Service catalogs: What’s on the IT menu?

CIOs fear mass IT exodus following economic recovery; BMC takes service desk to the cloud via Salesforce.com Network/Systems Management Alert NetworkWorld.com | Update Your Profile | Forward this to a Friend >>> Sponsored by Cisco How to Transition to a Strategic Network Platform New technology trends such as unified communications, virtualization, and mobility are handily showing business benefits, but they are also putting strains on the corporate network. IT managers are struggling to provide higher availability, manage a complex network of devices and systems, and reduce total cost of ownership. This paper, produced by the Yankee Group, outlines a strategic approach, in which the network is viewed as a single, end-to-end system, with the goals of providing lower TCO, increased uptime, and faster time-to-market of new services. Read this White Paper Now! Spotlight Story Service catalogs: What's on the IT menu? IT departments look to service catalog technologies from vendors such as Digital Fuel, newScale, Oblicore and PMG to align IT functions with business demands in a down economy. Read full story Related News: CIOs fear mass IT exodus following economic recovery Robert Half Technology and Deloitte Consulting report that IT leaders are worried high-tech workers will seek employment elsewhere, leaving their companies at a disadvantage in terms of business-technology initiatives. BMC takes service desk to the cloud via Salesforce.com BMC and Salesforce.com partner to deliver BMC's Service Desk Express on Force.com platform. Benioff trumpets Force.com platform's success Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff on Thursday attempted to cement an image of the vendor as a full-blown application development platform provider, not merely a purveyor of SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications. BMC buys Tideway for component tracking tools BMC Software said Monday it has signed a deal to buy London startup Tideway Systems, which makes software for tracking and analyzing IT system components. Terms of the deal, which is expected to be concluded this week, were not disclosed. Free online services benchmarks cloud provider performance Apparent Networks this week added to its already free cloud performance management application with a free online service designed to help cloud customers measure the quality and performance of services delivered by cloud computing providers. Manage power consumption for free IT managers feeling the need to be green can achieve some energy-efficient results without doling out cash by downloading Spiceworks IT Desktop software and the company's new Power Manager plug-in application.Free management software gets network smartsManaging PC power, data center and network device energy consumption Cloud computing: Simply SaaS renamed? Industry leaders cite subtle differences between the technologies at SIAA OnDemand 2009 conference SaaS-y start-up amps up its application performance management software New Relic introduces RPM Version 2, application performance management software designed to keep Ruby on Rails apps in check and now including features to manage Java applications as well. 5 Things to Know about Software-as-a-Service Contracts How CIOs can guarantee secure SaaS contracts. SaaS like you've never seen it before Software-as-a-service is pretty established, but Jeff Kaplan of Think Strategies believes the technology, along with cloud computing and managed service, is poised for huge growth in 2009. He explains why in this edition of Voices from IT Roadmap. (14:03) The Rise of SaaS Cisco's recent introduction of WebEx Mail, a Software-as-a-Service offering meant to replace on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers highlights the continued momentum behind hosted applications to reduce operating costs and complexity. Sixty percent of companies are adopting some form of SaaS, with customer resource management leading the way. IT leaders are also increasingly looking at SaaS-based... November giveaways Cisco Subnet is giving away free books on VMware vSphere security. Microsoft Subnet is giving away training from New Horizons and free books on Exchange Server 2010. Google Subnet is giving away free books on Android app development. Entry forms can be found on the main contest page. Trivia answers are revealed on each main Subnet page. Network World on Twitter? You bet we are Ethernet everywhere! Inside planes, trains, cars and spaceships, Ethernet is a morph master. Here's a look at some of Ethernet's cooler implementations. 7 tools to ease Windows 7 rollout These utilities help you plan, ensure app compatibility and manage images. Achieve Data Warehousing Performance with a Column-Oriented Database The growing demand for deep-dive data mining, complex event processing and strategic business analytics puts increased demands on today's data bases and data warehouse. Learn how an alternative data base approach, which begins by storing data by columns instead of rows, has proven to meet today's exploding data warehouses. Read this Paper Now! Total Cost Comparison: IT Decision-Maker Perspectives Review research done by Oliver Wyman to determine the total cost of acquiring, deploying, operating, and managing storage environments from various vendors to support VMware server virtualization solutions. Click here to learn more.   November 23, 2009 MOST-READ STORIES Microsoft Windows chief decries standards grandstanding The 5 best, and 5 worst, features of Google Chrome OS Federal government using PS3 to crack pedophile passwords 10G Ethernet cheat sheet Top 10 free Windows tools for IT pros, at a glance So you think you know Skype? NSA helped with Windows 7 development 3 basic steps to avoid joining a botnet Microsoft touts groundbreaking 'clip-on' for Active Directory FAA fixes computer glitch, delays remain The Dramatically Shifting Role of Network Management The traditional approach to network management focused just on the availability of networks. While that is still important, today's network managers are also being held responsible for the performance of network and applications. Listen to a conversation between Jim Metzler and Stelio D'Alo that discusses the business, technology and management trends that are impacting your job. View Now EMO Labs: Better Sound Through Innovation at DEMOfall 09 EMO Labs' Invisible Speaker innovation takes People's Choice Award top honors at DEMO conference. Watch EMO Labs product launch.   This email was sent to networking.world@gmail.com Complimentary Subscriptions Available for newsletter subscribers. Receive 50 issues of Network World Magazines, in print or electronic format, free of charge. Apply here. Terms of Service/Privacy   Subscription Services Update your profile To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. Unsubscribe Network World, Inc., 492 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2009 www.networkworld.com | Forward this to a Friend >>>