Amercian snack-food firm Lance has just rolled out new handheld computers for its delivery sales people — and in the process violated one of the core traditions of IT. How did Lance do that? By deciding to get the handhelds into users’ hands as quickly and simply as possible.
“Software prices will eventually fall to zero. The open-source software movement has already started that commoditisation.”
Hewlett-Packard has made a startling discovery. Last month, an HP marketing executive announced that “IT as we know it is really over” and that, going forward, HP won’t be in the information technology business. No, from now on, HP will be in the business of “business technology”.
Hoax hacks and Rigged demos of make-believe security holes. This was the big news that came out of the Black Hat USA security conference last month. But two claims made by independent security researchers at the show have since turned out to be bogus.
Feeling stressed? Of course you are — you’re in IT. And according to William Cross, a working CIO who has also done academic studies of IT people (see Computerworld, August 21, page 30) all the stress of working in an IT department doesn’t just produce health problems and high divorce rates for IT people with their Type A personalities. It also results in lower-quality software and more mistakes in IT operations.
Either you get it or you don’t. That’s the open secret about the Best Places to Work in IT. Either you understand that being a great place to work is a competitive business advantage or you still think it’s a luxury your company can’t afford in a competitive business world.
Ohio University says someone has hacked into an alumni database server and may have stolen personal information on more than 300,000 people and organisations — including 137,800 social security numbers.
Call it the worst work-around ever. How else to describe the advice from Mike Danseglio, a Microsoft security guru, to wipe and reinstall Windows on any PC infected with the insidious malware known as a rootkit?
What do people who renew their driver’s licences, buy hard liquor or donate to a home for elderly and disabled veterans have in common? In New Hampshire, in the US, people who did any of those things within the past six months may have had their credit card numbers stolen because of computer security issues.
Who will survive in IT? That's a pretty grim way to frame the issue, especially considering recent good news. IT pay is rising again for some skills, according to staffing research firm Foote Partners. IT employment keeps inching upward -- not by much, but at least it hasn't dropped since March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Let's say Larry Ellison is right. Suppose Oracle does hold on to PeopleSoft and JD Edwards users by finding a way to let them migrate gracefully to a best-of-all-worlds merged product that's now codenamed Project Fusion and is supposed to be ready by 2008.
Big IT projects are doomed. Want proof? Just look at the four-year, $US100 million-plus project to rebuild the air-travel reservation system run by Sabre. Sabre's decades-old system was 10 million lines of mainframe assembly language code. The new version is C++ and Java running on 17 HP NonStop database machines and 45 Linux servers -- which means everything is getting overhauled. And halfway through the project, it's all working.
Think the Sasser worm is trivial? Think just because it had near-zero impact on U.S. businesses, it's not something you need to worry about? Think again. True, Sasser infections numbered only in the dozens at places like American Express Co., Citibank NA and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and the worm was cleaned up quickly. Even in Europe, where banks, a stock exchange and even the offices of the European Commission were reportedly hit, Sasser was more of an annoyance than a crisis -- nothing to really worry about.
Corporate IT is a risky business. That's not new, but it's truer now than ever before. Nothing is guaranteed. Uncertainty is inevitable. Technology, business conditions and strategic requirements change constantly. You can never know in advance whether you really understand what users and the business need or whether technology can deliver it. And, oh yes, there really are people gunning for you.
FRAMINGHAM (10/24/2003) - Stratton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign Inc., says his company didn't intend to break anything on the Internet when it launched its Site Finder wild-card service. In fact, Sclavos told me a few days ago, VeriSign spent months testing Site Finder. And it did conform to existing standards. And when Site Finder went live and some things broke, VeriSign went to work fixing them as quickly as possible.