Technology Topics - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• How AmEx disciplined unruly software updates

  The once-sprawling software development groups at American Express have been reined in.

• Apple iCloud draws CIO concerns

  Last week, Apple unveiled its iCloud service to cheers at its WWDC in San Francisco. CIOs, though, weren't so thrilled. How will iCloud impact the enterprise? This question needs to be answered, hopefully before Apple launches iCloud this fall.

• Survey: CIOs are putting the Cloud first

  Cloud computing is practically mainstream, according to the latest CIO Economic Impact survey of 291 IT leaders. In fact, nearly half (48 per cent) of the CIOs surveyed said they have adopted the government's Cloud First policy, which requires agencies to evaluate cloud options first, over traditional IT approaches, before making any new IT investments.

• How the Cloud changes the CIO-CFO conversation

  In the final analysis, cloud computing may not actually save your company any money. I've heard that point argued convincingly by many CIOs in recent months, even those making big investments in cloud technologies. "It's really just a different way of sourcing IT," as one put it. "Everybody still gets paid."

• Smartphone data plans: How to keep bandwidth usage in check

  I love my hometown of San Francisco. Great weather, great views, great food. But terrible radio. So when I'm driving, I've developed the habit of tuning into Pandora on an iPhone that I link to my car radio. Like a lot of other AT&T customers, I've been moved from my unlimited data plan to measured service. Yes, that was my choice, but what has the metered plan done to my music habit? And does that mean I made a mistake?

• Cell phones and cancer: 8 precautions worth taking

  The good thing about being an adult is you get to make your own decisions. The bad thing? You get to make your own decisions - and live with the consequences.

• IT roles shift with move to cloud

  When Jim Honerkamp was hired as CIO of Steel Technologies last summer, he immediately identified a major problem on the company's IT org chart. Of the 34 technology professionals employed by the $1.6 billion processor of flat-rolled steel, nearly half were working in IT infrastructure. The anemic business-analysis group had a staff of three.

• Will Skype be another Microsoft license gotcha?

  After Microsoft acquired Skype earlier this month for $8.5 billion, most of the questions revolved around how Skype's IM, voice and video calling features will fit into Microsoft enterprise products such as Outlook and Lync.

• Why we chose Exchange Online, not Google Apps

  The City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has never owned an Exchange server, but starting on Memorial Day it will roll out Exchange and Outlook e-mail for 2,700 of its workers.

• Calculating virtualization, cloud costs: Four approaches

  Until recently, almost no IT industry vendor or analyst questioned the assumption that nearly all kinds of virtualization deliver quick, significant cost savings compared to computing only in the physical world.

• Cloud CIO: Like open source, cloud hides in plain sight

  I came across an article in InfoWorld about a survey that TheInfoPro conducted among Fortune 1000 firms regarding their use of public cloud storage offerings. The bottom line: they haven't, they aren't, and they won't. 87 per cent of respondents stated they have no plans to use public storage-as-a-service, while only 10 per cent say that they will. Clearly, the survey indicates this market segment has no use for cloud storage.

• The trouble with coding across the Clouds, part 2

  The best cloud applications have development (or at least scripting) capabilities for creating and extending the platform's database and computational capabilities. But even the best of the cloud applications must put in limiters for their platform/development environments: an app isn't a general purpose run-time or generic object container. For example, the development language must be made safe for a multi-tenant deployment, and must be well-behaved so that user code can't take down the virtual machine, database, or overall application.

• How to plan now for hybrid cloud management

  There's no question that cloud computing will be the trend to alter organizations' infrastructure the most over the next few years, especially as firms transition from basic server virtualization to the private cloud. But today these environments are still relatively immature, acting as two distinct entities; applications are deployed in one or the other. But private cloud will not be the end of the road for cloud computing. Over the next three years, leading edge IT shops will start blurring the boundaries between public and private IaaS environments, so that applications can move between them based on immediate needs and economics-known as hybrid cloud. Enterprise architects can begin planning for this now by creating a road map that lays out the necessary capabilities for a hybrid cloud and using these to evaluate the capabilities provided by today's vendors and products.

• The trouble with coding across the clouds: Part 1

  Most cloud applications have development (or at least scripting) capabilities that allow for deep customization plus some level of database access and computational capabilities. But even the best of the cloud applications must put in limiters for their platform/development environments: an app isn't a general purpose run-time or generic object container. For example, the development language must be made safe for a multi-tenant deployment, and must be well-behaved so that user code can't take down the virtual machine, database, or overall application. Further, some kinds of language constructs must be limited to prevent resource hogging and deadlocks. (Indeed, if you think about the billion lines of user code that Salesforce.com has running in their cloud, keeping quick responsiveness and good uptime stats is a non-trivial task.)

• Home Wi-Fi network security: 4 ways to avoid big trouble

  Locking down your home Wi-Fi network with a password is like making sure you eat your broccoli. It's probably good for you, but you probably think it's not much of a priority or a big deal. Well, it's time to make an attitude adjustment. It turns out that you can cause yourself a good deal of trouble by leaving that door to your system unlocked.