InfoWorld Daily | Tom Sullivan » TAG: Enterprise applications

October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

5 ways data projects go bad

TAGS: Enterprise applications

From the feature well: The only thing worse than a data integration project is a data integration project gone wrong. And they can go down so many different dark paths. In the perils of dirty data, five such tales emerge, including the 'Dear Idiot' letter, a high-tech rendition of Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls, and 'the war on error' among others. "Don't let your own project become someone else's horror story," Dan Tynan cautions. In Data mischief new editor-in-chief Eric Knorr shares one pleasant -- and profitable -- information integration surprise.

Security: While one-third of all employees admit to circumventing security policies on the job, according to a study due for release this week by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, "combine those results with the notion that many of these types of incidents also likely occur without employees' knowledge of their mistakes, and the survey result gains even more weight in terms of its overall gravity," Matt Hines reports in Auditors: Employees missing big picture risks. "Seemingly even worse, 65 percent of those interviewed reported that they are unconcerned with securing their privacy while using a workplace computer in general, and 63 percent said that do not worry about the security of the information they handle at work whatsoever."

Careers: "You're advising people to lie!" is a common reaction to his work, Bob Lewis admits. "Actually, I don't say that. Were I the sort to be completely honest under every and all circumstances I might be tempted," he writes in when telling the truth is more immoral than not telling the truth. "My first objection to 'always tell the truth' is, which truth? The truth I want to immediately blurt out before I stop to think? Or the truth that only comes with reflection?"

Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely calls TJX Dumber and Dumberest because "just when you thought the data breach couldn't get any uglier, it does." That's right, banks now claims that TJX had 94 million credit card numbers stolen, twice what it first claimed. "The other numbers are equally staggering." Take the 80GB of data hackers moved across the Net from its servers, for one. A sniffer set up camp on TJX servers for more than 7 months. It gets even worse. "Yet despite all this, sales at the company's stores (which include TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Bob's Stores) are actually rising."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 30, 2007 04:52 AM

November 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

A holiday gift for your boss

TAGS: Enterprise applications

Podcasts: I hate to be among the first to jump on the ol' holiday sled, but Oliver Rist discusses how to give your boss the gift of a do-it-yourself ultra-custom business dashboard. Then, he delves into how SMBs can make sense of all the commotion surrounding notebook evolution. Tune into Emerging Enterprise.

Best of the blogs: After three weeks with Apple's new Xserve and OS X Server Tiger 10.4.8, Tom Yager posts his Apple Xserve: The final review. "Apple is taking a road that pundits will likely insist will lead Apple nowhere: It is doing a server appliance play, but not of a flavor that the market's seen before," he explains. "The sum of Xserve's flaws is overwhelmed by the system's unique leading-edge, user and administrator-centric engineering. Xserve is far better than the commodity server that the Intel x86 market expects."

From the analysts: David Margulius reports on a dinner at the Churchill Club, where Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz was interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times. "Only one problem -- [Sun] couldn't seem to articulate a coherent strategy." Margulius lists what he sees as Sun's top three challenges and, of course, weighs in with some suggestions of his own.

The news beat: Sun open sources Java under the GPL. Google offers a start page for its hosted apps suite that enables users to centrally locate the various applications. And Samsung claims that DDR3 will be mainstream by 2009.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 13, 2006 04:51 AM

September 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

A brief history of BI

TAGS: Enterprise applications

Q&A: Howard Dresner coined the term 'business intelligence' in 1989. Now Hyperion's chief strategy officer, at that time he was a Gartner analyst. Dresner spoke with China Martens of the IDG News Service for this interview about how BI has grown in the past 17 years, what has hindered BI adoption, and how different industries stack up in terms of usage.

Podcasts: Oliver Rist is comin' at you from Interop NYC where he not only reveals one secret about Brad Pitt, but also goes-a-rantin' about where the WAFS standard truly is. Listen to Emerging Enterprise.

Columnists' corner: Fulfilling his geo-penance brings David Margulius to Prague and Italy, into the latter of which he takes a deep dive on the state of IT in that country. "The problem for Italian CIOs is that you can't think outside the box if your bosses don't care what's outside the box," he writes in Driving IT innovation abroad.

The news beat: Security experts are giving Microsoft credit for improving its software. The U.S. Commerce Department says that 1,137 laptops have been lost, 249 of which housed personal data. And AOL sells off AOL France.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 22, 2006 10:52 AM

May 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Mozilla fails to crack enterprise

TAGS: Enterprise applications

Best of the blogs: If you live in the 21st century, you stopped using Internet Explorer some time ago, writes Matt Asay in Open Sources. "It's ugly, invites unwanted malware, and has been behind the innovation curve for years. All of which makes it the more frustrating that Mozilla has been kept at bay in the enterprise. Mitchell Baker, head of Mozilla, was quoted recently with some explanation of this silliness: "Enterprises have intranets that only work with (Microsoft's) IE," Baker said. "We can't fix their intranet."

Columnists' corner: David L. Margulius gives some glimpses of how some techies de-stress in Tech jobs take stress to whole new level "[According] to a recent Wall Street Journal article, some of them participate in a worldwide online simulation of — of all things — the air traffic control system." Sound calming to you? Talk back to us below.

The news beat: Security researchers have discovered a serious flaw in Symantec's enterprise antivirus software; Microsoft confirms Ultimate Office; Vista's rating tool is retooled following criticism from hardware makers; and Google has struck a deal with the Dell to factory-install Google desktop, toolbar, search engine and homepage on consumer and SMB desktops and notebooks worldwide. Buh-bye Microsoft, Dell says in one fell swoop.

Posted by Mike Barton on May 26, 2006 08:07 AM

March 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Managing Exchange with multiple tools

TAGS: Enterprise applications

Test Center review: In Tackling Exchange management from all angles, we inspect products that bring the lacking capabilities of reporting, alerts, diagnostics and troubleshooting to Microsoft's e-mail platform. The solutions are from DYS Analytics, Microsoft, Quest and Zenprise. The best option naturally depends on your needs and expertise but, in the words of Logan Harbaugh, "there is no single all-around Exchange management product that will solve all of an administrator's problems."

Open source: Salesforce.com says that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and will release the free AppExchange tookit for Eclipse. Also at the EclipseCon show, vendors are pushing ALM, rich-client technologies and ALF, or Application Lifecycle Frameworks.

Columnists' corner: Neil McAllister writes that desktop Linux is still a hard sell for the hardware players and, what's more, not even the upgrade headaches bound to be brought on by Vista can significantly reduce Windows momentum. But there are options and Linux desktop problems are not insurmountable.

Best of the blogs: Ticketmaster has one of the worst privacy policies around, according to Ed Foster, in Reading Ticketmaster terms on the clock. Indeed, the company claims that limiting the amount of time one has on each screen where tickets are selected it prevents a customer from holding up a ticket for too long, but the practice makes it rather difficult to actually read and understand the privacy policy. "Just skimming over the words without much comprehension, it still took me almost ten minutes, and I've probably read more sneakwrap agreements than just about anybody except those who write them. If I'd actually been buying a ticket, I would have had to start over three or four time," Foster writes.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 20, 2006 11:03 AM

February 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The oldest question in IT

TAGS: Enterprise applications

Special report: Calling it a question of Shakespearean proportions, we get to the heart of a long-running debate: whether to build or buy those applications you need. Yes, the answer can be broken down to suggest that companies should build to boost their core competencies, and buy everything else. Oh, if it were only so simple. In Weighing the software decision, we offer advice on which path to follow and how to keep maintenance costs down along the way.

Open source: Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz tries to convince rival Hewlett-Packard to migrate HP-UX customers over to Sun's Solaris. HP, needless to say, is neither interested nor budging on the point. Schwartz also invited Oracle to use Sun's Project GlassFish rather than spend $400 million on JBoss. Something tells me that Oracle will decline that Schwartz offer as well. More important, will Larry really pay $400 million for JBoss?

Security: At the RSA conference, Bill Gates outlines Microsoft's ID management technology, code-named InfoCard, for Windows Vista and XP. RSA puts a token in a browser toolbar to electronically sign online transactions. A new survey shows security confidence is low, but people are buying anyway and 75 percent of businesses have completed more online transactions in the last year than they previously did, while only 1 percent saw a decline.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 15, 2006 05:07 AM