Lauren Gibbons Paul

According to a recent Computing Technology Industry Association survey, more than one-quarter-26 percent-of PC users at small- and medium-size businesses reported their productivity was affected by a spyware infection in the last six months. Of those that said they had been hit by a spyware event (including unwilling changes to their home page, disruptive pop-ups […]

Like many academic institutions, Southern Methodist University in Dallas had dabbled in open-source software. After all, as at most schools, IT dollars and resources were stretched tight at SMU, so the price was right. For years, SMU had been using the NetReg open-source network registration system to verify user identities on its student residence network. […]

For the most part, the vision of the paperless office remains exactly that—a vision. More than most vertical industries, the legal field is choked with paper documents (court briefs, depositions, forms, letters). Most law firms gave up the goal of eliminating paper a long time ago. But that doesnt mean they cant reduce costs by […]

The 160 first-year medical students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine used to receive a boatload of printed course materials during their first weeks in school—four cases worth of paper per student, in fact. Printing costs were sky-high. So it wasnt surprising when state budgetary officers zeroed in on printed course […]

All IT managers worry about hackers, viruses and external security threats. But what really keep IT pros up at night are threats generated inside their companies firewalls. Even when they are not maliciously motivated, employees, contractors and visitors to an office building can wreak havoc by logging on to the corporate network without heeding corporate […]

Listen to Michael Flanter Sr. describe Todd Sharp, and youll think hes talking about an old crony. “We had had business dealings with him, and we didnt hate him too much,” said Flanter. Not hardly. In fact, Flanter, president and founder of 30-employee, Atlanta-based hospitality product distributor Springfield, and Sharp, director at systems integrator Engage, […]

Early in 2004, IT managers at the bank of Utah bumped up against a hard reality: Their 5-year-old mainframe had simply run out of gas. Memory utilization and CPU usage on the Unisys NX5601 typically ran at more than 80 percent. Nightly updates of the online banking application took approximately 8 to 10 hours to […]