Columns

Charting a New Course

A fresh focus on business intelligence, including data warehousing.

• By Linda Briggs
• 11/01/2002

You're holding the final issue of Enterprise Systems magazine.

If you're a long-time reader of ES, and many of you are, you know that markets change rapidly, especially in IT. You've watched ES as we've expanded its coverage in recent years beyond mainframes to cover all of large systems computing. That was in reaction to the reality of the market and your jobs—the data center had evolved and was no longer a mainframe-exclusive place. Rather, you needed to know about interoperability and storage and security and data management topics, among other things.

Markets have continued to evolve, of course, and in today's tough economy, despite Herculean efforts by the editorial and sales staffs, ES is no longer a viable publication. Instead, 101 is taking some of the strongest and most popular portions of this magazine and rolling them into a new publication that will focus on a hugely challenging topic in today's data center— business intelligence, including data warehousing and topics surrounding the management of large data stores.

We're also moving some of ES' best staff and content over to that sister publication, which will be produced under the custodianship of the well-known and respected TDWI, part of the 101communications family. The portion of ES that focused on data management on large systems will live on under TDWI's care. Jim Powell, my excellent and hard-working senior editor, will move to TDWI as managing editor. Look for more information shortly on the new publication. In the meantime, you can reach Jim at jpowell@101com.com.

Of course, with or without ES, the heavy lifting of running the data center will go on—as will the challenges you face in integrating old and new systems, staying atop new technologies, and fighting for IT dollars and staff. If anything, in today's tough economy those challenges are magnified. You also need information quicker than ever before—which is evident in the fact that nearly every subscriber to ES also subscribes to at least one of our enterprise-focused e-mail newsletters.

So you'll all be pleased to hear that 101 will continue to publish each of those, including the popular Enterprise Strategies (Tuesday/Thursday), Jon Toigo's opinionated Storage Strategies (Thursday), and a new Security Strategies newsletter on Wednesdays. Go to www.esj.com/newsletters to subscribe to any that you don't receive now. If you already subscribe, rest assured that the newsletters will continue to deliver the ES-style enterprise news, perspective, and insight you've come to expect in the print publication.

And me? Coincidentally, I'd decided to leave 101 several months ago to take some time off, perhaps as much as a year. I plan to do some traveling and re-assess my career options away from the treadmill of publishing. I'll be in Australia in November, trekking in Nepal sometime next summer, and who knows where else in between.

An old Chinese proverb says, "There is no feast on earth which does not end in parting." We hope you've enjoyed the richness of the Enterprise Systems spread. We've enjoyed preparing it for you.