Recent writings of Tony Baer in ADT -- ADTmag

Recent writings of Tony Baer in ADT

October 12, 2004

Tony Baer is principal with Demand Strategies, a New York-based consulting firm, and editor of Computer Finance, a monthly journal on IT economics. He shares his insights regularly with readers of Application Development Trends and adtmag.com. Here is a sampling of recent writings

Estimate the degree of risk
When buying software, should your team approach it on technical merits, or judge it as an addition to your investment portfolio? Given the mortality rate of start-ups in general, and the accelerating pace of software industry consolidation, the answer should be obvious.

IT value: Behind the numbers
At first blush, the notion of documenting returns on business intelligence projects should be a no-brainer because these applications are very metrics-oriented, and are intended to help companies understand where their margins or operations could bear improvement.

IT slow to embrace enterprise Linux
Just over a year ago at the LinuxWorld 2003 conference, Colin Hope-Murray, CTO of global infrastructure at Unilever, headquartered in London and Rotterdam, The Netherlands, delivered a bold pronouncement at an IBM-sponsored press event. The message? Going forward, Linux would become the company’s strategic enterprise server platform.

IBM unveils new managed clients
Firing the latest shot in the battle to control client side deployment costs, IBM is extending its middleware to run client side applications.

Covering your assets
For banking institutions, emerging Basel II requirements covering risk management are driving the need to shed more light on how cash management, loan origination and investment activities are conducted. And for publicly held firms, Sarbanes-Oxley rules are requiring top executives to personally sign off on any financial data reported in SEC documents.

IT security: Taking a bite out of development?
Security and freedom of movement have always been at odds with each other, and that is especially true when it comes to access control.

BAM against the world
Many organizations credit the use of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions for their survival and, in some cases, their success in recent years.

What's next for Linux?
Depending on whom you spoke with at the recent LinuxWorld conference in New York City, the next frontier of Linux is either at the data center or on the desktop.

On track for integration
Systems integration has long been the kiss of death for IT projects. Software history is loaded with ill-fated attempts to standardize the way programs integrate, from proprietary technologies like IBM’s SAA to SQL relational databases and Rube Goldberg-like CORBA component architectures. Yet integration remains the costliest part of a software project.