Pushing project management to the collaborative Web

various versions stored at other SharePoint sites. And it can cause compliance and security issues because SharePoint sites often aren't managed for access control.

Enterprise Informatics' eB for SharePoint claims to let the business reassert control over SharePoint sites and their contents via policies, while letting users continue to deploy SharePoint sites for their project collaboration. "eB treats the SharePoint sites as a configuration problem," says Rick Berzie, the company's marketing director. So, as a "master" document moves or is copied throughout SharePoint sites, eB detects and tracks the versions, then can ensure all use the same one and that only people who should have access to it in fact do. Enterprise Informatics has long offered enterprise information management tools, and it sees eB as applying the governance of EIM to the ad hoc collaboration of SharePoint.

Help for MSPs' Windows management

Most large organizations have an internal or outsourced help desk to manage PCs, tracking inventory, configuration, and status. But most small businesses don't really manage their PCs, and some hire managed service providers -- usually small shops of a few IT people supporting a few dozen to a few hundred client PCs -- to do it for them. Paragent MSP gives such MSPs a tool to monitor its clients' PCs, tapping into WMI (the native Windows Management Instrumentation API) so they can see, for example, if a PC has a free memory slot to support RAM for a Windows Vista installation. MSPs pay an annual fee of US$8 per PC being monitored.

The service includes remote management capabilities based on VNC that let the MSP bypass firewall and other access barriers, so they can more easily troubleshoot user systems, says chairman Jeff Ready.