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In mid-May of 2008, just a few weeks back, HP’s CEO Mark Hurd announced an agreement to buy EDS for $13,9 billion and stated that it fulfills their strategic objective of expanding in the services area.

This is major news because this agreement means that HP’s and EDS’ combined revenues reaches a whopping $38 billion a year, a bit behind IBM at $54 billion but clearly ahead of Accenture at $21 billion.

According to the merger plan that’s been released, EDS CEO Ron Rittenmeyer will lead a new organization called “EDS — an HP company” and report directly to HP’s Mark Hurd. EDS will still employ 210,000 people but Wall Street is abuzz with rumors of downsizing.

While HP’s IT services unit was already managing P&G’s global consumer products’ tech operations (a 10 year, $3 billion contract, started in 2003), EDS brings blue-chip customers to the table, such as American Airlines, Bank of America and Royal Dutch Shell.

So EDS’ vast vertical and operational expertise which is especially strong in the financial services, health care and government sectors could finally help HP break into the IT services major leagues. The biggest threat to the success of this deal might come from HP’s somewhat “computer and printer” culture that’s still (proverbially speaking) lightyears away from SaaS, cloud computing and other new-wave IT trends for which EDS has proved to be more comfortable with.

HP hopes that with EDS now on its team, big multinationals will look to outsourcers more often to collect, secure, integrate and deliver software and other IT resources over the web.

Of course, the future will tell if giant system integrators, like HP’s newly acquired EDS, will still be required at a time when the SaaS and cloud computing super-efficient duo are removing complexity from many IT activities, across the board.

Tags: hp, eds, operations, merger plan, it, it services, saas, cloud computing, outsourcing, it resources

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It seems new rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require large publicly held companies to adopt the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) by December 15th, 2008, for all the financial documents they file with the agency.

Being the financial reporting version of XML, XBRL allows for standardized accounting data to be tagged and retrieved more easily as documents can be mined for data without calling up entirely.

So the SEC is basically requiring big changes from large publicly held companies because their PCs aren’t fast enough to process large documents, errr… while that may hold true, the main reason has to do with the structured way in which the XBRL data is stored.

SEC 10-K annual reports and other documents that use XBRL can be read by software, screened for specific data and then, reorganized into new reports. For investigators and investors looking to quickly search for less common financial data such as “assets held for sale”, the XBRL tagging does wonders.

The new SEC requirement affects “large accelerated filers” which likely includes the majority of the Fortune 500 — 75 companies, including Ford, GE, IBM, Pepsi, United Technologies and Xerox already use XBRL.

Once XBRL has become a standard way of making SEC reports, the mandate is expected to be phased in for smaller publicly held companies. Furthermore, the FDIC and the central banks of the European Union have already adopted XBRL in their reporting.

While the XBRL requirement might seem somewhat steep for large companies, it’s probably a good thing since it’ll be easier for investors, including large retirement fund analysts, to finally be able to quickly compare several companies using very specific variables.

For the financial publications’ readers, this means that the financial reports, in the years to come, might yield significantly more comprehensible information that’ll likely be useful when trying to understand what’s happening in a company where an investment is being considered.

Tags: xbrl, xml, sec, fdic, european banks, financial reports, reporting, standards, compliance, mandate

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Are you popular? Do other people have in interest for gathering data on you? Are the interested parties friendlies or otherwise utterly dangerous?

All these questions quickly come to mind for information security experts who look to secure data in all ways possible to prevent that it get leaked into the wrong hands.

The internet connects over 1.5 billion people daily, for anything ranging from email or web surfing to complex remote medical interventions — that makes for a tempting target for ill intended individuals looking to get their hands on sensitive data, which is basically why you need to protect yourself better.

What you did to protect your data a year ago probably isn’t as good today because the very nature of threats keeps shifting in sometimes unforseen territories. Regularly assessing the efficiency of your data protection will become even more critical in the future as attackers, ranging from more or less talented hackers, organized crime and even foreign governments will try their best to steal anything of value (for them) that you may have.

Your computer’s hard drive is like a proverbial safe which instantly becomes (way) more vulnerable from the moment you connect to the internet or even a home wireless network.

If you intend to have the upper hand against those determined to steal your data, you need to be one step ahead of them, namely with the following no non-sense strategies:

• Enclaves - Early on, determine what’s the most sensitive data you must protect and give it special treatment because that’s probably what the data thieves will be looking for.
• Border firewalls - Network-layer firewalls work best when combined with application-layer counterparts so be creative in protecting your “borders”.
• Strong authentication - Require strong passwords (on everything) which must be changed regularly and for more serious security needs, consider using token-based systems (physical USB key-like devices with ever changing “tokens” to access the data).
• Configuration and patch management - Make sure your (1) equipment, (2) software and (3) human resources are always “well maintained”… and up-to-date!
• Host-based firewalls - Server and workstation intrusion, virus and malware protection is still essential to weed out the unwanted stuff that somehow finds a way in (in spite of all the other protections).
• Data encryption - Make sure to especially encrypt data on mobile devices since they’re the ones likely to be lost (or stolen) when in transit — encrypt all you can.
• Awareness and training - An aggressive cybersecurity program will go a long way in efficiently protecting yourself against newer threats.

While some treat data security entirely as a hit-and-miss process, experience shows that luck favors the prepared, when it comes to cybersecurity.

Forget the antiquated (but still active, alas) Nigerian bank scam threat pouring in email boxes all over the world, the newer threats tend to be socially engineered so ensuing phishing attacks are savvily aimed at the intellectual interest of the end user, making them that much harder to debunk. In other words, attacks are getting uncomfortably personal.

As you attempt, most probably armed with gear, software and knowledge, to fend off the attackers’ attempting to break open the gates to your digital kingdom, keep in mind that people are the weak link in any network security effort.

Interestingly, there’s a corollary to the “people are the problem” saying and it has to with the widely recognized fact that people are also the most effective “tool” to fight attackers.

Although you may never be perfectly secure, make an effort to prevent data thieves from succeeding in their highly illegal —and overwhelmingly stealth— attempts to steal from you.

Tags: security, cybersecurity, it, firewall, border, encryption, data theft, hard drives

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Lots of intelligent people realize, at some point, that the web represents an ideal media to publish their educated (and sometimes less educated) thoughts regarding just about anything. Furthermore, if it’s done right, there might even be some financial incentive in doing so.

This is wonderful news for both the aspiring web publishers who will enjoy the excitement of making their ideas “public” and the targeted visitors who will have access to newly available knowledge (usually, for free).

To make your web publishers’ efforts worth their while, here are a few “common sense tips” for those who are getting warm to the idea of e-publishing:

Focus on human-sized challenges - Even if your favorite subject is as expansive as “technology” (for instance), make sure to break up your work in smaller chunks so you don’t choke on the amount of content you’ll want to publish.

Become a specialist - Being different isn’t enough, in the age of online publishing. In fact, specialists will inevitably have the upper hand against the army of generalists who aren’t as knowledgeable on given issues.

Web visitors rule - Whatever you intend to inform your visitors about, keep in mind that visitors who like your content have the means to easily make it more popular (through social bookmarking, for instance) so treat them with due respect.

Monetize your hard work - Creating unique content makes a fertile ground for getting enough visitors to, in turn, justify adding “monetizing zones” throughout your published work.

Explore the many “pay-per-click” publisher programs, including Google’s AdSense and stay away from “pay-per-action” schemes (unless you’re a pro) as they’re usually much harder to “convert” into revenue.

Of course, getting paid for your work is always nice.

Update often to add more value - Your initial content is probably fine as it is -but- the world changes and perhaps, at some point, it’s a sound idea to revisit your previously published work to update it, in the hope of adding more value, for your visitors (and the search engines).

Blogs help this occur “naturally” through the addition, over time, of user-generated comments. Publishers will, nevertheless, usually get extra credibility points for doing this, on their own.

Make your own rules - This tip applies to your online publishing work -and- to your life, in general. Doing anything because you’re told to is bound to make you miserable, at some point. The online opportunities are so numerous that it’s hard to imagine you can’t become a happy publisher without following your heart.

There’s never been a moment in human history when publishing to such a vast audience was this easy. Providing information online for other people to learn from is basically about sharing the wealth of knowledge you come across. Obviously, there’s a lot of merit in web publishing.

Bonus tip - If you’re publishing highly unique content, consider making it multilingual using specialized automatic translation tools (and services) which may easily interface with your favorite blog script. Whenever possible, specify the translation is “automated” so that your foreign readers don’t judge your syntax too severely. Multilingual content creation will multiply the potential readership for your content which, by all means, is a good thing for you.

Good luck in your web publishing ventures!

Tags: web publishing, web content, blogs, wikis, web pages, monetization

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At a time when information availability, online and off, is rising to unprescedented levels, almost anyone managing information should pause to think of a strategy to benefit from this digital bounty instead of being drowned by it.

As such, here are the many elements of information management you should consider when devising your very own “strategy for staying on top of things”:

Data - Databases, data warehouses, data cleansing, profiling, integration, metadata repositories, networked storage systems.

Content - Document management, web content management, records management, imaging.

Intelligence - Business intelligence, data extraction and mining, analysis, reporting, dashboards, performance management.

Search - Keyword search, content classification, categorization, entity extraction, taxonomy creation, document search, e-mail search.

Think of these elements as parts of your future strategy for winning in the information age. Whoever finds ways to inch ahead of everyone else in fields related to any one of these elements will stand to win big, especially in our increasingly networked world.

It’s not just about buying a bigger hard drive anymore, it’s about managing the information in such a way that truly empowers you.

Tags: information management, data, content, intelligence, search

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