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Dear CIO/IT managers,
This
CPTTM CIO newsletter is to bring useful news to you, CIO/IT managers in
Macau, for references without obligations, so that you can do your jobs
easier and better! Hope you like it. if you'd like to unsubscribe or
recommend your friends to subscribe, just email me at kent@cpttm.org.mo.
Old
issues
are available here.
Topics in this issue:
Saving
admin cost by automating desktop management
In Cyber-Lab,
a task that has consumed a
lot of time and effort is the installation and configuration of
different applications. For example, when we upgraded from Adobe CS2 to
CS3, we had to do it on dozens of computers in our training rooms. To
solve this problem, we applied a very important strategy in IT
administration: automate
your most time consuming work. So, we looked at various
ways to automatically deploy applications to desktops.
There are several
alternatives:
- Active
Directory. It can push applications to desktops, but it works
only
when the application is in MSI format. It also won't work if you're
using say eDirectory, LDAP or NIS.
- Established
players like OpenView, Tivoli, Unicenter. They are very
powerful.
However, they will cost more and are more complicated for our
purpose.
The solution we found is wpkg.
All it needs is a shared folder that clients can connect to. There is
no other infrastructure requirement. It supports MSI, EXE files created
by many different installers or even batch files. In addition
to
installing applicaitons, it can also be used to modify configurations.
We have used it successfully to deploy a couple of applications.
Finally, it is free, so you will lose nothing to try.
The
true benefits of open source
If you are
evaluating open source software
against proprietary software, keep in mind that the true benefit of
open source is not the free licensing cost (MS SQL Server
Express
edition is also free in cost), not interoperability (IE8 supports
open standards like HTML, CSS pretty well), not security (Vista is
quite secure), not auditability of security (Microsoft's share source
license allows governments to look at its source code). The true
benefit of open source is that you don't have to rely on a single
vendor for support and service.
For
example, multiple vendors such as RedHat, Oracle, Novell, Ubuntu are
providing support to essential the same Linux software, while you have
to rely on Microsoft to fix bugs in Windows as only it has
write access
to the source code. With Linux, if you like, you can stick to a certain
outdated version forever and pay someone with the technical expertise
to fix bugs as you go. In contrast, with Windows, Microsoft tells you
when to upgrade to Vista by stopping support to XP. Should SUN one day
abandon Java, you would still have other vendors such as IBM and Oracle
to rely on. Should
Microsoft abandon .NET, your existing investment would be at risk.
Therefore,
it is this freedom of choice for support vendor, freedom of
upgrade cycle and the long term viability that really shine. While only
the first benefit can be easily quantified in TCO or
ROI, we must not
forget the rest.
ISO
27001 lead assessor
You may have or plan to have
an information security
management system such as ISO 27001 in your company. A critical part of
it is certainly auditing, i.e., to check if people are really
protecting your information assets. Now you or your
colleagues
can learn how to do it by attending our IRCA
Approved ISO27001 Information Security Management Lead Assessor Training.
How
to save US$8 millions
Brazil
just saved US$8 millions by embedding Linux in voting machines.
If you're in the embedded business, you may get some insights in the
upcoming embedded
software forum in Hong Kong organized by the HK Trade
Development Council and HK Linux Industrial Association and supported
by CPTTM and others. You can register online here.
Upcoming courses
for CIO/IT managers
In addition, there are interesting courses that
make your kids love IT:
Feedbacks
Any
questions, ideas or experiences to share? Contact me at
28781313 or kent@cpttm.org.mo. We also
have two other newsletters: Network
administrator newsletter and Software
developer newsletter, your staff may like to subscribe.
Until
next time,
Kent
Tong
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