DATA STORAGE FOR IT DEPARTMENTS - For many organizations, storage needs
have doubled or tripled annually for the past few years. Increasingly, stored data must
be available to thousands or even millions of users on a 24/7 basis. And with much of
that storage directly attached to tens or hundreds of individual distributed servers,
configuration, backup, and other management tasks have become more expensive,
time-consuming, and staff intensive. There's now a Storage Area Network (SAN) that
offers the consolidation, scalability, and management advantages of Fibre Channel
without the unfamiliarity, complexity, and expense - Internet SCSI (iSCSI). iSCSI
combines three technologies most familiar to anyone running a typical corporate
network: Ethernet, IP and SCSI. iSCSI is a fairly new technology, but it holds great
promise as a SAN architecture. For more information see:
http://www.webseminarslive.com (eSeminars, 21 Mar 03)

ORGANIZATIONS MODIFY LEARNING PLANS AS WAR CAUTIONS
INCREASE - During the past weeks, the Masie Institute has been contacting
senior learning officers in organizations around the world, to see how they're
coping with the current war situation. Here are some of the comments and
strategies:

International Travel: Most of the organizations have implemented a short term halt
on non-critical international travel. In several organizations, all international travel
and learning events have been cancelled.
Domestic Travel: Most organizations are proceeding with domestic travel-based
learning events. However, they are adding online, videoconference, or asynchronous
attendance alternatives.
Use of Webconferencing: Serious increased use of webconferencing and
audioconferencing are planned in the coming weeks.
Conferences: Those hosting conferences during the next weeks are anticipating
decreased attendance based on location and also on travel requirements of attendees.
eLearning options are being added for those that cannot attend.
Distraction Levels: A number of been rescheduled in
order to cope with higher levels of distractions among attendees.
Corporate Communications: Ever since 9/11, many organizations have implemented
emergency communications strategies, to be able to use both email and web-based
applications to keep information and culture links in emergency situations. In the
US, many organizations have implemented "what if" plans, dependent on Homeland
Security Crisis Levels. (TechLearn Trends #255, 20 Mar 03)