This Week In IT: 3/15/13

This Week On Tom's IT Pro: Four Roads to Lowering IT Management Costs, Cartoon: King on IT: BlackBerry Gets Back in the Ring, The Four BYOD Integration Challenges, SAM in the ITIL Lifecycle Vs. SAM in the ISO Model, VIDEO: Threat Prevention: Exactly What Is It?, and more.

• Moore’s Law In Pictures: An Illustrated History of the Microprocessor

Consider the orders of magnitude (and sheer manufacturing prowess) required to morph the very first 4-Bit microprocessors into the multicore powerhouses we use today. 

• More Ruminations on the State of Greybeard IT

IT training and certification guru Ed Tittel advises those over 55 looking for work in IT. 

• Gigabyte Releases New Supercomputing Server

Announces new supercomputing server, the GS-R22PHL, designed with high performance and energy efficiency in mind.

• Software Licensing in a Virtual World

While virtualization is supposed to help simplify IT environments, there is one aspect that virtualization can complicate – licensing.

Four Roads to Lowering IT Management Costs

Pursue these strategic paths to free up maintenance resources and apply them in more effective areas that benefit the organization’s long-term goals.

• VIDEO: Increase Security with Multi-Factor Authentication

More securely protect business and personal apps and data.

• VIDEO: Unified Communications - Local or In the Cloud?

PBXs are good systems. But UC suites can do a lot more for less. 

• Enterprise Unified Communications

What unified communications means and why it’s necessary. 

Cartoon: King on IT: BlackBerry Gets Back in the Ring

BlackBerry training hard to get back into fighting shape so it can challenge current heavyweight smartphone and tablet champs Google and Apple.

• Avoid Network Performance Problems with Automated Monitoring

Network administrators can streamline the troubleshooting process by deploying automated monitoring systems. 

• Slideshow: Intel Processors Over the Years

A visual walk through the history of Intel processors from the early 1970s to today.

• Mellanox to Open Source Its Ethernet Switches

Plans to open source Ethernet switches in an effort to gain an edge in an era of software defined networking and open source software. 

• Jeopardy, IBM and Watson as a Service

IBM's Jeopardy-winning supercomputer to become the basis of a series of revenue-generating products.

The Four BYOD Integration Challenges

Careful planning across all involved interest groups will deliver a straight forward strategy to adopt BYOD.

• VIDEO: Increase Your Internet Privacy With PETS

Our favorite PETs to maintain security and privacy online. 

• Unified Communications: Beware of Cutting Corners

As with an IT project, you cut corners in a UC deployment at your own peril. So be careful. 

• Sponsored: Blade Servers Cut IT Costs

IDC study finds a high correlation between blade platform adoption and lower per user infrastructure costs among a wide range of businesses. 

• Application Control: How to Detect Performance Bottlenecks

The ability to monitor applications to detect and respond to problems is becoming a must have capability for the seasoned IT pro. 

• Video: The Business Case for Cloud Computing

What business processes you should and shouldn't place up in the cloud.

SAM in the ITIL Lifecycle Vs. SAM in the ISO Model

We examine where Software Asset Management fits within the ISO network management model versus its role in the ITIL lifecycle model. 

• Are You Spending Too Much on Software?

Finding the right balance of licensing as much software as needed, but not more, is one of the challenges addressed by software license management. 

• How to Buy and Deploy the Right Software Asset Management Tool

This Buyer's Guide discusses how to right-size your SAM solution and evaluate capable SAM candidates, as well as how to deploy your chosen SAM in an enterprise setting. 

• Understanding Software Asset and License Management

Together, these disciplines are important because they provide important outward- and inward-facing functions to help avoid or mitigate risk, ensure compliance, and lower the burden on service or helpdesk operations. 

Using SAM to Control Software Costs and Minimize Risk

ROI for a software asset management tool is easy to compute, and must be based on streamlining IT operations through automated software deployment and right-sizing enterprise licensing volumes. 

• Software Asset Management: Licensing Compliance and Enforcement

Save your company on software licensing costs while helping to avoid legal costs related to software licensing violations with a software asset management tool.

• External Private Cloud Provider Options

This article outlines some of the external private cloud vendor options available today.

• A Crash Course in Network Performance Monitoring: A Manager’s Guide

Networks are the backbone of IT service delivery. So when the network experiences problems, application performance can suffer. 

• Ultramobility Isn't Just for Mobile Devices

The benefits of taking unified communications mobile. 

VIDEO: Threat Prevention: Exactly What Is It?

We look at three sets of threat prevention products that will protect your environment at different levels of enterprise IT.

• Moving From SQL Server to Windows Azure SQL

Windows Azure SQL Database an appealing cloud-based alternative for those more concerned with business processes and applications than maintaining backend storage systems. 

• Microsoft Acquires Cloud Startup MetricsHub

Microsoft has made another move to bump up Windows Azure's appeal in the cloud services market.

• IBM PureFlex Server Manufacturing Moving from Rochester to Mexico

IBM decides to move hundreds of server manufacturing jobs from its long time location in Rochester, Minnesota to Guadalajara, Mexico.

• VIDEO: Enterprise Data Encryption Explained

Don't let your organization become a cautionary tale about poor encryption policy. 

Slideshow: The History of the Desktop Operating System

Join us for a journey back in time and meet those operating systems that laid the foundation for the computer as we know it today.

• Planning Your Unified Communications Deployment

There's more to UC adoption than may meets the eye. 

• Sponsored: Scaling Out with Converged Networks

Networks need to be simpler, flatter and more capable of meeting the high-scale demands of dynamic workloads.

• VIDEO: How Secure Are Your Mobile Devices?

Enterprise mobile devices are proliferating like rabbits in the spring. Rachel Rosmarin tells you how to keep them under control.

• VLANs, Subnets and Confusion – How to Monitor Complex Networks

IT pros are finding that as networks grow in complexity, so does their maintenance and troubleshooting chores. 

VIDEO: Understanding Unified Communications

Learn about Unified Communications and training opportunities in this growing area so vital to business success. 

• Understanding Data Loss Prevention

Preventing data loss is a best practice approach to avoiding potential breach, damage, or loss of confidential, private, or proprietary information.

• Slideshow: Dos and Don’ts of IT Product and Services Evaluation

Make better better decisions by following these basic steps for objective IT product evaluations. 

• Tools Are Not Enough: Driving Factors for Software License Management

Get the right people, processes and procedures in place to enjoy continual success with your software compliance initiative.

• Smartphones and Tablets Beat Personal Computers in Market Share

IDC research reveals smartphone and tablet growth has not only outpaced .

James Alan Miller is Managing Editor of Tom's IT Pro. He is a veteran technology journalist with over seventeen years of experience creating and developing magazine and online content. Founding editor of numerous business and enterprise computing sites at the internet.com network, James headed up the After Hours section at PC Magazine, as well as hardware and software sections of various Windows publications.

See here for all Tom's IT Pro articles written by James.