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April 1, 2006 -- Market Analysis: Is Outsourcing Right For You?
Sort By: Features Workshops Sneak Previews Geek Chic Departments Columns BuzzCuts

Features

Market Analysis: Is Outsourcing Right For You?
By Bruce Boardman
Often, outsourcing day-to-day IT functions to a trusted partner can be a smart move. It can alleviate workloads and control costs. Is it right for all companies? No. Is it right for your data center? Find out.

Review: Outsourced Data Center Services
By Bruce Boardman
We evaluated four RFI proposals on behalf of our fictional company, which was seeking a partner to manage its server infrastructure. Of the quartet, we gave high marks to the outsourcing provider with the best price and service guarantees and the most flexible, robust support.

Review: Wikis In The Enterprise
By Ron Anderson
Wikis can help you develop an easy-to-use collaborative workspace. We tested four commercial wikis: one software-based, one appliance and two hosted solutions. One offering stood out from the rest, thanks to its pricing, security, extensibility and customizability. Find out which one got our high marks.

Affordable IT: Desktop Management Suites
By Mike DeMaria
We evaluated five low-cost desktop management suites for small-to-midsized organizations. Our Editor's Choice Award went to the option with the best usability, patch management and tech support.

Workshops

Centerfold: Extreme Makeover: Virtual Building Edition
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Major commercial contractor Webcor Builders is paving the way to virtual building, the next generation of construction technology where every detail of a construction project is modeled and mapped out virtually before hitting the job site. But adding those heavy files meant major expansions to the company's WAN, SAN and e-mail archiving architectures.

Crash Course: Interior Routing Protocols
By Sean Doherty
Picking the right interior routing protocol for your network is crucial for delivering your business applications end-to-end without undue costs or delays. There's certainly plenty to choose from, including RIPv1, OSPF and IS-IS, as well as Cisco's IGRP and EIGRP if you're mostly a Cisco shop. We discuss each protocol, as well as when to use which one.

Sneak Previews

Hosted CRM Face-Off
By Lori MacVittie
SAP makes a strong, if limited, entry into the on-demand CRM market with a debut product focusing on sales force automation. Meanwhile, on-demand veteran Salesnet fine-tunes its offering.

NEC Solutions 2500 Storage Array
By Howard Marks
The NEC S2500 can meet your needs by providing flexible storage options, including support for dynamic RAID sets and the ability to mix FC and SATA drives.

Geek Chic

Apple MacBook Pro
By Glenn Fleishman
The MacBook Pro is clearly poised for the next generation of laptop use, with a faster architecture and more refined details than previous models.

GoToMyPC Corporate 5.0
By Michael J. DeMaria
It's a useful tool for remote access, but the product could sharpen its multiuser support capabilities.

Departments

Last Mile: Blogging Boo-Boos
By Andrew Conry-Murray and Tom LaSusa
In this edition, we shudder at the "Top 11 things your employee should never have blogged about." Also, a Junior IT Pro Kit and 3D avatars for mobile phone conferencing.

Quick Takes: Eight-Socket Blade Server
By Jennifer Zaino
In this edition, we look at Fujitsu's eight-socket blade server powered by dual-core AMD Opteron processors. We also spotlight IBM's DB2 Data Warehouse Edition 9.1, NeoScale Systems' CryptoStor KeyVault and more.

Letters: Absentee Lists; Writing Praise
By NWC Readers
Jeremy Harrington asks, "Why should I waste time comparing a product's features with its competitors' if the company that produced it has as good as told the IT community it won't hold up?"

Columns

The Art Of IT: Ultimate Outsourcing
Art Wittmann
In all likelihood, computing services will eventually be delivered to business in a manner similar to financial services. Although you'll be keenly interested in the characteristics of the services, you won't care at all about how those services are delivered on the back end.

Air Time: Your TWE Pocket Field Guide
Dave Molta
Technical White Elephants, or TWEs, are the product of an ill-informed imagination that postulates a simple solution to a complex problem. Here's a field guide to help keep you out of trouble.

BuzzCuts

Fat Fingers From The Past
By Lori MacVittie
We've all done it: fat-fingered a config and not caught it until packets started disappearing. But how many of us can say we missed a misconfiguration for nearly two years? We can!

We Know How Hard IT Is--Trust Me
By Don MacVittie
It takes a certain mentality to work with technology. I have the mind-set, but about once a year there's a project that makes me strongly consider changing careers.

11a Or 11g For Wireless? A False Choice
By Dave Molta
For enterprise Wi-Fi, the choice is both--not one or the other.

Red Hat's Virtual Road Map
By Art Wittmann
Red Hat reveals that Enterprise Linux 5.0 will include fully integrated virtualization. But the impact of its virtualization road map will depend largely on the management facilities that Red Hat develops.

Buzz Bites: RFID Viruses Hit Airwaves
By Andrew Conry-Murray
Researchers have created a proof-of-concept virus that propagates over IT. Just don't expect your local Wal-Mart's supply chain to disappear anytime soon. Also, find out what NWC readers say is the biggest hurdle to implementing VoIP.

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