Until recently, giving network access to the growing mobile workforce has primarily been the bailiwick of IT, but as mobilizing employees has become a major expense, finance is now getting more involved in the scene to find out how much this ever-increasing trend really costs and how these expenses can be monitored and controlled. The establishment and support of remote employees is of major concern to both finance and IT, especially in light of the added expense and complexity of regulatory compliance and protection against sophisticated security threats. NetworkStreaming’s remote desktop control support solutions fill the bill on all fronts.

Jack Wilson is enterprise information-technology architect at Amerisure, a mutual insurance firm in Farmington Hills, MI. Between January and May this year, the 800-employee company replaced its desktop PCs with "thin client" terminals from Wyse Technology that run applications hosted on nine servers running Citrix Systems’ remote-access software. He spoke recently with Baseline news editor Todd Spangler.

Personal data, including credit card information, of thousands of AT&T customers was stolen by hackers over the weekend, the company reported late Tuesday. The breach, which affected customers who purchased DSL equipment through AT&T’s Web store was discovered within hours and the online store was shut down immediately, said AT&T in a press release. AT&T said it was sending notifications to nearly 19,000 customers, and that it would pay for credit monitoring services for the affected customers.

The verdict is in: the greater the adherence to controls, the better-run the information-technology shop. In other words, careful compliance controls can be good for your company. That was the upshot of a study of 98 information-technology organizations at a variety of companies, undertaken last October by the Information Technology Process Institute, a small independent research firm in Eugene, OR. The institute’s goal was to find out if increased use of controls correlated with higher performance.

Organizational change always brings fear, uncertainty and doubt. When CIO Insight found that 57 percent of respondents say their IT department is going through more change today than they have ever seen in their career, they expected to also find that morale is taking a dive. That’s not how it turned out. Yes, one in five report serious morale problems. But those numbers are not as severe as last year, especially at large companies. Why is that the case? The most likely reason is that growing IT organizations provide opportunities for advancement and interesting new work. Finding 5.2 gives another explanation: few companies are cutting back on training, and training has a strong correlation with morale.

With Microsoft Office clearly in its long-range sites, Google has launched a package of Web-based productivity apps. The offering, called Google Apps for Your Domain comprises Google services that all have seen the light of day: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Page Creator. Notably absent from the menu are Writely, and Google Spreadsheets, which respectively provide basic word-processing and spreadsheet functions that would be essential for a productivity suite, a la the more feature-rich Microsoft Word and Excel. Also, Google has yet to unveil an application that could rival Microsoft PowerPoint.

Internet giant Google took the software battle deeper into Microsoft’s territory with a new package of online services for small-business users. Google said it would offer businesses tailor-made versions of its free email service Gmail, instant messaging, voice calling, shared calendars and basic design, publishing and hosting of Web sites. The company is marketing its Google Apps for Your Domain service to smaller companies, non-profit groups and universities that want the full range of Web-based corporate services without the cost.

Google Apps for Your Domain does not compete with Microsoft Office. Microsoft’s Office market may be $12 billion, but the lion’s share of those billions comes from a relatively small number of large companies. Writely can’t compete with Word, Spreadsheets can’t compete with Excel. They cater to the soccer mom, not the corporate worker. Right now, you need both to do your job. What Google gains from these apps is knowledge about how you use office software and what kind of information you’re sending back and forth. This data goes into its advertising efforts so it can target you better. Everything is in the service of advertising. Google is also firing a shot across the bow of Microsoft Live, which targets the same functionality. Steve Bryant, of eWeek’s Google Watch, offers a roundup of reasons why businesses will and won’t use Google Apps for Your Domain.

A new independent research report found that IBM is the overwhelming leader in SOA (service oriented architecture) software with 44 percent market share, more than three times the market share of the next closest vendor. The study, conducted by Wintergreen Research and entitled, "SOA Market Opportunity, Market Forecast and Market Strategies: 2006-2012," also found that the overall market for SOA software is expected to reach $18.5 billion by 2012.

A security company that pays hackers for information on software flaws and exploits plans to release a list of 29 unpatched flaws in products sold by a host of big-name vendors, including Microsoft, IBM, Apple Computer and Novell. The Aug. 28 disclosure from TippingPoint’s ZDI (Zero Day Initiative) flaw bounty program is a significant change to the way the 3Com-owned company handles the disclosure of vulnerability data it buys from external researchers. Instead of waiting for software makers to issue patches, TippingPoint will announce the flaw purchase in bare-bones advisories at the time the issue is reported to the vendor.