable bundle of Exchange, SharePoint, easy remote access, and integrated management continues to be a great platform on which to build a small business
With redundant power supplies, extensive backup options, and a wealth of handy features, the low-cost, multilingual QNAP TS-859U-RP offers flexible network storage to smaller shops
While technologies exist to vastly improve backup and recovery processes, many enterprises have delayed modernizing their backup infrastructure. Now a confluence of factors - greater storage demands, the need for faster disaster recovery, and the...
In the opening round of this two-part series, we tested seven leading e-mail archiving products. This time, we're applying the same test methodology to four additional products.
Software piracy by IT professionals is rampant, according to a survey of 200 IT professionals on IT Ethics conducted by Network World. While 89% of respondents said it was unethical for an IT employee to make the company fall out of compliance with...
Do most IT workers think it's unethical to study for a certification exam with stolen exam questions (so-called brain dumps)? Is it OK to buy used gear from an unauthorized dealer? How about new gear? What about gear falsely sporting a brand name...
An emerging class of so-called Data Center Infrastructure Management tools are emerging from a variety of vendors as CIOs increasingly seek technology that provides a complete view of their data center infrastructure.
James Williamson, IT coordinator at the New Canadian Democratic Party (NPD), on the ups and downs of storage, data protection and regulatory compliance in the cloud.
The various cloud markets and services will start making more sense to business buyers in 2011, according to a new Forrester report, with the midmarket embracing public clouds and enterprises sticking with virtualization as a prelude to private...
At its 2011 Strategic Forum in Boston today, EMC laid out its vision for virtualizing its customers' underlying infrastructure to give them a flexible and automated way to serve up applications and data.
The CIOs at Boeing and JCPenney moved up the corporate ladder last month, opening spots for new CIOs. Meanwhile, financially troubled Borders lost its CIO after just 21 months.
A recently completed NetForecast/Network World survey of application performance management (APM) practices has uncovered serious gaps between the performance attributes IT managers cite as important to measure, and those they actually do measure.
CIOs can't count on a well-timed act of nature to convince executives to invest more in business continuity and disaster recovery. But they're getting better at quantifying the risk and impact of a business disruption.
When he joined the FBI from Lehman Brothers, Chad Fulgham inherited an obsolete IT infrastructure and major project on the brink of failure. Two years later, agents have BlackBerrys and SharePoint, but the work isn't finished.
A large flat layer 2 network is the key to a new unified fabric data center. The idea is that everything in the data center - servers, appliances and storage - should be part of one big flat layer 2 structure.
The departure of longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia could prove troubling because the head of the Server and Tools Business was held in high esteem by the company's technical talent, industry watchers say.
Social media career job opportunities tripled in 2010, as compared to 2009. Here's what you need to know about 3 hot positions, plus expert do's and don'ts when you're applying for social media jobs.
So now that both Verizon and AT&T are launching LTE services this year, you should rush out to invest in 4G data plans and devices for your employees, right? Well, not so fast.
Service Manager 2010 is the new workflow and incident response module that's been added to the Microsoft System Center suite of management applications. Conceptually, it's a process control application with two faces: a management console for...
As chief security officer at AT&T, Edward Amoroso has long observed how cyberattacks impact customer and service-provider networks. In his newly published book, Amoroso says it's time to unite to create the equivalent of a national cyber-protection...
From training worries to compatibility woes, fears of business disruption can spread when IT announces a Microsoft Office 2010 upgrade. Here's how IT can steer clear of four big upgrade mistakes.
Billions of dollars, millions of man-hours, and thousands of projects at IBM are all focused on the same thing: turning scads of enterprise data into useful information.
Despite claims that IT systems are getting easier to use and manage, more people are calling help desks than ever before -- and companies are cutting back on support personnel, according to recent surveys.
There were some disturbing results from a capture-the-flag-style contest held at this summer's DefCon security conference. The CTF exercise--called "How Strong Is Your Schmooze?"--was an attempt to raise awareness about social engineering, or human...
CIOs are investing in projects to improve staff productivity, make business processes more efficient and promote innovation. These activities signal the retrenchment that ruled during the Great Recession is, thankfully, over.
Former Auto Warehousing Co. CIO Dale Frantz was a rising star at the company and in the IT industry, but he was also a thief. He was sentenced this month to serve nearly six years in prison for embezzling more than $500,000 from the company.
If you're thinking about operating a private cloud, you'll need management software to help create a virtualized pool of compute resources, provide access to end users, and handle security, resource allocation, tracking and billing.
Are you content with the way IT is viewed in your organization? If not, you need to study the work of Dr. George Westerman, a Research Scientist in MIT Sloan's Center for Digital Business (CDB), who suggests you rethink the metrics you measure and...
So 10G Ethernet is now taking off - 10G accounts for roughly 25% of the overall $18 billion Ethernet switching market and the growth trajectory is only up from there.
The "Bring Your Own PC" trend has expanded to become Bring Your Own Device as end users walk smartphones, tablets and some IT management headaches into the enterprise. Here's a guide to five key BYOD issues, to help you plan wisely and head off...
Users and analysts say Oracle's $1.3 billion victory in its lawsuit charging SAP with intellectual property theft could cause problems for enterprise users and for the third-party support industry.
We asked our bloggers to give us a list of the free or nearly free network tools they love. They had tons of them, ranging from ways to track network device configurations to ways to keep data synched between multiple devices.
When migrating to Windows 7, IT pros need to understand what business applications are truly being used, which need fixing and which are compatible with Windows 7. Here are six steps every IT organization should take when preparing apps for Windows...
Enterprises are rapidly adopting modern smartphone platforms. But these operating systems vary widely in how manageable they are. IT groups need a new realism and a new flexibility to proactively support what's becoming a critical business resource.
Buffalo shattered the $1,000 barrier for a terabyte of shared storage back in 2005. With storage prices continuing to drop, that same $1,000 today can buy a four or even five terabyte network attached storage (NAS) device with RAID 5 disk...
The longer your smartphone lasts on a single charge, the better, right? CIO.com's mobile expert Al Sacco details the techniques power users swear by to boost BlackBerry longevity.
From courtroom trials to executive shake-ups, 2010 was quite a year for the ERP marketplace. But 2011 has even more drama in store: Here's our analysis of the key problems, players and products.
Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2, which was released in early 2009, does a credible job of providing presence awareness, instant messaging, conferencing and voice capabilities. Still, these services aren't always integrated, and...
If you're like most IT professionals, you constantly feel as if you should be paying more attention to security. But it's tough to find the time, budget and staff to do the best job possible.
Capturing customer data and building communities on Facebook and Twitter isn't easy. Learn how four CIOs are integrating social media with business data to draw more attention to their companies' products and deliver better service.
During a trip to India, President Barack Obama acknowledged that offshoring is part of international trade, and instead of complaining about jobs moving to Bangalore, he offered an optimistic message to India's leaders, emphasizing how trade...
Desktop virtualization, Web apps, software as a service, and an increasingly mobile user base have created new challenges when it comes to endpoint management. Nonetheless, there are still some constants – endpoints need to be deployed, configured,...
Apple's App Store and iTunes are great for consumers but kludgy for companies. Yet only recently have enterprises been able to find an enterprise app store of their own -- for better mobile app deployment and management.
The influx of smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices into businesses is making many employees more productive, but Aruba Networks is seeing firsthand how much strain all of this newfound mobility is putting on the enterprise IT and security...
Even if you're shy, you can use Twitter to maximize networking opportunities at your next conference. Check out our tips on how to build buzz, be remembered and be valued.
Stratus Technologies has earned high marks for delivering fault-tolerant computing, but with the rollout of Stratus Avance CEO David Laurello is pouncing on an opportunity to expand beyond the company's existing market niche.
Brocade swallowed Foundry Networks a few years ago and has been hard at work ever since marrying the best of Brocade's storage network assets with Foundry's high-end Ethernet network tech. The result, says CEO Michael Klayko, is an emerging product...
Emerging business analytics needs are exposing limitations in traditional database management technologies and fueling the growth of highly specialized analytics platforms, according to a report by two leading industry analysts.
Departing Microsoft exec Ray Ozzie is leaving behind a communique expanding on his 2005 call for Microsoft to further eschew the PC-centric world and push further into cloud computing or slowly wither away.
Cisco Vice President of IT John Manville discusses the company's data center makeover strategy, the migration to the company's own Unified Computing System, the benefits of cloud and the new IT organizational structure with Network World Editor in...
So, you’ve received an iPad for the holidays, or are planning to get one or buy one. Now that you have the device, the next big decision you need to make is, “What do I put on this thing?” With thousands of apps to choose from, figuring out which...
Last week's Professional Development Conference brought new Azure features that might garner critical mass for Microsoft's still-fledgling cloud service.
Lori Beer can talk technology as well as any IT staffer. While rising through the ranks to executive vice president and CIO at insurance giant WellPoint, she could dive into any discussion about software development or hardware standards. But her...
The performance of applications across the WAN are beset by a range of problems – latency, congestion, chatty applications, contention with other apps, low bandwidth – that can be addressed in a variety of ways.
Will your new mobile enterprise app crumble under the weight of poor design and performance when you roll it out? Automated testing solutions for mobile apps are coming to market.
We asked, and you answered. As our thank-you, here are two of our signature research pieces for you to download and share among friends and colleagues.
CIO.com's Al Sacco offers up this step-by-step tutorial on how to "downgrade" or return to an older version of the OS software on a BlackBerry smartphone.
Microsoft's new productivity suite for the Mac doesn't match Office 2010 for Windows, but a new ribbon interface, Outlook client, and SharePoint integration help close the gap
The conventional wisdom is that enterprises aren't impressed by Apple's shiny iDevices, perceiving them as a consumer play. Is that a fair assessment? And if so, could it change in the foreseeable future?
A panoply of emerging cloud services is offering IT executives alternatives to things like in-house ERP deployments and the need to hire consultants to solve data integration problems. But CIOs say they are moving slowly to avoid potential security...
A panoply of emerging cloud services is offering IT executives alternatives to things like in-house ERP deployments and the need to hire consultants to solve data integration problems. But CIOs say they are moving slowly to avoid potential security...
We asked, and you answered. As our thank-you, here are two of our signature research pieces for you to download and share among friends and colleagues.
Apple's decision to use SSD technology rather than a hard drive in the new Macbook Air -- and Steve Jobs' pronouncement that it represents the future of notebooks -- could hasten the replacement of traditional drives with NAND flash technology.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has given the Obama Administration mediocre grades in its second annual privacy report card released this week.
Wireless networks are invading the enterprise, so in this series of tests we look at the hardware and software required for a full-blown enterprise WLAN. Tests in this handy PDF reference include: the largest 802.11n test ever conducted; a test of...
Microsoft is essentially refreshing its entire line of desktop and server operating systems, productivity apps and security tools. We've tested a number of the new products, including SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows...
When it comes to virtualization the benefits are huge, the options plentiful and the issues – particularly when it comes to security and management – profound. In an effort to bring some clarity to the virtualization landscape, Network World has...
Last Wednesday, Avaya, Inc. made a splash in New York City with a portfolio of new collaboration products, including the Flare Experience multimedia conferencing system, a new tablet designed to support the Flare software and the web.alive (stet)...
I've written extensively on the disruption that cloud computing presents to IT organizations; I've focused much less on the disruption it poses for the entire IT supply chain--from vendors through to system integrators and on to outsourcing...
As if managing your current IT operations wasn't challenging enough, along comes cloud computing to plaster on another layer of complexity. How does your current management strategy need to evolve to support private cloud? How do you seamlessly...
IT planning is broken. From the research I have participated in and the conversations I've had with people in the field, I can say that this is unambiguously true. The question is, should we care? Or is IT planning a quaint relic of a bygone era?
Research In Motion (RIM) is known first and foremost for its BlackBerry smartphones, but the Canadian company also manufactures and markets a wide-variety of related software and accessories, including its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BES...
It's a good idea to think twice before pursuing certain professions -- they could change your daily habits, if not your entire outlook on life. A chief financial officer might choose a house project based on its impact on home value. An emergency...
If you think WAN optimization is a niche market, don't bring it up around Jerry Kennelly. Co-founder, chairman and CEO of Riverbed Technology, Kennelly is a fervent believer that WAN optimization is the foundation for the next generation of IT...
Six years ago, we tested dual-WAN routers as a way to pump more bandwidth into small businesses that couldn't afford a T1 and were stuck with relatively slow DSL and cable connections.
Meg McCarthy remembers there being a quiet unease about women taking on high-level positions at the former Andersen Consulting when she began her IT career in 1980. "There was always a concern -- though it was never formally expressed -- could women...
The popularity of VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) is growing as enterprises both large and small start to realize the operational and environmental benefits it can offer. Centralizing the desktop operating environment in the data center,...
Looking for a relatively simple and inexpensive way to improve end user productivity? Desktop search tools can help end users swiftly locate critical nuggets of data, freeing up time for more important tasks.
Funny thing about the word “and.” You would think it would function as a connector, a word that implies the togetherness of two entities, like “stars and stripes” or “franks and beans.” Yet the phrase “IT and the business” does not work that way....
Virtualization and cloud computing haven't eroded the online security of most companies, analysts say. But they may be contributing to situations in which IT-service customers leave themselves vulnerable to attack because they assume their cloud...
CIOs' communication skills have come a long way since the days of data processing. But they continue to make many communication mistakes that hamper their effectiveness on the job or hinder their relationships with staff and other executives.
Anyone running multiple firewalls in a complex, enterprise environment knows how difficult it can be to catch misconfigurations, avoid conflicting rules, identify vulnerabilities and meet auditing and compliance mandates.
There were no big brainstorming sessions, rah-rah team meetings or executive committees convened to devise a plan to drive FiOS TV customers away from using call centers in favor of self-service ordering, the more cost-effective option.
Solid-state disks (SSDs) are hardly new, but their growing usage represents a significant shift in the primary storage landscape. SSDs have been increasing in capacity and decreasing in cost at an accelerating rate, so the chances that you're going...
Sybase CEO John Chen sat down for a wide-ranging discussion about his company's return from near-irrelevance in the late '90s, where the database software vendor is now, and what Chen sees for the future of the enterprise application market. The...
The explosive growth of today's virtualization management market is good news for organizations looking to manage and optimize their virtual environments. Like every technology that has come before it, the route to success with virtualization lies...
While one might hope that business leaders, who have everything to gain from process improvement, would recognize the importance of their own leadership role in driving change, we all know that is not always the case.
With WYSIWYG prototyping environments and preconfigured graphical components, rapid Web development tools can help you build applications faster -- but with less flexibility
From free tools for individual users to scalable services and network solutions, businesses large and small have innumerable options for keeping mobile and remote workers connected
The technology that underpins our infrastructures changes at a dizzying rate. What was bleeding edge a year ago is old hat today. This churn leads to an endless cycle of learning just enough about new tech to jam it into production, then moving onto...
Desktop virtualization has a comparison problem. Faced with too many product choices, and little concrete data comparing costs and benefits, many IT departments are delaying decisions -- or simply going with products from vendors they already use.
It's hard enough to build a solid primary storage strategy for a complex server environment, but that's nothing compared to the effort required to get your proposal through your organization's budgeting process. A refreshed storage architecture or a...
Users say protecting network endpoints is becoming more difficult as the type of endpoint devices -- desktops, laptops, smartphones -- grows, making security a complex moving target.
Cisco, HP and others are waging an epic battle to gain control of the data center, but at the same time they are joining forces to push through new IEEE Ethernet standards that could greatly ease management of those increasingly virtualized IT nerve...
At a recent media event, SAS CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight spoke with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant about how businesses did -- and didn't -- take advantage of BI during the downturn and how the economy has changed the playing field in...
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