P.J. Connolly

Many colaboration tools fall short of expectations because they really don't take into account the way people work. For most distributed organizations, e-mail becomes the de facto tool of choice because of its simplicity and ubiquity. The drawbacks to collaborating via e-mail are the tendency for discussions to fork and the ease with which people can be left out of the loop -- and conversely, the likelihood that people will be included in an irrelevant discussion.

E-mail is the primary collaboration tool of our time, and the e-mail attachment is what makes businesses tick. Even after organizations invest in document management systems and integrated collaboration environments, users often find it faster and simpler to attach a document to an e-mail message and send it along.

I must be an optimist, because when I hear storage vendors promising

Waiting for the U.S. government to approve an updated encryption standard

MS dubs server .Net, will users bite?

Videoconferencing adds depth

There is nothing worse for business than server failure, especially when the machine in question provides power for critical Web applications. As companies become more dependent on e-commerce to stay in the black, they are much less likely to emerge unscathed from significant periods of downtime.

Go nonstop on the cheap.