IBM Information On Demand 2008

The IBM Information On Demand 2008 happened this week (October 26 - 31, 2008 - Mandalay Bay - Las Vegas, Nevada).

According IBM's brochure:
IBM Information On Demand 2008 incorporates seven previous information management conferences, including IBM DB2®, IMS™ Technical Conference, Content Management Technical Conference, Business Intelligence Customer Solution Summit, Master Data Management Conference, Information Integration Live and Americas UserNet Conference. Learn how to unlock the business value of your information. You’ll discover everything you need to know about data management, enterprise content management, information integration, master data management, business intelligence and performance management.

Here are some links with news, posts, and articles about the conference:

- Cognos solutions

- B-Eye-Network
. Blog: Richard Hackathorn - He did a very nice coverage, with several posts about the Conference.
. Blog: Shawn Rogers

- Intelligent Enterprise - Doug Henschen
. IBM's On Demand Push: Greater than Sum of Parts
. IBM, Oracle and the Appliance Campaign Trail

- eWeek - Brian Prince
. IBM Pushes Forward with Its Information On Demand Vision
. IBM Expands Information On Demand Software Portfolio

- ItWorldCanada - Eleven things heard and seen at IBM’s Information on Demand conference - Kathleen Lau

How to Select the Right Business Intelligence Vendor

eWeek published yesterday an interesting article called How to Select the Right Business Intelligence Vendor, written by Ted Cuzzillo. He talks about the three advantages that he considers to select an independent BI vendor, instead to buy an integrated suite of the Big Four (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP).

The three advantages are:

1 - The ability to mix and match
As a CIO, you can build your own optimal set of tools for your organization's unique needs—with tools you know will work the way you need them to.

2 - Freedom to apply leverage with a vendor, and ultimately, the freedom to walk away
The freedom to adopt better, more advanced tools is critical in the rapidly evolving state of technology. There's a lot on the horizon and plenty of reason to stay open.

3 - Customer influence
During rapid change, independent vendors have to listen to customers. Even veterans cannot ignore their customers. Customers tend to be able to influence product direction (of independent vendors) more easily.

He also considers that there's a downside to buying from independents. Even so, the advantage of an open system is clear. While supposedly "integrated" platforms might serve for today, open systems serve today's needs and also tomorrow's—as they leave a path open for rapid and unpredictable evolution.

I agree with him, when you are choosing BI tools, you should choice the better tools to attend your company, whatever the tools are the same vendor or not.

How Online Fraudsters Are Using SaaS in Their Networks

The eweek published recently, an article about Online Fraudsters, written by Chris Preimesberger. Uri Rivner, RSA Security head of new technologies, told attendees, at an analysts' briefing Sept. 25 at EMC's Silicon Valley offices, that the Internet fraud business has grown so large and enmeshed in legitimate online activities that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell who's good and who's bad.

According the article: "Rivner pointed out two recent trends: a) Fraudsters using SAAS (software as a service) models to sell their services to customers for a monthly fee, and b) the appearance of new super-Trojans that hijack legitimate bank Web sites and fool people into entering personal financial information--such as ATM account numbers and personal identification numbers--into the phony Web site.

In describing the hosted fraud model, Rivner said that if a willing participant knows where to go, he or she can simply order a phishing or other criminal business service online and pay a fee per month to participate as an investor in order to share in the "profits."

"This fee at one of these services is $299 per month," Rivner said. "This puts you into the food chain of [identity] harvesters, phony ATM card makers, delivery specialists--a whole infrastructure of criminals.

The second trend, involving the new Trojans--which can get installed on an unsuspecting computer owner's machine through either opening an executable file or by a browse-by Web site, which is fairly rare--is also a growing problem, Rivner said.

"In this scenario, with the Trojan on the client and working, the user goes to his or her bank's Web site to make a transaction. The Trojan is alerted to this when the site is brought up. When it does show up, it waits for the user to log on, then brings up the false site, which looks very similar to the legitimate one," Rivner said."

With the growing of the online services, consequently the online fraud business also growing, and the frauds are increasingly more sofisticated. The users must be very careful when are accessing sites, mainly bank's Web site and shopping sites.

Video about How Tech Supports Business Initiatives

I watched recently a video interview about How Tech Supports Business Initiatives, provided by eWeek.com.

In this video, Eric Lundquist, eWeek's Editor, interviewed Leo Collins, CIO of Lionsgate, at the 2008 CIO Summit in Half Moon Bay, California. Leo Collins is a very experienced CIO, and they talked about several subjects, mainly how to make sure your IT department is seen and actually is a vital part of your company, and how you can make sure you are spending your technology budget to support key business initiatives.

This is a good interview, but the environment was noisily, I think they recorded the interview in the lobby of hotel.

The eWeek has many videos in its video page, sponsored by IBM.