Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Resource Kit
 

IT Median Salaries January 2008 vs. June 2009

It seems counterintuitive in a time of budget tightening; companies must continue to make strategic investments in IT. It is contrarian to think of investing in IT when normal reflexes would cause a CIO to consider hunkering down and focusing on survival until business conditions improve. Survival is clearly important, but by making survival your primary focus, you risk missing opportunities.

CIOs and IT organizations that position themselves for the eventual upturn will look at IT as an enabler of business efficiency and growth. In fact, in this turbulent economy, it becomes more critical to invest differently in IT. The key is to invest in areas that really improve IT efficiency and discipline. This focus will enable IT not only to survive this difficult financial period, but also to quickly shift its profile toward enabling true business growth.

U.S. adults have largely given up on manufacturing and traditional industries as the focus of the U.S. economy, according to a joint Zogby 463 Interactive survey. Instead, they see technology and the service sector as where the nation should target its efforts.

That was one finding of a survey of 3,030 adults, which also found people:

• Increasingly dependent on and concerned about uses of the Internet;
• Optimistic that the U.S. will not lag behind the rest of the world in recovering from this recession;
• Ambivalent about the ability of the U.S. to produce the next wave of technology innovators on the level of Microsoft founder Bill Gates;
• Overwhelmingly believing that the average 10-year-old knows more about the Internet than their Congressperson.

Disaster Recovery Plans are part of a larger, more extensive planning process known as Business Continuity Planning. Disaster Recovery plans should be tested frequently so that the as many individuals as possible are familiar with the specific actions they will need to take when a disaster occurs. Disaster Recovery plans must also be adaptable and updated frequently, e.g. if new people, a new branch office, or new hardware or software are added to an organization they should promptly be incorporated into the organization's disaster recovery plan. Enterprises must consider all these facets of their organization as well as update and practice their plan if they want to maximize their recovery after a disaster.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning are the process an organization uses to recover access to their enterprise operations; software, data, and/or hardware that are needed to resume the performance of normal, critical business functions after the event of either a natural disaster or a disaster caused by humans. While Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans, or DRPs & BCPs, often focus on bridging the gap where data, software, or hardware have been damaged or lost, one cannot forget the vital element of work force that composes much of any organization. A building fire might predominantly affect vital data storage; whereas a pandemic or epidemic illness is more likely to have an effect on staffing. Both types of disaster need to be considered when creating a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans. Thus, enterprises should include in their DRPs & BCPs contingencies for how they will cope with the sudden and/or unexpected loss of key personnel as well as how to recover their data.

When Microsoft submitted a several-hundred-page written response to the EU allegations, it was also given the June dates for a possible hearing. The company immediately asked the commission to reschedule according to Microsoft. The commission refused and the commission informed Microsoft that June 3-5 are the only dates that a suitable room is available in Brussels for a hearing.

The dates the commission selected for the hearing, June 3-5, coincide with the most important worldwide intergovernmental competition law meeting, the International Competition Network (ICN) meeting, which takes place in Zurich, Switzerland. As a result, many of the most influential commission and national competition officials with the greatest interest in the Microsoft case will be in Zurich and will unable to attend the Microsoft hearing in Brussels.

As a result, Microsoft said it had canceled an oral hearing set for early next month over EU antitrust allegations that it "shields" Internet Explorer (IE) from competition, saying that senior regulators won't be attending.

Enterprises choose SOA and ITSM to increase agility, simplify their IT infrastructure, and reduce cost pressures. This can be difficult with solutions that are delivered under a "closed source" model. According to industry analyst Janco Associates, 82 percent of companies are using open-source software, and the remaining 18 percent are expected to do so within the next few years. Sun's philosophy of free and open-source licensing is not to necessarily favor any one license or category of license but to make decisions that match the project or community with the license that best supports it. In this way, enterprises can truly have the best solution that fits their needs at any given point in time.

Microsoft has not yet disclosed the pricing for Windows 7's editions, although Microsoft will reportedly offer free or discounted upgrades to users who buy Vista PCs after July 1. According to those reports, people who buy Vista Ultimate after that date will be upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Ultimate Extras was one of the features Microsoft cited in the months leading up to the early-2007 release of Windows Vista Ultimate to distinguish it from lower-priced versions. A Windows Vista Ultimate extra was to provide regularly cutting-edge programs, innovative services and unique publications only to Ultimate users.

Many users took Microsoft to task for too few add-ons and a too-slow release pace. The last time Microsoft delivered Extras was in September 2008, when it released a puzzle game, some sound effects and three screensavers.

Last February, in fact, Microsoft announced that it would drop the concept from Windows 7's Ultimate edition. MicrosoftÂ’s said that the new approach to planning and building Windows does not have the capacity to continue to deliver features outside the regular release cycle