In Depth

In Depth

• Open source software - Essential Guide

  Free and open source software is seeing steady adoption among small to large UK businesses, as they begin to take it to the heart of their organisations for key enterprise applications in a bid to lower IT costs.  Continue Reading

• Energy management systems – Essential Guide

  Enterprise energy management systems can help to lower an enterprise’s carbon footprint and make the data centre more environmentally friendly, with the ultimate aim to reduce operational costs through more efficient use of IT resources.  Continue Reading

• Does Bluetooth have a future? – Essential Guide

  Bluetooth, the wireless radio technology for short distance mobile communications, has become pervasive in mobile computing, used in laptops and headsets as well as popular smart phones such as the BlackBerry, and even in Radio Frequency ...  Continue Reading

• CRM solutions – Essential Guide

  Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions and CRM products are a particular breed of business software application that allows a company to measure and control all of its contacts with customers.  Continue Reading

• Lower your software licence fees

  The downturn has given organisations the opportunity to revisit their software licences and maintenance contracts to make cost savings.  Continue Reading

• Software audits organisation's carbon footprint

  The green sensibility has been on the march for many years, but as far as the IT industry has been concerned the debate has focused mainly on the concept...

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• Using business intelligence to steer through the recession

  Business intelligence is one of the few areas in the IT sector to have remained buoyant during the economic downturn, as organisations use the technology to help them reduce costs and optimise operations.  Continue Reading

• A guide to storage virtualization

  Few technologies are more confusing than storage virtualization. Without a guide to explain the different storage virtualization solutions, storage administrators who want to deploy this technology will be lost.  Continue Reading

• Business intelligence: Collaborative decision-making

  The internet's academic roots lay in collaboration, but the rise of client/server computing favoured a more hierarchical way of working. However, the rise of Web 2.0 platforms has both revealed and tapped into a desire for knowledge sharing and ...  Continue Reading

• IT jobs freefall slows in Q2

  Amid the worst UK recession since the computer was invented, the decline in the job market is continuing, but slowing  Continue Reading

• Business Intelligence: the case for predictive analytics

  The idea of having a tool that can help organisations forecast the future is an appealing one, especially when living through the uncertainty of today's recessionary climate.  Continue Reading

• Find the only way to complete the nine-digit line

  Early research carried out in the 1800s, without the benefit of computers, showed there is only one way to plug the numbers 1 to 9 (no zero) into this expression...  Continue Reading

• Business intelligence: where is BI heading?

  Despite all the money invested in IT systems over the years, a study by IBM reveals that two-thirds of UK mid-market businesses still rely on error-prone manual processes when it comes to dealing with data, the lifeblood of any effective 21st ...  Continue Reading

• Network monitoring – Essential Guide

  Network monitoring systems and network testing technologies have evolved greatly over time, offering more automation, more ways to test servers and systems, and more ways to alert network administrators, sysadmins and IT managers of problems with ...  Continue Reading

• Email security – Essential Guide

  Email security is a priority for all businesses, with the growing threat of hackers, viruses spam, phishing and identity theft, as well as the need to secure business information.  Continue Reading

• IT outsourcing for small businesses (SMEs) – Essential Guide

  IT outsourcing can help small businesses reduce IT costs and access new technologies. It begins understanding which IT operations could benefit from being managed by a third party service provider, which could be an offshore outsourcer or someone ...  Continue Reading

• Point of Sale (POS) software - Essential Guide

  Point of Sale (POS) software, also known as electronic Point of Sale (ePOS), is an essential application for retail or hospitality businesses because it manages checkout operations and is what the customer sees when they make a transaction.  Continue Reading

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software suppliers – Essential Guide

  Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software suppliers come in all shapes and sizes, with the vital business process software available as a client server application, a hosted ERP service or even via a web-based portal.  Continue Reading

• Enabling business while minimising risk

  In the first part of a report from an exclusive Computer Weekly roundtable, in association with Oracle, Joe O'Halloran discovers how IT security professionals are coping with unprecedented demands for their services.  Continue Reading

• Disclose the single prime digits to solve the sum

  There are very few equations of the type PxPPP=PPPP (four only, I understand). Once these are found, the solution soon reveals itself as follows:  Continue Reading

• Small business servers – Essential Guide

  Small business servers, both server hardware and server software, is designed to help any small business planning to grow its operations.  Continue Reading

• Computer security for small businesses – Essential Guide

  Computer security for small businesses can be multi-layered, using desktop security products such as antivirus, antispam and firewalls, and network intrusion detection, and hardware technologies such as security tokens, disk encryption and biometric...  Continue Reading

• Cloud-based simulation cuts engineers' design costs

  One of the big challenges in computer-based design is the amount of processing power required to simulate how designs will perform in the real world.  Continue Reading

• How to set up your small business computer network - Essential Guide

  Setting up a small business computer network has become easier over the years with technology improving, and with storage and networking peripherals evolving to incorporate plug and play features  Continue Reading

• The best software for small businesses (SMEs) - Essential Guide

  The best software for small businesses is software designed to help them to run their operations better, cut costs and replace paper processes. The most popular software packages include accounts, office productivity, email and communications, but ...  Continue Reading

• Making a small business mobile

  LTT Vending has improved its bottom line with a BlackBerry mobile integration system, supplied by T-Mobile and rolled out by the in-house IT team.  Continue Reading

• Outsourcing contracts: Getting started - Essential Guide

  Outsourcing contracts can be complex affairs, but a good outsourcing contract will examine service level agreements, penalties and rewards, timeframes and measurements, regular reviews, and exit strategies.  Continue Reading

• Tech start-ups thrive at UK universities

  According to BERR, there are currently around 4.7 million SMEs in the UK today, but where are the new technology start-ups coming from? Steve Gold looks at the University of Manchester's commercial incubators and some of their business offspring.  Continue Reading

• Apollo 11: 40th Anniversary special report

  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

• Apollo 11: The computers that put man on the moon

  It is hard to appreciate the technical challenges involved in putting a man on the moon, but 1960s computer technology played a fundamental role.  Continue Reading

• Top seven data loss issues

  Eighteen months on from the HMRC data loss scandal - where contractors lost the details of 25 million Britons - Stephen Pritchard investigates why there is little evidence that the rate of privacy breaches is falling.  Continue Reading

• Internet law – Essential Guide

  Internet law is closely related to the laws that relate to other similar areas of broadcasting, retail, and information handling, and in many cases, internet laws are identical to those covering the offline world for such things as data protection, ...  Continue Reading

• Reconstruct the sum using all six digits

  Answer: And the bonus puzzle: Try more puzzlers >> Go...  Continue Reading

• Green data centres – Essential Guide

  Green data centres have been on the increase over the past few years, and there are a number of ways to make your data centres more environmentally friendly, through the use of energy efficient technology and servers and systems that require less ...  Continue Reading

• UK data storage management case studies

  Keep up-to-date with our latest UK case studies on data storage management, data backup and recovery, storage infrastructure management and more.  Continue Reading

• Pick nine cards to construct a magic square

  Magic square theory, in relation to any 3x3 array made up of nine consecutive numbers, states that the central cell will always be one third of the constant, so we can place the 9 with confidence.  Continue Reading

• Business internet providers (for SMEs) – Essential Guide

  There are literally hundreds of UK business internet providers that offer broadband, mobile internet and e-commerce services to SMEs.  Continue Reading

• Video conferencing and collaboration on the cheap

  Travel budgets are being squeezed -- however, top-end videoconferencing suites are not widespread as yet, generally due to the high costs of tele-immersion systems, and the need for dedicated rooms and managed high-bandwidth connections  Continue Reading

• Project management software – Essential Guide

  There are literally dozens of good project management software applications out there, with Microsoft Project being one of the most popular mid-range project management packages, and the likes of Primavera being popular at the higher end.  Continue Reading

• Computer equipment recycling – Essential Guide

  Computer equipment recycling and refurbishing is an important part of an organisation’s sustainable waste strategy.  Continue Reading

• Standard Life keeps IT fresh with enthusiasm and experience

  Sandy Crombie joined Standard Life 40 years ago in the IT department. Some of the code he helped to developed back then is still in use today. He is now...  Continue Reading

• Eight-point guide for migrating to cloud computing

  With its promise to cut costs and ease of scalability, the attractions of cloud computing for IT managers are straightforward, but the silver lining still eludes some enterprises reluctant to release sensitive data.  Continue Reading

• Podcast: Backing up a virtual server environment

  Learn about backing up a virtual server environment, some of the biggest issues that arise in backing up virtual machines (VMs), and what users can do to make VM backup easier.  Continue Reading

• Data recovery software - Essential Guide

  Data recovery software is a specialised field, with the software designed particularly for hard drive data recovery.  Continue Reading

• Competition: Top Web 2.0 woes and social media mistakes

  Competition now closed - you told us your stories of Web 2.0 woes for a chance to win the latest MacBook White 2 or an iPod Nano. Sponsored by Blue Coat Systems.  Continue Reading

• Distributed systems grid and cloud - Essential Guide

  Distributed systems, or distributed computing, have spawned many familiar technologies across the years, including Cloud computing, Grid computing, Utility computing, application service provision (ASP), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Web 2.0.  Continue Reading

• Risk Management Software - Essential Guide

  Risk management software, often linked closely with compliance management software, is designed to lower the overall risk and security implications that enterprises face.  Continue Reading

• Remote Working: Your Office Anywhere

  Remote Working: Your Office Anywhere  Continue Reading

• Flesh out the skeleton with the number seven

  The first thing to realise is that the four-digit number to be divided cannot possibly start with 2 or higher.  Continue Reading

• Features list: August 2009 - Business intelligence

  Features list: August 2009 - Business intelligence  Continue Reading

• Start-ups take advantage of IT breakthrough

  Cambridge has been recognised as an important cluster for technology start-ups since the publication of the Cambridge Phenomenon Report in 1985.  Continue Reading

• Cryptography breakthrough paves way to secure cloud services

  A research student who had a summer job at IBM, has cracked a cryptography problem that has baffled experts for over 30 years. The breakthrough may pave the way to secure cloud computing services.  Continue Reading

• Balancing IT costs during a recession

  Face facts; business is bad. For most businesses, the sustained growth seen in the past 15 years is history.  Continue Reading

• Hardware cuts messaging latency

  SolaceSystems is one relatively new company specialising in messaging middleware and content networking hardware. Solace equipment is being used as the foundation...  Continue Reading

• Executive Overview: Mobile applications services

  In order to become more flexible and agile, and more capable of surviving the current economic climate, companies are making their workers increasingly more distributed and mobile.  Continue Reading

• The benefits of low-cost SaaS for SMEs

  Business management Affordable business tools Accounting Unified communications Recruitment Managed EDI Document management Storage One-stop...  Continue Reading

• Plus ça change, plus c’est la même alphametic

  Solution to Plus ça change, plus c’est la même alphametic  Continue Reading

• Case Study: How Wow saved money by switching to hosting

  Accountancy services firm The Wow Company has saved money and improved its operations with a hosted file management platform and an improved messaging system. The...  Continue Reading

• Features list: July 2009 - SMEs

  Features list: July 2009 - SMEs  Continue Reading

• Unified threat management (UTM) integration challenges

  The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the most important protocol on the Internet, and is used to link the multiple networks that makes up the Internet. Although it performs well, it suffers from many security weaknesses.  Continue Reading

• Creating a secure platform for smart card programmers

  Royal Holloway authors discuss a new architecture for trusted computing in which an existing fixed-function Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is coupled with user application code running on a programmable smartcard.  Continue Reading

• Creating an enterprise security awareness campaign

  Security awareness programmes work better when everyone is involved in the process  Continue Reading

• How fuzz testing and tools can optimise testing processes

  Toby Clarke and Jason Crampton make a string argument for the use of fuzzing at all stages of testing.  Continue Reading

• Computer misuse cases: Get there before the bad guys

  By defining the scenarios in which computer systems could be misused, security professionals can test more thoroughly and assess risk more quickly.  Continue Reading

• Making security awareness programmes more effective

  Geordie Stewart and John Austen believe we could learn a great deal by looking at marketing and psychology disciplines when setting up a security awareness programme.  Continue Reading

• How to tackle a buffer overflow attack and avoid vulnerabilities

  Despite the research and learned papers on the subject, buffer overflow exploits seem to be as popular – and as successful – as ever  Continue Reading

• Fair digital rights management (DRM)

  Royal Holloway authors examine the various proposals that have been made to protect digital content, and why most of them have failed.  Continue Reading

• Deperimeterization changing today's security practices

  Royal Holloway authors explain how basic deperimeterization principles can ensure that security does not suffer when traditional boundaries are eroded.  Continue Reading

• Place the values to unlock the secret of the pyramid

  It is essential the eight selected numbers sum to exactly 45 in this case. This is because here, each number contributes twice, to two vertices, and there...  Continue Reading

• Innovation is a HiT in Spain

  The first HiT World Innovation Summit has been launched in Barcelona this week, with IT developers in mobile technology, green IT and healthcare IT fighting to grab the venture capitalists brought in to view the technology beauty contest taking ...  Continue Reading

• Getting finance in a recession

  Despite the recession firms still need to invest in IT, but gaining finance is harder than ever. In the first part of an exclusive round-up, Joe O’Halloran reports from a roundtable debate hosted by Computer Weekly and Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets ...  Continue Reading

• 2009 Royal Holloway University of London MSc thesis series

  Read a group of information security articles -- from the highly technical to the basic -- authored by recent MSc graduates of Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL).  Continue Reading

• The Puzzler: 34 is the key to the magic square

  Each of the four columns, each of the four rows, and each of the two long diagonals sums to a constant of 34.  Continue Reading

• Cutting-edge analytics

  The explosion of data being managed by organisations is driving demand for solutions to help them extract value and better understand their business and customers. But as competition to extract intelligence from data intensifies, companies will need...  Continue Reading

• Seven ways to make big datacentre savings

  Businesses can make massive savings in the operating costs of their datacentres by taking relatively inexpensive steps, such as removing servers.  Continue Reading

• HCL takes on the world

  Raja Sawhney, European president of outsourcing giant HCL, tells Stuart Lauchlan about the firm's global ambitions  Continue Reading

• Data backup and recovery quiz

  How much do you know about data backup and recovery? Try our data backup and recovery quiz to find out what you know about the various backup tools available for data protection.  Continue Reading

• Best Places to Work in IT 2009: the winners

  The Best Places to Work in IT Awards 2009 were celebrated in London on 22 May. Here we profile the winning workplaces.  Continue Reading

• Wolfram Alpha – how it works (part 2)

  Not every question you ask Wolfram Alpha brings back meaningful results. Peet Morris find out why.  Continue Reading

• Top five mobile working issues

  There can be little doubt that people work better and more when they're able to access corporate applications and data away from the office. But a bewildering array of mobile devices and solutions on the market means IT managers really need to do ...  Continue Reading

• IT integration essential for Santander's M&A strategy

  Banco Santander, the euro zone's biggest bank, has been on an acquisition spree over the past five years, helped by a powerful and flexible core banking system.  Continue Reading

• Integration: Choosing a systems integrator

  The systems integrator market has evolved, developing its specialist know-how to meet the changing needs of IT departments and organisations as they operate with tighter IT budgets.  Continue Reading

• Never the twain sums’ digits’ values shall meet

  Tom Marlow will receive £20 for this highly original contribution. Try more puzzlers >>  Continue Reading

• Conundrums pay tribute to a singular digit – number 7

  The required series of six primes in arithmetical progression is 7, 37, 67, 97, 127 and 157. In the second problem, the skeletal sum reconstructs to...  Continue Reading

• Leave the calculator alone to deduce the missing digit

  The key to a speedy solution is to realise that all factorials greater than 5! must be divisible by 9 (because 3 and 6 are factors of 6! and 3x6=18, which...

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• 3 Peaks Challenge: IT teams make a difference

  The CARE International 3 Peaks Challenge is not far off now, but there's still enough time to get involved and help raise money for an excellent cause.  Continue Reading

• IT salary survey: hard first quarter for 2009

  Nick Enticknap There's no getting away from the fact that times have been tough in the first quarter. The computerweekly.co.uk survey of appointments,...  Continue Reading

• HDS, HP ease storage virtualisation

  HP offers to turn DAS into a SAN, thanks to virtualisation, while HDS makes it easier to adopt the practice.  Continue Reading

• Score a century with an improper fraction

  There are ten other mixed fractions of this type equal to 100, but this is the only one which has a single digit as its whole number. Try...  Continue Reading

• ComputerWeekly Quotes - IT Buyers Guides

  buyers guide  Continue Reading

• Case study: NYSE readies 800Gbps super fast network

  Stock exchange NYSE Euronext is deploying a 100Gbps network from Ciena as part of its plans to improve bandwidth tenfold and reduce latency in financial...

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• Is the Microsoft public sector deal good value for Britain?

  As the Office of Government Commerce updates its software purchasing deal with Microsoft, we look at the implications and the measures of success  Continue Reading

• Comparison of free anti-virus software with paid-for products

  Now, more than ever, computer users have to be extra vigilant to avoid picking up a dose of something nasty online. In the early 90s, viruses were fairly abundant, but since the commercialisation of malware in the early part of this decade, the ...  Continue Reading

• Securing e-business with web application firewalls

  You have had your network firewall in place for years, and it makes you feel safe. Your ports are all locked down, so that no-one can hack your e-mail or FTP servers. So how is it that the database serving content to your website just got hacked, ...  Continue Reading

• Three vital e-discovery security issues

  It is time the UK's information security professionals got to grips with the role they play in e-discovery projects, the process of locating and providing current and stored electronic records for regulatory compliance and civil or criminal ...  Continue Reading

• Put digits on the heptagon and keep all sides constant

  The constant of 26 is the highest that can be achieved.  Continue Reading

• Case study: Virtualisation at the London Borough of Hillingdon

  Our municipal buildings date back to the 1970s, and use power supplies from the same period. Since moving in there we had simply gone out and bought the...

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• SOA rises through the cloud

  Service oriented architecture (SOA) has reached a reasonable level of maturity, and users are seeing greater returns as their IT systems become more cloud-centric.  Continue Reading

• Get Quotes: Content Management System (CMS) Sourcing Guide

  A CMS enables a website to control and create their content effectively and efficiently. To help you make the right decision, download our free guide to CMS software.  Continue Reading

• Get Quotes: Find the best Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Agency

  SEO will help you to maximise your website exposure. Finding a good SEO agency can be difficult, to help you make the right decision, download our free guide to sourcing SEO agencies.  Continue Reading