In this day and age, technology plays an important role in modern enterprises. It is a vital component in, smoothening business processes and informing the executive on both strategic and tactical decisions.

Consequently, the function information and technology (IT) staffs is under constant pressure and evolution to fine-tune the very essence of technological infrastructure by making it perform better and enable the organization to respond quickly to an ever-changing environment.

In addition, the IT organization now has to deliver services quickly to users so they can become more productive and efficient. And it has to do all these while keeping a handle on costs.

To deliver upon its now more demanding mandate, an increasing number of enterprises and business establishments have embarked on optimization initiatives such as virtualization and its extension, cloud computing. Both of these involve the use of shared infrastructure (primarily servers, storage and network resources) and serve up a multitude of benefits.

Other benefits of optimization initiatives include simplified physical IT infrastructure, lower TCO, scalability, resilience and reliability, enhanced security and outage recovery, and faster service delivery. However, while virtualization and cloud computing are beneficial, they also introduce new challenges. Take hypervisors as an example.

Hypervisors is a program that allows multiple operating systems to share a single hardware host. Each operating system appears to have the host's processor, memory, and other resources all to itself. However, the hypervisor is actually controlling the host processor and resources. It allocates what is needed to each operating system in turn and making sure that the guest operating systems (called virtual machines) cannot disrupt each other.

In essence software for managing virtual machines, a hypervisor is installed on server hardware dedicated to running guest operating systems. More often than not, several hypervisors are used in a single virtualized environment.

Given that each hypervisor comes with its own management tools, and that there is typically very little integration among the different sets of tools, performing tasks (for example, provisioning workloads) across multiple hypervisors can be a challenge.

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Surging birth rates should not be blamed for the country's long-standing population problem. Instead, rapid population growth is a result of past failures that fail to ensure the people's right to have access to comprehensive reproductive health care. In addition, there is a prevalence of poor cultural and social climate that prevent women from distinguishing fact from fiction in the use of contraceptive methods and devices.

Fear of unknown possible side effects and health concerns are the most common reasons for not using contraception based on a USAID family planning survey conducted in 2000. The most common myths uncovered include:

Myth 1: Birth control pills can cause tumor in the uterus.

Fact: Birth control pills are made of soluble components that are flushed out of the body during urine secretion. No medical cases were reported or recorded yet that cites BCP as cause of cervical or liver cancer.

Myth 2: Intrauterine device or IUD can cause discomfort for males during sexual intercourse.

Fact: Occasionally, males may feel the IUD string, but it is short to cause him any pain or discomfort. Some reproductive health providers suggest cutting the IUD string shorter.

Myth 3: IUD can cause infertility.

Fact: The copper sleeves in the arms of IUD are designed to prevent fertilization, not cause infertility. The fear of infertility may be the result of problems encountered with the use of Dalkon shield, an IUD manufactured and distributed 20 years ago. These problems include increased risk of infection, infertility, and abdominal pain and cramps. The IUDs manufactured today are designed to avoid these problems.

Myth 4: Birth control pills can cause significant weight gain.

Fact: Some women have attributed weight gain to feeling hungrier and stronger appetite while taking pills especially in the first year of use. One should raise health awareness to avoid the temptation to eat more by monitoring calories intake.

Myth 5: IUD leaves the uterus and travels to unlikely parts of the body.

Fact: No such case has ever been reported and confirmed.

Finding solutions to the population problem will not be as simple and inexpensive. Probably not one intervention will bring about rapid reductions in fertility rates. But the overall framework for population stabilization lies in the effective implementation of government family planning programs and policies coupled with strong self-motivation from people who are willing and ready to take the steps, the expert said.

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A 2010 CIO survey by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP) showed that IT budgets will essentially be flat in 2010. It will be increasing by a weighted global average of 1.3 percent in nominal terms, compared with 2009 levels where IT budgets declined 8.1 percent. It was also revealed that 2009 was the most challenging year for IT since the survey began in 1999, and CIOs had faced multiple budget cuts wiping away four years of budget increases, giving CIOs basically the same level of resources as they had in 2005. While there are some signs of recovery in the 2010 projections, these will not overcome last year’s cuts.

The worldwide CIO survey was conducted by Gartner EXP from September to December 2009 and represents CIO budget plans reported at that time. The Gartner EXP CIO report "Leading in Times of Transition: The 2010 CIO Agenda" represents the most comprehensive examination of business priorities and CIO strategies. The survey includes responses from 1,586 CIOs representing more than US$ 126 billion in corporate and public-sector IT spending across 41 countries and 27 industries.

"2009 was the most challenging year for CIOs in the corporate and public sectors as they faced multiple budget cuts, delayed spending and increased demand for services with reduced resources," said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner EXP. "This is set to change in 2010, as the economy transitions from recession to recovery and enterprises transition their strategies from cost-cutting efficiency to value-creating productivity."

Mr. McDonald said that while technologies are transitioning from "heavy" owner-operated solutions to "lighter-weight" services, CIOs are, in turn, transitioning IT beyond merely managing resources to taking responsibility for managing results.

"Transition gives the enterprise and IT the opportunity to reposition themselves and exploit the tough corrective actions taken during the recession," he said. "CIOs see 2010 as an opportunity to accelerate IT's transition from a support function to strategic contributor focused on innovation and competitive advantage. They have aspired to this shift for years, but economic, strategic and technological changes have only recently made it feasible."

Gartner EXP’s CIO survey findings show that, in the near term, business expectations and CIO strategies appear stable, with a continued focus on business process improvement, cost reduction and analytics.

Top 10 Business and Technology Priorities in 2010
BUSINESS PRIORITIES	RANKING.	TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES	RANKING
Business process improvement	1	Virtualization	1
Reducing cost	2	Cloud computing	2
Increasing use of info/analytics	3	Web 2.0	3
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness	4	Networking, voice and data communications	4
Attracting and retaining new customers	5	Business Intelligence	5
Managing change initiatives	6	Mobile technologies	6
Creating new products and services	7	Data/document storage and management	7
Targeting customers and markets more effectively	8	Service-oriented applications	8
Consolidating business operations	9	Security technologies	9
Expanding current customer relationship	10	IT management	10

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It was reported in several business sites last Friday (29 April 2011) that U.S. regulators has shut down banks in Florida, Georgia and Michigan. The total of five closures lifted the number of US bank failures this year to 39. By this time last year, regulators had closed 64 banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized: First National Bank of Central Florida, based in Winter Park, Florida, with US$ 352 million in assets; Cortez Community Bank of Brooksville, Florida, with US$ 70.9 million in assets; First Choice Community Bank of Dallas, Georgia, with US$ 308.5 million in assets; Park Avenue Bank, based in Valdosta, Georgia, with US$ 953.3 million in assets; and Community Central Bank in Mount Clemens, Michigan, with US$ 476.3 million in assets.

Florida and Georgia have been the hardest-hit states for bank failures.

Twenty-nine banks were shuttered in Florida last year and 16 in Georgia. The four shutdowns in those states on Friday brought to four and 10 the number of bank failures in Florida and Georgia, respectively this year.

California and Illinois also have seen large numbers of bank failures.

In 2010, authorities seized 157 banks that succumbed to mounting soured loans and the hobbled economy. It was the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago.

The FDIC has said that 2010 likely would mark the peak for bank failures.

There were 140 bank failures in 2009, costing the insurance fund about $36 billion. The failures last year cost around US$ 21 billion, a lower price tag because the banks that failed in 2010 were smaller on average.

Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.

From 2008, the year the financial crisis struck, through 2010, bank failures cost the fund US$ 76.8 billion.

The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009, and its deficit stood at US$ 7.4 billion as of 31 December 2010.

The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around US$ 52 billion from 2010 through 2014.

Depositors’ money – insured up to $250,000 per account – is not at risk, with the FDIC backed by the government. That insurance cap was made permanent in the financial overhaul law enacted in July.

The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list rose to 884 in the final quarter of last year from 860 three months earlier.

The 884 troubled banks is the highest number since 1993, during the savings-and-loan crisis.

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