Bloor Research on IT-Director.com

Farewell to GRC; bring on Good Governance

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I'm deeply interested in governance, but I've always felt that GRC (Governance Risk and Compliance) is a bit of a dead end. It often seems to focus purely on technology and in enforcing the letter of... [Read More...]

When the cloud improves security

Fran Howarth, Bloor Research — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Once considered a dirty word, no one today would doubt the importance of security. A decade ago, the world had a shock when the ILOVEYOU worm was unleashed by email, infecting an estimated 10% of... [Read More...]

Cell Phone Hacking Attacks - A Real and Present Danger (Part 4)

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

It has been possible to scramble telephone calls since the early 1920's. Originally, artificial noise was superimposed over a voice call to prevent eavesdroppers, with a suitably... [Read More...]

AVAST shows the way on accessibility

Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Accessibility does not just mean access by everybody to Information and Communication Technologies, it also means access to everything available through ICT. It is not sufficient that applications... [Read More...]

Security? what security?

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

We live in a world now that whatever you read you are bound to come across the word “Security” in some form. This word covers a whole gamut of meanings, so let’s go back to basics... [Read More...]

What, another TLA?

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

The computer industry seems to love using TLAs (three letter acronyms) to make things most mysterious. So here are two more for you to be able to show off to your friends and colleagues: CMMS -... [Read More...]

EntropySoft introduces appliance

Philip Howard, Bloor Research — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Avid readers will remember that I have written about EntropySoft a couple of times over the last two years. It is a specialist provider of content connectors, providing normalised access to content... [Read More...]

BPM in The Summer

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

The holiday months of June to August is not the time when you would normally expect to hear lots of BPM activity but this year appears to be different. Apriso started the ball rolling by announcing... [Read More...]

Taking the Cloud for B2B processes

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

For many companies all their trading of goods or services is with other companies. This is referred to as business-to-business or, in acronym form, B2B. These sorts of transactions are typified by... [Read More...]

What’s happening with event processing?

Philip Howard, Bloor Research — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I have been doing some thinking about (complex) event processing recently and it seems to me that, with the exception of companies that are very strongly focusing on capital markets (notably Sybase... [Read More...]

Cell Phone Hacking Attacks - A Real and Present Danger (Part 3)

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Following on with our current series of articles exploring cell phone hacking this time we will look at how phones can be attacked. There are 4 main ways in which cell phones can be... [Read More...]

Do BI tools provide the right intelligence for business’s today?

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Companies today need to be able to collect information on a number of indicators to gauge their performance against their own and external targets. These key performance indicators can vary from... [Read More...]

Survey on the needs and obstacles to accessibility in development

Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I am an associate member of the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA) and was sent the following request. I am not involved day to day in the development process so I cannot... [Read More...]

Accessibility of Apple's Magic Trackpad

Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Apple's recent announcement of new models of the iMac include faster processing and graphics as we would expect; but the really interesting announcement for the accessibility community is the Magic... [Read More...]

It's not just Analytics....

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

To quote Steve LaValle from an IBM Global Business Services Executive Report, in top-performing organisations, analytics have replaced intuition as the best way to answer questions about what markets... [Read More...]

W3C verification tool Unicorn

Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

W3C recently announced the release of Unicorn, a one-stop tool to help people improve the quality of their Web pages. Unicorn combines a number of popular tools from W3C in a single, easy interface,... [Read More...]

The impact of Mark Hurd

Philip Howard, Bloor Research — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I will leave it to others to comment on the overall impact that Mark Hurd has had on HP since he became CEO, and the only general remark I will make about his departure is that a drop in the share... [Read More...]

The BBC puts Smartphone security on test

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

BBC News has shown how straightforward it is to create a malicious application for a smartphone. Over a few weeks, the BBC put together a crude game for a smartphone that also spied on the owner of... [Read More...]

UAE, Saudi and the BlackBerry Security Conundrum

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:25:00 +0100

News that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia want to block the use of some BlackBerry features rumbles on.I was interviewed for my opinions on Aljazeera TV's Inside Story by presenter... [Read More...]

Cell Phone Hacking Attacks - A Real and Present Danger (Part 2)

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Before attacks on mobile phones can be discussed it is important that the underlying system employed by mobile phone providers is understood. There are a number of digital networks... [Read More...]

Interested in Cell (Mobile) Phone Hacking?

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I am running a set of 4 articles covering cell phone/mobile phone hacking and measures you can take to prevent such attacks on the Bloor site here. I'll be covering some of the underlying technology... [Read More...]

US Brands Targeted in Online Attacks

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

The latest RSA Online Fraud Report has just been published, revealing some interesting headlines. Some of the featured highlights include: As of July 1, 2010, the RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center has... [Read More...]

Cell Phone Hacking Attacks - A Real and Present Danger (Part 1)

Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

If you stop and take a look at all the objects that sit within an arms length of where you are sitting the chances are that a mobile phone, in all its guises, is one of the first that you see. The... [Read More...]

Uwhat?

Philip Howard, Bloor Research — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I have been accused on more than one occasion of being a technophobe. Which is kind of weird, given my profession. However, it is true that my mobile phone is usually switched off (for historic... [Read More...]

More mainframe madness

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

I'm often a little apologetic over my liking for the mainframe. After all, I used to be told (mostly by people who knew nothing about mainframes), it was only as powerful as an Intel 486... [Read More...]

Emerging a Priority ERP

Simon Holloway, Bloor Research — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

When looking for the right ERP solution, there are numerous candidate solutions to choose from. So how do you differentiate between them to select the right one for you? Well the starting point is to... [Read More...]

IBM breaks down the silos - Part 4, Reuse, Token Licenses and Conclusion

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0100

At one session of IBM's Innovate 2010 software conference, Steve Mills (Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software) was asked about how IBM manages (and reduces) the cost of building its... [Read More...]

IBM breaks down the silos - Part 3, Systems of Systems

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

What interested me most at Innovate 2010 (there's a Livestram video channel for the conference here) was the emphasis on delivering software for automating Systems of Systems. This is very much the... [Read More...]

IBM breaks down the silos - Part 2, the Security silo

David Norfolk, Bloor Research — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

One very obvious silo is security and it is a particular issue because the security silo can be so dysfunctional. Application security is the obvious example: the programmers in their silo assume... [Read More...]

New Working Draft of Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 2.0)

Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Creating accessible web content is a challenge. Many of the tools used to author web content make this challenge bigger because they do not give the author any help or guidance in creating... [Read More...]