Over 4 million people are thought to be working in IT these days, but at least one well known industry executive now appears to be out of a job.

IT Employment Hits a New High
With all the complaining about the current skills shortage and age discrimination in the market, it's interesting to note that IT employment has topped 4 million. But given the economy, there's still some doubt about how safe your job might really be.

Long-Time Leader of VMware Exits Stage Left
The sudden departure of Diane Greene as the head of EMC's VMware unit has lots of tongues wagging about where the company and virtualization in general goes from here. There appears to be a number of critics that claim Greene just didn't see past the where virtualization is today in terms of providing strategic direction to the company.

Microsoft Lends Tacit Support to Effort to Oust Yahoo Board
Carl Icahn claims that Microsoft will renew its interest in acquiring Yahoo, albeit at a lower price, if he can get in a new board to replace the people that rebuffed Microsoft's latest offer. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to be developing a strategy to try and contain Google just as the Department of Justice says it plans to look into the Google deal with Yahoo.

Baseline Magazine Study Finds that Software-as-a-Service Is Good But Not that Simple
Nothing is ever as simple as advertised, but a study conducted by Baseline in concert with the Burton Group finds that SaaS applications deliver on expected benefits.

Microsoft Starts to Set Pricing for Online Services
While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touted the benefits of the company's Software Plus Services computing model, partners appear to be in a grim mood because they see more threats than opportunities in these types of services. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced another revamp of its overall channel program and a ship date for its latest Small Business Server and Essentials Business Server offering for the mid-market.

Microsoft Preps IT Maturity Assessment Tool
Not everyone may think that Microsoft has enough credibility in the enterprise to judge others, but nevertheless the company is getting set to roll out tools that help its partners judge the relative merits of a customer's IT infrastructure. Speaking of maturity, there is a fuss building over the way Microsoft ranks security threats just as a new wave of attacks on Microsoft Office hit. Microsoft also says it now plans to move away from delivering hot fixes for Office.

Massive Patch Effort under Way to Fix DNS Flaw
A major DNS hole has most security experts scrambling to fix what appears to be a major potential problem.

Ten Steps to Simplified Systems Management
Everybody is trying to do more with fewer people these days so here are some tips that might put you on the road to better systems management.