Stories by: Frank Dzubeck

On November 6, Sam Palmisano, chairman, president & CEO of IBM, made an important speech entitled "The Smart Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City. That speech is only now getting public press attention.

When vendors and marketers get their hands on an IT concept, it doesn't take long for that concept to morph into a totally new business opportunity and possibly a new market segment. Such is the story of cloud computing.

It seems that every decade or so I get the opportunity to write an article on IT deja vu. This time around, the topic is cloud computing, which is the latest IT buzz word.

For the past six months, our offices have been part of the brave new world of virtualization. Not of servers, storage or networks but of the next-generation desktop. The rationale for the original decision to virtualize the desktop was to offer the staff operating-system and application flexibility while maintaining governance, manageability and control of the corporate environment.

What is the "L" word? It's latency.

With all the fanfare for Al Gore, receiving an Oscar, Emmy and the Nobel Peace Prize all in 2007, one would think that global environmental concerns rank No. 1 on the list of "corporate social responsibility."

Managing a data network in 2005 is much simpler than in 1995 or even 1985. The tools are more intelligent, and the information available is more accurate and complete. But network managers have let this sophistication cloud over a fundamental trait of corporate networking in 2005 - application fluidity.