ITworld Briefings

Integration as a Service: Are you connected?

2007-07-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Is your organization still stuck in the 1990’s? Webcast Explains

Building efficient, fluid connections with your customers is a business imperative in your competitive landscape. It’s no longer good enough to have the best product and service; you have to be the easiest to conduct business with. Bridging the process and system gap between you and your customers requires scale, agility, and next generation technology… but the payoff is tremendous.

NEW This Week

Managing Storage Growth with Intelligent File Virtualization

Learn how file virtualization is revolutionizing file management for companies around the world by simplifying the complexity and cost of managing burgeoning file data. You'll get an end-user's perspective from Sean Maisey, Manager, IT Operations and Engineering, who has successfully implemented this technology to help The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation successfully management over 40 terabytes of storage.

Actionable Tips for Developing a Log Management Strategy

Join Kelly Kavanagh, Principal Research Analyst from featured analyst firm Gartner Inc. and Doug Barbin, Security Architect from VeriSign, for a pre-recorded Webcast on "Actionable Tips for Developing a Log Management Strategy." Learn what is required to implement a successful
log management program, how organizations are addressing the issues associated with log management, and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls associated with deploying and managing a log management solution.

Planning, Designing and Building A Business Intelligence Infrastructure

2007-06-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

Driving results through effective data integration and data quality

Businesses today are often swimming in a sea of data, but many struggle to turn that data into actionable intelligence. In today’s business environment there is rapid proliferation and growth of data which is increasingly dynamic, and needs to be the most timely and accurate to drive better business decisions and operational actions. Learn how your organization can respond.

NEW This Week

Emerging Online Technologies to Build Loyal and Profitable Customer

Your website is the face of your organization. In the face of smaller budgets and fewer resources, how do you determine the right technology to implement to enhance a user's experience and drive greater ROI from your website? In addition, how do you move at the speed of the web while considering these decisions carefully?

Business Transformation through SOA: Evolve your IT Infrastructure

2007-06-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

A Distributed Approach to SOA Providing Benefits Hard to Ignore

The evolution of Service-Oriented Architecture is enabling businesses to realize low operating costs, high returns on existing and future IT investments, and a more modernized and streamlined IT infrastructure. Learn how your company can reap the business benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and hear experts discuss a distributed approach to SOA that is successfully sweeping the global market.

NEW This Week

Relationship Based Pricing as a breakaway strategy for banks

Banks are pursuing innovative and transformative customer service differentiation strategies to win and retain their client share in the highly competitive global financial services market. As products get commoditized, customers get more demanding and interest based income shrinking, banks are trying to differentiate with customer centric strategies like convenience banking, personalized and fee based products and packages as well as customer relationship based pricing. Learn more.

Is your IT department proactive or constantly fighting fires?

2007-05-14T12:17:00.001-07:00

Closing the Gap: Reactive to Proactive IT Service Management

How do you move from reactive to proactive IT service management? In this concise 17-minute webcast Gartner analyst David Williams discusses a new, automated paradigm for IT service management and introduces the innovative learning technologies that make it possible. IT operations executive Joseph Ambrose explains how his team used the approach to generate significant results at a Fortune 50 company.

NEW This Week

Combating the Rising Tide of Web-Borne Threats

Today, web content security means not only protecting your enterprise from nuisance adware and pop-ups; but more importantly, protecting against malicious spyware, Trojans, phishing and malware that are web-borne, dangerous and often criminal in nature. Learn how to stay ahead of the rising tide of web-borne threats to keep your enterprise and digital assets safe.

Achieving Business Objectives Through the Convergence-Ready Network

The networking world is constantly evolving. There's always a new challenge to wrestle with, be it: time-to-implementation pressures, scalability, reliability, investment protection, and so much more. So, how can enterprises best maximize their investments? And is there a future-proof solution for next-generation enterprise infrastructures? Learn from the experts.

What Independent Software Vendors MUST consider when evaluating strategies for deploying their software as a service?

Software delivery is changing, and software companies without a Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, strategy are going to fall behind their competition. As a software vendor, how do you decide the best SaaS strategy to complement or replace your existing on-premise application? In this webcast, learn from Gartner, USi, and Saba Software what factors Independent Software Vendors must consider to determine which software deployment models meet the needs of their customers while considering the potential business impact of delivering software in a new way.

Achieving Business Objectives Through the Convergence-Ready Network

2007-04-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

Convergence-ready networks provide a foundation to support all applications

The networking world is constantly evolving. There's always a new challenge to wrestle with, be it time-to-implementation pressures, scalability, reliability, investment protection and so much more. So, how can enterprises best maximize their investments? And is there a future-proof solution for next-generation enterprise infrastructures? In this webcast, trusted advisors from Gartner and Foundry Networks will address the networking challenges enterprises face and, more importantly, the solutions to solve those challenges and increase ROI.

Advanced Fraud Techniques on the Upswing

2007-03-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Countering Sophisticated Fraud

How do you give your customers and your organization the most access while protecting them from cyber-fraud attacks? What are the most secure solutions? Further, how can you use these solutions to automate business functions and increase self-service, thereby providing the strongest protection and cost savings? Tune in and learn.

A Strategic Use of Customer Feedback

2007-03-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

An Enterprise Platform for Managing Customer Feedback: Strategies for Championing the Voice of the Customer Across your Organization

Virtually all organizations collect some form of customer feedback, be it through individual surveys or regular customer interactions. But how many organizations actually make use of that feedback to enhance future interactions? The sad reality is only about 10 percent. Tune in to this rich media program and learn from the experts on how to use EFM (enterprise feedback management) to improve strategic and operational efficiency.

NEW This Week

CFO Priorities in the Performance Driven Enterprise

Hear the experts discuss the many advantages Corporate Performance Management (CPM) offers, including a closed-loop approach to metrics, planning and reporting, particularly in regards to the finances, consistency to your business processes, effective alignment between top-level goals and bottom-level objectives, a more uniform approach to how information is gathered and controlled within the organization and a greater confidence in the numbers.

Accurate and up-to-date data forms the foundation for flawless electronic business

2007-03-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

Leveraging Master Data Management To Build The Foundation For Operational Excellence

Improving quality of master data on a sustained basis is not simply an information technology problem that can be addressed through digital services alone. A successful master data management program requires the commitment of empowered people, effective processes, and well placed technology. The program you are about to see will look at the key components of a MDM program as well as the importance of planning to optimize your return on investment.

Free yourself from proprietary software stacks and architecture platforms

2007-02-26T11:56:00.001-08:00

Executing a Business Process Platform Strategy

Companies must re-think their business processes to keep pace with today's customer-driven business environment. Your systems now need to adapt to your business, and not the other way around. "Change on demand" is critical to quickly and effectively satisfy new business requirements.

Free yourself from proprietary software stacks and architecture platforms

2007-02-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

Managing your telephony infrastructure with Unified Messaging

2007-02-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

Spotlight: Unified Messaging

Experts Weigh In: The Compelling Business Case for Unified Messaging

Learn from experts and gain an understanding of the going-on in the message space and listen in on a discussion on why companies should implement unified messaging in the first place, and when they should start thinking about making the transition.

The Unified Messaging Waters: What you need to know before you dive in

Gain an understanding what unified messaging is all about and gain insight into making the business case for it. Further you'll hear a discussion from the experts explaining the difference between unified messaging and unified communications.

Myth Buster: Unified Messaging Requires Out with the Old and in with the New

Examine why it is not necessary to toss out our existing telephony infrastructure in order to implement unified messaging and gain a deeper understanding into how education and training are so critical to the success of unified messaging.

Other Programs to Check Out:

A Universal Approach to Records and Retention Management

In today's environment of increased risk, corporations need to focus early on an overall records and retention management process to remain compliant in their business processes and corporate disclosure practices, as well as be able to survive possible litigation.

The Emerging Market for Wide Area Application Services

2007-02-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

Succeeding with Enterprise Content Management

In today's competitive environment, diverse technologies are coming together to help organizations boost overall productivity, provide better customer service, and enable compliance. Learn more.

Enterprise Search: The Results You Need to Succeed

Effective enterprise search means far more than finding information fast. It will make an organization more efficient, improve compliance efforts and keep you out of legal trouble. Then again, the meaning of enterprise search keeps expanding. It’s moved beyond documents to audio and video files, and it applies to both internal and external data. So organizations need more than just a search engine – they need an enterprise search solution

The Archiving Imperative

2007-02-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Connecting the Dots: Enterprise Content Management and Archiving

Organizations today are struggling with an explosion of information. At the same time, they must deal with increased regulatory oversight and risk of litigation involving information. This places IT managers in a difficult paradox: How does one keep information which might be needed to manage risk, while controlling runaway storage and management costs?

NEW This Week

Five Security Mistakes to Avoid

During this program, Shawn Bernard, security auditor at Networks Unlimited, identifies where vulnerabilities lie and offers practical tips that will strengthen your security posture for the long haul. From insecure SNMP implementation and neglecting to encrypt mobile devices to continuing to use default passwords, find out how you can reduce your risk from Internet-based threats and malicious insider attacks.

Security Information Management: Insiders Reveal What You Need to Know

2007-01-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

A solution that addresses risk management and compliance challenges

Meeting compliance mandates while managing threats is a daunting task. An internal security breach or a hack to your network could cost your company millions and cause a myriad of compliance headaches. How can you make sure the right people have access to the information they need quickly and the wrong people don’t have access to the information at all? Tune in and learn.

New This Week

Delivering More "Service" With IT Service Management

Businesses increasingly rely on their IT departments to drive business objectives, help them reduce costs, while at the same time enhance overall productivity, security and improve customer satisfaction. Watch and learn how IT service management can help your business reach new heights.

Beating Spyware before it beats you

Experts examine the spyware challenges that companies face and, more importantly, the solutions that can solve those challenges. You’ll see why a multi-pronged solution offers the strongest defense against spyware, and why the best cure is stopping symptoms from being introduced in the first place.

Information Servers: Delivering Information You Can Trust

2007-01-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Take Back Control of Your Information Assets With Information Servers

The need to integrate and access disparate information in consistent, trusted and reusable way has become even more critical as enterprises extend their boundaries to encompass global suppliers, partners, and customers. Learn more now.

The growing trend of remote hosting: Is it right for you?

2007-01-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

Reduce Medical Errors And Improve Patient Safety With Remote Hosting

Advanced clinical information systems are helping today’s successful healthcare organizations reduce medical errors, optimize care, and increase clinician efficiency. However, the initial capital costs required for upgrades to infrastructure, facilities, staffing and support often put these systems out of reach. As a result, many organizations are turning to remote hosting which offers predictable maintenance costs, reduced staffing, lower technical risks, and most importantly, the ability to focus limited resources on the core business -- patient care.

NEW This Week

Justifying Data at Rest Protection Investment in Your Organization

Protecting data at rest is filled with challenges, ranging from legislative requirements to issues of cost control, ease of use, scalability, performance, and investment protection. So, what is the best solution to protect the confidential and personal data of your company, clients, and partners? Which solution will maximize your investment?

Analyst Spotlight

Jane Disbrow,
Research Director
Gartner Research

Ms. Disbrow is part of the IT Asset Management and Applied Research group. She covers software license agreements, best practices for contract terms and conditions, negotiation strategy, license metrics and software audits.

Watch Jane here:

Protecting Mission Critical Applications with Technology Escrow

What if a software development company, for instance, defaults on its maintenance and support contract? What leverage does the software licensee have to get the technical assistance it needs, especially if the software performs a mission-critical function? Learn why technology escrow plays a key role on any well-crafted technology license agreement.

Integrate or Consolidate? Real World Strategies for Next Generation IT Operations Management

2006-12-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

Integrate or Consolidate?

Understanding the behavior of business applications, services, and processes, and related key performance indicators is critical for effective decision-making. Discover how to improve operational efficiency by consolidating the management of applications, systems, networks, and countless tools under a single pane of glass view.

NEW This Week

High-Density Data Center Cooling: Removing Heat, Optimizing Efficiency

In this webcast, trusted advisors from Gartner, Emerson Network Power and Pomona Valley Medical Center break down the power and cooling challenges companies face and, more importantly, the solutions they can use to overcome those challenges.

Making the transition from paper to digital workflows a reality

2006-12-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

Competitive Edge: Partnerships to improve business efficiency

Hear from industry experts as they engage in a roundtable discussion on best practices to better manage the transition from paper based to digital documents. From scanning to analysis, learn how to build customized solutions based on your specific workflow, compliance and security needs.

New This Week

The Business Case for Remote Management

A growing number of organizations are tapping into data from intelligent devices. Remote management can and has enabled organizations to use this data to support their business objectives. How do you evaluate a remote management solution and its provider? How do you cost justify the investment? And what are remote management adopters saying about this technology? The program you're about to see provides comprehensive answers to these questions and more.

Solutions for multiple discreet regulatory regimes

Discover a solution that simplifies and integrates multiple compliance regimes together, provides process-modeling tools that map, document, simulate and improve business processes, offers pre-constructed, out-of-the-box best practice models; validated for COBIT & ITIL frameworks, and identifies the value-add of bringing ISO standards into the mix.

Pending Legislation Makes Employers Liable For Employee Internet Use

2006-12-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Spyware: An Opportunistic Application

Spyware is an opportunistic application that almost always requires user introduction at the desktop. Whether by naively clicking through pop-ups or by purposely installing unapproved and dangerous applications, a user is most likely behind any instance of spyware. Watch this on demand rich media Webcast and discover how to minimize privacy violations, reduce legal liabilities, decrease security threats, and improve your network integrity

Analyst Spotlight

Bill Hostmann,
Research Vice President
Gartner Research

Mr. Hostmann has worked for more than 15 years in the enterprise software market. He has held the position of Product Line General Manager for Informix Database and Internet Server product lines. Before that, he was Director of Marketing at GemStone Systems, an early Java application server company, where he was involved in the writing of the original Java EJB 1.0 specification.

Watch and learn from Mr. Hostmann here:

Trends and Directions in Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is one of the fastest growing and most important segments of the IT market. Whether you are a business professional seeking new insights into profitability, a service provider seeking to better understand client problems, or an IT manager needing to deliver useful information to your organization the discipline of Business Intelligence is critical.

Use Customer Data In Ways Your Competion Can't

2006-11-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

Forging A True Partnership With Customers

Watch this Webcast and hear how business intelligence solutions can help your organization integrate and use the data your already collect as part of your daily operations to help solve your customer challenges

NEW This Week

Trends and Directions in Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence is one of the fastest growing and most important segments of the IT market. Whether you are a business professional seeking new insights into profitability, a service provider seeking to better understand client problems, or an IT manager needing to deliver useful information to your organization the discipline of Business Intelligence is critical.

Information Availability: How to protect your people, processes & systems

There are no limits to when someone wants access to your company. Your information and systems need to be available 24-7 for people both inside and outside your company. Information availability is a crucial part of any organization’s success today. Protect your people, processes and systems.

Analyst Spotlight

Paul Proctor
Research VP
Gartner, Inc.

Mr. Proctor is a vice president in the security and risk practice of Gartner Research. His coverage includes Legal & Regulatory Compliance, Event Log Management, Security Monitoring (Host/Network IDS/IPS), Security Process Maturity Risk Management Programs, Forensics and Data Classification. Mr. Proctor is a recognized expert in the field of information security and associated regulatory compliance issues surrounding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

Watch Mr. Proctor here:

Protect Your Information—Assure Electronic Documents Are Secure

The move of more and more business processes from paper-based processes to electronic processes enables both organizational efficiencies and cost savings. Yet the need to assure your information is protected is more important than ever. You need to safeguard your intellectual property, protect confidentiality, maintain privacy, and conform to regulatory mandates.

Visibility into Next Generation OSS

2006-11-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

Visibility into Next Gen OSS/BSS and Service Delivery Platforms

With convergence becoming a reality and service delivery platforms becoming much more sophisticated, the OSS/BSS functions no longer take the backseat. Learn from a discussion on the operational realities and the service delivery strategies that will allow service providers to streamline their business and technical processes.

Analyst Spotlight

Dave Russell
Research Director
Gartner Research

Mr. Russell's research specialty is storage management software with a focus on data recovery, including continuous data protection (CDP) and storage resource management (SRM). For the last few years he has traveled the world meeting with customers, business partners and speaking at storage conferences and to the press. He was responsible for defining and driving the technical strategy for the data recovery, SRM and SAN Management offerings at IBM.

Dave can be viewed here:

ILM: How Much Is Inactive Data Costing You?

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) reaches right to the heart of what storage is all about. It’s about making sure you get the data you need when you need it, with no added burden on your IT staff or systems. Watch this new Webcast and hear trusted advisors discuss the challenges of ILM and more importantly, the solutions to overcome them.

What you should know about offshore outsourcing to China

2006-11-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

China Outsourcing Strategies: Perceptions, Realities and Best Practices

With wage inflation and attrition rates rising to as high as 40% in global outsourcing locations, smart companies are looking to China to send offshore IT work. But outsourcing to China presents not only a unique set of advantages, but also its own set of challenges.

NEW This Week

Protecting Mission Critical Applications with Technology Escrow

Inherent to every technology license agreement is a level of risk. Companies that supply and demand technology must adjust to a fast-changing marketplace, and with such uncertainty, precautions are needed.

Analyst Spotlight

Jeffrey Roster
Research Vice President
Gartner Dataquest

Jeffrey Roster is part of the IT Services group. In this role, he communicates global IT trends in the retail and consumer product industries, analyzes end-user requirements and consults on strategies with IT vendor clients. Mr. Roster also conducts primary research interviews with vendors and end users, performs secondary research and writes market research reports.

See Jeff here:

Maximize your WAN: Direct Network Connections add Security, Speed and Quality of Service

Implementing a private wide area network that's right for your business comes with the typical challenges for implementing any enterprise-wide solution. These challenges include time-to-implementation pressures, cost control issues, scalability, reliability and performance.

Gain a deeper understanding of business performance in real-time

2006-10-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

A Rapid-Value Approach to Service Visibility and Assurance

IT organizations are under increasing pressure to provide greater service visibility and intelligence to their customers – the line of business users that own profit and loss. As business success relies more and more on IT services, clear communication between the organization that delivers the services and the business users who consume them is critical.

New This Week

VCC vs. UMA: Two technologies or two different services

Delve inside the topic of fixed/mobile convergence and uncover what role VCC and UMA play in the transition to converged networks.

IT asset management is not just an IT issue, it’s a Business Issue

2006-10-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Translating IT Asset Management into Business Service Value

The impact that the IT infrastructure has in keeping the core business going is as vital as people or money or even electricity. But because IT asset data is dispersed in almost every phase of the enterprise, most companies have only been able to account for IT in broad strokes and with little accuracy, and that can seriously affect critical business decisions.

New This Week

Why You Need to Separate Backup vs. Archiving

Join CXO Media’s Managing Editor Jim Malone and Brian Babineau of Enterprise Strategy Group as they discuss why organizations need to have two separate processes for retention and retrieval.

Analyst Spotlight

Yefim Natis,
Vice President & Distinguished Analyst
Gartner Research

Mr. Natis' research focuses on enterprise software infrastructure, including such technologies as application servers, application platform suites, integration middleware and TP Monitors. Mr. Natis also researches the fundamental software architectures, including event-driven architecture, service-oriented architecture and Web services, COM/COM+, .NET, J2EE and CORBA.

Watch Yefim Natis here:

Server Consolidation and Virtualization for Java Applications

IT departments running enterprise Java applications are embracing server consolidation projects to reduce capital and operational expenses and to drive up server utilization. In addition, there's an accelerating trend toward industry standard hardware platforms, which lend themselves to server consolidation.

30% of businesses experience disaster. Don’t be one of them

2006-10-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

New disaster preparedness technologies

Most businesses don't need an underground bunker in order to keep operating, but you do need to think about what you would do if disaster struck. We all hope disaster never strikes. However, world events have shown us that disasters can and do happen. A recent survey of CIO’s revealed that 30% had experienced some form of disaster, and that can translate into serious revenue loss. The good news is there are a lot of new technologies that can help insulate your company from loss.

Analyst Spotlight

John E. Girard,
Vice President & Distinguished Analyst
Gartner Research

John specializes in business security and privacy solutions for wireless and mobile road warriors, extranet, remote offices and teleworkers. Mr. Girard was European research director for New Science Associates(acquired by Gartner), and a founder of the advanced network computing research practice. Previously he was a software engineer at Pacific Bell, where he formed an Expert Systems R&D group and a software testing practice.

See Mr. Girard here:

Protecting Data on Laptops and PDAs

Once company information leaves the office, it becomes vulnerable to loss or theft however, It seems we hear new reports of missing laptops and PDAs every week and when these devices contain sensitive personal information - social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. - the consequences are particularly severe. Tune in and see how you can fight back.