Todd R. Weiss

With its three hotels in New Orleans out of commission in the wake of deadly Hurricane Katrina, IT workers at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. are focusing on moving data systems elsewhere so they can get critical operations up and running again.

Once Hurricane Katrina has taken a final swipe at Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, the American Red Cross will begin quickly deploying satellite communications and other IT systems in affected areas to help storm victims begin piecing their lives back together.

New Jersey has passed a new law mandating voter-verifiable paper trails for electronic touchpad voting machines, but election reform advocates in the state are pressing ahead with legal action because the new requirement doesn't take effect until Jan. 1, 2008.

The growth of grid computing is being stymied by the traditional per-processor licensing models that software vendors continue to push, according to a new research study from The 451 Group.What's needed, according to the New York-based analyst firm, is a re-evaluation of software licensing strategies that won't penalize grid users by charging them for each processor they use in their work.

After three years of declines in the bonuses paid to specially trained IT workers, skilled employees are likely to see bonus pay rebound this year, according to a new study by Foote Partners LLC, a New Canaan, Conn.-based IT research consultancy.

SMARTS's network systems management software includes SMARTS InCharge, which automatically pinpoints problems, calculates their impact and presents logical action plans to keep business services running.

The companies plan to pool their development efforts to create and maintain a common Linux distribution core based on the Free Standard Group's LSB 2.0 standard.

Microsoft Corp.