Recent Articles
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The 25 Killer Apps of All Time
A “killer app” is not always an especially good application. What a killer app needs to be is the right product, at the right time, in the right competitive environment to turn potential into reality for enough users to create a critical mass. With the question “What’s the killer app for Vista?” on the minds…
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Security at Your Service
What does an outsourcing company do when it needs to improve security and lower costs? It outsources, of course. In 2003, Siemens Business Services found itself facing a tough challenge. As an IT outsourcing company, it had plenty of experience handling security matters, but the legwork was beginning to take more time and effort than…
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Managing Security Success
When president Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair got caught with their microphones on last July in St. Petersburg, Russia, The New York Times blogger Virginia Heffernan posted a clip of CNN video that included their conversation on the soundtrack. Most of the subsequent comments posted on The New York Times site concerned people’s…
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OpenSUSE 10.2
While the eyes of the IT world have spent years squinting to see Microsoft’s slowly unfolding vistas, the companies and individuals that drive open source have been steadily building a case for broader adoption of Linux-based operating systems. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Novell’s OpenSUSE 10.2 builds upon the strengths of previous SUSE releases and includes what is…
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Making Music Business Hum
Making good music is seldom a solo effort. And making complex, sophisticated IT solutions hum harmoniously often calls for individuals with a diverse set of skills. In the case of Virgin Entertainment Group, reinventing and integrating the 23-store chain’s business intelligence, POS (point of sale) and data warehousing solutions required a team of experts from…
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A Little Information for Our Files
Partisans of object-oriented programming, often including myself, often say that the only proper programming model is one of data structures with bundles of associated methods wrapped around them. Yes, algorithms are fascinating things, but ultimately any application that’s not just part of someone’s doctoral thesis is going to do something to something else. Mere data-centric…
