In Depth

In Depth

• UKtech50 2011: Vote now!

  Voting has begun to find out who is the most influential person in the UK IT community.  Continue Reading

• iPads in the field - Powerlink Queensland

  While iPads tick many of the boxes for mobile computing, Powerlink Queensland engaged in a pilot to see if Apple's tablet wunderkind could cut it in the field  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media (public sector) - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: IT Best use of social media – public sector - category information.  Continue Reading

• Socialisation, social engineering, and securing the enterprise

  What can and should organisations do to convince and empower IT users to play an active part in protecting data?  Continue Reading

• Buyer’s Guide: The top five business reasons to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7

  Those still on Windows XP should have that decision under review, as the rationale for businesses staying with Windows XP – as it faces the end of support, at the expense of a Window 7 upgrade – is now considerably flawed.  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: Tony Prestedge, COO, Nationwide

  Tony Prestedge took over as COO at Nationwide in 2010, mid-way through a five-year transformation project. He tells Karl Flinders how the company is transforming its business through a £1bn investment in technology, how the IT department changed ...  Continue Reading

• What does the future hold for Microsoft’s business model?

  With the technology industry shifting away from traditional software licensing, what is the future for Microsoft as tech top dog?  Continue Reading

• CIO interview: Martin Davies, head of technology at Bet365

  The success story of £5.4bn-per-year online gambling company Bet365 is nothing to do with luck and everything to do with technology.  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: Use virtualisation to run Windows XP applications in Windows 7

  Virtualisation can help keep legacy Windows XP client applications running on Windows 7. Forrester analyst David Johnson looks at best practice.  Continue Reading

• Case study: New College Swindon replaces fixed Ethernet network with Wi-Fi

  New College, Swindon, is planning to replace its fixed Ethernet network with a campus-wide wireless network that will let students access the internet using their own devices.  Continue Reading

• Case study: Law firm uses RES Automation Manager to migrate users to Windows 7

  Law firm Kennedys is using RES Automation Manager to migrate users from Windows XP to Windows 7. The company has over 900 people across the UK and provides specialist legal services for insurance, healthcare, construction, employment, rail, maritime...  Continue Reading

• New forms of direct-attached storage emerge to meet VM I/O demands

  A new dawn for DAS? New forms of direct-attached storage have emerged that aim to meet the needs of virtual servers and their extremely random I/O characteristics.  Continue Reading

• Interview: Shareagift CTO Jonathan Midgley discusses its VMware cloud

  Jonathan Midgley has been an IT entrepreneur since he was 15 years old. The chief technology officer of Shareagift.com sold his first application for £99. Written on the Acorn BBC Micro Model B home computer, the application was designed to help ...  Continue Reading

• Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

  Among the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing are that it offers a high degree of scalability, but incidents such as cloud outages make it less reliable.  Continue Reading

• RightNow: Oracle and next-generation CRM

  In his opening keynote presentation at the RightNow Summit 2011 in Newport, Greg Gianforte, RightNow founder and chief executive officer, presented his view of device-aware CRM.  Continue Reading

• Cloud computing security risks guide: How safe is the cloud?

  Although moving IT to the cloud brings advantages such as flexibility and scalability, cloud computing security risks are seen as a major impediment for its wide-scale adoption.  Continue Reading

• How Capex vs. Opex affects data centre outsourcing decisions

  Capex vs.Opex comparison reveals that although cloud services help avoid capital expenses on building own data centres, its Opex model can turn costly if IT pros aren’t cautious.  Continue Reading

• Tools for migrating XP applications to Windows 7

  Analyst Gartner has identified three tools that IT departments can use to help with the migration from XP to Windows 7: Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit (Act), which is free; App-DNA, which is now owned by Citrix; and ChangeBase, which ...  Continue Reading

• The consumerisation of IT: it’s a trickle, not a tide, but you still need to be ready

  If media headlines and supplier claims are to be believed, organisations today are faced with an unstoppable tide of many different types of personal device connected to the corporate network  Continue Reading

• Professional advice on sharing data responsibility

  Information is the lifeblood of most organisations. It can take one of many forms, such as physical files, digital files or databases. Furthermore, computer systems allow us to keep data almost indefinitely, and as we generate even more every year, ...  Continue Reading

• The top five SME security challenges

  Best practice in IT security and compliance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is often seen as a "grudge purchase", but SMEs face the same threat as larger organisations - just without their budgets.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Vote now!

  Computer Weekly's search for the best use of social media in IT is back for its fourth year, in association with IBM, and we want you vote for the best uses of social media in UK IT. Fill out the form below and submit your vote.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011 with IBM

  IBM is proud to sponsor the 2011 IT Social Media Awards. The world now spends more than 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites per month. This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every 4.5 minutes.  Continue Reading

• Have service assurance tools finally come of age?

  Vendors have long promised that service assurance tools could monitor across IT systems, but they've always fallen short. Are these tools finally growing up?  Continue Reading

• Application - aware networking emerges but has far to go

  Application awareness is emerging on firewalls and WAN optimization devices,but efforts fall short of a network-wide strategy,especially at Layers 2 and 3.  Continue Reading

• Idea Lab: Employees want social networking tools

  Where evolving concepts come together  Continue Reading

• Improved debt collection with BI: An ICICI Bank story

  Debt collection can gain immensely by BI. By powering this, ICICI Bank has effectively turned debt collection into a customer-relations management program.  Continue Reading

• Storage protocols battle it out for the data centre switching crown

  Storage protocols battle it out for the data centre switching crown. The key vendors -- Cisco, Brocade and QLogic -- embrace convergence, but they differ in emphasis over Fibre Channel.  Continue Reading

• CW500: How CIOs are exploiting the cloud

  CIOs from the Guardian, Mitchells & Butlers and Oxfam reveal how they are exploiting cloud computing  Continue Reading

• Ethernet storage: When will FCoE gain traction in data centres?

  Ethernet storage: FCoE has been around for some time, but how do vendors’ implementations differ, and when will the technology gain real traction in data centres?  Continue Reading

• Buyer's guide: Top six tips to improve your organisation's social media CRM strategy

  Although social CRM definitions vary, all share some common distinctions. They all centre on customer-centric interactions through social media. Competitive intelligence (CI) professionals - inherently customer-focused marketers - recognise the ...  Continue Reading

• Five VDI technology bottlenecks faced by implementers

  Though VDI technology offers benefits, bottlenecks may hamper smooth deployment. We talk to VDI implementers to identify common VDI technology bottlenecks.  Continue Reading

• Hybrid cloud solutions address cloud data storage’s three key challenges

  Hybrid cloud storage addresses the three key challenges of cloud storage—latency, security and reliability—by building in local cache storage and hardware security.  Continue Reading

• Disaster recovery awareness and testing require training, strategic plans

  After you develop DR plans, disaster recovery awareness and testing strategies ensure the plan works and that everyone knows their role within it.  Continue Reading

• CISO Power List 2012 Nominations closed

  If you are in the business of securing organizations from all threats (internal and external), it’s time to put in nominations for the CISO Power List 2012.  Continue Reading

• SMB NAS product survey: Non-scale-out/clustered NAS still fills a need

  Traditional/non-scale-out NAS still fills a need for SMB NAS use, despite the rise of clustered alternatives, although product categories are becoming blurred with block access.  Continue Reading

• Project management process challenges: Lessons from SBI, M&M, & NCDEX

  Project management process is usually riddled with challenges. Use these insights from India’s largest enterprises to effectively manage your projects.  Continue Reading

• Adobe defines digital enterprise platform for customer management professionals

  The Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform provides multi-channel digital interactions aligned to social and mobile technologies. It says customer experience management embodies customer management such as customer service and field worker automation.  Continue Reading

• The advantages of integrating technology across the school curriculum with Wi-Fi

  What does ubiquitous broadband coverage mean for the education environment and what challenges and opportunities do schools face in adapting to this?  Continue Reading

• Oracle Openworld 2011: Conference coverage

  Read TechTarget’s news coverage, blogs and tips from Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Everything you need to know about the 2011 San Francisco show.  Continue Reading

• Global data quality management: local headaches, international rewards

  Global data is varied. It originates from many countries, contains country-specific values and is provided and stored in differing languages or special characters. Learn how to handle it.  Continue Reading

• An eye on Indian enterprise data warehousing tools market

  Single vendor sourcing and emergence of appliances are leading to consolidation in the enterprise data warehousing tools market. Find key trends in DW tools.  Continue Reading

• Yorkshire Building Society delivers business intelligence as a service

  Yorkshire Building Society is using an in-house centre of excellence for business intelligence, to deliver reporting, with a single version of the truth to business departments.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best IT video of the year - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: Best IT video of the year - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best new blog of the year - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: Best new blog of the year - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media (not-for-profit sector) - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media – not-for-profit sector - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media (private sector) - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media – private sector - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: CIO / IT director - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: CIO / IT director of the year - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media (individual) - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: Best use of social media (individual) - category information.  Continue Reading

• Social Media Awards 2011: IT industry blogger of the year - Nominate now!

  Social Media Awards 2011: IT industry blogger of the year - category information.  Continue Reading

• Bombay Stock Exchange’s server consolidation journey

  BSE recently consolidated its servers and began its cloud computing journey. Find out more about BSE’s server consolidation initiative in this case study.  Continue Reading

• Back-up datacentre challenge - to build or to host?

  The Royal College of General Practitioners has built its own back-up datacentre using a private cloud architecture, rather than use an external provider.  Continue Reading

• Product survey: Tape storage drive capacities and libraries still growing

  Tape storage drive capacities and throughputs grow while the biggest tape libraries nudge into exabyte territory. Not bad for a storage format whose death knell has been rung for years.  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: The companies using social networking in their CRM processes

  Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to acquire a greater understanding of the customer and social networking sites can capture and track customer sentiment in real time. Here are five case studies of organisations using social networks for ...  Continue Reading

• Cloud computing: UK companies adopt eagerly, but often insecurely

  While UK companies seem eager to move to the cloud with little thought for security, industry bodies are trying to raise awareness of the risks.  Continue Reading

• Hadoop for big data puts architects on journey of discovery

  Solving the problems posed by big data has led architects beyond traditional database and business intelligence technologies to open source Hadoop.  Continue Reading

• Best practice in datacentre transformation

  At a recent Computer Weekly roundtable, in association with Oracle, IT directors discussed best practices for transforming the datacentre and the challenges of such a project. Lisa Kelly reports  Continue Reading

• Book excerpt: BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing -Beginner’s Guide

  In BackTrack 5 Wireless Penetration Testing - Beginner’s Guide, Vivek Ramachandran teaches WiFi pen-testing using BackTrack 5 in a lucid, exhaustive style.  Continue Reading

• Self-encrypting drives: What's holding back SED hard drive encryption security?

  The self-encrypting drive (SED) provides a high level of data security, is invisible to the user, does not affect workflow or performance and cannot be turned off, yet SED technology has been adopted by relatively few organisations – so what's ...  Continue Reading

• Indian IT Rules 2011: Industry cautiously upbeat amidst gray areas

  The Indian IT Rules 2011 notification has brought some level of clarity to the IT Act, but several aspects in the IT rules remain open to interpretation.  Continue Reading

• Self-encrypting drives: SED the best-kept secret in hard drive encryption security

  The SED solves many common data loss problems and is easy to use and manage with minimal impact on system performance – yet relatively few businesses and governments use SEDs.  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: Choosing the right tool in a changing business intelligence landscape

  Business intelligence should provide business decision-makers with insight, but the definition is changing. The growth in data means it can only be tracked on a quarterly or yearly basis, but business leaders want to make decisions faster.  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: Social networking adds another layer to CRM practices

  As with any new technology, the social network does not push away everything that has gone on before. Companies still receive paper mail, telephone calls, e-mails, web contacts and so on. All social networks do is add to that complexity.  Continue Reading

• Using ComputerWeekly.com Content on Your Site

  There are now several ways you can use content from ComputerWeekly.com on your website or blog.  Continue Reading

• Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing

  Today we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing back on July 20 1969. The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon  Continue Reading

• Computer Weekly and InspectaGadget apps on Apple, Google and Nokia

  The Computer Weekly and InspectaGadget app bring you the latest news from the IT industry along with exclusive videos, jobs, photo stories and posts from our blogs.  Continue Reading

• CERN - Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

  CERN - Large Hadron Collider (LHC)  Continue Reading

• Competitions and offers from ComputerWeekly.com

  Competitions and offers from ComputerWeekly.com  Continue Reading

• Case study: Why and how International Personal Finance moved into the cloud

  Home credit provider International Personal Finance (IPF) has embarked on a 12-month project to move its IT infrastructure into a private cloud which will cut costs by millions of pounds and make its planned expansion easier.  Continue Reading

• CW500: Public sector IT in an age of austerity

  The role of CIOs in local government is changing as the sector faces a period of unprecedented austerity and cut-backs  Continue Reading

• The IT Apprentice: How technology internships bring niche skills to industry

  With IT-related GCSE and A-levels numbers falling, and university tuition fees set to rocket next year, the IT sector is preparing alternative IT career paths for young people to enter the industry as apprentices and build niche skills through ...  Continue Reading

• Action against e-waste

  Every day, tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) is sent to Africa from the EU. It is illegal to trade in e-waste and despite this almost all e-waste is dumped in places where no facilities exist for safe recycling with a minority of e-waste being ...  Continue Reading

• Computer Weekly Features List

  In this series of articles we will cover why desktop virtualisation is growing in popularity, what type of products are now available, how businesses are deploying VDI and the challenges in getting it working.  Continue Reading

• Android, iPhone, Palm & Windows Mobile 7 Operating Systems Compared

  A few years ago, mobile phones differed massively. You chose a phone for it's size, functionality, camera and user interface. Then, on the 7th of January 2007, the iPhone was released and as Apple have told us repeatedly, it changed everything.  Continue Reading

• Computer Weekly Journalists and News Beats

  Got a lead on a news story? Let Computer Weekly's reporters know. Each member of the team covers a range of news topics or 'beats'; their beats are listed below, along with their contact details.  Continue Reading

• Computer Weekly Publisher Community

  Together, ComputerWeekly.com’s community of publishers and bloggers cover a wide range of subject matters and offer a wealth of varied insight from their different backgrounds and experiences.  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: How agility will shape the future of business intelligence

  Agility provides the most important best practices and leverages a key capability of business intelligence technology to help close the gap that earlier-generation business intelligence processes and technologies create.  Continue Reading

• IT Works - The resource for training and skills to empower the digital economy

  IT Works - The resource for training and skills to empower the digital economy  Continue Reading

• Encryption techniques and products for hardware-based data storage security

  Encryption techniques can be applied to data on the drive or array, at the host or in the fabric. We survey the key hardware-based methods and products available for data storage security.  Continue Reading

• Mobile BI takes baby steps into the enterprise

  Mobile BI needs to go beyond pushing static reports to smartphones to bring significant new value. EU corporate IT adoption is nascent.  Continue Reading

• How to make sense of cloud computing

  Given the hype surrounding cloud computing, you'd be forgiven for thinking every CIO has a cloud deployment strategy. A deluge of analyst predictions of rapid cloud take-up has driven suppliers, rather than business users, to take a leading role in ...  Continue Reading

• CIO advice: Moving to IT 2.0

  IT needs a rethink. Cliff Saran finds out what IT 2.0 will entail.  Continue Reading

• Review: Jaspersoft's Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition

  Jaspersoft's Business Intelligence (BI) Suite Enterprise Edition is a strong competitor in the open source BI market, with its main rivals being Actuate BIRT, SpagoBI, and Pentaho Enterprise. But due to its wide toolset, analysts also view ...  Continue Reading

• Review: QlikTech’s QlikView business intelligence platform

  QlikTech's QlikView is a commercial business intelligence (BI) platform that has achieved rapid success over the past few years, particularly since the company had its NASDAQ IPO in July 2010, making it the first BI flotation for many years.  Continue Reading

• ATA over Ethernet offers SAN storage on a budget

  ATA over Ethernet offers SAN storage on a budget, at 20% of the cost of Fibre Channel and half that of iSCSI SANs. But, does being a one-vendor protocol mean it’s a non-starter?  Continue Reading

• From back-office to top-line sales: How CIOs are making money for their businesses

  Most businesses agree technology is fundamental. But more than putting technology at the core of business strategies, CIOs are developing products to directly boost company sales, moving the IT department into an era of product development, away ...  Continue Reading

• Tackling the IT security and compliance challenges for SMEs

  SME IT leaders discussed the cyber threat landscape and its impact on small and medium-sized businesses at a Computer Weekly roundtable  Continue Reading

• Telemedicine in the NHS: The benefits and costs of implementing telecare services

  Health professionals agree patients will have to do more home monitoring in the future if the NHS is to cope with an expanding population. But how advanced is the telemedicine market in the UK, and how well is the NHS positioned to implement ...  Continue Reading

• Spotlight profile: Sapior - risk-free data sharing

  Sapior is a provider of web-based services that de-risk the collection, linking and processing of sensitive data. Its on-demand browser-based service allows users to avoid the costs and breach risks of maintaining a central database. The company ...  Continue Reading

• Spotlight profile: Stickyworld - real-time digital communication

  StickyWorld is a web platform for display, dialogue and decision-making. It is a project management, design review and exhibition platform mainly for education, design professionals, buildings maintenance, property marketing and development. However...  Continue Reading

• Cloud backup is ready for the enterprise

  Cloud backup services have seen increased adoption by SMBs, but with a choice of methods and tighter controls, cloud backup is now also a viable enterprise alternative.  Continue Reading

• How the financial services sector uses big data analytics to predict client behaviour

  The financial services sector has gone through unprecedented change in the last few years. Customers are expecting a more personalised service from their banks. Regulators have reacted to the credit crunch with significant changes to regulation with...  Continue Reading

• Integrated wired and wireless LAN security? Not so fast

  Combining wired and wireless LAN security solutions may be a plus for smaller companies, but larger enterprises fear security integration could result in vulnerabilities.  Continue Reading

• Datacentre services supplier Equinix gives its top three tips for apprenticeship selection

  Equinix, provides datacentre services, operating 90 datacentres worldwide, and is taking on two apprentices on 5 September in a four-year "Electrotechnical" programme to grow the team.  Continue Reading

• How to choose an ERP system?

  Replacing your company's ERP system is a once every ten years or more project. Given the magnitude of the decision, what are the steps you can take to maximise your chance of success?  Continue Reading

• Open source storage users break free of vendor lock-in

  Open source storage frees users of the need for proprietary software on top of commodity disk. Read how UK IT departments have used it to gain cost-saving advantages.  Continue Reading

• Best of vForum Awards 2011 nomination form: SYDNEY

  Hosted by TechTarget the Best of vForum Awards 2011 will take place during vForum in Sydney, 19-20 October 2011. Enter so your IT project can receive the recognition it deserves.  Continue Reading

• The Best of vForum 2011 Awards: Have you signed up?

  If you are an IT leader who delivers value to your business through innovative use of virtualization, cloud computing and IT as a Service, don’t miss The Best of vForum 2011 Awards. Hosted by TechTarget, the Best of vForum Awards 2011 will take ...  Continue Reading

• Buyer's Guide: How to make business intelligence work for your organisation

  The last few years have seen a flurry of activity in the business intelligence (BI) markets. The approach of reporting against data in a static manner was put under pressure by users demanding something a lot more flexible, where they did not need ...  Continue Reading

• IT and marketing: working together for business success

  The IT department builds things that scale and last, while marketing wants the next big thing - and needed it yesterday. How can heads of technology work effectively with marketing? Cliff Saran investigates  Continue Reading