whitepapers.scmagazine.com/IT Management

How A10 Networks' Smart IDentity Management Solutions Simplify Sarbanes-Oxley Act Compliance

Compliance with SOX and other new corporate reporting requirements is costly and challenging for many companies to implement, as the SOX act covers many different areas of business practices for internal controls and financial reporting. Get this whitepaper now and see the impact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has on Information Technology.

Windows Terminal Server Software Licensing Control

Learn how AppSense Application Manager enables IT Administrators to reliably and effectively enforce software licensing policies on client devices, and therefore gain greater control over the deployment of applications in a Windows Terminal Server environment.

Implementing General IT Controls for Sarbanes-Oxley: Merging People, Processes and Technology

Achieving and maintaining compliance with the general IT controls specified in Section 404 of Sarbox involves far more than just establishing rigid control over various processes and access to information. It requires merging people, processes and technology into a unified, enterprise-wide compliance effort.

Swing into Business Service Management: Seven Strategies for Enabling IT to Activate the Business

This white paper from BMC Software reviews how IT organizations can become more responsive to business needs, and accelerate the business by following the same steps that people would use when trying to improve the way they play golf.

Streamline IT Service Management (ITSM) and Workflow with BMC

Learn how BMC IT Service management and Transaction Management solutions provide a single, integrated view of your transactional data, the end user experience, and the IT infrastructure. Find out how in this white paper from Enterprise Management Associates.

15 Minute Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The 15 Minute Guide to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provides a nonpartisan look at the what, why, when, where, how and who of enterprise content management. This guide will give you the basics of ECM and its related technologies, tips for successful implementation.

11 Criteria For Selecting The Best ERP System Replacement

An ERP system is your information backbone and reaches into all areas of your business and value-chain. Replacing it can open unlimited business opportunities. In this white paper are the 11 criteria that will allow you to identify and select the ERP system replacement solution that will meet these expectations.

Successfully Managing Remote Teams

Managing remote teams can be difficult for even the best manager. This white paper explains the challenges you will face and how to overcome them.

Delegate or Suffocate - the Art of Working Through Others

Management is delegation. Either learn to delegate or you will be buried in work that others should, and could, be doing.

E-Organizing for Busy Project Managers

Learn how to manage your electronic tools before they manage you. This paper will teach you how to properly utilize your office technologies and set effective communication rules with your project team.

Communication Breakdown and Conflict within Teams

Team interaction is an essential part of job success. But often, the creation of teams can lead to communication breakdown and conflict. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams and discover the six components effective teams have. This paper also includes a behavioral quiz to help you determine the health of your own team.

Project Management Network Diagram: A Tool for Understanding the PM Life Cycle

This white paper will help you better understand the Project Management Life Cycle by introducing the Project Management Network Diagram (PM Network Diagram) from Global Knowledge. This diagram provides a visual illustration of the life cycle and can help you prepare for the PMP exam.

Upgrading or Migrating to Exchange Server 2003

If you are currently running Exchange 5.5 or Exchange 2000 and you are contemplating Exchange Server 2003, this article describes how you can upgrade or migrate from your existing Exchange environment to Exchange 2003 utilizing the tools available from Microsoft.

We've Got to Have a Meeting. How Do We Ensure that It Is Productive?

A meeting will only be successful if it is managed effectively. Learn the four stages of meeting management and how to utilize each properly.

Compliance. Protection. Recovery. A Layered Approach to Laptop Security for Corporations

This paper discusses the problems IT departments face with laptop theft, mobile data protection, IT asset tracking, and regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and California Senate Bill 1386.

Resolving Critical Business Problem Areas in Data Center Operations Through Automation

Automating repetitive Data Center Operations into best practices makes response times faster, more reliable, and less costly. Learn how to extend your current IT systems to do more of the routine work, freeing up IT staff for higher-value projects.

Content Security: Blocking Spam and Unwanted Traffic

The Internet and email have stimulated huge productivity gains for employees. Workers quickly and easily access volumes of research on the Web and correspond with a mouse click. Unfortunately, businesses taking advantage of these tools are increasingly faced with daily onslaughts of spam and unwanted Web traffic.

Controlling the Use of Instant Messaging and Peer-to-Peer Applications

Use of instant messaging applications-like AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and ICQ-and peer-to-peer applications has grown significantly. Although the benefits of real-time communication offer a productivity benefit to corporate environments, instant messaging and peer-to-peer applications add significant vulnerabilities and risks to an enterprise's security posture.

10 Things to Look for When Buying Project Management Software

Looking for project management software can often be confusing. There are so many choices in the market, how do you narrow your search? This white paper gives you 10 tips to guide your solution search.

Enforcing IT Change Management Policy

Discover how high-performing IT organizations are able to create a culture that supports and uses change management to their advantage, facilitating enterprise business goals.

System Monitoring: Seeing is Believing for IBM System i Managers

Capability breeds dependence. The more you can do, the more is asked of you. The more time you save, the more time you spend seeking out ways to save more time or money. If less really is more, how do you do more with less? Effective system monitoring could help you break free of the system shackles and use your System i (iSeries) network to save time and money.

Lower Costs with On-Demand CRM & Accounting/ERP Solutions

This Yankee Group White Paper, compliments of NetSuite, shows how on-demand applications can significantly reduce cost vs. on-premise applications. See how to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of deploying & integrating CRM & accounting/ERP applications.

Unified CPM and the Application of Predictive Analytics

As vendors rush to embrace and exploit predictive analytics, only those with a truly unified solutions will succeed in capitalizing on this powerful and promising technology. Read this insightful white paper to learn more.

A PDF Primer

PDF files are prevalent in virtually all market segments worldwide. Most people know and use the term "PDF" but have misconceptions what it can and can't do. The purpose of this White Paper is to explain what PDF actually is and what it's strengths and limitations are.

Managing End-To-End Infrastructure and Critical Applications

With the current demands on today's CIO and IT Managers, implementing a top notch, easy-to-use proactive network, application and server support structure that meets budgetary confines can seem like a daunting task. Until now...

Implementing Best Practices for Network & Systems Management

The phrase "Best Practices" has become so overused, it has become practically meaningless for IT managers. Improvement is necessary, but where do you start, what tools are appropriate, where do I find actionable information, and how do I do this with minimal cost? If these questions apply to you, this paper provides a plan of attack.

Managing Enterprise IT Security Risk: Get Ahead Of the Problem

Much has been written and discussed about Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) as it relates to compliance, corporate governance, financial controls and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Until now, there was very little available to the risk manager on how to apply ERM to day-to-day operations.

Get Answers to Tough Environmental Compliance Questions

Would you like to get recommendations from a leading analyst firm on achieving tangible results with industry best practices? Learn about new strategies for complying with upcoming environmental regulations, as well as the compliance shortcomings common to many companies in a new research report by AberdeenGroup.

Executive Guide to Understanding Business Requirements

This white paper is structured so that each page is its own "mini-white-paper" but each is also part of a total look at better structuring requirements documents, processes and content completeness. At the end of this paper is a one page "tear-out" summary which is both a shortened distillation of the content, and a diagnostic tool to start a peer discussion on your organization's performance.

Top Ten Server Virtualization Technologies to Consider

This top ten list provides key guidelines for honing in on the differences between the solutions and helping to understand the basic options and limitations of each server virtualization technologies approach.

Controlling, Delegating, Logging and Auditing Root Actions with Symark PowerBroker

The purpose of the document is to demonstrate the value of Symark PowerBroker as a tool for eliminating or reducing risk in environments where information security and risk avoidance are considered important.

A Practical Guide to SOA for IT Architects

As a strategy for creating a flexible and agile IT, service-oriented architecture (SOA) has gained considerable momentum in recent years, largely due to the advent of standards-based Web services.

Keeping Up Your SOX Compliance and Turning IT into a High Performer by Improving Change Control

This paper covers the implementation, disclosure and ongoing evaluation of internal controls for SOX compliance with a focus on the role of IT, as well as the penalties for non-compliance.

Realizing the Business Value of Converged Applications

This IBM white paper posits that most enterprises have yet to realize the full value of convergence and explains why the real promise of IP networks lies in converged applications. It goes on to explain how IP convergence can build real business value for today's busy contact centers.

5S As An Integral Part of Six Sigma

Based on the Japanese words Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu and Shitsuke, the 5S philosophy focuses on effective workplace organization and standardized work procedures. 5S simplifies your work environment, reduces waste and non-value activity while improving quality efficiency and safety. Once fully implemented, the 5S process can increase morale, create positive impressions on customers, and increase efficiency and organization.

Understand Earned Value in Under an Hour

Earned value (EV) has grown in popularity over the last several years. With 76% of IT projects failing (Crawford, 2002), project management and control systems must be implemented to ensure IT project success. Learn how EV links to the work breakdown structure (WBS) the schedule and the budget.

How Project Managers Benefit from Lean and Six Sigma

Professionals who master Six Sigma disciplines can become recognized leaders, guiding key projects that result in breakthrough improvements, improving bottom-line results. This white paper discusses how Project Managers can deliver projects as much as 90% faster, and reduce costs by 25%.

Top 10 Points to Consider in a Business Integration Vendor

Selecting the right business integration vendor is a challenge. While it is essential to focus on what is critical for your company, it is also important to evaluate vendors using a common set of metrics. This document uses customer feedback taken from a broad portfolio of evaluations to offer key factors and considerations to use when selecting an integration software vendor.

Making the Transformation to SOA

This white paper explores why service-oriented architecture has emerged as one of the most significant developments in IT, and is followed by an overview of how businesses can make the transformation to service-orientation.

The Business Case for SOA: Rationalizing the Benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture

One of the most significant IT initiatives underway is the adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA), where IT assets are aligned to business services in a standard, flexible and architected fashion. The concept is often discussed in conjunction with Web services, though the two are not synonymous.

Advancing Productivity Where Complexity and Urgency Collide

Creating business value is the ultimate goal of investing in new IT technologies. This paper offers recommendations for both IT users and vendors that are vital to ensure that this goal is met.

Consolidation of Disaster Recovery Replica Servers

Achieve significant cost savings through consolidation of disaster recovery servers by combining the award-winning disaster protection of XOsoft's WANSync with the latest virtual server technologies from Microsoft and EMC. Consolidating disaster recovery servers on virtual machines can yield both reduced hardware costs and significantly lessened management burden.

On-Demand Vulnerability Management

Learn how to start your own self-auditing process by setting goals and answering key questions about your infrastructure. This podcast examines what to look for in a self-audition solution, how to use vulnerability management to ease the pain and why your software solution really matters.

Network Faxing with Castelle Network Fax Servers

Investing in a fax server is like providing everyone in the office with a virtual fax machine, at a fraction of the cost. Read all about the benefits in this informative paper.

Network Faxing and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Easily implemented and integrated with electronic medical record systems, network fax servers can play a valuable role in supporting HIPAA objectives, offering a standardized, enterprise-wide faxing solution, and helping to maintain a high standard of security, efficiency and organization.

Run Book Automation, Job Scheduling For IT Operations

This paper highlights how Run Book Automation Software provides the new level of automation required to automate IT operations and traditional job scheduling tasks, without the costs and management burden associated with custom programming and scripts.

Process Automation: Moving Beyond Scripts in Operations Management

This white paper describes how automating IT processes greatly reduces operational costs and improves service delivery. Learn how to standardize best practices and integrate data center and operations tools without the management burden associated with scripts and home-grown programs.

How to Get ITIL Done

This paper explains how ITIL can improve service delivery through data center integration and automation of best practices. It also highlights common implementation hazards, real-world examples and the tools required to implement ITIL.

On Demand IP Communications at IBM

Download this paper to learn why IBM believes that the real business value of IPC voice systems is reflected in improved employee productivity, enhanced business processes, and the ability to deliver more responsive services and offerings.

Integrated Business Communications: A Force For Business Transformation

Many forward-thinking organizations are beginning to see the true potential of the convergence of voice, video and data. It has the power to transform business relationships, business processes and collaboration between employees, suppliers and customers.

DataDrill EXPRESS v3 for Software Project Performance Management

DataDrill EXPRESS is known for being the most capable web-based performance dashboard tool available for software and IT projects and organizations, automating every aspect of performance measurement.

EvolveWare’s S2T Technology - Automated Software Analysis, Documentation & Transformation

Software analysis, documentation, migration, upgrades or replacements are daunting and risky endeavors because they are primarily manual and time-consuming. EvolveWare’s S2T Technology provides a solution to these problems with tools that automate the process up to 90%, thus reducing the time and cost of such initiatives by as much as 40-60%.

Establishing a Culture of Measurement – A Practical Guide to Business Intelligence

This paper serves as a synopsis of Information Builders' philosophy of business intelligence. By using this paper as a model, you'll learn how to establish a culture of measurement and begin a powerful cycle of continued improvement within your organization.

Butler Group on iWay Service Manager

iWay Service Manager is a complete integrated design environment. From an end-user perspective, it is simply a complete management solution that can be used with the graphical interface to design process-centric applications, without the need for developers to understand or map to the underlying infrastructure.

The Role of ESB in SOA: Creating a Loosely Coupled Integration Architecture

This paper discusses the relationship between ESB, loose coupling, and the effort needed to align IT with business process owners in order to ensure a successful SOA implementation in any organization.

An Agile Framework for Fast, Flexible, Low-Risk Service Deployments

Can service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles untangle the complexity of today's business integration requirements? This paper provides an overview of the promises and realities of collaborative SOA environments, and describes how iWay SOA Middleware solutions make the benefits of an SOA achievable, while protecting investments in already-in-place applications, middleware, and information systems.

There's a Hole in Your Network: Vulnerability Management Is No Mystery

Learn how vulnerability management allows you to keep on top of these problems by identifying an organization's greatest security vulnerabilities and proactively recommending fixes.

Don't Dread that Network Audit: Compliance with Government Regulation and Industry Standards

Security administrators need to be more proactive about preventing attacks, making vulnerability assessments a crucial tool in their portfolio.

Email as Intellectual Property: The Need for Suitable Management

Growth in overall email volume (driven by more sophisticated spamming attacks), the need to filter out malware, and ensuring suitable content for purpose means that we now must re-address how we view email within the organization.

Helping Find the Way to Better Public Sector IT

IT in the UK public sector is under intense scrutiny and needs to deliver better results: much investment has been made which has too often failed to deliver. Projects have a history of being protracted and complex, offering significant challenges to all involved.

IT Investment Decision Making Getting to “Yes” and Avoiding “No”

Getting to “yes” requires accessing and influencing other key decision makers especially those in the finance department. And along the way, there are plenty of others who can say “no”.

Your IT Guy Has Enough on His Plate Without Being the HIPAA Police

How is HIPAA Security Rule compliance impacting your IT department? This paper explores some solutions.

Automate Now! Achieve Immediate Cost, Productivity and Security Benefits by Automating IT

This Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) white paper takes a close look at automated IT management, especially for medium-sized businesses.

Got The Enterprise Software Blues? Appliances to the Rescue

This paper explores how Appliance-based Software Delivery (AbSD) provides a better alternative to both software and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Top 10 Requirements for Effective Patch Management

Keeping up with the endless stream of security patches is a continuous strain on IT resources. Assessing, deploying, & tracking software patches across operating systems is even more difficult. This whitepaper distills the top 10 requirements for selecting an effective patch and vulnerability management solution.

Patchlink Update and Microsoft SMS 2003: Implementing an Effective Patch Management Strategy

See how the advanced capabilities of PatchLink Update, working in tandem the Microsoft SMS foundational system can effectively counter today's emerging vulnerabilities and new rapidly spreading threats.

Lower The Cost of Patching Desktops: $222 to $40 per Computer

This paper demonstrates the cost savings and the myriad of other benefits of an automated versus manual system. Learn how to reduce the cost of patching from $222 - $40 per computer - savings of over $180,000 annually for an organization with 1000 computers.

Privacy, Compliance, and International Data Flows

Mandatory compliance requirements often vary or conflict. Discover the major issues and appropriate actions organizations must take today to protect the privacy of information and meet legal and contractual requirements.

The IT Manager's Working Guide to Sustainable SOX Compliance

If you are spending too much time and money on SOX compliance, this white paper will help you identify where investments in technology could really pay off in time for your next SOX audit.

Image Spam: The Latest Attack on the Enterprise Inbox

Spammers have now fired a new barrage of image spam using randomized images that appear identical to the human eye, yet appear to be entirely unique to most anti-spam software. Many of the changes to the images contained within spam messages are so subtle that they require a pixel-by-pixel examination of the image in order to detect the differences. Read how Secure Computing effectively addresses this problem.

Web Application Security: The Overlooked Vulnerabilities

This white paper identifies critical vulnerabilities that most organizations overlook when they secure their web applications. It also introduces host intrusion defense with deep packet inspection as a new, effective approach for shielding these vulnerabilities.

Cenzic: Application Security for Financial Institutions

The Cenzic Hailstorm® solution helps financial institutions comply with GLBA and other laws by automating risk assessment, checking for vulnerability to the injection of malicious code into Web servers, automating the testing of code and key controls during the software development process, and helping them respond to new vulnerabilities in the software development lifecycle.

Leveraging Managed Service to Automate Security Assessment

With web applications constantly evolving, finding vulnerabilities is a challenging, costly and time-consuming undertaking. The solution is automated security assessment products that leverage stateful processing to comprehensively examine web applications and reveal vulnerabilities in hours rather than weeks. Find out how Cenzic's ClickToSecure solution can help you secure your applications.

Connectivity and SOA: Embracing Old Assets, Furthering the New

Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) will provide greater flexibility for those utilizing them, but will also bring greater issues for data and functional connectivity. This paper contrasts and compares the capabilities of a point-to-point and an enterprise service bus approach.

Easing Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance by Giving Business Users Control of Their Data

This white paper describes some easy-to-use data management tools that many companies are using to let business users do complex data updates and reporting tasks effortlessly. This technology is not only easing their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, but is also saving these companies large amounts of time and money.

What to Look For When Considering On-Demand Applications

You’ve made the decision: the overall ease and economics of implementing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) appeal to you, and you have selected an application that delivers what you need for your business. The last hurdle is the service component itself — making sure that critical factors like security, speed, and reliability that will affect your users’ experience meet your standards.

Business-Oriented Architecture: Combining BPM and SOA for Competitive Advantage

In this paper, we will discuss the benefits of BPM and SOA in more detail and show how leading companies have recognized that implementing BPM and SOA together gives them unique capabilities.

Making the Case for BPM: A Benefits Checklist

This paper is intended for groups who want to make the business case for investing in BPM to drive process improvement. It provides an overview of the areas of benefit that companies can expect from BPM as well as concrete examples of value.

WebSphere Customer Center Product Positioning Paper

This paper gives the reader an overview of the functionality of IBM's WebSphere Customer Center, and explains why IBM is the strategic partner that more Fortune 500 companies select as their strategic platform for Customer Data Integration.

IBM's Banking Data Warehouse and Basel II

This white paper will outline the components of the Banking Data Warehouse (BDW) and how they assist financial institutions to address the data modeling and data consolidation issues relating to the Basel II Capital Accord.

What's Missing from SEM? Security Management is More than Event Management

This white paper identifies what is required for a comprehensive and integrated security management solution and examines the difference between SEM, SIM and SIEM and the challenges of enterprise level security monitoring.

Fatal Consequences of Ignoring Team Dynamics

This white paper examines how the failure to structure equitable relationships, establish ethical foundations for action and correct blinding group think led to the catastrophic death of a specific corporate organism.

Risk Assessment & Compliance: A Management Tool for the IT Security Infrastructure

Risk assessment is the cornerstone of security. The risk assessment process includes gathering information about the assets of the organizations, including all information assets, and all physical assets.

Leveraging Lifecycle Management for Software and Business Adapt Ability

In this white paper, you'll learn how to clearly define business requirements, align them with testing, and evolve development processes to prevent defects.

Major Initiative Success through Micro-Projects

Learn how you can mitigate risk and accelerate value delivery of large-scale IT initiatives. A complete Project and Portfolio Management solution allows you to approach daunting projects as a manageable portfolio of "micro-projects."

Reducing the Costs of IT Security Management

Read this paper to discover how you can streamline the management of IT security in order to improve the overall operational efficiency of your enterprise. Discover the operational efficiencies that you can gain through the use of an integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution.

Planning For A Pandemic: Turning Office Workers Into Mobile Workers For Business Continuity

This white paper looks at some of the key issues facing enterprises that might need to turn office workers into mobile workers, rapidly and in large numbers.

ITIL Training: Aligning IT with the Business

ITIL awareness training is defined as a broad yet detailed enough overview of ITIL practice areas to give IT managers enough information to begin to pinpoint their business drivers for the implementation of ITIL. This white paper explores the value of 'ITIL Awareness Training', including using this training as the first step towards aligning IT with the business.

How To Develop an Asset Management Program

This white paper explores the definition of IT asset management and the business case for developing an asset management program. Motivations for developing a program are discussed, most notable being the development of a centralized repository for IT assets in preparation for developing a configuration management systems and a CMDB.

Developing the Business Value of ITIL

This white paper, a sequel to 'Developing the Business Value of ITIL Part 1', focuses on the importance of developing a business case, and an ROI (return on investment) to justify ITIL best practice initiatives. Survey results are included from Evergreen Systems' last survey on when, how and why companies develop business case metrics to justify ITIL initiatives.

How To Develop a Service Catalog

This white paper discusses how to develop a service catalog, leveraging ITIL and CobiT best practices, and lays out eight steps towards developing one, beginning with taxonomy via service definitions and addressing services and service 'families'.

LANDesk Management Suite for ThinkVantage Technologies

LANDesk Software and Lenovo have teamed up to create an integrated hardware and software management solution to manage your systems from a single console.

An Opportunistic Entry Point into IT Process Automation

As IT departments work to transition from "firefighting mode" to becoming more proactive and responsive, a key step along the path is to implement labor-saving automation tools that allow more tasks to be done more rapidly, using fewer resources and with greater predictability and reliability.

Define, Control and Refine IT Processes Across Your Enterprise

This paper shows how LANDesk Process Manager can allow you to design processes once, automate them everywhere and refine them as needed - saving money, ensuring compliance and keeping even the most complex processes running reliably.

Business Process Management: The Key to ITIL Success

This white paper describes how ITIL implementation can be rendered simpler, faster, more effective and more affordable by combining new service-oriented Business Process Management (BPM) tools with the established functionality of task-oriented IT management software.

Realizing ROI from Automating Business Processes

This white paper examines some of the business benefits and potential cost savings that can accrue to an organization that implements a BPM solution.

Hiring the Right Product Manager

Product management positions are among the toughest to fill in the high technology industry due to the broad range of skills and real-world experiences that make for success in any given environment. A successful product manager in one organization doesn't necessarily translate to a successful product manager in your organization because the circumstances may be very different.

TrueUpdate 2.0 Overview

TrueUpdate 2.0 is a comprehensive solution for software developers, network administrators and IT departments wanting to integrate automated update capabilities into their software applications and business processes. Read through a comprehensive list of features, and learn about the system requirements of TrueUpdate 2.0.

TrueUpdate 2.0 Customer Presentation

An introductory view of TrueUpdate 2.0 from the ground up. Learn all about TrueUpdate 2.0 and see everything it can do. Integrate automated update capabilities into software products easily.

Managing Through Change: The Power of Rolling Forecasts

Many executives are concerned about trends such as high demand for resources and the acceleration of business. They also question whether their traditional planning, budgeting, and forecasting tools will allow them to be successful...or even survive. This white paper reviews common traditional budgeting problems and provides answers for your organization.

Reducing the High Cost of High Availability

High availability (HA) configurations seek to bring downtime to zero - but can increase complexity across the IT organization, often in the form of excess technology, financial, and human capital investments. Learn how application virtualization can reduce planned and unplanned downtime, and deliver greater flexibility.

Presenting a Real-Time Enterprise for Your Company

This exclusive Yankee Group White Paper reveals and examines how mid-size businesses can now build a real-time enterprises and leverage real-time information. Learn how to reduce scattered information and silo databases that prevent your enterprise from achieving operational excellence.

Why Master Data Management Vision May Fail

Master Data Management (MDM) has made the CIO's technology short-list. This paper addresses issues related to data governance, the business master, building on proven success, and ROI.

Evaluating Financial Management Software - Is It Time for a Change?

This white paper walks through the key areas of a financial management solution so when you are evaluating current and future financial management software, you are prepared to avoid challenges and maximize your investment.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Enterprise Performance and Scalability

Read how demand planning software packages can help manufacturers to establish baseline sales forecasts, incorporating multiple inputs; perform sophisticated analysis that improves their use of human and capital resources; and better understand their markets and customers.

Performance Appraisal Software: Build It or Buy It?

Thinking of building a performance appraisal system? Often, long-term consequences of building software systems internally are overlooked. Read this white paper for a cursory look at some of the actual costs involved.

Employee Performance Management: Making It a Reality in Your Organization

This paper outlines how to source and implement an Employee Performance Management system that is right for your organization.

4 Steps Toward Creating a Better Performance Management System

Good performance management cannot be reduced to a "magical form," but instead is a process that provides feedback, accountability, and documentation for performance outcomes. It also helps employees to channel their talents toward organizational goals. This paper talks about 4 key areas of Employee Performance Management for your company to focus on.

Datacenter Power & Cooling Problems? Here are 3 Innovations

Download this IDC white paper from HP, that cites 3 new technologies designed to quickly identify and address the key TCO operating expense issues facing today's data centers, including server management costs, interconnect complexity, power and cooling.

Optimize Your Vision: Aligning Your IT Portfolio & Business Strategy

Read this guide, that was published in BusinessWeek, on how organizations are now beginning to tackle this problem by taking a more holistic approach to IT Portfolio Management, enabling rapid decision-making based on a company roadmap.

Transforming IT With Strategic Measurement

Learn Forrester's 4 steps to transformation. There are occasions when an IT organization must change from one archetype to another as a result of internal or external events that change what business management is expecting from IT. The origin of change typically determines how & when IT responds.

Bill 198 and Internal Controls for Technology

Find out about the requirements and issues addressed in corporate governance Bill 198, Canada's version of Sarbanes-Oxley, for internal controls for technology and how IT configuration auditing brings compliance.

IT Management for Small Businesses

Operating and maintaining a complex IT infrastructure requires the necessary skills and investment but getting the right staff at an affordable price can be a problem. Finding ways around this can give SMBs a competitive edge leaving them free to focus on new business opportunities.

People and SOA: Improving Productivity through People Collaboration

SOA enables composite applications or collections of services that have been assembled to support a company’s business processes. Portal and collaboration software delivers the essential people-focused capabilities of the SOA strategy to provide significant value to the organisation.

Learn to Improve Compliance Through Identity and Access Management

Managing the identities and access rights of those inside and outside the enterprise has become a primary concern for IT organizations today due to increasing regulatory compliance requirements and the ongoing need for IT to reduce costs and manage risk, while improving business performance.

Migrate To Vista Without Sacrificing Productivity

Leverage best practices to manage & control the time, cost & risk of migrating your enterprise PCs to Windows Vista operating systems. Learn how HP covers every phase of the migration process & can cut deployment time by 50%, costs by 68% & improve software management efficiency by 78%.

Getting Consensus on Business Requirements: Tips and Traps

Before your company launches its next package selection, implementation or upgrade, make sure you don’t cripple the project from the start by failing to identify your requirements – the number one reason that projects spin out of control. This white paper summarizes some of the key lessons we have learned through our industry-leading requirements definition practice.

Network Lifecycle Management - A Solution Approach to Managing Networks: A Perspective by EMA

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) provides insight challenges facing network engineering and operations team.

IT Due Diligence Case Study: J.W. Childs

In 2004, J.W. Childs had the opportunity to acquire the Sunny Delight Beverage Co. (SDBC) through a unique carve-out of brands by Procter & Gamble. An accurate and in-depth assessment of the infrastructure required to support SunnyD’s business going forward would be absolutely essential to Childs’ decision to purchase the company.

Spyder Active Sports Acheives High Performance with OneNeck

When Spyder Active Sports offered to pay its IT outsourcing provider more money in return for more services, and the provider not only refused the offer but its service levels continued to go downhill, it was time to look for a new provider. It came down to three potential vendors, however, a number of factors lead Spyder to select OneNeck IT Services.

How ERP Outsourcing Helps Skanska's IT Group Maintain Its Focus

In November 2002, Skanska embarked on the construction industry’s largest consolidation effort. Having acquired numerous companies in the previous 12 years — ranging in size from $100 million to $1 billion and comprising the $3.9 billion Skanska of today — CIO Chris Stockley was charged with migrating all the companies onto the J.D. Edwards application platform already in use by a few of the organizations.

A Juicy IT Story: How IT Outsourcing Helped Sunny Delight Beverages

When he joined SDBC in May of 2004, SunnyD's Chief Information Officer and Global Controller was faced with a classic build-or-buy decision, although the circumstances were less than typical. Despite the company just being carved out from Procter & Gamble with an experienced management team and a well-known brand name, it was missing a crucial operational element — an entire information technology infrastructure.

Targus Goes Global with OneNeck IT Services

This case study explores the IT challenges of Targus, a global supplier of mobile computing cases and accessories, and how OneNeck helped Targus achieve their IT goals.

The Little Gym Makes Service a #1 Priority

"Service to our gym owners is our number one priority," said Linda Mason, Vice President of IT for The Little Gym International. "This clearly drove our decision-making process in searching for an outsourcer." Learn why OneNeck was their number one choice for outsourcing their IT services.

Social Networking and Opportunities in the Public Sector

Social Networking tools have proliferated in the recent past, and many individuals are now utilizing such tools as a core part of their day-to-day lives. If these tools can be harnessed as a means of interaction by the public sector, constituency involvement will rise, while costs can be minimized.

Using Service Catalogs to Run IT As A Business (Not 'Like' A Business)

Properly implemented, service catalogs can help IT run as a business - not just "like" a business. They improve communication, provide users with easier access to IT services, and enable measurement-driven continuous process improvement. This white paper shows you how to achieve a successful service catalog implementation on BMC Remedy and extend the benefits of service catalogs across functional areas.

IT Service Management Metrics That Matter

Learn how your IT organization measures up against the best performing IT organizations and what you can do to improve efficiency, sustain compliance and security, increase system availability, and reduce the frequency of outages.

Web-Enabled Applications and the Internet: Satisfying the Growing Expectations of Business Users

Businesses across Europe are becoming increasingly reliant on web-enabled applications that are accessed over the public internet. One of the key drivers for this is to open up communications with external organizations that are fundamental to core business processes.

IT Asset Management: Saving Money, Reducing Risk

A majority of organizations do not have efficient ways of keeping track of their IT assets. That opens them up to dangers like system downtime from improperly implemented upgrades, potential licensing violations, poor customer service, overpaying on license fees and improper usage of software and the Internet by employees.

Business Intelligence: The Strategic Imperative for CIOs

The CIO's role becomes more strategic as organizations use information to create a competitive advantage. This paper – using evidence from benchmarks created with IBM to test WebFOCUS' performance on System z running z/OS and Linux – helps CIOs to balance demands for information accessibility and processing power.

Pre-Test DR & Business Continuity Plans

Effective IT disaster recovery and business continuity planning is essential for every business. All businesses depend on their IT services for moment-to-moment operations. It is vital to ensure that those services are not disrupted due to any disaster. Pre-test your plans in a simulated network.

Analyst Profile: mindSHIFT Offers Broad Portfolio of Managed IT Services

mindSHIFT has extended its service capabilities to include software-as-a-service as well as managed IT services, and is a "compelling solution" for small and medium-sized organizations seeking a strategic source to meet their IT and business needs.

Harnessing the Power of an IT Dashboard

Discover the three key reasons how enterprise IT dashboards can deliver highly valuable information to your organization in an easy to use format and provide simple processes that will turn dashboard data into actionable IT decisions.

The 12 Pitfalls of IT Systems Management

You’ll learn what the 12 pitfalls of IT Systems Management really are, as well as the bridges you need to cross them. Learn what the big framework solutions don't want you to know, and why they might not be the answer for your IT Department. Learn to leverage what you have and your limited budget to get you the Systems Management tools and Solutions you need.

The Truth Behind Agent vs. Agentless Monitoring

Monitoring servers, applications, and services has become an essential part of the IT department over the past 10 years. However, it can be a daunting task to find the right solution for your Enterprise. This brief paper will examine the differences between Agent and Agentless monitoring, so you can make the right decision based on your company's needs, the metrics you need, your budget range, your resource availability, and your management's reporting needs.

Desktop Management: Getting It Right

The increased use of personal computers and remote access has added significant workload and coordination to the already busy IT schedule. For many companies, desktop management is not a core competency and there are other IT tasks that are considered mission critical or more strategic. Yet for many knowledge workers, the desktop is mission critical.

Real Results Report: The True Opportunity of Online Learning

Those businesses that have actively fostered deployment of e-learning into all points of the enterprise are now in the enviable position of experiencing geometrically increasing levels of operational and strategic efficiency. And those corporate learning officers and training managers that went through the arduous process of developing a business case in support of e-learning are now key strategic players in their organizations.

Real Results Report: WebEx Increases Productivity for the Enterprise

Enterprises around the world are discovering new ways to optimize business processes using on-demand web services. These businesses use WebEx online collaboration applications to reach, educate, and support a growing number of employees and customers. Companies can now collaborate anywhere, any time, without boundaries.

How Do You Know Your Change Program Benefits Have Been Achieved?

Every change program has to have deliver something – a new service, a new process, increased market share, and so on. But how do you know what the benefits are? How do you identify them, develop them and measure them to ensure your program has achieved its 'end-state'?

The Essential Guide to Disaster Recovery in i5/OS (AS/400) and AIX Environments

This white paper provides a basic understanding of the building blocks of IT and business continuity—from understanding the concepts of disaster recovery and information availability to calculating the business impact of downtime and selecting the right software solution. Readers will be able to quickly match their specific optimum uptime objectives with the easiest and most cost-effective IT.

The Distributed Enterprise: Access and Management of Remote Office IT Infrastructure

While the proliferation of branch and remote offices is a positive sign of company growth, it can be a challenge for IT staffers. While many IT staffers use remote access software to diagnose and repair branch office problems, these tools are only useful if the OS and network are functioning. If the network or OS is down, additional costs in travel, time, and lost business might be incurred.

Data Center Transformation: Simplify data Center Build Outs, Consolidations and Acquisitions

Changes in information technology (IT) can be split into two broad categories. Moves, additions and changes (MAC) are day-to-day IT activities which involve adding and removing end-user personnel, changing end-user locations such as when an employee moves to a different cubicle and upgrades services. Build outs, consolidations and acquisitions (BOCA) are large-scale projects which can be very disruptive and require careful planning and implementation to maintain operations.

A Corporate Guide to Better Decisions through IT

Learn how to make better decisions through IT: Efficiency is at the heart of your business goals—whether it is efficient operations, customer interactions, financial transactions, or human resources support. If your company is operating efficiently, you make faster, smarter decisions, respond quickly to market changes, reduce costs, and consistently meet performance standards.

Enhance BMC Change Management with Closed-Loop Control

Are you about to implement change management using BMC Remedy Service Management or BMC IT Service Management for Mid-sized Businesses (a.k.a. Magic or Service Desk Express)? Have you already implemented one of these systems and want to maximize the return on your investment? Get this white paper to see how others have optimized their change management implementation approach to derive the most value from their investment by adding closed-loop control.

ITIL Version 3 and the IT Service Catalog

Demand for IT services is outpacing the growth of IT budgets. The business constantly requests new services, requires higher service levels, and expects more consistent service delivery. With supply constrained, the only solution is to manage this demand more effectively. The new version of ITIL prescribes essential changes to help IT and the business tackle this difficult task.

10 Best Practices for IT Request Management

This white paper outlines the challenges associated with IT Request Management and ten best practices that represent the hard-won knowledge from dozens of successful Service Request Management projects. By following these guidelines, your IT organization can provide more responsive service delivery, increase operational efficiency, and improve internal customer satisfaction.

The IT Service Catalog: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

This white paper is intended to share some of those lessons learned and suggesting ways you can achieve success by avoiding the most common pitfalls. But before we talk about the typical mistakes in creating a Service Catalog, let’s briefly review its purpose.

3 Key Chapters from the Award-Winning Book 'Software without Borders'

Despite the fact that Software Executives are pressured to do more with less and cut costs to the bone, many see offshoring as a "threat." They know they need to go offshore - but where? And with who? What they want is an easier, better, more effective and safer way to use offshore programming resources.

Economist: A New Mandate for IT

Innovation is no stranger to the information technology function. Armed with increasingly sophisticated applications, IT-led teams have consistently found new ways to streamline enterprise business processes, vastly improving operating efficiency and reducing costs. Corporate leaders, however, are raising the bar: they expect IT’s core mission to expand from cost-cutting to enabling revenue generation within a short period of time.

The Economist: How to Achieve IT Excellence

SAP sponsored article written by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), this article discussion focuses on how leading companies enable IT to perform optimally. Includes interviews with Abbe Mulders, CIO, Dow Corning, and Ron Kifer, chief information officer (CIO) of the global nanotechnology manufacturer Applied Materials.

Strategies For Growing IT Service Revenues

Learn how VARs, solution providers and IT staffing firms are finding the contract IT service professionals they need to drive service revenue without adding overhead. Get the free Ziff Davis white paper, “Strategies For Growing IT Service Revenues.”

Make Funding and IT Asset Disposal Part of Your Green Strategy

Going green is becoming more than an altruistic aspiration to save the planet. A proactive corporate environmental policy is now an essential part of any company’s overall business strategy. Download this paper to find out how IBM can help you to support environmental initiatives while achieving your company's long-term business goals.

The Green Data Center: More Than Social Responsibility

Transitioning to a green data center and optimizing operating efficiency can be a complex undertaking. There are multiple components to factor into the equation—and best results can often be achieved by integrating improvements from multiple fronts. The good news is that IBM can provide many solutions and techniques to support such a transition.

Bridging the Value Gap Between IT and Business

Why is it that business and IT teams always seem to be at odds with one another? In this IBM white paper, Macehiter Ward-Dutton, specialists in IT business alignment, give a step-by-step explanation of how to make long-term improvements in the relationship between business and IT.

Site and Facilities Services from IBM: Success Stories

This reference guide can help you understand IBM’s capabilities in the site and facilities services area through real-world scenarios that demonstrate those services in action. Download this guide now and use it to quickly find stories that illustrate how IBM has delivered high-quality, value-add services for the site and facilities needs of companies of all sizes in a variety of industries around the world.

IT Optimization: A Source of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

There is increasing concern that IT investment is approaching the point of diminishing marginal returns. This white paper highlights the costs of IT asset proliferation and the advantages of the IBM view of IT optimization as a strategic, ongoing process. It describes the holistic and practical IBM approach and shows how it is helping organizations realize greater initial savings and higher returns going forward.

Grant Thornton Achieves 99.7% Accuracy Tracking IT Assets

Discover how Grant Thornton standardized its IT asset management across a nation-wide network of leased computers to reduce loss rates, achieve regulatory compliance and drive down total cost of ownership. By tightly controlling all network end-points, Grant Thornton was able to achieve close to 0% loss of all mobile IT assets.

Compliance. Protection. Recovery. A Layered Approach to Laptop Security for Government

This paper discusses the problems IT departments in government agencies face with laptop theft, mobile data protection, IT asset tracking, and regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and California Senate Bill 1386.

The Network Box Mail Portal

Network Box Mail Portal contains patent-pending technology, and implements a "virtual per-user administrative interface", extending delegation of manageability and maintenance of the security gateway down to the per-user level. This is an industry first. The Mail Portal system allows end users in organizations using SMTP email servers to have direct control of their quarantined emails for the first time.

Evaluating IT Security Options

Assessing IT security claims – especially in the all-important area of perimeter security – is difficult at the best of times. Vendors in this area often exaggerate their offerings (sometimes spectacularly!). It can be very difficult to compare products side-by-side. And compounding this problem is the lack of clarity in the terms that are used. It’s almost impossible to make rational comparisons between the different offerings available.

IBM BladeCenter—Integrate Servers, Storage and Networking

By doing more with less, you can realize savings and reduce complexity at the same time. IBM BladeCenter is a complete, compact and integrated system designed to simplify IT in small and mid-sized offices and distributed environments. It's packed with energy-saving features that lower operating costs and it's flexible enough to grow with your business. Learn about the features and options of the IBM BladeCenter and see why it’s the right choice for your diverse business needs.

7 Strategies for Enabling IT to Activate the Business

This white paper from BMC Software reviews how IT organizations can become more responsive to Business Service Management needs, and accelerate the business by following the same steps that people would use when trying to improve the way they play golf.

Data Center Asset Planning: Regaining Control of the Data Center

After years of uncontrolled growth, many data centers face a crisis as they run into space and power constraints. While remedies exist, present business practices do not encourage the prioritization of power reduction within one of the most power hungry areas of a business — the data center.

Cost Transparency for Business

Cost transparency in relation to IT consumption isn't just about showing which applications, physical resources or even individual users increase company's costs (although that can be valuable information). The real goal is to drive efficiencies throughout the whole business. This white paper offers some practical guidance on where to start.

How to Achieve Sustainable, Competitive Advantage in the Leisure, Entertainment and Travel Industry

Online bookings, billing and ticketing activities lie at the heart of high quality and reliable services in the leisure, entertainment and travel (LET) industry. Indeed, they can effectively act as a primary differentiator in an increasingly competitive and cost-aware environment.

Service-Oriented Architecture: Developing the Enterprise Roadmap

Most large enterprises have launched an initiative to adopt service-oriented architecture (SOA), but SOA is not a solution that comes in a tidy little box. SOA is a new way to design systems, and it is more about culture than it is about technology. SOA will impact many aspects of an organization—from software development and operations to accounting and incentive systems. Governance is critical.

Can You Really Get ITIL Out of the Box?

You don’t have to be skeptic of the ITIL implementation promises. This paper from BMC Software examines the people, processes, and technology issues associated with getting ITIL up and running in your organization. It also demonstrates how you can obtain technology that addresses those issues and delivers a substantial portion of ITIL right out of the box.

Strategies to Maximize IT Business Value

The key to maximizing the value of IT is to optimize your IT processes based on a business-aware foundation. Business Service Management (BSM) is the most effective approach for doing just that. Organizations that have begun BSM implementations are already reaping the benefits. Read the BMC white paper to learn more.

Streamlining Service Request Processes: A Key to Business Success

Imagine being able to give your employees the luxury of one-stop, online shopping for all the services they need. Now, imagine that you could provide all of your service providers with a centralized location to promote available services to those employees. With service request management technology, you can.

Extending Reach and Ensuring Effectiveness of Leadership Development

Leadership is an important element of organizational success. So, it is not surprising that many companies look for ways to extend the benefits of leadership development to more employees. Technology-based learning approaches such as online courses, books and video programs can be used effectively to develop employees at all levels.

Benchmark Study 2007: The Future of Learning

Take an in-depth look at how employees use e-learning; when and where they do it; what specific skills e-learning has enabled them to develop; how these skills have been put into practice in the workplace; and whether the knowledge gained is widely shared.

The Impact of Work Force Agility on Business Performance

Agility is an issue that is becoming more and more prominent in businesses across industries. While it is a common goal, its meaning can be somewhat ambiguous. Depending on the context, agility can mean different things to different organizational units. But one common thread persists: the accelerating speed of change. Change is not only driving organizations to keep up and anticipate, but more so to be its catalyst in order to be competitively positioned.

A Systematic Approach to Buying Software

This white paper proposes that our purchase decision meets our expectations and does not end in “divorce”, so to speak. An exhaustive list of things that are important while buying software, from company background to how our data is handled. Also includes a practical “software selection tool” to be used for purchase decisions.

Learn How to Achieve High Availability While Managing IT Costs

This IDC white paper discusses how the current need for server virtualization, infrastructure consolidation and energy efficient technology requires significant changes to IT systems. It describes the steps to take to achieve high availability and reduce operational costs, while still adhering to the requirements of “green IT.”

Go Green with an Energy Efficient Data Center and You'll Never Go Back

This Q&A-style article from CIO Green Edge Zone covers some of the many ways businesses can benefit through green technologies. Becoming more energy efficient not only dramatically reduces power costs, but can actually help companies improve operational efficiencies, increase productivity, enhance customer service and heighten brand awareness.

New Enterprise Data Center Ensures More Efficient IT Service Delivery

This white paper explains the why's and how's of data center transformation. It reveals the breakthrough IBM approach that supports dynamic, service oriented applications and consolidates systems, servers and networks for decreased operational costs on all fronts—freeing up funds for business innovation. Download white paper on new data center.

The Titan 3000: Business Velocity on a New Scale

It’s no secret: The scale and pace of business change today is challenging all of us to do more -- better, faster and with ever greater efficiency. Customers are demanding more and wanting it now. Market expectations for product and process innovation are growing. Mergers and acquisitions in many industries are at or near all-time highs. Complex global supply chains and highly distributed organizations are the norm.

IBM's Vision for the New Enterprise Data Center: A Breakthrough Approach for IT Service Delivery

You can't make the world move slower. Or change where markets are headed. Or hold back new technologies while focusing on day-to-day IT operational issues. But there is something you can do, right now. To react faster. To be more efficient. To provide innovation for your business and your customers. A new vision. A better approach. The new enterprise data center-starts now.

Fighting Fire with Fire: 5 Strategies to Enable Business Change in IT Operations

HP Operations Center software helps IT operations managers enable change in the organization, in processes and in technology. Download this white paper to view five strategies to enable business change in IT Operations.

Achieve Greater Efficiency in Asset Management

You face key challenges–technological and organizational–in enterprise asset management. Every last vehicle and material is under your control, often in different software formats that only provide you with a partial view of your enterprise. We would like to share a white paper with you that explains how you can see your assets holistically and optimize their performance.

BlackBerry Platform Management: Mobile User Management with ITIL and ITSM

For advanced enterprise BlackBerry administrators only. IT Service Management (ITSM) - as defined by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – is now the required approach to ensure superior BlackBerry service levels at the lowest possible cost. Read this White Paper to see how ITSM/ITIL can transform your approach to mobile user management.

IT Asset Management Basics: A Guide to Increasing Value

According to industry experts, organizations that systematically manage the life cycle of their IT assets will reduce the cost per asset by as much as 30% in the first year alone. Yet today, many organizations have little or no insight into exactly what assets they own, let alone how they can optimize assets throughout their life cycle, from requisition to disposal. The same holds true for major IT investments.

5 Steps to Successful IT Consolidation

Has your Enterprise made the strategic decision to consolidate remote site IT infrastructure into central data centers? Then you have probably discovered that consolidation projects are fraught with technical, organization, and implementation challenges that require a well thought-out strategy. Download this paper by Riverbed and discover a clear 5-step approach to making sure every consolidation project is successful.

How a Flexible Infrastructure is Essential to Manage Costs in the Face of Increased Budget Pressures

Today's organizations face a tough set of challenges. Markets around the world have become increasingly volatile. Competition is more intense. Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures demand revisions in business plans and the IT infrastructures that support them. And IT departments have to keep doing more-and better-with budgets and resources that are already stretched to the limit. To meet these critical challenges, your organization needs much greater flexibility in its business models and business processes.

Achieving Business Performance Goals through Virtualization Management Best Practices

This EMA white paper investigates virtualization management issues in detail, outlining the key drivers and outcomes of virtualization, explaining critical inhibitors to virtualization success (and how to overcome them), and describing core virtualization performance management solution requirements. It also briefly describes one such solution, the eG Enterprise Suite, and includes a short case study highlighting this solution in action.

A Consulting Assessment: Examination, Evaluation and Recommendation

Whether you’re implementing new technologies, upgrading existing infrastructure or evaluating current needs, consultants can help you identify and document the gap between your current situation and a desired future state. When an assessment is done correctly, it can provide a solid foundation for successful implementation and improvement. The consultant first interviews stakeholders, analyzes data, and compares your business against best practices or specific industry competitors.

Enterprise Architecture Is More Than Engineering

While many enterprise architecture (EA) programs may be less than effective or threatened by extinction, the EA discipline is still an important set of skills and processes that improve IT decision-making and CIO effectiveness. Yet, after decades of architecting systems, the advent of several EA frameworks, and the many definitions available for the term EA, we still strive to understand what EA is, what it does, and what it looks like when it is successful.

Reducing the Cost of Messaging

Email is absolutely critical in making users productive: for example, a February 2008 survey conducted by Osterman Research found that 93% of email users consider email to be important or critical in helping them to get their work done. However, most decision makers are not aware of the true cost of providing email functionality to their users.

7 Steps to Controlling Social Networking. A Guide by MessageLabs

The rise of online social networking poses new risks for businesses and new challenges for IT Management. As sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo become evermore popular with end-users, businesses must consider risks such as employee cyber-slacking, reputation damage, broken privacy, identity theft and the threat of virus and spyware infections. This guide will help you reduce the risks of uncontrolled social networking use within the workplace and prescribes seven simple steps for both you and your end-users.

10 Ways to Sell Upper Management on a Network Upgrade

The days of deploying new equipment for the sake of having the latest and greatest ended when the Internet bubble burst. So when you know it's time for a network upgrade, you need to have more than the technical facts — you need to arm yourself with a rock-solid business case. Start with these 10 ways to sell the members of your upper-management team on the network upgrade.

ITSM: It's About Managing Change

This white paper describes critical steps IT executives must take to prepare for change and manage an ITSM implementation to maximize its value and ensure that it achieves the full transformation effect it is capable of delivering. IT Service Management (ITSM) is a proven and effective framework for helping IT organizations become more adaptive, flexible, cost effective, and service oriented.

Operational IT Service Management (ITSM)

This white paper explores the advantages of Operational ITSM- through incremental and continual improvement of service management practices on an ongoing basis. IT organizations must evolve into trusted service providers that adapt quickly, offer cost-effective, reliable, and flexible services to meet today's business initiatives. This evolution is not easy. It requires that the IT organization adopt an IT Service Management (ITSM) framework. Operational ITSM provides an incremental approach for companies that may not have the resources to finance and staff a large ITSM project.

Skill Level and Training Key Factors

This white paper by IDC shows how an investment in training improves the likelihood of an IT project chances for success through enhancement of team skills. The white paper provides an analysis of a comprehensive survey with 144 senior IT managers examining the impact which training and skill level had on the success of 377 IT projects.

Downtime: Myths and Truths Webcast

Join Forrester Research and HP in this webinar which explores common myths about IT disasters and analyzes different strategies to protect a company's information assets based on risk and cost. Stephanie Balaouras of Forrester analyzes 5 common myths around IT disasters e.g. disasters and loss of a data centers are rare.

7 Steps to Controlling Social Networking – Free Guide by MessageLabs

Entrepreneurs & Managed IT: Putting Big Company Strategies to Work for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses

No matter the size of the business, technology plays a critical role in its financial success. At the most basic level, companies have to deal with desktop and laptop computers for all their employees, e-mail, access to the Internet, Blackberries, and other kinds of on-site and remote devices. Add networking issues like viruses, spam and bandwidth utilization, and suddenly, this effort becomes a major challenge to anyone operating a small or mid-sized business (SMBs) with limited resources and a limited budget.

Reducing Cost, Risk, and Errors with IT Process Automation

Despite increasingly complex data center environments, IT is expected to provide business owners with faster service, higher reliability, and greater agility than ever before – all within a tight budget. It is impossible to meet these goals with manual IT processes. However, EMA research shows that IT Process Automation (ITPA) helps achieve these goals, delivering annual savings of $500,000 on staff costs alone, and 64 hours of additional uptime per year – plus improved resource utilization, security and compliance, problem response
times, and agility.

Lean, Green and Sustainable IT

The terms "Green IT" and "Lean IT" and "Sustainable IT" are used prolifically these days and often inter-changeably. The three areas are the focus of exciting innovation the IT industry these days are significantly impacting IT operations departments both large and small and are described below. Lean IT focuses on reducing hardware, green IT builds on lean IT to reduce consumption and sustainable IT builds on green IT to reduce impact on economy, society and the environment.

Solving Your Enterprise-Wide Service Management Problems

Today’s increasingly complex environments are a challenge to manage. This white paper will show you how IBM Service Management solutions from Tivoli can help you better understand your IT and operation environments and manage your business more efficiently—all while controlling costs and mitigating compliance risks. You’ll also discover how IBM Maximo Enterprise Asset Management solutions provide a single software platform for managing all IT and operations assets across your enterprise.

The Strategic Value of IT Asset Management for Financial Services Companies

Financial services companies face an array of demanding and ongoing challenges—global competition, mergers, acquisitions, converging service offerings, and an imperative to build and maintain customer loyalty. This white paper explores the landscape of operational risk in the financial services industry, and suggests ways an IBM Maximo IT asset management solution can reduce IT and operation risk while adding strategic benefits.

Enabling the Reliability Centered Maintenance Process with IBM Maximo Asset Management

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is an advanced maintenance strategy for increasing asset availability by minimizing downtime caused by failures, reducing an asset’s total cost of ownership and increasing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

This white paper describes the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) process, breaking it down into seven steps including supporting information on how IBM Maximo® Asset Management supports each step of the process.

Increase your Service Availability and Performance with IBM Service Management

Today’s operations teams are faced with more pressure than ever to ensure high service availability and performance. They must keep pace with the growing array of service demands, soaring costs, the rapid evolution of technology and an increasingly competitive marketplace. However, many organizations suffer from an obscured view into key business services and supporting technology, because they lack the closed-loop, cross-domain management that’s needed.

Gain Strategic Insight into Business Services. Optimize Availability and Performance

Many enterprises depend heavily on business services to generate revenue. But they often have trouble correlating availability and performance information from individual systems with the business as a whole. To do this, you need a clear view of your service infrastructure. Integrated availability and performance solutions can provide the visibility, control, and automation that your IT environment needs.

ITIL version 3: What It Means and How IBM Can Help

For a growing business, it’s increasingly difficult to integrate technological solutions and services to improve service management. So various frameworks have been created to help today’s IT professionals optimize their use of technology in managing IT processes. The third version of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides the latest set of process best practices for any service management improvement effort.

IT Service Management: Is It Now Too Important to Leave to the IT Department Alone?

IT is becoming increasingly important in virtually every aspect of business. For enterprises to compete effectively in the marketplace, IT service management must broaden its focus and take a more holistic attitude toward IT service provision. The goal is to resolve the disconnect between IT and business within organizations in order to achieve necessary levels of resilience, control, availability and quality of service.

Bridging the IT Talent Gap

Bridging the IT talent gap focuses on measures insurers have taken to adapt to the growing shortage of qualified IT staff. The paper features insights from John Chu, senior vice president of e-business and technology for Hartford Financial Services.

Coming to Grips with IT Risk

According to the EIU, companies fear IT collapse more than they do terrorism, natural disasters, financial risk or regulatory constraints. Nonetheless, most companies do not have sound IT risk management processes in place. This brief summarizes the findings of an online survey conducted with 145 senior executives from a variety of industries on their current and planned strategies for minimizing IT risk.

Enterprise Asset Management

Explore how utilities can drive network and plant asset management amid changing markets, varied regional and regulatory factors, and diverse asset structures. The SAP for Utilities solution portfolio can help your utility company implement asset and operational risk strategies to achieve reliability and cost efficiency.

Successful Mergers and Acquisitions

Considering a merger or acquisition? Ensure its success with solutions and services from SAP, whose proven strategy for success is built on preparing your IT team members to meet the challenges of post-merger integration and providing the tools and help they need to do it.

GO GREEN Information Technology Resource Kit

Get an easy and proven eco-friendly framework for your company to GO GREEN. See how your company can cut operating costs while reducing energy consumption, greenhouse emissions and waste through your equipment infrastructure and business operations.

Security vs. Flexibility: Must IT Management Choose?

IT Managers are tasked with making the desktop environment more secure and locked down to a uniform corporate standard, yet flexible enough to handle the myriad of exceptions that arise across the enterprise. Centralized Configuration Management (CCM) tools are great, especially in environments with branch offices. But CCM tools can’t do the big job of making your environment inherently more secure or more flexible.

CIO Bundle

Discover how WDS can help your company remain competitive in a world without boundaries. In these three whitepapers, CIO discusses how WDS can help you remain competitive in a world without boundaries, how to keep remote and mobile workers productive no matter where business happens, and so much more.

CA's Workload Automation: Product Roadmap and Integration Strategy

This white paper provides insight into CA's vision of advanced job scheduling. With the acquisition of Cybermation products, CA has gained components of workload automation not currently in CA Job Management solutions. The technologies from both companies combined, when integrated, will provide you with a strong solution for advanced workload automation.

The Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface: IT Decision Maker Perceptions

This white paper presents the results of a Forrester Research study commissioned by Microsoft to help IT organizations considering adopting the 2007 Microsoft® Office system anticipate the impact of the new Microsoft Office Fluent™ user interface on their end users.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus Demo

See Microsoft® Office Professional Plus 2007 in action. Find out how this integrated set of business productivity programs helps you work more efficiently and deliver better results faster.

Remote IT Management

Businesses of all sizes have to manage an increasing diversity of remote users and devices. The task ranges from simply keeping systems running to ensuring security, compliance and the achievement of environmental goals. Under this sort of pressure, IT managers and managed service providers, to which the task is often outsourced, must have flexible access to powerful tools and an ability to share the data those tools rely on.

Get Protection on Demand with Managed Security Services

Organizations of all sizes need security that can adapt to their ever-changing environments. IBM Managed Security Services can help you integrate security with business processes for increased flexibility, efficiency and productivity. Read this white paper to learn how IBM can put you in the driver’s seat with protection on demand.

Applications, Virtualization & Devices- Taking Back Control

Employees installing legitimate but unauthorized applications, are a real and growing threat to business security and productivity. Removable storage media and wireless protocols make the challenge of securing data even more complex. This paper explains why control is important and highlights how integrating this functionality into malware protection is the simplest and most cost-effective solution.

The Business Benefits of e-Learning in High-Growth Companies

This research report looks at learning strategies and the use of e-learning technologies in high-growth companies – by focusing on the experiences of six such organizations. In addition, we include data from Bersin & Associate's Corporate Learning Factbook research, our annual benchmarking study on trends in corporate learning practices.

The True Value of Learning

Yogi Berra, that paragon of word manipulation, exposition and baseball, is often quoted as saying, "The future ain't what it used to be." And, surprisingly, so it is in the world of learning measurement. We cannot sustain our training departments based on how well we do against our training budgets. This only leads to the budget being cut on a year by year basis.

Don't Forget About The 'People Costs'

Most white papers and webinars available on the Internet about choosing enterprise middleware focus the selection process around criteria such as licensing costs, technical coverage of long lists of specified functionalities, and vendor viability. While these criteria may have been suitable in the past, the experience of many enterprise architects leading J2EE projects over the past few years suggest that they are not enough. What’s missing? People costs.

Information Architecture for Fabrikam Industries Intranet

This paper is intended to represent the process that a medium-to-large organization may undergo when deploying Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 in a practical scenario. Included are typical approach and implementation techniques that may occur when planning, customizing, and deploying an Office SharePoint Server 2007 installation.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Evaluation Guide

The ultimate goal of this guide is to aid the reader in performing a thorough and effective evaluation of Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. This guide is intended for anyone who is interested in learning more about Office SharePoint Server 2007 and wants hands-on experience.

What To Look For in a SharePoint Consultant

In order to understand the key skills for your SharePoint consultant, you need to understand that SharePoint itself is not really the source of the complexity. Rather, it is the design of the deployment, the uses made of it, its part in an integrated, unified business system, and how you actually use it to deliver on business objectives which make it challenging. This understanding is ultimately going to make the difference between a happy ending and frustrated customers who end up giving SharePoint a bad name.

What to Look for in Mission-Critical Managed IT Services

The Choices from many reputable suppliers of IT managed services can appear very much alike. Yet when you have a mission-critical business process whose function must not be interrupted, you know your requirements call for something above and beyond. This paper serves as a field guide to help you identify key characteristics that set a critical managed IT service apart from even highly capable general-purpose offerings.

IT Service Management- Metrics That Matter

ROI with Proactive Network and Voice Management

In this paper, we present an eye-opening look at ways to improve your IT infrastructure at its most fundamental level. With the right strategy, you can not only do more with less, but you can deliver clear, credible business returns.

The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management

The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management is designed to help IT staff better manage the complexity of virtualization. This Guide begins with a discussion of the business value of virtualization and how organizations can benefit from this technology.

IBM WebSphere Application Server family

Today’s organizations face a tough set of challenges. Markets around the world have become increasingly volatile. Competition is more intense. Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures demand revisions in business plans and the IT infrastructures that support them. And IT departments have to keep doing more— and better — with budgets and resources that are already stretched to the limit.

To meet these critical challenges, your organization needs much greater flexibility in its business models and business processes. For IT, a flexible infrastructure has become essential to capitalize on changing market opportunities and to manage costs in the face of increased budgetary pressures.

Application Server Revolution - Feature Packs and the new world of SOA & Web 2.0

Find out how Tom Manning uses WebSphere Application Server 6.1 Feature Packs to harness the power of partner, supplier, customer & internal assets in a single, powerful, agile Web 2.0 application. This video shows customers the power WAS 6.1 has to bring you future: SOA + Web 2.0 unites!

How to disappoint your HIPAA auditors and gain the respect of your board of directors

With HIPAA audits now randomized, you must be prepared for them every day. And with state regulations requiring compliance-breach reporting, you must become your own auditor. HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the 1996 federal regulation that mandated health-data privacy.

This regulation requires compliance by all insurers and health care providers, including physician’s offices, hospitals, health plans, employers, public health authorities, life insurers, clearinghouses, billing agencies, information systems vendors, service organizations, and universities.

But that’s not all.

Reducing Cost, Risk, and Errors with IT Process Automation Webcast

Featuring an expert from Enterprise Management Associates, this webcast discusses some tactical steps towards automation of various IT processes, showing how even in processes with interdependent tasks, IT Process Automation can start IT groups down the path of reducing complexity and error rates, two of the leading drivers of cost and chaos.

Bringing Automation to the Data Center

Given the increased complexities and requirements thrust onto data center management environments over time, a more holistic management approach is necessary for efficient and cost effective delivery of IT services. Authors and analysts Judith Hurwitz and Robin Bloor bring their research and extensive experience to light in respect to the state of data center management by building the case for automation as a key strategy for efficient and cost effective management.

SOX and Data Access/Audit Controls

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not pose direct requirements for corporate data security, although it does include a number of clauses concerning internal control, the completeness of sensitive financial documentation, and audit situations. Updating a corporate data security system can make compliance with the law’s key provisions considerably easier. This whitepaper will address SOX requirements that affect a company's data infrastructure, including the means of securing data collected and maintained by the company, with particular emphasis on protecting endpoint avenues of data leakage.

How Can Communication Service Providers Deliver Exceptional Support to Multi-Services Customers?

In today’s converging, multi-services market, leading providers must standardize processes and IT infrastructure across their multi-play offerings in order to improve profitability while reducing costs.

An Overview of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Today’s business requirements—such as security, disaster recovery, and mobility—are more extensive than ever before. To meet these requirements, Microsoft® Exchange has extended its reach beyond simple e-mail to increase user productivity and keep information close at hand, while being flexible enough to meet your organization’s administrative model.

Adhesives Manufacturer Simplifies IT, Boosts Productivity with New Messaging System

Elmer's Products, Inc., producer of well-known adhesives for general consumer use, has undergone several company acquisitions and consequent iterations of its IT infrastructure, most recently using a messaging environment based on IBM Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes. Elmer's decided that it could simplify its communications environment and realize significant productivity benefits by adopting integrated Microsoft® products and technologies.