This site contains the tools that the Chief Information Officer -
CIO, Chief Technology Officer -CTO, Chief Security Officer - CSO, and
Chief Financial Officer -CFO can use for Sarbanes Oxley, Disaster
Recovery, Security, Job Descriptions, IT Service Management, Change
Control, Help Desk, Service Requests, SLAs - Service Level Agreements,
and Metrics.
NEWS
-- Internet & IT Job Descriptions HandiGuide 2008 has just been releasedOver 210 Job Descriptions in a new easy to read and modify format.
Available in PDF, WORD 2003, and WORD 2007 formats. Styles sheets
used to maximize the ease of use. The CIO, CTO, CSO job
descriptions have been updated to comply fully with Sarbanes-Oxley and
the new ISO Security Standards. New job descriptions include Chief
Compliance Officer (CCO) and Director of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance.
Read on.....
Disaster Recovery Templates are Sarbanes Oxley compliant and the
Disaster Recovery Template is included in the Sarbanes Oxley Compliance
Kit.
Janco provides Information Technology and Business Management
infrastructure tools to better manage technology and become world class
enterprise. These tools are proven and easily applied to any size
enterprise.
Janco's
clients are from around the world in over 70 countries and
cover every industry. Janco's clients include many premier
corporations, including over 300 of the Fortune 500.
05/08/2008 -
Is Verizon Trying to By Pass the Open WiFi Rules of the FCC?
(eWeek) Google is
challenging Verizon's vision of what sort of open network it will run on the
spectrum it recently acquired in the Federal Communications Commission auction
for $4.7 billion. Under the auction rules, Verizon is required to build an open
network to which users can connect any legal device and run the software of
their choice.
But in a May 2 filing with the FCC, Google contends
Verizon has no such intentions. Instead, Google claims, Verizon plans to
institute a two-door policy: one door for open access devices and applications
and another door for closed devices that only support Verizon's proprietary
applications.
In the filing, Google urged the FCC to deny Verizon
a license to use the spectrum until it fully commits to an open
network.
Verizon has taken the public position that it may
exclude its handsets from the open access condition, Google states in the
filing. Verizon believes it may force customers who want to access the open
platform using a device not purchased from Verizon to go through Door No. 1,
while allowing customers who obtain their device from Verizon access through
Door No. 2.
It is door No. 2 that troubles Google, which
is heavily invested in promoting its own Android open-source mobile platform. As
the search giant sees it, Verizon plans to deny Verizon customers full open
access to competing devices and applications.
Accourding to Google, the FCCmandates opening the C
Block network for the use of anydevice, and for the use of
anyapplication on any device, regardless of whether an end user
obtains the device from the licensee, another service provider, a manufacturer
or other third party.
Verizon promptly dismissed the Google
concerns.
The Google filing has no legal basis.
It is really no surprise that despite not winning spectrum, they continue
to try to change the rules and further their own business interests through the
regulatory process, Verizon spokesman said in a statement, adding that Verizon
plans an FCC filing in next several days to counter the Google
claims.
Last summer, Google lobbied the FCC into adopting
open access standards for the prime C Block of spectrum, a notion Verizon
initially opposed in a lawsuit, contending that the spectrum should go the
highest bidder with no restrictions. Verizon eventually dropped the legal
challenge.
Verizon Wireless Â… understood the FCC rules for
using that spectrum in advance of the auction, a Verizon
spokesman said. Of course Verizon will abide by those rules.
As Verizon works to put the spectrum we won to good use, if Google or
anybody else has evidence that we aren't playing by the rules, there are
legitimate and expedited ways to address
that.
(Business Week) Published reports that first
appeared on the Web site of Fortune Magazine suggest that AT&T
(T), which has an exclusive five-year deal to sell the iPhone in the U.S., is
prepared to subsidize the device by as much as $200, slicing the purchase price
as low as $199 for customers who sign a two-year service contract. Apple and
AT&T declined to comment on the matter.
Such a discount could cause a surge in demand. At
last count, Apple had sold some 5.4 million units, the vast majority of them for
AT&Ts network, even with price tags of $400 to $600—essentially unheard of
in the U.S. cellular market. Impressively, AT&T says 40% of its iPhone users
are new customers. Yet with rival smartphones like Research In Motion's (RIMM)
BlackBerry and a new Palm (PALM) Treo selling for as little at $99 at some
carriers, competitive pressures are building.
For AT&T, eager to generate returns on its
multibillion-dollar investments in a next-generation data network, a $200
subsidy on a device with a proven success record may be a no-brainer. This is
not unexpected at all. The $200 is a small fraction of the revenue that AT&T
makes over a two-year contract.
04/25/2008 -
Career suicide - Things to Avoid Doing
Career
suicide can happen all too easily, in several different ways. Fortunately, by
taking common-sense steps, you can reduce its chances of happening.Things
that you do not want to do if you want to succeed:
Sending
e-mail without thinking about the consequences - Most
of us are bright enough to realize that chain letters or off-color jokes have
no place in business communications. Where most office workers get into
trouble is with the over-hasty e-mail reply. Ever read an e-mail too quickly
and fired off an angry reply, only to discover later that you had
misinterpreted the first sender's message? You end up not only wasting
everyone's time, but poisoning your work relationships -- perhaps
permanently.
Say
negative or uncomplimentary things aboutco-workers - Having
done a significant amount of work for a particular client, I decided one day
to try to expand my presence there. I called an executive in another part of
that organization, introduced myself and said that "Carl” was pleased with my
work. That executive responded, "Why should I care what Carl
thinks?"
Not smart -- especially when said to someone outside
the organization. If Carl had heard about this remark (and these things do get
around) it could have created a Grand Canyon-size rift between him and his
indiscreet co-worker. More critically, remarks like this damage the
credibility of the organization.
Contradicting
your boss or management publicly - Suppose
that your boss, while giving a presentation, makes a factual error. Should you
jump in and correct the error immediately, secure in the knowledge that your
boss will thank you for underlining the mistake in front of an entire room of
people?
Correcting your boss in public will hardly endear you to him.
More likely, he will be upset at being made to look foolish, and may even
wonder why you didn't catch the error yourself prior to the
presentation.
Burning
bridges when you resign - Many
of us fantasize about telling off the boss when we quit a job. Remember the
1990s Internet bubble? Many IT people left traditional companies with visions
of pulling in millions from Internet start-ups, only to be rudely surprised
when their new companies went under. Those who left on good terms with their
former employers had a better chance of being
rehired.
04/21/2008 -
Downtime versus data saved is the issue
(Blue
Coat) The global enterprise has a voracious appetite for data, and little
patience for downtime. According to a recent Forrester report, 82 percent of
larger IT organizations rated improving recovery time as a “critical” or “very
critical” business priority.
The need for continued focus and investment is clear, especially when you
consider that data-at-rest in enterprises is growing at a compounded rate of 55
percent a year.
Moving all that data is a mounting challenge, and business simply cannot
wait.
To meet these growing demands at a reasonable cost, organizations are
moving to IP-based networks; 70 percent of North American and 79 percent of
European organizations use some combination of the Internet, MPLS or Ethernet to
connect to their primary backup datacenter. Bandwidth prices may be in decline,
but that doesnÂ’t mean it comes cheap. Bandwidth, on average, is 29 percent of
the total cost of replication, backup and recovery solutions, and is often
constrained by the effects of latency.
End-to-end plans for turning disaster recovery into full business
continuity are very complex, but from an IP-network perspective it can be
reduced to three main challenges.
The first is to accomplish backups in a timely yet accurate manner. Given
organic data growth, and that each logical data object has between four and
eight copies somewhere in the network, even differential backups can be tough to
fit into assigned windows. Synchronous or live-to-live data models are even more
bandwidth intensive and latency intolerant.
The second challenge is minimizing downtime. In the event of a failure or
disaster, how quickly can backed-up data be restored? Considering a differential
backup can take 8 hours or more to complete, and only represents 10-20 percent
of the total data set, a full restore can be daunting. According to Ziff Davis
Research, the average organization has 94TB of managed storage, and getting that
data across the network only begins after the systems have been physically
restored.
Finally, because of how long full data recovery can take, most
organizations are moving from disaster recovery to disaster tolerance, where
some level of service can be quickly restored in the name of business
continuity. To do this effectively requires both warm – or even hot – standby
servers and the ability to quickly re-route users, customers and partners to the
secondary location. Beyond the clear routing and networking challenges, there
are additional application performance concerns. Users may have to cross
physically or logically longer networks with higher latency to reach the
redundant datacenter, and do so over links whose bandwidth is typically
provisioned as sparingly as possible.
04/19/2008 -
Backups take too many resources for most enterprises
Data at rest is growing much faster than network throughput. That makes
it difficult to get backups completed on time and on budget – not to mention
trying to recover from an IT emergency.
The
first is to accomplish backups in a timely yet accurate manner. Given organic
data growth, and that each logical data object has between four and eight copies
somewhere in the network, even differential backups can be tough to fit into
assigned windows. Synchronous or live-to-live data models are even more
bandwidth intensive and latency intolerant.
The
second challenge is minimizing downtime. In the event of a failure or disaster,
how quickly can backed-up data be restored? Considering a differential backup
can take 8 hours or more to complete, and only represents 10-20 percent of the
total data set, a full restore can be daunting. According to Ziff Davis
Research, the average organization has 94TB of managed storage, and getting that
data across the network only begins after the systems have been physically
restored.
Rather than add more bandwidth, or invest in expensive, dedicated storage
networks, WAN optimization can improve IP network performance sufficient to turn
recovery into continuity. To help meet the objectives outlined above, a WAN
optimization solution must be able to do three separate tasks for true business
continuity: restrict bandwidth to backup applications during the allowed window
and allocate it to critical applications in the event of a disaster, overcome
latency and bandwidth limitations on the wire, and provide acceleration to
roaming or displaced users redirected to alternative data
sources.
04/15/2008 -
Internet will not be tax free much longer
(CNet) Two years ago, a CNET News.com special
report found that 15 states and the District of
Columbia said that their laws and
regulations meant that digital downloads should be taxed. A few months later,
New Jersey joined that list.
Since then, more states have become tax-inclined.
In 2008 alone, Indiana, Utah, and South Dakota have enacted laws reiterating
their commitments to collect taxes on digital downloads, while Nebraska recently
voted to send its governor a bill (PDF) that would tax downloads of books,
movies, and music starting October 1. Others, including Wisconsin and
Massachusetts, have formed groups to study new iTunes taxes.
I would not be surprised to see other states
attempting to impose taxes on digital goods, said an attorney who represents a
group of Fortune 500 digital goods vendors opposed to new taxes. He could
not name the companies because irked tax administrators might retaliate by
singling out his clients for audits.
One reason that music and movie downloads have
partially escaped the notice of tax collectors is that, until a few years ago,
the market was relatively small and state tax laws sometimes apply only to
tangible goods. But their attitude has changed now that iTunes, Amazon.com,
eMusic, Rhapsody, Wal-Mart Music, Yahoo Music Unlimited, and others have
demonstrated that there is plenty of untapped revenue for tax-hungry
politicians--underscored by reports like one in February stating that iTunes has
sold more than 4 billion songs.
Arguably the most heated showdown is looming in
California, home to an $8 billion deficit and lawmakers who are scrambling to do
something about it. The state legislature is considering a bill proposed earlier
this year by Democratic Assemblyman, who represents a district east of Los
Angeles. The bill calls for new taxes to sweep in digital property, which
includes, but is not limited to, products like music, movies, and
books.
Some opponents fear that broad definition could
sweep up everything from electronic tax-preparation services to video games to
advertising, causing new headaches for online retailers and their customers.
Backers of the new taxes--which, in the California
case, include the AFL-CIO and associations that represent state, county, and
municipal employees, teachers, firefighters, and county governments--contend
they're necessary to offset budget deficits and to create parity with the
physical versions of those products that would otherwise be taxed.
According to a study conducted by Forrester Research, only
53 percent of surveyed IT users reported being satisfied with their help desk
support. Areas such as resolving usersÂ’ requests in a timely manner and
successfully resolving an issue on the first call were identified as key
opportunities for improvement.
Do you want to know how your company can
deliver exceptional support and, as a result, significantly impact your IT
department and organization as a whole? Help Desk is the basis for IT Service
Management and meeting the ITIL and ISO 20000 standards. A good help desk
will:
Quickly resolve technical problems and save
time;
Rapidly resolve complex, mission-critical incidents;
and
Handle increasing call volume without
increasing budgets.
