Project Management

A mobile mess looms for CIOs who ignore the rising popularity of handhelds. New third-generation (3G) cellular networks make wireless handheld computing more convenient for everyone from executive travelers to salespeople and field technicians. This trend poses new challenges to CIOs who need to maintain enterprise network and data security, plus keep end-user support costs down.

IT security is at the top of the priority list for U.S. government chief information officers. It's also an area where CIOs are making progress, according to a survey released Monday by the Information Technology Association of America.

Microsoft Corp. has been ballyhooing Windows Vista's security for years, saying that it will prove to be its strongest, toughest operating system ever.

SAP AG's planned suite of hosted midmarket applications will be available in select markets later this year. The company will offer more details on pricing and functionality after the Cebit trade show in March, according to CEO Henning Kagermann.

In the wrong hands, storage devices can siphon away valuable cargo faster than the Artful Dodger. And seemingly innocuous iPod music players have been cited as a serious security threat, too. Known as Podslurping, iPods with their large hard drives, USB 2.0 and FireWire connectivity, can be an ideal tool for file-pilfering.

Cisco says it is not releasing its NAC client software code to the open source community, nor does the company have plans to exit the endpoint security client business, despite a Cisco executive telling the contrary to the media earlier this month.

Google Inc. is pushing further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.

Hoping to accelerate the adoption of Vista for businesses, Microsoft Corp. Tuesday unveiled tools to help companies deploy the new Windows client OS, including software that allows older versions of Windows to run virtually alongside Vista.