BigFix at West Coast Green – Booth #441
BigFix Power Management is part of this year’s West Coast Green, the largest green innovation, building, and design tradeshow that highlights some of the greenest inventions and ideas in the industry.  It is happening October 1-3 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. 125 Speakers 80 Education & Networking Sessions

BigFix CTO on Patch Management and End Users
“While it’s not always the sexiest side of security, patch management is one of the most critical aspects of an organization’s overall security program. Unfortunately, despite vendors working diligently to combat vulnerabilities with patches and enterprises incorporating them, those efforts are often in vain because the end user doesn’t apply them. These days, leaving patch installation in the end user’s hand is as safe and effective as installing a top-of-the-line security system at a bank but leaving open the vault door.” – Amrit Williams, BigFix CTO and host of Beyond the Perimeter

Sysadmin of the Year – Progressive Jackpot up to $5,000!
With just a month left for nominations, BigFix is adding a new prize to the 2009 System Administrator of the Year contest – a progressive jackpot up to $5,000. The prize will start at $2,000, with $200 added to the pot for every 10 new nominations. The final prize will be split between the winning sysadmin and his or her nominator. In the case of self nomination, the entire cash prize will be awarded to the sysadmin. This cash prize will be the new Grand Prize, with the runner up receiving a laptop, a conference pass to the 2010 

SAOTY Entry of the Day: Keeping Things Ship Shape
Until I read this, it never occurred to me that oceanographic vessels would have sysadmins, but now I know better. A truly fascinating entry from the log book of a marine sys admin. My SysAdmin is a Rock Star because…: He takes on everything.  Out where this sysadmin rocks, the boundaries of responsibility blur— where need and capability converge, duty becomes defined. Take two global class, nearly continuously operating oceanographic research vessels from the world’s premier oceanographic research institution, sprinkle in two near-coastal research ships, add several research laboratories worth of acoustic devices, chemistry s

Sysadmins With Benefits
This entry is short but gets right to the point. This Sysadmin of the Year nominee has saved his organization big bucks. That gets attention in any phase of an economic cycle. Names changed to keep the awesome out of the hands of headhunters. My SysAdmin is a Rock Star because…: [Julien Sorel] virtually single handedly transformed the fortunes of [our] site and company – reducing out hosting costs by over 50% while at the same time improving our performance by over 4 times! As a result of his work, hundreds of thousands of [end users] around the world can, and do, [access our services] in peace…. unconcerned by downtime or i