Big brother a reality

Are you being watched? A survey run by the Work Foundation suggests that your daily work may well be closely scrutinised by your employer. According to the survey, employers are becoming increasingly concerned about workplace ICT abuse and are turning to big brother technology for help in monitoring employees. The survey found that 75% of organisations already have or are working in "netiquette" policies. Of these, 66% monitor Web sites visited by employees, 65% monitor incoming e-mails and 43% monitor all e-mails for inappropriate words or content. Some 23% of respondents would dismiss an employee for breaches of company ICT policies.

The survey found that one in 10 employers do not inform their employees that they are being watched, a figure which increases down the scale of company size.

Organisations most likely to have policies on "netiquette" are the utilities organisations (71%) and the financial sector (69%). The least likely to have formal policies are IT firms.

Intel yesterday unveiled its latest microprocessors for cellphones, an area it hopes to dominate despite a tough battle ahead with established market leader Texas Instruments. Intel showed two multi-chip packages set to hit the market early next year that save space by stacking a processor together with flash memory chips, used heavily in cellphones because they retain their data after the power is turned off.

Intel`s advanced current XScale processor for mobile devices is used mainly in personal digital assistants, but as wireless services become more sophisticated, it hopes the processor will be used widely in handsets as well. "We believe if we provide performance and ease of development, they [handset-makers] will use our architecture," Stefan Lai, VP of Intel`s technology and manufacturing group, told a news conference in Tokyo. Intel`s announcement included a new flash memory chip, expected to hit the market in mid-2003. It uses less power and, with narrower circuitry and a double cell structure, is less than a quarter the size of its predecessors. [Reuters]

HP recently unveiled its three-year storage blueprint, including ENSAextended, the company`s enterprise network storage architecture (ENSA). The company says this extension to ENSA will give customers greater flexibility and automation than before.

ENSAextended includes universal network storage, virtualisation and application integration as well as a host of data services such as optimisation, archiving replication and migration options. Underpinning all of this is intelligent management. "Active intelligent management is a key element of ENSAextended," says Kim Howlett, storage manager, HP South Africa. "It gives customers control over their environments by simplifying the way data and storage resources are managed through automated, policy-based management. This ensures that storage administrators are able to meet demanding quality of service levels." Active intelligent management will include integrated storage resource management, lifecycle data management and adaptive data access.

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