Stories by John Dix

Tower, tower, come in tower

It is hard to put your finger on any one thing that sums up developments in the world of IT this year, but a speaker at one of Network World's recent IT Roadmap conferences had an interesting analogy that seems apt.

Written by John Dix19 Dec. 11 22:31

The water pump alarm

If nothing else, the now disputed "hacking" of an Illinois water utility has brought the spotlight back to shine on the vulnerability of our national infrastructure.

Written by John Dix02 Dec. 11 03:35

Corralling complexity

It has been referred to as Moore's Flaw: The IT complexity that results from the inexorable innovation driven by Moore's Law.

Written by John Dix21 Nov. 11 22:32

Getting a handle on complexity

Everyone knows complexity is a foe of IT. But how bad is it, and how do you tell if your decisions are making it better or worse? Peter Leukert, CIO of Commerzbank, one of the largest banks in Germany, set to find out. Leukert, who runs the financial service giant's 3,800 member centralized IT group, built an IT Complexity Model to get a handle on the problem, and then turned to consulting firm Capco Partners to help get other financial service firms involved. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with Leukert and Mat Small, Partner with Capco in New York, for a briefing on the effort.

Written by John Dix21 Nov. 11 17:32

Assessing the APT threat

Do <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/security.html">security</a> vendors secretly create the attacks their tools are designed to ward off? Of course not, but that old chestnut hints at a broader suspicion about whether the current state of security is really as bad as the security firms make it out to be, especially when it comes to the latest poster child: advanced persistent threats.

Written by John Dix07 Nov. 11 22:28

A BlackBerry user's first impressions of his new iPhone 4S

I've been a BlackBerry user for years but finally decided I needed a device that provided a better Web browsing experience so just made the leap to an Apple iPhone 4S and thought I'd share some impressions.

Written by John Dix26 Oct. 11 04:31

Vendors as partners

Ken Piddington, CIO of Global Partners LP, an $8 billion energy company in the Northeast, recently implemented an innovative vendor partnership program that he hopes will improve the product and services the company gets from suppliers while helping those suppliers more efficiently serve the company and benefit from the relationship.

Written by John Dix22 Aug. 11 20:39

Communicate the value, not the tech

As we close out 2010 and welcome 2011 it is clear we're at an interesting juncture in IT, with new opportunities stretching out before us. The key will be what we make of the opportunities and how we position our efforts to capitalize on them.

Written by John Dix20 Dec. 10 17:12

Cisco bets state-of-the-art data center on UCS

Cisco bet big on its UCS products for data centers – and now it's going "all in" with a massive, resilient and green data center built on that integrated blade architecture.

Written by John Dix09 Nov. 10 02:06

Complexity of IT systems will be our undoing

Roger Sessions, CTO of ObjectWatch and an expert in software architecture, argues that the increasing complexity of our IT systems will be our undoing.  In fact, he just recently got a patent for a methodology that helps deal with complex IT systems. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with Sessions to get his take on the extent of the problem and possible solutions.

Written by John Dix04 Nov. 10 03:24

Juniper execs share network vision

Juniper Networks has always been about high performance and, since it straddles the carrier and enterprise markets, has an interesting perspective on where these worlds intersect. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with Kim Perdikou, EVP and GM of the Infrastructure Products Group, and David Yen, EVP and GM of the Fabric and Switching Technologies Business Group, to discuss converging needs, tech trends and the company's Stratus project, a single-layer network architecture.

Written by John Dix08 Feb. 10 16:29

Climate Savers Step In Right Direction

Google, Intel and the other backers of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative are to be commended for their efforts to address an issue that is on the minds of corporate buyers but not well understood.

Written by John Dix18 June 07 14:36
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