Progress at Foxconn factories, but working hours still exceed Chinese laws
Employees at the Chinese factories of Apple supplier Foxconn continue to work beyond the country's legal limit of 49 hours a month, according to a report from the Fair Labor Association (FLA). But the Taiwanese manufacturer is making overall steady progress in improving the working conditions at a select group of factories in China, it said.
The report released Thursday is the latest audit from the FLA, which has been tasked by Apple to monitor the working conditions at three Foxconn factories in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Chengdu that produce iPad and iPhone products. Since the initial audits were carried out in February of last year, the factories have instituted new changes, including enforcing breaks for workers and stopping student interns from logging overtime hours. Read more...
Forecast 2013: Setting a mobile risk management strategy
If you're CIO at a large enterprise -- or a small one, for that matter -- chances are good that you're seeing a steady rise in the number of employees using smartphones and tablets at work.
The upside of this trend is that people might be more productive if they're using mobile devices they're comfortable with to access corporate data, collaborate with colleagues and communicate with customers. But increased mobility comes with risks.
Smart IT executives are mapping out strategies for managing their organizations' mobile risks and benefits. More than half (52%) of the 334 IT executives who responded to Computerworld's 2013 Forecast survey said they're ramping up mobile risk management efforts, and more than one-third (38%) said they're seeking help from outside providers. Read more...
Infosys faces new visa fraud allegation
The Indian offshoring giant Infosys ran a "full-throated campaign of retaliation" against employees to deter them from cooperating with federal authorities investigating visa fraud, according to a new lawsuit.
This allegation is made in court papers by a former Infosys employee, Satya Dev Tripuraneni, who claims he was punished after raising concerns about the company's visa practices. He later met with a federal agent and filed a whistleblower complaint with federal authorities.
If Tripuraneni's complaint sounds familiar, it should. This is the second lawsuit filed against Infosys by an employee claiming he was harassed after raising concerns about the company's visa practices. Jay Palmer, an Infosys employee, filed a lawsuit last year alleging harassment, including threats, after he refused to help the company get B-1 visas, a business visitor visa, for work requiring an H-1B work visa. Read more...
The enterprise app store: 10 must-have features
Is 2012 the year app stores will break out in the enterprise?
The environment is certainly ripe for it. Over the past two years, there has been a proliferation of employees using smartphones and tablets to do work and more enterprises are implementing BYOD (bring our own device) programs that allow employees to use personal iPads, iPhones, and Android smartphones to access business apps.
The company app store, which follows a consumer trend started by Apple's iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market (now called Google Play), is a logical extension of the BYOD movement.
But whether businesses are providing company-issued devices or letting users bring their own, mobile app stores still offer the same value: to efficiently and securely distribute mobile apps to employees and take the burden off IT to migrate apps to individual devices or upload each app onto a public app store. Read more...
Sony Confirms 10,000 Jobs To Go As Part Of Its Big ‘One Sony’ Reorganization
So the reports have proven to be true: Sony has now officially said that it will be reducing its headcount by 10,000 people worldwide, some six percent of its workforce, as the struggling electronics giant reorganizes under new management and its new “One Sony” plan.
Sony says the employee reductions will be made over the course of this fiscal year, and will also include some employees leaving the company through sale and transfer. Meanwhile, the organizational restructuring will see Sony strengthen its focus on the core units of digital imaging, gaming and mobile; attempt to turn around its ailing TV business and expand in emerging markets. Altogether Sony estimates that the restructuring will cost it ¥75 billion ($926 million). Read more...
Meg Whitman fluffs HP’s age, gets corrected by shareholder
Meg Whitman has spent her first six months at Hewlett-Packard talking to customers and employees and learning how the business works, but apparently she didn't get much of a history lesson.
"HP will be 70 in 2014," she said proudly at HP's annual shareholder meeting Wednesday. Few Silicon Valley companies can boast such longevity, she said, and her job now is to set HP up for "the next 70 years."
It's a line Whitman's been using for the past few months as she tries to drum up enthusiasm for the new, reinvigorated HP she hopes to build. The only trouble is, it appears to be wrong, as an elderly shareholder gently pointed out to her.
"I believe HP was founded in 1939," he said during the question-and-answer session after her talk. Wouldn't that make HP 75 in 2014? Read more...
Study: Enterprise social networks failing to meet expectations
ESN (enterprise social networking) software can improve communication and collaboration among employees, but most companies aren't implementing and using these products properly, leading to unmet goals, according to a new study.
ESN software can help organizations by boosting information-sharing among employees and improving cross-departmental collaboration, among other benefits, but missteps in planning and execution abound, according to the Altimeter Group study "Making the Business Case for Enterprise Social Networking."
The main mistake organizations make is not defining clearly the reasons for adopting ESN software, which offers features and capabilities like profiles, status updates and microblogging popularized by consumer social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but adapted for workplace use. Read more...
San Francisco police help search for lost iPhone
San Francisco police officers helped Apple Inc. investigators look for a missing iPhone prototype that was left in a city restaurant in July, the police chief said, the second time in two years the company has lost an unreleased smartphone.
Police Chief Greg Suhr told the San Francisco Chronicle ( http://bit.ly/oOfTi1) that four plainclothes officers accompanied two Apple investigators who searched a San Francisco home for the iPhone prototype.
Apple employees who contacted the department asking for help finding a lost item conducted the house search after asking the resident's permission, and the officers did not enter the home, according to police.
Apple tracked the smartphone to the home using GPS technology, but the gadget wasn't found there, said Lt. Troy Dangerfield. Read more...
Are costly SSDs worth the money? Enterprise users say absolutely
With 5,000 employees and 280 branch offices, Associated Bank is a prime example of a medium-sized business with big data demands.
After acquiring another bank in 2006, its storage area network (SAN) grew form 17TB to 300TB in less than a year. Since then, due to more applications coming online and federal regulations requiring more data retention, the SAN has grown to 900TB, or 52 times its original size.
Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at the Greenbay, Wisc.-based bank, decided to try solid-state drives (SSD) to increase the performance on I/O-hungry applications, while reducing his spindle footprint. Read more...
Symantec promises encryption viewer for iPhone and iPad users
More employees are using their iOS devices in the workplace. That's good from an employee morale standpoint, but not so good when it comes to the possibility of security breaches. Symantec says it will tackle the problem later this year by extending its encryption offerings to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
This week, the company announced Symantec PGP Viewer for iOS, a mobile offering that will make it possible for users to encrypt messages through the standard built-in Mail application on their devices. Symantec PGP Viewer users will also be able to view encrypted emails and attachments within Mail. Read more...
Minnesota furloughs 75% of IT staff amid shutdown
Many of Minnesota's IT employees have been furloughed due to a state government shutdown that was prompted by a budget impasse.
The state's Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) has furloughed about 75% of its 338 employees as a result of the shutdown, according to Cathy de Moll, director of planning, communications and marketing in the technology office.
The state government has 1,800 IT employees in its executive branch, including the OET staff, but it's uncertain how many overall are in layoff status.
"I think most IT staffing at the agency level is minimal, except for a few major applications, including unemployment insurance and the new ERP system that just went live on the first day of the shutdown," said de Moll.
The shutdown began July 1.
Under the rules imposed during a shutdown, government agencies are only allowed to continue "critical" services, which for IT has been defined as those providing security, networking, hosting and communications services. Read more...