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"The consumer technology universe has evolved to a point where it is, in essence, a fully functioning, alternative IT department. Today, in effect, users can choose their technology provider. Your company’s employees may turn to you first, but an employee who’s given a tool by the corporate IT department that doesn’t meets his needs will find one that does on the Internet or at his neighborhood Best Buy."

“Never use security and compliance as an excuse for not doing the right thing. Never use these as sticks or excuses for controlling things. When you find that people have broken rules, the best thing to do is try to figure out why and to learn from it.”

"Successful companies will learn how to strike a productive balance between consumer IT—and the innovative processes for which employees are using these tools—and the need to protect the enterprise. This will require CIOs to reexamine the way they relate to users, and to come to terms with the fact that their IT department will no longer be the exclusive provider of technology within an organization. This, says Smith, is the only way to stay relevant and responsive. CIOs who ignore the benefits of consumer IT, who wage war against the shadow IT department, will be viewed as obstructionist, not to mention out of touch. And once that happens, they will be ignored and any semblance of control will fly out the window."

"IT needs to learn how to strike a similar balance. Corporate IT isn’t going to go away, and neither are the systems that IT has put in place over the years. But a CIO who doesn’t develop a strategy to accommodate the shadow IT department will be employing an outdated and (more important) an inefficient business model. And, like the HR department that ignores the informal relationships in a company, the CIO might lose sight of how his users actually work. Corporate IT thereby loses its authority and, eventually, the CIO loses his job. It won’t happen quickly, but it will happen. As Anderson puts it, “It will be like getting nibbled to death by ducks.”

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Thirty-one percent of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment" in the past year.
Thirty-seven percent reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
Thirty-nine percent noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.
Twenty-seven percent noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.
Twenty-four percent reported that their supervisor invaded their privacy.
Twenty-three percent indicated that their supervisor blames others to cover up mistakes or to minimize embarrassment.

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The large number of customers that use NT 4 are in no rush to upgrade to newer software or are in the process of moving to Windows 2000, analysts say, and that could hurt Windows Server 2003 sales for some time.

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MySQL CEO Marten Mickos acknowledged that it would take time for big businesses to embrace MySQL in a major way. He predicted that open-source database software will eventually reach a tipping point in terms of adoption by big business, much the same way Linux did. A few years ago, Linux use was primarily an underground software movement taking place behind the backs of company executives. Now, it's a major player in the operating system market, embraced by companies ranging from Oracle to IBM to Intel.

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MySQL is aiming for speedier development cycles than most database companies. The company is currently focusing on two products: MySQL versions 4.1 and 5.0. It released the binaries of 4.1 this week and plans to unveil a final version in about eight months. A final version 5.0 should be available about six months after that.

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As a result, porn spam could begin to crop up in sexual harassment complaints from employees offended by the material. Even if companies aren't the source of such messages, they could be liable for hefty civil fines if managers know that porn spam is a problem and don't move to address it.

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The move is a step toward making OpenOffice.org a more mature product and a stronger competitor against Microsoft Office. Sun Microsystems, which released the OpenOffice.org source code in 2000, and sells a commercially supported derivative called StarOffice, is among the strongest backers of the software.

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To Sprint and many other companies, instant messaging has evolved from a teenage fad to a valuable communications tool that is central to everyday business. Companies are using IM not only to send real-time messages, but also to collaborate on projects, exchange data and create networks linking all types of Internet devices.

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The new version of StarOffice includes expanded support for handicapped users and new business configuration tools that allow information technology managers to oversee multiple StarOffice desktops from a single location. The new release also will allow people to save documents in Adobe Systems' widespread Portable Document Format (PDF).

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"I'm surprised Microsoft has let Adobe own this space as long as they have," said Paul DeGroot, lead analyst for research firm Directions on Microsoft. "Something like 80 percent of the world's business documents are created in Microsoft's .doc format. But when people need to exchange documents, there's no compact, easy-to-download, secure way to exchange them and preserve all the fonts and formatting and layout. The requirement for this kind of format was obvious to Adobe 10 years ago, and they capitalized on it."

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A Microsoft-sponsored white paper from research group IDC, which compares the total cost of ownership of Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Linux server environments across five enterprise computing workload situations at 104 companies, found that the Windows 2000 server offered a lower five-year total cost in four of the five selected workloads.

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AOL's new offer includes the AIM Enterprise Gateway, which allows system administrators to manage the use of messaging software from behind a corporate firewall. It can be configured with a private domain service that allows administrators to manage IM screen names from corporate directories.

It will also let managers keep tighter control of employees' use of the service, letting mangers log, audit and create reports on all AIM communications so they can be monitored for legal, regulatory and accounting compliance.

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"It's not the first time they've done it," Silver said. "Office XP wouldn't install on Windows 95. In fact, they built something into Office XP so that it wouldn't install on Windows 95."

Silver said a repeat performance with Office 11 would not be surprising, in part "because all support for Windows 98 and NT end on June 30, 2003. This is certainly in keeping with the lifecycle of Windows. If they don't support a version of Windows, why should they continue to support an application on that version of Windows?"