Technological (non)predictions for 2007

By Sean McGrath

The early part of any new year sees its fair share of prediction
lists. You know the sort of thing : 'In 2007, X will go mainstream'
or 'Y will finally grind technological opponent Z into the dust'.

For grins, I have taken a different tack. Here is a list of things
that I predict will not happen in 2007.

New Ernst & Young survey says most organizations fail to manage risks associated with sharing data with third parties -- Jose Granado

In this interview, Jose Granado, a Principal and Service Delivery Leader at the Security and Technologies Solutions Practice for Ernst & Young shares findings from the survey, and the top five things companies must begin to do in order to better manage this data and mitigate risks.

The Geek Gap: Why business and technology professionals don't understand each other

Lack of respect and trust, poor communication and a culture clash are often at fault for the clash between "geeks" and "suits", according to Bill Pfleging and Minda Zetlin, authors of The Geek Gap. A geek's primary strength is problem solving or creating and maintaining technology, while a suit's talent is influencing people. Here's an interview with the authors, and some tips for closing the divide.

Talking R&D with HP's chief technology officer

As the IT industry changes to keep pace with convergence and the rise of emerging markets, vendors like Hewlett-Packard Co. have to stay one step ahead of the curve to remain competitive. At HP, the job of directing that effort falls to Shane Robison, the company's executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer, who is responsible for overseeing the company's annual $3.5 billion R&D budget. In this interview, he discusses how different trends, such as convergence and the rising importance of China and India, have affected HP's R&D strategy

Business Innovation Defined

By James Gaskin

In my last column, I mentioned that businesspeople define IT's value to the company by how much you and your coworkers enabled business innovation. What do they mean by that? Innovation to them means shifting their work load to someone else, usually IT. The more of their work you do, the more innovative they are. Those with older siblings will recognize this: you are the sucker.

Read the full article here.

Migration, Productivity, and Sine Language

Joel Shore

While at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, I had an opportunity to sit down and discuss with Microsoft some issues it faces as Vista and Office 2007 hit the streets just a few days from now. In my 30 minutes with Julie Larson-Green, corporate vice president of program management for Microsoft's Windows Experience, we covered a lot of ground. It is Larson-Green who has lead the user-interface design for Office XP, Office 2003, and now the revolutionary 2007 Office System. You'll not easily find anyone more brilliant or pleasant in Redmond. We agreed on some points, disagreed on others, and had a few chuckles along the way. Though not much in the way of new information was imparted, I was impressed by a simple fact: Microsoft understands and has come to accept that customer acceptance will take time.

Chaos and order in information systems

By Sean McGrath

The word 'chaos' is an interesting example of an old word that is having its meaning reshaped by the, um, chaotic forces of change that surround us all.

In speech and in informal writing we generally use the term in the negative sense of an orderless bedlam of some sort. Few IT personnel would be happy to hear their systems described as chaotic. However, to a physicist, a chaotic system is not senseless bedlam at all. On the contrary, chaotic systems can be very simple systems that just happen to look as if they are utterly senseless when observed casually. The apparent disorder disappears once you look at the (often simple) feedback-based equations that drive the system.

Read the full article here.

January's coolest gadgets

With the new year comes a lot of buzz from the phone industry. Not only are regular cell phones improving by getting smaller, smarter and lighter but a host of new network services, like higher-speed data transmission, are making them more useful. There's also a new breed of handset packing digital TV reception, and you can find examples of these in this month's round-up of hot gadgets. Looking ahead to the rest of the year we're sure to see more advanced phones with features like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony too.

Search from IBM and Yahoo

By James Gaskin

IBM rarely tells large companies to "help yourself to our free stuff" but that's what they said with their new IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. One might argue that this is a ploy to distract customers from the Google Search appliance with a repackaged Open Source search program that hasn't set any sales records as part of the WebSphere family, but that sounds so cynical early in a new year.

Read the full article.

The age of uber-tooling in software development

By Sean McGrath

When developing software in the old days, we used to grab a bunch of separate tools with names like compiler, linker, editor, profiler, debugger and hook them together with our fingers. That is, we installed them as individual applications and made them work together the way we wanted by organizing a working setup on the hard disks of our computer systems.

Read the full article.

Asset stripping meets the web dividend

By Sean McGrath

I think about information as an asset. I think that the term "asset" works wonders when you need to focus on the true value (or otherwise) of any corpus of information.

What is the most significant thing that most of us have done with our information assets in the last, say, 10 years? For most folks I would wager that the answer to this is that we put them up on the Internet or perhaps our local intranets. If you had electronic information assets over a decade ago you have most probably "web-enabled" them by now. If you had paper-based information assets over a decade ago, you have probably captured them to some web-friendly format by now.

Read the full article here.

Too often, the barbarians are not left at the gate, they are invited in

By Joel Shore, ITworld.com

Windows Vista. It hasn't even hit the streets yet, and the first hack is already upon us. Corporations, already reluctant to roll out any operating system upgrade until at least the first service pack is available, are no doubt becoming even more skittish. That's not a good way to start a new year.

Resolving the online/offline service conundrum using virtualization

By Sean McGrath

Here is the conundrum in a nutshell. Online enterprise applications are a great idea. Putting all the complex moving parts of an application on the server side means that you - the end-user - need not worry about them. Online applications take away soooo much administrative pain that they should really require a doctor's prescription. With an online application, the vast majority of the application gets filed under SPP (SPP = Service Provider Problem). Administrative Bliss. Costs cut. Bottom line improves. Everyone is happy ... There is a significant catch of course.

What's on tap in 2007

By Dan Blacharski

It's the beginning of a new year, and the blogosphere is full of armchair futurists speculating on what it will hold. It seems everyone is getting in on the act, with predictions that range from the unlikely to the bizarre. An Associated Press/AOL News poll shows that 25 percent of respondents expect the second coming of Jesus Christ in 2007, and 19 percent think scientists will find evidence of extraterrestrial life in the new year. But before you go out and buy your ascension robes and roll out the red carpet for E.T., let's take a look at what 2007 may hold for the world of technology.