1. ZERO LATENCY CONCEPT & TRAINING - Watch your CIO's emails for use of a new term: Zero Latency. This concept, introduced by the well-respected Gartner Group, is focused on using the latest technologies and business processes to reduce toward zero the amount of time it takes for vital information to reach applications and people that can act on it. It was the buzz of their recent CIO conference and you will see it rapidly appear in IT strategy memos.

Zero Latency creates a strong role for a flexible learning department. As the emphasis is placed on integrating technology and business processes, it is a green light for training approaches that can assist with productivity, aimed at both reducing cycle times and integrating the power of data and business processes. To read an article about Zero Latency: http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek /news/0907/09egart.html

FRACTAL MODELS FOR MANAGING INTERNET TRAFFIC - Researchers at AT&T Labs and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are looking for new ways to manage networks that carry more data than voice traffic, and suggest the mathematics underlying so-called fractal behavior could serve as a basis for more efficient models of data networks. (A geometric object has fractal characteristics if a magnified piece of the object resembles the original pattern.) In the case of data traffic, bursts of activity show up in approximately the same spiky pattern over a wide range of time scales - from milliseconds to minutes. Finding the fractal nature of Internet traffic can be viewed as a promising start toward solid characterizations of Internet traffic. (Science News 17 Oct 98)