Stories about: Interplay

Scooping up soil samples and searching for elements that could support life on Mars isn't just an adventure for the Mars Lander and the robotic arm doing the scooping.

Just this week while I was on-site, an IT services company serving a client of mine asked for my help. They needed to know where to put their efforts in securing information. Their customers are varied, with a range of systems and connectivity. For each infrastructure, they wanted to know, where are the highest risks? In one case, there are two connections to the Internet, remote access, mobile users, and a complex web of systems and networks, some with external data sharing.

Looking to bolster technologies that support bandwidth-heavy applications, such as virtualization, collaboration, unified communications and video, LAN switching vendors are set to roll out a flurry of new products and enhancements, highlighted by Cisco's new data center switch and Juniper's expected rollout of edge, core and data center boxes.

Security researchers have been touting the growing nature of professionalism among virus authors over the last several years, but new evidence points to increased cooperation between malware writers spread around the globe, according to some experts.

We live in an era of "virtual" corporations, rapid product lifecycles, and ever-changing alliances between businesses. These trends put increasing pressure on companies to find flexible, innovative ways to connect with their partners, customers, and suppliers--known in IT circles as business-to-business (B-to-B) commerce. However, while the Internet has proven a boon to some aspects of B-to-B commerce, many critical B-to-B operations remained mired in the rigid and costly territory of traditional enterprise architectures. In general, IT connections between businesses are difficult to maintain and complex to change.

Bill Gates has backed a sweeping plan to reshape Microsoft's development efforts to adapt to the threats and opportunities presented by the rapid growth of new Internet-based services.

Just because IBM and Sun Microsystems made a show of playing nice at JavaOne this week in San Francisco does not mean the two companies have entirely repaired their rift over the development of Java standards, observers at the annual Java developers conference said.

Few areas in business create more sparks, conflict and frustration than the interplay between tech support and its customers. Expectations on both sides are often unrealistic, and appreciating each other's position is tough. Here are some tips to help take the sting out of the help desk/customer relationship.

The transition to Microsoft's brave new world of managed code will probably take a decade, during which time Windows programmers will struggle with the complexities of a hybrid managed/unmanaged environment -- both in the Windows OS itself and in the componentized applications and services layered on top of it. Instrumenting these very different programming environments -- so that developers can analyze, profile, and more effectively debug programs straddling the unmanaged and managed worlds -- is a big challenge that Compuware Corp.'s latest offering, DevPartner Studio 7.1, tackles fearlessly.

IT departments risk investing in inappropriate technology if system administration staff are shunned during the purchasing process, according to US Systems Administrators’ Guild (SAGE) president Geoff Halprin.