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Great technological designs and products have revolutionised the way we live and work, and most of the people behind them are well-recognised and rewarded for their innovation. The likes of […]

Presents an interview with Sohaib Abbasi, enterprise software vendor Informatica Corp.'s chief executive officer. Comments of Abbasi on the future market for data integration products, which are changing over the coming years; Cause behind the data fragmentation faced by British businesses that are outsourcing; Views of Abbasi regarding aims of business intelligence vendors.

The article discusses the data backup systems used by food chain Pret A Manger. At its headquarters, Pret has 25 Microsoft 2000 servers, each storing and managing about 500GB of information. Each Pret store has a dedicated point-to-point line connecting it to headquarters and the servers. Pret's data growth created three primary information technology objectives related to backup and recovery: Nightly backup required improvement as backup windows were being encroached by the growing data volumes--leading to some data not being backed up each night. After evaluating other backup and recovery software, Pret selected EVault InfoStage online backup software.

The article presents information related to the DesignIT contest, a competition to recognize creativity and innovation in IT system design. DesignIT consists of two parallel competitions, the deadline for which is May 3, 2006. One is to reward innovation in enterprise IT system design, the other rewards the designer of an outstanding system design that could benefit a charity. Shortlisted work will be exhibited at a London art gallery, while the winner will receive a trip to the Ice Hotel in Sweden. The winner of the charity competition will see their system design implemented at their chosen charity, up to a cost of £15,000.

The article reports that software firm Vista will offers business users dedicated versions of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next PC operating system. The company announced that when Vista launches there will be three consumer versions, two for businesses and a limited low-cost version for emerging markets. The business versions exclude many consumer features, but have extra security, storage and management functionality. Vista Business, for smaller businesses with little on-site IT support, includes data encryption support and more flexible group policy management to reduce support callouts.

The article presents information on Microsoft Corp.'s DesignIT project. The project is intended to redress the balance by identifying the best examples of innovation and creativity in the design and implementation of business IT infrastructure and systems in the enterprise, public sector and in the voluntary sector. IT professionals can submit a design for an actual deployed IT system, or an aspirational system design appropriate for any size of organization in the commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

The article presents information on the findings of a research that revealed that many businesses in Great Britain fail to maximize the benefits of virtualization. New research carried out by C&C Technology Consulting into PC and server virtualization suggests a lack of understanding among businesses of the benefits of virtualization technology. The survey questioned 26 senior IT decision-makers from Great Britain firms with at least 1,000 users, and examined the understanding, adoption and application of virtualization software. The research revealed that most of the firms fail to realize the cost effectiveness and benefits of running virtualization applications on desktop and server PCs, and how this can improve the use of processing and storage resources.

This article discusses how businesses are tackling information lifecycle management (ILM). ILM is the structured process of managing data as it passes through the organisation, ensures effective handling, security and eventual disposal of data. Understanding the amount of data being retained at any one time is a big challenge for the information technology (IT) department, and effective measuring is essential both for network and storage capacity planning. A survey of 258 British IT managers across the public and private sectors, found that seven per cent of IT departments have no idea of their storage commitment, while 38 per cent are managing between one and 10TB of data.

The article focuses on the storage space use, archiving and data compliance in Great Britain. A survey conducted by eMedia Corp. on behalf of storage software vendor BridgeHead Software focused on the storage needs of 300 IT directors at medium-sized and large British companies, and found that with regard to storage volumes, 70% of respondents manage about two terabytes of day-to-day live storage, in addition to second tier and archive capacity. Those surveyed also pointed to email as the main consumer of space, with two thirds using up to 20% of their total storage for live and archived email. Archiving remains a difficult challenge for all businesses, and 67% still do their archiving manually.

Presents letters to the editor on matters related to information technology (IT). Use of incoherent speech by IT leaders; Information on projects performed by IT manager and directors; Discrimination of women in the IT sector.