IT Manager's Journal

Last week's announcement of a patent infringement suit against Red Hat and Novell set in motion speculation about motives, theories, agendas, and behind-the-scenes players. If you've been feeling like you need a scorecard to keep up, then you're in luck.

Receiving a job offer can have all the excitement of a first date -- to say nothing of the same potential for permanence. Yet in the excitement of receiving an offer, it's easy to to forget to look carefully at the details. Many people also assume that offers are fixed and nonnegotiable. but that's not typically the case.

The truth is, even an offer that seems firm usually has some flexibility. Besides, you'll never have a better chance to negotiate your working conditions than when the company makes an offer. Negotiation at the start can lay the foundation for mutual respect between you and your employer by ensuring that you are both satisfied with the terms. Conversely, if you accept an offer without negotiating, you may be signalling to your new employer that you are easily imposed upon or can be taken advantage of.

Openads, formerly known as phpAdsNew, is one of the more successful open source development projects. Its online advertising software is used by many thousands of domain owners who want to make a profit on their Web content by selling advertisements. Scott Switzer, the project leader, recently went commercial with the project, securing $5 million in venture capital and a new CEO straight from Skype. The key to the company's success? "I have really seen the value in what a community can give to a software project," he says.

Every year, Linux enthusiasts in India's capital, New Delhi, hold a conference to help spread word of free and open source software (FOSS). This year they called their conference Freed.in, and had more talks and attendees than they've had in the past. While the event was a wonderful opportunity for the FOSS community to interact in person, discuss issues, and brainstorm solutions, attendees were overwhelmed by the number of talks jammed into a two-day schedule.

When Nathan Eckenrode goes to the United Nations in New York City next week to help demonstrate the technology behind open source software, he doesn't really expect to discover the answer to world peace. If he gets a little closer, though, he's all right with that.

Everyone knows it's crucial to keep up-to-date with operating system patches, but application software needs to updated as well. This is more important than ever as businesses increase their Web presence, and use powerful tools such as content management systems (CMS) to manage things behind the scenes. Unfortunately, as CMSs become more popular, they also become targets for attackers looking for confidential data on your Web server.

When Lori's "mission critical" software development project faltered after considerable time and budget investment by her IT team, Lori moved on and another manager was brought in to try and salvage the process. A post-project review revealed that Lori and her team had not done very well in their up-front understanding of crucial project timing, specifications, and vendor capabilities.

While there are volumes of online magazines, blogs, trade magazines, and books written about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), everything I need to know about SOA, I already learned from Linux and the Open Source Software movement.

Neutrino Consulting provides IT services for small companies that don't want or need an in-house technology departments. Michael Wacht, Neutrino's founder and principal, says because he offers open source software alternatives to his clients, they get to choose the "best of the best," avoiding big license fees and vendor lock in. That, he says, makes Neutrino more competitive.

What would happen if manufacturers were responsible for the disposal of their used-up products? The Computer Take Back Campaign (CTBC), a coalition of environmental groups across the United States, hopes that the result would be both a national recycling network and the removal of hazardous materials like lead, mercury, and brominated flame retardants from products so that companies would not have to worry about them later. The CTBC has been promoting this idea with limited success since 2002, but this year it finally seems on the brink of acceptance.

For companies that are considering offshoring their IT development projects to China, the benefits extend well beyond pure cost savings to include a better educated workforce, world-class IT infrastructure, lower employee turnover, and a proactive commitment towards protecting intellectual property. In fact, China is transforming the IT development/outsourcing landscape from the low cost talent strategy that made countries such as India, Thailand and the Philippines hot markets, to one driven by better value, talent, and alignment with key organizational initiatives.

Ontario-based Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the ubiquitous BlackBerry smartphones, are quietly wading farther into open source waters. The organizers of Ontario Linux Fest announced that, in addition to RIM's Platinum sponsorship of next month's event, the company will also be actively recruiting Linux-skilled employees during the Fest.

For nearly twenty years, the software community has embraced the concept of open source development, which stresses collaboration between coders and uses the Internet to broaden its reach to include input from great minds spread across the world. California-based database software company db4objects applies these same concepts to the company’s corporate culture when hiring its paid engineers. The results? Better software, quicker development times, and an unbeatable work environment.

Jonathan Ham is a computer security expert with 13 years of open source experience under his belt. He has seen open source become an "emminently more workable business model," and says that there has been a gradual shift over the years of "people starting to realize that all products have security flaws, whether open or closed." He believes that realization has led to greater adoption of open source, because "sometimes the devil you can know is better than the devil you can't know."

Automatic patch deployment by an IT department is a good idea in theory, but since software patches can be pushed out faster than fundamental software deficiencies can be resolved, flaws are often uncovered by users -- not vendors. The unanticipated and adverse effect on software quality can at best be a nuisance and, at worst, disastrous.

IT projects often fail when an IT manager does not consider that the people affected by IT efforts are likely to have conflicting concerns and priorities. Take George, for example. He manages the IT Department in a medium-sized Midwest consulting firm. After considerable expense and effort selecting and implementing an "improved" project tracking system desired by the firm's managing partners, George found that the company's field consultants failed to appreciate and use all its wonderfully capable features. George had neglected to realize that, while the new system could provide the partners with important information, it placed a considerable time burden on its users and detracted from the consultants' billable client hours. The result? After a lot of grief within the organization, this expensive new IT system simply faded away.

An IT manager must take steps to consider the social side of IT issues because failure to do so will hinder the success of your organization's projects and activities -- and maybe even your chances for advancement. There are several things to consider if you want to avoid having your next IT project tripped up by social issues.

SCO announced today that it has filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. Business operations, according to SCO, will continue as normal during the reorganization.

It's a common problem in IT departments everywhere: as a company grows and market dynamics change, business needs must keep pace. The IT department finds itself continually pushed by upper management demands for low cost, flexible IT systems with quick turnaround time.

Though the juggling act isn't easy, there are steps managers can take to create an IT department that's ready for whatever the future holds. The key is to be agile, adaptive, and proactive.

UK-based Packt Publishing has announced the finalists for its Open Source CMS Award: CMS Made Simple, Drupal, e107, Joomla!, and PHP-Fusion. The overall winning project, scheduled to be announced in November, will receive $5,000, with an additional $15,000 distributed among runners-up and subcategory winners.