Steve Andriole

The whole area of standards is fraught with emotion. Nearly everyone in your organization will have an opinion about what the company should do about operating systems, applications, hardware, software acquisition, services and even system development life cycles. Everyone. Even the people who have nothing to do with maintaining your computing and communications environment will […]

In order to make cost-effective infrastructure investments, several things should be true: You have to know every piece of your infrastructure: laptops, desktops, servers, personal digital assistants, minicomputers, mainframes, communications networks, routers, switches, business applications, messaging applications — all of it. (And if you don’t have an asset management system, now is a good time […]

Well, it’s finally happened: security and its first cousin, privacy, are now household requirements. Ignore them and you’re toast. How did this happen so fast? Blame it on distributed computing and the distributed steroid known as the Internet. As business models moved into cyberspace, we found ourselves facing new threats. We’re now surrounded by security […]

There’s a good chance that your applications portfolio is not what it should be. It’s probably got a hodge-podge of applications developed over the past 20 years or so, many of which require some form of life support to exist. Your e-business strategy is probably driven by a mix of mainframe-based applications, client-server applications, and […]

Data’s still king, but now we call it information, knowledge, or even content. Whatever the name, it’s the lifeblood of business applications and the linking of employees, customers, and suppliers in a virtual world. Businesses now think beyond database administration and about intelligent decision support, online analytical processing, data warehousing, data mining, metadata, and universal […]

Let’s say it clearly: If a company doesn’t understand its competitive advantages and its current and future business models, it’s doomed. Not only will it fail in the marketplace, but also it will waste tons of cash on technology along the way. So what business are you in? If the strategists in your company have […]

These are the facts: Many companies have piecemealed their security capabilities. Because of this, auditors frequently hammer away at large enterprises, writing letters chastising the companies for their lack of appropriate internal and external security. At the same time, smaller organizations are scared to death of viruses and worms, while small dot.coms are painfully aware […]