Ten Thankful Things in IT for 2006

Written by Michael Vizard; Illustrated by Brian Moore

The inescapable truth of the matter is that the eyes of the work force are getting older, and without higher resolution displays, usage of computers would be down, along with productivity.

They may not be perfect yet, but tools that automate the provisioning of servers help reduce the amount of time IT people have to spend rolling out and then updating applications.

Beyond the fact that open source is a good deal, the methodologies behind the development of open-source products are now being adopted by internal IT departments that are as a result turning out better classes of applications.

While most large-scale server virtualization projects are just emerging from the pilot phase, the initial results look promising for increasing server utilization rates. In addition, the use of virtualization has all kinds of promising implications for di

The combination of XML and JavaScript may not be the favorite tool of elite programmers, but for people that are just looking to integrate data sets from different applications, AJAX may be the best thing to happen to mankind since the invention of the Sw

It may rub some people the wrong way to give a single vendor credit for anything, but without AMD there would be no price pressure on Intel, dual-core processors would still be a year away and the low-cost powerful desktops and servers from Sun, IBM and H

While being audited is never any fun, the fact of the matter is that increased government oversight over financial reporting has been a boon to IT organizations, which are now seen as a crucial element of the business that needs to be attended to at the h

The search engine giant may not mean much to the average IT person struggling with his or her own internal IT issues, but the presence of Google has turned Microsoft into a much more benevolent creature that is much more willing to negotiate with PC users

There’s no question that the bad guys are getting smarter and more malevolent, but the good news is that the quality of security tools across the board has improved to the point where relatively simple attacks no longer penetrate IT defenses as if they we

Of course, the business edition of Vista is set to ship any day now, but for all intents and purposes that will be a 2007 phenomenon, so relax and enjoy the holidays!