TechWatchSM For IT pros

If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. Volume 7, Issue 5      In This Issue:   The new worlds tallest building   Vista's growing pains leave room for XP   P2P networks called national security threat   U.S.-China probe nets $500 million fake software   Gartner: Businesses struggling with ID management   How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years   Your boss is spying on you right now. What can you do about it?   So the CEO got an iPhone -- now what's an IT staffer to do?   The broken process dilemma   HP service helps keep data centers cool   10 Mistakes to avoid when negotiating a raise   How one CIO escaped e-mail attachment hell   Time to rethink your relationship with end users   How to recruit IT stars   Top 10 toughest questions - Asked and answered   Google: T-shirts over ties   Virtualizing the desktop   The trials of the Hogwarts IT director   Users urged to patch serious hole in BIND 9 DNS Server   Free security tool ferrets out unpatched software   12 IT skills that employers can't say no to   Top 3 Vista support issues The new worlds tallest building On July 21, construction reached 1,680 feet on the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, making it the largest building in the world ... Read the article.  Back to top Vista's growing pains leave room for XP David Daoud ran into trouble when he started using Vista, the new version of Windows that Microsoft and PC makers have spent millions of dollars advertising since it came out six months ago. He said it short-circuited key software programs he counts on: Quicken for balancing his checkbook, Lotus Notes e-mail and a networking program that connects his home to the office. His Sony camcorder also doesn't communicate with the PC properly. "Basically they don't work," said Daoud, a computer industry analyst with market research firm IDC. Such problems are part of the normal growing pains that come with every major upgrade to the Windows operating system. To ease those pains, some consumers are seeking out machines equipped with the more compatible Windows XP. That's prompted some PC makers and retailers to give the older operating system more room in their product lines... Read the article.  Back to top P2P networks called national security threat WASHINGTON--Politicians charged on Tuesday that peer-to-peer networks can pose a "national security threat" because they enable federal employees to share sensitive or classified documents accidentally from their computers. At a hearing on the topic, Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said, without offering details, that he is considering new laws aimed at addressing the problem. He said he was troubled by the possibility that foreign governments, terrorists or organized crime could gain access to documents that reveal national secrets. Also at the hearing, Mark Gorton, the chairman of Lime Wire, which makes the peer-to-peer software LimeWire, was assailed for allegedly harming national security through offering his product. The documents at risk of exposure supposedly include... Read the article.  Back to top U.S.-China probe nets $500 million fake software More than $500 million worth of pirated software, including counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec products, has been seized in a long-running joint probe by Chinese police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, officials from both countries said on Tuesday. The operation began in 2005 and has led to 25 arrests and the smashing of several pirating syndicates in China that were making and distributing counterfeit software around the world, mostly to the United States. "The cooperation between the U.S. and China is an important development," said Steven Hendershot, the FBI's legal attache in Beijing. "But we still have a long way to go." Widespread intellectual property rights violations across a range of industries, including software, music, movies and fashion, have been a major source of friction between China and major trade partners the United States and Europe. Details of what officials called the "unprecedented co-operative effort" between China's policing ministry and the FBI were... Read the article.  Back to top Gartner: Businesses struggling with ID management (Identity and access management) is not something you can relegate to a low-level administrative task." --Ray Wagner, managing vice president, Gartner Despite broader recognition of the need for securing access to applications and other IT resources, enterprises are still struggling to come to terms with the issues involved with identity and access management, Gartner has warned. "We need to have a much more well-defined process for IAM (identity and access management), with architectures, controls and processes," Ant Allan, vice president of research at Gartner, told attendees of a recent conference in London on identity management. While there has been a tendency to treat such problems as primarily a technological issue, and focus on how to integrate identity management into existing applications and systems, effective access management has a much broader impact, Allan said. "IAM is more and more about business issues as much as it is about security issues. You have to reflect the business controls and processes in your IAM controls and processes." Another recent challenge has been an increasing emphasis on ensuring that staff members actually are... Read the article.  Back to top How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years Vista, schmista. Follow our tips for keeping your XP setup humming happily for a long, long time. Windows Vista may be shiny and brand new, but as plenty of PC users will tell you, sometimes newer isn't better. Many PCs simply don't have the horsepower to run the new operating system, and even those that have the juice may get bogged down by processor-and RAM-hungry Vista. If you've got Windows XP, worry not -- you can keep it running on your hardware for years to come. As with an old car, though, if you plan to keep XP around for a while, you're going to have to spend some time maintaining it. Think of us as your virtual mechanics. We'll give you tips, tweaks and tricks so that you'll be able to keep XP running smoothly, at top performance, for smooth operation and long life. But what if you suffer from Vista envy, and you're interested in more than just maintaining XP as it is? No problem -- we'll also show you how to get many of Vista's goodies, such as greatly improved security, transparent windows, Windows Flip 3D and the Network Map, all without having to spend the money to upgrade or get new hardware. So, if you've got better things to do with your time and money than upgrade to Vista, read on. There's still plenty of life in your old operating system... Read the article.  Back to top Your boss is spying on you right now. What can you do about it? Workplaces increasingly track your digital footprints as you go about your normal computing workday life. Here's how to fight back. Computerworld has noted before that surveillance cameras are becoming more common in the workplace ("Big Brother is watching you ... and he's a computer"). But what we are talking about here is the more insidious tracking of your digital footprints as you go about your computing workday. When you start thinking about all the ways that you can be digitally tracked, it can make even the least paranoid person sit up and take notice. By now, most of us know that our Web browsing histories are stored on our own PCs, which comes in handy when we want to track down a cheating spouse or errant teenager, but is less useful when we are looking at, shall we say, recreational sites at the workplace. Granted, this history can be easily erased if someone knows the right command. But when you are connected to a corporate network, this information can easily be recorded by any number of network packet-capturing and forensic products that are typical these days (see the list at the bottom of this article). There is even one product, called Locate from eTelemetry Inc., that will cross-correlate your IP address, network log-in name, machine location and other data, making it easier to track you down... Read the article.  Back to top So the CEO got an iPhone -- now what's an IT staffer to do? 12 tips for dealing with those iPhones at work. With hundreds of thousands of iPhones flying off the shelves in the U.S. in the last three weeks -- and numerous Apple stores reporting renewed shortages of the popular device -- chances are good that IT staffers will be asked sooner or later to get an iPhone working on the corporate network. Given that Apple has a reputation for making consumer-focused products that -- at least in the past -- didn't always play nice at work, most IT managers are likely skeptical of letting iPhones on their networks. Even without enterprise purchasing plans, a real keyboard and slow EDGE network speeds, the sheer form and function of this revolutionary piece of technology may soon have your management team pushing you to evaluate it for mass deployment. Whether that new iPhone is company property or was bought by rogue employees, don't panic. By following a few easy steps, IT staffers might find that iPhone can make their lives easier -- and your colleagues (or boss) ecstatic:... Read the article.  Back to top The broken process dilemma Fixing a broken process is often difficult, expensive and thankless. IT executives are divided on whether to outsource a broken process (e.g., payroll, help desk, accounting) or fix it in-house first. Some feel that outsourcers specialize in specific processes and therefore prefer to let the outsourcer fix what’s broken. Others claim that after a broken process is outsourced, it often remains broken. Fixing a broken process is often difficult, expensive and thankless. IT executives are divided on whether to outsource a broken process (e.g., payroll, help desk, accounting) or fix it in-house first. Some feel that outsourcers specialize in specific processes and therefore prefer to let the outsourcer fix what’s broken. Others claim that after a broken process is outsourced, it often remains broken. This view advocates fixing processes before outsourcing. There are good arguments on both sides. Here’s why you should let the outsourcer fix your process: Expertise. Good outsourcers strive to make processes as efficient and effective as possible. They have state-of-the-art tools and metrics, as well as experienced staffers. They understand how to migrate customers’ processes efficiently. One Fortune 500 company tried unsuccessfully to fix its payroll system for 10 years. When it finally outsourced, the new system was up and running in six months. Impartiality. Your outsourcer functions as your business partner, but it’s not part of your organizational hierarchy and is minimally affected by your corporate politics. This allows the outsourcer to make unbiased decisions... Read the article.  Back to top HP service helps keep data centers cool Hewlett-Packard Co. is getting more detailed in how it analyzes the energy efficiency of its customers' data centers. HP is one of many technology companies touting energy-efficient products, services or corporate commitment to green technology. A 2006 survey of IT professionals by IDC showed that about one-fifth cited power and cooling as the No. 1 issue they face in their data centers, a greater proportion than those who cited disaster recovery, security, staffing or any other issue. Data centers in the U.S. use 59 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, costing $4.1 billion and generating 864 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO²) emissions, said Thomas Goepel, program manager for adaptive infrastructure solutions in HP's technology solutions group. On Wednesday, HP introduced Thermal Zone Mapping, a new feature of its HP Services business that calculates how to improve server cooling while keeping electric bills down... Read the article.  Back to top 10 mistakes to avoid when negotiating a raise Contrary to what you might think, the trick to negotiating a salary increase—or any kind of deal—is not to seek consensus but to say no. Read on to find out why “no” is the most powerful word in negotiations. Every day, at work and at home, you are involved in dozens of negotiations, big and small. Many people find negotiation difficult because of their desire to please, to come to an agreement, to compromise. We have been taught that win-win is the best possible result, that we need to “get to yes” so that all sides are happy. That’s the biggest mistake you can make in negotiations. The problem with the consensus-based approach to negotiating is that it will get you killed at the deal-making table. Why? Because if you’re focused on making another person happy—or on avoiding making that person mad—then you’re focusing on the outcome. You can’t control the outcome. You can’t control how the other person feels about you. However, you can control your actions and behavior during the negotiation. That’s the essence of what I call Systematic Decision-Based Negotiating, or the No System, for short. The No System teaches negotiators to base each action not on emotions but on what has come before in the conversation and what they can control. Why do I call it the No System?... Read the article.  Back to top How one CIO escaped e-mail attachment hell We even asked pretty please with sugar on it," says Danback, "but compliance is never voluntary." The CIO at an insurance company found a network applicance to help sift through chunky attachments before they reach end-users. E-mail attachments have become a staccato series of shooting pains for many a CIO. Today's attachments —packed with images, presentations, PDFs, video clips and other space gluttons —keep getting bigger, with no end in sight. They can bloat your servers, clog your systems and slow user mailbox opening to a crawl (prompting help desk calls). Worse, large attachments can make messages that your users have sent bounce back, when clients set up policies to block messages larger than a certain size, say 10MB. (In other words, a limit low enough to block a crucial marketing presentation.) Also, the bigger your e-mail store gets, the more complicated your backup and restore jobs become. Sure, you can ask people nicely to stop sending large e-mail attachments. But voluntary behavior change requests usually fall flat, and besides, that solution doesn’t address the client issue, says Fred Danback, CIO of Integro Insurance Brokers. Sooner or later, he says, you realize something's gotta give... Read the article.  Back to top Time to rethink your relationship with end users Tips for Developing Acceptable-Use Policies As the rise of shadow systems attests, end users can build their own systems. If you want to stay relevant, you need to stop developing applications for them and start working with them. I asked my friend, a user support specialist, what most annoyed him about end users and he said: End users are demanding, self-centered, narrow minded, shallow and completely detached from technological reality. His idea of a good end user was of the seen and not—or even better, never—heard variety. An end user who follows the processes and procedures decreed by the IT department. One who makes his job easier by keeping to what he or she knows best, while IT keeps to what it knows best—thus, preserving the age-old principle of functional specialization that has served organizations well for more than a century. USERS For more about user relations and shadow IT, read An Autocratic Approach to Users Will Fail and Users Who Know Too Much and the CIOs Who Fear Them. This view of end users as little more than self-centered children is not unusual. However, a transformation is occurring that should cause us to reconsider our views. From relative ignorance, end users are becoming increasingly IT savvy—able not only to use technology but also able to develop their own solutions... Read the article.  Back to top How to recruit IT stars Your old recruiting methods aren't going to cut it if you want to woo top IT professionals today. Here's what works now. The first quarter of this year saw the biggest net hiring increase in enterprise IT in more than five years, according to Robert Half's survey of CIOs. It's officially a seller's market for IT talent. Good news for IT professionals. Bad news for IT hiring managers. A hotter job market combined with a limited IT talent pipeline means you have to be more proactive—and more sophisticated—in your recruiting methods, says Forrester's IT Staffing and Careers analyst Samuel Bright, who shares new tricks of the trade (including how to attract millennials, how to uncover a shadow market of IT recruits in the business, and how to expand your universe of IT professionals) from his recent report Recruiting IT Talent: Adjusting to a Hot Market... Read the article.  Back to top Top 10 toughest questions - asked and answered Regular emails from readers ask hundreds of questions each year. Patterns emerge about the toughest situations you face in your organizations. These are the ten toughest, but most frequent, questions you send my way. I’ve written a how-to piece to answer each question you’ve asked. These articles address and answer your toughest questions. 1. How to Deal With a Negative Coworker: Negativity Matters Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like ... Read the article.  Back to top Google: T-shirts over ties Privacy chief wrote to The Financial Times backing casual dress, in response to an article that praised the tie as appropriate. Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, wants to see t-shirts replace the tie as standard business attire, saying the tie "constricts circulation to the brain." In addition, the tie "acts as decorative camouflage for the business suit, designed to shield the middle-aged male physique, with its shrinking shoulders and protruding paunch, from feeling sufficiently self-conscious to hit the gym," Fleischer wrote in a recent letter to The Financial Times. The letter, written in response to an article that praised the tie as appropriate business attire, was signed using Fleischer's Google job title. Fleischer suggested replacing the tie with t-shirts, which he said do less to hide the shape of a man's body. "Wouldn't you like to know whether your business partners are fit? Why should you trust a man in business if he abuses his own body?," Fleischer wrote, saying casual attire may also result in greater creativity. "If your fashion editor can hardly imagine a better garment for men to exhibit their personality, power and masculinity than wearing ties, well ... I work at Google. Our unofficial motto is, 'Be serious without a suit,'" Fleischer wrote. Google, like many other technology companies, allows employees to dress casually for work... Read the article.  Back to top Virtualizing the desktop VDI in the OR Power and maintenance costs of desktop computing have become an unbearable albatross for IT. Desktop virtualization provides a large-scale solution. Everyone wants to escape the horror of rising energy costs. So why not run fewer servers? That’s the no-brainer benefit of server virtualization and consolidation, which is already saving forward-looking companies big bucks in kilowatt hours of electricity, not to mention in hardware and server administration. No wonder so many enterprises are eying fresh virtualization territory: the humble desktop. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that collapsing a dozen desktop systems with 500-watt power supplies into a single server with a 2000-watt power supply saves power and cooling costs. It’s also obvious that collapsing a few hundred workstations into just a few physical servers would slash the power bill much further, while reducing the overhead of desktop system repairs and replacement parts. With cheap desktop terminals, total power consumption per seat drops dramatically, as does the heat generated by hardware, resulting in lower air conditioning costs. This idea isn’t new. Thin clients coupled with Citrix and Microsoft Terminal Services have provided the traditional method of pushing desktop sessions from the back office to the front room, but those solutions don’t fit everywhere. Application incompatibilities abound and the relative fragility of a single Windows server instance running dozens of desktop sessions has always been a concern. Hence the sudden proliferation of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) solutions. Riding the virtualization wave, everybody and his brother are offering VDI products that deliver a full desktop (or virtual system) to a thin client. “We’re seeing customers who really want to move away from terminal services for application incompatibility issues, among other things, and this is a clear alternative,” says Mason Uyeda, Sun Microsystems marketing manager for desktop virtualization. “VDI is like putting gasoline on the virtualization fire.” The basics of these solutions are very similar... Read the article.  Back to top The trials of the Hogwarts IT director Plucked from the personal archives of the late Albus Dumbledore, headmaster. From: Coxrid, IT director, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To: Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster Re: My resignation (Where did this memo come from?) Headmaster: I regret that I must resign my position, effective two weeks ago, at least. It is simply impossible under these conditions to create a modern, integrated, flexible IT architecture aligned with the school’s educational mission and objectives. Deployment of the OC-3 fiber backbone... Read the article.  Back to top Users Urged to Patch Serious Hole in BIND 9 DNS Server On the contrary, this transaction ID is very predictable," he wrote in a paper describing the problem this week. " A security researcher has reported a serious vulnerability in BIND 9, the software widely used in the Internet's DNS addressing system. Users of the software, which include ISPs and large companies, are being advised to patch the software immediately to prevent end users from being vulnerable to pharming attacks, when they are directed to a Web site set up by criminals. BIND 9, or Berkeley Internet Name Domain 9, is among the most widely used software packages used on DNS servers... Read the article.  Back to top Free security tool ferrets out unpatched software A Danish security vendor is offering a free tool designed to inform users when their applications need patching. Secunia ApS released the beta version of Personal Software Inspector for download, a client program that periodically checks to see if new updates have been issued for some 4,200 applications. After installation, the tool inventories a computer's software and versions. It classifies programs... Read the article.  Back to top 12 IT skills that employers can't say no to Have you spoken with a high-tech recruiter or professor of computer science lately? According to observers across the country, the technology skills shortage that pundits were talking about a year ago is real (see "Workforce crisis: Preparing for the coming IT crunch"). "Everything I see in Silicon Valley is completely contrary to the assumption that programmers are a dying breed and being offshored," says Kevin Scott, senior engineering manager at Google and a founding member of the professions and education boards at the Association for Computing Machinery. "From big companies to start-ups, companies are hiring as aggressively as possible." Many recruiters say there are more open positions than they can fill, and according to Kate Kaiser, associate professor of IT at Marquette University in Milwaukee, students are getting snapped up before they graduate. [Suffice it to say, the market for IT talent is hot, but only if you have the right skills. If you want to be part of the wave, take a look at what eight experts -- including recruiters, curriculum developers, computer science professors and other industry observers -- say are the hottest skills of the near future]... Read the article.  Back to top Top 3 Vista Support Issues More about how security is driving Vista adoption. As consumers gradually upgrade to Windows Vista, tech support firms are beginning to field an increasing number of calls from consumers looking for help with Microsoft's new operating system. "Vista-related tech support is currently a small but expanding part of our business," said Anthony Rodio, a senior vice president at SupportSoft, which runs Support.com, a site which aims to undercut in-home and in-store tech help services. "As adoption rates continue to grow over the next year, and more consumers upgrade to the new system, we expect to see the number of Vista-related calls increase significantly," he said. Support.com works by fielding calls from consumers, then connecting them through the Internet where their issue is diagnosed, and hopefully resolved, at a cost of between $29 and $99. The biggest single Vista issue Support.com has been dealing with, at 26 percent of all Vista-related support calls, is... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive TechWatchsm? Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would benefit from applying to receive this publication. Inviting a friend to experience the benefits of joining the BusinessWatch Network is easy! Just FW: this newsletter to the person you know who may have an interest and ask them to click here http://www.businesswatchnetwork.com Your friend will be glad you did! If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from TechWatchsm simply visit this URL, or send a letter requesting opt-off to: The BusinessWatch Network Privacy Mailbox, 1321, Marblehead, MA. 01945 DISCLAIMER: TechWatchsm and the BusinessWatch Networksm are service marks of DMS. 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