Business Systems Books

Great book, highly recommended. Detailed information explained thoroughly and understandably. Every Windows Admin should own this book. As mentioned previously, the Kerberos and Delegation chapters are fabulous as is the chapter on Unix/Linux Authentication Integration. Actually, every chapter provided quite a bit of value. If you are a Windows Admin - read this book, you will be glad you did.

Another instant classic from the folks at DP/HP. The writing style is truly excellent - flows nicely, never boring, and technically enlightening...its what i expect from De Clerq to be honest - author of the classic: Mission Critical Active Directory. My only complaint is that this book is really the 2nd Ed of Windows 2003 Security Infrastructures (again De Clerq and DP/HP, and obviously covering SP1 and R2), so if you already have that one, then you may need to determine whether the new info is worth the purchase. Regardless - this book is brilliant...the chapter on Delegation is worth the price alone.

Very good book, chock full of detail on things you have issues finding details on normally. Sections on Kerberos and Active Directory will likely be extremely enlightening for many people. Some pieces can be a little tough to follow at times but we aren't talking about how to color within the lines in a coloring book, this is some serious technical security information. I highly recommend that all Windows Admins spend time cuddled up with this book. Windows Server Admins absolutely better be reading this book.

This book explores the monumental task of supporting today's heterogeneous distributed computer systems. The new methodology introduced in the book is based on accountability and automation and has been key to effecting spectacular improvements in both support quality and personnel productivity at Lehman Brothers. The production of this seminal text involved a team-oriented approach. Written with colleagues from leading investment, industry, and academic institutions such as Salomon Brothers, Sun Microsystems and MIT, the work's subject reflects its team-oriented authorship. The book's uniqueness lies in its lucid treatment of a subject which is inherently behind-the-scenes. In a brilliant foreword, Kevin McGilloway, CIO of Lehman Brothers, articulates the fundamental reality of systems support where "no news is good news", and yet no modern trading can be conducted without the computer. In what he describes as the "change culture" of Wall Street, where profit depends on market dynamics, computer systems must enable traders to capitalize on the continuous evolution of markets. This dynamic marketplace tolerates nothing less than zero downtime. The book shows how to meet the ultimate challenge of balancing change with perfect availability of the computer/communications infrastructure.

Tired of continued turnover of skilled systems personnel? Confused by the haphazard introduction of new technologies, such as Windows NT? In this new extraordinary book you can learn both the practical skills and cultural context needed to deal with growing complexity of systems support in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Specific to distributed computing systems, this first-of-its-kind idea book divulges knowledge accumulated over years of practical experience in the arena of performance, availability and cost reduction. Like a modern-day Frederick W. Taylor, Lirov believes that systems support can be rigorously quantified and improved through disciplined planning and execution. He pulled together a team of experts first to elevate systems support at Lehman Brothers to the best service on Wall Street, and then to share t he acquired grasp of this tremendously difficult subject with the readers. Abandoning the traditional approach of focusing on a single support discipline, Lirov paints a panoramic view of an all-inclusive support process. In his lucid foreword to the book, Kevin McGilloway, CIO at Lehman Brothers, emphasizes the criticality of matching technical solutions with cultural change. The topics span the entire gamut of support disciplines encompassing all aspects of systems, database, and batch administration, including contributions from experts at such leading edge institutions as He wlett-Packard and Cray. The ideas, described in comprehensive detail, transcend the Intranet and apply to systems management on the Internet. These ideas also encompass multiple systems platforms, especially, UNIX and Windows NT. The book's only drawback is that it stops short of offering more detail on cross-platform systems management. With dozens of practical examples, this is an advanced level text, geared towards IT managers, systems and database administrators, and graduate students. If you are in the trenches, battling to manage distributed systems of unprecedented complexity, this book can save your career -- and your sanity.

I first reviewed this book three and a half years ago. It is time for an updated review to reaffirm this book's value nearly four years after it was first published.

First, since this book was published there have only been two (that I know of) books that address the topic of mission critical systems management: Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems and High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes.

Second, after reading the other two books this one continues to have a solid place - it fills in gaps of the other two.

Third, Mission Critical Systems Management contains the best approach to service level management from among the three books in this category.

The key strengths of this book are its straightforward approach to designing, deploying and maintaining highly available systems on a 24x7 basis. The author chronicles his own approach to doing this, which lends authority and credibility to the book. The service level agreement format provided in the book continues to be one of the best I have come across. And the approach itself is sound.

There are no discernable weaknesses. Three and a half years ago I gave this book 4 stars because it cited specific products. I am giving it 5 stars today because in retrospect this complaint is irrelevant. What counts is the fact that a technology book written nearly four years ago is as valid and valuable today as when it was first written.

Bottom line: Mission Critical Systems Management contains a good balance of process and technical detail, and provides a clear path to achieving 24x7 operations. It fills the gaps of, and augments, the two other books on the subject: High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes (process-oriented) and Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems (technology-oriented).

If you haven't read this book because of its age, read it and marvel at how timeless the contents are. If you read it when it first came out, re-read it and discover how prescient the author was when he sat down to write it.

I just finished reading this book and found that it filled in many inconsistencies that I have noted in my mainstream economic study. The author explains clearly and concisely the origins of and money and its importance to any economic system. He proceeds to describe the evolution of banking to its current inflationary state. He clearly shows that this inflationary states results from a combination of fractional reserve banking, the government's grant of monopoly powers through a cental bank (the U.S. Federal Reserve in the case of the U.S.), and the central banks open market operations to manipulate bank reserves (e.g., monetizing debt). Finally, Rothbard makes it clear that the banking industry's inflationary policies are beneficial to the banking industry itself and leave the reader no doubt that this industry has a vested interest in the status-quo.

I found this book to be the most interesting and revealing book I have ever read about the banking system and the Federal Reserve. Rothbard has a very different perspective than most conventional economists, but his explanations are very clear and compelling. He explains how fractional reserve banking makes banks inherently prone to bankruptcy, how the Federal Reserve and other central banks create inflation, and how money has evolved and been debased. Gene Epstein, the Barron's columnist, recently recommended The Mystery of Banking as the best book to read for anyone interested in understanding how our banking system works.

Murray Rothbard writes clearly and yet with a technician's precise knowledge of the operation of money and banking. This book should be read by any who truly desire to understand these important aspects of the ecoonomy. And, oh, by the way, you don't really have to fork over $98 bucks for this important book. Resourceful readers can locate it for free online. Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?

William Chang has very successfully introduced a number of diverse networking concepts some specifically used only in the DoD's (Department of Defense's) and others used in commercial telecom/IT environments and identified how these concepts together can be profitably used by the Network-Centric Service Oriented Enterprises in both commercial and DoD worlds. Although the scope and number of topics covered are very broad, author has gone into sufficient technical depth and provided additional references for those who want to pursue the subject matter further. A few of the topics worth mentioning are - description and comparison of emerging ITU/TMF's eTOM and DoD's GIG, and value of combined solution using these two; and Service Modeling in the context of Service Knowledge Management. Overall, I highly recommend this book, to all network professionals in general, and systems engineers and planners in particular.

The two most powerful concepts in Networks, Telecom, and Information Technology today are:

1) The DoD's (Department of Defense's) "Network-Centric Operations" -- which provides information and decision superiority in a decentralized, loosely-coupled, wireless, mobile ad-hoc, "fog-of-war" network environment; and

2) The Commercial Telecom/IT world's "Service-Oriented Architecture" -- which enables independent, interoperable, inter-communicating, mobile ad-hoc services across a System-of-Systems "fog-of-business" enterprise.

The powerful combination of these two concepts requires an author with experience in both the detailed technical understanding of futuristic military "Net-Centric" networks; and a thorough knowledge of commercial enterprise-oriented business operations, telecommunications, information technology, and technical expertise in Service-Oriented Architectures.

William Chang has successfully married these two fields to evolve the next step for competitive businesses using Networks and Information Technology in the "Network-Centric Service Oriented Enterprise." Mr. Chang takes the reader through the important concepts of Information Superiority, Speed of Execution, Service-oriented Enterprises and Architectures, Network-Centric Business Operations, and how to merge these concepts into a competitive business advantage.

Mr. Chang also "deep-dives" into the technical details of the Global Information Grid, Wireless Network Technologies, Wireless Sensor Networks, Building a Wireless Transport Service, Network Management and Service Monitoring, Service Quality Management and Prioritization, as well as Security and Information Assurance. Mr. Chang then adds Service Knowledge Management and ties all of these subjects together into a total approach to the Net-Centric Service-Oriented Enterprise.

Overall, a 5-star rating and a leap forward in how advanced technology can create information superiority to make businesses more competitive.

Mr. Chang puts it all together in his book Network-Centric Service Oriented Enterprise (NCSOE). This book is an excellent body of work and an essential text for anyone involved in networking.

Mr Chang's book has far-reaching implications for current networks and projects under development for emergency response, government, and commercial applications. Economic, legal, and technical drivers pave the way for Network-Centric Service Oriented Enterprise. Network centric is the wave of our technical future and Mr. Chang's book is a must read for all network professionals.

Rick Gallaher
Author/ Sr. Engineer

As an ex-Intel person, I participated in a number of "map days" to pull project plans together. Timm Esque's book documents the approach, including the "behind-the-scenes" work to prepare for these map days, to run them, and to perform the after-the-map day activities.

I've used Timm's book in running map days in my current organization and in running a large IT program. I've leveraged his PAC (Performance Against Commitments) and his deliverables matrix to stay on top of the program performance and quickly identify what's behind and what's on track.

In short: excellent reference!

Timm Esque has created an outstanding book with many practical insights for project managers. I am a performance technologist for a high tech company. Timm's case studies and templates contribute to making this one of the best books that I have read concerning performance improvement in business environments. The book is well thought out and based on Timm's extensive experience in industry. Tom Gilbert would be proud (if you don't know, read the book to find out who Tom Gilbert is).

This is a two flight book! A coast-to-coast round trip about does it. Actually, Timm's ideas are so straightforward and elegant that it should have taken one flight, but I got into a long conversation about the book with a client on the way. The top-down, bottom-up approach is something I've been teaching for some time in my project management classes. But what Timm has done integrating human performance technology and PM is a breakthrough. The PM community often talks about "the human side" as if there are the real skills (which are very technical--the good stuff) and the touchy-feely things you have to do to glue a team together. Not surprisingly, manipulation is a recurring theme. Timm has hit the Achilles heel of the traditional approach: getting commitment. Traditionally, project management is like scar tissue: it builds up layers of protection against the inevitable re-injury. "No Surprises" reframes the whole conversation into a way of enabling project teams to self-manage the 'how's" while putting the project manager in the role of "making trade-offs visible."

This is an extraordinarily practical book, filled with tools and techniques you can pick up and use right away.

Great addition to the workbook. I was not interested in organization psychology but had to take the class to graduate. I was suprised how much I liked the course and reading the text. Became my favorite course of this semester. Easy to read and very informative.

An Excellent Book.. A Must For All The Managers In Any Organistaion.

"The organizational behavior reader" contains twenty chapters, each with two or three readings by recognized academic experts, usually adapted from the original source, e.g., Harvard Business Review. Chapters begin with the psychological contract (1), theories of managing people (2), individual and organizational learning (3), individual and organizational motivation (4), ethics and values (5), personal growth and work stress (6), and later topics include managing diversity (12), leadership (13), decision making (15), performance appraisal (18), and managing change (20). The pantheon of authors features experts such as Henry Mintzberg, Jay Conger, Denise Rousseau, Ed Lawler, Peter Senge, Cary Cooper, Deborah Tannen, Geert Hofstede, Hank Sims, Victor Vroom, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Ray Miles, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter. There are numerous charts, diagrams, graphs and models. Anecdotes and examples are plentiful. Self-assessments are rare. Few of the readings offer empirical data; the emphasis is on mental models, images, and concepts.

Professors of organizational behavior, looking for readings rather than integrated text, exercises, and cases, as well as a less expensive alternative to traditional college textbooks, will find this book appealing. These authors are, in general, engaging and highly readable. Chapters can be assigned in an order or avoided altogether to please the teacher's preferences. The breadth of topics, the currency of the treatments, and the expertise of the authors provide a solid foundation for the primary college OB course. Graduate students in need of less text structure and faculty in need of less ancillary materials will find the most benefit.

The book is rooted in social psychology and emphasizes perception, learning, thinking, images and personality, e.g., interpersonal communication, attribution, creativity. There is less on the `behavior' side of organizational behavior. Several authors use the device of posing `myths' to contrast with the author's learned, alternative state (`fact'), and sometimes the myths read more like `conventional wisdom' or the author's own attempt to make his or her point more vivid by presenting a myth that exists only in the minds of a few people. For business school students, this reader is more about organizations and people than about business. Business faculty and courses adopting this book will likely want and need to provide a management context.

Mr. Cowen provides great depth and analysis about an often ignored period of US history. Despite the apparent boring subject matter, the book is quite entertaining. On my recent vacation, I took this book, Harry Potter and Bill O'Reilly's "No Spin Zone." Believe it or not this was the book I could not put down on the beach.

A masterstroke of economic insight.Cowen's attention to detail is unsurpassed and will leave you breathless. Goodbye Paul Erdman - Hello David J. Cowen. A must read if ever there was one.

Hands down this is *the* best book on *the* most important early bank in U.S. history, the Bank of the United States, or BUS. The brainchild Alexander Hamilton, one of the greatest minds in financial history, the BUS was by far the largest early US bank in terms of market cap and reach; it was the only chartered bank that could branch across state lines. Although owned by private persons, the BUS, in conjunction with the US Treasury, functioned as a central bank. Cowen convincingly argues that it did a great job, thwarting a panic in 1792, stopping inflation later in the decade, and serving as a lender of last resort in the early nineteenth century. Cowen also carefully traces the early history of the BUS, from its hot IPO, through its development under long-time president Thomas Willing, through its emergence as a central bank, to its eventual demise at the hands of radical agrarian politicians.

Based on the BUS's balance sheets, and what must have been years of painstaking archival research, _Origins and Impact_ is virtually irrefutable. Historians, economists, public policymakers, and Wall Street bankers will all enjoy, and learn from, this important, provocative, original book.

I was impressed with the ease of use. Richard could lay off some of the by-lines as they are not necessarily relevant. Interesting, but notrelevant. I used the book to steer our efforts in redirecting our company. It will work.

This excellent book wastes no time getting to the essential elements of business process design and implementation. Where other books on the topic often start with a high-level view of a grand scheme and then get bogged down in irrelevant detail and tangential issues, this one clearly outlines what needs to be done and how to get there with no fluff.

What makes this book so special is that the author never loses sight of business imperatives - after a quick overview of integrated business processes, which is the high level view, he goes directly into business planning. There he dissects the key elements of a business plan, which adds both a focus to business processes and ensures that the key processes described in the rest of the book have a foundation to which each process is linked.

The key processes are - customer development, product introduction, supply-chain and industrial distribution management, customer satisfaction and quality, project management and finance management. These are the minimums for a coherent set of interlinked business processes that are required for a process-oriented organization. Moreover, the processes set forth are completely aligned to Michael Porter's value chain, which has proven itself in the decades since it was first presented in "Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance" (ISBN 0684841460).

In addition to the focus on the essentials, and the distillation of what it does take to win as a process-oriented organization, this book also is clearly written and makes excellent use of illustrations to reinforce key concepts. Be aware that this book is slanted towards product-based enterprises, but the principles can also be effectively applied to service-based organizations.

"Plan to Win" presents an excellent proven framework for assessing, designing and implementing world-class operational systems across enterprises.

Topics covered include: integrated business processes, key elements of a business plan, customer development process, product introduction process, supply-chain management, industrial distribution management, customer satisfaction and quality, project management, and financial management.

This book is well presented with illustrations, checklists, and references and should prove useful supporting incremental operational change or full-enterprise re-engineering projects. This book excels when used with a fuller operations text (Wild, or Slack) to use the tools and methodologies required for change projects.

My mother in-law was over at my house and we started talking about Y2K. See asked me to explain how this will affect her.

The problem I've always had is trying to explain to a non-technical person what it really is.

This book explains in simple terms what Y2K is all about and how to prepare for it.

I have also fond myself quoting from this book to my co-workers.

Pam Wylie has written an excellent book on Y2K. It discusses what the problem is, how wide the impacts might, and how to deal with it. The orientation is the average citizen, small business person and community organizer. She knows that Y2K can be dealt with, and her goal is help them get the problem solved. Pam is not one of the doom-and-gloomers that are so prevalent these days. Pam deals with the technical details of Y2K in a straight-forward, easy-to-understand manner.

This book is a must-read for small businesses and community organizers.

Time is really short, folks. Get your copy, and get crackin!!

This is a great book! I found the section on CROW (Century Roll-Over Weekend) extremely valuable and concise. I have referred to this book many times on the job and at home. I have shared it with a community leader and would recommend it to anyone interested in practical advise for stepping into the Year 2000.

I need a teachers edition

I'd like to know if this book is teacher's edition?

As an instructor at a college, I have used the last three editions of Mr Slater's book since 1999. This has to be one of the most understandable, helpful and explanatory textbooks ever produced.
The examples are clearly written, and the use of small,quick reference 'vignettes' make it so easy for the student to get answers to just about any question they want to pose.
I use many textbooks, as I teach various business and management subjects, and this one stands head and shoulders above any other textbook covering this particular discipline.
The BEST part of this book? It can be kept as a reference guide for just about any mathematical question that comes up in everyday life, such as credit card balances, mortgage amortizations etc.