Computer World Canada Magazine - September 28, 2007

Social networks add
to compliance chore

: steal these strategies

By Kathleen Lau

 AS ENTERPRISE EMPLOYEES

augment the traditional forms of social networking tools with newer platforms — wikis, blogs and message boards — these too enter the realm of regulatory compliance and privacy.

While there may be awareness of the need to monitor and control communication channels like chat and e-mail, this may not be the case with new tools that have permeated the enterprise, said Adel Melek, global leader of the security and privacy practice with professional services firm Deloitte.

“There is not as well a developed level of maturity in terms of the understanding of these new forms,” he said.

Those organizations that are proactive around eliminating risk are generally those that have experienced mishaps before, otherwise the level of concern is pretty low, said Francis Ho, a spokesperson for Toronto-based Federation of Security Professionals.

“It’s analogous to new technology coming in and the executives eventually become aware and focus in on that, but then the technology will have moved on to somewhere else,” said Ho.

Despite this, corporations are beginning to understand the associated negative repercussions of newer social platforms, said Brian Babineau, senior analyst with Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group.

“They can also pose risks if

POWER UP ORDER-TO-CASH

Toronto-based Direct Energy has begun implementing a new business process management system from Santa Clara, Calif.-based Savvion to revamp its order management process.

Direct Energy executives said they needed an effective way to capture an order, provision that order, turning the power on and doing it all at the right time. “Most businesses, especially ours, are really information management businesses,” Sanjay Acharya, senior director of process engineering at Direct Energy, said.

Acharya said the problem for Direct Energy was that the information flow, as it relates to the order management chain, was often interrupted, stalled, and duplicated. He said the problems occur in the hand-offs from one department to another, and often times, companies without a solid management system will have trouble pinpointing where a particular order is in the chain.

Cognos buys Applix Direct Energy said it still has some work to go in implementing the solu- fo_r _CFO _appealtion, with modelling completed on five of their eight biggest business units. “Even though we haven’t delivered out first application yet, just doing the modeling has been worth the effort thus far.” 078433

— Rafael Ruffolo

there is no editorial process published material should first around what happens,” he said. be put through analysis and

An editorial process is a approval for inappropriate proactive way of attempting content. to exert control over such Another way is to use soft-platforms both internally and ware, like data loss prevention externally, he said. For instance, tools that can stop confidential information from leaving the company. He recommended enterprise search software and semantic tools to scan the Internet and intranets. Techrigy tracks online references to firms across social media. 070626

to the co-location in May. The Toronto-based company won out partly due to its location, a short jaunt from Workopolis’ own downtown offices, which would make the occasional equipment visits or troubleshooting much easier, but it was its unique hub-and-spoke ISP model that really won over Workopolis. Q9 also offered a proper staging area, which other data centres don’t have, said Megarry.

Workopolis now maintains a cage in Q9’s data centre; they provide Workopolis with racks, space, cooling, and power for the company’s Dell Web servers, IBM database servers, and HP SAN servers, which are protected by the data centre’s cutting-edge biometrics. 075423

— Briony Smith

By Mari-Len De Guzman

 OT TAWA-BASED COGNOS INC. will acquire performance management software firm Applix Inc. in a US$339 million deal that will see the Canadian business intelligence vendor expanding its reach in the financial performance market.

Westborough, Mass.-based Applix will particularly bring into the Cognos fold a technology called TM1, a 64-bit, in-memory multidimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) server, Cognos said in a statement.

It may well be Cognos’ competitive move against the Oracle-Hyperion team, but the deal also signals a higher level of bringing BI to the enterprise, said Timothy Hickernell, associate senior research analyst at Info-Tech Group.

“It’s the evolution of business intelligence to realize and latch-on to some real-world problems and for many years now, compliance and financial governance issues have been at the top of the CEO’s list,” Hickernell said.

Cognos plans to integrate Applix TM1 with its Cognos 8 platform, which includes Cognos 8 Planning, Controller, and Business Intelligence.

The acquisition will also add some 3,000 Applix customers to Cognos’ existing customers, Cognos CEO Rob Ashe said in a conference call.

Info-Tech’s Hickernell said the deal is in line with Applix’s market strategy to expand its performance management capabilities beyond financial data and into operational data. 075715

KEEP YOUR OUTSOURCERS CLOSE

Workopolis.com fields over three million unique visitors per month and thousands of job postings daily, and is growing at a rate of around 35 per cent each year.

Director of infrastructure Kevin Megarry balked at the costs and effort required in hosting its own environment.

Workopolis auditioned four vendors over a four-month period last winter, eventually settling on Q9 Networks. It shifted its servers over

SAVE ON E-MAIL I/O

For the last 10 years, St. Clair College in southern Ontario had been using the open source SendMail system for its messaging needs, but the school’s growth demanded something more powerful, said Amar Singh, the school’s IT manager. “The systems just couldn’t handle that load anymore.”

Singh cited price as a main driver towards Exchange 2007, along with the fact that, as a predominantly Microsoft shop, the training curve would be minimal.

The phased approach began with a pilot project of about 50 users for two weeks. The system, which runs on Dell PowerEdge Servers, was then slowly rolled out to the rest of the school.

Kevin Smith, an executive with Dell Canada, said the five-server setup was necessary to ensure St. Clair College is prepared for further expansion. Dell has learned that there are important differences in the way the disk I/O interacts with Exchange 2007, Smith said. 071027

— Shane Schick

EDI TORIAL
Editor
Shane Schick
Editor-in-Chief/Publisher
Dan McLean
Assistant Editor
Mari-Len De Guzman
Staff Writers
Kathleen Lau
Rafael Ruffolo
Briony Smith
Executive Editor
Greg Enright

Online Editors Joaquim Menezes Neil Sutton Contributing Writers Nestor Arellano Grant Buckler Vawn Himmelsbach ART AND PRODUCTION Graphic Artist Irena Gorian Graphic Designer Mel Manasan Production Coordinator Anna Demetriou Creative Manager Jeff Coles

SALES
Director of Sales
Brad McBride
Account Managers
Linda Angellotti
Julia Hogers-Bentley
Weng Ng
Bill McKnight

CIRCULATION Fulfillment Manager Cheryl Patfield Circulation Director Doni Moore

Michael R. Atkins President and Group Publisher Andrew White Vice -President, IT Business Group Joe Tersigni Vice-President and Editorial Director John Pickett Vice-President, Publishing and Events Fawn Annan General Manager, ITworldcanada.com Gerald Chopik General Manager, Enterprise Group Dan McLean Controller Rob Novorolsky

HO W TO CON TAC T COMPU TERWORLD Telephone: (416) 290-0240 Fax: (416) 290-0238 Mail: ComputerWorld, 55 Town Centre Court, Suite 302, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4X4

E-mail: The publication’s address is cwc@itworldcanada.com Also, employees may be reached using a combina- tion of their first initial and last name, for example: sschick@itworldcanada.com

Online: www.ITworldcanada.com

Subscription inquiries: tel: (613) 475-3217 or 1-800-565-4007 fax: (416) 290-0239 or 1-800-565-8148 e-mail: circulation@itworldcanada.com

We acknowledgethefinancial supportof the Government of Canada, through the Publications Assistance Program toward our mailing cost.

PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMEN T NO. 40063800 RE TURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO CIRCULATION DEPT — I T WORLD CANADA INC. 302-55 TOWN CENTRE COUR T SCARBOROUGH ON M1P 4X4 E-mail: circulation@itworldcanada.com PAP Registration No. 10782 Published by: IT World Canada ComputerWorld Canada is published 25 times a year by IT World Canada Inc., Michael R. Atkins, Chairman, Andrew White, President. I T World Canada Inc. also publishes Network World Canada, CIO Canada, CIO Government Review, Computer Dealer News and Direction Informatique. ComputerWorld Canada is distributed free of charge to the following job categories in Canada only: company executives, public servants responsible for computing, management/computer consultants, I T managers/supervisors, systems analysts, programmers, operators and computer field engineers. Subscription rates outside of Canada: in the U.S. $75 U.S./year; other countries $95 U.S./year. Available to non-qualified readers in Canada at $2.50 per single copy; $55 for 25 issues. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced in part or in whole without the consent of the copyright owner. ISSN #1484-9089. GS T Registration #R122605769 IT World Canada Inc. is an affiliate of International Data Group, the world’s largest publisher of computer-related information and the leading global provider of information services on information technology. International Data Group publishes over 300 computer publications in 85 countries. Ninety million people read one or more International Data Group publications each month.