- Apple pushes past Google as top brand
- Last Week to Nominate for InfoWorld CTO 25 Awards
- Symantec gets a thank you
- Blaster worm author gets jail time
- Frank talk about SOAs
- Looking back over the years
- Get Out the Blog Vote
- IBM, Lenovo cooperate with security review
- 3 am Labs Unwraps Remote PC Management Tool
- Technological Trickle-Down Among Indian Outsourcers
January 31, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple pushes past Google as top brand
Following a year in which it captured the country's attention with its iPod, iTunes and Mac mini products, Apple Computer knocked off Google as the brand with the most global impact in 2004, according to Brandchannel.
"It's hard to imagine a brand having a shinier year than Apple," Brandchannel said, reporting the results of a survey of 1,984 respondents. "Notably punctuated with iMacs, iPods and iTunes, Apple's 2004 presence was felt in the press, in ads and on the streets, with iPod coming to define the word 'ubiquitous.'"
In addition, and not to be underestimated, Apple made a tidy $295 million profit in the last quarter of 2004. Still, some clouds hovered over Apple's shiny outlook.
"However, Apple's cultural symbolism was not economically symbiotic," Brandchannel reported, pointing to continued weak market share in the computer division.
"Apple Computer ranks sixth in the U.S. with just 3.33 percent of the market (Dell leads at 33 percent, followed by Hewlett-Packard at 20 percent and Gateway at 5.23 percent)."
So while the company's consumer play has paid off mightily, questions remain about the company's future direction.
"This (brand recognition) shows you how much power a hot consumer product can have in its segment," said Rob Enderle, of The Enderle Group. "The real question is whether Apple can survive as an iPod company. While iPods generate profits, PCs still pay the bills. They may shift publicity in 2005 back to PCs, perhaps to their small Macs."
Google, meanwhile, which won the award in the previous two years, still garnered high praise.
"The world's number one search engine, Google's impact on our readers reflects the online public's growing dependence on sorting through an incomprehensible amount of available information," Brandchannel said. "But Google does more, including technology licensing and hardware, news aggregating and shopping (Froogle).
"Largely based on functional attributes, which offer clarity in a complex field, Google is by no means invincible," Brandchannel said. "It faces competition on many fronts including Yahoo's Overture search engine and other solutions like Vivisimo's Clusty, and MSN Desktop Search, all of which hope to build a better mousetrap."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 31, 2005 03:50 PM
January 31, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Last Week to Nominate for InfoWorld CTO 25 Awards
Only one week remains to nominate your favorite technologist for InfoWorld's annual CTO 25 award.
We are looking for CTOs, or senior-level IT decision makers, who have harnessed technology to impact their organization.
Here is a list of achievements we would consider worthy of nominations, which InfoWorld editor-in-chief Steve Fox compiled for a previous column on the awards.
* Created a new tech-driven profit center for the enterprise?
* Driven a new technology or spearheaded a new standard within the tech community?
* Initiated a significant XML, Web services, or SOA (service-oriented architecture) deployment?
* Succeeded in a substantial integration project?
* Made an outsourcing or offshoring project work effectively or, conversely, implemented a successful keep-it-in-house strategy?
* Planned and handled major staffing changes?
* Recognized a potential vulnerability and shut it down?
* Restructured or optimized workflow or collaboration within the organization?
* Turned painful IT experiences into pleasurable ones?
* Put the technology in place to keep the compliance hounds at bay?
* Maximized efficiency in the supply chain?
The nomination form is here and our story about 2004's winners is here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 31, 2005 02:01 PM
January 31, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Barbara Nelson is happy to say thank you to Symantec and Veritas. When the NeoScale Systems CEO and president began touting the company's products a few years back, she was often met with blank stares.
NeoScale's CryptoStor product line is a family of highly available, high performance, transparent and scalable policy-based storage security appliances for network storage and security. The company's products are designed to lower the cost of protecting accessible, distributed storage infrastructures, while also enabling greater efficiencies for the secure management of storage capacity, consolidation, continuity and compliance.
Sounds good, but for a startup to deliver that message in 2000 was a bit unusual. But in the past six to eight months Nelson said she began to find a more receptive audience among IT managers. Still, despite Nelson's strong background with Intel, Maxtor and Quantum, it was a hard sell.
Then, Symantec announced it was purchasing Veritas for a hefty $13.5 billion. The two companies pointed to the convergence of storage and security as one major reason for the merger of the two companies. For NeoScale, which today announced a new CryptoStor product for tape backup, it was an affirmation that they were on the right track. "Now companies are coming to us. That's been a nice change," said Nelson.
Posted by Bob Francis on January 31, 2005 12:57 PM
January 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Blaster worm author gets jail time
Jeffrey Lee Parson was barely 18 years old and dealing with some personal problems when he launched a variant of the Blaster worm that infected more than 48,000 computers worldwide. On Friday, a federal judge in Seattle sentenced Parson to 18 months in prison, three years of supervised release and 100 hours of community service.
"What you've done is a terrible thing. Aside from injuring people and their computers, you shook the foundation of technology," U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman told Parsons. She will determine restitution at a hearing Feb. 10.
Parson was indicted in September 2003 and charged with sending out a variant of the MS Blaster worm on August 12, 2003.
Parson admitted he created his worm by modifying the original MS Blaster worm and adding a mechanism that allowed him to have complete access to certain infected computers, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, Wash.
Parson's W32.Blaster-B variant first appeared just days after W32.Blaster-A first appeared. Blaster-B used a different file name, teekids.exe, as opposed to the original msblast.exe, IDG News Service reported.
The worm was programmed to take advantage of a vulnerability in the DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model) interface component of Windows, which handles messages sent using the RPC (remote procedure call) protocol, to spread itself over the Internet and launch denial-of-service attacks against popular Web sites, including Microsoft's Windows Update Web site, the news service said.
"This defendant's malicious attack on the information superhighway caused an economic and technological disruption that was felt around the world," said Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray of the Criminal Division. "Today's sentence demonstrates to criminals intent on releasing computer viruses and worms that they will be found and appropriately punished."
The judge said she took into consideration Parson's special circumstances. Parson, who weighs more than 300 pounds, was three weeks past his 18th birthday when he released the worm, had history of mental illness, and was inadequately monitored by his parents on his computer activities, the judge said.
Pechman told Parson that his community service had to be through face-to-face contact with others and restricted his use of computers to only educational and business purposes. "No video games, no chat rooms," Pechman said to Parsons. "I don't want you to have anonymous friends, I want you to have real world friends."
By giving Parson a significant jail sentence, law enforcement authorities sought to discourage others from creating damaging worms, one security expert said.
"An 18-month prison sentence is probably the best that Jeffrey Parson could have realistically hoped for. The U.S. authorities have demonstrated their determination to deal with virus writers and other cybercriminals," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security software company Sophos. "Parson's sentence sends out a strong message to other young people that writing vi-ruses is a fool's game. Parson and his parents will be regretting the day he decided to get involved in virus-writing.
"You can't help but feel sorry for Jeffrey Parson - he was clearly a kid with issues, who got mixed up in a game with far bigger consequences than he could have ever imagined," Cluley added. "It must not be forgotten that the identity of the author of the original Blaster worm, who infected many many more computers than Parson, is still a mystery. Despite a $250,000 bounty on their head - we are still no closer to unmasking the culprit. Jeffrey Parson is small fry when compared to the major virus-writing criminals who are still at large."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 28, 2005 05:21 PM
January 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
BEA Systems on Friday brought out a couple of its customers building service-oriented architectures to make some observations about SOAs.
Featured were eHealthinsurance, which is an online health insurance brokerage, and online meeting host WebEx.
EHealthInsurance is switching from a proprietary point-to-point-based system to an SOA to interface with insurance companies and provide services to customers. Web services is critical to the company's effort. Also, eHealthInsurance seeks to patent a technology it calls EPI, for Electronic Processing Interchange, enabling consumers to utilize the eHealthinsurance lifecycle of services.
"Our customer that comes online is expecting a total electronic experience," with instant quotes and quick turnaround times for rates, application processing and enrollment, said Robert Fahlman, COO for Core Products at eHealthInsurance.
"We needed a solution that would be very flexible, reliable [and] could scale," Fahlman said. The company reduced processing costs by 40 percent last year through SOA technology and is looking for another 25 percent reduction this year, he said.
"Executives are very supportive of this paradigm shift for us," said Jiang Wu, director of Technology and System Architecture at eHealthInsurance. The company also is using technologies such as Secure FTP in its SOA endeavor.
WebEx looked at SOA as a solution to connect different systems and build customer- and marketing-facing dashboards. Applications from companies such as Pivotal and Remedy are featured in the mix. Web services also figures highly in WebEx's plan.
"We had an opportunity to build out this infrastructure from scratch and build out in a new fashion," said Prasanna Deshmukh, senior manager for IS Applications at WebEx.
BEA's CIO Rhonda Hocker stressed that architecture is vital in an SOA. "You really need to think about what you're going to architect. You don't want to go out and just start building services," she said.
Companies such as BEA and Sun Microsystems continue to preach the SOA mantra. Web services, which are key to this paradigm shift, have not received as much ink in the last year as in the two years prior to that. The presentations by WebEx and eHealthInsurance demonstrate that Web services is moving from the hype to the reality stage and making good on the technology's promise.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 28, 2005 04:05 PM
January 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
This month marks 10 years as a writer at InfoWorld for me. I thought it might be kind of fun to look back on the way things were in 1995:
* Spam was this rather tasty meat product that came in a steel can and had this gook on top of it.
* Steve Jobs was out at Apple.
* Bill Gates was worth only a few billion dollars.
* Sun Microsystems was a company on the rise.
* Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment, Compaq and Tandem were separate, competing companies.
* The World Wide Web was not pervasive.
* Linux was Lucy's brother on "Peanuts", with his name misspelled.
* Windows 95 was the most widely anticipated product of the year.
* The National Hockey League locked out its players.
* Phishing is what people did in a small boat on the lake.
* Novell NetWare was a critical product in my area of coverage.
Things sure look different now. But in some respects, things haven't changed much. Windows still dominates the desktop (and the NHL has again locked out its players). Ten years from now, who knows what the IT landscape will look like? Will Microsoft be dominant or Linux? Or perhaps it will be something still being developed in some unknown developer's garage?
The possibilities are endless.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 28, 2005 01:50 PM
January 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Nominees for the fifth annual Bloggies -- awards given to blogs and bloggers -- have been listed and voting is open to the public.
There are 30 categories, with new ones for best food blog, best entertainment blog and best writing of a blog.
Public voting closes February 3, but since the nominees have been announced traffic to the servers was jammed enough that the group closed the site temporarily, so you're better off not waiting until the last few days.
Winners will be announced between March 13 and March 15.
At the very least, visiting the site is a good way to learn about blogs I had not yet visited or heard about.
The BBC, by the by, has a story about the bloggies.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 28, 2005 09:19 AM
January 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IBM, Lenovo cooperate with security review
Although security concerns mounted this week over the acquisition of IBM's PC business by China's largest PC maker, Lenovo Group, the companies say they are cooperating with a review panel set up to deal with such issues.
Three Republican congressmen said this week in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow that the deal could pose a threat to U.S. national security and deserves a closer review by the U.S. Congress and government agencies before a decision is made on whether or not to approve the deal.
The U.S. Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is examining the deal.
IBM said it is already cooperating with CFIUS. "IBM has filed the required legal notice with the Committee on Foreign Investment," said Edward Barbini, an IBM spokesman. "IBM is following all the normal and routine procedures in the review of the transaction."
Lenovo's chief executive, Yang Yuanqing, said the company had not received any notice from Washington that the deal could not go ahead, The Financial Times reported.
"The acquisition is proceeding as normal," Yang said, adding that Lenovo would cooperate closely with any US investigation.
"I don't think [the transaction] is a threat to the US's national security", Yang said, because PCs were relatively low-end technology.
In their letter, the congressmen said the $1.75 billion deal could result in the transfer advanced technology and corporate assets to the Chinese government, along with licensable or export-controlled technology, and may result in certain U.S. government contracts involving PCs being fulfilled by the Chinese government, according to a statement released by the House Armed Services Committee, IDG News Service said.
One international trade and technology expert, however, said national security concerns would not appear to be serious enough to merit stopping the deal.
"We view this as an economic issue, recognizing this is a global economy," said Bob Cohen, a senior vice president with the Information Technology Association of America, a trade association representing 380 IT companies.
"We don't view this as a national security issue," he said. "This (IBM's PC business) is commodity technology manufactured in China."
Cohen said he expects the deal to be approved once the 90-day CFIUS review process is completed.
Todd Malan, executive director for the Organization for International Investment, said he hoped the deal would not become a political issue. "If, in fact, these are low-tech products, maybe they (IBM and Lenovo) will move through the process quickly," Malan said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 27, 2005 01:26 PM
January 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
3 am Labs Unwraps Remote PC Management Tool
3am Labs on Thursday announced it plans to ship its remote PC management and support tool, LogMeIn IT Reach, next month. The new Web-based tool helps administrators connect to mobile PCs worldwide, even those that are behind firewalls or that have dynamic IP addresses, according to company officials. These mobile systems automatically identify themselves to the gateway through a secure beacon as they come online allowing an IT support staff to then access and support them.
Administrators, or consultants, can deploy solutions to a wide range of machines at once by generating and then sending an installation link to remote machines. The product's support tools let administrators monitor and adjust settings for the processor, memory, PCI information, and network settings. The product comes with an integrated console giving system administrators the ability to monitor, manage, and fix all computers supported with both LogMeInIT and RemotelyAnywhere.
LogMeIn IT Reach, widely available next month, costs $99 per user per year, with additional users costing $79.95 per year. More information about the product can be seen at www.3amlabs.com.
Posted by Ed Scannell on January 27, 2005 10:09 AM
January 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Technological Trickle-Down Among Indian Outsourcers
Technology Review this morning has a story about one of the side-effects outsourcing could have in India: creating a potentially fertile ground for IT startups.
From the TR article:
The impact of outsourcing on indigenous innovation may not be so clear cut. Big outsourcing providers like Infosys may not be fountains of innovation, but their presence will have—in fact, is already having—trickle-down effects. Outsourcing, many Indians argue, is training India’s next generation of tech entrepreneurs.
The piece says that large, successful outsourcing operations are not only arming employees with skills they can use to start new companies, but also paying them well, so that they'll be able to afford it. Adding to that, some Indian's trained here in The States are returning home to spin the startup wheel.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 27, 2005 08:22 AM
January 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google snags another Mozilla developer
I wouldn't say it qualifies as a 'brain drain' just yet, but Google has hired another developer from Mozilla.
First Ben Goodger announced in his blog that he would be collecting a paycheck from Google and, now, Darin Fisher wrote in his blog that he is also going to Google. Both contend that they will maintain active roles in Mozilla moving forward.
Mozilla and Firefox have garnered considerable press and attention over the last several months, but there are more browsers emerging to choose from, as a story in The New York Times this week points out.
The article offers advice on choosing a particular browser based on user needs, whether that be tighter security than IE can offer, or special interests, such as a browser for "Star Trek" fans.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 27, 2005 07:13 AM
January 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun's open source Solaris: Is the race already over?
Sun Microsystems this week finally unveiled its long-anticipated open source program for Solaris and, showing a thing or two to IBM, released 1,670 patents to the community at large. This is far in excess of the 500 patents IBM made available earlier this month.
Once hailed as the open systems company, Sun is now seen as being a bit on the proprietary side, which is unfair to the vendor. Yes, the company has clinged to Solaris and the SPARC hardware architecture while Linux, Windows and the Intel CPU platform have become de facto industry standards, of sorts. But Sun has long been a champion of letting others use its software, such as the Network File System and Java. Unix, on which Sun has built its company, predated Linux as the so-called open systems OS.
Now, the industry at large must sit back and see if open source Solaris can give Linux a run for its money.
Yes, Solaris has lots of years of development and some snazzy features that put it technically ahead of where Linux is today. Linux, though, has had such a head start in open source that it may have already crossed the finish line before Sun's entrant in the race was even able to leap from the starting gate.
In a twist of irony, it may be too late for Sun to lead in the open technology vein that the company always championed.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 26, 2005 03:09 PM
January 26, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google, Yahoo video search is the tip of the iceberg
Google and Yahoo's introduction of video search clips is only the beginning of a new age in search capabilities.
RocketMobile, a much smaller software developer based in Los Gatos, Calif., just launched a very cool music search program for cell phones called Song Identity.
Don't look on their Web site to learn more about it because it hasn't even been put up yet.
But if you have the application and use Verizon as your carrier, you can hold your cell phone up to a music source for ten seconds and it will identify the singer, the song and the album.
Almost all of the major database companies with a research arm, such as IBM, Oracle, Sybase, already have search engines for the broadcast industry that find video images as well as audio.
What Google and Yahoo are doing is making the mass consumer market aware of these kind of multimedia capabilities.
I'm sure there is more to come.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on January 26, 2005 11:31 AM
January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IBM's Lotus jumps ahead with Notes Domino 7
Both IBM and Microsoft are trumpeting their respective messaging platforms this month and the two roads are diverging.
Both vendors a couple years ago drew up big plans for a unified data store across messaging, database, applications, which they promised would simplify data management.
Well, IBM has jumped ahead in a piece of that vision. Big Blue confirmed this week that the forthcoming Lotus Notes Domino Version 7 will offer the ability to store Domino data in IBM DB2. Microsoft, meanwhile, earlier this year deferred the WinFS unified storage technology in Longhorn and last week said that the next version of Exchange, due in the 2006 or 2007 timeframe, will stick to the JET database technology. Earlier Microsoft officials had suggested Exchange might adopt WinFS or SQL Server 2005, formerly called Yukon.
As users look ahead to messaging upgrades, how important is this distinction?
Significant productivity benefits can be gleaned through a unified data store across e-mail, content creation, database, and storage, according to The Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner.
"There is a lot of lost productivity when you don't have a common format for all of your different data. Attachments and spreadsheets are difficult to manage and finding things is [going to get] increasingly difficult," Gardner said.
IBM and Oracle have a lead over Microsoft in moving to a more unified data platform for messaging, but IBM has a huge global installed base with Notes, Gardner said.
Although Microsoft laid out strong TCO gains in Exchange 12, IBM and Oracle customers can get a jump on some of the productivity benefits of having a common data layer.
"There are some risks for IBM as users consider their options for Domino, but the advanced enterprise that exploits the DB2-Domino tag team and builds out a common data architecture using DB2 Integrator products to gain broad control over content and data will gain significant long term productivity," Gardner said.
"Microsoft will still have its users mucking around in spreadsheet marts and Exchange public folders for their intelligence assets for years to come," he said.
Oracle, meanwhile, which built its three year old Collaboration Suite on its relational database technology, claims its database underpinnings translate to better reliability, security and scalability.
Another big benefit is to enable processes that can access structured and unstructured data seamlessly, according to Rob Koplowitz, senior director of technology marketing for Oracle Collaboration Suite.
"For an end user who is ensconced in a business process to be able to access unstructured data that supports the process simply and easily is a big advantage," Koplowitz said.
"I don't think IBM has gotten all the way there with a DB2 option on the back of Notes," he said.
Oracle plans to introduce a third release of its collaboration platform, called Collaboration Suite 10g, sometime mid year. That offering will add IM, VOIP, and content management features.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on January 25, 2005 04:05 PM
January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google's announcement of a service that allows users to search the content of television programs from the likes of PBS, the NBA, Fox News, and C-SPAN, will open up a new world of easy access to research and will ramp up search competition with Yahoo and others.
Yahoo, meanwhile, said it is making its video search available this week by linking to the service from the home page of its Web site.
The Google Video beta (http://www.google.com/video) lets users search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004, the company said.
"What Google did for the Web, Google Video aims to do for television," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products, in a statement. "This preview release demonstrates how searching television can work today. Users can search the content of TV programs for anything, see relevant thumbnails, and discover where and when to watch matching television programs. We are working with content owners to improve this service by providing additional enhancements such as playback."
The new video search initiatives from Google and Yahoo allow access to yet another level of content in the intense competition over search technology, said Rob Enderle, of the Enderle Group. "This is certainly important for users who want to research news events and shows. It's another easy to get us to the data we need," Enderle said.
For users of Google Video, entering a query will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken, the company said. Google Video also offers a preview page of still video images and five short text segments; upcoming episodes; search within shows; and program details.
The Google Video beta enables users to search across the closed captioning content of a growing number of TV programs that Google began indexing in December, 2004. Entering a query will return a list of relevant television programs with still images and text excerpts from the exact point in the program where the search phrase was spoken.
Google published endorsements of the program from prominent executives Tuesday.
"For more than three decades PBS and local PBS stations have pioneered the use of state-of-the-art technology to use media to inform, engage, entertain, and educate the American public," said Pat Mitchell, President and CEO of PBS. "Today we are proud to join with Google, a company that continues to achieve new levels of technical innovation with the launch of Google Video, a new service that increases the reach and impact of PBS content."
"NBA fans are tech savvy early adopters," said NBA Commissioner David Stern. "With our partnership with Google on the pioneering Google Video service, we enhance our ability to meet the needs of NBA fans, delivering to them content and information in a new and innovative way."
For its part, Yahoo's video search product will be able to search closed captioned content from Bloomberg, BBC and BSkyB as the result of a relationship with TVEyes, a company spokeswoman said.
Yahoo will leverage its established content partner relationships through "Ya-hoo! Movies," "Yahoo! Launch" and "Yahoo! News" to include movie trailers, music videos, and news.
Yahoo includes content made available through Media Real Simple Syndication (mRSS), which enables smaller video content publishers to upload their content directly to Yahoo! Video Search.
The online community has access to Yahoo Video Search and mRSS format that the company introduced in December 2004 and which allows users access to online video content. Yahoo also has direct feed relationships with Real, Atom Film, IFilm and Stupid Videos, the spokeswoman said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 25, 2005 02:02 PM
January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Q&A: Ex-HP Executives Form Startup To Deliver Itanium Technologies
With some analysts beginning to take a harder look at just how successful the Itanium series of chip can be in an increasingly competitive 64-bit chip market, the arrival of startup Secure64 Software could not come at a better time. The new company, which had its formal coming out party launched on Monday, was founded in 2002 by a group of ex-Hewlett-Packard executives including Bill Worley who was the technical director of PA-RSC and PA-Wor. The latter project eventually evolved into the first generation of Itanium processors. What is driving the company is its belief that there is yet to be delivered any software to take full advantage of Itanium's range of capabilities, most notably its own built-in security architecture and its superior performance capabilities.
A group of the company's co-founders discussed their upcoming software, scheduled to enter beta testing in the next four to six weeks, and the market opportunities for it that may lie ahead with Editor At Large Ed Scannell.
IW: The 64-bit market is where the future is, but why Itanium?
Cranstone: If you look back at the major inflection points of the industry, the real critical junction is always when someone comes along with a piece of software that truly leverages the full range of architectural capabilities of a chip. So when Bill (Worley) came along, I only had one question for him: What makes Itanium so special. It must be something in there we do not understand yet. Bill said two things that make it unique. One is its parallel processing capability and ability to support a sustained maximum of 8 instructions per cycle. In comparison, the Pentium can sustain a maximum of three and other RISC chips a maximum of four. But in reality they do not ever hit those theoretical numbers. So we saw there the possibility for a huge performance gain with Itanium. Second, another unique aspect is the chip has a whole security architecture inside that no one has focused on.
IW: How did you proceed?
Cranstone: Bill's idea was if we could come up with a simpler software structure that was extensible and that could leverage the inherent power of the chip, then it could create a great opportunity. Again, looking back to the inflection point that drove both Windows and Intel in 1995, it was the convergence of the Windows OS, the applications, and the developer toolkits that were all leveraged to take advantage of up to the 4 gigabytes of memory. If you look at our four core patents, we have focused our energy on a very simple structure. It is not an OS, it an execution environment that is designed as a simple structure that is extensible but really gives you access to the full power that is contained within Itanium.
Worley: If you look at the way systems have evolved, we see some natural forces driving that evolution, particularly among OSes. Operating systems have been driven by two factors. One is they want to be fully general and incorporate all the capabilities that users and application developers want. At the same time they want to remain portable. It is this second objective that has caused them to basically stick with a security model, a model established in the 1960s by IBM with the mainframe with its of one level of privilege, where the OS and I/O drivers run, and an other level of privilege where application run. Other hardware architectures have had richer capabilities for security but the OS does not use them because it would make them non-portable. At the same time, as their generality has grown, more and more abstractions have been added onto the system. What one finds on the desktop today on a PC is really a staggering number of functionalities, and a collection of abstractions that were not found even on the largest machines of the 1960s and 1970s.
But this generality has not come without a cost, and that cost is the complexity in cycles.
But one of the questions we asked ourselves was, suppose we had all those hardware gains, but could somehow divorce it from the overheads that have been piled on by general purpose OSes? The feeling we had was, there was a lot of performance being left on the table. We have our technology running in the labs now and we have satisfied ourselves in that one goes for the performance that is there, it is really substantial. Not ready to talk about specific benchmarks or products now. We are not ready to talk specifics today but the measurements we have established at the labs have convinced us there is really a big payoff there.
IW: What sort of technical advantages are inherent in Itanium and not present in competing chips?
Worley: One of the classic problems in security that has never been solved is where to keep cryptographic key information inside the machine. In 1998 there was a paper called, "Playing Hide And Seek With Stored Keys," What it showed is there are very simple algorithms where if you can get into the system under the guise of being an I/O driver and simply scan the physical memory, and so you can identify everything that is a crypto key. Many people recommend today, for instance, that when you develop your key material you get rid of it as quick as you can because if someone can find it they can compromise you. This is a problem generally thought not to be solvable in today's systems. With the Itanium however it is solvable because one can construct a compartment and keep this information inside a compartment that is impervious to penetration. And if one organizes the software as we outline in our patents, one can show it is impossible for that security to be breached.
IW: So what are the shorter term market opportunities as a result of these breakthroughs?
Cranstone: Look at a couple of market segments that are interested in higher performance namely financial transactions and e-commerce transactions. One is where time is money and the other is related to money and on-line shopping. A very significant amount of money was spent online in the last quarter, something like $23 billion. When you went shopping online this year you probably could see it takes a lot of time to be able to process the data. So anything that can be done to improve the processing capabilities will result in direct financial gain for those e-commerce providers. Plus, if you remember when MasterCard's data base was hacked and they ran off with all those credit card numbers? The ability to store private keys and confidential data in these secure compartments we have discussed is a significant improvement. We are looking at two other areas, multi-media as it is related to movies and movie distribution i.e. the ability for Hollywood to have a higher degree of confidence to store movies within these compartments and so would be very difficult to hack. Second, since 9/11, we have seen a large increase in secure data replication and the desire to secure that data off site. The problems with doing that is I have to transmit it securely and make sure it is secure at the other end. As we said all you have to do is submit a malicious driver and you can get control of ring zero.
IW: Why hasn't HP come up with this technology?
Cranestone: Intel and HP have been big supporters of our company and we are working closely with them. They recognize what this problem is all about.
IW: Will you license this technology to Intel, HP, and other chip makers? How do you plan to make money with this?
Cranstone: The are multiple ways to package it right now and that is why we are working on with HP and Intel, looking at different distribution mechanisms that can be used with this technology. We are looking at the shortest way to market at the moment. We have been in touch with (HP vice president) Don Jenkins group at HP for over a year.
IW: When do you expect to go into beta and deliver the finished product?
Cranstone: The current plan for the rollout is for evaluation customers to get it in the next month to month-and-a-half time frame. The whole idea there will be to validate our existing benchmarks and make sure they are in line with customer expectations. In other words really find out what the customers need. They likely are going to want things we have not thought of. As we integrate those changes we will then roll it up into beta with a launch of late summer of this year.
Posted by Ed Scannell on January 25, 2005 12:47 PM
January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Open Source Database Market Share Breakdown
Evans Data revealed the results of a study on open source databases. While the familiar names MySQL and PostgresSQL were in there, the biggest surprise may be that Firebird was nearly tied for the most used open source database.
Here are the rankings found in Evans' Database Development Survey 2005, Winter:
MySQL -- 53%
Firebird -- 52%
PostgresSQL -- 15%
Berkeley DB -- 4%
GNU SQL -- 3%
SAP DB -- 1%
Other -- 6%
Some survey respondents are using use more than one open source database, thus the total exceeds 100%.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 25, 2005 08:29 AM
January 25, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SBC aligns with California to Create Wireless State Parks -- No Thank You
When does wireless computing tilt the seesaw away from pervasive and directly into the invasive realm? Well, one place where this is starting is California State Parks.
SBC Communications struck a deal to provide wireless access to 85 of California's State Parks. The telcom will offer Wi-Fi from picnic tables, RV spaces, tent sites, and cabins. A free service allows users to access state park Web sites, such as http://www.parks.ca.gov/, for park and camping information, such as which roads are closed. I've been to enough state parks to know that information is typically available at the ranger station on the way into most parks, anyway.
Users who want access to more Web sites and to their e-mail can get that, too, for a fee. This is where it gets more disturbing -- because it means that coming from the next tent site I might have to listen to that noise made every time an IM is sent or received. Just like a chipmunk scurrying around a camp site at night can sound like a grizzly bear, the beep a PC emits upon incoming e-mail will carry in the woods.
True, no one has to bring their notebook if they don't want to but, then again, no one has to bring a cell phone out in public either, yet leaving one's cell at home does nothing to protect them from the annoyance of other people talking on their mobile phone a few short feet away.
The deal between SBC and California is being marketed as the largest scale Wi-Fi deployment of its kind. In my mind, though, it is set to become the largest wireless disaster of its kind.
I can think of no better way, excluding logging, roads and arson, to destroy the land sanctuaries we have set aside than to transform them into wireless hot spots.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 25, 2005 07:30 AM
January 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Symantec joins email appliance brigade
Symantec today entered the email security appliance market this week with the introduction of the Symantec Mail Security 8000 line.
It is hardly a surprise that Symantec would jump into the market. Interest in email security has grown as companies deal with the growing problem of email spam and new compliance regulations involving email.
While this is Symantec's first appliance, the company has been involved - and continues to be involved - by working with other companies in the market. For instance, IronPort Systems now licenses Symantec's Brightmail AntiSpam engine and Symantec AntiVirus engine on its IronPort C-Series email security appliances.
Another email security appliance provider, BorderWare Technologies, recently added a new president to help the company manage its growth. Tim Leisman joined BorderWare from Storability Software. He is best known for heading up Compaq's outsourcing division, which he founded and grew to $1.5 billion in revenues in five years.
All told, these moves suggest that the email security appliance market is hot. Watch your inbox for more on this topic.
Posted by Bob Francis on January 24, 2005 02:05 PM
January 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Nokia to produce single-chip mobile phone from Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments' and Nokia's joint announcement that Nokia will incorporate a single-chip system based on Texas Instruments' technology to its future mobile phones may result in development of phones for the mass market in the short run and, eventually, more advanced devices that will let users roam between networks, analysts say.
The new chip design uses digital technology to simplify radio frequency processing, which can reduce board space and extend battery life, the companies said. Using Texas Instruments' DRP (Digital RF Processor)-based, single-chip technology, Nokia will utilize cost, size, power and performance advantages for high-volume, entry-level mobile phones.
As a first step, the phones will target high-growth regions such as India and China.
"Over two years ago, Texas Instruments announced its vision to integrate its DRP technology in our mobile system solutions," said Gilles Delfassy, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Wireless Terminals Business Unit, in a statement. "This vision was first put into action in a single-chip solution for Bluetooth connectivity, is now continued with the single-chip GPRS solution, and will be followed with a robust roadmap of single-chip products to address additional wireless needs. With the industry's first integrated single-chip solution, Texas Instruments and Nokia are bringing more affordable, advanced mobile phones to consumers worldwide."
"Texas Instruments' advanced DRP technology, combined with our systems expertise, will enable us to deliver smaller, sleeker handsets with the latest voice, data, and multimedia capabilities without increasing size and power consumption," said Juha Pinomaa, Vice President, Entry Business Line, Nokia.
Some industry analysts said the chip will enable wireless phone developers to evolve services in stages.
"The phones that will first come to market will be basic phones, but that's where the improvement will begin, and over time, they will make them move up market," said Alex Slawsby, senior analyst for mobile devices for the IT re-search and consulting company, IDC. "The design will free up resources of hand-set vendors to focus on handset development."
"It's an important milestone for the industry and a first step towards a mass market-friendly device and, eventually, it will let you roam between different types of networks," said John Jackson, wireless analyst for the IT research company, The Yankee Group. "You'll have GSM, GPRS, CDMA and WiFi."
The new chip follows Texas Instruments' integrated DRP technology roadmap. The BRF6100 Bluetooth single chip, announced in June 2002, was the first imple-mentation of Texas Instruments' DRP technology, followed by the BRF6150 and the BRF6300.
Texas Instruments' integrated wireless technology roadmap also includes a sin-gle chip solution for digital TV for mobile phones, as well as future single chip solutions for GPS, wireless LAN, UMTS and other air interfaces, paving the way for further integration with the cellular modem and the company's OMAPTM processors.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 24, 2005 01:59 PM
January 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Globus Consortium grid pact forged by IBM, Sun, Intel
A new industry organization, the Globus Consortium, is being formed today to promote grid computing in commercial enterprises. Featured participants include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems and Univa. Intel's participation was revealed just this morning.
Absent from this list of high-level companies are Microsoft and Oracle, a key grid proponent. At press time, I'm still trying to find out why.
Formation of the new Globus Consortium brings to four the number of organizations promoting grid, although there may be a few more that I can't think of right now. The new group is focused on extending the open source source Globus Toolkit for enterprise usage.
Other organizations promoting grid include the Globus Alliance, Enterprise Grid Alliance and Global Grid Forum. Similar to the plethora of organizations promoting various aspects of Java, IT developers and managers now will be hard-pressed to keep track of which organization is doing what in grid.
This makes me wonder why the enterprise work could not be done in one of the existing grid organizations and what kind of overlap there will be amongst the various groups. Grid presents the promise of more complete usage of compute cycles distributed around a network. But did the world really need another industry consortium to boost grid? Is it me, or does forming another industry organization seem like a reflex action in technology endeavors?
Good luck to the participants in these grid organizations. May they avoid overlap and gridlock in their various deliberations.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 24, 2005 12:30 PM
January 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Viruses Go Airborne and Take to Mobile Phones
Virus and worm attacks are increasingly infecting mobile phones, but experts say that what we have seen thus far is only the beginning.
This morning two new Trojan horse programs appeared, threatening to render Symbian-based mobile phones useless. A story by IDG News Service correspondent John Blau, reported that the programs, Gavno.a and Gavno.b, masquerade as patch files designed to trick users into downloading them.
They both affect phones, such as Nokia's 6600 and 7610 models, using Symbian's OS version 7 with the Series 60 graphical user interface, Blau wrote in the story.
Not affected are Symbian-based phones such as the P900 and P910 from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications and the A925 and 1000 from Motorola equipped with the graphical user interface from UIQ Technology, the story said. Also unaffected are Nokia's 3650 and Siemens' SX1, running Symbian OS version 6.x together with the Series 60 interface.
Meanwhile, The New York Times this morning ran a profile of mobile virus writer Marcos Velasco, who created the Velasco worm, a.k.a. Lasco.A, Symbos_Vlasco.A or the Lasco virus.
That story stated that "industry experts are careful to say that the age of the cellphone virus is not yet upon us."
Furthermore, the story quotes Gartner analyst John Pescatore as saying the firm has told clients that 2005 is the year they should being taking steps to protect against mobile phone worms.
The ramifications of mobile phone viruses include data theft, the generation of expensive phone calls and, as is the case with the Gavno worms, crippling the handsets.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 24, 2005 11:45 AM
January 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Symantec, McAfee pack more security into appliances
IT shops got a raft of new options in the ongoing security battle this morning, with Symantec and McAfee each announcing security appliances, and VeriSign detailing improvements to its managed services.
Symantec offered up two gateway appliances and one for the perimeter, all three containing its own anti-virus software alongside the anti-spam product it acquired from Brightmail.
Also this morning, rival McAfee bolstered its intrusion prevention system (IPS) appliance roster, adding two new IntruShield products that are designed to spot malicious code and spyware, and to thwart denial of service attacks.
On the managed services front, VeriSign added new spam filtering features and administration tools to its Email Security Service, which receives and filters messages before forwarding them to a customer's servers.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 24, 2005 10:03 AM
January 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
ThinkSecret lawyer fights back at Apple
The lawyer for the Harvard freshman being sued by Apple Computer for publishing trade secrets about the company's products, says Apple is stifling free speech.
Terry Gross, the lawyer working free of charge for Nicholas Ciarelli, said the Apple lawsuit ignores First Amendment protections of free speech and attempts to intimidate small publishers from printing unwanted information about companies such as Apple.
"My client is angry," said Gross said, a partner at the San Francisco-based law firm of Gross & Belsky LLP, "He's a fan of Apple and can't understand why Apple is suing him."
Gross said he is preparing a motion to be filed by Feb. 2 that says the lawsuit was filed to intimidate public speech and should be dismissed. "They would not do this against the New York Times," he said.
Apple has released a statement supporting their lawsuit.
"Apple has filed a civil complaint against the owner of ThinkSecret.com and unnamed individuals who we believe stole Apple's trade secrets," Apple said. "We believe that ThinkSecret solicited information about unreleased Apple products from these individuals, who violated their confidentiality agreements with Apple by providing details that were later posted on the internet. Apple's DNA is innovation, and the protection of our trade secrets is crucial to our success."
Apple filed the lawsuit Jan. 4 in Superior Court in Santa Clara County.
Gross, who has represented the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which advocates for civil liberties in the technology and electronic communications field, said Ciarelli sought legal help from the EFF, which in turn contacted him.
Ciarelli, who publishes ThinkSecret.com under the name of Nick dePlume, welcomed Gross as his lawyer in a statement on his Website.
"Apple's attempt to silence a small publication's news reporting presents a troubling affront to the protections of the First Amendment," the statement signed by Nick dePlume, listed as the site's publisher and editor in chief. "I'm grateful that Mr. Gross has stepped forward to help defend these crucial freedoms."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 21, 2005 03:19 PM
January 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Intel will advance virtualization development
Intel's decision to bring its virtualization technology, code-named Vanderpool, to desktop PC processors several months sooner than first planned may accelerate industry efforts to develop the nascent technology.
The company said it has released its preliminary Vanderpool Technology (VT) External Architecture Specifications to foster design collaboration and to push advancements in virtualization.
Virtualization allows a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions or "containers." One physical compute system can function as multiple "virtual" systems, Intel said.
Intel will build support for VT into the chip sets it plans to release around the middle of this year, but it hadn't planned to activate that technology in processors until 2006, around the time Microsoft is expected to release its long-awaited update to the Windows XP operating system, code-named Longhorn, according to IDG News Service. At last September's Intel Developer Forum, President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini said that VT wouldn't become a mainstream technology until operating system support was available.
The Vanderpool Technology specifications provide technology overviews and guidance to soft-ware developers who are designing virtualization solutions for both IA-32 and Intel Itanium-based processor platforms, Intel said.
While expected in Itanium-based platforms this year, Intel now also plans to offer Vanderpool Technology in future desktop processor and chipset products in 2005, a year earlier than previously planned.
"Virtualization is going to be an important addition to the capabilities of the new chips, but it may take a while for people to figure out what to do with it," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight64. "The role of virtualization in big servers is clear, and there is an advantage for people doing software development and testing where they can have all their environments in one machine.
"The other idea is having a virtual machine where an employee can download a version and run it for his own job. I don't think we are ready for that yet," Brookwood added. "It's interesting technology and people will now get started working on applications for it sooner than they might have otherwise."
Intel is collaborating with independent software vendors on products that don't require operating system support to make VT an option for home or business users, said Bill Kirby, Intel's director of desktop platform marketing, according to IDG News Service. Those products will be ready from companies like VMware later this year, and VT will work with existing operating systems as long as a PC is using application software that has been optimized for the technology, he said.
Intel declined to say which of its forthcoming desktop processors will support VT, but the technology will arrive either as part of a planned upgrade to the company's Pentium 4 processors, expected in the first half of 2005, or with the Smithfield dual-core desktop processor that's expected in the second half of the year, IDG News Service said.
Virtualization technology is more commonly used in server environments. Intel's Itanium 2 processor will receive Vanderpool Technology this year, as previously scheduled, while its Xeon server chips won't get VT until 2006, Kirby said. The company's Centrino mobile technology will also ship with VT in 2006, he said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 21, 2005 01:11 PM
January 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Live from Redmond: It's Outlook and Hotmail
Microsoft this week expanded its presence in the hosted messaging market with the new Office Outlook Live, which combines Outlook with MSN Hotmail in a subscription service with 2 GB of online storage.
Targeted at SMBs and consumers, Outlook Live gives users a single place to view and manage e-mail accounts, contacts, and calendars, along with more advanced e-mail tools provided by Office Outlook. Outlook Live marks the first time a Microsoft Office product has been made available as a downloadable subscription service, according to Microsoft officials.
The Outlook Live service, which began testing last month, is an extension of the existing MSN Premium offering, a $10 per month service that lets users access MSN services from within Outlook. MSN Premium does not offer a copy of Outlook.
Packaging its offerings into a service for the low end of the SMB market is a good idea, and presents competition to similar services from ASP-One, Intermedia, and others, according to Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research.
"I think the key for acceptance of this type of offering is convincing people it's a hosted tool that competes with other business-grade offerings instead of 'Hotmail on steroids,'" said Osterman.
With the Outlook Live service, priced at $59.95 per year, users receive the latest version of Office Outlook 2003 for Subscription Services, 2 GB of online storage, the ability to send 20MB attachments, and advanced spam and virus protection.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on January 21, 2005 10:34 AM
January 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Will Mac Mini get PC users to switch?
The iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini continue to grab a great deal of ink in the mainstream press, see USA Today, as well as in the computer press, see PC World, with the discussion moving from the superiority of Apple technology to the effect Shuffle and Mac Mini will have on Apple's revenues.
A lot of the press reports cite Apple stores as the lynch pin for growing Mac sales and Apple's revenue. According to PC World, 16% of Apple revenue now comes out of their 100 plus Apple stores.
I've been to a number of Apple stores on the West Coast. They are indeed
spacious and beautifully designed. However, they make me uncomfortable.
The stores say to me, expensive, boutique prices. They are not like a Circuit City where you think, here's where I'm going to get a bargain.
On top of that you can't compare Apples with anything else in the store.
Obviously all they sell are Apple computers.
Yes, as MacWorld UKs Jonny Evans quotes one industry analyst, the stores are the holy places for the Apple faithful. But, I'm afraid the world of shoppers is a venal world where money, and spending less of it comes before religion.
In the long run, those stores that are generating nice profits for Apple will be detrimental to Apple's long range strategy of getting PC users to switch.
While many Apple users may believe it is okay if Apple cuts out for itself a nice comfortable niche in the market, it doesn't really work that way.
Like it or not they are competing for customers in a world of commodity products. Apple stores as they exist today and the exclusivity of a beautifully designed product is not enough.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on January 21, 2005 10:10 AM
January 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Symantec takes perception stock hit
Remember that nicely nuanced advertising slogan from Rolling Stone magazine: Perception is reality?
That would be little comfort to Symantec after it announced what can only be considered solid earnings this week. After reporting sales for the quarter ending in December were $695 million, a 41 percent increase over the same quarter a year earlier, handily beating Wall Street expectations of $665 million and reporting net income of $164 million, up 38 percent from a year ago, the company's share price is down about 25 percent over the last four weeks. Granted, the stock only fell a few points just after the announcement, closing at $24.50 on Jan. 19, but it still had to hurt.
Moreover, Symantec reported that it had strong double-digit gains across nearly all its business lines and in every geographic region. The company looks like it is firing on all cylinders. Symantec is hardly the only tech company to be hit by investor expectations. Ebay and Yahoo! also failed to overwhelm stockholders with their solid earnings.
But two other items of note have held back investor confidence even as the Symantec shows its strength - Microsoft and Veritas. The company's merger plans with storage software giant Veritas have not caught investor's fancy and Microsoft's planned entry into Symantec's market is reminding investors of Microsoft's other vanquished competitors such as Borland, Aston-Tate and Word Perfect - if they can remember their names at all.
Perception can be reality, particularly on Wall Street.
Posted by Bob Francis on January 21, 2005 07:35 AM
January 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Intel's Centrino platform for notebooks hits a sweet spot
Intel's launch of its upgraded Centrino platform for mobile chips for notebook computers comes as both businesses and consumers are looking to notebooks to replace clunky desktops.
Centrino, code-named Sonoma, offers enhanced graphics and wireless connectivity. The platform includes three major pieces: the processor, its companion chip set, and a wireless board, IDG News Service reported.
The platform includes improved versions of all three components with a new chip set, called 915 Express, forming its centerpiece.
"The mobile sector is huge because in the corporate world, laptops are over-taking desktops as the preferred way to do client-side computing," said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with Illuminata. "In the home, the same dynamics are occuring as more people use laptops.
"They are not going to go home and use clunky desktops," Eunice added. "And the kids in college are getting used to mobile computing."
Centrino's 915 Express chip set, formerly known by the code-name Alviso, adds support for the PCI Express interconnect technology, which allows users to add more powerful graphics cards or hard drives to their notebooks.
"When we introduced Intel Centrino mobile technology almost two years ago, Intel changed the mobile computing landscape with a platform suite of technolo-gies that enable great battery life, easier wireless connectivity, terrific per-formance and cooler designs," Mooly Eden, vice president of Intel’s Mobility Group, said in a statement. "Now, with all of the consumer and business-oriented features we’ve packed inside the 2005 platform, we’re taking notebooks to a new level for a no-compromise mobile computing experience. Intel Centrino mobile technology has become the essential ingredient for notebook computing."
The Centrino technology has broad support from notebook manufacturers. Nearly every major notebook vendor, including heavyweights such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, IBM, and Sony said they will support the new Centrino platform and Intel said it expects more than 150 different notebooks based on the new platform to be available this year.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 20, 2005 02:30 PM
January 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
David Pogue of the New York Times has a blog post this week explaining his theory about how Google is planning to grow Gmail virally.
As a Gmail user, this makes a lot of sense to me. I have already invited a handful of people to join, but whenever I log in, it says I can still send out 4 more invitations, the exact number I was permitted upon joining.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 20, 2005 12:29 PM
January 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Notebook: Open source marches on
Is the open source stampede destined to continue unimpeded? It's a question to ponder.
Officials in the open source industry serving on a panel at Stanford University on Tuesday discussed business models for open source products. Options were examined such as selling support or services for an open source technology - a pure play model - or simply using open source contributions in your commercial product.
I still have to wonder how far a pure play open source model can go, or at least how far it can go if software companies want to be zealous in generating lots of money. A Microsoft official, for his part, last year also openly questioned the economics of open source.
If we look at Red Hat, considered perhaps the most noteworthy open source software vendor, the dollar signs are not eye-popping. Red Hat, which does in fact use a subscription model, reported revenues only in the $45 million range in recent quarters. Not bad, but hardly in the billion-dollar neighborhood.
Open source is continuing its momentum, though. A new version of the PostgreSQL database released on Wednesday is aimed squarely at commercial rivals. An analyst at Forrester Research, Noel Yuhanna, said the open source database market will grow from its current $120 million size to a $1 billion market in three years. Some traditional commercial databases might even become open source as the trend moves forward, Yuhanna said.
Of course for users, the question of how to make money on open source doesn't really matter, at least in the short run. Users no longer have to pay licensing fees and can get their software for free. Can't argue with that. As long as the products keep getting upgraded, who needs to pay for them?
But Andrew Morton, lead maintainer of the Linux kernel, said in November that leading-edge projects in open source are the exception, not the rule. Anyone with a leading-edge technology ought to try to get rich with it first, he said. One example of this could be StreamBase Systems, which is implementing a commercial, subscription-based pricing model for its data processing application for streams rather than traveling the open source route.
What would any of you do if you had something fabulous - take it open source or go commercial first? Let's hear from you. I am at paul_krill@infoworld.com.
Also: The article on the discussion at Stanford University, which included talk about the patents issue, drew a heated response from one reader. "All patents ar evil," the reader wrote. He also dismissed the notion of intellectual property and suggested "viral open source patents," an open patent system, as an alternative. FWIW, the issue of patents was touched upon in a blog entry here last week.
Also: BEA Systems in February is tentatively scheduled to unveil its Project Da Vinci family of products for the telco industry. Briefly mentioned last month, the technology is expected to feature SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and VOIP functionality.
Posted by Paul Krill on January 20, 2005 10:37 AM
January 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SAP counters Ellison's Oracle-PeopleSoft integration push
SAP is going after PeopleSoft customers, countering Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's plan to integrate PeopleSoft's applications into a single suite.
With white-hot interest focusing on PeopleSoft applications, users may do well do sit and wait a few months before making any decisions, analysts say.
SAP announced a new maintenance and migration service Wednesday, aimed at its customers using PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards applications, called SAP Safe Passage, IDG News Service reported. The initiative extends maintenance and support services to products from PeopleSoft and the company it acquired in 2003.
The SAP move come one day after Ellison announced "Project Fusion," its effort to combine the Oracle, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards enterprise applications into a single suite. Fusion is due in 2008, with the first deliverables set to appear next year.
Fusion will be Java-based and use standard technology for easy integration with other applications, according to Oracle. The product will provide a simple upgrade from PeopleSoft, Oracle, and J.D. Edwards applications, Ellison said in his remarks at the event, IDG News Service reported.
"I expect the majority of customers will do the upgrade," Ellison said. "The important thing is that it will be a time of their choosing, not of our choosing. Customers decide if and when to do the upgrade."
Joshua Greenbaum, a principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting of Berkeley, Calif., said the best course may be to wait until the dust settles before making any business decisions about using PeopleSoft applications.
"This has always been about capturing the PeopleSoft customer base, and certainly that's what Larry was trying to (at the Fusion event)," Greenbaum said. "But SAP has put those back in play in a big way. I'm looking at a six-month window before we'll see customers start assessing their options for the future."
The 2008 due date for Fusion offers customers time to consider their options, Greenbaum said. "The real question is where do you want to be in 2008 with your business and your products," he said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 19, 2005 03:36 PM
January 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Deloitte issues IT predictions for 2005
On the heels of predictions from the likes of Gartner and IDC, Deloitte dusted off its crystal ball, gazed inside at potential events for the coming 12 months, and this week circulated its report containing 10 such predictions.
Much like other consultancy's glimpses into the days ahead, Deloitte's prophecies range from the insightful to the obvious to the back-to-the-future type. But Deloitte also goes where the others do not in making interplanetary predictions and even one that I can confidently say won't happen in my work or home in 2005.
That said, here is the list:
1 Web browsers take center stage
2 Fuel cells debut
3 Super small technologies equate to huge return
4 Connected devices under siege
5 The robot invasion
6 Mesh networks hit the streets
7 Flat screen frenzy
8 Digital crime runs rampant
9 The space race moves into the private sector
10 Quantum computing gets closer to reality
The full report is available here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 19, 2005 02:14 PM
January 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apps vendors set the migration bait
The enterprise applications fray is growing increasingly cut-throat.
What with the Oracle-PeopleSoft merger underway, SAP this morning officially made a play for potentially disgruntled PeopleSoft users by announcing a new migration program.
Dubbed SAP Safe Passage, the program extends maintenance and support services to products from both PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards, which PeopleSoft acquired before Oracle's hostile takeover. As part of the program SAP will offer incentives to customers who ultimately migrate PeopleSoft and JDE apps to SAP.
On the hosted side, NetSuite today detailed a program to attract prospective salesforce.com customers. Calling it "a package of discounts and data migration offerings" NetSuite stated that companies considering buying salesforce.com's professional and enterprise editions for the first time can opt, instead, for NetSuite at 50 percent of the subscription estimate salesforce.com gives them.
Likewise for existing salesforce customers. NetSuite will cut their renewal price in half and include the data migration services, according to a statement from the company, so long as customers contact NetSuite by April 1, 2005.
For more information on NetSuite's offer, see www.netsuite.com/salesforcecantdothis, and for SAP's program, it's http://www11.sap.com/usa/company/safepassage/index.aspx.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 19, 2005 01:54 PM
January 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple Shuffle delayed, why oh why?
I just don't get it. News of four-week delays for those wanting to buy the Apple Shuffle digital music player leaves me perplexed.
Either the company is in desperate need of better supply chain management software or supply chain managers or they have an ulterior motive.
Looking back at the history of Apple new product introductions all you see are delays, in PowerBooks, iMacs, and iPods. The list of delayed products is very, very long. And as always delays mean lost sales.
Why does Apple make the same mistake over and over again? Is there a method to their madness? Do they gain some intangible benefit from delaying products and keeping customers with cash in hand waiting?
If there is please send me an email, ephraim_schwartz@infoworld.com and explain it to me.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on January 19, 2005 09:43 AM
January 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Phishing scams and worms plague tsunami aid effort
Internet users are being targeted by scams using the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster as a ploy to obtain funds illegally or to spread damaging worms.
On Monday, FBI agents arrested a Pittsburgh, Pa. man and charged him with fraud for initiating a mass mailer worm that posed as an appeal for aid for tsunami victims.
Matthew Schmeider, was charged in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, according to court records. Schmeider accessed image files from the Mercy Relief Fund and used an HTML editing program and a Web hosting tool to put the images into an e-mail message he composed, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
Schmeider set up an e-mail account in his own name and linked it to a PayPal account also in his name. He used a "harvesting" program to gather about 800,000 e-mail addresses and used a spam program called "Bulker" to send the e-mail through about 2000 "proxy" computers to the addresses, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
"It's unfortunate that unscrupulous people are exploiting the tsunami disas-ter to commit fraud," May Beth Buchanan said in a statement. "We will aggressively pursue those who would victimize philanthropic individuals and capitalize on the grief of the tsunami survivors."
"He basically sent out a mailing to look like e-mail, but it was an account from PayPal," said Eric Block, a spokesman for Mercy Relief Fund. "He used the graphics from our homepage. Pretty crafty."
In another tsunami-related Internet fraud, Sophos warned of a new mass mailing worm that masquerades as an appeal for tsunami aid, IDG News Service said.
The worm carries the subject line "Tsunami Donation! Please help!" and the text message "Please help us with your donation and view the attachment below! We need you!" The attachment, labeled "tsunami.exe," spreads the virus to other Internet users, Sophos said.
"Duping innocent users into believing that they may be helping the tsunami disaster aid efforts shows hackers stooping to a new low," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in a statement on the Sophos Website.
"This gruesome insensitivity is a despicable ploy to get curious computer us-ers to run malicious code on their computers. Everyone should be wary of unsolicited email attachments, and visit the established charity websites instead if they wish to assist those suffering as a result of the disaster."
Although there have only been a small number of reports of the worm, called, W32/VBSun-A worm, Sophos recommended computer users ensure their anti-virus software is up-to-date, and that companies protect themselves with a consoli-dated solution which can defend them from the threats of both spam and viruses, IDG News Service said.
Running the attached file also launches a denial-of-service (DOS) attack against German hacking site www.hacksector.de, said Sophos Chief Technology Con-sultant Graham Cluley. The site appeared to be down Monday morning when Sophos researchers tried to access it, Cluley told IDG News Service.
Sophos has received a small number of reports of the worm, VBSun-A, being found in the wild. It appears to be part of a new trend in Internet hoaxes that seek to take advantage of the tsunami tragedy, Cluley said.
Sophos, based in Abingdon, England, warned last week of a number of e-mail scams related to the tsunami, and similar to the seemingly ubiquitous Nigerian letter scams which seek money from their recipients.
Still, 2005 has started as a relatively slow year for new Internet viruses, Cluley said. The most prevalent at the moment is Netsky.P, which was first dis-covered nine months ago, he said.
David Freund, practice leader for information architecture with IT analysis company, Illuminata, said the Tsunami worm followed a typical pattern.
"It exploited the weakest link in any IT chain, human beings," he said. "The way you get a lot of people to open things up is you convince them the e-mail is from a buddy or that it matters to them."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 18, 2005 01:10 PM
January 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Red Hat dons Enterprise Linux 4.0 to catch Novell
Some of the news originally slated for LinuxWorld has slipped out early this year.
IDG News Service correspondent Robert McMillan broke the story before the long weekend about Red Hat's plans to release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0.
According to McMillan, RHEL 4.0 will be the most significant upgrade to Red Hat's Linux operating system since October 2003, when the company released version 3 of the product, and the first time Red Hat includes the 2.6 kernel. Most significantly, version 4 will include a rewrite of Linux's I/O subsystem, which manages the transfer of data between components on the computer, as well as a new version of the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) hard drive partitioning software, McMillan wrote.
McMillan also pointed out that Red Hat is playing catch-up with Novell, which already supports the 2.6 kernel.
The full story is here.
LinuxWorld Boston 2005 runs from February 14-17, and we'll be there to cover it.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 18, 2005 10:42 AM
January 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Firefox and Netscape still blazing
One company's apparent monopoly is another's seemingly infinite frontier. Just ask the folks building the open source Firefox and the Netscape browsers.
Nate Mook at BetaNews has a story about an update to the beta version of Netscape's revived browser that not only fixes bugs, but also aligns the code base with Firefox 1.0 to resolve security issues.
Building Netscape atop Firefox 1.0, Mook reports, will also enable the team to make significant changes, including a new UI, to Netscape.
Serving as evidence that the Firefox browser itself is continuing to take the industry by storm, BusinessWeek has a story citing numbers from WebSideStory indicating that Firefox gained 4.6 of the 4.9 percentage points that Microsoft's IE slipped during the past 6 months.
All that, of course, still leaves Microsoft with more than 90 percent of the browser market, but Spread Firefox counts 18,509,605 downloads of Firefox thus far. And that number comes from a modest goal and slogan of marching toward 1 million downloads.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 18, 2005 09:57 AM
January 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Oracle outlines plans for PeopleSoft integration following layoff notices
Oracle, while announcing a 5,000 workforce reduction as part of its acquisition of PeopleSoft, also outlined broad development strategy.
"The PeopleSoft development team will finish the development and deployment of PeopleSoft version 8.9, and then begin development of the next upgrade to PeopleSoft products, version 9.0," the company said in a statement. "The PeopleSoft support teams, with the assistance of the Oracle support organization, will continue to support PeopleSoft customers around the world.
"By retaining the vast majority of PeopleSoft technical staff, Oracle will have the resources to deliver on the development and support commitments we have made to PeopleSoft customers over the last 18 months," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
The company said that detailed information about Oracle's applications organization, product plans, and go-to-market strategies will be presented to customers and partners next week at the launch of the combined applications business. Oracle completed its acquisition of PeopleSoft on Jan. 7, following the completion of a tender offer in which more than 97 percent of PeopleSoft's shareholders tendered their stock.
InfoWorld's Ephraim Schwartz looked at implications for Oracle in a blog Friday as follows:
If there is any bright spot in the news that Oracle is laying off 5,000 former PeopleSoft employees, it is that the layoffs will be distributed world wide.
"When you look at where the redundancies are coming from they come from field offices where there is overlap with non-strategic, back office functions," said Josh Greenbaum, principal analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting.
Greenbaum noted that yesterday at the former PeopleSoft office in New Zealand, Oracle laid off about 30 of the 40 employees.
In addition, over the last year, PeopleSoft picked up a great many international employees when it acquired J. D. Edwards.
Once the dust settles, Greenbaum sees a number of challenges ahead for Oracle as they absorb PeopleSoft. "The number one challenge is customer retention," according to Greenbaum.
Oracle needs to keep PeopleSoft customers happy and signing up for maintenance licenses in order to pay for new product development. Oracle also has a new market and the real value will come from up sell and cross sell to all of those PeopleSoft enterprise users.
From a cost structure, Oracle also needs to get all of its users onto a single platform as soon as possible. The alternative is to support three platforms, its own, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft.
(by Jack Mccarthy)
Posted by Cathleen Moore on January 14, 2005 10:37 PM
January 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Texas and Microsoft tag team spammers
Don't mess with Microsoft. That's the message the company is sending by suing two men, accusing them of sending out millions of spam through a series of companies in violation of the federal Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).
Microsoft joined Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in suing Ryan Samuel Pitylak, a student at the University of Texas, Austin, and codefendant Mark Trotter, of California in a lawsuit filed Friday in a federal court in Seattle, according to IFG News Service.
Pitylak and Trotter are accused of setting up shell companies that sent tens of millions of illegal spam messages to Internet users over its network, according to court documents.
The men allegedly set up a number of Nevada-based shell companies to distribute spam, according to the suit. Together, the companies made up the fourth largest illegal spam operation in the world, according to a statement by the Texas Attorney General.
"We're very excited by Attorney General Abbott's action," said Aaron Kornblum, internet safety enforcement attorney for Microsoft. "This set of defendants sent out tens of millions of illegal messages through our Hotmail (free Web-based email) system to our customers."
Kornblum said Microsoft worked with the Texas Attorney General's office for almost one year on the case.
The Texas Attorney General said in its suit that the two men violated CAN-SPAM by using misleading subject lines and not indicating that their e-mail messages were advertisements, IDG news Service said. Some messages also offered home refinancing services the defendants were not licensed to offer.
Recipients were also tricked into giving away personal information with promises that information would be protected. The information collected was then sold to other companies, according to the Attorney General.
Kornblum said Microsoft has teamed with state attorneys general three times to sue spammers, including actions in suits filed in New York and Washington. To fight spam, Microsoft is also developing antispam filters and is working on redesigning its e-mail authentication technology, Kornblum said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on January 14, 2005 03:59 PM
January 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Oracle lays off 5,000 PeopleSoft employees
If there is any bright spot in the news that Oracle is laying off 5,000 former PeopleSoft employees, it is that the layoffs will be distributed world wide.
"When you look at where the redundancies are coming from they come from field offices where there is overlap with non-strategic, back office functions," said Josh Greenbaum, principal analyst with Enterprise Applications Consulting.
Greenbaum noted that yesterday at the former PeopleSoft office in New Zealand, Oracle laid off about 30 of the 40 employees.
In addition, over the last year, PeopleSoft picked up a great many international employees when it acquired J. D. Edwards.
Once the dust settles, Greenbaum sees a number of challenges ahead for Oracle as they absorb PeopleSoft.
"The number one challenge is customer retention," according to Greenbaum.
Oracle needs to keep PeopleSoft customers happy and signing up for maintenance licenses in order to pay for new product development.
Oracle also has a new market and the real value will come from up sell and cross sell to all of those PeopleSoft enterprise users.
From a cost structure, Oracle also needs to get all of its users onto a single platform as soon as possible. The alternative is to support three platforms, its own, J.D. Edwards and PeopleSoft.
Oracles track record with acquisitions is mixed. It earns high marks in its most recent acquisition of database company RDB a few years ago, said Greenbaum.
"They did a good job of keeping customers happy and upgrading. However, when they bought application vendor Gemms the transition did not go as smoothly. They had some integration problems," Greenbaum said.
Greenbaum believes that Peoplesoft may be one of Oracle's best resources in making the transition work.
"Peoplesoft has had a number of successful mergers with companies, including its most recent with J. D. Edwards. Oracle should tap into that savvy."
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on January 14, 2005 03:14 PM
January 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
HP merger of PC, printing units aims at emerging markets
The decision by Hewlett-Packard to combine its Imaging and Printing Group and Personal Systems Group indicates the company will re-engineer both units to serve evolving consumer markets increasingly interested in digital ente