... the productivity of project managers while adding to IT complexity. So claims Marc O'Brien, CEO of Projity Inc. in San Mateo, Calif. His evidence? Not insubstantial. He points to Microsoft's decision to remove from its Project software the tree views of a project's tasks and resources -- a feature that gives you a concise look at who's doing what with what. Microsoft nudges users who want that capability to add its Visio software, which means you need to bolt on Project Server so the two applications can work together, and then you have to integrate all that with Exchange. In other words, what was once a single app becomes an IT integration, um, project. Naturally, O'Brien offers an alternative -- Project on Demand. POD, as Projity insiders call it, is a software-as-a-service offering that's compatible with Microsoft Project - and is its equivalent and more in functionality, he says. (For example, you get those tree views that Microsoft ripped out.) Now in beta, Project on Demand is due Jan. 30. A project manager has to shell out US$39 a month, but team members only pay $7 on a monthly basis.
On-demand app offers real-time ...
... planning engine for supply chains. The Mitrix Project was started in 2001 to help some of Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) Inc.'s more than 100 subsidiaries manage their supply chains without each having to invest in its own IT infrastructure. The project led to the creation of Mitrix Inc., a wholly owned Mitsui subsidiary in Irvine, Calif. Mitrix CEO Ed Lewis says that the unit's service, which is now available to the world, includes a planning engine that can instantly recognize changes in your supply chain and devise recommendations to compensate for them. By midyear, Mitrix plans to aggregate more data sources for improved forecasting and update its end-user dashboard. Although the service starts at $200,000 for the first year and goes for $75,000 annually thereafter, Lewis says that price is one-fifth to one-tenth of what it would cost to install and run supply chain management software in a data center.
'Forget Madonna -- the real rich ...
... content searches are to happen in business." That's what Rimas Buinevicius predicts for the near future. "Rich media is coming of age in traditional organizations," says the CEO of Sonic Foundry Inc. in Madison, Wis. As proof, he suggests that you visit his company's Mediasite.com Web site, which links to more than 7,500 professional multimedia presentations available online. If you search on the word CIO, you'll get more than 11 hours of video and slide shows. Buinevicius says Mediasite's proprietary tools can index slide content via optical character-recognition technology. It's also possible to index audio streams and perform other "exotic" search functions on Mediasite, Buinevicius says. But he's cagey as to whether the indexing feature is fully functional now. In the future, Mediasite could be used on corporate intranets and extranets, he says.
Centralize remote file services ...
... without hurting local performance for end users? Now there's a wish held by many IT pros. Chris Williams, chief marketing officer at Expand Networks Inc. in Roseland, N.J., claims that it's possible with his company's Expand Accelerator appliance. Williams says the device optimizes WAN performance through advanced compression and quality-of-service techniques, and it caches files locally, sending only updates to the central repository. The appliance also includes a print server, so you don't have to support a separate one at remote sites. An upgrade due later this month will add support for voice-over-IP traffic. Pricing starts at $2,800.
The hullabaloo over multicore chips ...
... transcends Intel vs. AMD in servers. Multicore processors also will take a big bite out of the market for application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) in embedded systems, predicts Hiro Kataoka, CEO of Boston Circuits Inc. His Burlington, Mass.-based start-up is designing multicore chips to replace the ASICs now found in everything from manufacturing robots to consumer electronics. Kataoka claims that his Grid on Chip devices are one-third the size of a Pentium 4 and can handle all manner of ASIC functions as well as the duties of a general-purpose PC chip. Plus, they'll be upgradable. "There will be an IP pipe to all these devices," Kataoka says, so you'll be able to get new capabilities without having to throw out your hardware. Developers will be able to get their hands on Boston Circuits' linker, compiler and debugger later this quarter. Expect Grid on Chip silicon sometime next year.