IT Infrastructure - News

The executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material in an attempt to derail the "Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights of 2009," which is pending before Congress.  If the bills are passed, airlines could lose as much as $40 million in revenue and spend much more to comply, the lawsuit contends. The bills would allow passengers to deplane if they have been delayed on the tarmac more than three hours. They would also be entitled to clean air and access to medical treatment.

• The next generation of chips for notebooks
• Mobile-oriented features in Windows Vista and XP
• Embedding wide-area broadband capabilities
•  "Ultra-light" notebooks, Ultra-Mobile PCs (UMPCs) and other mobile devices
•  "Green" notebook-related initiatives by vendors in manufacturing, use, and post-use stages.

More Processing Power

For notebooks, the continued improvement in CPUs - the "brains" of the system  - means doing more work faster. It also means using less energy (and not costing more than their predecessors). Intel's newest CPU family for notebooks, desktops, and servers has Core 2 Duo processors and the latest 45-nanometer (nm) process technologies. The processors offer nearly twice the density of Intel's older 65nm approach. That translates into more than 400 million transistors for dual-core processors and more than 800 million for quad-core, providing faster processing and less energy use. It also adds to energy efficiency.

When CIO and CEO look to trim costs, care needs to be take so that long term productivity is not impacted.  In addition, if employees feel they are not productive because of "technology', once the economy improves they will find better jobs where the technology is more current..

Browser Twelve Year Historical Trend

The full study was produced with data through August 2009.  See a full copy of the  press release here.

The Browser Market Share and Operating System Market Share White Paper data is by month starting in September 1997 through the August 2009.  The data sampled is internationally based (Just under 50% of the data points sampled are outside of the United States).

(JAMA) Sixty percent of US medical schools responded (78/130). Of these schools, 60% (47/78) reported incidents of students posting unprofessional online content. Violations of patient confidentiality were reported by 13% (6/46). Student use of profanity (52%; 22/42), frankly discriminatory language (48%; 19/40), depiction of intoxication (39%; 17/44), and sexually suggestive material (38%; 16/42) were commonly reported. Of 45 schools that reported an incident and responded to the question about disciplinary actions, 30 gave informal warning (67%) and 3 reported student dismissal (7%). Policies that cover student-posted online content were reported by 38% (28/73) of deans. Of schools without such policies, 11% (5/46) were actively developing new policies to cover online content. Deans reporting incidents were significantly more likely to report having such a policy (51% vs 18%; P = .006), believing these issues could be effectively addressed (91% vs 63%; P = .003), and having higher levels of concern (P = .02).

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced that it will offer 60GB and 120GB solid-state disk (SSD) drives as an option across the full range of HP ProLiant G6 servers, as well as in select ProLiant G5 servers.

The serial-ATA (SATA) SSDs, from Samsung Electronics Co., are aimed at supporting virtualized environments and I/O intensive applications where the latest HP ProLiant G6 servers are often deployed, the company said. Virtualized environments require significant memory, data storage and network connections to optimize server performance.

HP qualified Samsung's SSDs for what it's calling the "green" option across its server line to give customers a way to minimize power consumption, saving money while boosting performance. Samsung claims the SSDs can significantly cut power use in HP's ProLiant servers and offer 40 to 50 times the performance over traditional hard drives, depending upon the application and computing workload

• CIOs must keep all IT systems and networks managed, optimized, and available to contribute maximum business value at minimal cost.
• CIOs need to protect critical infrastructure against an increasingly hostile threat environment spyware, viruses, attacks, intrusions and human-engineered security lapses.
• CIOs  must prevent exposure to legal and regulatory compliance penalties or breach disclosure laws. If IT fails in any one of these areas, their organizations can go out of business, or face criminal sanctions.

In meeting these responsibilities, CIOs can no longer incrementally buy new tools to meet any new requirement that makes headlines in the technical or business media. Business drivers, security and compliance mandates converging on the enterprise require a converged response. CIOs now demand solutions that enable them to eliminate redundant technologies and processes and integrate disparate elements into a common workflow. While established enterprise software vendors have adopted the language of convergence and consolidation, their product lines remain constrained by legacy architectures and designs. Proposing radical change to their customers' carries the risk of disrupting established revenue flows not to mention technical risks inherent in overhauling or replacing obsolete products.

Business runs at a velocity unimagined a few short years ago. Complex and highly distributed environments have grown to support an intricate web of partners, suppliers, distributors, and customers. Service oriented architectures and web-based applications have progressed from vision to real-world instantiation as enterprises look to leverage technology to innovate and deliver new services. In this new world, IT-delivered services must be available 24x7 to customers, suppliers, employees, regulators, investors and other constituencies.

The highly exposed nature of today's IT infrastructures fundamentally changes how organizations manage IT assets, processes and data. IT organizations can no longer treat resource management and maintenance as back-end functions that can be performed at times and conditions of their choosing. Neither is their work protected from outside scrutiny. Processes whose success or failures were largely internal now make the difference between business success or failure, legal compliance or litigation, prudent stewardship or ineffective execution.

How does one go about turning a career setback like a layoff into an advantage? First of all -- and here's the power of positive thinking at work -- think of a layoff as an opportunity, not a setback. Is a layoff a serious challenge? Of course. But you won't get anywhere by focusing on the negatives or feeling sorry for yourself. Look at a layoff as a unique opportunity to open a new door. Maybe this is the time to take your career in a brand-new direction. Recessions have spawned many an entrepreneur, and some of the world's biggest companies were launched in the midst of economic downturns.

There are a myriad of ways to accomplish this: streamline project-planning practices, use opensource applications, opt for solutions that avoid bureaucratic approvals and delays, etc. Drawing on the experience of four IT vice presidents from diverse industries, this ExecBlueprint discusses “lean IT thinking” from multiple perspectives and provides guidance for how today’s CTO/CIO can create a more cost- and time-efficient operation without sacrificing quality, employee morale, or IT’s vital role in the organization. The claim that such a focus can, in fact, serve to improve IT’s standing with the business and employees by creating innovative opportunities to earn recognition and profits. The key to engaging the business and IT team members? Stay aligned with overall business objectives while celebrating individual and team accomplishments.

Despite having to cope with massive budget cuts, salary freezes and demoralized staffs, most employed IT executives are more satisfied with their jobs this year than they have been in previous years, according to the results of a job satisfaction survey.

The only functional leaders who ranked less satisfied than IT executives were engineering execs, 60 percent of whom said they were satisfied, and sales leaders, 59 percent of whom said they were satisfied.

Executives in marketing, HR, consulting and finance reported the highest levels of job satisfaction.

It has come to our attention that some people may have been subscribed to our email lists without their knowledge - likely as a result of efforts by outside groups of all political stripes - and we regret any inconvenience caused by receiving an unexpected message.

He did not expand on who the "outside groups" were or how they could subscribe users to White House e-mails without their permission. E-mail lists often employ confirmation systems where the recipient has to confirm that they wish to receive e-mails in order to prevent 3rd-party sign-ups.

Earlier the White House deleted an e-mail address (flag@whitehouse.gov) that had been set up for users to report what they considered "fishy" claims about the President's health care proposals. E-mails are currently bouncing with a note that "We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck." The flag address had been called a "monitoring program" by opponents.

A poor relationship with one's boss is the number one reason for failure at work. Two common flashpoints adversely affect performance:

• The employee is unclear about the CIO's expectations - Goals should cascade down from the CIO to team members so that everyone understands how they contribute to the objectives of both the team and the organization. If an employee does not understand the goals given,or if they have not been given goals at all, the onus is on the employee to seek clarity. Asking a simple question such as, "What are the top three priorities in my role that you would like me to focus on?" can help everyone on the team gain clarity. Employees should also ask, "Why is this so important?" as the answer will give them a lot of good clues for developing the relationship with their CIO.
• CIOs fail to adapt their styles to the employees' preferred styles - Every employee/CIO relationship is unique and requires a different management approach. For example, the approach taken by highly decisive boss working with a highly decisive employee should be significantly different from the approach taken by this same boss when working with a less-decisive employee. The decisive employee thrives on quick decisions, while the other employee will be more methodical in thier decision-making approach. The less-decisive employee will potentially enter into conflict with the faster-paced CIO.  

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Apple will continue to work with employer in China and  nothing has been done to help the dead employee or his family. 

Following that attack, Twitter conducted a security audit and they concluded that there was not security vulnerability in Google Applications.  Twitter continues to use the suite internally.

Are your security policies and procedures strong enough to withstand such a breach?

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