Columns

Virtualization, security and other best practices

• By Michael Alexander
• June 1, 2006

ADT blogger John Waters has been banging out stories for us (print and online) for years, as many of you know. For this month’s issue, he looked into the hot tech of virtualization. What he found is virtualization’s potential is greater than its marketing, which you have to admit is hard to believe in an industry that feeds on hype.

Regular contributor Alan Joch turned in two stories this month. In the first, Alan looks at how some enterprises are using on-demand services to launch new business opportunities. In the second, he reports on some of the latest advances in intrusion detection and prevention and how enterprises are better equipped to walk the line around their IT infrastructures.

Security doesn’t stop at the perimeter, of course. Linda Briggs checked in with a story on application security. Firewalls, intrusion prevention and other network-based control mechanisms work so well that now the bad guys see the application stack as their new way in.

Service-oriented architectures have gotten a lot of play in our world and yours, so it was time that veteran reporter Alan Radding scouted pioneer enterprises to find out what they considered to be best practices for SOA. Focus on business value, governance, security and management. The more involved issues such as testing, orchestration and reuse also come into play, but not right away.

I’d also like to introduce two new members of our editorial staff. Shawna McAlearney, one of our senior editors, spends most of her time guiding our Web and newsletter content. Jason Turcotte, our new assistant editor, already has more things to do than hours in a day. Feel free to drop them a note anytime.