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  Obama's H-1B answer in forum may haunt him

  WASHINGTON -- Until President Barack Obama responded to a question about H-1B visas during an online forum last week, the administration had said little about the controversial program.

• Salesforce.com shakes up Standard support plan features

  Salesforce.com has made a series of changes to its support services that include the removal of certain features from the Standard tier, but which the company says overall will provide a better experience for customers.

• Apps-related jobs tallied at 466K in U.S.

  Nearly half a million jobs in the U.S. have been created because of the 1 million-plus applications designed for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, according to a new study.

• SAP community portal launch date still unclear due to bugs

  Serious technical problems that have delayed the rollout of an upgrade to SAP's community portal are persisting, to the point where the company is no longer specifying a launch date.

• Engineer's wife 'ferocious' in Obama Q&A on H-1Bs

  The White House is following up on an offer made by President Barack Obama this week to help find a job for an unemployed semiconductor engineer in Texas. The offer was made during a live online town hall after the engineer's wife questioned the government's policy concerning H-1B visa workers.

• In depth: The new help desk - agile, educational, efficient

  A help desk can be a real lifesaver for employees, not to mention a productivity boost. A keyboard stops working, or Outlook crashes repeatedly, and a technician is just a phone call away. Even complex issues can usually be resolved internally, and relatively quickly, without needing an outside vendor.

• Guide: How to bulletproof your website

  'Tis the season to begin ramping up online shopping activity, and for retailers that means doing all they can to ensure their websites are up, highly available and able to handle peak capacity. Looming in many IT managers' minds is the cautionary tale of Target, whose website crashed twice after it was inundated by an unprecedented number of online shoppers when the retailer began selling clothing and accessories from high-end Italian fashion company Missoni.

• IT inferno: The nine circles of IT hell

  Spend enough time in the tech industry, and you'll eventually find yourself in IT hell -- one not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his "Divine Comedy."

• Get the IT career you want: Develop business value

  A lot of technology professionals are frustrated with the IT profession. They can't find a job or move into the position that they want. They're always hearing that demand exists, but that's not what their personal experience has shown them. They feel they have the skills for the job, and have even put in the time it takes to be qualified or certified in the technologies in demand. But the requirements for IT career development remain elusive.

• How the iPad will change IT forever

  When evaluating the adoption of mobile enterprise applications, it's important to understand the overall trends driving the adoption of the iPad within the enterprise. As I worked on the book, iPad in the Enterprise: Developing and Deploying Business Applications, I spoke to, interviewed, and received feedback from dozens of technology authors, industry analysts, enterprise software executives, Fortune 1000 CIOs, and other visionaries of enterprise IT. I felt that the best way to explore this concept was to hear from those industry leaders directly.

Whitepapers about it management

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  Forecasting & Planning - Achieving the correct staffing levels with continually fluctuating demands

  Managing a high performing service operation in today’s complex environment requires a complete rethink of the way the operation is managed. Accepting current capacity without a real understanding of the fluctuating demand will lead to inconsistent performance. This white paper looks at the applications and processes available to achieve a balanced demand capacity curve, which will deliver consistent high quality service, satisfied customers and good margins.

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  Endpoint Security Performance in Desktop Virtualization Environments

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  Lower Security Risks with Virtual Patching

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  Top 10 Reasons to Embrace Workshifting