Cisco CCNA Certification Training

The Cisco Certified Network Associate or CCNA certification is Cisco's most popular credential. As an Associate, or entry-level certificate, the CCNA is a common prerequisite for more advanced professional credentials.

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employers increasingly prefer to hire certified professionals, so CCNA certification can boost one's overall employment potential, not to mention salary. BLS data shows that the mean wage for network administrators in 2009 was $70,930. According to Global Knowledge's IT Skills and Salary Report, however, the mean wage for CCNA professionals in 2011 was $79,536, an improvement that far outpaces growth attributed to inflation.
Who should consider CCNA certification?

The CCNA cert is designed for either entry-level networking pros or for more advanced professionals who must earn CCNA certification before pursuing more advanced credentials. CCNA certified professionals are often sought out by mid-sized corporations of virtually any industry that rely on secure networks to maintain company operations and communications.
What will CCNA candidates learn?

According to Cisco, the CCNA certification validates one's ability to install, operate and troubleshoot medium-size route and switched networks. This also includes the implementation and verification of connections to remote sites in a WAN. In order to meet these requirements, Cisco's curriculum touches upon the following areas:

* Basic mitigation of security threats
* Entry-level wireless networking concepts and terminology
* Performance-based skills
* The following protocols: IP, Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), Serial Line Interface Protocol Frame Relay, Routing Information Protocol Version 2 (RIPv2),VLANs, Ethernet, access control lists (ACLs).

What are the CCNA exams like?

Cisco allows CCNA candidates to earn certification two ways. The first option allows students to complete the Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Parts 1 and 2 (640-822 ICND1 and 640-816 ICND2) separately. Students are given 90 minutes to complete 40 to 50 questions for each exam. Once they pass Part 1, students have three years to pass Part 2. The second option allows students to take a composite exam (640-802 CCNA) combining Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Parts 1 and 2. This exam is also 90 minutes in length, but includes 45 to 55 questions.

All CCNA certification exams can include the following types of questions: multiple-choice single-answer, multiple-choice multiple-answer, drag-and-drop, fill-in-the-blank, and simulations. Tests are given online, in an official test center. Candidates are not able to return to skipped questions or review previous answers, so they need to be able to manage their time and choose answers wisely. Simulations tend to take the longest and contribute heavily to one's final score, in turn, making them require extra time and attention.

An organized candidate can typically prepare for each of the two separate CCNA certification exams in about a month, or in about a month and a half for the composite exam. One can access official study materials and practice tests on Cisco's website. The Association for Computing Machinery, an organization for IT professionals, also offers study guides.
How long is a CCNA certification valid?

All associate-level Cisco credentials, including the CCNA certification, are valid for three years. According to Cisco, those who wish to re-certify can do so by passing any of the following exams:

* ICND2 exam
* CCNA exam
* CCDA Design exam
* CCNA Concentration exam
* Any 642-xxx Professional-level exam
* Certain Cisco Specialist exams
* CCIE written exam
* CCDE written or practical exam
* Cisco Certified Architect (CCAr) interview and board review

What are CCNA specialties?

Cisco offers additional CCNA certifications in the following specialties:

* Security
* Service Provider Operations
* Voice
* Wireless

Note that these CCNA credentials are different from the basic CCNA certification described above, which serves as a prerequisite for specialty-based certifications.

Should Microsoft unload Bing? Heck, no!

A pair of bloggers in the New York Times today recommend that Microsoft sell Bing as a way to pare the company's online losses and fatten the bottom line for investors. Selling Bing may save money in the short term, but in the long term it would ensure Microsoft's eventual irrelevancy in the Internet and mobile future.

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Robert Cyran and Martin Hutchinson, in their Reuters Breakingviews blog, have this to say about selling Bing:

Microsoft needs to concentrate on a different kind of search: finding a buyer for Bing, its online search business. Bing is the industry's distant No. 2 after Google. It has become a distraction for the software giant --- one that costs shareholders dearly. The division that houses Bing lost $2.6 billion in the latest fiscal year. Facebook, or even Apple, might make a better home for Bing. A sale would be a boon for Microsoft's investors.

They go on to claim that Microsoft could sell Bing for $11 billion, based on sales related to search, and that overall, it would result in a 10 percent increase in profit for the company by unloading the search engine.

There's so much wrong with the argument, it's hard to know where to begin. First is that the numbers are off-kilter; Bing didn't lose $2.6 billion for Microsoft in the past year; the entire online division did. There are plenty of other products and services in the division that bring in little or no revenue. As the bloggers themselves write, Bing brought in $2.5 billion in sales for the year that just ended on June 30. So it's hard to know the bottom line numbers for Bing by itself.

Beyond that, though, Bing is central to the future of Microsoft, especially in mobile, where the greatest growth is. Ultimately, a major reason Microsoft needs Windows Phone to succeed is because of ad revenue from online searching, which is a tremendous growth market. In addition, mobile search will become the glue that holds many other mobile services together, an area where Microsoft desperately needs to succeed.

Google, for example, doesn't get any money at all from licensing Android; its revenue comes from search, maps, Gmail, and other Google services. Microsoft will need the same business plan if it is to succeed in mobile. And for that it needs a search engine, and a very good one. And Bing is a very good one, and constantly getting better.

In addition, as the bloggers themselves note, Bing and sites it powers like Yahoo make up 27 percent of the U.S. market. They see this as a bad thing. But it's certainly not that --- 27 percent of the U.S. search market is a tremendous revenue opportunity. In addition, if Microsoft abandons Bing, it might as well just about abandon its entire online presence, because, aside from Hotmail, Bing is its only substantial Internet service. But giving up online as well as mobile would ensure that Microsoft will never see high-growth days.

So yes, selling Bing would certainly be good in the very short term for Microsoft, because it would bring in substantial revenue from the sale and pare short-term losses. In the long run, though, it would be a disaster.

Microsoft expands Intune services

IDG News Service - Anticipating use of Intune by larger organizations, Microsoft is outfitting the managed desktop service with a number of new capabilities that should make its use more appealing in enterprise settings.

The functionality draws from Microsoft System Center, though it has an entirely different interface, Heaton said.

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Other new features include the ability to scan a machine for viruses and malware without manual help from the user -- a step that was required before -- and the ability to tally all the copies of a given third-party software program, which can be handy for assuring software license compliance. Also, the user interface has been updated in various ways to make it more intuitive.

This new beta service, named Intune July 2011, will be run separately from the commercial version of Intune. Eventually, all the new features of the beta will be folded into the paid Intune service, which should take place by the end of this year, Heaton said.

Users of the current Intune service can try the beta of the new version of the service, though the beta service cannot be used on the same computers using the production version of Intune. Users of the commercial version of Intune will be able to use the new features after they have been incorporated into the paid service. At that time, beta users will be able to use the trial service for an additional 30 days. If they wish to use the paid version, they will need to set up their accounts again.

Should CIOs have a foreign policy?

With business operations entangled in the unpredictable and sometimes volatile global scene, the answer is a resounding 'yes' (and the more detailed, the better).

Computerworld - In July 2005, a series of suicide bomb attacks in London's transit system killed 56 people and threw the city into a state of confusion. The U.S.-based CEO of a multinational financial company with offices in London posed what to him seemed a simple and essential question: "Are all our people OK?"

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Getting an answer proved challenging. First, there was no single staff directory that covered the entire company and was kept up to date with ongoing staff changes. Nor was there a single directory of every person's location and contact information. Second, even if it existed, such a directory would not have included contractors, who nonetheless fit within the CEO's definition of "our people."

Third, there was no central record of which London employees were on vacation, on leave or traveling that day, or -- more worrisome -- which employees from other locations might be visiting London. And finally, even for those employees who were known to be in London and for whom the company had addresses and phone numbers, it was hard to make contact.

"Transportation was disrupted, cellphone service was down, SMS was down, and it was very unclear for most of the day just what had happened," recalls Andrew Marshall, director of Consultifi, which helps companies understand business risks.

The company's HR and IT departments weren't able to provide a timely answer to the CEO's questions, he says. "It turned into a conversation that involved philosophy and technology as well as HR," Marshall notes.

There are several lessons any IT leader can draw from this tale. First, there's no such thing as a safe location: Disruptions can happen anywhere. Second, it's important to have a plan that spells out what everyone's responsibilities will be and includes all the information you'll need. And finally, you need redundant communications systems, because "normal" methods of communication will likely fail -- especially mobile, which is quickly overwhelmed by the spike in local demand that takes place during any crisis.
Concerns About Crisis Events Grow

It would be impossible to think about events of the past 12 months without having at least a few qualms over systems, data and employees, especially those outside the U.S., and the possible effect of local unrest, epidemics, earthquakes or other hazards. Indeed, in a 2010 survey of the 100 largest technology companies, 55% of executives reported worrying about "natural disasters, war, conflicts and terrorist attacks." When the same executives were again asked that question in 2011, that percentage rose to 81%.

In this increasingly global and interconnected world, it's easy to see why they're concerned. Power outages, weather events, political unrest or even something as mundane as a ship dragging its anchor over a fiber-optic cable can disrupt your operations in unexpected ways. Data centers could go offline. Data stored in remote locations could become unavailable, as could your supply chain. You could lose contact with offshore service providers due to interrupted communications. Software-as-a-service applications could go offline. And although cloud-based infrastructure is mostly hosted in the U.S. now, that's expected to change in the next few years, posing even greater risks.

Microsoft revs dump-XP campaign, says 'time to move on'II

Reminds users that the most popular OS on the planet has about 1,000 days to live

Computerworld - Microsoft on Monday made its most aggressive move yet to convince customers to drop Windows XP and adopt Windows 7, telling them that there were only 1,000 days of support life left in the older operating system.

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Stephen Rose, IT community manager for the Windows commercial team, noted the 1,000 days remaining for Windows XP support in a post to a Microsoft blog.

"Windows XP had an amazing run and millions of PC users are grateful for it. But it's time to move on," Rose said, adding that the operating system exits security support in "less than 1,000 days."
Unmentioned Monday -- for some time, actually -- was Windows Vista, the hapless 2007 version that has been called Microsoft's first OS failure since 2000's Windows Millennium. Customers agree: Vista peaked at just under 19% in October 2009 but has lost about half its share since.

Instead, Reller talked up not just Windows 7 as the replacement for XP, but its successor, Windows 8, as well, which is widely expected to ship next year.

While Reller encouraged corporate customers to continue deploying Windows 7, she promised that Windows 8 would run on the same hardware.

"For our business customers, your customers," she said, speaking to the partners at WPC, "this is an important element, because the ability of Windows 8 to run on Windows 7 devices ensures that the hardware investments that these customers are making today will be able to take advantage of Windows 8 in the future."

While neither Reller nor Ballmer mentioned Windows 7's life cycle, the company will push consumers now running Windows 7 to upgrade to Windows 8 too. According to Microsoft's longstanding practice, it will support Windows 7 Home Premium, the most popular edition for consumers, for five years, half the time slated for enterprise support.

Windows 7 Home Premium will be retired from security support in January 2015.

Microsoft drops patch support for Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Vista mainstream support ends for good next year

Microsoft dropped support for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this week, and recommended that Vista users buy Windows 7 or upgrade to the most recent version of Vista.

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There were two Vista service packs. Support for the first ended Tuesday, while Service Pack 2 will continue to receive mainstream support until April 10, 2012, and the more limited "extended support" until April 11, 2017. Once support for a service pack ends, that software no longer receives security updates.

Windows after 25 years: A visual history

In the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft said: "We recommend folks look at upgrading to Windows 7, which is the fastest selling operating system in history, selling over 400 million licenses to-date. Windows Vista users can also use Windows Update to update their PC to the latest service pack available which is Service Pack 2 (SP2)."

The end-of-support dates follow published Microsoft policies and so are known months or even years in advance.

Just because your software is out of date doesn't mean you need to buy a new computer. A Vista machine, of course, can upgrade to the second Service Pack for free. Many Vista machines have the hardware necessary to upgrade to Windows 7, and this week Microsoft said any PC capable of running Windows 7 will be eligible for future upgrades to Windows 8.

Since Vista was never that popular, the bigger issue applies to users of Windows XP, still the most widely used version of Windows. All support of Windows XP Service Pack 2 ended last year, but XP's third service pack is on extended support until April 8, 2014. According to Microsoft, sales of PCs with XP pre-installed ended last year and sales of PCs with Vista pre-installed will end in October of this year.

Microsoft is starting to show previews of Windows 8, signaling it could come out sometime next year. How long Windows 7 continues to receive support has not yet been determined.

IT jobs: Winners and losers in the cloud era

We survey the cloud's effects on nine classes of IT jobs: Architects and sys admins win, middle managers and tech specialists lose -- what about you?

Changed roles: CIO and senior IT managers Like lower-level IT supervisors, senior-level IT managers are having their responsibilities expanded and barriers among them broken down -- or should be -- to accommodate more flexible infrastructures that include applications or islands of computing power housed with external service providers.

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"A significant amount of the computing power and applications the typical enterprise uses is coming from Salesforce.com or Amazon.com or Google or other service providers," Staten says. "If you're going to rely on that connection and integrate it with the rest of your infrastructure, you need someone who can identify standard interfaces, enforce service levels, make informed decisions about which service providers to choose."

In the past, the CIO or IT executive responsible for outsourcing deals was the only one involved with those kinds of extracurricular connections, Forrester's Dines says. With cloud and SaaS, many of the senior IT managers will find themselves doing it.

Changed roles: Contract and service managers Dealing with service-level guarantees, searching for and choosing the best provider for a particular IT service -- whether that be a SaaS company, external cloud provider, or internal IT -- is too much for many IT people to handle given their hands-on workloads, says consultant Cramm. "Typically you're talking about a couple of dozen SaaS providers and platform providers you have to be able to talk to and integrate technology with," Egan says, "and managing those contracts becomes a skill set in itself."

Cramm warns, "There are a lot of technical issues to integrate with an outside provider, because cloud sounds so fantastic, but as we found out with Amazon, if you don't do your due diligence and don't have the contracts laid out right, you're not going to get what you need and you'll spend the whole [term of the contract] wishing you did it differently."

Managing external vendors and contracts is second nature to large populations of specialists within IT, mostly those at companies that have outsourced most or all of their IT, Olds says. People in such organizations will more easily adapt to the external management challenges that come with the cloud.

Changed roles: Enterprise developers It's not that large companies will be using less software than they used to, it's just that they won't be writing or customizing nearly as much of it themselves, says Forrester's Staten.

Companies can get either the bulk or a large chunk of the software they use from Salesforce.com or other SaaS providers, which means they don't have to build the core functions of those applications themselves.

They do need to maintain the data and databases, as well as implement a certain amount of customization to make generic SaaS apps fit their workflow and data -- but much less so than in the past, he says. "You're not really customizing Salesforce to meet your needs," Staten says. "You're making some adjustments, using APIs and documentation and simple tools they supply. Mainly you're adjusting your internal workflow to match what the SaaS providers you choose can supply. In some ways that's actually better because you learn more about standardizing on efficient processes rather than customizing everything."

Who are all these hacker groups?

They go by names like Anonymous, Lulz Security, Zeus, Night Dragon, Green Army Corp, Inj3ct0r Team; their goals, methods, effectiveness vary

Dogma Millions
This group, largely Russian, runs what's known as a "pay-per-install" operation to get victims to download malware they've designed and it's believed to have hundreds of "affiliates" that get paid when a malicious file is installed on a victim's machine. The group is known to have developed specialized software packers and protectors to ensure its malware, such as rootkits, which remain undetected by antivirus products.

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The Chinese hacker puzzle

With a growing number of cyberattacks traced back to mainland China, there's a lot of interest in knowing about hacker groups there, with speculation there are many dozens of them. Security firm McAfee earlier this year released a report called "Night Dragon" which claimed hacker groups from China work regular hour shifts to try and break into oil companies to steal data.

Over the years, the more famous China hacker groups have included Janker, founded by Wang Xianbing, and the Green Army Corps, founded by Gong Wei, according to researcher Scott Henderson, who runs the website Dark Visitor. Although there is no shortage of suspicion in the U.S. that Chinese hackers have at times worked for the Chinese government to steal secrets from U.S.-based businesses and the government, there are also times when Chinese authorities have taken steps to shut down hacker groups. For instance, reports said police last year in Hubei province went after hacker group "Black Hawk Safety Net" and its website that was providing Trojan-based malware.

Over the years, others such as the Network Crack Program Hacker Group based out of Zigong have been identified. The group used a rootkit called GinWui in attacks on the U.S. Department of Defense, other U.S. agencies and Japan about five years ago. GinWui is thought to have been developed by the group's leader, Tan Dailin, who has used the handle "Wicked Rose" and later "Withered Rose."

The Network Crack Program Hacker Group is believed to have transmitted a large amount of documents to China from the U.S. But when Dailin launched denial-of-service attacks against other Chinese hacker groups, including Hackbase, 3800hk and HackerXfiles, these hacker groups went to Chinese authorities, which arrested Dailin in 2009. He now faces over seven years in prison.

This week's hacker group in the news: Inj3ct0r Team

Some hacker groups, particularly the hacktivists, are inclined to make their exploits public by announcing them online in some way or dumping contents they've stolen as proof of their prowess. This week a group called "Inj3ct0r Team" claimed they'd compromised a server belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

When contacted by IDG, the group said the files were a "server backup, confidential data."

According to IDG, "inside the files was a notepad document dated July 3 that said: "NATO lamers! I've been watching you day and night since then! W00t! Your Machines rooted! Servers restored to default! what else! [Expletive deleted] you and your crimes! And soon enough all your stupid ideas will be published on WikiLeaks!"One industry source asked about Inj3ct0r Team says it started as one individual who began finding vulnerabilities in websites and publicizing them, who then attracted a following.

Microsoft Rolls Dice Hopes For (Windows) 7 And (IE) 8

After taking a lot of flak for Windows Vista, Microsoft has recently released beta versions of two of its most popular products–Windows and Internet Explorer–in an attempt to recover lost ground.

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The past few years have not been easy for Microsoft. The company that’s been synonymous with operating systems on computers has had to take a fair deal of flak from critics, users and has even been at the receiving end of a European Union (EU) adverse judgement. Added to that are the woes of the ongoing recession. And on the mobile front, its OS, Windows Mobile, is struggling against newcomers like the mobile versions of Mac OS and Google’s Android (very rashly dismissed as a ‘press release’ by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer). Perhaps it would be fair to say that the Redmond giant is not short of challenges at the moment.

The Vista albatross

There are many who feel that Microsoft’s problems began with Windows Vista. Launched a couple of years ago amidst a lot of hype, the OS has become a burden to the company. While tech experts might point to flaws in the structure of the OS and its security issues, the biggest reason for its relative lack of success (Microsoft will roll out reams of information to claim that it is in fact a huge success) is that the operating system was a pain to use for mainstream users who were more than content with its predecessor, Windows XP.

Redemption through Win 7 and IE 8?

But if there is one thing we know about Microsoft, it is that for such a big company, it moves incredibly fast to address problems. The immensely successful Windows XP had in fact come hot on the heels of the less-than-impressive Windows Me and had promptly made people forget the problems posed by the latter. In what seems to be a similar move, the company has released betas of its next version of Windows, Windows 7 and its browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 8. While we have given neither product a really extended trial yet, the little we have seen of both seems to indicate that they are significant improvements over their predecessors.

The improvement in Windows 7, in particular, is stark. While the dazzling exterior of Vista has been maintained (and some might even say, made to look better), resource hoggers such as the Windows Taskbar have been removed. Microsoft has also added its Ribbon interface (seen in Office 2007) to its staple Paint and Word Pad applications, making them much more user-friendly. Those concerned about security might like the Action Center, which displays a number of security and maintenance features in a single menu–saving time and making them far simpler to manage. While its system requirements seem to be on the same lines as Vista’s on paper, a number of people have told me that it actually runs perfectly well on systems that struggled with Vista.

Time to put Google under the microscope

Google is too important not to investigate -- don't believe the bozos whining about governments picking winners

"Mad Men" and politicians know that the well-turned phrase can be a game changer. During the debate on health care reform, for example, "death panel" stuck in the minds of millions and nearly won the day. Over the years, another phrase -- "the government is picking winners" -- is trotted out whenever a regulator takes a serious look at the alleged abuses of a technology company.

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There were no death panels, of course, and neither the Federal Trade Commission nor the U.S. Department of Justice in investigations of Microsoft, Intel, and now Google was attempting to pick winners. By repeating that phrase, the target companies and their paid (and unpaid) propagandists are trying, with some success, to define the terms of the debate in their favor.

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The FTC's investigation into Google isn't about how big it is, whether its technology is better than someone else's, or whether it does evil. Being big, indeed being a monopoly or near-monopoly, is not a crime. What is a crime is the abuse of monopoly power to the extent that the free market is no longer free.

In the antitrust consent decree related to Internet Explorer, Microsoft wasn't punished because it had a huge share of the operating system market, and Intel wasn't singled out in an FTC antitrust investigation because it dominated the market for microprocessors. They were punished because they abused that power. (Intel agreed to a draconian settlement without admitting guilt.)

Similarly, Google isn't being investigated because it dominates the market for search-related ads. Its rivals have made a case that it is abusing that power by cooking search results in favor of companies it does business with. That would be an abuse of its market power, if it turns out to be true, and is worth investigating.

Is Google guilty? I really don't know. And who wouldn't be suspicious when Microsoft (the linchpin of an anti-Google coalition called Fairsearch.org) points a finger at a rival and cries foul? But I do know that Google is as central to the technology industry today as Microsoft and Intel were in the 1990s. Sure, an investigation is costly and a nasty distraction for management. But both Intel and Microsoft are now doing just fine, thank you, and the technology market is arguably freer and better because of that scrutiny.

Are Google search results fair?
In case you missed it, Google last week confirmed press reports that the FTC had opened an antitrust investigation into its core search and advertising business. In a blog post, Google said it wasn't sure about the rationale for the commission's concerns, but according to reports in the Wall Street Journal, it appears that the probe will ask if Google searches steer consumers to the company's partners at the expense of competing businesses.

CFOs lack faith in CIOs and IT teams, survey shows

And power of the CFO over the IT department also growing

National Harbor, Md. -- Increasingly, it's the chief financial officer (CFO) who has direct oversight of the IT department and IT-related spending, but it turns out the CFO has a low opinion of the CIO and the entire IT group.

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CIO wannabees told to think outside the box

That's according to a survey of 344 CFOs at North American companies involved in manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, energy, transportation and other fields. The survey, conducted by the professional organization Financial Executives International in tandem with Gartner, sought to find out what CFOs think about use of information technology in their companies and the people who provide it. They weren't that happy.

According to the 2011 Gartner/FEI study, only about a quarter of the CFOs had confidence that their own IT organization "has the organizational and technical flexibility to respond to changing business priorities," or "is able to deliver against the enterprise/business unit strategy."

"Only 25% see the CIO as a key player in determining the business strategy," said Gartner analyst John Van Decker.

In addition, less than a quarter of the CFOs felt the IT department "delivers the technology innovation needed by the business," or that it "has the right mix of skilled people to meet business needs." And in the final act of disdain, only 18% of the CFOs said they thought "our IT service levels meet or exceed business expectations."

Van Decker said the results of the survey show that "CIOs sometimes care too much about technologies" rather than the business environment itself that is top of mind to the CFO. The survey showed that CFOs, when they are considering IT decisions, are inclined to invest in technologies where competitive advantage can be demonstrated, analysis and decision-making is assisted, or efficiencies and cost reduction are achieved.

If the typical CFO, whose job often entails keeping a close watch on spending, approving investments and assuring compliance with regulations, is really so disenchanted with the IT department, that could spell bad news for corporate IT. That's because the Gartner/FEI survey shows the rising influence of the CFO over the IT department. The survey showed 42% of IT organizations now report directly to CFOs, "and that is expected to increase," Van Decker says.

In terms of who authorizes IT investments, 29% of the respondents said it's a steering committee of IT and business executives. But 26% said it's the CFO alone authorizing IT investment, up from 18% last year. A quarter says it's the CIO and CFO together. In 11% of organizations, it's still the CIO alone.

The study's findings point to the need for the CIO and others in the IT department to reach out to the CFO and be as clear as possible about why some kinds of IT investments are being advocated by the IT department, Van Decker says. He noted the survey shows only 35% of the CFOs viewed IT as being a strategic driver of business performance.

"Perhaps CFOs don't understand the longer-term importance of deploying new technologies, such as virtualization," Van Decker says. CFOs are strongly focused in on business enablement, particularly of ERP systems, where the current mood favors consolidation of systems. But acceptance of software-as-a-service is also gaining favor in the eyes of the CFO, with 10% now accepting SaaS (up from 6% in 2010), though 76% still prefer licensed software.