This purpose of this article is to describe the basic steps needed to make a smooth transition from Microsoft Outlook to IBM Lotus Notes V8.

In early December, InfoWorld Senior Writer Matt Hines had the opportunity to sit down with John Thompson, chief executive of Symantec, and David DeWalt, chief executive of McAfee, to interview the leaders about the strategic direction of their companies and where they see different aspects of the IT security market heading in 2008 and beyond. Each of the individual interviews took their own course, but an intentional effort was made on the part of the reporter to ask the two executives about many of the same issues.

What follows are a sampling of the respective CEO’s comments on issues related to the rise of data protection, consolidation in the security market, and competitive issues between the two industry leaders and their many rivals.

IBM has bought XIV, an Israeli manufacturer of SAN (storage area network) equipment. XIV’s main product is Nextra, a storage system based on a grid of standard hardware components.

Nextra’s self-healing, self-tuning and dynamic scaling capabilities will give IBM new technology to address the growing requirement for high-performance storage for digital archives, digital media and Web 2.0 applications, IBM said.

Starting a career as a cyber criminal got much easier in 2007. So say security experts looking back on 12 months in which hi-tech gangs took control of the net’s underground.

The economy supporting these groups has matured so much that now everything from virus-writing kits to spam-spewing zombies are available for rent or hire. This has helped to fuel, say security professionals, rapid growth in the methods criminals use to catch out PC users and steal saleable data.

The loss or theft of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers soared to unprecedented levels in 2007, and the trend isn’t expected to turn around anytime soon as hackers stay a step ahead of security and laptops disappear with sensitive information.

And while companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of data with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, the investment often is too little too late.

The browser that helped kick-start the commercial Web is to cease development because of lack of users. Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%. In particular, the browser has faced competition from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), which is now used by nearly 80% of all web users.

With three of the largest competitors in the field taken over by software giants, you’d think that the best days of the business intelligence market were over. You’d be wrong.

Far from heralding the death of BI, the loss of Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion to SAP, IBM and Oracle may well signal "agolden age for business intelligence," says AMR Research analyst John Hagerty.

In the almost five years since SCO launched its attack on Linux and IBM, open-source and legal experts have predicted that SCO would fail and the company would collapse with its lawsuits. That day is one day closer at hand. On Dec. 27, SCO was delisted from the Nasdaq.

There’s no surprise here. After several escapes from being delisted, the Nasdaq had been seeking to remove SCO from its trading floor for two reasons: The Unix company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the stock’s price had declined below a dollar a share for 30 business days.

Brad Willman was installing networking equipment out of an emergency van in British Columbia when a policeman showed up and asked for him. Willman knew the officer from a case he was involved with a couple of years earlier, so he didn’t worry–until he arrived at the police station and was introduced to a couple of U.S. cops. The visit marked the end of Willman’s version of vigilante justice.

IBM is trying to succeed in the less familiar terrain of network and desktop security–and finding that a few high-profile moves aren’t enough to sway some skeptical analysts.

When IBM acquired Internet Security Systems a year ago, the industry’s mixed reaction included that of Gartner security analyst John Pescatore, who said it doesn’t "make sense for IBM to own network-security products."