Anne Chen

As Im writing this column from the Gartner Symposium ITXPO Conference in San Diego, Im conversing with a colleague in our San Francisco offices who is infamous among public relations managers for never answering his telephone. The reason hes speaking to me, however, isnt because he picks up the phone when I call. He never […]

SAN DIEGO—The future of beleaguered WorldCom Inc. rests on its IP backbone, said Michael Capellas, CEO and chairman of WorldCom Inc., here Wednesday. Ten weeks after taking the helm at the bankrupt telecommunications giant, Capellas said his strategy centers on using the IP backbone to offer network-centric services built using Web services and open standards. […]

Cubicle dwellers who complain loudly when the network goes down for an hour have nothing on the consultants at Cerner Corp. Until last year, it wasnt unusual for as many as six Cerner consultants working off-site to be expected by the client to share one analog line to connect to the Cerner corporate network using […]

As enterprises expand their corporate networks to new sites, remote workers and partners, they are increasingly deploying virtual private networks on IP technology. And as they do, they are faced with new challenges: In order to deliver quality of service, flexibility and scalability while providing a wide variety of remote access, for example, many organizations […]

A Pringles “Cantenna” may increase the size of a WLAN, but D-links $99 AirPlus Wireless Range Extender DWL-800AP+ will probably be an easier sell to CIOs. The DWL-800, which can be used as a repeater or an access point, operates at the 802.11b 2.4GHz frequency range. When used in repeater mode, it can receive a […]

Plenty of mobile phone customers have legitimate complaints about bad service, dropped calls and insanely-difficult-to-decipher billing charges. After an upgrade of the Cingular Wireless network here in the Bay Area late last year, Ive had none of those problems. My beef with Cingular centers on its Web site. From the day it began offering online […]

Persuading business executives to spend money on security technologies can be harder than pulling teeth. It can be much less difficult, however, if you are able to show how a new technology can make executives lives easier and cut costs while improving security. Thats what Whirlpool Corp. Vice President of Architecture and Planning Jim Haney […]

Most IT managers would kill to be where Golden Gate University chief technology officer Anthony Hill found himself a year ago. Thanks to rising enrollment and an initiative at the San Francisco school to move most classes online, Hill, unlike many of his colleagues these days, was overseeing an IT budget that was growing. As […]

These days, an increasing number of my friends are looking for Valentines online. Unfortunately, its all too common for people to pretend to be someone theyre not. Or at least, stretch the truth. Too often SWM with George Clooney looks, future CIO, turns out to be SWM with George Costanza looks and a help desk […]

After a decade of receiving accolades for their cutting-edge use of information technologies, IT managers at St. Vincents Hospital, in Birmingham, Ala., werent about to let concerns over Wi-Fi (802.11b) security dampen their ambitious plans to tie together the institutions five-building campus using a WLAN. So beginning last year, said Jackie Kennedy, director of health […]