Bladewatch.com

Public Technology net

A new framework to help chief executives get the very best out of their staff has been launched. As public finances come under growing pressure, chief executives are increasingly looking for ways to do more for less, and improving productivity is fundamental to that.

The ‘Getting the best out of your people’ organisational productivity framework has been developed by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs), in consultation with chief executives, and by looking at best practice in other sectors.

The country’s leading councils have an understandable and accessible management culture which sets out a clear vision for the authority and their local area.

Check out this article. Anything we can do to get more from our teams has to be a good thing, I wonder if this kind of framework or process were adopted in a re-organization what results we’d see, those business/IT re-alignments and role changes might be dramtically different if those doing the support had a say. We need to manage discussion and interaction with what is better for corporate strategy, for customer delivery, I just wonder if we had a staff suggestion portal, if we might see a different view of things, a different way of doing business – that on call get called at 2am because server19 is out of disk space because it’s 9 years old, not only annoys the oncall teams, but costs more in support long term than it would to virtualize or replace the server – how do we empower IT to be in the position where they can illustrate this? How do we get IT to sell it to us?

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HPC Wire

Some of the most excited HPC vendors these days are the grid computing companies that are rapidly extending their portfolios for the cloud computing market. Companies like Univa UD, Cluster Resources and Platform Computing, among others, are hoping that their expertise in utility computing can be parlayed to address a much wider market. Across the industry, the attraction of delivering infrastructure and software as services has become irresistible. Unlike grid computing, which never attained widespread use, cloud computing is almost certainly headed for fame and fortune.

Two general trends are pushing cloud deployment to the front of every CIO’s to-do list: the falling price of hardware and the increasing expense of managing that hardware as a single resource. Managing infrastructure at scale is where the grid middleware vendors come in, and at this stage it is these companies that see nothing but green field between high performance computing and the rest of the commercial enterprise market.

An interesting article talking about cloud computing, it’s always great to see what people are talking and thinking about in the industry, do check it out. Cloud might not be for everyone right now, but I wonder if we wont see it enter the enterprise, the smb for different reasons, for different technical or organizational reasons, whether it’s costs, business charge back/alignment or carbon footprint? We’ll have to see, an interesting read, do check it out.

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Microsoft

Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for August 2009

Version: 1.0

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for August 2009.

With the release of the bulletins for August 2009, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued August 6, 2009. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on August 12, 2009, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the August security bulletin webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security, high-priority updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

An article to remind you about the importance of applying the relevant security updates to your server/desktop estate, not only will it protect you from known issues, it’s the first thing that a service provider or vendor will ask when logging a call. Whether these updates apply to your infrastructure will depend on your infrastructure, your business but do check it out.

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Silicon

Microsoft on Thursday said the next version of Office for Mac will arrive by the 2010 holiday buying season, and it added that the new version will include a version of Outlook.

Outlook for Mac will replace Entourage, the current email and calendar program in the Mac Office suite. Although it will still differ from the Windows version of Outlook, it will add support for more Exchange features, such as public folders and rights management features.

Office for Mac had a version of Outlook in its pre-Mac OS X days, but Microsoft switched to the Entourage program with Office for Mac version X because that version lacked a good connection with Exchange.

The software maker has worked over the past several years to add better Exchange capabilities to the email software.

Apple, too, has worked to support Exchange within its own mail program and has said it will add improved Exchange capabilities from within Mail as part of its forthcoming Snow Leopard operating system.

It will be interesting to see what the next version of Office for Mac will bring, anything to improve it’s interaction with the Windows platform and Exchange has to be a good thing, we’ll need to wait and see..

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Public Technology net

PGP Corporation has announced the results of the third annual study by The Ponemon Institute, identifying the steps UK organisations are taking in order to safeguard their confidential data. The 2009 Annual Study: UK. Enterprise Encryption Trends study, which polled IT security professionals at 615 enterprises and public sector organisations, found that 70% of UK organisations have been hit by at least one data breach incident within the last year, up from 60% in the previous year.

The number of firms experiencing multiple breaches was also up, with 12% of respondents admitting to more than five data loss incidents in the twelve month period (up from 3%). Less than half of these breaches (43%) were publically announced; there was no legal or regulatory requirement to disclose the remaining 57% of incidents.

The public sector experienced the highest number of data loss incidents in the last year; reporting an average of 4.48 breaches per organisation. Financial services firms were the next most likely to suffer data loss (an average of 3.11 incidents per year); followed by the education sector (2.74), healthcare and pharmaceutical firms (2.65) and the professional services industry (2.52). Faring better were the entertainment, media and defence sectors, none of which reported any data breaches.

We have to think about what we mean about data breaches, it can range from that email sent in error to more serious data or customer private data loss, that said we need to continue that difficult line of managing the need to make data accessible to the right teams and protecting the organization and our clients from data loss or exposure. The more dialogue and discussion we have in this area the better, though it’s not just a technical mindset, it’s an operational and organizational one, we need people to appreciate the importance of data, in terms of revenue and exposure and operationally – how much data is kept online and how accessible is it and who is it accessible to?

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PC Pro

Dell may not emanate the instant cool that comes with each new Apple launch, but it’s doing its best to change that. Months of drip-fed information, a few brief hands-on previews and a luxurious official website have whipped up the expectation, and now it’s here we can confidently say the Adamo has been worth every second of the wait.

It comes in silver or black, with suitably lush monikers – the Adamo Pearl and Onyx – and its dimensions are to die for: it’s impossibly slim at just 18mm and weighs 1.8kg, so it should become a permanent companion on your travels – although we’d recommend a padded slipcase, at the very least, to ensure the exquisite exterior isn’t scratched or damaged.

Check out this review of the Dell Adamo laptop, I had a good play with one recently at an event, it reminded me of my old Apple Titanium notebook, the first notebook that I ever bought when I started properly working in the olden days. The build quality and feel are very impressive, as are the weight, I’ll need to build myself up to it, a suitable replacement for my trusted Dell D430? We’ll see…

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Dell.com

I’ve been speaking with a few of the server vendors recently, and today I got told that I’m being sent my first server to review, I’m so pleased and so looking forward to it. It’s always great to be able to play with it, and understand how it works so that you can not only review it, but know how to use, configure and maintain it.

I’m being sent a Dell PowerEdge R710. This server is a dual socket 2u server that supports 144GB RAM, with up to 6TB of internal storage. Here’s a url all about it, the R710 would be a great mid-range server or ideal for virtualization as a result of the memory, storage and support of additional network cards. The specifications are here.

I’m genuinely excited about it, so I’ll do a review of the server naturally and will publish pictures, I’m hoping some videos and documents detailing how to set it up etc.

It’s very cool to be sent the servers, try them out, see how they work and start publishing some posts/documentation or media about them, and for that we thank Dell very much.

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HP

HP today announced that Cancer Treatment Centers of America(CTCA), a national network of hospitals providing a comprehensive, fully integrative approach to cancer treatment, has upgraded its entire technology infrastructure to HP ProLiant servers.

The technology upgrade is designed to increase system performance, uptime and reliability ¬– all of which are critical to delivering the best patient care.

CTCA offers cancer patients a care model that combines the best traditional medical treatment with scientifically supported integrative therapies aimed at helping patients better manage side effects, strengthen their immune systems and improve their quality of life. It serves patients with advanced cancer from all 50 states at facilities located in suburban Chicago, Philadelphia, Tulsa (Okla.), and suburban Phoenix.

CTCA depends on its technology infrastructure for operating comprehensive electronic health records, specialized clinical programs, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning applications. Its highly integrated systems allow the organization to maintain all-digital operations with 100 percent uptime to ensure patient care and safety.

It’s always interesting to see how the technology is being used and how it can be used as an enabler to your business or organization, an interesting read.

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IBM

ARMONK, N.Y. and KATHMANDU, Nepal – 30 Jul 2009: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the High Level Commission for Information Technology (HLCIT), Government of Nepal today announced a long-term cooperation and collaboration in developing policy, frameworks, research and solutions to support Nepal’s vision of being a smart country. IBM will create an innovation policy to help the Government of Nepal achieve its development goals specific to e-government transformation and IT sector development, as well as key infrastructure and IT skills capacity building.

HLCIT will establish an Innovation & Smarter Planet Task Force, to be chaired by the Vice Chairman, HLCIT and with representation from key stakeholders. IBM will assume a key role in the task force and will extend the company’s domain expertise in helping run National Innovation Initiatives and Smarter Planet policy reviews.
“We are confident that this collaboration will pave way for the Government of Nepal to reorient their structures, information technology and policies around the citizens they serve. At IBM, our resolve is to extend our expertise in helping HLCIT build a framework interconnecting dynamically with citizens, communities and businesses in real time to spur growth, innovation and progress,” said Sanjiv Pande, Vice President, Emerging Markets, IBM India/South Asia.

Any opportunities that we can present to developing economies, whether it’s in terms of new markets, new businesses or improved efficiency has to be a good thing, interesting to see IBM collaborating with the Government of Nepal, I’m off to read up more.  I wonder what range of technologies and services will be deployed and in what schemes they will be used, could we see further investment/encouragement of technologies, data centers or cloud opportunities in the region?

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HP

HP today announced a series of webcasts that will provide an in-depth customer view into the inner workings of the technology used in today’s data centers.

The first webcast, entitled “The Value of Green Technology,” is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 6.

The HP “CIO Real Talk” webcast series features chief information officers (CIOs) from leading companies on a panel moderated by Jonathan Eunice, principal IT advisor at Illuminata. During each audio webcast, CIOs will discuss important industry topics and share real-world experiences as to how they transformed their data center infrastructures to support and drive business objectives. These CIOs also will explore the challenges, lessons, tips and techniques related to maximizing IT investments.

These webcasts look great, it will be interesting to hear different customer viewpoints and conversations, I’m off to find out more, I wonder if they’ll be streamed, what technologies will be covered and where they’ll be shown.

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