In-Depth Features


Maximizing the Benefits of Capacity Planning

IT is the epicenter of your company's nervous system. Capacity planning can keep it healthy. We examine planning methods and highlight their pitfalls.

Corporate E-Mail Security: Compliance Swamps IT Staff

IT managers look to better tools, including self-service retrieval for employees

Using Architecture To Combat Increasing IT Complexity

Explore how companies can conquer issues associated with IT complexity and achieve success in their architecture initiatives through the appropriate mix of people, process, and technology.

Profile: Flickr's Photo Synthesis

Flickr Architect Cal Henderson provides a snapshot of the popular photo-sharing Web site and its beginnings.

A Few Bright Spots in Storage as 2006 Unfolds

As the first month of 2006 comes to a close, our curmudgeon of a storage analyst finds several companies deserve praise for their storage efforts.

The Shape of Endpoint Security to Come

Will 2006 be the year of endpoint security? A number of network-access-control approaches are finally coming to fruition.

SOA’s Impact on SLAs: Trouble Ahead

Organizations may see service-enablement, and the next generation of SLAs, as a chance to improve the responsiveness and dynamism of their IT departments.

Careers: IT Employment Rebounds

It’s worth remembering how much the employment outlook has improved in the last half decade—and how far we have still to go

Apps on the Grid

Using grid computing to share processing power across a network is still rare, but standards bodies are getting on board.

Careers: Strong Demand Continues for Information Security Jobs

With information security increasingly a boardroom-level concern, job prospects continue to be good, according to a new study. Training and certification are becoming increasingly important for candidates and companies alike.

The Web Is the Platform

Online service providers such as eBay, Amazon, Google and Yahoo have recognized the bottomline value third-party app developers can bring to their platforms.

Data on Demand

Some organizations are launching tightly controlled rollouts that, although not transforming the enterprise, are delivering concrete benefits.

Service-oriented Architectures: Tool time for service-oriented architectures

"New tools for an emerging class of app developers, who will create the B-school policies that drive SOAs, promise to help orgs mediate services and monitor their networks."

No Rest for the Query

Users expect search engines to meet the Google standard for ease-of-use and effectiveness, and that’s driving the business in embedded search add-ons.

I, Smartapp

Many of the problem-solving techniques such as adaptive learning and rule-based inferencing that power artificial intelligences and expert systems have gone mainstream.

Process Is the Rationale for Open-Source Development

For many programmers, Rational Unified Process conjures up images of suits dashing around carrying three-ring binders bulging with forms, templates and checklists.

Content Integration Is Still Too Loose & Low Tech

On paper, enterprise content management vendors have all the pieces needed to deliver integrated content management, but the simplicity, functionality and elegance found in the different modules can be uneven, says one analyst.

Identify Slow Code and Bottlenecks

Processor speed continues to increase according to Moore's Law, but application developers still need to worry about performance. Use performance analysis data to seek out code that executes slowly and examine the reasons why.

What Are Performance Dashboards?

This article is an excerpt from the book Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business by Wayne W. Eckerson, director of research and services at TDWI, a worldwide association of data warehousing and business intelligence professionals.

Staying Power!

COBOL is here to stay. It’s become UNICODE—compliant, object oriented and XML friendly. It participates in MDA,calls Web services natively and wraps itself in Java. Some mainframe shops are even deploying COBOL apps on Linux.