- Welcome Guest
- Sign In
The U.S. government is falling behind in making critical and productive investments in research related to networking and information technology. Federal agencies have used funds designated for direct pioneering research and development in NIT for alternative purposes, such as the creation of inform...
There is a quiet but persistent buzz that IT budgets will grow in 2011. CIOs are hinting at this during analyst meetings, and a recent poll at Interop, the leading business trade show for IT executives, showed that more than half of IT professionals are projecting an increase in their budgets going ...
It's often useful to interview customers to understand their perspectives about their suppliers. In these discussions, open-ended questions about supplier "success stories" and "horror stories" can prompt enlightening replies. Answers in the latter category invariably connect to some supplier failur...
Scaling a website up to the size of a Twitter or a Facebook brings its own set of problems. These problems aren't always like those that crop up in moderately large sites -- they're unique to these massive, hyperscale systems. That's partly because IT administrators and managers have to rely on new ...
Well, it's November again. And in addition to gearing up for turkeys, pumpkin pie and football, those of us in IT know it's time to gear up for something else, something probably much less pleasant: our annual budget cycle. It's time once again for us to enter into days-long deliberation sessions ...
You may recall that even though this is a technology column, I did predict that Nancy Pelosi would be a problem for Obama, and that both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina would lose. What was missing in all three cases is leadership. In the technology market, the most visible leader is Apple and the str...
Over the past year, the IT world has seemingly fallen head over heels for the cloud. Cloud computing has great potential in terms of collaboration and efficiency, and it's already delivering strong results for organizations that have leveraged the cloud model. For all the hype, though, it's importan...
Regardless of which party holds office in the U.S., my true hope is for its success, because I have this twisted view that if we have successful president, we'll have a better quality of life. Unfortunately, both of the U.S. parties seem to be competing as to which can screw up the country more effe...
Since the latter days of the 20th Century, business and political leaders have moved between each others' fields with increasing ease. Vice President Dick Cheney was one; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is another. Right now, two former leaders of high-tech companies are running for office: former ...
Working with data and the cloud were the topics of choice for keynote speeches delivered by Intel and Oracle executives at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 on Tuesday. "I'm going to talk about harnessing the data footprint in terms of delivering services to IT users and consumers -- but more importantly, busin...
Deploying, managing and maintaining the high availability of the Microsoft Exchange 2010 email platform in enterprise environments is no small feat. Given the increased complexity of this new Microsoft platform, there are numerous key decisions to be made as the precursor to keeping Exchange running...
At one time, HP was such a nice, quiet company. It was a relatively steady firm known for loyal employees, solid ethics, and products you could trust but not necessarily get excited about (unless you loved calculators and were part of the pocket protector set). While I think excitement is grand, I'm...
The entire future of a company or industry can hinge on one little deal. The $50,000 IBM paid to license Windows was the foundation for Microsoft and the technology industry for the last couple of decades. Apple's licensing contract with Portal Player to create the iPod was nearly as big -- and ce...
The number of businesses moving toward virtualization is growing constantly, and together they will lead to an important change in the face of IT, according to to VMware President and CEO Paul Maritz. Speaking at his company's VMworld expo on Tuesday, Maritz told his audience that the focus will cha...
Imagine this situation: A coworker calls you in a panic. He's facing a fast-approaching deadline, and you are the only person who can help him succeed in getting some critical task done. This hypothetical coworker explains to you what he's working on and how it's critical to the success of the orga...