Dan McLean

Get ready for grid.That's the message the backers of grid computing technology are sending to smaller businesses, and the numbers seem to back them up. A February report from Insight Research Corp. predicts that worldwide grid spending will undergo staggering growth in the coming years, rising from $714.9-million (U.S.) this year to about $19.2-billion in 2010.

Canadian information technology groups can't seem to get IT right. A new report conducted by market research firm Info-Tech Research Group says 95 per cent of information technology groups ''are not delivering some number of projects on time or to the full satisfaction of the business executive.''

A company's successful use of information technology often has little to do with the technology itself, an issue highlighted at the recent Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) Convergence 2005 event in San Diego.

There's no substitute for experience, especially when it comes to recognizing value in information technology -- and knowing how to make the most of it. The big corporations have written the book on what to do and what not to do in computing and smaller businesses shouldn't be afraid to take a page from it. Big businesses have made the investments, endured the expensive failures and reaped the rewards throughout decades of hit-and-miss IT projects -- from mainframes to client/server to Web-enablement -- in a continuing effort to build today's world of highly distributed computing.

From Britain comes disturbing news that the country's politicians seek to introduce wide-scale ''biometric'' identity registration for its citizens.On Feb. 11 that nation's House of Commons passed in a 224-to-64 vote the Identity Cards Bill, which calls for the use of biometric identification cards and passports. The bill still has to clear the House of Lords, where critics say it will likely face stiff opposition, but if passed it's expected that biometric identification will go into effect by 2010 and that the documents will become compulsory for all British citizens by 2012. That could set a disturbing precedent for the rest of the world.

This was supposed to be a golden age of information technology for small and medium-sized businesses.Industry gurus decreed the time had come for smaller operations that had been purchasing IT as individual products to start thinking in terms of buying ''solutions,'' as their larger counterparts had been doing for years. Such solutions would comprise a complete package of hardware, software and services, collectively applied to building powerful and efficient computing infrastructures. They would enable processes designed to support the strategic growth and ensuing requirements of a changing business.

There isn't a more searing hot-button issue than security when it comes to business technology.Few topics get as much mass airplay or attention from vendors, customers and the general public. Judging by the noise surrounding IT security, you'd assume that every business in Canada was zealously plugging up the many seeping cracks that seem to form relentlessly within networks, in an effort to fend off viruses, worms, trojans, spam, spyware, phishing scams and an assortment of other bizarrely named intrusions and digital corruptions.

Information technology at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital was in failing health in 2000. To address the issue the hospital's CIO concluded that what might work was computing power purchased as a