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Strategies for Dealing With IT Complexity 24/12/2007 10:30:47
Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business. - +
What Price Innovation? 05/11/2007 13:44:31
CIOs say they want more than the traditional “your mess for less” relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn’t it happening?CIOs say they want more than the traditional "your mess for less" relationship with their outsourcing providers. And the providers want to market themselves as partners in innovation. So why isn't it happening? - +
Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04/02/2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients? - +
Kimberly-Clark's Secrets to RFID Success 29/10/2007 13:24:18
The man in charge of keeping store shelves across the US stocked with Kleenex and Huggies reveals the company’s best practice for making RFID workAs one of Wal-Mart's top suppliers, Kimberly-Clark got onboard the RFID revolution early and has been one of the technology's most ardent supporters. Mark Jamison, vice president of customer supply chain management, talked with CIO about the company's overall supply chain strategy, how RFID fits into the mix and how to make RFID work for the business
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Understanding Email Marketing: A Guide for SMBs
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Web Security SaaS: The Next Generation of Web Security
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Chemical company Qenos will upgrade its SAP platform and deploy a business intelligence portal to complement its existing Web-based reporting infrastructure.
Qenos is using SAP R4.7 and the upgrade has been under way for the past two months and is due to go live in March, 2008.
Applications development team leader Ray Thomas told Computerworld the company has a six-month window of opportunity to do the upgrade and is now building test environments.
"We're also deploying a portal and the SAP BI component as part of a business warehouse," Thomas said, adding SAP is a good product, but it is complex.
"We're running R4.7 and have had problems in many areas. It's not so much with SAP but with the business processes around various modules."
Thomas blames in part Qenos' implementation of SAP than the technology itself, but believes it is a difficult platform to support given the company's heritage and size.
SAP and Notes are running on separate partitions of an IBM AIX system which Thomas says has a good uptime and security record.
Qenos is not new to BI and back in 2001 became an early adopter of Information Builders' Web-based reporting application to gain a consolidated view of its diverse infrastructure.
"We had a range of request for reports and didn't have any reporting engine," Thomas said. "Engineers write all sorts of custom code in Excel and over a number of years lots of things started to fall apart so we were looking for a standard platform for reporting and BI."
Qenos' standard requirements were a Web-based reporting system that would allow it to extract data from SAP, Lotus Notes, and Oracle, and process plant systems running on SQL Server.
After viewing proposals from Cognos and the now Business Objects-owned Crystal Reports, it was the Web-based features of Information Builders that won the deal.
"Most didn't have Web-based reporting at the time and that was a key requirement as we have a complex desktop environment with some 200 applications so the last thing we wanted was another client to support," Thomas said. "It worked out nicely as an efficient, effective solution and there is good local support."
Qenos has a small IT team of 16 people with a few contractors for development projects.
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Prioritizing Services with IT Service Management (ITSM)
Computerworld Live Webinar
Wednesday 20th, August 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney, Australia)
To be repeated on:
Thursday 4th, September 2008
11:00am EST (Sydney Australia)
Sign up and receive a free copy of The Forrester WaveTM Service Desk Management Tools, Q2 2008 at the conclusion of the Webinar.
Attend and discover:
- How to deliver value to your business through ITSM
- Best practice ITSM implementation
- Why emphasis is changing from optimizing IT management processes to better servicing customers and demonstrating real dollar value
- If service-oriented ITSM is best for your business
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Computerworld Live Podcast #97: The Future of Enterprise Networking 25/07/2008 09:45:36
This week CW Live chats with Mark Thompson, global sales and marketing manager for HP ProCurve, on the future of the enterprise networking. Mark discusses the trends we can expect to see in the near future and how the right infrastructure can ensure your enterprise network is secure. - +
Computerworld Live Podcast #96: Security at the Edge 11/06/2008 09:22:22
CW Live speaks with Amol Mitra, HP ProCurve Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific and Japan. Today's topic: how enterprises are starting to shift away from simply controlling security via server logins, firewalls and moving to more adaptive security frameworks. - +
Data Management Edition #10: Multi-Petascale Systems 02/05/2008 09:12:33
This week we look at sustainability and the development of multicore technologies to build multi-petascale systems. - +
IT Security Edition #11: How to poison the Storm botnet 01/05/2008 08:51:55
This week CW Live presents a case study on how to poison the notorious Storm botnet . Plus we take a look at Cisco's plans for Ironport. - +
IT Security Edition #10: Cyber-battles fought and won 24/04/2008 11:09:47
Vendors bow to end user pressure to improve product security, and we take a look at the latest concepts shaping the cyber-battlefield of the future.
Viva la Verticals! Key to Vendor Growth is Through Vertical Market Opportunities, Says IDC 2008-09-05 11:05:00+10
F-Secure delivers fastest protection in the online world 2008-09-04 16:50:00+10
NETGEAR expands ProSafe team as business-class products take off in SME market 2008-09-04 16:27:00+10
Rogue security apps dominate Fortinet's Aug 2008 IT threat report 2008-09-04 16:00:00+10
Adaptec Intelligent Power Management Reduces Storage Power Consumption Up to 70 Percent 2008-09-04 11:28:00+10
SOA and Agility
Organizations need agility to maintain strategic advantages in businesses operating on faster and faster time-scales. The difference between gaining and losing market share may very well depend on the ability of organizations to deploy updated or new applications before their competitors. Read on to discover how SOA-based application development can meet the promise of reduced application development and maintenance costs through service reuse.
