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To users and operators of information systems, the plummeting costs of digital storage and processing power are becoming as much a threat as a blessing when it comes to protecting […]

Like the cobbler's children who go without shoes, an IT department may be fully engaged in equipping enterprise profit centers with the latest management tools and yet find itself without […]

During my years with EXXON, I developed an almost reverent awareness of the difference between 'capital' and 'expense.' The only good thing you could say about expense was that you […]

In his keynote speech this month at the internet world exhibition in New York, Compaq Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas proposed a dangerously self-serving view of the mission of IT […]

When a perfect technology comes along, I may be willing to let it protect me from myself. Until that happens, I'll insist that every black box has to give me […]

Earth, like the larger planets, has a complex system of rings. Being blessed with intelligent life (or at least, complex, tool-using life), Earth didn't need natural processes to create those […]

The director of the National Security Agency says that 'information is now a place.' Just as warfare became three-dimensional with the advent of airplanes and submarines, so will tomorrow's conflicts […]

When newborn rats are exposed to pain, the affected limbs develop more pain-sensing nerves. When mature, the rats will avoid what harmed them as infants-but this does nothing to help […]

In the spirit of Dickens' 'A Tale Of Two Cities' and its paradoxical opening ('It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair'), I suggest that we […]

A woman once finished a session with her high-priced hairdresser, then noticed as she left that there was barely enough hair on the floor to be worth sweeping. She asked, […]

In this week's fast-track feature on United Parcel Service and its IT investments (see Page 78), at the foundation of UPS' impressive system is the snowflakelike MaxiCode symbol-encoding data in […]

It's common to say the world is 'going digital' but much less common to say it is 'going mathematical.' Even so, IT buyers increasingly encounter once- obscure branches of mathematics […]

Builders of business computing systems don't always think of themselves as players on the asset side of their companies' balance sheets. Today, however, good IT planning is more a matter […]

If you want to check the public's image of IT, try taking a cab while attending Comdex. Before arriving at your hotel, you may hear an opinion on how Alpha […]

In the furor over India's tests of nuclear weapons technology, it's easy to overlook the country's actual use of a far more subtle weapon. It's only part of the news […]

Like the length of a continent's coastline, the gap between supply and demand for IT people seems longer when it's measured with a shorter ruler. As I mentioned last week, […]

It serves me right. Fifteen minutes after I filed last week's column, examining the prospects for three-dimensional data visualization and the Visual Connected PC, the mail carrier delivered July's issue […]

Your software-development schedules and budgets may soon be casualties of the Oklahoma City bombing. Legislative potshots are likely to increase the cost and the complexity of developing and delivering reliable […]

The article reports on National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) project. The project presents challenges that are recognizable to many enterprise information technology builders. ESDIS has a broad portfolio whose key tasks include project management, systems engineering and technical direction of systems that archive and distribute earth science data, along with the definition of high-level standard data products. NASA defined 12 different domains in which earth science information has beneficial applications: agricultural efficiency. Space-based computer systems also yield petabytes of data, pushing the state of the art in data visualization and creating both technical and managerial challenges. These different interests entail radically different combinations of urgency, complexity and security. Growing commercial application of earth sciences data has yielded a growing variety of commercial off-the-shelf software. ESDIS team was concerned that adopting any such commercial solution might not meet requirements for extensibility and evolution.

This article focuses on developments related to the field of information technology. Enterprise and academic systems are equally challenged by thickening jungles of system complexity and massive flows of data. Research facilities are also IT customers as well as innovators, with technical sophistication that often leads to early adoption and provides potential lessons learned that may benefit less aggressive sites. Mere continuation of the Moore's Law trend to greater physical density of devices is not an attractive option, even if it were physically possible. The Internet itself demonstrates this general approach as its packet-based communication relies on connection and transfer protocols, such as TCP/IP and Ethernet, that are designed to function "well enough" rather than requiring perfection to function at all. Enterprise buyers should be increasingly prepared to discuss their tolerance for error rates and variabilities in system performance, rather than expecting single-valued measures of performance in system specifications. Not merely in metaphor but also in direct application, biology and biochemistry may contribute to the creation of IT hardware.

This article reports that after years of striving to limit the damage of downsizing and contain the chaos of malware and spam, there is a sense in the enterprise information technology (IT) community that it's time to start moving forward once more. IT professionals are well positioned today to take advantage of ubiquitous broadband and wireless connections and to exploit the affordable integration opportunities of Web services. The current resurgence of corporate merger and acquisition activity is finding IT departments ready to roll in response to the resulting infrastructure integration demands, and even to convert those burdens into benefits. According to Glenn Evans, district manager for enterprise foundation architecture at AT&T Global Networking Technology Services, the company's IT strategy, which now faces acquisition by SBC Communications Inc., is to consolidate the redundant applications that large enterprises often find themselves hosting. IT departments that have invested during the last few years in standards-based technologies, such as Web services, and repurposable data formats, such as XML, will reap the rewards when their systems face similar demands for integration and auditability, whether those demands are due to mergers, to regulatory mandates or to continued desire for greater supply chain efficiencies.

The article informs that when information warfare experts want to set the proper base line for what's secure, they point out that the only completely protected machine is one that's disconnected from the network and preferably turned off. Application development security begins from an equally useless zero point: The only completely secure application is one that accepts no input from the outside and offers no access to data. Two factors intensify the hazards facing enterprise development professionals. First, the growing dominance of Web-enabled applications exposes developers' finished products to a vastly larger army of attackers. Second, the rapid development cycles of customer-facing or supply chain-partnering software mean that most new code is never really finished at all. Security must be built into applications from the lowest level upward, rather than applied as a hard outer shell, because a focus on perimeter security ignores the fact that many intruders are already on the inside.

The article focuses on the emerging technologies and developer strategies that enable an enterprise team not merely to survive but also to triumph against such challenges, without forgoing the opportunities that new database deployment options can provide. There are clear upsides to new database architectures, like, grid computing on high-bandwidth networks enables cost-effective and highly scalable analysis, while portable devices with wireless links give better support to decision makers in the field. These same technologies, however, also increase the number of places where an outside attacker might find vulnerability or where internal inconsistencies of data format or application development practice might rip apart a system from within. The agenda of the enterprise database developer is therefore readily defined. Without abandoning costly investments in servers, software and developer skills, the next-generation database must deliver greater analytic capability and rich-media versatility-even while serving users in remote locations who may have only limited bandwidth available to them via intermittent connections. Tomorrows database must be able to meet critical needs in more places, must be able to reach those destinations on shorter notice, and must better defend itself against the threats of both malice and misfortune.

Focuses on the customer relationship management (CRM) in enterprise information technology systems in the U.S. Range of CRM products from foundation database and call center management systems; Issue on relationships in the strategic side of the organization; Connections between the data and top-line strategies. INSETS: CRM: Spreadsheet of the new millennium? by Peter Coffee;Best practices.

This article focuses on how enterprise application developers are squarely in the cross hairs of the next generation of information technology system attacks. As generic infrastructure security and user awareness issues are increasingly addressed, the most dangerous remaining and newly arising vulnerabilities are those in the applications that define any modern organization's procedures and controls. When perimeter security is lax, attackers will exploit promiscuous connectivity or weak password discipline; when users are careless and/or clueless, opportunistic attacks such as e-mail worms will have free rein. In the current environment, though, there are three reasons that line-of-business applications are ever-more-attractive targets. Supply chain pressures dictate that enterprise online presence, in the form of network-facing applications, must be accessible to the largest possible number of potential users and must meet aggressive targets for rapid development and deployment. Application developers thus find themselves under pressures that lead to the creation of systems with numerous and subtle flaws that are forbiddingly costly to fix. INSETS: Developers in the cross hairs;Where to look for application weakness.

This article advices on coping with data growth. Enterprise storage might look like a problem that's been solved in principle, requiring only continued refinement of proven technologies combined with the careful management that's needed to minimize costly data glut. IT system builders must look ahead, however, to the dead end on the path of hard disk evolution and start to think now about other pathways that can be explored as storage volumes inexorably grow. Improvement in any one of these attributes will often come at the expense of others. Emerging alternatives to magnetic disk have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Every enterprise needs its own carefully tailored portfolio, meeting not only volume requirements but also operational and even regulatory needs. To estimate future storage needs, by simple extrapolation of the exponential trend, is cause for amusement or despair. Sometime before 2100, one would conclude, the entire crust of Earth will be representing data at a density of one bit per atom. Parsimonious data retention policies, as well as aggressive rich-media compression algorithms, will have to be thrown at this problem, along with every possible improvement in storage technology.

Project management tools and practices address only 10 percent of IT spending, according to IT economics consultant Paul Strassman, of Strassman Inc. Where this is the case, a 5 percent improvement in nonproject IT efficiencies would increase by 45 percent the available funds for new IT initiatives. That's a powerful multiplier at a time when companies are getting ready to reinvigorate their IT investment cycles after a few years of dormancy or even decline. But IT managers will find themselves subject to greater financial discipline after the perceived excesses of the dot-com boom.

Presents a summary of the roundtable discussion on the high technology industry. Investment cycle of technology companies; Alternatives to existing information technology providers.

The article presents the first step to enterprise security that is the assessment. There was a firestorm of reaction to the accounting abuses revealed in the aftermath of the Enron bankruptcy in December, after the initial publication of the steps to enterprise security. The change in the Information Technology was due to the post-Enron impact of sweeping and pervasive legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and of other enterprise governance mandates, along with public awareness of privacy threats and risks of identity theft. The environment now demands far more attention to external stakeholders and scrutineers. Moreover, specific organizations and missions may have other infosec attributes that must be achieved and preserved.

The article discusses issues related to the integration of software applications. In the present environment of the information technology industry, technology providers focus on providing a high degree of standards-based interoperability. Adobe Systems Inc. has built a name among individual PC and Internet users with portable document technologies. According to Jeff Whatcott, an executive at the Enterprise and Developer Business, XML is being embraced for the integration of application. He also warned software developers not to focus solely on online integration. Comments of Doug Purdy, a program manager at Microsoft Corp., on the integration of application programs have been included.

The article focuses on the roundtable conversation convened last month by the journal "eWeek" Labs to assess the current status and direction of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOAs). Several roundtable participants agreed that customer sophistication has greatly increased in terms of understanding that merely building application components with Web services technologies is not enough to bring about a service-oriented IT environment. Several participants said tools and trends have both enabled and required the emergence of people who live up to the label of "enterprise architect," not merely devising architecture in the individual IT silos of an enterprise, but thinking in architectural terms about IT assets and capabilities across the enterprise. Alexander Krapf, from Codemesh Inc., didn't want to see the group dismiss too quickly the continued importance of Web services in paving the way to SOA success. Krapf credited Web services with energizing the SOA process. On the plus side, performance concerns about verbose XML-based Web services conversations are being addressed, according to Systinet Corp.'s Roman Stanek.

The article presents information related to the U.S. Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DODAF). Released in version 1.0 in October 2003, DODAF supplanted the former framework known as C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance). The first formal statement of DODAF was followed last February by the release of two more informative volumes, the 87-page "Definitions and Guidelines" and the 254-page "Product Descriptions," put forth by the DODAF Working Group. Immediately, some clarification may be useful. As used in the title of DODAF Volume II, product means not something that's bought from an information technology vendor but, rather, a piece of graphics, text or tabular data that describes the elements of an architecture or their relationships. Two benefits flow from the imposition of a standard framework in general and from DODAF in particular — completeness and consistency. To appreciate why DODAF is worth the effort, imagine the task of comparing documents that describe several different automobiles.

The article informs that Information technology has a well-hyped reputation for exponential rates of improvement, but productivity growth in delivering IT-enabled services has fallen short of what's been achieved in less glamorous sectors of the economy. As services come to dominate global markets, it's critical for U.S. systems scientists and professionals to find ways to apply capital and technology as effectively in the workshops of Web services as in the factories and fields. For purposes of comparison, U.S. farm productivity grew at 2.3 percent per year in the post-World War II period, as estimated by Wellesley College professor Robert Paarlberg. This is characteristic of what happens when capital and technology are effectively applied to labor. No business regardless of industry sector can sit out the services revolution, said Michael Radnor, professor of management and organizations at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, in Evanston, Ill. Speaking as conference co-convener, on behalf of the Kellogg School's Center for Technology Innovation Management and the Management of Accelerated Technology Innovation consortium,

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java Studio Enterprise 6 combines innovative, comprehensive packaging of developer technologies and supporting services with an easy-to-swallow subscription-based model of pricing and delivery. The Java Studio Enterprise produces core technologies begin with the foundation of the open-source NetBeans 3.6 IDE (integrated development environment). Sun builds on that foundation with an ambitious effort to integrate an entire portfolio of server-side resources. "eWEEK" Laboratories' tests showed that this NetBeans-based strategy has produced a package of superb capability that's easier to install and deploy than any other system of comparable complexity. During tests with the 2004Q1 release of Java Enterprise Studio, one couldn't quite pop in the compact disc and produce an instant IT stack. However, Java Studio Enterprise comes close enough to that target to be well worth investigation by any development team that's eyeing J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) for major projects.

Application developers have been fighting an escalating war against chaos in IT stacks of evergrowing complexity. Utility computing, with its highly distributed systems, must make a final assault. The challenge is grueling even in those systems where a developer has full knowledge of hardware configuration, with only a known portfolio of applications and inputs and outputs to manage. The contest rises to a much higher level when utility models run in dynamic environments, such as those of a grid computing arrangement. INSET: Keeping it loose.

Bycasts is one of many utility computing offerings that are not tomorrow's new thing but are already meeting enterprise needs not with the modified supercomputing applications that readily move to grids or other utility platforms but at the foundations of mainstream IT functions. Printing, for example, is an utterly boring component of mainstream IT that frustrates administrators and users with cumbersome and costly redundancy and management of consumables. International Business Machines Corp. is attempting to recast enterprise thinking in this area with Output Management Services, a program that unifies printing, copying, scanning and faxing equipment and support under a single monthly bill. INSET: What makes a utility offering compelling.

Any technology offering that aspires to the label utility computing ought to address the commercial, operational and technical aspects of turning information technology (IT) infrastructure into a cost-effective, secure, reliable and high-performance computerized architecture. It should address building, buying and renting IT assets along a spectrum of choice that includes outsourcing commodity IT functions to service providers, setting up grid computing networks, and building standards-based systems and applications. A utility computing model can handle high peak-to-average ratios of database activity, such as those associated with cyclical bursts of transaction volume, without costly investment in static overcapacity. Utility initiatives rely on self-discovering grids of computing nodes. Its important, however, not to think of utility computing as merely the enterprise application of distributed supercomputing. Utility computing is largely aimed at reducing the high peak-to-average ratios that result in low overall utilization of enterprise IT assets.

IT community concerns are apparent, for example, in the current draft program for next month's International Conference on Quality Software, scheduled to take place in Dallas, Texas on November 6 and 7. Presentation topics during those days will include test-case generation from software specifications, checklists and models for estimating software costs, and the challenges of defining and testing software quality in e-commerce environments involving highly distributed systems with varying performance of critical communication links. Modern languages make it possible to design in a modular and flexible fashion, but they often do not enforce that modularity; they certainly do not meet the need of nonprogrammer stakeholders to understand the impact of their requests to development teams or to have an opportunity to refine those requests as a project moves forward.

There is a difference in business intelligence (BI) and other aspects of data processing or productivity application development. The difference lies in the benefit of identifying changes in business opportunity or challenge, rather than merely meeting business needs. It's not hard to imagine need-driven problems easily dominating an IT architect's agenda. The core of a BI approach is that it is driven by understanding of the business rather than understanding of business systems. Informatica Corp.'s Power-Analyzer 4.0 begins with the core belief that information democracy is an organizational immune system — that making common facts available to the largest possible number of people, and letting different groups view those facts in different ways, is a means to avoid selective perception and deliberate deception. Power-Analyzer is a large system, but it strikes an exceptional balance between open-ended flexibility and usefully structured design.

Six months after the release of the capable but resource-intensive JBuilder 8, Borland Software Corp. has upgraded its premier Java development tool set with May 2003 release of JBuilder 9. Offered on operating system platforms like Windows, Linux and Solaris in configurations priced from $999 to $3,500, the update features higher-level design tools, improved aids for project life-cycle management and expanded support for many enterprise application server platforms in addition to Borland's own Enterprise Server. Even so, Borland continues to label the Enterprise version of the product as demanding a minimum of 512MB and a recommended 768MB of RAM, which is probably good advice for those who intend to use all its facilities described below.

Focuses on upcoming developments related to information technology (IT) architecture. Assumptions that shape the design of IT architecture; IT investment approaches; Impact of computer technologies on computer investments.

Focuses on the need to assess information technology (IT) spending by IT professionals. Challenges to be faced by the industry in 2003; List of technologies aiding in IT spending; Advantages of the technologies.

Focuses on the debate of information technology security and the technical response to potential threats. Use of encryption by criminals to protect communications; Prohibition on the use of encryption; Types of security products.

Focuses on the geopolitics of Web site services and the property frameworks of Wed site developers in the U.S. Ideals of standard-based interaction among loosely coupled modules; Knowledge base of developer guidelines; Technology road map of the enterprise information technology architects.

Part V. Focuses on the means of preventing security threats in the United States. Significance of vigilance as an element in an information technology (IT) security strategy; Importance of identifying and differentiating the types of risks; Classification of possible consequences of an IT breach. INSETS: Best practices: Vigilance;Web resources;Heads up: Vigilance.

Features the tuple data model for information technology. Use of tuple data model to a molecule of DNA; Criteria for retrieving information; Availability of tuple data model.

Focuses on factors to consider in designing mobile information technology. Problems in the technology's operations in terms of connectivity; Importance of the technology's flexibility and reliability to different conditions; Approach of Thinque company to mobile application design; Capability of Thinque's Call Report Builder software.

The author discusses his views concerning the need for employees to be educated about data protection. According to the author, the role of every worker in considering information as an asset must be articulated clearly, monitored and assessed thoroughly and rewarded promptly when reliably performed.

The article reports on the preparation for Cyber Monday 2007. The author discusses that the information technology people invest much of their time in prevention of security and other computer related threats. He also discusses the Thanksgiving weekend wherein he mentions that Wal-Mart's systems were described as "effectively down" by the monitors at Keynote Systems while Macy's systems ran at one-sixth of the normal throughput that were likely caused by system misconfigurations, site-specific errors, application errors and others.

The article talks about the introduction of the Microsoft Office 2007 software application from Microsoft Corp. Accordingly, the enterprise information technology professionals who had served as gatekeepers for new software in their companies are to balance the benefits of new collaborative features and control tools in Office 2007 against the considerable inertia of users and the pervasive concern for containing information technology costs. The departments responsible for assembling and distributing enterprise documents, such as press communications or annual reports, have likely recognized and take advantage of the Office 2007 aids for building libraries of shared content and for inspecting and pruning document metadata.