Opinion

Opinion

• Insourcing is no panacea

  When outsourcing goes sour, think before you act.  Continue Reading

• NHS IT project: divided we fall?

  Private angst among senior executives that spills over into the public domain is a compelling spectacle.  Continue Reading

• Watch your KPIs as new law starts to bite

  The Operating and Financial Review (OFR) has become a legal requirement for all UK quoted companies for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2005.  Continue Reading

• Protect yourself and get the best out of outsourcing deals with India and China

  There are several legal issues that companies need to consider in order to get the best from their offshore outsourcing arrangements with India and China.  Continue Reading

• Service can offer route to respect

  It is understandably galling for many IT directors that their departments are often seen as simply providing a service and as a cost centre rather than a profit generator.  Continue Reading

• Web application development continues to evolve as the Ajax approach catches on

  Google put the Ajax development method on the map with the launch of its Google Mail service, and now there are more than 50 websites taking a similar approach to online applications.  Continue Reading

• Time for a PC lock down

  Forget hacking, a significant proportion of unauthorised access to systems occurs when someone sits down at sombody else's computer. In our increasingly litigious and regulation-bound society, e-mail messages have become one of the primary forms of ...  Continue Reading

• Employers must tackle age discrimination now to avoid losing talented IT employees

  Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who is perhaps the best known IT worker on the planet, celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and it is worth contrasting his fortunes and prospects with those of other people working in IT.  Continue Reading

• Noble intentions, but can government IT strategy deliver its shared services vision?

  In the Cabinet Office at Admiralty Arch in London, on 2 November, John Hutton, then a Cabinet Office minister, parried questions from journalists about the publication of the government's new IT strategy.  Continue Reading

• Public sector IT 'on the verge of era of delivery'

  Government CIO Ian Watmore assesses progress on his pointers for a successful technology profession  Continue Reading

• Secure measures

  Network security is a daily challenge as hacking and viruses proliferate. Cliff Saran reviews some approaches to keeping the bad guys at bay  Continue Reading

• Steer clear of confusion

  Avoid outsourcing storms by giving clear directions, says Phillip Everson  Continue Reading

• The challenges of on-demand integration

  Integrating in-house applications with those provided on demand by a third party can be complex if issues such as data duplication are to be avoided, says Teresa Jones  Continue Reading

• Your shout: Princely project manager, and e-mail aliases

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• What makes a good chief security officer?

  The qualities and skills of an effective chief information security officer include strong ethics, professional qualifications and the right experience, says Richard Starnes  Continue Reading

• Not all dangers have a headline

  The crash of the trading system at the Tokyo Stock Exchange because of a software problem offers a timely reminder that disaster recovery and business continuity planning are essential not simply because of the more sensational incidents such as ...  Continue Reading

• Compliance gets real

  This time it is for real. The government last week published a bill on corporate governance that means there is nowhere for UK directors to hide.  Continue Reading

• Chip virtualisation could boost resilience

  Intel and AMD multicore chips promise more consistent performance, argues Clive Longbottom  Continue Reading

• Beating the USB burglars

  Policies are needed to counter removable media risks, say John Rostern and Jared Landin  Continue Reading

• Whitehall must embrace honesty and openness to succeed with IT

  Government ministers and CIOs have identified the key causes of public-sector IT disasters. So why are mistakes repeated?, asks Tony Collins  Continue Reading

• Getting serious about security

  Security is a topic that raises strong emotions among IT managers. Ask any one of them what they think should be done to improve the state of corporate security and you are likely to elicit one of two pessimistic opinions.  Continue Reading

• Common sense at the Revenue

  The decision by HM Revenue and Customs to postpone the introduction of an online tax collection system for 12 months represents a welcome dose of common sense.  Continue Reading

• Dangers of compromise

  Stephen Castell, in his opinion piece (Computer Weekly, 13 September), related an all too familiar chain of events leading to a systems disaster, and eight points at which warnings should be seen. The problem almost certainly started way before his ...  Continue Reading

• Your shout: NHS e-mail, password security and e-recycling

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• Users need to clear the short-term hurdles in pursuit of the long-term RFID dream

  For fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers, an enterprise-wide investment in radio frequency identification technology based on case and pallet tagging will not generate enough revenue to significantly add to the bottom line.  Continue Reading

• The network's missing link moves closer

  With "application oriented networking", Cisco aims to improve performance through closer interaction between the network and the applications that run on it.  Continue Reading

• Why Microsoft is learning from Linux in its drive to deliver software as a service

  "We are not anti-open source," says Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of competitive strategy. In fact, he makes a point of hiring people with Linux and open source skills for his R&D team and Linux lab.  Continue Reading

• House of cards set to fall?

  The government says ID cards will cost around £100 each, while The London School of Economics says they will cost £300. But this dispute becomes almost insignificant next to the likely cost of poor project management.  Continue Reading

• Your shout: New outsourcing skills, PDF features, Offshore testing

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• A clearer view of real-world IT

  Do you know what you are doing? Do you know what your staff are doing? Pretty basic questions, but ones that it is tempting to ignore. We are not talking about competence here, but about how you and your staff spend your time.  Continue Reading

• Public lessons for private firms

  Many companies are keen to exploit the benefits of mobile IT but fewer have a coherent strategy about how to harness it for the good of the whole organisation.  Continue Reading

• Storage: Age of awareness

  Companies are rapidly adopting a more mature approach to storage, focused on how to manage and protect data through its entire lifecycle, says Cliff Saran  Continue Reading

• Public, not managers, drive online agenda

  As Socitm prepares for its annual conference, the president of the public sector IT directors group looks at the achievements of e-government and future challenges  Continue Reading

• Could companies be getting more from their business intelligence?

  Rationalise and integrate for better value  Continue Reading

• Licensing: Do not become a target

  Beware licence complications of second-hand software, says Quentin Archer.  Continue Reading

• Choose a mentor who will push you out of the comfort zone to reap maximum benefit

  Whether it is a teacher at school, a particularly inspiring boss, or your parents, we all rely on mentors to help our personal development. Some will have a profound effect on our lives, others may not exert such obvious influence, but all will ...  Continue Reading

• Your shout: Security is everyone's responsibility, e-recycling

  Computer Weekly readers have their say.  Continue Reading

• Government focus on management 'laws' reduces the number of problem projects

  For government CIO Ian Watmore, IT is the servant of business and sound business approaches can help bring complex IT projects in on time and to budget  Continue Reading

• Microsoft plans route through the desktop

  Windows users will need to assess carefully how specialised their content needs are before lining up for the software giant's new content platform, says Jim Murphy  Continue Reading

• No jobs for the bad boys

  Can there ever be such a person as an ex-hacker?, asks Mark Hanvey  Continue Reading

• Your shout: 'Dark side' dynamic, contract is king, cyber-terror hysteria

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• Virtualisation offers higher asset usage while masking complexity

  Virtualisation of IT systems enables admin staff to run datacentres effectively while hiding complexity from end-users, says Hamish Macarthur  Continue Reading

• Power struggle could be costly

  The electricity consumption of datacentre servers and desktop PCs should be a concern for any IT director looking to make savings in their IT systems.  Continue Reading

• Putting IT in place

  End-users have technologies that serve their purpose – now they want assistance on how best to use them, says Jon Collins  Continue Reading

• A question of quality

  It is good to see Oracle's chief security officer, Mary-Ann Davidson, admit that the IT industry's biggest challenge is software quality. With users needing masses of patches to manage, the industry is at the bottom of the curve of software quality,...  Continue Reading

• Polishing up the act

  The new Companies Act will affect firms to different degrees but makes proper data management essential, says Jon Fell  Continue Reading

• End-users speak out

  As the increasing volume of data makes storage a hot issue, end-users are spending their money carefully, says Frank Timons  Continue Reading

• Tiers are not enough

  Everyone seems to want a tiered storage architecture but the correct approach is essential to business efficiency, says Geoff Hough  Continue Reading

• Storage and security

  Keeping data stored safely means finding a balance between accessibility, protection and staying within the law, says Correy Voo  Continue Reading

• Your shout: SOA shivers, men only, the real offshore objective

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• SOA: Beware IT balkanisation

  Service-oriented architectures raise security issues, says Jean-Noël Ezingeard  Continue Reading

• Boost IT's credibility

  IT departments and IT leaders are used to being undervalued and taken for granted.  Continue Reading

• Making a habit of strong security

  There is a lot of talk about creating a security culture in the workplace, but for most IT departments it is a tough job to get users across the organisation to understand why it is important, to put it into practice and, even more important, to ...  Continue Reading

• EBS users will have an advantage, but move to Fusion will require careful evaluation

  Enterprise Business Suite should be first choice for new Oracle customers, says Lee Geishecker  Continue Reading

• Can Google bring openness to messaging?

  E-mail style universal interoperability would add huge value for users, says Jack Schofield  Continue Reading

• Web services and SOA enable organisations to simplify exploitation of the mainframe

  The arrival of web services has reduced terrors of mainframe deployment, says Andy Gutteridge  Continue Reading

• Your shout: pear-shaped projects, Scottish teamwork, open-source copyright

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• Think modular for effective recovery plans

  There is no one-size-fits-all business continuity strategy, so think of disaster recovery scenarios as modules that can be invoked depending on the situation, says Josh Krischer  Continue Reading

• A little knowledge is a dangerous thing as end-users add mobile devices to the system

  Encryption could address threat to data security of consumer storage products, says Alan Lawson  Continue Reading

• Managing information: the skills challenge

  Only with a professional approach to management can business integrate four distinct information worlds and beat information overload through quality, says Sharm Manwani  Continue Reading

• Let's sort the bugs before we get regulated

  Developers need to focus on decreasing risk in new releases to an acceptable level. Rather than tackle every single flaw the most risky areas should be addressed first, says Sarah Saltzman  Continue Reading

• Making sense of the information age

  One thing we are not short of in this society is information. A couple of generations have grown up with notions like "the information age" and "information is power". Governments, especially the current one, appear besotted with the idea that the ...  Continue Reading

• Microsoft beefs up collaboration software

  The Office Communicator messaging tool is the latest component in Microsoft's increasingly integrated strategy for collaboration, but does it deliver?, asks Christopher Harris-Jones  Continue Reading

• Disaster but no recovery?

  You are the CIO of a company whose board, a year ago, agreed with your recommendation to upgrade existing computer systems by buying an "ERP-like package", "lightly-customised", from a "solution provider".  Continue Reading

• Revenue must finally face facts

  David Varney has cut an impressive figure since his appointment last year as chairman of HM Revenue and Customs. He gives the impression of leading a new board that wants to sweep away the dusty and unco-ordinated business practices, ancient IT ...  Continue Reading

• How to make ITIL work for your company

  For the past 20 years, IT has been attempting to align itself with business. Yet how many companies still offer poor service based upon reactive helpdesks, haphazard change management and irrelevant service level agreements? And this is despite an ...  Continue Reading

• Make sense of corporate data complexities through master data management systems

  The emerging field of master data management deals with the issue of how to handle data that needs to be shared between different computer systems.  Continue Reading

• Choose the right tools for offshore success

  Sixty six per cent of software projects worldwide are considered failures, more than 50% exceed budget and 84% suffer from overruns, according to research firm The Standish Group. For many corporations, offshoring has been seen as a way of ...  Continue Reading

• End the e-mail data management debacle

  Users are losing confidence in e-mail servers and struggling to find the information they require to conduct day-to-day business.  Continue Reading

• Need for testing limits value of automation as IT managers look to accelerate patching

  Worms and viruses that exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities are appearing faster and faster, prompting IT departments to install security patches at an ever greater speed.  Continue Reading

• Perils of procrastination

  Student houses are notoriously messy. Pots and pans sit around covered in caked-on food, empty beer cans litter the kitchen, while the residents sit in front of day-time television in their dressing gowns.  Continue Reading

• Steer yourself to career success

  The good news is that the IT jobs market is in good shape, as demonstrated by the results of the latest Computer Weekly/SSL salary survey. But for the individual IT professional it is certainly not a case of "summertime and the living is easy".  Continue Reading

• The right fit for public IT

  IT-enabled business change in the public sector needs to be supported by an approach that harnesses the full potential of technology within an overarching vision of public service delivery. This can only be achieved if it is based on an ...  Continue Reading

• Isolating infections to protect IT systems

  With threats to the corporate network on the increase, security is one of the biggest service disrupters facing systems administrators and network managers. IT managers frequently experience concerns regarding security levels, such as those around ...  Continue Reading

• Continuity plans are going public

  Once, business continuity was a matter between a company and its shareholders.  Continue Reading

• Check out the changes in Windows Vista

  Microsoft has released the first beta test version of Windows Vista, formerly known as Longhorn, and it would be a good idea for companies to try it as soon as possible. Compared with the simple transitions from Windows NT4 to 2000 to XP Pro, it may...  Continue Reading

• Virtualisaton key to service improvement in next phase of datacentre consolidation

  Datacentres are going through various stages of consolidation. Driven by the development of technology and the need to contain costs and improve services, the system infrastructure has become more resilient, more available and more secure.  Continue Reading

• Can traditional technology leaders make the transition to become hybrid managers?

  In the Industrial Revolution, with its smoking chimney stacks and noisy steam engines, the impact of new technologies on the way people worked was obvious.  Continue Reading

• HMRC loses its grip on reality

  Loss of contact with reality is a good way for the mind to cope with daily difficulties, according to a Canadian university professor on Radio Four last week.  Continue Reading

• Dose of realism for NHS ITplan

  It is more than three years since ministers launched the national programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) with the publication of a strategy document "21st Century IT".  Continue Reading

• High cost of ignorance

  Over the past couple of months I have attended a series of roundtables with IT managers, talking about asset management. They revealed that one of the biggest barriers to them taking greater control over their software assets was a lack of board ...  Continue Reading

• Commitment will pay off

  The history of outsourcing partnerships can seem a bit like that of the Beckhams' marriage: some early golden years, a lot of hype and, more recently, a load of bad press.  Continue Reading

• IT professionals should beware environmental cost of complexity

  Millions of working PCs are dumped in landfill sites in the UK every year, but why?  Continue Reading

• Overanxious or underinsured?

  The problem with business continuity planning is the third word in that phrase. All the planning in the world is pointless if the reality fails to match when things go pear-shaped.  Continue Reading

• Can volunteering help job prospects?

  Can volunteering help job prospects?  Continue Reading

• Lessons, not lip service

  A firm commitment to learning from completed IT projects will more than repay the cost and effort  Continue Reading

• IT must change in step with the business

  Chief information officer has to be more than a title, as business change demands greater agility from IT and a new view of professionalism from IT management  Continue Reading

• Network and system administrators must acquire new skills to manage storage areas

  The increased focus on data storage has broadened the responsibilities of network managers, but the creation of specialist roles in IT departments could help ease the pressure.  Continue Reading

• European 'no' to software patent directive leaves doors open to protection of new ideas

  Software can still be patented as long as certain conditions are met  Continue Reading

• Joining the helpdesk software revolution could cut costs as users help themselves

  Software for running helpdesks is becoming more accessible by any type of user and can be installed on laptops and mobile devices to help remote workers  Continue Reading

• Framework aids building IT architectures

  Zachman method can improve clarity, consistency and communication  Continue Reading

• Your shout: Successful recruitment and belt-and-braces multi-sourcing

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• The devil is in the data

  The value of mergers or acquisitions can be reduced if data migration is not sorted out before completion  Continue Reading

• Do not ignore your responsibilities under European hardware recycling directives

  Is your business prepared for the effect of EU directives enforcing recycling?  Continue Reading

• New approach to aid security management

  Data extraction software can provide comprehesive view of corporate systems.  Continue Reading

• Your shout: IT figureheads, cowboy agents, backward education

  Computer Weekly readers have their say  Continue Reading

• Chance to have a say on licensing

  Microsoft's planned revamp of its Software Assurance subscription licensing programme in September will fuel debate among IT directors across public and private sector organisations. Does it suit your organisation in terms of the frequency of ...  Continue Reading

• Quick and dirty substitute for Soap

  'Really simple syndication' looks set to provide users with a short cut to the information they regularly need via the internet.  Continue Reading

• Model-based automation can help users keep pace with changing security demands

  Setting up automated systems that respond to events can improve adaptability  Continue Reading

• Know your risks

  Speed is vital to assess and manage swiftly changing risks and meet regulatory demands. A matrix-based approach can offer a faster route than traditional, bottom-up methods  Continue Reading