Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. SOA Governance: Rule your SOA
A Guide to Next-Generation Backup, Recovery and Archive
How to Protect Business from Malware at the Endpoint and the Perimeter
The IP Storage payoff: Turning your investment into efficient, affordable results
Extending Business Solutions across the Organisation
The State of Internet Security
EMC Solutions for Databases Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Nseries iSCSI
The Secrets of C-Suite Success
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Open source players will need to swap baggy jeans for suits if they want to secure lucrative enterprise and government contracts, experts say.
Google architect Grant Allen joined Labor Senator Kate Lundy and analyst Sam Higgins at Open Cebit 2008 to debate how the open source community can compete with software giants in a market geared to splurging millions on IT in return for SLAs and vendor liability.
The largest barrier to mainstream open source adoption is the entrenched ideals of proprietary software that business has come to expect, according to Higgins, research director at analyst firm Longhaus.
"It's very much the case that open source needs more of a [professional edge]," Higgins said.
"If a business puts out a $200,000 tender, it expects a $200,000 professional response because of a proprietary heritage. They expect to pay $200,000 up-front plus 20 percent maintenance over say seven years, so they want to be assured that the bidders are serious.
"There is a propensity by government and the [enterprise] to treat open source different. It needs to subject to the same market scans and RFOs."
To compete better, the open source community should form a cooperative, according to Higgins, which would respond to tenders with a catalogue of the best solutions covering the whole stack.
He said a cooperative will help market open source solutions in the same way that Dairy Farmers helped farmers to sell produce to cities.
Labor Senator for the ACT Kate Lundy said a cooperative will give open source a professional edge.
"A cooperative is a good idea because there are so many great open source solutions, but no one has the business experience to wrap it up in a slick package," Lundy said.
"[Enterprise] and big departments are used to slick packages. They have really high expectations for solutions which could be met by a cooperative, because it could bundle and present a whole stack of open source solutions.
"Businesses and agencies will be better off if they tested the market for open source products because there are solutions for the whole stack that can break open the entrenched opinions which mean they are often overlooked."
Lundy stopped short of naming an entrepreneur to head-up the cooperative, but said it would be someone who has a corporate image, charisma, and is prepared to take risks.
Google's Allen said developers can don a professional image without needing to drop their altruistic ideals of computer science, but should be more shrewd with marketing campaigns.
Higgins said 14 percent of businesses "are in denial", referring to a Longhaus survey which claimed that number of companies would not consider open source software.
He predicted open source will be a part of all proprietary software solutions within five years.
2008 CIO Summit
19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.
The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.
Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.
Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'
Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).
Click here for more information.
Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Citibank debit card fraud highlights ATM vulnerabilities 08 July, 2008 08:17:53
'Back-end servers are kind of a joke,' and the trouble doesn't end thereMalicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives. - +
How to not have your Web site hacked like Sony's 07 July, 2008 08:23:22
A SQL injection attack was used to plant malicious code on pages of two popular Sony Playstation games - SingStar Pop and God of War, reports security company Sophos. Hundreds of Web pages from other businesses have also been compromised.The US Sony Playstation Web site is the latest high-profile victim of a hacker attack on business sites that's spreading malware at breakneck pace, says a security vendor. - +
AG launches review into national e-security 07 July, 2008 11:07:49
Howard's security agenda dragged over coals.A review of Australia's top e-security projects lead by the Attorney-General's Department has been launched to scrutinise the Howard's government's $73 million E-Security National Agenda. - +
Selling zero-day exploits has a down side 07 July, 2008 10:16:36
There is an ongoing argument about the ethics of selling 0-day exploits on the open market: It helps if you don't sell exploits targeting the company you work for.Information Security can sometimes be a funny field to work in. Some days it seems as if anybody with their hands on unpublished exploit code can sell it for all they're worth, and others it seems that they are set to become the target of law enforcement and the companies the code affects. It does help if you don't work for one of the companies that is set to be affected by the exploits you are trying to sell and aren't trying to bootstrap a competing company in the process. - +
'I have a lost laptop horror story for you' 30 June, 2008 10:08:14
The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow...The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.
Zepto release the Mythos, the 2nd installment in the Centrino 2 refresh 09 July, 2008 12:05:00
Symantec Data Protection Solutions Preferred by Users and Industry Experts 09 July, 2008 11:56:00
Frost & Sullivan: Australia’s Mobile Advertising Spend to Grow 300 Per Cent in 2008 09 July, 2008 07:57:00
DIARY ALERT - Symantec data leakage prevention seminars 08 July, 2008 17:20:00
Dimension Data Appoints New National Human Resources Director 08 July, 2008 16:58:00
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The Secrets of C-Suite Success
With help from the CIO Executive Council, we tap into research about successful executives. Read on to learn more about the competencies CIOs need to develop to take the corner office, where CIOs fall short — and what CEOs expect from CIOs.
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