Stories about: Critical Systems

Hurricane Katrina and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center caused scores of companies to reconsider their disaster recovery and business continuity plans, whether they were affected by those catastrophic events or not.

Rationalizing server estates has been one of the most significant datacenter trends of recent years, driven by the twin needs to make server management more cost effective and the growing constraints on power.

A company I worked for a while ago had a novel approach to managing "indispensable" staff.

We've probably all seen the IT iceberg, the one with new projects rising majestically above the water line - and application maintenance submerged in the murky depths below. Well, since global warming is busy melting the icebergs up north, I hope it will soon come along and melt this particular one too.

There isn't much about Tom Sanzone that bespeaks drama. The CIO of Credit Suisse is direct, meticulous and practical, and it doesn't seem as if he'd suffer fools gladly, an impression partly informed by his New York accent, nearly shaven head and confident demeanour

The call to Bob Bailey, an IT executive with a major US government contractor, came on an otherwise ordinary day in October 2003. "Why are you attacking us?" demanded the caller, an IT leader with a Silicon Valley manufacturer. He wanted to know why Bailey's company had launched a denial-of-service attack against his network

To call Clyde Thomas a high performer would be an understatement. As CIO and executive vice president of global operations and technology for eFunds, a $US600 million financial services company, Thomas logs nearly 70 hours a week on the job. He oversees five data centres in the US and two abroad, managing 450 people who serve 6000 users overall. He is responsible for the company's software engineering, call and data centres, and security. He is also building new enterprise projects in China and Eastern Europe

Rarely acknowledged by the mainstream, adult and gaming sites collect a healthy percentage of Web traffic and account for a good deal of innovation, too

Joining the growing trend of federal government departments appointing supplier panels, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) intends to create a register of pre-approved organizations that can deliver and support ICT services and solutions.

A US House subcommittee investigating cybersecurity vulnerabilities at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has blasted the agency's CIO for his alleged lack of leadership on key security issues. Subcommittee members also questioned DHS CIO Scott Charbo's willingness to make needed security fixes and his ability to head the agency's IT operations.

Even as its adoption in the enterprise has exploded, open source software remains dogged by questions regarding its legal status. Most recently, Microsoft has claimed that open source violates no fewer than 235 software patents.