- SaaS to fill void left by app vendors
- Small businesses' ERP deficit
- Who wears the pants in your organization?
- Microsoft EPM: Not just for the enterprise?
- Tax software tax users' patience
- Web 2.0 moves beyond SaaS and social networking
- Google, Salesforce and ... Shakespeare?
- Daily news beat for April 14, 2008
- Getting into the Groove
- Changing of the SaaS guard
May 13, 2008 | Comments: (0)
SaaS to fill void left by app vendors
IT benefits from big vendor's slow on-demand plays.
Indeed, in Ephraim Schwartz's words, "hesitations and nascent efforts from the big players open the floodgates for a deluge of even more vendors."
By "big players" Schwartz means the likes of SAP and Microsoft, while a host of startups is emerging to offer what the old guard cannot.
Take PivotLink. This SaaS BI vendor makes it easier than, say, SAP because PivotLink customers can send a simple flat file which PivotLink then analyzes and processes in memory for a real-time response.
"What might be bad news for SAP is good news for companies that want choice and flexibility without tying up their budgets for the next year or two," Schwarts writes in this week's Reality Check.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 13, 2008 07:58 AM
May 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Small businesses have been left out in the cold when it comes to ERP.
SAP has labored for 48 months to get Business ByDesign, its SaaS product for the SMB market, off the ground -- and it's still not ready for prime time; Oracle doesn't even pretend to care about smaller businesses; and Microsoft has a sort of SaaS offering -- but just for CRM.
Bill Snyder, writing in Tech's Bottom Line blog, finds that "small businesses' on-demand ERP options are limited to offerings from small providers such as Intacct and RightNow Technologies."
Snyder provides a clear-headed look at the current state of the enterprise software world, which has been hit by a wave of consolidation that clearly doesn't serve the interests of the little guy, and concludes: "Luckily there is a wealth of smaller companies busily adopting open standards and moving toward the SaaS model."
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 8, 2008 06:48 AM
May 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Who wears the pants in your organization?
When it comes to the thorny problem of Web designer vs developer, it turns out that your choice of platform often reveals where the power lies.
In "Developers vs. designers: Who wins?" Neil McAllister writes: "Particularly for RIAs (rich Internet applications), where form and function share equal billing, team dynamics can make or break a project. Little wonder, then, that Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun are all racing to market with new tools and platforms aimed at helping developers and designers meet each other halfway."
Unfortunately, what McAllister finds upon examining those solutions is that "though well intentioned, these wonder products aren't likely to solve anything. ...which of these three technologies you choose is going to rest squarely on who wears the pants in your organization.
"Web design firms whose clients want slick advertising and marketing will value presentation foremost and go with Adobe. Hard-core Microsoft shops will cross their fingers and pepper Monster.com with openings for Silverlight-savvy designers. And staunch Java developers will rush headlong to JavaFX and hope that the Photoshop plug-ins work as advertised."
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 8, 2008 06:27 AM
May 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft EPM: Not just for the enterprise?
Does choosing the right software to keep track of a project sometimes seem like an overwhelming task in itself?
Microsoft last year ripped Project Server in two, creating Project Server 2007 and Project Portfolio Server 2007, which are part of what Redmond calls the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.
J. Peter Bruzzese takes readers through the capabilities of each in today's Enterprise Windows blog, and then asks "How can Microsoft respond in the mini-market of project management when its offerings ... all seem so gi-normous to the average user?"
In Microsoft's favor, "the high-end features of an EPM solution don't necessarily require in-house servers or the administrative skill necessary to handle the dedicated hardware and software that come with such high-end project management solutions."
But then again, "many will argue that aside from the cost for infrastructure ... there is still a valid reason to consider other solutions due to the unnecessary complexity of Project and concerns that it actually doesn't handle projections reasonably."
Posted by Caroline Craig on May 7, 2008 09:36 AM
April 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Tax software tax users' patience
Complaints about the 2007 tax-year software have been flooding in, making it necessary for Ed Foster to file this late return on the state of tax programs in Taxing software experiences.
The largest number of gripes this year concerned Intuit's TurboTax, but less well-known tax software vendors came in for questions about their accuracy as well. And H&R Block's TaxCut was the subject of one short piece earlier this year.
This Gripe Line account may not "help to weed out the bad apples, because it seemed like just about all of the programs came in for criticism on support, accuracy, or even privacy grounds."
Still, keep the blog as a reference when deciding which tax software alternative you'll try next year, and also post comments about your own personal taxing experience.
Posted by Caroline Craig on April 29, 2008 09:59 AM
April 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Web 2.0 moves beyond SaaS and social networking
Web 2.0 is no longer about social networking, SaaS, Web communities, or rich Internet applications.
At least that's what David Linthicum has found at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week.
"It's about moving as many of the core business processes as you can to the platform of the Web. Or, perhaps better put: Web-enabled process outsourcing," Linthicum explains in Web 2.0 ... it's about process outsourcing.
After witnessing a flurry of new and existing products on display at the conference, Linthicum concludes that, "now you can design, build, deploy, and test applications completely using on-demand platforms delivered over the Web. You can access information on-demand, and now you can even share your core enterprise data on-demand."
Beyond social networking, indeed.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 24, 2008 09:47 AM
April 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Google, Salesforce and ... Shakespeare?
Jumping straight to Act I, Scene V, Ephraim Schwartz invokes the kingly ghost who tells of "that incestuous, that adulterate beast."
Schwartz sees parallels immediate to the so-called global strategic alliance Google and Salesforce.com unveiled this week.
"I'm not sure who will be the queen and who will be the ghost as an outcome, but I do predict there will be one of each," Schwartz waxes in Google and Salesforce ally -- for now.
"My skeptical mind tells me the seeds of discontent are being sown alongside the integration. Because let's face it, both Mark Benioff and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are no fading flowers."
And trouble could come in so many ways.
Who will give in if Google wants to partner with an ERP company that is not part of Salesforce AppExchange? What if an AppExchange member offers a productivity suite integrated with Salesforce that suddenly grows in popularity?
Schwartz has another: "Salesforce meets Microsoft? Stranger things have happened."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 15, 2008 10:14 AM
April 14, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Daily news beat for April 14, 2008
Google and salesforce.com team up on business apps. The partnership to integrate applications could boost cloud computing, but unfulfilled requirements remain.
Fujitsu shows a prototype laptop it claims is more environmentally-friendly because it uses bio-plastics parts and comes in a cedar casing.
Sharp details the first ultramobile PC built with Intel's Atom chipset, a device that will be larger and more expensive than originally expected of the class.
Sun Microsystems claims a big leap with MySQL 5.1, an upgrade that brings several new features to make the open source database more suitable for critical applications at large enterprises.
And Robert X. Cringely writes that Windows is falling -- run for your lives. "Vista is a bloated mess. Corporate America doesn't want it." Even worse, Microsoft admits that Vista's infamous User Account Controls were put there to deliberately annoy users. "The future belongs to nimble, lightweight operating systems and applications."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 14, 2008 08:58 AM
April 09, 2008 | Comments: (0)
For companies that prefer to run Groove themselves, rather than enlisting a third-party, there are a number of benefits.
"First, you gain greater control over managing the servers, controlling service levels, and handling security. Add to that the flexibility of how you set up your Groove servers, such as deploying them all in one datacenter or spreading them out. Finally, you can optimize your machines for behaviors on the network that only in-house experts know to expect," J. Peter Bruzzese explains.
Groove has three main components IT might install in its organization: Manager, Relay, and Data Bridge. Bruzzese examines them all in Getting into the Groove, part 2: Taking Groove in-house.
"Each has its own functionality and set of requirements that come together to help build out your Groove environment," Bruzzese adds.
Related: Getting into the Groove, part 1: Outsource or in-house?
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 9, 2008 07:31 AM
April 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Salesforce.com may have opened the door, but Google and its ilk are best poised to step boldly through and leverage Web 2.0 technologies to create a back-end, front-end service that will be tough to beat.
That's according to Ephraim Schwartz in SaaS favors Google over Salesforce.
"Google represents the changing of the guard, one that heralds a new wave of upstarts who know how to exploit the Internet," Schwartz explains. "Strategy and technology are and always have been interconnected. But companies like Google understand better than most how to leverage the emerging Web 2.0 technology in order to give companies a competitive edge."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 8, 2008 08:34 AM
March 28, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Is Microsoft Office Online next?
It's a question lots of folks are searching for clues with which to answer.
Ephraim Schwartz may have found one in the form of a press release Microsoft issued indicating that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live is being renamed CRM Online, as the IDG News Service reported in this news story.
Perhaps more telling than the re-christening, though, is a line in Microsoft's statement about the company's "tremendous investment in and focus around on-demand technology for business users."
That's why Schwartz is asking Will Microsoft Online Office follow?
"One piece of advice: don't laugh."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 28, 2008 09:41 AM
March 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Daily news beat for March 27, 2008
One can only imagine that they chose the code-name before the most famous resident of New York's capital city stole so many headlines; nonetheless Microsoft has been secretly working on the Albany project, a set of hosted, low-end productivity applications to compete with Google Docs.
Speaking at the Black Hat conference, London School of Economics Professor Ian O. Angell says that computers plus people equals risk. Angell says to expect uncertainty and be careful when crunching data because sometimes, "if you count, you miss the most obvious things."
The Hacker Super Bowl, meanwhile, kicks off this week at CanSecWest, where organizers pit Mac OS X against Linux and Vista, and hackers get the chance to win a $20,000 purse by writing a zero-day attack that's never been seen before.
AMD introduces new Phenom Chips, including its first triple-core offering, which OEMs have said will ship in PCs next quarter.
Amazon adds resilience to its cloud computing service in the form of two features designed to simplify failover and address management.
And as security threats increase, more IT shops are gripping PC reins tighter and blocking users from non-work Web sites and applications. Attacks are pushing Web controls.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 27, 2008 09:41 AM
March 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center review: Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite 8
The Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite 8 is a Windows-based server and development toolset that helps streamline the BPM launch cycle.
"In general, I found the Ultimus solution to undervalue good planning. In comparison to offerings from vendors such as Lombardi that recognize the necessity for discovery/documentation tools, Ultimus has a huge hole to plug," James R. Borck wrote.
What's more, proprietary engine can be difficult to work with, including a lack of integration with standardized design-time tools, no native support for BPMN, and no comprehensive onboard rules-management facility," Borck explained.
But all is not lost.
"On the bright side, Ultimus flaunts a no-code approach to BPM that will have you up and running quickly when implementing document-centric workgroup processes ... I did warm up to BPM Studio. The Ultimus client provides a good interface for task workers to be productive with a very minimal learning curve. And I found the administrative and reporting interfaces delivered good insight with excellent functionality."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2008 08:33 AM
March 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)
How Microsoft is trying to eradicate e-mail
Spam has reached tragic proportions.
Paul Venezia points the finger at none other than Microsoft for that. Now, let's look at some facts.
"Hundreds of thousands of connections, coming from thousands of hosts. What are those hosts anyway? The vast majority of those are exploited Windows systems. They're zombies run by botnet operators," Venezia explains in How Microsoft is trying to eradicate e-mail.
"Let's not mince words here: Botnets are comprised of compromised Windows systems. Thus, Microsoft's massive security failures are at the very core of the spam problem."
And then there's the case of the disappearing e-mails that Microsoft has the temerity to simply never deliver...
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 18, 2008 07:39 AM
February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
If you think that you, or the department in which you work, ought to own social media and have domain over related projects, then you're not alone -- but that doesn't necessarily mean you're in the right.
"Far too many folks in corporate would rather focus on turf ownership than quality strategy. It's like a never-ending game of Monopoly gone horribly wrong," Lena West writes in Who owns social media? Hint: Not you.
Ultimately, success really does come down to bearing in mind just who the REAL proprietors of social media are in terms of content, conversation, and community.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 12, 2008 10:44 AM
January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Apps: While SaaS has thus far progressed by appealing to small companies and moving up from there, one area has seen some traction among large customers. That would be EDI between supplier and buyers. "Strangely enough, although suppliers are those most in need of a solution like this, it is the customers -- Target, Welch's, and so on -- that are actually buying into the solution. After all, when a supplier doesn't get it right, the retailer suffers, too," Ephraim Schwartz explains in SaaS means business-to-business. "The more I cover SaaS as a reporter, the more respect I gain for the model, and the more I believe that in just a few more years it will become the entrenched incumbent waiting for some new upstart methodology to unseat it."
Test Center review: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is a contender for the best Windows-hosted C/C++ IDE, Martin Heller espouses. "I ran the VS08 Team Suite on my XP desktop almost all day, five days a week for several weeks, and tried to use it for all my development work," he explains. "Overall, Visual Studio 2008 is an upgrade that most Microsoft-oriented development shops will want to make, in order to develop with new technologies, such as WPF, WCF, and WF, and for new platforms, such as Windows Vista. However, it's not an upgrade that's easily made piecemeal." Read the full review.
The news beat: Intel is likely to reveal details of its forthcoming Silverthorne processor next week at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. Spring Framework for Java provider SpringSource buys Covalent to get its services for Apache users, including Tomcat, Geronimo and the Axis Web Framework. Microsoft partner Intermedia becomes the first to offer Office Communications Server as a hosted service. And President Bush calls on Congress to extend telecom spying provisions, during his final State of the Union address, saying "to protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 29, 2008 04:58 AM
January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Collaboration software's untold drawback
Reality Check: Collaboration may be all the rage these days, but it's also got a downside IT ought to understand. Collaboration is a bandwidth killer. "As creators of collaborative software spew out application after application, other ISVs are quickly following up with what you might call the antidote: software designed to prevent a tidal wave of collaborative programs from overwhelming corporate networks," Ephraim Schwartz begins. Avistar Communications, FaceTime Communications and Permessa are three such examples, though their approaches differ somewhat. "Provisioning bandwidth is a pain, sucking up a lot of time and money. Yet the call for collaboration keeps the network bandwidth-hungry."
Ongoing coverage: Macworld 2008. And our three-part video series: Two Geeks and iPhone.
Careers: In the analogously titled Some headhunters are bumblebees, but you're not dead yet, Nick Corcodilos responds to a reader who, after calling a pair of headhunters back and leaving message, never heard from them again. "Some recruiters ... flit from one flower to the next, with little memory of where they were last. Odds are, they are busy with other candidates, which means they may come back to you, or they may not. You have zero control. For that reason alone, I suggest you forget about them and move on," Corcodilos advises. Another reader says that where he lives and works, in Maine, job seekers 49.5 years of age are "the walking dead." Not so, Corcodilos answers, but we are in a bold new world. "Don't be shocked when I tell you that I've heard from readers in their 60's and 70's who've written to say they've gotten new jobs. How? By showing how they will profit their new employers. It's not an option: Everyone needs to be able to do that nowadays. Employers won't figure it out for themselves -- you must demonstrate it."
Save Windows XP. Sign the petition -- and, as part of our effort, we're encouraging IT pros and individuals to submit their own videos on why Microsoft should keep XP alive. Remember, too, that XP is greener than Vista.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 16, 2008 04:33 AM
December 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WordPerfect's defeat: Re-visiting an historic gripe
Applications: It seems there are some gripes that readers just can't let go of. Ed Foster's Gripe Line re-examines one that is ancient history in terms of the technology world: Why did WordPerfect lose out to Microsoft Word? There is still plenty of debate whether "WordPerfect simply failed to compete or was a victim of Microsoft monopolistic practices." Some readers feel Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and others "were the leaders of the pack; Microsoft brought up the rear, then used FUD to crush them." But others are quick to point out that WordPerfect wasn't blameless in its defeat: ""WordPerfect ran into trouble when it did not move quickly into the Windows environment." Where do you weigh in on this historic argument?
Hardware: More than 2,000 consumer electronics companies will soon be fighting for the attention of 140,000 attendees at International CES. Before succombing to the hype and hoopla, visit this look back at the class of 2007 to see which predictions from last year's show were spot-on -- and which were way off the mark.
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 28, 2007 05:17 AM
December 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A service pack worth deploying
Best of the blogs: It's not for Vista, Exchange, or even XP. The service pack that headline refers to is the easily-missed Office 2007 SP1. "It looks like the Office team has got their act together when it comes to tuning their code paths," Randall Kennedy writes. No fan of that Vista SP1, Kennedy points out that in addition to typical bug fixes and compatibility tweaks, Office SP1 even brings a performance kick. It doesn't solve all the suite's problems, of course, namely code bloat. Related: Is Vista hampering Office 2007 adoption?
Green IT: They call it SPECpower_ssj2008. Yes, you read the right. It "doesn't so much roll off the tongue as ooze -- but what's in a name, anyway?" Ted Samson poses in this SustainableIT entry. Well, in this name is SPEC's (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation), umm, spec for measuring servers' power performance. Such a benchmark, thus far, has proven elusive, he adds. "Plenty of smart people have been trying to devise one, and at first blush, it may seem like a deceptively simple task." Alas, it's not quite so cut and dry. Related: Climate Savers green catalog proves unripe.
Reader voices: I'm a mom who hasn't approved of my college age kids downloading music for free but I've also watched as they sampled dozens of songs just to hear them when they'd never have bought them or even known they existed before the Internet ... I've tried to take the moral high road here and now the RIAA tells me I'm a criminal just for putting my purchased Garth Brooks CD on my ipod?? Me? Us moms were purchased music's best advocate but this has gone too far. If the RIAA wants a war then I'm jumping in the trenches with my kids and refusing to buy any more CD's. An InfoWorld reader comments in response to Robert X. Cringely's I'm so bo-o-o-red with the RIAA (but what can I do?).
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 14, 2007 05:09 AM
November 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Columnist's corner: What with all the acquisition activity in the business intelligence fray -- IBM buying Cognos, SAP snapping up Business Objects -- Ephraim Schwartz points out that, "BI will disappear as a separate application category soon enough." While that may be inevitable, the remaining vendors "don't subscribe to my bleak view of their future." Pure-play BI vendors strike back. Take MicroStrategy, for instance, and a new focus other vendors are putting on operational, rather than strategic or managerial, business intelligence applications. "Perhaps point-solution BI vendors will not only survive but flourish and the recent acquisitions by the giants only serve to reinvigorate rather than replace the pure-plays." Related: IBM Cognos deal highlights resurgence in upgrading the database, and SAP's Business Objects acquisition: The death knell for point solutions?
Gripe Line: "It's always disturbing to find a vendor playing a little too fast and loose with confidential information about its customers," Ed Foster begins. In this case, that's DirecTV, which was bandying about some customer info such that another could see it -- and claimed it could not inform the violated customer as part of some privacy protection tactic. In short: a reader received a bill with someone else's name and account number on it. "I asked why giving his account information to me was OK in their eyes since it was their mistake, but correcting their mistake was a problem? I was told that I would be 'transferred to their Internet people' whereupon the call was disconnected." DirecTV won't correct privacy gaffe. Now, our reader still has access to that other person's account. "Since he has no intention of taking advantage of the situation, perhaps no harm will come if he does nothing," Foster writes. "What if the original mistake is due to endemic problems with DirecTV's system that bad folks are already exploiting?" What should our reader do in this, his moral quandary? Talkback below or at the link above.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 21, 2007 04:35 AM
November 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Is a world of application segmenting upon us?
Best of the blogs: In deploying Google Apps for 165 of its 2,500 customer server agents, Capgemini is "segmenting users making a decision on which application to deploy based on what best suits that group," Ephraim Schwartz writes in this Reality Check post. Schwartz explains that although all 80,000 Capgemini employees need word processing, they don't all need the same application -- particularly not when there is a low-cost choice available. In this case, Google Apps will cost Capgemini $50 per user per year. "Google Apps may not answer all a company's needs. That is the point I'm trying to make. But with little need for support, a low barrier to training and enough capability to keep a large segment of the company happy, we will see segmentation not only in productivity applications but in other kinds of applications as well.
The news beat: IBM details Blue Cloud, its initiative to turn datacenters into computing clouds such that resources are available wherever needed. Apple patches a whopping 41 bugs in Mac OS X, 10 in Safari and upgrades several other applications. Michael Dell foretells of a reference architecture to help customers go green and makes the bold proclamation that his company will be carbon-neutral by next year's end. And Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describes the next iteration of Fusion, which will bring what he calls second-generation sales force applications.
Tech's bottom line: Everyone knows the market is not always rational -- and the way in which Apple and VMware took the rap for Cisco's warning and Oracle's virtualization announcement proves it. "Part of the reason for the slide: momentum players. These are hedge funds and other institutions that trade directionally over the short run. When a stock moves down, short sellers can get into the game, and suddenly the stock is really tumbling," Bill Snyder writes in Don't get caught in the stampede. "Take a deep breath and look closely before you sell. Indeed, the dip in VMware's value might well have been an opportunity to buy some shares at a nice discount."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 15, 2007 10:59 AM
October 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Even though the providers try to make it seem as if they handle everything involved with the software-as-a-service model, SaaS demands IT intervention. The upside is that it's "further proof of the lasting importance of IT," Ephraim Schwartz writes in The five tenets of SaaS integration. "It's no longer a question of whether IT admits SaaS into the enterprise. It's a question of how IT makes it work."
Notes from the field: The frightening Robert X. dons his Cringely mask to warn users to be afraid, very afraid of Microsoft. The company "can take over your computer wherever you are, and do whatever it wants." Yet another Windows Update snafu proves just that. This latest went ahead and installed Windows Desktop Search 3.01 on PCs configured not to run the resource hog, to which Microsoft muttered underneath it's breath, "oops, sorry." But, Cringe reveals, "the ugly truth is that Microsoft is using security fears to force its enslaved base (that would be you and me) into installing stuff it wants us to have. Somebody needs to put a stake through its heart, before it kills again." Windows Live? Or just ... undead? What could possibly be scarier than that? A blind date with Larry Ellison, for one. Yikes.
App dev: Yesterday, Microsoft detailed project Oslo for model-centric applications, with a bent toward SOA and integration, and it has Savio Rodrigues shaking his head. "You know, SOA and especially Composite Applications, are supposed to be about heterogeneous environments. I didn't find a thing that leads me to believe that Oslo has much to do with interoperability," Rodrigues writes in Microsoft Oslo: Lacking interoperability? "Microsoft, open you eyes ... your 'SOA' customers care about more than .NET and all customers benefit from open standards. This is not new news."
The news beat: Security geeks say Leopard needs fixing -- and that Apple has "a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft," security-wise. Intel ships its dual-core Itanium 2 update, Montvale, a server processor that offers incremental improvements, such as a faster front-side bus. Google finally makes its social networking power move as it sets to unleash today OpenSocial, its initiative "to spread social applications across the Web." And Poor earnings results prompt more layoffs at Alcatel-Lucent.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 31, 2007 11:16 AM
October 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
How and why Amazon makes you lie
Gripe Line: Some e-commerce sites, it appears, are making it harder and harder for users to log-off, Ed Foster reports in Amazon makes you lie to log off. One reader, in fact, got "confirmation from Amazon that the best way to sign out from your account is to lie to them about who you are." The reader explains that, "you have to find a page on the site that has 'If you're not (your name), click here' and click on it, thereby saying you're not you." What's even more odd is that it was an Amazon rep who actually stated that the proper process for logging out is to engage in the aforementioned lie. Foster's theory is that "it's a pretty simple equation: the fewer clicks it takes to buy, and the more clicks it takes to log out, the more money for Amazon."
Columnist's corner: One variety of trial by fire is a night shift laden with spun-down drives. That's precisely what happened to the new guy in this week's Off the Record. The little tech that could. It all started when one of the drives went offline at oh, about 3 in the a.m. Next thing 'John' knew, "there were some five drives and at least nine disk packs that just would not spin up," our author writes. "Result: the loss of many tens of thousands of 1960s dollars' worth of hardware." But this one has a happy ending, folks.
Best of the blogs: Although it's a stretch, and still in the rumor phase, iPhone Extreme does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it? "Let me guess. Extreme will have 3G, a better phone and a user-replaceable battery," stabs Mike Barton in this Tech Watch post. "Maybe Apple should call it the 'iPhone Legal.'"
Careers: In response to a reader who is irreplaceable at his company and trying to do something to fix it, Bob Lewis recommends a higher-risk approach. This reader, you see, has trained several people who ultimately left the company, and has pushed to remove the complex software on which he was the lead developer. Lewis' suggestion is a modification of the what-if-I-was-hit-by-a-bus argument. "The risk to you, of course, is that not all managers are businesslike when the chips are down," he writes in Involuntarily irreplaceable.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 3, 2007 04:32 AM
September 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Feature well: We've all experienced the frustration that is a slow application. The kind that makes you wait. "By all accounts, we live in a digital Golden Age, and yet for many of us, our day-to-day computing experience is more purgatory than paradise," Neil McAllister explains. You know, slow startups, delays, crashes, annoying and time-wasting reboots all spark the questions, "Why does computing have to be painful? Where have we gone wrong?" Well, there are at least 7 answers, such as chip advances that leave developers in the dust, code bloat and trends that overburden networks. "These computing pitfalls aren't going away any time soon." Read the special report.
From the Test Center: Adaptec's little San that can. That's what Mario Apicella calls it in this exclusive look at the Snap Server 720i, "an affordable yet scalable iSCSI SAN module that doesn't skimp on performance and is easy to manage." The system brings scalability, high-availability and excellent management tools, Apicella explains, adding that "few arrays in its class can even come close."
Quoteworthy: Seriously, I am -- and likely always will be -- a total curmudgeon. I'm cynical, jaded, and basically unimpressed by anything I deem faddish or 'cool.' Virtualization? Blah! Open Source? I say 'sue the hippie bastards for IP infringement!' Multi-core CPUs? I was preaching the desktop computing parallelism message back in the 90s, for cryin’ out loud! I'm a person who firmly believes that the 'Wintel' duopoly will continue to rule the world for many years to come, and that firms like Google and VMware will eventually go the way of Borland, Novell, Netscape, and a host of other niche also-rans that were eventually absorbed into the amoeba-like entity that is Windows. -- Randall Kennedy, as quoted in Steve Fox's Editor's Letter: Open source hippies and opinionated bloggers.
Careers: One reader writes in to Bob Lewis with comments about when to fire an irreplaceable employee and when not to. The critical difference, he argues, is tools versus keys; tools being skills that no one else in the company has. "There are lots of keys," Lewis explains. "Many confer significant political power. And in politics, while a bullet to the back of the head will usually cause the victim to lose power (but read the history books about the power of martyrs), it doesn't always transfer it to the shooter."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 18, 2007 04:38 AM
September 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Special report: Web-hosted office suites, it appears, are here for good. Some customers have benefited greatly from them already. "Thousands of organizations, large and small, are researching and implementing hosted office suites as alternatives to pricier, traditional options, like Microsoft Office, designed to live in PC hard drives," Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service reports. "While 'fools rush in' mistakes are bad, an even worse decision regarding the SaaS model is ignoring it." And as SaaS keep catching on, the same goes for Microsoft, according to executive editor Eric Knorr in Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge. "If Microsoft fails to act decisively much longer, some Redmond careers might be shortened." The package Web apps lock horns with Microsoft Office also includes a review of eXpresso, a hosted service for Excel file sharing.
Notes from the field: Online dating has gone spammy, Cringely declares in reference to Quechep.com. The U.K.-based dating/social networking site has been "surreptitiously squeezing" email addresses out of visitors by forcing anyone who signs up to share their address book and then promptly and without requesting permission sending "an invite from you to everyone in your book -- making you look like a nasty purveyor of pork."
From the Test Center: Dell adds the MD3000i iSCSI storage array to its lineup this week. "Setting up the array didn't take long," Mario Apicella writes. It's got some "smart features," but the management GUI, "while helpful, doesn't cover all the possible administrative tasks." And it doesn't have load-monitoring applets, though it does bring "1GB of mirrored, battery protected cache that helps to boost performance and shelters data from sudden power shut-offs." Read the full review.
Gripe Line: Restocking fees for returned items are typically a nuisance, but little more. "A reader recently encountered an unpleasant variation on that theme. In order to get an RMA number to replace an in-warranty Sapphire video card, he was required to pay an RMA 'processing fee' amounting to more than a third of the original purchase price," Ed Foster reports in this entry. "If you can charge an RMA processing fee of $15 for a $40 product, how many customers are actually going to bother trying to get a warranty replacement? And perhaps that's the whole idea from Sapphire's point of view."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 11, 2007 04:49 AM
July 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Gripe Line: In what he describes as "really good news" Ed Foster reports on the surprising run of judges "reaffirming the traditional view of 'contracts of adhesion' and ruling that the onerous terms of shrinkwrap, clickwrap, and browserwrap agreements which deprive customers of any real recourse are not binding." More legal defeats for nasty sneakwrap terms. Think Gatton vs. T-Mobile. "At least there is some hope that the courts are starting to come back to a more balanced view on the validity -- or the invalidity -- of all those nasty terms that hide deep in the sneakwrap's small print." But don't pop those champagne bottles just yet.
The news beat: Adobe links its ColdFusion to AIR, as in Adobe Integrated Runtime, with the new ColdFusion 8, available today. Intel backs the Server System Infrastructure Forum's draft Modular Server Specifications set of guidelines for low-cost blade servers. Dell's new Indian plant starts operation to address the booming PC market there. And a Black Hat security presenter gets turned away at the U.S. border after customs officials found training materials in his luggage.
Quoteworthy: Technology has a way of making the miraculous seem commonplace. This is especially true in the workplace, where the latest technologies (in the hands of IT pros) get a full workout. We simply expect IT to build new business capabilities on creaky old apps, to do remarkable things with data, or to integrate with partners across vast distances and disparate systems. Yep, we’ve become jaded. -- Steve Fox, in Enterprise tech thrives where you least expect it.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on July 30, 2007 05:37 AM
July 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Enterprise: Take SaaS serioulsy!
Apps: What with Salesforce.com opening its Apex Code so customers can tailor CRM as well as rechristening its offering as PaaS, as in platform-as-a-service, and Google's acquisition of Postini last week, "we are finally starting to see critical mass build around SaaS," Ephraim Schwartz writes in SaaS gains enterprise cred. "With development, security, and compliance out of the way, there aren't many hurdles left for SaaS to clear before it becomes the dominant force in the software industry and the enterprise." Related: New Salesforce.com version unmasks Apex Code.
Columnist's corner: A dream job gone immediately wrong is this week's Off the Record tale, sent awry by management that considered the news-related Web site piece of its business to be little more than necessary burden. "I saw it as a diamond in the rough and I couldn't wait to polish," writes our author in The war of hidden motives. "I learned quickly that our job was to exist and do as little as possible. My direct boss didn't help matters much. She was a newscaster with a megawatt smile and no training in any type of technology." Moonlight upgrades, unauthorized changes and no one to stop them translated into what the boss thought was some sort of magic once they made it to the live Web site. Even so, a battle erupted in which both the boss and the head of technology had a vendetta that went unexplained. "I learned a valuable lesson: In business, people act for many reasons that are usually not the ones they claim."
Gripe Line: Windows Vista compatibility problems hit a new low with Roxio's Easy Media Creator 9. "Readers say that not only does the program have many problems working with Vista, the fixes promised by Roxio are beginning to look like so much vaporware," Ed Foster reports. That, despite the fact that one might otherwise presume the software to be as compatible as possible with Microsoft's new OS. It's already garnered Microsoft's certification logo, after all. One reader encountered a conflict with an incompatible driver, Roxio's no less. The subsequent call to tech support was even worse. A second reader points out that such problems have been here all along. In the end, though, "those who believe that a 'Windows Vista Certified' logo means there will be no problems are perhaps themselves certifiable."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on July 18, 2007 04:48 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
April 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Calling Google Apps e-mail 'moronic'
Open source: Google Apps Email -- I am forced to give you the finger. Those words come from Dave Rosenberg who is amid a switch over to Google Apps. "What a world of pain we ran into with some of the stupidest "features" I have ever seen from a business application," he practically screams. Ouch.
Off the Record: There's a lot to see in IT, that's certain. But one professional services consultant for a top computer manufacturer has likely witnessed more than most. "I do love this job," he insists. "My wife really believes I love my computer far more than I do her, but then, computers just seem less complicated." The joys of complexity.
The news beat: Microsoft warns of a DNS server flaw in several of its products that could let hackers run malicious code. Sun scoops up SavaJe for its mobile phone software. Apple delays Leopard, saying it will no longer release it in June and blaming the iPhone. And IBM touts new "low-carb" blade servers.
Best of the blogs: As larger companies keep swallowing smaller ones, David Linthicum pauses to wonder Will acquisitions kill SOA innovation? "The core concern is that most of the innovative work occurs within venture funded startups," he writes. "When these guys are acquired the innovation typically slows down. I've seen this time and time again, and have been involved personally."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 13, 2007 10:41 AM
April 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Living in an interruption society
Video: To buy it all from a single vendor or go best-of-breed is an age old question. "The reality is that for every company I've ever met, small, medium, or large, it's both," says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com. Then the conversation turns toward the personal. As in productivity habits and avoiding distraction. Watch it here.
Best of the blogs: Since we folded our beloved print publication and transformed the entirety of our efforts toward the Web site and events, Robert X. Cringely, now a blogger, has been getting all kinds of feedback. Mostly, this is coming from disgruntled subscribers. The good news? "I was always under the impression I made some readers ill," Cringe writes in Farewell sweet prints. "Turns out they were sick before they started. That's a relief." You see, he has not lost any the snarkiness we all love. (Okay, well, not everyone, but I do.)
Security: Oracle says it will issue 37 fixes next week with patches for its database, app server, and applications. Microsoft, meanwhile, is investigating reports of new Office flaws, including three present in Word 2007, one of which could allow for remote code execution. (This just in: Microsoft refutes Office flaw reports. ) And the Internet Security Alliance outlines government incentives for fighting cybercriminals that call on the private sector.
The news beat: The Green Grid details plans to hold its first technical summit in just over a week. Google plots a worldwide developer day, replete with workshops in 10 countries to spark interest in its tools and APIs. And laptop shipments rose last month.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 11, 2007 10:52 AM
March 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Gripe Line: Not every month has 30 days in the Gregorian calendar. You know that. I do, too, for the record. But that doesn't mean eMusic does, as one reader discovered. "eMusic has a 30-day billing cycle, not monthly. Because of it, I thought I had cancelled at the end of the month, but in fact rolled into the next so was on the hook for another fee." That, of course, was just the beginning of the end. "Have you run afoul of a nasty term in a vendor's sneakwrap?" Ed Foster asks. If so, tell us about it here.
Columnist's corner: The battle between Microsoft and open source trudges on with scare tactics and intimidation serving as the primary weapons. "The problem is, when you bring fear and uncertainty to bear on the open source market, you also stifle creativity and innovation," Neil McAllister writes in Mr. Gates, tear down these walls. "The ongoing conflict, like the Cold War, is a wasteful exercise that diverts untold resources away from worthwhile goals, such as fighting disease, bridging the digital divide, and improving quality of life." Related: Novell steering Microsoft defectors back to Microsoft?
The news beat: Iona adds a repository for SOAs, dubbed the Artix Registry/Repository 1.0. The SANS Institute details four exams that test programmers' security sense and training. And Symbian builds support for Wi-Fi roaming, location-based services, database applications and more into its OS v9.5 for mobile phones.
Best of the blogs: We've folded the print edition of InfoWorld to hone our focus on online and events. Editor-in-chief Steve Fox explains why we did it in this post. "Frankly, the editorial staff foresaw the demise of print from a long way off and began making preparations for that inevitable day. Now that it is here, InfoWorld is well positioned to serve our readers," Fox writes. "I expect other trade publications will be following InfoWorld's lead soon enough."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2007 10:54 AM
March 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Applications: Sure, the software-as-a-service model has its attractive points. But as is the case with many technologies, the upfront ticket is only the beginning of TCO. To gauge the real cost of SaaS, Ephraim Schwartz whips out his calculator and does the math for you, based on two major providers, NetSuite and Salesforce.com. Before I get ahead of myself here, though, it's important to note "that price isn't everything." In some cases, customers find themselves tailoring the business to fit what a provider offers, a situation Schwartz explains, that could lead SaaS into a dead end. "But something tells me big changes are ahead."
Columnist's corner: Lots of college kids go somewhere with bountiful sun and booze and very little clothing for spring break, but our Off the Record author found himself "driving east with a COBOL manual in the back seat of my car." So what if he didn't find bikers and bikinis but, instead, uncovered that a contract programmer was operating on finger math rather than normal division operators. Not as much fun? Perhaps, but it landed him a job offer before graduation. If you're wondering why I keep defending this guy, well, so am I. How I started my IT career.
Podcasts: The latest SOA Report topics include Semantics, ontologies, the Semantic Web and SOA. Taken together, those pretty much make this particular podcast about, well, pretty much everything related to a services-centric philosophy. Oh wait, I almost forgot one. "Formally known as the Semantic Web, Web 3.0 promises yet another Internet revolution. It would provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion." The Semantic Web, by the by, is not entirely new. Tim Berners-Lee, in fact, delivered a keynote about it in the '90's. "Now that we're starting to build service-oriented architectures ... people are understanding its value." Tune into SOA Report.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 21, 2007 05:01 AM
February 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apps: Much like quarterback Joe Namath boldly proclaiming that his underdog New York Jets would beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says that his company, in its 'Salesforce 2.0' incarnation, is going to take on Microsoft as a development platform provider.
Columnist's corner: After accepting a network support job in the District Attorney's office of a major city our Off the Record author found the place such a shambles that not only were all home directories open and available but, worse, nearly every PC was loaded with Napster. A letter to the boss didn't accomplish much and, in fact, it wasn't until 4 months later, when someone else noticed, that IT was called and had to argue with lawyers. Plot twist: the moral of the story is not, as one might presume, to avoid working for attorneys.
Security: Then again, with the dark cloud of threatened legal action over its head, IOActive cancelled a talk at Black Hat that its researcher Chris Paget planned to give about RFID security and secure card maker HID in specific. This is one story that's sure to keep unfolding...
The news beat: Firefox 3.0, due later this year, will bring a handful of new features including offline support for Web applications and improved search capabilities, according to Mozilla. Symantec's vice president of technology Robert Clyde says that the U.S. Congress must pass a data breach notification bill that could help combat identity theft. And open source database vendor Ingres releases Icebreaker which it describes as a tight coupling of the database with only those components of rPath's Linux distribution needed to run Ingres.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 28, 2007 04:47 AM
February 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: The industry's DRM approach is not accomplishing what it should -- even if you have sympathy for software vendors' need to protect against piracy. A reader recounts in Gripe Line, "one for the record books when it comes to stupid IT designs as far the activation issues I encountered with Adobe." The quandary came about while upgrading from Acrobat 7 to 8, at which point our reader found both the 'Activate' and the 'Deactivate' buttons turned off. A call to the company fixed it but only for a day. That's when the nightmare began.
Special report: iSCSI's star is on the rise. Thanks to lower costs, simpler deployment, and a raft of new products, iSCSI is becoming an attractive alternative to Fibre Channel, particularly for remote offices and SMBs. Lending credence to the cause are new choices in networked storage from the likes of Agami Systems, Hewlett-Packard and NetApp.
Columnist's corner: IT and bean counters are often at odds, it's true, for a multitude of reasons. But that needn't be the case. Instead, IT can actually aid the finance department, Ephraim Schwartz points out, and in more ways than mere spreadsheets. Take the fast close, for instance. As in the closing of books and accounting cycles. "Getting IT and the finance department working together can help drive the success of your business in subtle ways," Schwartz writes. "If your company hasn't realized that yet, it is about time it woke up."
The news beat: Salesforce.com trudges into new ground with its Wealth Management Edition application that integrates customer information with data services. MySQL inks a pact with open source BI provider JasperSoft to arm developers with tools for incorporating reporting into programs they build on top of MySQL. And a U.S. immigration bill increasing the number of H1-B visas permitted could pass both houses by July and ultimately land on the president's desk come September.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 27, 2007 10:49 AM
February 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Google Apps: Poised to be a contender
The news beat: Google today introduced a major upgrade to its Google Apps hosted suite of communication and collaboration applications. As businesses grow increasingly comfortable with the hosted model, this cheaper alternative to Microsoft's core Office applications could come to be seen as a viable replacement option by more and more enterprises. Apple and Cisco have settled their dispute over rights to the iPhone moniker. Under the terms of their agreement, both companies have the right to use the name. And CEO Mark Hurd issued a clarion call to action, telling analysts that Hewlett-Packard's storage sales organization "just doesn't cover enough accounts." He vows to invest in improving sales coverage and hiring more storage sales specialists to remedy the situation.
Best of the blogs: If understanding how SOA Reference Model and SOA Reference Architecture relate to each other has you confused, today's Real World SOA blog will help unravel the semantics. Dave Linthicum explores the concepts behind the standards and provides context for the SOA issues that have been in the news of late.
Columnist's corner: This week's Enterprise Insight examines an urban myth that says the Internet and computers consume a huge chunk of America’s energy resources. Despite a recent study out of Stanford University that at first glance seems to dispel this belief, David Margulius takes a closer look at the data and concludes "Cyberspace is sucking a lot of juice."
Posted by Caroline Craig on February 22, 2007 06:29 AM
December 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Rediscovering inherent worth of desktop apps
Best of the blogs: Adobe's Apollo project, which will enable apps known as 'gadgets' to be installed on the desktop, is stirring quite a buzz. Bloggers are "talking about Apollo as if this was some revolutionary idea, a program that runs locally," Ephraim Schwartz jests in Reality Check. "The technorati are quite excited about Apollo's ability to create Rich Internet Applications for the desktop. Isn't that what SaaS is all about?"
Podcasts: We've all felt the seasonal frustration that springs from shopping online at major retailers. Ed Foster's readers voice such holiday horrors in the latest Gripe Line. Tune in here.
Applications: BI vendors should be very afraid. That is, the old guard proprietary business intelligence software providers, points out Matt Asay in JasperSoft turn 5,000. "What a great time to be an open source company. As SugarCRM and JasperSoft both demonstrate, open source is an effective way to bring sophisticated technology to the masses, at a price point and in a form that makes them easy to consume."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 21, 2006 04:38 AM
December 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Columnists' corner: IT will have to deal with a host of issues next year, but it is SaaS (software-as-a-service) that may become the most important, writes Eprhaim Schwartz in Easing the burden of SaaS. "Forget about vendors' claims that the SaaS model eliminates the need for significant IT oversight; the opposite is actually closer to the truth." Why? In Schwartz's words: Suppose your company has a payroll of 5,000 or more employees divided into 10 departments and each department uses between four and 10 SaaS applications. IT is dealing with, at the low end, 40 hosting organizations to make sure every user can access SaaS apps at any time from anywhere on any device.
Best of the blogs: One Gripe Line reader calls Hewlett-Packard out for putting time-bombs in printing cartridges, thereby forcing customers to buy new ones, whether they're needed or not. "I figure that it costs me about $20.00 per print when I factor in the time bomb in the printheads. And I can't buy spares for fear they will time out before installation," our reader explains.
The news beat: Microsoft publishes a security advisory stating that a new zero day hole in several versions of Word was found; would-be victims have to open a malicious Word file to fall prey. Netbula slaps Sun and its StorageTek arm with a copyright infringement lawsuit. Hewlett-Packard's third quarter numbers drop. And here's a look back at the year in PCs and chips.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 6, 2006 04:37 AM
December 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)
New problems for holiday shoppers already
Best of the blogs: While many stores are offering the option of buying a product online then picking it up at the store, the reality is that for customers this is not so easy, as Ed Foster reports in this Gripe Line post. Lowe's, for instance, charged one reader's credit card, but when he arrived to collect the goods, they didn't even have them in stock, leaving said reader wondering, "This system is guaranteed to result in situations where they collect money from customers for items that they do not have and cannot get. How do corporations get away with treating their customers this way?"
Columnists' corner: Just when IT was starting to understand the two competing document formats, ODF and OpenXML, along comes a third -- in China no less. This one is Uniform Office Format. "The sheer population of China is enough to ensure that UOF will become a significant player on the global IT stage," writes Neil McAllister. China aims to set a new office document standard. "Although no plans have yet been announced to incorporate UOF support into Western office productivity applications such as Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org, that doesn't mean China plans to remain an island unto itself."
Podcasts: Jon Udell speaks with John Wilkin, director of University of Michigan Library's technology department, which means he's the guy coordinating the library's joint digitization with Google. They discuss how the deal with Google has altered the library's effots to digitize 7 million volumes, and what it all means for the rest of us. Tune in here.
The news beat: Microsoft unveils a new tool to help developers build mashups for mobile devices. Dell unwraps PowerEdge Energy Smart servers, along with claims that the machines are 25 percent better in terms of performance per watt metrics. And AMD gets a subpoena as part of an antitrust investigation about price fixing in the graphics processors and cards market.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 4, 2006 04:54 AM
November 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Quote of the day: Kicking Google's tires
Like many of you, probably, I tire-kicked Google Spreadsheets when it first arrived on the scene, then forgot all about it. A nice bit of AJAX hackery, I thought, but no serious competition for Excel. I was wrong, though ... Google's office apps, while collaboratively adept, are functionally lame. Microsoft's apps are adept and lame in precisely the opposite ways. Everyone needs to converge on solutions that deliver the best of both. -- Jon Udell. We need a universal canvas.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 30, 2006 04:05 AM
November 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: The virtual world Second Life is beginning to look a lot like, umm, First Life, suggests Dave Rosenberg in this post. "What happens when avatars start stealing each other's stuff? Or playing each other's music (without permission)? Or writing free software and giving it away to lobotomize others' businesses?" he poses.
From the analysts: If you're expecting that certification you're pursuing to pay off, you might want to think again. Certifications are losing respect. Perhaps it's because anyone can track down a tech tutorial anytime, or maybe just a refocusing of priorities. "The IT labor market's like one big auction, and rather than bidding based on a single skill set, employers are starting to look more at bundles of skills, of which a certification may not be the most important feature," writes David Margulius in Will IT certification pay off in the long run? He's not the only asking that question, either.
The news beat: Yahoo says it will buy Bix.com, an online contest site, in efforts to broaden its array of social media services. Dell establishes a fourth support center in India. And Avaya acquires Traverse saying with the purchased technology it hopes to make voice mail easier.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 17, 2006 11:07 AM
November 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Casting conspiracy theories about the Republican Party's ties to Diebold aside, Bob Lewis has a notion of his own -- and at its foundation is technological chicanery of sorts. The companies that sell e-voting machines, Lewis asserts, have duped the agencies that buy them into believing the systems are far more complicated than they actually are, and done so to charge more money. "Over the past six years or so I've read all manner of experts weigh in on this subject, and haven't yet read one who has pointed out what I think is obvious to readers of this blog (and anyone competent to read any blog): We're talking about an awesomely simple programming task," he writes in Advice Line.
Podcast: In the words of Ed Foster, just getting tech support can be akin to running a marathon. McAfee tech support, for instance, wins the disfavor of one GripeLine reader, Dave, who recounts his headaches with the security vendor, including instructions to delete files that ultimately disable his Internet connection and disarm the Windows search capability. After all that, promised return calls never came -- but attempts to charge Dave extra for tech support sure did. Tune into the Gripe Line podcast.
Columnists' corner: What with the Web 2.0 conference and all the associated chatter this week, the reality is that the current crop of Web applications still conduct an all-too-passive existence. "Mere access to data does not, of course, yield meaningful interpretation," explains Jon Udell in Web apps, just give me the data. Udell provides seemingly simple listings of the Fortune 500 as one example of how you can read the data, just not get a hold of or query it yourself.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 8, 2006 11:03 AM
November 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Concluding series' on Vista and Office
Best of the blogs: Oliver Rist is likely the only InfoWorld writer who could get away with using the word 'freaking' in a lead sentence, or anywhere else for that matter. But he does just that in Living with Office 2007, Part III. Actually, he does get slapped during the whole thing, just not by an editor. Along the way, Rist examines what just might be the most powerfully redesigned application in the suite: Access 2007.
Columnists' corner: With Microsoft finally committing to a ship date for Windows Vista, Rist has also been living inside the penultimate iteration, RC2, a.k.a. release candidate 2. "First off, users may not see a big features difference with Vista on a day-to-day basis, but administrators sure will." Rist writes in Visiting Vista RC2, Part Three. But that's not to suggest there are no important changes. This week, Rist shares the experiences his front-line sys admins had with Vista, to add multiple perspectives.
Podcasts: The loose triptych of disk encryption, SAS and iSCSI are stirring up a quiet revolution of sorts at Storage Networking World Fall, in Orlando. Tune in to Storage Sprawl.
The news beat: CA's former CEO Sanjay Kumar is handed a 12-year prison sentence and an $8 million fine for charges of securities fraud. Microsoft changes Vista licensing so that customers can now uninstall the OS from one machine and install it on another box any number of times they want. And Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff speaks about his company's vision, competitors and customers, in this interview.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 3, 2006 04:44 AM
November 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Quote of the day: Google's mindshare over Microsoft
With this [JotSpot] acquisition, Google has really pushed its "office 2.0" agenda much further ahead. Alone, JotSpot was just an interesting curiosity. With Google's other cloud-based applications, it starts to look like an interesting application. Thus, in Innovator's Dilemma fashion, the original innovator, Microsoft (or, more appropriately, WordPerfect/Novell) has been supplanted by the upstart, Google. Not financially. Not yet. But mindshare is on Google's side on this one. -- Matt Asay. Google: turning weaknesses into strengths.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 2, 2006 04:07 AM
November 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Columnists' corner: Are all screen sharing systems the same? Roughly, contends Jon Udell in this week's Strategic Developer. "There's one thing I wish screen-sharing systems would do well: screen sharing," he writes. Instead, they're bogged down with too many features that simply aren't usable in practice. But Udell has a radical theory, and it's laden with simplicity.
Best of the blogs: Rumors are swirling that Google is in cahoots with the CIA; at least according to Robert David Steele, former case officer for the CIA, who calls the relationship "a very important strategic mistake." Steele, as reported in this post, also accuses Google of being hypocritical in not sharing information requested by the U.S. DOJ.
Open source: It was "the fickle finger of fate" that led Paul Venezia to upgrade his laptop to Fedora Core 6 and, ultimately, to put together a list of not only problems with the software but also half-a-dozen resolutions. Suddenly, Fedora Core 6.
The news beat: EMC lays out its intentions to buy Avamar for its data storage software. Sun says that open source versions of Java SE and ME will manifest in the November timeframe. And Microsoft partners to make Vista compatibility easier on customers.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 1, 2006 11:36 AM
October 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Oliver Rist kicks off a series about Living with Office 2007. Rist has been running the beta along with Vista RC2. "It's actually been two weeks now and I may not stop using it at all, which is most likely going to tick of Dell PR since I'm running it on their PC," Rist confesses. "Hey, a bunch of steak-eating Texan dudes coming up here to get what they want. What could possibly happen?" I'll let Rist tackle his own question but, seriously, there's more to this caper than that.
Review: "Apple's new server is a story, not because I'm Mac-aligned, but because if Xserve Xeon were stripped of the logo, the aluminum and the trappings of Apple culture, it'd be hailed as a server design breakthrough," writes Tom Yager, in Xserve Xeon review, Part 1. "Xserve Xeon is not Xserve as you've known it, and if you're well familiar with x86 1U servers, you'll find that Xserve Xeon is unlike any x86 server you've seen or used." All that said, though, "Xserve Xeon is not flawless -- there are design challenges presented by compact rack servers than even Apple hasn't overcome." Be sure to keep an eye on the Enterprise Mac blog for forthcoming parts of the review. Also, Yager's column this week is on Xserve and how it fits into Apple's approach to external services.
Storage: What with all its acquisitions and branching into new software realms, the question has to be asked: Is EMC losing touch with hardware? You won't find an answer in this post at The Storage Network, but Mario Apicella does reveal the reasons that drove him to pose the question.
The news beat: Cisco CEO John Chambers haunts Oracle OpenWorld attendees by saying that IT vendors and customers have gotten too comfortable with the status quo and, as such, have grown nervous about change. Acer vows to beat Lenovo and take over the third spot in global PC