The oldest question in IT

Special report: Calling it a question of Shakespearean proportions, we get to the heart of a long-running debate: whether to build or buy those applications you need. Yes, the answer can be broken down to suggest that companies should build to boost their core competencies, and buy everything else. Oh, if it were only so simple. In Weighing the software decision, we offer advice on which path to follow and how to keep maintenance costs down along the way.

Open source: Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz tries to convince rival Hewlett-Packard to migrate HP-UX customers over to Sun's Solaris. HP, needless to say, is neither interested nor budging on the point. Schwartz also invited Oracle to use Sun's Project GlassFish rather than spend $400 million on JBoss. Something tells me that Oracle will decline that Schwartz offer as well. More important, will Larry really pay $400 million for JBoss?

Security: At the RSA conference, Bill Gates outlines Microsoft's ID management technology, code-named InfoCard, for Windows Vista and XP. RSA puts a token in a browser toolbar to electronically sign online transactions. A new survey shows security confidence is low, but people are buying anyway and 75 percent of businesses have completed more online transactions in the last year than they previously did, while only 1 percent saw a decline.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 15, 2006 05:07 AM