Processes don't get much more hands-on than the work carried out in a specialized branch of the clinical laboratory services industry known as anatomic pathology. In most AP labs, the procedures for processing the hundreds of bits of skin, gallbladder, breast lumps, and other tissue specimens that flow into the facilities every day are carried out by specially trained technologists. Each specimen must be described, sectioned, dehydrated, and embedded into small blocks of paraffin that are sliced for slides. As they are traditionally carried out, manually, these procedures are both time-consuming and vulnerable to human error.
A February report from IDC gives a bullish outlook for IT spending in both the U.S. and worldwide, a welcome indicator that companies are apparently ready to spend on IT investments.
"There is a lot of money walking around the show floor," noted open-source evangelist Bruce Perens, describing how Linux has turned into a commercial marketplace. Citing surveys showing that 53 percent of CIOs expect open source to dominate their IT environments by 2007, Novell chairman and CEO Jack Messman claimed that Linux is ready for the enterprise today.
To regulate or not to regulate; that was the question for a panel of IT industry notables at last week's RSA security conference in San Francisco. In an on-stage debate that sparked some heated exchanges, the panel--which included former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) president Harris Miller, TechNet president Rick White, and IT security expert and author Bruce Schneier--took on the issue of software liability and whether there should be more government regulation of the private sector, including the technology industry.
Parasoft Corp., the Monrovia, Calif., provider of solutions that automatically prevent software errors, announced the availability of Jtest 6.0 at LinuxWorld in Boston last week.
Microsoft and Nokia, archrivals in the enterprise mobility applications space, announced two agreements at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France this week that will make it easier for wireless app developers to synch Nokia's handhelds with Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003 and for consumers to download and play music using Microsoft's Media Player.
Software development shops using Seapine Software's Surround SCM for software change management can now seamlessly integrate a Java-based IDE from JetBrains Inc.
The 14th annual RSA 2005 Security Conference and Expo, under way this week in San Francisco, saw an upstart and an old rival announce products and initiatives aimed at taking market share from the event's namesake.
Companies that used manual tracking techniques in 2004 to meet initial Sarbanes-Oxley compliance deadlines are now ripe for considering tools to automate compliance tracking, according to analysts and industry watchers.
Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, made two big announcements during his conference-opening keynote at this week's RSA security conference in San Francisco. He told attendees that his company was on track to deliver the first version of "the ultimate mail virus protection" for Windows users by the end of this year. He also revealed that Microsoft will be releasing a new version of the Internet Explorer browser with strong, built-in security features.
On paper, the Capability Maturity Model Index seems about as different from XP and other agile programming disciplines as it can be. This is true to some degree in practice, too, because CMMI and agile adherents typically approach software development from decidedly different viewpoints. At the same time, experts say, they are complementary to a surprising degree, and there's very little, if any, irreconcilability, between the two prominent paradigms.
Borland Software initiated the next phase of its software delivery optimization strategy last week with the release of Borland Core Software Delivery Platform. Formerly code-named "Project Themis," the Core SDP provides what Borland is describing as an application lifecycle management environment with integrated tools optimized for job function and cross-role interaction.
Because the importance of identity has been elevated across the board, Liberty Alliance, a global consortium for open federated identity standards and identity-based Web services, has released ID-WSF 2.0, the second version of its Web services framework specifications.
Microsoft gave attendees at last week's VSLive conference in San Francisco a closer look at its new Web services-oriented "Indigo" communications infrastructure. During his conference keynote, Microsoft SVP Eric Rudder described Indigo as "a natural extension to the .Net Framework," which will enable developers to build more secure, reliable, and interoperable applications.
Sun Microsystems is coming to this year's RSA 2005 security conference, under way this week in San Francisco, with several "love for the customer" Valentine's Day announcements. And after years of preaching that "the network is the computer," there's a bit of I-told-you-so swagger in the Santa Clara, CA-based systems company.
At this week's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, Nokia introduced the latest edition of its Series 60 Platform, an OS for smart phones, which the company says is especially aimed at enterprise users and companies that develop wireless apps for enterprise customers.
BEA Systems has formerly unveiled a new suite of products designed specifically for the telecommunications industry. Formerly code named "Project Da Vinci," BEA's new WebLogic Communications Platform is a version of its Java-based WebLogic application sever, designed for what the San Jose, CA-based infrastructure company calls the "convergence of IT and telecom."
The secret to getting the most out of your training experience is to speak up, speak out, and speak often, veteran instructors say.
In the aftermath of 9/11, many financial firms discovered and sought to remedy serious problems with their IT infrastructure. Some dispensed with the conventional wisdom of slow and deliberate shopping in favor of a quick build-vs.-buy analysis to implement a solution quickly.
With Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System supposed to ship sometime late this year, IBM is ramping up its counteroffensive by stressing its open-source commitment.