Project Management

Antivirus firm Sophos PLC named the SoBig-F worm as the hardest hitting virus of 2003, accounting for almost a fifth of all reports to the company throughout the year.

Delivering value to the organization is the mandate of every CIO and IT department, yet it's long been a difficult goal to achieve, and perhaps an even harder one to quantify. At Bank of Montreal Financial Group, five key steps are being taken to ensure that IT pulls its weight, and then some. Technology head Lloyd Darlington gives CIO Canada readers an inside look at how it's being done.

Years ago while attending a conference, I was transfixed by what one of the speakers said, that "the early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese."

After a three-year roller-coaster ride, the IT industry settled down a bit in 2003. The year seemed to provide a respite from megamergers, monopoly-busting, history-making corporate scandals, and the exhilarating but scary boom-and-bust cycle. Not that anyone was operating on cruise control. IT managers faced continual assault from a variety of nasty worms, handled user demands for wireless access and figured out how to work 64-bit computing technology into their systems.

As W32.blaster, Sobig, and earlier virus threats have shown, the Internet is not a terribly safe place to connect your PC.

Remote access software maker Citrix Systems Inc. is making a splashy play to move beyond the enterprise market, announcing Thursday an agreement to buy Web-based desktop access developer Expertcity Inc. in a US$225 million cash-and-stock deal. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close in early 2004.

Microsoft Corp. will gradually phase out its Windows 2000 Server family, the company said Wednesday. Effective April 1, 2006, the products will no longer be available.

So you think you run a pretty tight IT shop? Maybe, but maybe not.