- Bidding our month of startups adieu
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- How to avoid being a 'buffer' from the brass
- Private equity and Novell: Perfect together?
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- When it's ok not to share salary history
- 5 things HP must do to impact SOA market
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- A tipping point for outsourcing
- Challenging the storage status quo
May 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Bidding our month of startups adieu
Startups: To borrow a George Harrison album title and apply it toward our Month of Enterprise Startups, All Things Must Pass. And so it's true that along with the month of May our series concludes today with Zenoss bringing open source to enterprise management. Bill Karpovich, co-founder and CEO explains that Zenoss open source network and system monitoring solution was born from the failure of IBM Tivoli at USi, an application service provider (and now a subsidiary of AT&T) where he and Zenoss inventor and CTO Erik Dahl used to work. Harrison's music lives on via CD (and tape, album, memory, et. al) archives, likewise our Special Report, replete with slideshow of all the companies.
Best of the blogs: It's something of a cliche, perhaps, that old saw 'teach what you know'. But, "as a lightweight way to steer my life in the direction of making some small positive difference I'm a pretty big fan of that phrase." So begins John West in this Leading from the trenches post. "Teaching is the best way to learn, and your knowledge and skills are some of the most precious resources you can share with others."
The news beat: Alleged Spam King Robert Alan Soloway was arrested in Seattle and, as was his company Newport Internet Marketing, charged with mail fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. Dell opens a new R&D center in Bangalore, India to further its goal of making the country a hub for enterprise-class hardware development. And TurboLinux says it will launch Wizpy in June; the multimedia player contains a PC-bootable version of Linux.
Notes from the field: Cringely may be the only guy who can come up with a headline like this one. Bill + Steve: the love that dare not speak its name. In which he compares the dynamic duo to other such pairs, namely Laurel and Hardy, and Martin and Lewis. The tech enemies shared a stage for the first time in a decade and, Cringe reports, "Jobs jabbed and Gates grinned uncomfortably." What with George Lucas, Steve Case, John Chambers, John McCain and others also in the vicinity, Cringe writes, "I understand conference organizers were forced to rent an aircraft hangar to accommodate all the egos." (Circling back to the first story in this post, Cringe links to a video of Gates and Jobs on stage in which Jobs concludes the segment by saying that, "I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song.")
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 31, 2007 10:59 AM
May 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Palm unwraps Linux-based ultramobile PC as smartphone companion, Google buys Panoramio, releases Gears for offline access to Web apps, Motorola cuts 4,000 workers, and more
LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 31, 2007 08:10 AM
May 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
How to avoid being a 'buffer' from the brass
Careers: One reader writes in to ask Bob Lewis an ostensibly simple question about tips he might have to help managers avoid becoming a barrier to communication instead of a promoter of it. "The way to avoid this problem is for upper management to stop causing trouble. It's easy to say but hard to achieve," Lewis asserts in this Advice Line post. A more realistic answer, though, is that managers should be brutally honest with themselves. "It's something every employee should do on a regular basis, in fact."
The news beat: Palm grows into the ultramobile realm with Foleo, a Linux-based PC that syncs with a smartphone and carries a full keyboard, 10-inch screen. Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem resigns after working at the company since 1996 and serving as CTO for the past decade. Rival Google, meanwhile, touts Google Gears, an open source developer tool that the company claims will solve the problem of using a Web application offline. And a security researcher says don't trust toolbars for Firefox because many, including those from AOL, Google and Yahoo, do not use secure connections to update themselves.
Hardware: It would seem that the Sun Ultra 40 M2 coupled with a 3Ware 9650SE SATA RAID controller is a match made in heaven, Paul Venezia writes. After running the pair for a few months now, he writes, "If history is any indicator, reliability isn't an issue with 3Ware cards. I'll be posting more on this power duo as time and events warrant, but for right now, I'm a very happy guy."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 31, 2007 04:39 AM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Private equity and Novell: Perfect together?
Best of the blogs: Here's a suggestion that might surprise some, though not all, of you readers. Private equity should buy out Novell. "What Novell needs is to be taken off the public market so that it can regroup and make difficult decisions that Wall Street doesn't have the patience to permit," Matt Asay asserts. "I think that it will be too hard to effectuate the necessary changes without getting off the quarterly Wall Street treadmill."
Hardware: While it's not quad-core, a magic key does exist to a quantum jump in virtual server density, according to Tom Yager. Getting much, much more per x86 rack. Host guest virtualization is one, faster server to server interconnects another. "This is the kind of leap in x86 server density that we've been waiting for...you'd be a fool not to invest the minor additional effort that pushes you higher, and quite possibly higher than my imagination has taken me."
Startups: This being the 30th of May, we're winding down the Month of Enterprise Startups, but the last two are just as important as their predecessors. Today's is ConnectBeam: Social Bookmarks behind the firewall. ConnectBeam's technology enables bookmarks to be made available to anyone else inside a corporation who is searching for similar information. And it relies on folksonomy to achieve that. Founder and CEO Puneet Gupta explains that a taxonomy has trouble telling the difference between, say, the element Mercury and the planet of the same name. Hence, that folksonomy. View the slideshow with all the companies we've thus far revealed.
The news beat: Samsung crams 4GB of storage into a mobile phone chip for 3G handsets and claims it could reduce the need for external memory cards. Adobe slides mark-up features into Acrobat 3D for working in CAD files. And Symantec delays its mobile security client, Norton Mobile Security for Smartphones.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 30, 2007 11:09 AM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Adobe bridges Java and .Net worlds. Also, Google adds street views to Google Maps, Palm plans to unwrap new device today, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 30, 2007 07:26 AM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When it's ok not to share salary history
Careers: Advising employment hunters not to confuse the process of applying for a job with that of showing a hiring manager you are worth talking to, Nick Corcodilos explains that despite what job descriptions call for, it's appropriate not to reveal your salary history. "Instead of filling out a data field that puts you at a disadvantage, stop, figure out who is the manager involved, and get in touch directly," he writes in Just say no. "If you provide your salary history, you will sacrifice your ability to negotiate later."
Notes from the field: Spotting national trends before they become headlines is just one of the many, many tasks Robert X. Cringely fills his days with. This time its about cousins, or perhaps just perceived kinfolk. Bill Gates and Robert M. Gates. Jessica Simpson and Homer Simpson. You get the picture. It all began when 23andMe.com probed to determine whether investor Warren Buffett and pop star Jimmy are of distant relation. "No, thank Google," Cringe reports. Wasting away in Googlenetics-ville.
Columnist's corner: In something of a Robert Frost meets Bugs Bunny mood, Oliver Rist reflects that he should have taken that path way back in Albuquerque that would have led to law school -- so he could sue the pants off anyone violating Microsoft patents. Either that or work for the Linux Foundation's legal team and today be prepping to countersue Team Redmond. Instead, he's infected with "this inner need to work on projects that actually have the feeling of moving things forward," he explains in OCS 2007 doesn't spell doom for VoIP. Now he's reflecting again, only this time it doesn't go back any further than the Interop show. "Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 has telephony vendors worried. And I really don't get why. Not because it's from Redmond..."
The news beat: Adobe injects a public beta of ColdFusion 8 with support for Microsoft .Net that, the company claims, bridges the Java and Microsoft worlds. Toshiba provides details on the AMD-based laptops that it will launch in the third quarter of this year. And a jury finds Qualcomm guilty of patent of infringement in the Broadcom case.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 30, 2007 04:42 AM
May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
5 things HP must do to impact SOA market
Best of the blogs: What with the SOA governance tool it released last week, Hewlett-Packard seems ready to battle the likes of IBM, Oracle and Tibco, David Linthicum explains in this Real World SOA post. Not so fast, though; HP has to straighten a few tactics out first. The starting points are a detailed product strategy, and a defined stack road map. "The issue here is that HP is rather big, and their SOA offering is rather small," Linthicum adds.
Startups: Nailing identity and access management, protecting against hackers and insider threats, all the while being able to pass external compliance audits is a daunting task for any IT shop. But Securent thinks it has a brand new approach. Securent takes access control to a new level. "We have a very distributed architecture that allows people to specify and configure entitlement policies in a central place to enforce them consistently over different applications and resources," says Rajiv Gupta, co-founder and CEO. Related: Wage inflation sinks offshoring.
Slideshow: The Ten Commandments of Blogs and Wiki Etiquette. Well, the title pretty much says it all, but here's a taste. One is 'Thou shall not confuse thy opinion with gospel truth' and 'Thou shall own up to thy mistakes' is another. Watch it here.
The news beat: While the U.S. FCC investigates the Google-DoubleClick acquisition for privacy and anticompetitive practice concerns, Google buys GreenBorder Technologies and its way into the antivirus fray. Garmin opens its GPS data to coders in hopes of making it easier to write applications that use the devices' information. And BMC buys ProactiveNet to add its analytics software to BMC's business service management roster.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 29, 2007 10:44 AM
May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
BEA jumps into event-driven architecture fray, U.S. FTC investigates Google-DoubleClick, Toshiba says it will use AMD chips, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 29, 2007 08:36 AM
May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A tipping point for outsourcing
Editor's letter: It being just after Memorial Day and all, "many InfoWorld readers are having their patriotism tested by a topic that hits close to home: offshoring," explains Steve Fox in Is outsourcing getting too expensive? "Wouldn't it be ironic if the same economic forces that once made offshoring inevitable could someday make it impractical? It could happen."
Columnist's corner: First, a joke (sort of anyway). How many techs does it take to turn on a PC? The short answer is three can do it, but in three hours. "It was a Monday morning. A user called in unable to get his computer to boot up," writes our Off the Record author. Two hours, a pair of theories and a junior floor tech later and, "the dead PC remained dead." Next the IT support manager dispatched a senior tech to the scene. Perhaps a resurrection was in order.
Reality check: Two trends are currently unfolding that impact people's relationship with information, explains Ephraim Schwartz, in Dumbing down and smartening up via the Web. One grabs attention, the other moves it toward deeper sets of knowledge. "The scarier trend is what I call the dumbing down of information to accommodate what some are calling Digital Natives," he writes. "On the smartening up side, I see the concept of social networking creating a growing pool of people who have access to and thus are aware of far more information than ever before."
The news beat: BEA Systems tackles event-driven architecture with a product ripe for SOA in Java environments, BEA WebLogic Event Server. Toshiba says it will use an AMD chip in a low-end laptop. And Microsoft claims to have sold more than a million Zune music players.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 29, 2007 05:31 AM
May 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Challenging the storage status quo
Storage: If, like many IT professionals, you're not exactly satisfied with your storage gear, you just might find what you need in an ostensibly unlikely place, offers Mario Apicella in Raising the storage bar. That would be vendors NEC and Stratus. "New or old, both companies are putting some heat on the storage industry," Apicella writes. "Although Stratus has perhaps more moderate ambitions, NEC has the financial and technological muscles to give the largest storage vendors a headache or two."
Security: It's been ten months since Roger Grimes kicked off his password hash cracking contest in which he posited that short and complex passwords are easier to break than longer but less complex ones. The first piece was cracked in November of last year. "We have a winner for the second of three hash challenges," Grimes writes in this week's installment of Security Adviser. "I just don't know who they are." The original contest guidelines are here. Oh yes, and to the very clever cracker of part 2: reveal yourself and collect your well-deserved prize!
Columnist's corner: Indifference and incompetence can make for a potentially lethal combination. At least according to our Off the Record author, who claims to have gotten a cold, hard look at the dynamic duo -- and in a piping hot server room, to boot. "The machine and drives were so old that there was a legitimate concern that they would not power up again." Guess what ... management, comprised of non-IT folks, "never really understood what was at stake."
Startups: London-based Cogneto brings risk analysis to the authentication equation with its Unomi solution for verifying user identity and measuring risk against biometric and behavioral factors. "The way that people interact with information is incredibly unique," CTO Patrick Audley says. Cogneto: to identity and beyond! "So if you can find a way to capture that, then you can measure someone's identity." View the slideshow Month of Enterprise Startups to see all those we've thus far revealed.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 25, 2007 10:25 AM
May 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Philadelphia steps closer to citywide municipal Wi-Fi, Wal-Mart to sell Dell PCs, Mozilla boosts 'Places' in Firefox 3.0 alpha, MS grants Zune team iPod amnesty, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 25, 2007 07:43 AM
May 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A nod in favor of 64-bit Vista
Best of the blogs: The Web is rife with negative reviews of the 64-bit version of Windows Vista, as Randall Kennedy points out. "So I was understandably curious how my own transition would unfold," he writes in 64-bits of smooth sailing. Six days and the recreation of his runtime environment later and Mr. Kennedy only came across 2 incompatibilities: an unsigned device driver and the Office Web Components from Office 2003. "The overall runtime experience has been far superior to 32-bit Vista. For example, multitasking -- especially under heavy loads with SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and several VMware virtual machines chewing-up the available RAM -- is much smoother under Vista 64-bit." There are downsides, of course.
Sustainable IT: Thin clients are not only slimmer than those fat desktops hogging cubicle corners, they're also more eco-friendly. Verizon, for instance, slashed its energy consumption 30 percent by replacing PCs with Sun Ray clients, Ted Samson reports in Thinking green? Think thin. "That will translate to a savings of $1 million per year, once the company rolls out thin clients in its remaining data centers." Verizon is not the only success story, and thin client options abound.
From the Test Center: Walking a different path than most, Oakley Networks SureView helps enterprises get at the root cause of insider threats. "Rather than take the all-or-nothing approach, the system's designers fundamentally believe that bad behavior is perpetrated by certain individuals in specific situations and should be addressed accordingly," Mike Heck writes. While it does not offer message blocking, the new version brings more trigger responses, improved agent management, and better reporting. "SureView 4.0 is a very good solution for targeted investigations." And, it has Mr. Heck looking forward to version 5.0, slated for later this year. Read the full review.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 25, 2007 04:24 AM
May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Columnist's corner: The tiny country has been under cyber attack for three weeks now. The aggressor, Estonia's government believes, is Russia. Such an assault raises all kinds of questions, namely: whether or not the Kremlin is involved, if such a devastating econo-knockout punch is comparable to military aggression, and under what circumstances the U.S. would intervene, David Margulius writes in Cyberpunks: Pick on someone your own size. "As an IT manager, should you care about Estonia? Not particularly. Should you care about the possibility of geopolitical turmoil leading to cyberattacks affecting your company? You bet."
Startups: A crop of companies has sprouted in the last few years to help guard against data leaks, and Code Green is one such example. "We've gone from talking to companies who want to get educated," explains Chip Hay, senior vice president for marketing and customer care at Code Green. "Now they've decided that [they] want to put data leak prevention in place." The next iteration of Code Green's appliance will bring enhanced data fingerprinting for relational data, structured and flat files.
Video: At WinHEC Microsoft chairman Bill Gates discusses Windows Vista and Server 2008, the operating system formerly known as Longhorn. "We've been amazed at the customer response," Gates says, adding that Vista has sold nearly 40 million copies as of last week. Watch it here.
The news beat: Microsoft and Novell defend their partnership with claims that Microsoft is now Novell's most prominent channel partner. Dell begins shipping its first Linux PCs, pre-loaded with Ubuntu, along with a Linux Forum to guide users toward resources, help with troubleshooting. A Michigan man gets fined for hopping on a cafe's wireless network -- from his car parked outside. And Nokia says that it will add to its phones a feature that warns users when lightning is about to strike; exact timing for this one remains in the 'someday' realm, but the company has applied for a patent.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 24, 2007 10:45 AM
May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Novell bands with the EFF to push patent reform, Dell begins offering PCs pre-loaded with Linux, HP settles with the U.S. SEC, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 24, 2007 08:22 AM
May 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Freedom: a better business model
Best of the blogs: And that applies to more than just software. At least according to Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL. Think eBay, Google, Skype and YouTube. Open source in and of itself, though, is not a business model, he says. But as Matt Asay points out, "it does nudge the vendor one direction or another."
Quoteworthy: There was, and still is, no such thing as an IT impulse buy, a system purchase or a switch in suppliers driven by the emergence of a new or updated CPU architecture. Indeed, institutional buyers are still unmoved by that great obsession of punditry, market share. It delights me whenever tech industry oddsmakers' projections, always presented with such certainty, are made hollow by the market that these pundits fancy themselves driving rather than watching. -- Tom Yager. The two technology markets.
Q&A: Google product manager Nathan Stoll defends the Google News practice of indexing media content, sans permission. In this interview with the IDG News Service, Stoll also discusses plans for video news and social networking sites.
Security: Microsoft could fulfill security dreams with NAP, or, then again, perhaps not. At Interop this week were, "Cisco, Juniper, and Microsoft clearly showing that endpoint security solutions can talk to each other if only they'd try," writes Oliver Rist in this installment of Enterprise Windows. Third-party providers have a fighting chance for the next year or so, but they'll have to deliver better management interfaces, better support for transient clients, much better support for unmanaged clients, and support from all the best anti-virus/anti-malware engines. "Just a few of the things on my endpoint wish list, and they'd better be there a year from now or the Redmondian version really will be a foregone conclusion."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 24, 2007 04:49 AM
May 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Video: BT has some lofty ambitions: to be 100 percent SOA by the year after next. Eric Knorr chats with BT's chief architect George Glass about the company's goal, and how it got from a customer-oriented architecture to service-oriented. "Using the elements of reuse, what we actually see is a dollar and cents benefit," Glass explains. Watch SOA for the customer's sake here.
The news beat: Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth says that open source and Microsoft are actually on the same side of the software patent issue. 3Com offers cheap IPS gateways. Google suggests an ad-like auction for U.S. spectrum in a filing made to the FCC. And Moore's Law meets Gore's Law at the Microprocessor Forum 2007.
Startups: MuleSource is striving to bring flexibility, speed and low cost to large-scale integration. "Enterprise software has failed completely in this spot," insists Dave Rosenberg, MuleSource CEO and, I should point out, an InfoWorld blogger. "Here you have something that's crucial to the business and you need a huge level of customization. But you can't get that with a proprietary vendor." Read the full story, and view the Month of Enterprise Startups slideshow.
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely throws in his two cents regarding the Linux users who are inviting a lawsuit from Microsoft. In Be the first on your block to be sued by Microsoft, Cringe paints a new picture of the company's CEO. "Imagine Steve Ballmer as a Bond villain, wearing a monocle and stroking a white cat." What it all really means, though, is that "for the first time since DOS 2.0, Microsoft may have a real operating system fight on its hands."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 23, 2007 10:55 AM
May 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
HP joins ranks of tech vendors investing in environmental causes, Linux users invite Microsoft to sue, Business Objects goes on-demand, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 23, 2007 07:40 AM
May 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Some vendors harder to shame than others
Gripe Line: "Today's gripe is a tale about HP and the grueling support gantlet a reader and her son were forced to run to get a broken computer fixed," Ed Foster begins An HP support nightmare and customer recourse. At issue: they sent back the PC which kept turning on and off and flashing green lights across the screen, only to receive it again with the same problem. Oh, and a few scratches here and there, compliments of HP, of course. Repeat. 25 hours on phone support. Still an unusable PC. "I want to emphasize that it could just as easily be about Dell. Or Gateway -- except if it were Gateway, we probably would not have as happy an ending as we can relate here."
Podcasts: Full-contact SOA. Sounds a tad extreme sports-like, perhaps, but it was the topic of David Linthicum's keynote presentation at last week's InfoWorld SOA Executive Forum. Now it's online. "I'm not going to play the entire hour ... just the most interesting part." Tune into The SOA Report here.
Columnist's corner: More "goldfish in a Dixie cup," than big fish in a little pond, our Off the Record author served as MIS manager in a small shop -- where a fateful box turned a monitor blue. (And no, not as in the Blue Screen of Death.) VGA blues. "After months of perfectly ordinary days, the receptionist called me, frantic. When she started her system that morning, the monitor had a horrible tinge to it..."
Live Chat: Let me clarify: this one is actually the full transcript of an archived chat that took place leading up to the Open Source business conference. Doug Dineley and Matt Asay host. That means its chock full of opinion, mostly about Novell, Microsoft and the current state of open source, not to mention irony and debate about whether applications that run on Linux and Apache are, by nature, open source. Discussion also touches upon how open source winds its way up to the CIO, gains leverage, and the worst thing about proprietary products for customers.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 23, 2007 04:47 AM
May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
IT failure as currency of success
Careers: It's a theme ripe for exploration during our month-long look at startup companies. Despite taking great strides to avoid it, as you grow in your career failure is an inevitability. That's not to say failure is necessarily bad, though. "Here's the truth: if you aren't failing at least occasionally, you aren't doing anything of long-term value for yourself or others," espouses John West in this Leading from the trenches post. Another way to think about it is that even though it might be painful and embarrassing, failing means learning something new and, as such, should be recognized "as the currency of success, not as an occasion for recrimination and remorse."
Startups: Open source has shaken up several aspects of the software fray. Operating systems, databases, even BI. If three-year old Hyperic has its way, the next up will be systems management. The goal, as is nearly always the case with open source projects, was to build a community around the product. "Here you have this large-scale community of sysops who are sharing the results of managing large environments and discussing what works and what doesn't," says CEO and co-founder Javier Soltero. And to think, Soltero bought the technology for $1. View the Month of Enterprise Startups slideshow.
Compliance: What with a major revision planned for Sarbanes-Oxley, the aim remains the same, though the approach changes. "That difference will have an appreciable effect on IT, in a good way," writes Ephraim Schwartz. For starters, the latest iteration, otherwise known as Audit Standard No. 5, reduces some of the bureaucracy of compliance, and exchanges minutiae for a focus on the bigger picture. "The SEC will relax some nitpicky procedures in favor of a top-down approach. Which is probably a good idea, given that the real risk lies at the top."
The news beat: In a public wiki, some Linux users actually invite Microsoft to sue them, with one such IT pro writing "as a Linux user for nine years I believe I deserve to be sued." Dell, meanwhile, says that laptops pre-loaded with Linux will be available on Thursday. And to obtain its software for analyzing unstructured data Business Objects gobbles up Inxight .
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 22, 2007 11:03 AM
May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A dozen telephony vendors back Microsoft's OCS 2007 spec, Symantec explains buggy update, recording industry goes after allofMP3.com, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 22, 2007 07:55 AM
May 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apps: The rumored partnership between Google and Salesforce.com "could have far more significance than simply sharing and exchanging mashups," writes Eprhaim Schwartz in Google, Salesforce may make software history. The imprimatur of Salesforce's application with Google "may start as a ripple, but I predict it will end up as a tsunami that could, one day, wash away the largest software company of all time." It's only conjecture at this point, though.
From the feature well: Microsoft's patent claims over Linux are not the only threat to open source. "An accurate understanding of the relationship between open source code and intellectual property can help IT practitioners become better advocates for open source within their organizations," explains Neil McAllister in How risky is open source? Facts to understand include who owns the code, trademarks, patent issues. "Actual risk is impossible to measure, but probably minimal."
Best of the blogs: Reporting live from Interop in Las Vegas, Oliver Rist is "wading through carnage caused by dozens of SEs given free reign to setup the latest equipment, management software and geek toys," he writes in SMB IT. The vendors, meanwhile, are "making loads of announcements and bombarding my inbox with them."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 22, 2007 04:53 AM
May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Changing nature of enterprise architecture
Best of the blogs: Hitting the links with Open Group CEO Allen Brown led David Linthicum to think about the discipline around enterprise architecture and SOA, and things the Open Group is doing in this realm, specifically. "The core issue here is driving this into the industry so that people think about it as a true professional organization," Linthicum writes in this Real World SOA post. "This is really good for SOA as well, considering that there will be a common architecture framework around SOA, and standard frameworks and approaches."
Video: In The week ahead with Gina Smith, she discusses Google's major overhaul of search, and previews the Semantic Web show, Interop and the Open Source Business Conference. Robert X. Cringely gets the last word. Watch it here.
The news beat: IBM releases its Power6 processor and boasts that it's the fastest chip yet for high-end servers. The Trusted Computing Group details a new specification that will enable products to integrate with Microsoft's network access protection infrastructure. And Vodafone aims handsets at developing markets.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 21, 2007 11:20 AM
May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google, Salesforce.com in partnership talks, Dell shows prototype Tablet PC, Siemens names new CEO, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 21, 2007 08:03 AM
May 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Careers: One reader finds himself in the sticky situation of having a new boss that lacks IT experience and never makes time for it. Add to that vibes bad enough that our reader feels he/she will be replaced, and soon. "Is it worse for me to be fired for cause or quit? How will it affect my job search and subsequent reference/background check?" our reader poses. Bob Lewis has an answer in New boss, bad boss. "I don't recommend trying to fix your relationship with your new boss," Lewis asserts. "The conversation you'd have to have would be all downside and no upside."
From the Test Center: Trapeze Networks AirDefense both sell the RingMaster 5.0-AirDefense 7.0 combination of WLAN monitoring and network access policies. "Based on what I've seen, this is a strong product that will likely get better as AirDefense and Trapeze add more automation to upcoming releases." Read the full review.
Columnist's corner: Honesty is not always the best policy. Plowing through 4GL code, easing tension between IT folks and the accounts staff, 18-hour days, all added up to a report showing no problems. It looked so good, in fact, that our Off The Record author and his team automated the entire Christmas run, from tape load to reconciliation to potential restore and didn't have to think about it over the holidays. Until a puzzled accountant came knocking. The numbers were off, you see, and one simple code alteration was responsible. "Of course, I never fessed up, until now. I hope the cold sweats I still get when making one-liner changes are punishment enough."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 21, 2007 04:02 AM
May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The key to stopping data leaks
Storage: It is with blood-boiling indignation that Mario Apicella explains how remedies for data breaches have been inadequate, at best. "Almost all of those disclosures could have been prevented by using data encryption on sensitive data, especially when that data flows to mobile devices or removable media," he explains in this week's installment of Storage Insider. What's more, the tools to do so are widely available. "Why, then, are companies not implementing encryption whenever possible and appropriate?"
Startups: Silver Peak Systems claims to transition WANs into LANs. And no, I don't have that backward. The idea was born while Silver Peak co-founder CTO David Hughes was an executive in residence at Benchmark Capital and examining the branch office to create an appliance that would improve the link to the home network. The result of that quest is disk-based data reduction that eliminates repetitive data transfers by identifying byte-level patterns of data that have traveled the WAN and serving them locally on subsequent requests.
The news beat: After losing out to Google in the DoubleClick bidding war, Microsoft reveals intentions to scoop up aQuantive for its digital marketing services. Adware maker Zango sues PC Tools over the antispyware program flagging and removing Zango's technology. A year-long study conducted by the OpenNet Initiative finds that government filtering of online content is on the rise. And Symantec says Chinese hackers are growing in number and skills.
Careers: Most people have something to say worth hearing. You can't possibly have all the good ideas. Those are but two pieces of the advice John West shares in this Leading from the trenches post. "People in all situations feel valued when they feel they have impact or influence on their surroundings," West writes. "The strength of your solutions will increase ten-fold, and the strength of your implementations will increase exponentially."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 18, 2007 10:56 AM
May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Dell unveils Project Hybrid for enterprise customers, U.S. FCC approves Apple iPhone, Microsoft pushes for patent reform, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 18, 2007 07:52 AM
May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The compatibility issue ignored by Salesforce.com
Gripe Line: "One reader has been flabbergasted to find that Salesforce.com seems to have no inclination to fix a compatibility problem that he and other customers have encountered between Salesforce and Office 2007," Ed Foster reports in this post. The case has been viewed literally hundreds of times by the hosting provider, but to no avail. Now, it is closed -- with no fix, and Salesforce.com no longer responding. "Yesterday, the reader gave up."
Notes from the field: Another one that borders on the ludicrous from the oft-off-beat Robert X. Cringely. In a word: MooTube. Indeed. Welsh monks created a Webcam to help save Shambo the bovine tuberculosis-laden cow. Such infection, Cringe reports, is "apparently a capital offense in Wales." The monks, alas, contend that Shambo will recover. The no bull prize.
The news beat: Dell unwraps Project Hybrid, a new strategy to take back some of the ground it has lost to Hewlett-Packard and IBM in the enterprise PC fray. (View a slideshow on Hybrid here.) The U.S. FCC approves Apple's iPhone, which Apple says will go on sale in late June. And a Cisco executive says that the lines are blurring between applications and communications spaces, and other previously distinct worlds are merging as well.
Best of the blogs: Reflecting on a panel he moderated this week at InfoWorld's SOA Executive Forum, David Linthicum concedes that "SOA has always included business processes." Still, it's a worthy discussion point because many folks think it's new. Linthicum adds that, "processes are able to abstract distributed services turning them into solutions within a SOA," and in the end, "Planning and good architecture lead the day."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 18, 2007 05:03 AM
May 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Defining the phrase open source
Best of the blogs: It had to happen. What with Microsoft's patent claims, the meaning of open source came into question once again. There are different takes on this, of course, and most recently Gartner weighs in. Tending toward the OSI description, Matt Asay agrees with Gartner in at least one capacity. "Whatever the definition, it needs to be consistent." The idea here is not to confuse buyers. Related: Hilf: Microsoft won't sue over Linux, for now.
From the Test Center: Handing off active voice sessions from one network to another is a formidable task, and one that DiVitas' wireless technology avows to achieve. Configuration is "fairly easy, considering its functionality," find Oliver Rist and Brian Chee. "DiVitas' solution is fantastic for companies with large fleets of roaming voice users." Read the full review.
Startups: Teqlo had a rather ironic origin. "We were a solution in search of a problem to solve," CEO Jacoby Thwaites says. Not your father's mashup. That solution is the company's mashup platform, the first application of which will blend Salesforce.com widgets, Outlook, Plaxo and BlackBerry. How? Each piece self-describes its capability and the Teqlo engine does the rest. View the Month of Enterprise Mashups slideshow.
The news beat: Oracle looks to ratchet up its product lifecycle management software via the $495 million bid for Agile Software this week. India's commerce minister cautions that a U.S. investigation into H-1B visas could have negative implications for other trade issues between the countries. And security firm Secunia says that Firefox users are more likely to install patches than folks who use IE or even Opera.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 17, 2007 10:59 AM
May 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google goes after 'universal' search model. Also, NY AG sues Dell for fraud, false advertising, Fujitsu shows off e-paper screens, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 17, 2007 07:49 AM
May 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: The notion that SOA is currently making more sense to business than it is to IT is gaining steam. Likewise, it follows that IT is actually inhibiting SOA, though it's not categorical pushback, David Linthicum writes, just caution around the issues. "I spend more time going after hearts and minds than pushing the technology and approach," he adds. "The technology is easy, hearts and minds are not."
Sustainable IT: While the U.S. government sets high standards for hardware makers, IT vendors such as Dell, IBM and HP "have been raising that bar even higher, scrutinizing not only suppliers' materials and manufacturing processes, but their overall environmental practices," reports Ted Samson in Green demands trickle down the supply chain. But "efforts to green the supply chain aren't just to satisfy the IT vendors."
Live Chat: Conference organizer and InfoWorld blogger Matt Asay is holding a discussion today at 11 PST, in the open source chat room of IT Exec-Connect, where he'll share the inside scoop on next week's Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), and address hot topics of the day, such as Microsoft's latest wrangling. (Free registration required.)
The news beat: The soon-to-be-approved GPL v3 could complicate Microsoft's patent claims and, at the very least, it raises questions about the company's deal with Novell. Google moves to what it calls 'universal' search, or the integration of results from its specialty engines so users won't have to run the same query multiple times. And Oracle takes a stake in IP management company Sophoi.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 17, 2007 04:47 AM
May 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, IBM and tactical weapons of choice
Columnist's corner: Linux is not the only concern Microsoft faces these days. Take the Open Document Format, for instance. "At the highest level, ODF vs. OpenXML is a battle between two business competitors, IBM and Microsoft, each of which views itself as threatened by the other," Ephraim Schwartz begins in this week's installment of Reality Check. You see, when high-tech companies go to war, technology is the weapon of choice, he explains. "What you shouldn't expect is any meeting of minds between the two companies. However, while this may appear to be a battle to the death, I don’t see the fight over file formats as Armageddon. That will have to wait for another day."
Careers: In IT and elsewhere, success can depend on whether you work to grow, or just to get the job done, points out Nick Corcodilos in Learning to fail, a post inspired in part by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's work researching adults who give up easily and those who persist in the face of setbacks. "Reading it hasn't changed my life, but it's made me watch myself now," Corcodilos confesses. "Am I getting along? Or am I learning something? Not enough of the latter."
Gripe Line: Replacing a motherboard in your PC means ponying up cash to Microsoft for the OS that came with your system. The problem is that Microsoft doesn't make that clear at all. "Microsoft has chosen not to inform end users, not even in the darkest depths of the Windows EULAs, of this policy. Instead, computer manufacturers have just quietly been told that, hey, that's the way it's going to be," Ed Foster reports in Motherboard replacement and Windows OEM EULAs. To be fair, Foster admits there are multiple angles to this debate. "But on one point there should be no argument: Customers have the right to know about any policy that might cost them money before they purchase a computer with bundled Microsoft software."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 16, 2007 10:49 AM
May 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A Mozilla service lets users store online content on a remote server and access that information via cellphones, Motorola unveils the Razr2, Bill Gates announces Longhorn will be known officially as Windows Server 2008, Oracle pays $495 million to buy Agile Software, and more. LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 16, 2007 08:00 AM
May 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Careers: Building smart teams. "The difference between a group -- where the aggregate is dumber than its members -- and a team, where it is smarter, depends on trust and alignment," writes Bob Lewis. Trouble is, neither one is sufficient on its own; you need both. "Especially alignment. Focus on building it and the team will generally figure out the trust part."
Podcasts: David Linthicum shares his notes about the SOA Executive Forum this week. His talk at the conference is about Full Contact SOA. "Service oriented architecture is moving from no contact ... to people making time to build their service oriented architectures and doing it right the first time." Highlights include: the technology is easy but people are hard; focus on using best technology, but not the technology that's easiest to use; don't follow the hype; and people can't take SOA in a huge dose. Tune into SOA Report here.
Best of the blogs: Boatloads of cash and 31 years old, Microsoft remains unchanged, espouses Matt Asay in At least Microsoft is consistent. At the heart of this entry is a classic diddy from Bill Gates that highlights how his thinking about open source has lasted so long. "The irony is palpable," Asay asserts. "This isn't about IP. It's about Microsoft's 'right' to a business model under siege." Related: Jonathan Schwartz to Ballmer: Try innovating, not litigating.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 16, 2007 05:01 AM
May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Even in IT, lunacy is relative
Columnist's corner: Disbelievers in the paranormal, think again! That's the advice our Off the Record author offers in The ghost who sabotaged the mainframe. "The story really starts back in December of 1971..." A week later, his predecessor, Ernie, was in a fatal car crash. Back in the office, though, the door to the limited-access computer room opened and closed -- while every single person with permissions to it was in a meeting down the hall. Lights flickered. Soft breezes stirred. The most bizarre hardware problems HP had ever dealt with arose in the following weeks. "Gradually, we began to accept the fact that somehow Ernie was still with us ... I didn't feel comfortable telling the HP engineers." This ghost tale, not entirely over even today, left one reader commenting that, "Many is the day I needed an exorcist far more than a call to Redmond. Exorcism is just the ultimate in outsourcing."
Startups: Rockwell Scientific spin-off ColdWatt makes servers mean and green. Indeed, a machine loaded with ColdWatt's power supplies would need only 25 watts for power conversion and 106 for air conditioning; for a bit of perspective the company claims that a server needing 200 watts of electricity actually consumers 511 watts, with 96 for power conversion and 193 for cooling. View the slideshow Month of Enterprise Startups, with all 15 revealed thus far. Related: Vendors' green messages are loud, not clear.
Quoteworthy: Sarbanes/Oxley and other regulatory requirements aren't just about keeping an eye on wayward CEOs. They're about trying to govern the behavior of this species. Not an easy task. -- Bob Lewis. Six stupid and the nature of adulthood.
The news beat: U.S. ISPs, broadband and VoIP providers come up against the wiretap deadline to prove they can accommodate law-enforcement regulations. An IBM labor union calls for a 15-minute work stoppage this afternoon in protest of layoffs. AMD Developer Center gives a boost to software aimed at multicore chips, while Sun Microsystems licenses multithreading technology to ARM, and Intel settles its copyright suit with a Chinese company.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 15, 2007 11:09 AM
May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Backlash begins in response to Microsoft patent claims over open source. Also, former Oracle exec fined for using insider information, Sun licenses multithreading technology to ARM, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 15, 2007 08:19 AM
May 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Live chat: Today at 11 a.m. PST, Ask the Headhunter author Nick Corcodilos is hosting a discussion and answering questions about how to deal with headhunters. It's in the IT ExecConnect careers chat room. (Registration required but, hey, it's free.)
Open source: What with Microsoft claiming royalty rights, open-source providers, and users, insist that it's patent claims prove Microsoft is threatened by Linux. "It's like saying I have a big baseball bat, and I'm going to hit somebody," says Joe Lindsay, CIO at Secured Funding Corp. "Everyone runs away." Related: Microsoft patent claims hit at internal issues.
Best of the blogs: Martin Heller takes a look at Microsoft's resurrected XML Notepad. "I find the application quite useful," he writes. "On the other hand, don't expect too much: I wasn't able to build the version 465 project I downloaded from CodePlex without errors in my copy of Visual Studio 2005."
The news beat: Hitachi Data Systems revamps its storage virtualization and adds thin provisioning. An analyst at Forrester Research says Apple TV and video iTunes have a rather limited future and that, "the paid video download market ... will go the way of the dodo." And the U.S. DOJ piracy crackdown gets its 50th conviction; that would be Christopher Eaves, a member of the Apocalypse Crew.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 15, 2007 04:37 AM
May 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft patch party gone wrong
Notes from the field: Microsoft's patch brouhaha last Tuesday got a bit rowdy when svchost.exe hijacked users' CPU cycles. "A hotfix issued by Microsoft has done nothing to solve the problem," Cringely writes in Microsoft: We canna taka no more, cap'n. Disabling Automatic Updates seems to be the best workaround, Cringe asserts. "I suspect the Romulans had a hand in all this."
Special report: SOA is everywhere in the tech realm these days. As the model gains momentum, though, it's becoming clear that there are SOA bottlenecks, particularly when trying to scale. "The good news," pipes Galen Gruman, "is that by understanding these barriers you can plot a way around them." Other obstacles include actually getting the concept and selling the dream.
Startups: Two-year old Talend is looking to make BI for the masses more than just an empty mantra by driving costs down via open source. Or at least the ETL piece. "We are already seeing integration work at companies that could not dream of data integration a few years ago," says vice president of marketing Yves de Montcheuil. Or view the Month of Enterprise Startups slideshow. Related: VCs take startups on the road.
Best of the blogs: In response to Microsoft's claim that Linux and other open source products infringe on patents it holds, Matt Asay fires back in Put up or shut up, Microsoft. "We're left with chimera. It's hard to get excited about paying Microsoft's poll tax when Microsoft refuses to substantiate its claims."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 14, 2007 10:30 AM
May 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft demands royalties on Linux, other open source wares. Also, AMD details Phenom chip, notebook sales dip, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 14, 2007 08:12 AM
May 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
5 reasons not to plug security holes
Columnist's corner: It seems like a simple enough question. Should vendors close all security holes? If you're thinking 'why, yes, of course they ought to," then not so fast. Security guru Roger Grimes leans toward a 'yes,' but one reader's response was interesting enough to stir internal debate. This reader, you see, has five main reasons for waiting to close a noncritical, internally discovered vulnerability. Budget, to be certain, is a big one. So is the belief that "when a bug isn't announced, most hackers don't exploit it." True or not, Grimes concedes that our reader does make points cognitive enough to be worthy of consideration.
From the Test Center: As they become easier to create, Web services also are getting easier to foul up. With that in mind, Rick Grehan examines tools that claim to verify your Web services do what they're supposed to do. "These three open-source Web service testing tools require a little more work, and I would recommend them for moderate-to-expert developers, where the learning curve would be only modestly longer than for a commercial product," he writes. One resides above the others for its lighter framework and Perl roots. "These three tools place themselves along the spectrum from quick and easy to complex and powerful." Read the full review.
Video: This iteration of The Week Ahead with Gina Smith looks at YouTube as a malware hotspot, previews our upcoming SOA Executive Forum, and delves into what Silicon Valley is doing about global warming. Watch it here.
The news beat: Microsoft's general counsel demands royalties for open source software, including Linux, saying that it infringes on 235 of its patents. AMD details its forthcoming 'Phenom' quad-core chip for desktops, while the arrival of Intel's Santa Rosa chip slows notebook sales for April. And SAP buys two Scandinavian companies to gain identity management software and IP-based call center applications.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 14, 2007 05:46 AM
May 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Longhorn to sweep Linux off table
From the Test Center: Microsoft's Longhorn appears to have been hit with a mega-dose of growth hormones since the second beta, points out Tom Yager. "And I mean that in a good way." Minding that, Mr. Yager focuses not so much on the strengthening of features that Microsoft has done but, instead, on the new functionality, commencing with PowerShell. Out of the box security and virtualization are in there, too. "Longhorn will go where money is no object. And from what I've seen of it in beta 3, it will sweep Linux off the table in some of those well-moneyed places where the heavy lifting is done, and will continue to be done, by unsinkable big iron Unix." Read the full review.
Startups: Calling his company "a bet made on several things," CEO and co-founder Bob Quinn explains that 3Leaf Systems achieved the first piece of its two-phase plan just last week with the introduction of its V-8000 Virtual I/O Server. The appliance, he says, promises huge hardware savings via dynamic allocation of network and storage bandwidth among as many as 20 Windows, Linux, and VMware ESX servers. 3Leaf Systems: Scale up by scaling out. Or view the Month of Enterprise Startups slideshow, which features the dozen fledglings we've thus far named.
Best of the blogs: A short list exists of issues that Paul Venezia just cannot comprehend. Six items that need to change, to be precise, beginning with the RIAA's war against customers, and concluding with the aptly titled category, "Oops! I lost your ID. My bad." I hate to eradicate the mystery of the others, so I won't. I will say, though, that Mr. Venezia considers one that I've not revealed to be personal and while I cannot speak for him, they all more or less impact on an individual level.
The news beat: IBM criticizes TippingPoint over the hacking contest it held that spurred the disclosure of a vulnerability in Apple's browser. Big Blue also unveils Big Green, a $1 billion per year initiative to create datacenters that use less energy. Following that, here's a look at seven green products that can save IT money, beginning with an esoteric data center liquid cooling system.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 11, 2007 10:59 AM
May 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft cuts virtualization features, Ballmer downplays rumors of Yahoo acquisition, U.K. gov't ID card plan soars in cost, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 11, 2007 07:44 AM
May 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Open source: Red Hat, like many a company, could be doing more with its resources, including it's brand. That sentiment comes from both Credit Suisse's Jason Maynard and contributing editor Matt Asay, in Red Hat's opportunity. In short: that involves the company expanding its footprint by acquiring the likes of Zimbra and others. "This may not be the time to be as prudent as Red Hat would like," Asay writes. "Oracle is not sitting still. Neither is Microsoft." The important thing, he adds, is for Red Hat to operate like it has to go it alone because, well, it does.
The news beat: In hopes of preventing further delays, Microsoft cuts key server virtualization features out of the first public beta of its hypervisor technology, Viridian. The Free Software Foundation claims it will iron out incompatibilities with other free software licenses and organizations, including the Apache Software Foundation. And the Truste group says that because building trust in downloads is no easy matter it unveils a program to certify downloadable software and, in so doing, is forcing white list members to disclose the impact on users' PCs.
Columnist's corner: Plenty of companies talk transparency, but hardly any actually walk the walk. "Imagine my shock the other day to receive a glossy, 32-page annual report in the mail from Intel. Not its corporate annual report, but its 2006 IT Performance Report," David Margulius writes in Intel secrets revealed. "The report opens the kimono on how a large corporate IT organization operates and thinks about itself -- making it a must-read for all top IT execs." It's available as a PDF right here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 11, 2007 05:29 AM
May 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
From the feature well: Think of our sequel more as a tragicomedy than a horror flick, suggests editor-in-chief Steve Fox, with elements of an instructional documentary thrown in, if only for good measure. More stupider user tricks: IT horror stories redux. "By user we mean any schlub with network access or oversight who manages a brain fart loud enough to halt the network, compromise it, or in some other way cause harm to the enterprise, and thus the company's bottom line," Oliver Rist explains. My personal favorite draws comparison to Ari Gold in a move that led the fired IT guy to trigger every server in the farm to rebuild itself that night, right along with the CEO's, CFO's and office manager's desktops. Perhaps this wasn't stupid, per se, but it did cause several days worth of living, breathing nightmares for the remaining IT staff. Read last year's Stupid user tricks right here.
Startups: Plenty of folks think business can benefit from MySpace's sharing techniques, sure, but not many are actually doing anything about it. Nexo, on the other hand, is trying to accomplish just that. While collaborative software is hardly new, "what MySpace does for individuals, Nexo does for groups, letting workgroups, extraprise partners, and SMBs -- or any assemblage, really -- create and share calendars, bookmarks, videos, tasks, files," reports Ephraim Schwartz. Read the full story, or view the Month of Enterprise Startups slideshow.
The news beat: Microsoft takes a minority stake in CareerBuilder.com and extends the companies strategic alliance under which CareerBuilder serves MSN Careers. As expected, Vonage's appeal cites the Supreme Court's recent patent ruling and claims that the March jury verdict against it relied on a standard of analysis that the higher court has since rejected. A clustered NEC array scales from gigabytes to a petabyte, thereby achieving new benchmarks in scalability, availability and performance. And, back to Microsoft here, the company invites hackers back to its Blue Hat conference, a gig designed to garner feedback from external security researchers regarding where Microsoft has gone wrong.
Best of the blogs: "It's shocking how fast the future becomes the past," Matt Asay writes in this Open Sources post. He's talking about software, of course, but also about milk and Morrissey. Yes, I do mean glasses of creamy white stuff and the former Smith's frontman, on stage sans shirt specifically. What do they have to do with software? "I may still sing the old songs, and the Finns may still like their beer, but milk and The Shins/Subways/Flaming Lips/etc. are taking over."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 10, 2007 11:08 AM
May 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Virtualization to top IT agenda until 2010, Gartner says. Also, Intel unveils Santa Rosa chips, hacker nabs U of Missouri students' personal info, Microsoft addresses data explosion, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 10, 2007 07:27 AM
May 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Virtualization is no longer about only server and storage consolidation but "more about the process change and cultural change," says Gartner vice president Thomas Bittman, who adds that it will be the most important technology in IT infrastructures until 2010. David Marshall, in this post, also quotes Bittman as warning that, "virtualization without good management is more dangerous that not using virtualization in the first place."
Platforms: The third beta of Longhorn has Oliver Rist writing, "I can see it coming. Longhorn RTM, Longhorn shrink. Planning for Longhorn, installing Longhorn," and so on. Oh, and one other thing Rist will have to face is "explaining to my mom why Longhorn has nothing to do with John Wayne." The install itself was uneventful, so Rist uses this week's Enterprise Windows to discuss the "stuff you'd better start boning up on now if it looks like Long is going to Horn in on your business in the semi-near-term future." In that category lives QoS, NICs, TOE. "If you're thinking that Longhorn and Vista were built on the same code base and you already know most of it -- well, you're wrong."
Q&A: Sun Microsystems has found that the first project to emerge from its open sourcing Java, GlassFish, is a lesson on how the model spurs innovation, according to Ken Drachnik, community development and marketing manager for Sun's open source group. In this interview Drachnik also discusses how GlassFish works, the ways interest in it has grown, and how open sourcing Java can create technology that changes people's lives.
The news beat: Aiming to answer those industry folks that keep asking why it bought a storage company, Symantec points to rootkit technology as validation of its Veritas acquisition, insisting that the move armed it with a wealth of strategic opportunities. Microsoft says that interest in its Office Open XML format is continuing to grow, citing the more than 4 million downloads since November as evidence. And CEO Ed Zander says that Motorola is ready for Apple's iPhone to enter its competitive fray, as his company readies a new high-end phone for introduction next week in Europe.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 10, 2007 04:49 AM
May 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: "We will never engage in interoperability discussions that are closed in nature and involve closed APIs." Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat says that, according to Matt Asay, in Overheard at the Red Hat Summit. Asay seconds that with "interoperability should be based on standards, and standards should not be closed."
Notes from the field: Even if it doesn't live up to Microsoft's promises, "Vista does seem to be more secure (or less insecure) than prior versions of Windows," Cringe explains. Don't get comfortable, though, as the company did just this week issue seven critical patches for 19 bugs. Microsoft and the age of insecurity. "The black hat hackers simply take Microsoft's new focus on security and turn it to their advantage. Give them lemons, and they make lemon-flavored poison." It ain't just Microsoft, or the Internet, either.
Startups: Today belongs to Varonis, which claims to help those companies drowning in information by matching data to fishy behavior. "We hook into the directories and file servers and pull in all the important information about users and file structure to show what's out there and what the entitlements are," says Yaki Faitelson, president and chief executive. "We're the only ones who can do a detailed audit like this." View the slideshow Month of Enterprise Startups with all we have revealed to date.
The news beat: Analyst house Gartner says that virtualization is still too expensive and recommends that companies "stick it out" until licensing, support and other issues are resolved. That didn't stop VMware from detailing an upgrade that adds support for Windows Vista as a guest or host OS. More users are evaluating and deploying that new Microsoft OS, meanwhile, but concerns are on the rise, particularly about hardware requirements and security.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 9, 2007 11:22 AM
May 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun details 'superpackaging' for Java SE 7. Also, SAP scoops up OutlookSoft, Microsoft ships May patches to fix 19 bugs, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 9, 2007 08:19 AM
May 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Slimed by a venture capitalist
Careers: You can't be too careful when giving out personal information, even to higher-ups on the corporate food chain, be they headhunters, V