InformationWeek Analytics Weblog

Can IT Help New Cancer Screening Guidelines?

Marianne Kolbasuk McGee — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:36:35 -0500

New recommendations from a federal task force last week about breast cancer screenings have infuriated many cancer survivors as well as medical professional organizations, including the American Cancer Society. The guidelines were based on data analysis of the risks and benefits of mammograms for women under age 50.

Up With Virtual Grid Power

Elias Khnaser — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:50:49 -0500

I recently wrote a column for InformationWeek Analytics that got some e-mail responses, and I thought the discussion was interesting enough to post the column and some of the comments that sparked the discussion. So here goes.

A Useful Outsider Perspective On Evil IT

Jonathan Feldman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:14:33 -0500

Some of the best advice on being an IT executive that I ever got was from an ex-boss. Jonathan, he said, there are two types of CIOs. The first type looks into the data center, and the second looks out of the data center to interact with customers. The first type, he said, isn't nearly as useful and doesn't last nearly as long.

Here's What's Different About 'The Cloud'

Charles Babcock — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:46:52 -0500

What's different about cloud computing versus the forms of computing that have gone before? It's really just a matter of scale, isn't it? The Google or Amazon.com or eBay data centers are maybe a little bigger than a big enterprise data center, right? Wrong. One answer lies in an example like Hadoop.

VDI And Netbooks: ROI Peanut Butter And Chocolate

Jonathan Feldman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:23:24 -0500

Man, it's great talking to folks who are actually taking a chance on new ways of doing things instead of just speculating about doing it. I chatted with Mary Ann Buch today. She's the director of technology for a school district in upstate New York. They've actually been using Netbooks and VDI for a proof of concept project in the classroom. Kids and teachers like it, and she says the financial models are pretty compelling. "It's just a school district"? "That doesn't apply to my for-profit enterprise"? Think again.

Blue Coat Identifies Halloween Trick

Adam Ely — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:14:20 -0500

Blue Coat has identified a new malware trick just in time for Halloween. Unsuspecting victims are redirected to one of two malware sites after searching for Halloween related sites. These distribution sites are typically used for hosting of warez, pirated digital content, but have been switched to malware distribution in the past 12 hours.

I've Got A Netbook And It's Not A Toy

Michael Healey — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:37:56 -0500

I just put the wraps on an InformationWeek Analytics Informed CIO report on the rise of netbooks in the enterprise. These babies continue to make their way into the office, despite the somewhat weak claims from Intel and Microsoft that they're not appropriate for business use.

Says who? Not folks in IT. In our recent InformationWeek Analytics Windows 7 survey of 1,414 business technology professionals, 36% of respondents said they already have some level of netbook use in their organizations today. This is expected to grow to 72% of companies over the next 24 months.

Why? Simple: Netbooks fill a major computing gap between the smartphone and laptop and do it at a terrific price.

Keep Your Laptop Off Our Inadequate Network

Jonathan Feldman — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:01:05 -0500

Why do IT people resist end users bringing their own equipment to the enterprise network? Those same IT folks are typically pretty proud of what they've achieved with their infrastructure. The message is typically, "it's a security risk." But the implied message is: "we have an inadequate network to deal with this challenge."

Sun Plans To Cut 3,000 Jobs Over the Next 12 Months

Charles Babcock — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:02:40 -0500

Sun disclosed Tuesday in regulatory filings that it plans to cut 3,000 jobs from its workforce, as it awaits the go-ahead on its takeover by Oracle. It's cut 7,600 workers in three rounds of layoffs over three years, according to SEC filings. Will this mark the end of the downsizing?

Enterprise IT Is Not Ready For Private Cloud Storage

Randy George — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:09:02 -0500

Our esteemed Director of InformationWeek Analytics, Art Wittmann, has a theory that I�m secretly working as a cheerleader for underdog technologies. And our esteemed Executive Editor of InformationWeek Analytics, Lorna Garey, often asks if my favorite drink is Koolade. To my dismay, they have proven themselves right once again. 18 months ago, I predicted that private cloud storage would take off for the Tier-2 storage needs of enterprises. You won�t hear me say this often, I WAS WRONG.

Is Virtualization The Key To Continuity?

Lorna Garey — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:10:49 -0500

Business continuity and disaster recovery have long been sore points for enterprise IT. Can virtualization change all that and make true continuity a reality ... or at least, make recovering from disaster a faster and more thorough operation? That's the premise of our latest InformationWeek Analytics poll.

A Chat With ITPI About Demand Management

Jonathan Feldman — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:16:54 -0500

I had a great conversation last week with Kurt Milne of the IT Process Institute. ITPI is the source of the Visible Ops Handbook, unarguably one of the most usable and practical ITIL books out there, and I'm delighted that they've turned their focus to one of my pet IT peeves: demand management.

Cisco's 2nd Generation Server Blade Arrives 10/16

Randy George — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:37:08 -0500

The Cisco UCS "Ventura" server blade is ready to hit the store shelves, with an approximate release date of 10/16 according to Cisco. Read on to find out how it ups the ante in the utility computing space.

FTC To Bloggers: Gut Check Time

Lorna Garey — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:50:53 -0500

The FTC's new rules on what constitutes an endorsement should be required reading for anyone who renders an opinion on products or services, and for those of us who give these bloggers a venue.

Sustainable & Green: The Color of Money

Jonathan Feldman — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:02:24 -0500

Having worked with an organization that got good press for saving money through an automated PC shutdown program, I've fielded a lot of questions from IT managers looking to make sustainability and green moves. I can consolidate my advice on the topic into two short points: First, remember that green is the color of money. Second, overseed.

Web Security In The Cloud

Randy George — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:49:19 -0500

Are tight budgets crimping your ability to provide adequate web security to your organization? Can you afford $30/month per user instead? Don�t lament if you can�t afford a shiny new Bluecoat ProxyAV, you may be able to get the same level of service in a subscription based model.

Google's Dataliberation.org a Public Policy Blow for Freedom

Jonathan Feldman — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:03:03 -0500

I'll admit it, I was raised paranoid. So, part of me is highly suspicious of Google when the IT world seems like a bunch of crazed lemmings leaping to ADOPT GOOGLE'S SEXSAH NEW OFFERINGS RIGHT NOW. But Google, despite the fact that it is a Massive Empire, may well be the real deal when it comes to understanding what smart CIOs need. And frankly, they may be contributing to reversing a terrible public policy trend.

Meet Your New Enterprise App, Information Intake Management

Jonathan Feldman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:25:46 -0500

Some enterprise teams that I work with, when confronted with the question, "what do we do with this new social networking thingy" immediately shoot back, "we're getting killed with emails -- we can't deal with the information we have." It's not that new social information isn't useful. It's that when you're already drinking martinis from a firehose, somebody offering you a cosmo is ironically tragic.

Unified Communications, Take 1

Lorna Garey — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:44:15 -0500

The best thing about my job is hanging out with smart people. I had that opportunity last Friday when I attended the filming of a series of videos on unified communications.

Ethics, Integrity, and Playing Nice

Adam Ely — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:06:13 -0500

As security professionals we are paid to know how to do bad things. We must know how to do these bad things in order to defend from bad people. What separates us from the criminals is our integrity. We hack for the good of humanity.

Infrastructure Uptime: A Useless Report

Jonathan Feldman — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:30:05 -0500

I got a question yesterday from a large organization's IT leadership asking for recommendations on how to report infrastructure uptime to a governing board. The answer? Your governing board doesn't care.

InformationWeek Analytics Has A New Home

Art Wittmann — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:39:00 -0500

It�s both a tough time and an exciting time to be in IT. It�s exciting because the systems and services that IT offers business can provide true competitive advantages.

GMIS Epilogue: DHS, DC, and The Merits of In-Person

Jonathan Feldman — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:39:52 -0500

Like every conference attendee, I was way too busy dealing with logistics to deal with most anything else. But now that I'm all unpacked, here are a few things of note that I left out of my conference blog, including advice from the Department of Homeland Security, cloudy goodness from Dmitry Kachaev of the District of Columbia, and why we might all want to be teleconference luddites.

Massachusetts Data Privacy Law Delayed, Again

Randy George — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:30:31 -0500

We predicted this eventuality here, in this blog, 6 months ago. The MA Data Privacy law, touted by some as the most far reaching in the nation, is too unwieldy for small businesses to follow. However, the law is getting watered down a bit, making it more palatable for small businesses.

GMIS 2009 Report

Jonathan Feldman — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:03:48 -0500

I'm here in Rhode Island at the GMIS International 2009 conference, and it's apparent that even though budgets are tight, local governments are still investing in training conferences that make sense and that ultimately benefit citizens. There's good attendance and sessions ranging from the coupling of 311 and local government metrics program to cloud computing (moderated tomorrow by yours truly).