it management

Features

• In depth: Unified communications still fragmented

  Unified communications (UC) technology has garnered a fair amount of attention, much of it due to vendors touting their UC offerings as the answer to problems workers have keeping in touch with colleagues, business partners and customers in a highly frenetic, increasingly mobile business world.

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  Five things CIOs should know about big data

  Five key points CIOs should know when considering big data

• Today, printers. Tomorrow, 'integrated peripherals'?

  Out went 42 aging black and white copiers with interface boxes that let them serve as printers. In went 42 new networked multi-function printers (MFPs) that could do color printing and copying and scan directly to e-mail, fax or files. And the owner, the Park Hill School District in Kansas City, MO, saves $19,000 yearly.

• True tech confessions: Sinners and winners

  We all make mistakes. But when you work in IT, those errors can quickly go public.

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  The upside of shadow IT

  First, a scary statistic: Gartner predicts that in less than three years, 35 per cent of enterprise IT expenditures will happen outside of the corporate IT budget. Employees will regularly subscribe to collaboration, analytic and other Cloud services they want, all with the press of a button. Others will simply build their own applications using readily available Cloud-based tools and development platforms.

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  Mobile apps: The IT pro's new power tools

  Think the mobile revolution is all about word games and social networking apps? Think again. Heavy-duty apps for IT pros have arrived on mobile platforms and they're quickly changing the face of IT systems management.

• IT's worst addictions (and how to cure them)

  Are you a jargon junkie? Got an insatiable appetite for information? Do you rule over your company's systems with an iron fist, unwilling to yield control until someone pries the keyboard from your cold, dead hands?

• 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.

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  Security fail: When trusted IT people go bad

  It's a CIO's worst nightmare: You get a call from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), saying that some of the Microsoft software your company uses might be pirated.

• With thick skin, Google CIO finds job rewarding

  When Ben Fried left his post as IT managing director at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google's CIO in May 2008, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars, like co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and Vice President Vint Cerf. In a recent interview with IDG News Service, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs, including the urgent need for tablet device strategies. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

• A daughter follows her father into a mainframe career

  Kristine Harper and her father, Tom, both work on mainframe computers. BOSTON - Kristine Harper was about 12-years-old when her father took her to his office to take part of a "take your daughter to work day." Tom Harper said his daughter was less than enthusiastic about his profession that day.