Over the next five years, business will become so deeply embodied in technology–and technology so embedded in the business–that it will change the way IT is managed by an organization. This was the message delivered by Forrester Research analysts to attendees at the consultancy’s annual IT Forum in Nashville, Tenn.

This shift stands to have a profound effect on IT departments, one that will be felt internally from the chief technology officer level to the help desk specialist, and externally in the way that the CIO relates to the CEO.

You may have noticed the news has not been as regular over the last week as it normally is. We’re having some trouble with the news rendering engine, but investigations and repairs are under way. Be assured, we are doing all we can to ensure the timely delivery of our industry news.–Ed

Wintergreen Research announced that it has released two new SOA reports detailing how Web services significantly enhance worker productivity, implementing process from desktop icons. The services oriented architecture market study details how shifts to flexible computing models drive flexibility in IT and achieve resurgence of the mainframe.

IBM leads the SOA process engine and collaboration component license services and maintenance markets with 53% share, gaining on Microsoft, Oracle and SAP which all have single digit participation in the markets in 2006. The strength of the IBM middleware line is what made the SOA engine markets grow, giving increased productivity from automated process at every level of the channel and supply chain. This PDF press release contains more details.

Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry devices, has begun the process of integrating its devices with corporate PBXes, with the BlackBerry Mobile Voice System. The new integration capabilities mean that corporate BlackBerry users will be able to dial extensions directly, transfer calls within the company and perform other PBX functions in much the same manner as if they were using desktop PBX telephones.

Dell is being accused of making false promises to customers to drive sales, according to a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The court filing accuses Dell and Dell Financial Services of 10 counts of fraud, false advertising and deceptive business practices, including offering misleading financing, and failing to honor rebates and warranties.

The state of New York is asking for an injunction of Dell’s allegedly bad business practices and an order that the world’s second-largest PC maker pay an unspecified amount of damages to customers found to be affected, in addition to a $500 civil penalty payable to the state of New York for each violation.

Percussion Software announced that it has spun off its award-winning collaboration division to create a new company, Axceler, which will be managed as an independent company with its own management team. Axceler offers the largest selling Lotus Notes/Domino administrative product, and brought to market the industry’s first Notes-centric real-time data integration solution, as well as the first Notes-based workflow product. The spin-off enables Axceler to continue to expand its mission to develop and deliver productivity tools for the Notes/Domino platform, with particular emphasis on administration, integration, and business process automation. This PDF press release contains more details.

Laplink Conference Center provides a suite of simple, powerful, and secure online conferencing tools that make it easy and affordable for any-sized business to adopt a virtual conferencing solution.

A simple, streamlined interface manages the various tools including Web Conferencing, Audio Conferencing, Instant Messaging with colleagues, and Screen Sharing.

With no extensive technical knowledge or training, Laplink Conference Center allows users to collaborate on projects, deliver presentations, perform product demonstrations, train customers and employees, and safely share confidential information from anywhere at anytime. With its suite of secure online tools to help teams collaborate and communicate, Laplink Conference Center increases business productivity without compromising the security of company information.

If the question is how to stop greedy CEOs from embezzlement and fraud, and the answer is Sparta Systems’ TrackWise. TrackWise provides C-suite executives, as well as staff members, with an instant window to all aspects of their operations by offering powerful reporting, automatic trend detection and management dashboards. TrackWise ensures compliance and removes risk by managing, tracking and reporting all issues and actions made within the organization while offering a fully-configurable workflow management, powerful querying and enterprise metrics reporting.

Lacking a comprehensive change history for database designs, or a documented and controlled promotion process? This can result in an inefficient, chaotic and costly environment that is difficult to manage and audit. It also has serious ramifications for an organization’s overall level of operational risk in an increasingly regulated IT environment. Many organizations enjoy the rapid application development environment of Lotus Notes and rely on Notes to deliver mission critical applications. Learn how you can gain control over your Notes environment by attending this Webcast: Source Code Control & Version Management for Lotus Notes.

Since we’ve been following the path of the GWB43.COM domain name through SMARTech, and we know that Karl Rove and 21 other White House officials, abiding by the Hatch Act, run political email through GWB43.COM and SMARTech, we thought it best to look at the national security implications of this practice. In this article, we’ll also look at questions of BlackBerry security with a security expert and the nightmare scenario compliance with the Hatch Act might inadvertently cause.

Read this DominoPower article.