Process, Process
In these days of doing more with less, solid process development and management
is less of a luxury and more of a necessity. So it should come as no surprise
that business process management (BPM) has been getting a lot of attention of
late. Both Forrester and Gartner have recognized BPM vendors -- one Windows-based
and one open source -- in their market reports.
In its recently released market assessment, called The Forrester Wave, the
Cambridge, Mass.-based market researcher recognized webMethods for its Fabric
product suite and overall market strategy in the BPM world. Forrester praised
webMethods for realizing "the significance of XML interactions."
The report continues, "Since that time, [webMethods] has expanded its
scope to include enterprise application integration, electronic data interchange
and, most recently, business process management."
Gartner just published a First Take on open source BPM developer Intalio. In
its report, the Stamford, Conn.-based analyst firm states that "users wanting
support for BPM initiatives would have to rely on commercial BPM vendors. As
the technology matured -- and market acceptance increased -- prices climbed,
making it difficult for novices to get hands-on experience in requisite BPM
technology skills."
It sounds like business process management is no longer the sole province of
the Fortune 500. BPM for the masses!
Out with the Old
There are many things you can do with all those old machines as you replace
them. Sell them to another company, or move them down to some non-essential
department that has been screaming for "new" computers. If you wait
too long, though, you might just be better off recycling them. While that's
the right thing to do if you're not going to resell or reuse them, it can also
be a huge hassle.
The Electronics Industry Alliance (EIA) hopes to make that process a bit easier.
The EIA's Web site
features an online guide to electronics recyclers and other options for technology
disposal across the country.
Developed by EIA's Environmental Issues Council, the E-Cycling Central Web
site has the scoop on where to find electronics recycling, reuse and donation
programs in all 50 states. You can search for local and national options for
managing used electronics. There's also a list of recommended questions to ask
a recycler to ensure they're properly handling used electronics, information
on the economic impact of recycling electronics products and how properly disposing
of used technology can protect privacy.
Clean Slate
Completely erasing a hard drive can be a little more involved than you think.
And with Vista deployments looming in the near future, you may need to take
some of your machines down to bare metal.
BluestSoft's DiskDeleter USB 2.2.0 is a handy little tool for quickly and completely
cleaning off a system's hard drive. Just plug in the USB device and it's as
good as done. You can also accomplish the same thing using just the software.
Start the cleaning wizard while Windows is running and it will take you through
the steps. It supports just about any flavor of Windows, Linux and Unix, and
it performs pretty quickly as well. BluestSoft claims that it takes about 21
seconds to erase 1GB.
DiskDeleter's erasure methods are based on the U.S. Department of Defense DOD
5220.22-M directive for clearing and sanitizing disk drives, which ensures unrecoverable
removal of data. If it's good enough for DOD data, it ought to do the trick.
Upgrade Now
Everybody likes something for free, right? If you use Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus
Free Edition 7.1, you just got a bit more time to upgrade to version 7.5. Product
support for the free edition, which also lets you upgrade, was originally set
to expire on Jan. 15, but Grisoft just extended that deadline to Feb. 18. So
if that's one of your anti-virus tools, get with it and up-grade soon here.
Version 7.5 is Vista-ready and has improved built-in heuristics, NTFS data-stream
scanning, smaller update files and a new interface. And yes, it's free.
About the Author
Lafe Low is the editorial liaison for ECG Events.