What makes a good Information Technology professional? Is it simply good training, gritty determination, logical thinking, and the ability to put in long hours alone at the keyboard?

In 2008, there was a lot of talk around communications devices, but in many corporations one of the hottest IT topics was a technology called “virtualization”. So I’ll start the new year by explaining what virtualization is and why you might be interested in it.

In a recent article on Social Media, I discussed the power of online personal connections and mentioned the phenomenon that is Facebook. There is another social media tool which is similar to Facebook but is more intended for business contacts. It is called LinkedIn.

What a way to learn. I was with my colleagues Dave and Geoff, a couple of people from Microsoft, and a dozen or so customers at Glen Arbor Golf Course. We called it the Nicom IT Solutions/Microsoft “Golfinar”, a combination golf game and seminar.

We now have this huge computer network called the Internet and we usually think of it in terms of Web pages, but it has potential for a lot more than just providing online marketing material for us to look at. Organizations with offices across multiple locations can make use of high-speed Internet connections and replicated databases to transfer data from one place to the other, and keep one another up-to-date on what’s going on.