The pros and cons of different approaches to network access control

One important piece of a multilevel security defense for companies of almostany size is network access control (NAC), which lets you enforce policies forend-user machines.

The basic idea behind NAC -- which can include hardware, software or acombination -- is deceptively simple. Before any end user's computer -- anendpoint -- is allowed on the corporate network, a NAC makes the computer provethat it complies with the company's security policies. For example, you couldset up a NAC to refuse to let a user's PC on the company LAN until the PCreports that it has all the latest patches for its operating system and officesoftware and that it has the latest updates for the corporate antivirus program.If it doesn't have the goods, the device is not getting on the network.

You can upload your files to a 'virtual hard drive' and access themfrom your other devices

"Syncing to the cloud" may sound like marketing-speak, but it's actually aconvenient thing to do: Upload your important files to an online server andaccess them from any of your other computers and mobile devices.

Cloud-based syncing services usually use a virtual drive that exists on yourdesktop in some manner, and it is linked directly to your online storage space.The contents of this virtual hard drive remain in sync across all of thedesktops, notebooks and mobile devices on which you have installed the clientsoftware.

A Look At What's Happening In The Security Field, From Technology To Strategy

With 74% of business PCs running XP, the move is more proof that it's the OSthat won't die

Just a day before Microsoftdrops support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company announced onMonday that people running some versions of Windows 7 can "downgrade" to theaged operating system for up to 10 years.

The move is highly unusual. In the past,Microsoft has terminated downgrade rights -- which let customers replace anewer version of Windows with an older edition without paying for two copies --within months of introducing a new OS.

Key Points

• With the Opteron 6000 Series, you'll get more cores and more memory, and the 6000 Series offers improved bandwidth and support for faster memory speeds.
• You won't pay a luxury tax for investing in a 4P server.
• 6000 Series processors include a variety of ways to automatically and manually manage power and cooling.

What Options Are Available & Which Are Best For SMEs?

Key Points

• The move to wireless sensors cannot only improve security but also allow data centers to achieve a more appropriate sensor count compared to prior times with wired equipment.
• Environmental monitoring may only be part of the real picture. When weighing new solutions, keep an eye on those that can scale to include other areas, such as power consumption.
• Effective monitoring vendors should be able to help managers distinguish objective needs and display experience with integrating their solutions with any existing equipment.

Accept that your company's IT system have been compromised -- thenget towork defending them

Microsoft official says infrastructure and platform cloud lines will blur

Microsoft'sWindows Azure and Amazon'sElastic Compute Cloud tackle two very different cloud computing technologyproblems today, but are destined to emulate each other over time, Microsoftcloud official Tim O'Brien says.
WhereasWindows Azure is a platform-as-a-service cloud, giving developers the toolsthey need to build and deploy Web applications, Amazon EC2 is primarily aninfrastructure-as-a-service cloud, offering on-demand access to customizablevirtual machine instances. 

Hold your iPhone the wrong way and it won't work, say users. There is noproblem but stay tuned for a solution, says Apple. 'Death grip hysteria' isgetting wackier by the minute

Guy walks into an Apple Store, goes to the Genius Bar. He says "My iPhonedoesn't work when I hold it like this." The genius says, "Don't hold it likethat. Next!"

Ba-dum-bum. Thank you, ladies and germs, I got a million of 'em.

• Focus on TCO and not just acquisition cost. Trying to save money on cheaper but less flexible alternatives can cost IT significantly more in the long run.
• Use more than one vendor for different areas of infrastructure spend to avoid lock-in and maximize ongoing negotiation leverage.
Wherever possible, schedule major software projects to coincide with hardware refresh cycles. Combining projects in this manner can minimize disruption and maximize project management economies of scale.

• The depth and breadth of the recession is driving significant and permanent changes to the way IT and data center managers make decisions. Even as the economy shifts toward recovery, long-held approaches to buying new equipment are being questioned.

Saving money and resources goes beyond focusing on the initial acquisitioncost, however. It's no longer simply about getting the best price. Astrategic approach to buying new equipment can drive long-term savingswithin IT and, just as importantly, throughout the organization it serves.Keep the following tips in mind before finalizing any acquisition deals fornew technology.

Pinching Pennies Doesn't Mean Cutting Back On Efficiency

Key Points

• Cutting power costs is a two-part problem: knowing what is happening at a power level down to the circuit and identifying inefficient pieces of equipment.
• Increasing the supply set points for CRAC (computer room air conditioner) units can have a huge impact on cooling costs.
• Small efforts such as monitoring usage, sealing airflow, and keeping equipment up-to-date can add up to big savings.

When CFOs and CEOs tell IT anddata center managers to trim the excess off their budgets, power and cooling aretwo of the usual targets. Although they are both integral players in data centerefficiency, they can't hide forever when cost cutting is the name of the game.Here are some tips and advice to use when you need to do more with less withpower and cooling.

• Google's Fiber For Communities project will deliver speeds of more than 1Gbps to one or more trial locations as part of its effort to improve broadband penetration in the United States.
• The project's huge network pipeline will accommodate a range of applications that can overwhelm current networks, such as high-definition video streaming and real-time multimedia collaboration.
• Although Google is mum on plans following the trials, experts predict the trials will help to spur content providers to provide full network delivery of all content in the future.

Depending on whom you talk to, desktop virtualization is either the hottest trend in IT or an expensive notion with limited appeal

Desktop virtualization harks back to the good old mainframe days of centralized computing while upholding the fine desktop tradition of user empowerment. Each user retains his or her own instance of desktop operating system and applications, but that stack runs in a virtual machine on a server -- which users can access through a low-cost thin client similar to an old-fashioned terminal.

ITEC Portlandis just 2 weeks away on June 15th and there are lots of cool things happening. If you live/work in the Portland area make sure you join us for this fast-paced day focused on the changes in the IT landscape.

1) Check out the updated Agenda, including the just announced IBM Lunchtime Keynote.

2)iPad Giveaway - One lucky attendee will receive a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad.

Web-connected copiers, printers, and fax machines can provide malicious hackers with unfettered access to a trove of data

As an IT admin, you likely spend much time contemplating the security of end-user machines and back-end systems -- yet how often do you consider the security risks posed by copy machines and other smart office devices in your office? As noted in recent reports, documents stored on these machines' internal hard drives can create security risks.

The problem is, today's office-class multifunction printers, fax machines, and copiers often have very capable computers in them, including memory, hard drives, network interfaces, and software...

Like nine-year-old milk, aged browser is spoiled, company argues

Microsoft is urging users to dump the aged Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) with a campaign that claims the browser is past its expiration date.

Assess Your Current Situation, Do Your Due Diligence & Prepare For Setbacks
Key Points

• Determine whether the data center is ready for an upgrade by looking at power, cooling, and existing equipment.
• Have the right people at the ready, including vendors and outside experts if needed.
• Back out of the upgrade if it's not going as planned or too many problems are cropping up. You can always go back to the planning stage and find a better way to proceed later.

I'm tired of the closed system. I'm tired of the capitulation to the Hollywood moguls. I'm tired of Apple's nyet-policy. Apple: eat dirt.

The 1984 images worked for a long time. I tend to identify with iconoclasts. I'm also a tool user. For better and worse, I use computers for a living. In my garage is a huge cabinet with automotive/motorcycle and homeowner tools, but I don't make my living with them.

Deploying and maintaining a wireless network can be a challenge. Ensuring the network is reliable, maintains high performance, provides adequate coverage, and is secure can be complex and time-consuming. During this webinar, we will explore how advancements in radio technologies, wireless management, and network automation have enabled small, leveraged IT staffs to deploy wireless, and meet employee's needs for bandwidth and mobility.

REGISTER TODAY!

Can Harnessing The Wind Bring Down Cooling Costs?

Key Points

• Because renewable energy can increase overall data center efficiency, it can also boost cooling efficiency.
• Challenges abound when it comes to implementing wind power for a specific data center, and it's likely that managers will want to check with wind power producers rather than put their own equipment into place.
• Potential renewable energy regulations should cause data center managers to start thinking about alternative power and cooling strategies sooner rather than later.

Google technologies such as Android and Chrome also will be topics at the Google I/O conference

HTML5 will figure prominently at this week's Google I/O technical conference for developers.

Key Points

Test and make sure that storage recovery plans will deliver when needed by ensuring that business continuity demands are met. Additionally, realize that even backup disks can lose data, so ensure that more than one copy exists.

Make sure that a policy is in place so that business data is stored where it should be and that superfluous data remains on workstation drives.

Using modern storage systems is more efficient than maintaining legacy equipment, so, if possible, migrate to more up-to-date systems.

Storage failures are dangerous for enterprises, especially when critical data is involved. In the worst case, data loss can cause enterprises to close their doors when key data, such as customer records and contacts, is lost forever. But when mistakes are made and things go wrong, data center managers are usually not inclined to advertise their missteps, especially in scenarios where the problems could have been avoided with better management practices.

Grabs almost all the share that Internet Explorer loses

Computerworld - Chrome was the only browser to gain significant usage share last month, and it again trounced Firefox.

By the end of April, Google Inc.'s Chrome accounted for 6.7% of the browsers that surfed to the sites that Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based NetApplications monitors for its clients. Chrome boosted its share by 0.6 percentage points, by far the largest increase of any browser for the month, and the second-highest increase since Google launched the application in September 2008.

Virtually all of Chrome's April expansion came at the expense of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, which dropped 0.7 percentage points to finish the month at 59.95%, the first time that IE has fallen under the 60% mark. IE's decline was lower than the previous month -- it lost nearly a full point of share in March -- but was still above its average monthly decline.

Some mum on timelines, configurations, prices; Cisco Nexus 7000 might require switch fabric upgrade

LAS VEGAS -- Notwithstanding an aggressive first strike by Extreme Networks, switching vendors are largely mum on when and in what configurations they will ship 40G Ethernet products.

Extreme announced and demonstrated four-port 40G Ethernet modules for its Summit X650 stackable edge and BlackDiamond modular switches at the Interop conference here this week. Extreme is pricing the modules aggressively: $1,000 per port, which is only $85 more than the average selling price of a 10G Ethernet port, according to Dell'Oro Group.

Yet, with the exception of Force10 Networks and Brocade, Extreme's competitors would not commit to timeframes for shipping 40G Ethernet products, and only Brocade indicated it could match Extreme's price points.

Industry leader Cisco may have a more delicate issue to deal with than determining 40G Ethernet pricing and availability.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest has signed a 4.3 million infrastructure overhaul contract with IT services provider 2e2, as it moves to a virtualised setup that is fully hosted.

The contract, which is for three years, with an option for a two-year extension, supports the council's 'One Infrastructure' programme and is aimed at generating substantial savings. Supplier 2e2 agreed, before the weekend, to acquire services firm Morse for 70 million.

Under the transformation programme, Waltham Forest Council will replace its end-of-life systems with a new IT infrastructure that will provide a foundation for more efficient and flexible working, and enable the transformation of working practices and processes.

2e2 will provide virtualised applications and servers, hosted datacentre services, network provisioning, migration to Microsoft Exchange and storage infrastructure.

Key Points

IT department hiring budgets largely remain frozen due to doubts about whether the economy will see sustained growth in the future.

Enterprises might be tempted to demand more out of IT staffers, but pushing employees too far can backfire.

IT professionals can find opportunities to widen their skills and to mentor colleagues as enterprises seek to rely on in-house talent for new projects instead of hiring additional employees or third-party consultants.

Thursday, June 17, 2010 2:00 PM ET

Pre-register now for this informative session!

Having inventory control issues? Looking for better efficiency in your warehouse operations?

With IT departments expected to do more with less resources, many companies are turning to the software as a service (SaaS) model as a means for purchasing enterprise software applications. Learn best practices for implementing warehouse management software on a cloud computing platform. Join this free webinar and learn about the 6 advantages a hosted WMS can provide for your warehouse or distribution center.

In most companies, IT remains far less effective than it could be. And guess what? The main barriers to success are almost never technological. They're human -- how people organize themselves and how they relate (or fail to relate) to each other.

So where are we in the long-running soap opera of IT and its relationship to the business? To answer that question, I could think of no better person to ask than Bob Lewis, who has been writing about this topic for InfoWorld since (I believe) the disco era. His Advice Line blog, the "Dear Abby" of InfoWorld, remains one of our most popular items. And he has written several insightful books on IT management, his most recent being "Keep the Joint Running: A Manifesto for 21st Century Information Technology."

The growing maturity of virtual desktop technologies and customer interest in Windows 7 has virtual desktop infrastructure vendors expecting big adoption numbers in 2010. But while most CIOs are at least thinking about desktop virtualization, this year's projects may be limited to pilots and small deployments because of up-front costs and technology challenges that hamper user experience.

An ITIC survey of more than 800 businesses worldwide shows that 31% of respondents plan to implement VDI this year, more than double the previous year. A related technology, application virtualization, is also on the upswing with 37% of respondents planning implementations, an increase from 15% the previous year. Likewise, Gartner has found that 33% of organizations plan to deploy hosted virtual desktops in 2010.

The flip side to those numbers is that about two-thirds of customers either won't deploy desktop and application virtualization this year, or are undecided. There's good reason for that, says Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf.

"The ROI case for virtual desktops [over three to five years] is break-even at best right now," Wolf says. "Contrary to what vendors are claiming, the ROI isn't there for a large-scale, server-hosted virtual desktop deployment."

Executable end-around doesn't require a vulnerability to hijack PCs

Adobe and Foxit Software are investigating attacks based on a new tactic that embeds attack code in rigged PDF documents, the two companies said today.

Only Foxit has promised to address the problem, however.

Earlier this week, Belgium security researcher Didier Stevens, known for his work on PDF bugs, showed how he used a feature in both Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader to run executable code on a Windows PC from a malformed PDF . Steven's technique doesn't require an underlying vulnerability in either program to hijack the machine; all attackers need to do is dupe users into opening PDF documents.

That kind of social engineering-based attack is nothing new, but until now hackers needed an exploit of an unpatched software vulnerability to pull off a successful attack delivered via PDFs.

Computerworld - Mozilla yesterday confirmed a critical vulnerability in the newest version of Firefox, and said it would plug the hole by the end of the month.
Although the patch won't be added to Firefox before next week's Pwn2Own browser hacking challenge, researchers won't be allowed to use the flaw, according to the contest's organizer.
"The vulnerability was determined to be critical and could result in remote code execution by an attacker," Mozilla acknowledged in a post to its security blog late Thursday. "The vulnerability has been patched by developers and we are currently undergoing quality assurance testing for the fix."
Firefox 3.6, which Mozilla launched in January, is affected, Mozilla said, adding that it would be patched in version 3.6.2, currently slated to ship on March 30.
The bug was disclosed by Russian researcher Evgeny Legerov a month ago in a message posted on a forum hosted by Immunity, the Miami Beach, Fla. developer best known for its Canvas penetration testing framework. Legerov works for Moscow-based Intevydis, which produces the VulnDisco add-on for Canvas.

Still, hearing it from an enterprise storage solutions maker is quite another matter entirely.Of course, Yoshida also rightly pointed out that the lifespan of 100,000 writes that SLC flash memory currently yields in current enterprise storage products "may not be adequate" to make flash a complete replacement for hard disks at this stage.

Google has apparently decided that the time to hold its punches has past, as it unveils its Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool. As its name implies, the server-based tool will help Exchange users migrate their company's email, calendar and contact details from their server or hosted Exchange account into the Google Clouds.

The tool is free to Premier subscribers of its Google Apps or Education subscribers, and will work with both Exchange 2003 and 2007.Google says that migration is a simple four-step process that starts with entering the credentials for your Exchange server and Google Apps account. There is ample flexibility to move only selected users, or transfer the data across in phases.

Computerworld - Given the growth of social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter, and the increasing use of collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint, you may begin to wonder whether e-mail's day in the sun is coming to an end.

Once the primary way we communicated electronically, e-mail has begun to seem less central to our daily lives. It feels as if a tipping point has been reached. Businesses recognize the power of social networking sites to attract customers, build buzz and perform sophisticated research, and they see that collaboration tools can allow employees to work with one another and with people outside the company.

E-mail, it seems, is no longer the center of the universe. So is it time to say goodbye to it as the core of business and personal communication? Will e-mail go the way of the physically mailed letter -- useful for certain purposes, but not the primary way that people keep in touch and collaborate?

As an IT Manager you face the daunting task to meeting all of your company's IT needs in a challenged economy. Hiring additional staff is one way to approach the issue, but finding and paying for qualified staff takes time and money, which are the resources you are limited on in the first place. Quite the "Catch 22." Not to mention that all you may really need is just a little extra help here and there - not another full-time or even part-time employee.

Another approach is forming a partnership with an organization that has the resources you need on standby. In this scenario, you are only paying for help when you need it, and you know you are covered no matter what issue arises. There are no salaries, benefits, etc. to worry about. You also don't have to worry if the person you would have otherwise hired may have all of the skills for the multitude of issues he or she may face. You will have a team of professionals at your disposal.

DoubleRadius Technical Solutions (DRTS) meets this need for small and mid-size businesses, offering solutions for:

Desktop virtualization is still a nascent technology, but it does offer the kind of flexibility and ROI that enterprises are looking for, especially ones that are migrating to Windows 7 and are worried about application incompatibility. Microsoft's desktop virtualization model, including VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), promises to rein in desktop costs, improve security and management and speed up the delivery of new applications.

One key part of the sweeping announcements, covered in an hour-long Webcast, is a simpler and cheaper model for licensing Windows in a virtual desktop environment. Specifically, on July 1, Software Assurance customers will no longer have to buy a separate license to access Windows via a VDI.

The three Cs in today's business world are consolidation, centralization, and conservation. The focus is to create a harmoniously designed network that efficiently and economically meets all of a business' desired goals.

Businesses are seeking the three Cs in the areas of network storage, virtualization, and remote access:

1. Virtual NAS/SAN

The IT industry is about to go through a metamorphosis in the coming decade, and technicians and engineers need to be prepared. Research is showing a 75% reduction in the work force needed in the next decade, and a 50% reduction in the next five years for the traditional company IT staff. This will occur at all levels, and the numbers presented will bear this out.

Despite the recession, IT staffing added 40,000 jobs during the worst quarter of the recession in 2009. It is expected to continue to grow in the short term. So, how do we get from a growth industry to one where massive amounts of people will be out of work?

Key Points

Web 2.0 and social networking sites have changed the nature of Internet usage from mere information consumption to bidirectional information sharing by end users-a transformation that renders traditional enterprise Web-filtering solutions obsolete.

Social networks create new avenues for data loss from malware infections, targeted phishing attacks, or data leakage from employees posting sensitive information.

User awareness to new attack methods and security vulnerabilities posed by social networks is the first line of defense. However, IT should redouble efforts to ensure proper PC and Internet hygiene.

According to researchers at US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team), software that accompanies the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a Trojan horse that gives hackers total access to a Windows PC

The Energizer DUO, a USB-powered nickel-metal hydride battery recharger, has been discontinued, said Energizer Holdings, which late Friday confirmed that the software contains malicious code. The company has not said how the Trojan made its way into the software, however. "Energizer is currently working with both CERT and U.S. government officials to understand how the code was inserted in the software," Energizer said in a statement.

The blog calls the elimination of this package of integrated Microsoft back-office programs a move to "streamline [Microsoft's] server product portfolio."

"[M]idsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as ... virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness," the post stated. "Those capabilities are already available through other offerings, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center and the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite."

The pendulum is moving toward IT consolidation as CIOs try to save money and gain efficiencies. But it's possible to go too far.

Computerworld - When the economy plummeted at the end of 2008, the Western U.S. branch of The Salvation Army was ahead of the cost-cutting game. CIO Clarence White had centralized the IT organization a year or two earlier, and he had consolidated the database and storage servers from the business units into a single data center in Long Beach, Calif.

The move wasn't aimed at cutting costs, but "the timing was good," White says. It reduced the charitable organization's technology footprint, encouraged more virtualization and lowered maintenance and power costs. "It was an unanticipated benefit," he says. "We looked like geniuses."

Pre-register now for this informative session!

The rapid growth of social networks and electronic communications compel employers to understand, implement and update their Acceptable Internet Use Policies.

But maintaining a policy is not enough. Regulatory compliance and affirmative defense strategies require employers to monitor employee use of Internet services and electronic communications. Creating, Updating and Enforcing Your "Acceptable Use Policy" for a Social Networking World

The rapid growth of social networks and electronic communications compel employers to understand, implement and update their Acceptable Internet Use Policies.
But maintaining a policy is not enough. Regulatory compliance and affirmative defense strategies require employers to monitor employee use of Internet services and electronic communications. How much monitoring is appropriate? What are the available technologies? How can they legally and properly be used?

Key Points

Common data center setup mistakes can be grouped into three categories: power and cooling, design, and people and processes.

Today's cutting-edge technology is a double-edged sword, as it provides more functionality but has higher requirements. Proper power and cooling are essential to ensure good technology does not become a problem.

The importance of establishing key processes, and hiring the right personnel to implement them, is vital to success.

It is critical that IT administrators engaged in the task of setting up data centers pay heed to the lessons learned from mistakes made by previous businesses. Paying close attention to these lessons can provide a roadmap to successfully navigating the complex task of setting up a data center and avoiding extremely costly mistakes. After all, as George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The rapid growth of social networks and electronic communications compel employers to understand, implement and update their Acceptable Internet Use Policies.

But maintaining a policy is not enough. Regulatory compliance and affirmative defense strategies require employers to monitor employee use of Internet services and electronic communications. Creating, Updating and Enforcing Your "Acceptable Use Policy" for a Social Networking World

The rapid growth of social networks and electronic communications compel employers to understand, implement and update their Acceptable Internet Use Policies.
But maintaining a policy is not enough. Regulatory compliance and affirmative defense strategies require employers to monitor employee use of Internet services and electronic communications. How much monitoring is appropriate? What are the available technologies? How can they legally and properly be used?

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -- Philip K Dick

It seems that many businesses believe that when you've been around for long enough whatever it is you have been successful at can't possibly ever become obsolete. This is despite the fact that there are countless examples of how business models die off as our culture and technologies evolve.

Get Your Data Center Out Of The Hot Seat In 2010

Data centers aren't the only things chugging along into the new year, as heat is anticipated to have yet another successful year of delivering headaches to infrastructure managers around the globe. However, by undertaking a project in 2010 that can help to keep temperatures and power consumption under control, data centers can force heat to look elsewhere to continue its productive run.

Key Points

The recession delayed many programs and much infrastructure growth, but continuing a policy of "buy nothing" may start to seriously harm enterprises.

New methods of assessing value in the enterprise are likely to be based on TCO. This is why data centers are likely to increase their reliance on services.

Energy savings will continue to be a top priority in 2010 as enterprises adopt numerous methods for reducing consumption.

2010 AITP Member Summit
Bringing Together Your Community of IT Leaders
Friday, January 22 - Saturday, 23, 2010
InterContinental Chicago
Chicago, Illinois

Bringing value to the IT profession, the AITP Members Summit is an annual educational event hosted by aitp for all IT professionals, members and non-members.

Take the next step in your IT career - Register today!

Key Points

Data centers will continue to harness the performance benefits of storage virtualization, which has moved beyond its one-time role as a tool for SAN data migration.

Storage clouds will see more rollouts in 2010, but experts advise initial use within focused areas to best determine the use of clouds across the enterprise and to build skills.

Data deduplication could take a back seat to tiered archiving in some arenas, but the technology remains poised to have a significant impact on data centers in the coming year.

Unstructured data on underutilized storage devices create huge data center inefficiencies. Learn how to extend the capacity of your existing storage investment without buying new equipment.

This Hitachi Data Systems webinar will teach you five important concepts that will lower your storage costs by one-third or more. Learn about money-saving tactics like:

• NAS Head Consolidation
• File Tiering
• Capacity Efficiencies
• Archive Reduction
• Backup Efficiencies

You'll also learn where you can view a Video White Paper: Storage Economics: "Four Principles for Reducing TCO"

I see this a lot - if you like this story, please share it with friends.  You can email the link to your friends (with a neat customized message), or  share the link ondelicious,facebook, digg and other social networking sites.  Yes, you can do this within the registration process, but, as event planners, wouldn't you rather already have the data than rely on your attendees "friends" to fill it out??

I am workingwith a global financial services company that needs to overhaul itsportfolio of communications technology. These include  theirpublic/customer facing web sites to intranets and broadbandcommunication services serving their internal associates acrossfunctional areas. To add further complexity, this is a globalorganization across time zones embodying different cultural norms andstyles of communication along with different languages.

Typical of many organizations, the communications technologyportfolio has grown out of different business organizations that havechanged and been re-aligned over the years. While IT has been workinghard all along to deliver and manage a set of solutions that align withbusiness needs, the changes in business structure and focus hasincreased the "value gap" over time and resulted in a highly disparatesystems portfolio that can no longer support the business. Multipleemail systems, disparate intranet channels and internal web sites,experimental broadband video services, third party communicationplatforms, and multiple public facing or customer-specific web siteshave been deployed across the businesses have created a complexcommunication portfolio making it impossible to deliver a consistentand timely brand message to either the internal and external audiences.

What's the solution?  They need a rational communications technology portfolio and the governance structures to manage it well over time.

Are you a membership based organization struggling with managing your member data?

• Want an alternative to expensive AMS solutions?
• Would benefit from membership reports, as highly detailed or streamlined as you needed?
• Would like a more effective way of managing your organization?s chapters, officers, and rosters?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this is a must attend webinar for marketers, business leaders, content editors, and developers. Join TJ O'Connor, Principal Consultant, CrossTech Partners, along with Mark Boisvert Account Executive, CrossTech Partners, in part four of our four part series on Business Strategies for Content Management and learn strategies and technologies for managing your member database and provide a seamless user experience for your members.

How do you manage your print content? The latest print publishing tools allow you to quickly and easily populate a print document with database-driven content using XML.

• Do you need a centralized, fully managed repository of data; allowing greater control and end to end assignment management?
• Would you like to reduce document production lead times?
• Reduce costs in editing and proofing?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this is a must attend webinar for marketers, business leaders, content editors, and developers. Join TJ O'Connor, Principal Consultant, CrossTech Partners, along with Mark Boisvert Account Executive, CrossTech Partners, in part three of our four part series on Business Strategies for Content Management and learn strategies and technologies that will help you automate the publishing of content from a digital repository into your print publications.

I wrote a few weeks ago about strategic outsourcing and technology rationalization (link).Today, I am sharing some further views on successful technologyportfolio assessment and a transformation strategy to Second CircleTechnology ™.

As the economic downturn continues we are seeing and increasingnumber of companies looking at cost reduction through applicationportfolio transformation. Application transformation with Second CircleTechnology drives more flexible and lower cost while legacy systemsconstrain IT's ability to meet business needs. We have seen reductionsin cost that range from 15% to 30% of IT spend.  At the same time,legacy application portfolios constrain the ability to meet businessneeds. Some of the typical constraints are:

• applying systems and processes consistently throughout the company
• adapting quickly enough to address changing business needs
• ensuring the skills needed to make critical changes to systems

Business Strategies for Content Management
Part 2 of 4: Syndicating and Repurposing content with RSS Feeds
February 4, 2009 2:00 PM EDT Register Now!

Many users now prefer to subscribe to content via feeds, instead of traditional email newsletters. RSS is a technology that allows organizations to deliver regularly updated content to users. This relevant, personal content is then aggregated into a single, easily accessible location.

• Do you want to reduce information overload to your audience by moving information away from the e-mail inbox?
• Do you want to increase portal and intranet usage by incorporating updated, personalized information?
• Would you like to improve employee collaboration and knowledge sharing

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this is a must attend webinar for marketers, business leaders, content editors, and developers. Join TJ O'Connor, Principal Consultant, CrossTech Partners, along with Mark Boisvert Account Executive, CrossTech Partners, in part two of a four part series on Business Strategies for Content Management, and learn how create syndicated content, allow users to subscribe, and reuse content across multiple areas of your website.

IT executives have a challenging mission in 2009 when it comes to the data center. Cut energy and operating costs, go green, make architectures more flexible, evaluate blade and other server platforms, and stay on top of the ever-evolving world of virtualization and cloud computing - just to name a few key concerns. CrossTech Forums can help with two major IT executive summits.

BladeSystems Insight, taking place April 19-21, 2009 at the Arizona Grand Resort in Phoenix, is focused on blade servers, virtualization, power and cooling and other core data center technologies. It is an annual national event that provides a travel participation package for IT decision-makers. The Next Data Center is a series of regional one-day summits that will host an audience of IT executives starting in June 2009 in Dallas, October 2009 in Chicago, and March 2010 in Atlanta. To launch the "Next Data Center," there will be a special program at BladeSystems Insight in Phoenix this April.

It's a great way to kick off a year of data center education, networking and business for IT executives everywhere. Solution providers interested in sponsorship opportunities should contact Paul Samargedlis at 781-821-6740 or psamargedlis@crosstechforums.com. For information on applying for an executive invitation to attend any of the summits, visit http://www.bladesystemsinsight.com/ or http://www.gondc.com/.

Business Strategies for Content Management
Part 1 of 4: Evaluating Web Content Management Solutions
January 21, 2009 2:00 PM EDT Register Now!

Web Content Management (Web CMS) means many things to many people. This begs the question of how/where to maximize efforts when building a content management strategy.

• Do you need an easier way to manage your web sites?
• Would you like to manage all web content from a single online platform?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, this is a must attend webinar targeted at marketers, business leaders, content editors, and developers. Join TJ O'Connor, Principal Consultant, CrossTech Partners, along with Mark Boisvert Account Executive, CrossTech Partners, in part one of a four part series on Business Strategies for Content Management, and learn how to successfully evaluate and deploy a Web CMS platform.