Frank E. Ferrante

Bridging e-business and added trust: keys to e-business growth

Systems based on a proper public-key infrastructure (PKI) architecture offer the missing trust and interoperability necessary for e-commerce expansion. As the number of services available to users continues to increase, so will the need to maintain the users identity in a secured, trusted manner. The user name and password concept has worked thus far but lacks the portability and scalability that global e-commerce demands. An interoperable PKI system that offers trust services between users will become a common industry practice. We envision that the future global e-commerce system should work with various devices, from desktops to handheld computers. Eventually one certificate will represent an individual across multiple services and devices.

Ron Hira: Managing the Impacts of Offshoring

Editor-in-Chief Frank Ferrante interviews Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the IEEE-USA vice president for career activities, about the pros and cons of offshoring. The article includes discussions about the differences between outsourcing and offshoring, Hiras involvement in public policy, the future of IT in the US, and the need for IT workers themselves--not just the corporations they work for--to get involved in offshoring policy discussions. Its not a matter of stopping offshoring, Hira says, the question is how to better manage it.

Guest Editors' Introduction: Strategic Planning in Today's IT Environment

This introduction to the special issue dedicated to strategic planning presents the complexity and dynamics of global enterprise IT management in todays tight and unstable economic environment. IT managers and enterprise executives can achieve their overall business success by opening channels of communications among their normally independent organizational silos and by creating an enterprise-shared culture that recognizes the critical role IT has in this endeavor.

Web Services - A View from the Top

Panelists (alphabetical order): Karen Evans (Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget.) Gil Miller (Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Mitretek Systems.) Henry Schaffer (Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Biomathematics and Coordinator of Special IT Projects and Faculty Collaboration, North Carolina State University.) George Strawn (Chief Information Officer, National Science Foundation.) Linda Wilbanks (Chief Information Officer, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), US Department of Energy.)

Welcome to a New Era of IT in 2005

This year, IT Professional have chosen the following pattern of themes and topics for issues to address. The first issue focuses on what is one of the hottest real-world topics of the day: IT operations during crisis situations. These articles provide you with architectural insights as well as experienced-based knowledge of how IT operations are changing to accommodate the threat of emergencies and wartime situations. An excellent overview of the architectural issues and interoperability concerns associated with public-safety wireless communications leads off this issue. In addition, a topical article related to the crisis communications theme describes the benefits of commercially available satellite communications to augment military needs in the military environment in Iraq. Other articles in this first issue will continue the pattern of mixing themes and topics as appropriate. Hopefully many will benefit from this choices.

IT expanding in new ways

IT is poised for another expansion, this time to provide services globally and with a unified view. This years final issue of IT Pro would focus on intelligent searching tools, knowledge discovery, Java scaling issues, business process engineering, and more. Hoping that these articles continue to expand the IT knowledge globally of its readers.

Fresh perspectives, new ideas to start 2004

Welcome to a new year of IT Professional. Our editorial board enters this year optimistic that the technical recession of the last two years finally appears to be easing.

Fighting fear with improved IT

A first-hand brush with anthrax makes it clear how IT professionals can help combat terrorism.