- AMD and Intel: The long war ahead
- HP aims for small business with new backup options
- Microsoft, Toshiba define HD-DVD mission
- Microsoft decision to ship Longhorn with RSS draws applause
- JavaOne set to stir
- Java cluster technology to debut
- Cisco's new unit aims for network intelligence
- Microsoft extends RSS support
- Chambers unveils bold network vision with AON
- Jack Kilby's momentous contribution
June 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
AMD and Intel: The long war ahead
AMD's antitrust lawsuit alleging Intel coerced hardware vendors and retailers into using Intel's chips instead of AMD's with discriminatory pricing, market pressure and intimidation is bound to capture the attention of much of the tech industry for some time to come.
Almost 40 companies listed in the complaint received discovery retention notices from AMD, requiring them to keep documents related to this case, Mike Simonoff, an AMD spokesman, told IDG News Service. And so far, AMD has built its case on discussions with industry partners, he said.
AMD believes that Intel's practice of providing PC companies with marketing dollars in exchange for purchasing certain amounts of Intel chips excludes AMD from competing on the basis of its technology, AMD executives said in a conference call. AMD will attempt to prove in its antitrust case that this behavior harms consumers and competition. Intel strongly denies any wrong doing. (See an InfoWorld Special Report).
The case is expected to start by the end of next year, IDG News Service reported.
Some of the documents produced during the Japan Fair Trade Commission's investigation of Intel's business practices revealed that Intel withheld market development funds from Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and other Japanese PC companies unless those companies agreed to drop AMD from their products. Intel disagreed with the JFTC's interpretation of those business practices and did not admit any wrongdoing, but it did not dispute the validity of the charges.
In its 48-page complaint, AMD also outlined several instances in which mar-ket share leaders like Dell and Hewlett-Packard were pressured to maintain or develop exclusive relationships with Intel, or risk the loss of marketing dollars.
Past attempts at pinning anticompetitive behavior on Intel have not succeeded because the world's largest chip maker has been able to compete aggressively without running afoul of antitrust regulations, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif.
"Historically, I've always believed that Intel took its obligations as a dominant supplier in the marketplace very seriously. If the AMD claims have any basis in fact, it's going to shake my perspective on this," Brookwood said.
It is no great secret that Intel provides the so-called market development funds -- really just cash payments -- to PC vendors to support marketing activi-ties around new chips or new technologies, said Roger Kay, vice president of client computing at IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts.
The specific details of the program are not as well known, but Intel essen-tially rewards PC companies for including key marketing messages in their adver-tisements around concepts such as Intel's Centrino mobile technology. The funds can sometimes account for more than half of a company's marketing budget for a specific product, Kay said.
AMD will attempt to show that these market development funds are also de-pendent on maintaining an exclusive relationship with Intel, or fulfilling a quota for a certain amount of Intel chips. This could be trickier than just pro-ducing documents and evidence about "suspicious-looking behaviors" on the part of Intel, Kay said.
"In a market where there is competition, which supplier is not going to offer some kind of benefit [to its customers] if they are prepared to commit to some kind of exclusivity?" said Brian Gammage, a vice president with Gartner.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 29, 2005 12:58 PM
June 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
HP aims for small business with new backup options
Hewlett-Packard says it plans to introduce the first digital audiotape (DAT) USB 2.0 tape drives for servers next month.
The new DAT drives are aimed at the small to midsized business (SMB) market. The drives will have a data transfer rate of 23GB per hour with a 2 to 1 data compression. HP says a 40GB drive will start at $599, while a 72GB drive will cost $749.
Half-height LTO Ultrium 1 tape drives and additional tape drive support for the HP StorageWorks 1/8 tape autoloader were also introduced.
The new tape drives support HP's One-Button Disaster Recovery feature, allowing users to recover not only their data but, in the event of a catastrophic disaster, complete system configuration with the push of a single button.
Additionally, all of the new tape drives and autoloaders come with HP StorageWorks Library and Tape Tools, a set of utilities that make installation, management and troubleshooting simple, even for smaller businesses with little or no IT support.
The solutions are part of HP's Smart Office initiative, which provides smart technology, services and advice to help SMB customers keep their companies up and running by better safeguarding their business systems and IT operations.
With no need for a SCSI adapter and more complicated SCSI setup, users can have the HP StorageWorks DAT 72 and DAT 40 USB tape drives out of the box and ready to use with their HP ProLiant servers in less than 60 seconds, according to HP.
HP also is bringing to market the new HP StorageWorks Ultrium 232 tape drive based on the linear tape open (LTO) technology. The half-height LTO 1 HP StorageWorks Ultrium 232 tape drive has 200 GB capacity per cartridge and a backup speed of 115 GB per hour. Available in July, the Ultrium 232 has an estimated list price of $1,799.
HP also now offers two new versions of its HP StorageWorks 1/8 Tape Autoloader: an Ultrium 960 model and an Ultrium 448 model. These 2U tape autoloaders are rack-mountable.
Extending support to these two new Ultrium tape drives increases the autoloader's maximum capacity to 6.4 TB with an Ultrium 960 drive or to 3.2 TB with Ultrium 448 (assuming 2:1 data compression). The HP StorageWorks 1/8 Ultrium 960 Tape Autoloader starts at $7,499. The HP StorageWorks 1/8 Ultrium 448 Tape Autoloader starts at $5,299. Both are now available
Posted by Bob Francis on June 28, 2005 12:10 PM
June 27, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft, Toshiba define HD-DVD mission
Microsoft and Toshiba announced today they will work together to develop High Definition-DVD (HD-DVD) players, giving Toshiba some high-powered backing in the current standards battle over next-generation DVDs.
Toshiba is offering a different DVD format than its rival Sony, which is offering up Blu-ray, an alternative technology. Microsoft and Toshiba said they would investigate the development of HD-DVD players using Microsoft Windows CE technology and would continue to collaborate on iHD, a DVD interactivity format.
Even though HD-DVD uses some Microsoft technology in its system, Microsoft continues to maintain the company has a neutral position in regard to this format war.
The battle between the Blu-ray group and the HD-DVD format is similar to the Betamax and VHS wars 20 years ago. Most in the industry are hoping the two groups will reach an agreement to avoid a damaging repeat of the Betamax and VHS wars. The first players for the new format are expected to high store shelves this Christmas, so an agreement would have to occur pretty soon.
The technical difference between the two systems is slight, but difficult to overcome. The main differnce lies with the thin layer of plastic above the metal surface on which data is written. The HD DVD format specifies a 0.6-millimeter coating, while a Blu-ray disc specifies a 0.1 millimeter coating.
HD-DVD's slightly thicker coating is the same as on current DVDs, allowing manufacturers to use existing manufacturing technique, giving HD-DVD a cost advantage.
Blu-ray's thinner coating would require new manufacturing equipment, but it also allows for Blu-ray's higher storage capacity.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 27, 2005 02:34 PM
June 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft decision to ship Longhorn with RSS draws applause
Microsoft announced its intention to fully support the RSS Web publishing standard in its next generation version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, along with plans to help application developers more easily create RSS-enabled applications for Windows.
The RSS initiative captured the interest of many who see new opportunities in bringing RSS capabilities to Microsoft's Longhorn OS, especially since Microsoft is not threatening to take over the technology.
Dave Winer, the inventor of RSS, wrote favorably of the news. "This is not the world of 1995, nor is it the Microsoft of 1995," he wrote. "We have drifted apart, gone our own ways. What you'll hear to-day is that they want to come back, and they're largely willing to accept our terms, the Internet's terms, the no-platform-vendor terms. That's what I'll be listening for."
Microsoft apparently wants to help create commercial opportunities for other application developers.
"When Microsoft would talk about embracing and extending a technology, many would interpret that as engulfing and devouring. In this case, they seem to be really going out of their way to talk about extending but not co-opting this technology," said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president and research director at Jupiter Research. "The fact they are releasing this under the Creative Commons License, the same license that RSS is released under, is a pretty big deal in and of itself."
"Today, RSS is still mostly an extremely handy way to get blogs, news items, Podcasts, and other chunks of information delivered to you. But the technology has the potential to be a powerful, universal means of automated communication between applications (both Web- and desktop-based) of all sorts," Harry McCracken, PC World's Editor In Chief, wrote. "This news from Microsoft could help make that happen. And it'll be interesting to see if the company's use of Creative Commons licensing spurs other developers to adopt Simple List Extensions."
The company is proposing its own Simple List extensions to RSS that will better allow the technology to support ordered lists of information, according to a report from InfoWorld's Ed Scannell. Presently, RSS feeds are sent and re-ceived as streams of messages with their order being determined only by the time they were sent. Microsoft's extensions are reportedly offering a way to add ordering information so RSS feeds can more intelligently handle, for instance, a Web site's list of best-selling items.
"The RSS [Simple List] extensions we are developing can allow a content pub-lisher to enable a Web site to publish feeds that represent ordered lists of items. We will make these extensions widely available to developers through the Creative Commons [license]," said Megan Kidd, a group product manager on the Windows team.
Microsoft has already done some "baseline work at the platform level" that supports a range of basic functions that are contained in all applications that support RSS, which should help lighten their overall development effort.
"RSS feeds now come through Weblogs but it will go way beyond that. For in-stance, if you are at a conference and go to that Web site, subscribe to a feed that has all the conference information, you can have an RSS feed right into your calendar application like Outlook that will automatically update you on all changes being made at the conference like keynotes and sessions," Kidd said.
Asked about Microsoft's plans to incorporate RSS support into its upcoming Office 12 suite of desktop applications, Kidd said, "you can expect to see some functionality with Outlook," but that the company has yet to formulate any specific plans.
Microsoft will also make it easier for users to discover feeds within their browsers by illuminating icons that allow them to easily see what RSS feeds are available to them at any given moment. The company will also allow users to view the feed live from within the browser, which Kidd said is not available today.
"They will be able to actually see the feed, pick the one they want to subscribe to. We want to make it a one click experience," Kidd said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 24, 2005 04:59 PM
June 24, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The JavaOne conference begins next week in San Francisco, with a host of happenings planned that center around open source, tools, SOA and other technology areas.
Sun Microsystems in an email highlighted the following bullet items:
• Updates to the tools, including Java Studio Creator 2, Java Studio Enterprise and Java Web Services Developer Pack.
• Development of version 5 of Java Enterprise Edition.
• Open sourcing of enterprise Java technologies.
• Gathering of industry support for the Java Business Integration specification.
• Boosting SOA.
• Announcement of an AMD Opteron-based workstation wth a starting price of $895.
• Rich client computing news.
Also, this Sunday will be NetBeans Software Day at JavaOne, with the event to feature executives such as Sun President/COO Jonathan Schwartz and Sun Vice President James Gosling.
Meanwhile, Sun on June 6 launched Project GlassFish, which allows developers to view source code for Java Application Server Professional Edition 9. Developers are able to submit improvements and join in technical discussions.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 24, 2005 03:41 PM
June 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Java cluster technology to debut
Terracotta at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco next week will herald its clustering technology for Java systems.
The Terracotta Virtualization Server clusters applications onto multiple Java Virtual Machines (JVM). "What we have is essentially techology that transparently enables an application that's written for one single JVM to run on multiple JVMs," said Bob Griswold, senior vice president at Terracotta. "It will make multiple JVMs appear as one."
Enabling clusters on thousands of systems and across the Internet, Terracotta's technology can be used for applications such as financial services, trading systems or large portals, according to the company.
The technology saves developers from having to write code required for clustering, enabling them to focus on business logic, Griswold said. "This is a far easier way to write distributed applications," he said.
Version 1.1 of Terracotta Virtualization Server ships on July 5. Pricing will vary. A configuration for an eight-node cluster, for example, would cost about $100,000, according to the company.
"Any Java application that needs to run in multiple places at once can benefit," Griswold said.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 23, 2005 04:33 PM
June 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cisco's new unit aims for network intelligence
Cisco's new Application Oriented Network or AON business unit is designed to add more intelligence to the network and boosts a host of technical relationships, such as IBM and SAP.
It is also, according to Zeus Kerravala, analyst at Yankee Group, a difficult concept to grasp.
"I think it was a hard concept to grasp and to explain because some of the attendees seemed not to understand it," he said.
While that may be a problem, Kerravala remains high on the concept. "At the same time, I thought it was one of the more innovative things I've seen from a networking company in a long time," he said.
AON is a network-embedded intelligent message routing system that integrates application message-level communication, visibility, and security into the fabric of the network.
Cisco's new AON business unit will roll out its first products later this year. Initial offerings will be a branch-office router and a blade that can be used with Cisco switches. Eventually, the company will add a standalone AON device and a branch-office router that connects to SAP applications, according to Cisco officials.
Kerravala believes IT managers will see some big benefits from adding intelligence to the network.
"Companies have a difficult time getting their application developers to understand the network better and vice versa," he said.
"With this, that doesn't have to happen, so I think it solves a lot of problems. Cisco is putting some intelligence into the network, so it can understand what it is doing, where it is from, etc. I mean we've tried this with load balancing and whatever, but this I think is a real step forward," he said.
Also pleased with Cisco's direction is CXO Systems, which is partnering with the networking giant to integrate its visibility dashboard for real-time business and risk intelligence into AON. The dashboard allows senior-level executives who require business and IT information to have access to real-time data in the enterprise, according to Malcolm Frank, CEO of CXO.
"Our collaborative efforts will help organizations decrease risk and ensure superior performance by ensuring senior managers, such as the Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Security Officer (CSO), and the Chief Risk Officer (CRO), are acting on real-time data," said Frank.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 23, 2005 03:02 PM
June 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft on Friday will announce it plans to deepen its support of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Web publishing standard, which is commonly used by bloggers and news organizations. Specifically the company is proposing an extension to RSS that will provide support for ordered lists of information.
In his posting yesterday well known blogger Dave Winer said Microsoft now has a team in place specifically focused on the syndication standard and that RSS will likely be taking on a central role in the company's strategy.
"Lists are all over the place, and people are starting to move them around via RSS, and they are not the usual kind of data that has been carried by RSS in the past," Winer wrote. "The people at Microsoft noticed something that I had seen, only peripherally -- that there were applications of RSS that aren't about news. Like Audible's NY Times Best Seller list, or and iTunes music play list, or lists of Sharepoint documents, or browser bookmarks."
Microsoft is expected to make the announcement at the Gnomedex conference being held in Seattle.
"On Friday you'll see how deeply integrated RSS is in the architecture of the browser. But that is just the tip of what may turn out to be a very big iceberg," Winer wrote.
Posted by Ed Scannell on June 23, 2005 02:11 PM
June 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Chambers unveils bold network vision with AON
Cisco Systems and its CEO John Chambers are taking an important step toward implementation of the company's AON (Application-Oriented Network) initiative, designed to create a revolution in application design and network management by bringing intelligence to network infrastructure.
At the Cisco Networkers conference in Las Vegas, Chambers announced the formation of the AON business unit.
"Perhaps the most exciting thing that we are going to focus on today is literally how intelligence enables IT to not only drive productivity and business process change, but how intelligence in the network changes the IT industry forever. The ability to think about the first network-embedded intelligent message routing system for applications," Chambers said.
"We're talking about dial tone for applications - the ability to not go though, in your application design, the applications in terms of message routing or event capture or end-to-end security. That should be embedded in the network. If you think about where we were before, you thought about applications and they were completely separate from the network. Quote, the network was transport. But it shouldn't be," Chambers said. "There's a large part of the application that should be embedded in the network. But I would call these regular services if you will, services that are better performed in the network. The ability to ask, how do packets and applications come together in this intelligent network is what the Application Oriented Networking is all about."
Cisco also announced a number of technical relationships, including with IBM, SAP and Tibco, intended to add more intelligence to the network. This added intelligence will in turn equip the network to understand business-application communications in order to support more-effective business decisions.
AON supports Cisco's vision for the Intelligent Information Network, said Stephen Cho, senior director for product management in Cisco's AON business unit.It is a network-embedded intelligent message routing system that integrates application message-level communication, visibility, and security into the fabric of the network.
The AON group will roll out its first products later this year. Initial of-ferings will be a branch-office router and a blade that can be used with Cisco switches. Eventually, the company will add a stand-alone AON device and a branch-office router that connects to SAP applications, Cho said.
The AON products will be about the size of a hardback book, he added. Pricing on the products will be announced later this summer.
Cisco is hardly going it alone in providing these services. It is also bringing aboard third-party providers who can build add-ons to Cisco's products. IBM and Tibco Software for instance, will participate in the middleware space, building products that will allow AON to interpret messages sent by those mid-dleware systems.
While it might look as if Cisco's AON and IBM's Websphere products would compete, IBM officials said the collaboration between the two would work to the customer's benefit . The goal of the collaboration is to create stronger inte-gration between Websphere and a number of network infrastructure layers by sim-plifying the IT infrastructure, thereby reducing complexity and the total cost of ownership.
Another benefit of establishing tighter integration between the two compa-nies' respective technologies is that the integration can serve as a building block for an SOA, IBM officials said. This in turn can help corporate users cre-ate an on-demand business that better integrates data across the enterprise as well as externally with business partners.
"Traditionally Cisco calls on networking guys and we call on a software guys," said Jeff Henry, IBM's director of Websphere Product Management. "And so now the two are able to play off one another's infrastructure much better, espe-cially as our customers start to roll out SOAs. It breaks it down into more con-sumable components. When you use the network and middleware layers together, it provides a good infrastructure for an SOA."
- By Bob Francis and Ed Scannell
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 22, 2005 05:26 PM
June 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Jack Kilby's momentous contribution
At the time when Jack Kilby's experiments resulted in the first integrated circuit that was about half the size of a paper clip, computers were about 50 feet long, weighed eight tons, and used more than 5,000 vacuum tubes. The internal storage capacity of the UNIVAC, one of a handful of mainframes available in 1958, totaled 1,000 words or 12,000 characters.
It's easy to see how Kilby's invention, which laid the groundwork for the modern microprocessor, was extraordinary. Another important piece of his legacy was the fact that Kilby and his employer, Texas Instruments, were able to settle a patent dispute with Robert Noyce, who later went on to co-found Intel. Noyce filed a patent for a silicon-based integrated circuit only a few months after Kilby and TI filed for their integrated circuit patent. The legal agreement reached between TI and Fairchild Semiconductor, Noyce's employer at the time, allowed the companies to cross-license their technologies, which let the semiconductor industry thrive.
In 2000, Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit, according to TI. Kilby died this week in Dallas at the age of 81.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 22, 2005 11:47 AM
June 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Agile programming on the march
Agile software development is the focus of new professional services being launched this week by Digital Focus, which is unveiling its "Experience Agile" pratice.
Digital Focus says agile development is defined by short development cycles, lots of interaction between business and IT and a focus on automation between testing and deployment.
"The biggest challenge [in implementing agile programming] is just the organizational change involved in thinking about doing a software project in a different way," said Jeff Nielsen, chief scientist at Digital Focus. Software development is becoming an art rather than being engineering, added Digital Focus President Erin Smith.
Experience Agile provides mentoring, coaching and training services to improve the way development teams build custom software, Digital Focus said. The practice seeks to support the transition of clients' internal development teams from traditional software engineering practices to an agile approach.
Prices vary. For example, Digital Focus charges $80,000 for an assessment on moving from "waterfall" development process to agile.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 21, 2005 03:31 PM
June 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cisco adds intelligent network unit
Cisco embarks on a new business direction today as it details its first move into the messaging middleware business with its Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit.
At its Networkers conference in Las Vegas the company announced the formation of its Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit and a number of technical relationships, most notably IBM, and products that are intended to add more intelligence to the network. This added intelligence will better equip the network to understand business application communications in order to support more effective business decisions, according to company officials.
"AON is a new technology direction for Cisco as well as a new product offering," said Stephen Cho, senior director for product management in Cisco's AON business unit.
The AON group will roll out its first products later this year. The initial offerings will be a blade that can be used with Cisco switches and a branch office router. Eventually, the company will add a standalone AON device and a branch office router that connects to SAP applications, said Cho. The AON products will be about the size of a hardback book, he said. Pricing on the products will be announced later this summer, he added.
Read more about the new Cisco direction here.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 21, 2005 10:38 AM
June 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft readies BitTorrent alternative
Researchers at Microsoft's Cambridge, England, labs are developing a file-sharing technology that they say could make it easier to distribute big files such as films, television programs and software applications to end-users over the Internet.
Code-named Avalanche, the technology is similar to existing peer-to-peer (P-to-P) file swapping systems such as BitTorrent's, in the sense that large files can be divided into many smaller pieces to ease their distribution, James Niccolai, of IDG News Service, reported. End users request the file parts from other users' hard drives and reassemble them to create the original file.
Such systems can scale well to serve millions of users, and reduce the band-width and computing costs of sending content directly to users from central servers. Some have also irritated publishers who complain the services are used to share copyright works illegally.
The problem with existing systems, according to Microsoft, is that people sometimes have wait a long time to receive the last, "rare" pieces of a file. This is made worse when clients drop off line unexpectedly and creates bottle-necks when only a few clients have files that are in high demand.
Avalanche goes a long way to solving these problems, according to Peter Key, joint head of the systems and networking group at Microsoft's research labs in Cambridge, during an open day on Wednesday.
It does this by encoding the file pieces at the server with a special algo-rithm before they are distributed. Each encoded piece contains information about every other piece of the original file, so users don't have to collect every last piece in order to reassemble the whole, Key said.
"Each encoded piece has the 'DNA' of all pieces in the file," another Microsoft researcher wrote. "A given encoded piece can be used by any peer in place of any piece."
When PCs in the Avalanche network receive encoded files, they randomly create new encoded files from the ones they have collected, and these are sent to other peers. When a user receives enough encoded files, they assemble them to make the original.
The system differs from BitTorrent's eponymous software in a few ways, Key said. It does not depend on central servers, called "trackers," to orchestrate the download. The Avalanche client on each PC shares the files automatically among users; they do not look at other users' hard drives to find what they want. And the system works well in smaller networks, such as a corporate intranet, he said.
Perhaps more importantly for content creators, Microsoft claims its system prevents users from redistributing copyright material, because Avalanche will only forward files that have been signed by the publisher.
Microsoft has developed a prototype of Avalanche and is testing it by using it to distribute software applications to several thousand of its software beta testers, according to a research engineer demonstrating the software in Cambridge. The company has distributed a 4GB application in as little as a day, down from about two weeks when it sends a program directly, he said.
The software may also be interesting to TV broadcasters and movie studios. Microsoft has been in talks with both groups, and Avalanche may be introduced to users in the U.K. as early as next year, he said.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) began testing a service last month that lets people download TV and radio programs using a P-to-P system from Kontiki. It is not looking at Avalanche currently, but will put the contract out for public tender before launching the service, said Chris Charlton, a BBC spokesman.
The concept behind Avalanche is impressive, according to Mike Thompson, prin-cipal research analyst with Butler Group, in Hull, England, who saw the technol-ogy demonstrated. But it faces two problems of perception, he said.
"Firstly, Avalanche is a mirror of P-to-P models that are coming under scru-tiny for allowing illegal distribution. I believe this idea of 'good' and 'bad' P-to-P for file-sharing of copyright material will create a deal of confusion.
"Secondly, despite the 'pull' nature of the model and the security that should allow only the file to be accessed, Microsoft has had issues around security in the past -- IIS [Internet Information Server] being the clearest example of a secure solution that wasn't. I think the P-to-P network would be a prime target for the dissemination of viruses, despite Microsoft's assurances that it is 'safe.'"
Still, Avalanche is "an excellent take on P-to-P," Thompson said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 20, 2005 05:22 PM
June 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Yahoo Search Subscriptions comes under fire
Yahoo's new Search Subscriptions service has taken several punches from critics since its introduction earlier this week.
Arguing that users who need access to fee-based content are mostly likely already paying subscribers to the content they need, Softpedia called the service "rather useless." Meanwhile, Motley Fool points out that people who need to search numerous subscription sites probably already use services such as Reed Elsevier's Lexis-Nexis.
Contrary to those opinions, Chuck Richard, vice president and lead analyst of Outsell, a research and advisory firms for the information industry, said Yahoo Search Subscriptions is a valuable service that will help knock down barriers to content that was previously locked away from open Web search engines.
"This is a positive step forward to dropping the artificial barriers to accessing professional content. 67 percent of professionals go to open Web search engines [first] to search. It's time for subscription services to take advantage of that," he said.
Rather than overlap with services such as Lexis Nexis, Richard sees the type of service Yahoo is providing as zeroing in on a different set of users.
Lexis Nexis serves a very targeted set of users and a subscription comes with a high price tag, he said.
"This opens up access, a huge reach mechanism through Yahoo, to people who don't use these paid services but would if they had some kind of arrangement," Richard said.
"People can finally get access to content that was never indexed and crawled. People can decide if they want to pay for it. People are wiling to pay for content they need," he said.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 17, 2005 05:05 PM
June 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Google extends search to mobile Web
Google unvieled a new search service for viewing Web pages from mobile phones by linking to pages that have been formatted for display in mobile devices' small screens.
To access this XHTML-based service, users need to have a mobile device with a Web browser and enter a query in the search box at the Google home page or http://www.google.com/xhtml.
Mobile users can already perform searches from these locations, but Google added a new "Mobile Web" option to the pages, IDG News Service reported. When this button is selected, users will only receive links to pages that have been formatted for the smaller displays of mobile devices, according to Google.
The service fills a need to more clearly view Web pages via cell phone, one analyst said. "Web browsing on a cell phone right now is pretty boring," Rob Enderle, co-founder and president of the Enderle Group, said. "The pages are often not designed to work with a cell phone. It takes someone thinking about what it looks like on small screen.
"We still have to deal with the expense side," Enderle added. "Some carriers start charging by the bit. It can be expensive."
Other options available to mobile users are "Web," to run a query against the full Google Web index, "Images," to search for pictures, and "Local," to hit Google's business directory for local merchants.
Google also offers a similar Web search service for phones that support WML (wireless markup language) instead of XHTML (extensible markup language.) However, WML doesn't support images, so searching for pictures isn't possible using this service, which is available on a mobile device's browser at http://www.google.com/wml. The Mobile Web option is not available on WML phones.
If a user is unsure which markup language his phone supports, Google suggests trying both google.com/xhtml and google.com/wml to see which one works.
Another mobile search option from the Mountain View, Calif. company is Google SMS, which lets users retrieve text information from the search index us-ing Short Message Service technology. To tap this service, users need to send a query as a text message to Google's SMS code, which is 46645, and they will receive text results typically after a minute's wait. Google SMS has been designed to provide factual information such as local business listings, driving direc-tions, movie showtimes, weather conditions and product prices.
Google's mobile search services are free, although mobile carriers may apply charges related to data transmission or Web browsing.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 17, 2005 04:52 PM
June 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Can Dell sell a Mac OS X PC for the Masses?
If Michael Dell calls Steve Jobs and says, "Look Steve, we think we can massage OS X enough to have it run on our Intel boxes," do you think Jobs would turn him down?
Do you know how many PCs Dell sells? They are number 1 worldwide with no other company coming near them in sales and marketing.
I don't understand why Jobs would turn down Dell. But for more on this see our news story.
With payment of a decent licensing fee how could Jobs turn down the offer without setting off a furor among stock holders. It would be dereliction of his position as a guardian of share holders' investment.
The Apple OS for desktops and servers is well-respected and in the enterprise where Unix is still king of the glass house it would be a no brainer to have OS X running high availability, non-stop servers.
As a result we might see Apple over time moving away from being a hardware company and become more like Microsoft, a software company with targeted operating systems for computers, gaming and home electronics.
Would it be so bad? What users would lose in beautifully designed products would be made up for with less expensive products that still have the Apple smarts inside.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 17, 2005 02:54 PM
June 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Dell would sell the Mac OS, but Apple holds back
Michael Dell says he likes Apple's Mac OS, but Apple isn't biting.
Dell said that if Apple Computer ever decides to let its Mac OS X operating system outside of its confines, the company can count him in as a possible customer.
With the recent news that Apple plans to become a fellow customer of Intel for x86 processors, Dell has expressed interest in selling Mac OS X-based PCs, he said in an e-mail to Fortune published on the magazine's Web site Thursday.
"If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," Dell wrote in the e-mail. A Dell spokesman confirmed Thursday that the e-mail exchange took place.
Apple, however, is not keen on striking a deal with the world's largest PC vendor.
"Mac OS X will only run on Macs. Apple has no plans to sell Mac OS X software to run on PCs," an Apple spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to questions about Dell.
Dell's interest in Mac OS X raises numerous questions about how such a partnership would work, IDG News Service reported. Dell's current PC product strategy is famously one-sided: Microsoft's Windows operating system and Intel's processors for all. Dell executives believe this arrangement allows them to keep their operating costs as low as possible.
However, Mac OS X, with its Unix underpinnings and secure reputation, might pique the interests of many IT managers looking for a low-cost PC that is easy to maintain. And Dell's position as the industry market share leader could expose Mac OS to a much wider range of users.
But Apple can't afford to let Mac OS X loose right now, said Roger Kay, vice president of client computing with IDC in Framingham, Mass. If Mac OS X could be sepa-rated from Apple's hardware, hackers would have pirated copies of the operating system out on the streets with little delay, he said. This would cause great harm to Apples business model, which emphasizes its tight control over the entire combination of hardware and software as a premium product, he said.
At least one analyst believes that Apple is due for a day of reckoning with this strategy, especially now that it plans to move to x86 chips. Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif., thinks it is only a matter of time before someone in the PC industry sues Apple for "tying" its operating system to a specific type of hardware available only from Apple.
Digidyne then a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument, successfully pursued a tying case against Data General in the 1980s in which Data General was rapped for licensing its Nova operating system only to purchasers of its hardware.
"If you sell software that can run on hardware that you do make and hardware that you don't make, you can not require people to buy your hardware to run your software," Brookwood said. If Dell really wanted to sell Mac OS X hardware, it could force the issue through the legal system, he said.
Dell's interest in Mac OS X also appears to run counter to its processor strategy. The Round Rock, Texas, company's reluctance to use AMD's chips is based partly on the additional costs Dell would incur setting up a product development and testing team for AMD's products, Dell Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins said at the company's analyst meeting in April.
However, supporting a second operating system would involve training thousands of Dell employees on the ins and outs of Mac OS X and setting up separate product development teams. Dell is willing to do this for its server customers interested in the Linux operating system, but the company ended Linux support for consumer PCs several years ago. Large business customers can still get Linux PCs or workstations through Dell by special arrangement.
In the end, it's hard to really get a sense of Dell's true interest in Apple, Kay said.
"It's very much Michael Dell. It's cryptic, you can interpret in a number of different ways," he said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 16, 2005 04:05 PM
June 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Yahoo scours subscription content
Yahoo on Thursday unveiled a new search service designed to index and search content from multiple subscription sites. Yahoo Search Subscriptions beta lets users who are subscribed to fee-based content from a limited number of Yahoo partners, conduct a single search to find both personal subscription and public Web content.
Currently the service indexes content from Consumer Reports, Forrester Research, The Financial Times, IEEE, the New England Journal of Medicine, TheStreet.com, and The Wall Street Journal. ACM, Factiva, and Lexis-Nexis will be added in the near future, according to Yahoo.
Because fee-based content is typically not indexed by search engines, users are forced to separately visit each subscription site and log on in order to search their subscription, or deep Web, content. Users of Yahoo's new service still need to have a subscription from each publisher to access the fee-based content. If a user is not logged in to the publisher's site, when a search result is clicked on the user will be prompted for login information. Otherwise, users can usually navigate directly to the chosen content, according to Yahoo officials.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 16, 2005 12:13 PM
June 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Ericsson partners with Napster to bring music to mobile phones
Telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson and the Internet music downloading service Napster announced today a partnership to offer an integrated digital music service for mobile operators.
The service will allow mobile operators to develop opportunities for personalized digital entertainment on the mobile phone and personal computers and will also encompass ring tones, master tones, and video content, Ericsson said in a statement.
Napster's brand, catalog, label relationships, programming, PC and
portable offerings will be combined with Ericsson's operator
relationships, wireless development, integration, hosting, deployment
and support and IPX charging system, Ericsson said.
The announcement follows news earlier this week that Sony Ericsson unveiled several mobile phones, including a 3G high-data speed phone that offers enhanced features such as video conferencing, music and games. Ericsson is pursuing an ambitious program to develop phones that handle increasingly diverse features.
"With Napster we are uniquely positioned to deliver the easy to use, complete suite of music offerings our customers are asking for," Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said in a statement.
"We gain access to the biggest digital music brand in the world and
exposure to the largest music catalog available, which will not only
increase our customer's consumer offerings and revenues but
substantially strengthen their own brand image as well," Svanberg said.
The service is scheduled to start in Europe during the next 12 months and will initially be offered to operators in selected markets in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America, Ericsson said.
The new service will support coordinated wireless and PC downloading
of digital music in both subscription and a la carte models, and
phone-based initiation will ensure convenient and easy music library
access for both mobile and PC usage, Ericsson said.
The service scales to current handset models and networks but can
also accommodate next-generation technology for newer handsets on
higher-speed networks and is designed to work on mobile phones from
all major manufacturers that support content protected by digital
rights management.
The platform delivers a complete digital music solution
under one brand via a consistent user interface and with billing
consolidated by mobile operators.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 15, 2005 05:17 PM
June 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Yahoo has acquired DialPad Communications, a six-year-old startup whose software sets up calls over the Internet for a fraction of the price of regular telephone service.
No financial terms of the deal were announced.
Yahoo said it will use DialPad to expand its product offerings in the fast-growing area of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
DialPad has 40 employees and competes with several other startups that route calls from computers into the phone system. According to the company website, the company has been offering calling plans for about two years and has more than 14 million users.
The acquisition is not Yahoo's only VoIP announcement this year. Last month, Yahoo introduced a test version of its instant messaging software with an Internet telephony component that allowed users to make free computer-to-computer calls.
Activity in the VoIP space has been moving quickly lately. This week MCI rolled-out its MCI Advantage service in Europe. MCI Advantage is a portfolio of IP-based services designed for companies converging their voice and data networks.
As VoIP grows in popularity, so too is concern that tying telephony services in with IT networks can cause additional security problems. Last week, SurfControl, an Internet security provider, issued a warning to enterprise IT departments to establish policies regarding the use of free and paid-for desktop VoIP services.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 15, 2005 09:00 AM
June 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Financial analysts: Apple to take hit because of move to Intel
The latest chapter in the evolving saga of Apple switching to Intel comes this morning in the form of financial analysts claiming that the big move will result in fewer sales of Apple computers in the short-term.
The Globe and Mail, for one, has a story saying that PowerPC sales may slow down while customers wait until next year for Intel-based Macs to come to market.
MacNewsWorld has a story echoing that sentiment:
Apple is bound to lose some of its customers as this migration takes place. Some users won't want to worry about which software is compatible with which Mac models -- or whether those systems will work reliably. "I don't want to play this game," says Joon You, chief technology officer for contract researcher Target Health in New York, which just bought its latest Mac last week. "I have so many other things to worry about."
Instead, You plans to stop buying Macs. He also plans to stop evaluating Apple's servers and go with Sun Microsystems products.
Forbes, meanwhile, takes a look at the branding benefits of the Apple-Intel agreement and determines that the risk is on Apple.
My colleague Tom Yager, chief technologist for the InfoWorld Test Center, argues that in time it will be tough for users to tell the difference between Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, in his column Inside the Intel-based Mac.
The way Apple set up the PowerPC-to-Intel-x86 transition, or G4-to-P4 as I’ve come to call it, will go unnoticed by the majority of Mac desktop users and developers. Fence-sitters who have been eyeing the Mac but who balk at the price will find that, side by side, Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs will be almost indistinguishable.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 15, 2005 08:13 AM
June 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Opening Day for Sun OpenSolaris Project includes blogger onslaught
Sun Microsystems unveiled a grouping of technologies as part of OpenSolaris, the open source version of the Solaris 10 operating system, and along with it, scores of blogs from developers involved in the project.
Technologies including the kernel and networking software will be available for free usage under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License, said Tom Goguen, vice president for platform software at Sun.
The kernel includes features such as predictive self-healing and Solaris containers for isolating an application within the operating system. Also part of the release are system libraries and commands.
Users can download source code, combine it with their own source code and make commercial products out of it. "It's a completely royalty-free open source product," Goguen said.
"Our goal is to increase and really drive up the ecosystem around Solaris,” said Goguen.
"It's going to be a full, buildable environment. That's perhaps the key thing," Goguen said.
At the Sun Website, viewers can read scores blogs from developers such as Alan Coopersmith, who offer unique insight into the project.
"Since Solaris is huge, instead of waiting until everything was ready for release, a staged plan was developed for OpenSolaris, starting with the consolidation at the core of the OS and then working out to the higher layers," Coopersmith wrote. "Now that ON is out and the infrastructure used is set up, we're starting to work out how to release code from other consolidations. Once everything is in place for additional consolidations to be added to OpenSolaris, the next phase will probably be the source trees that come from open source releases and are thus not needing as much work to separate out the bits that can be released from those that can't, and that is expected to include our Xorg server source tree."
OpenSolaris will run on Intel x86 and 64-bit AMD Opteron systems as well as on Sun’s Sparc hardware. Sun hopes to leverage the operating system by offering support packages. The company also is hopeful that seeding the market with Open-Solaris will boost demand for its portfolio of other products, Goguen said.
Asked if Sun was releasing Solaris to open source because of competitive pressure from the open source Linux platform, Goguen responded that Sun itself was started more than 20 years ago through open source technology -- BSD Unix.
"[BSD Unix developer] Bill Joy, who was one of the founders of the company, arguably could be considered one of the founders of open source software," Goguen said.
"We’re the second largest contributor of open source software to the community [behind the University of California] and [on Tuesday] we’ll step up and be the largest contributor of open source software," Goguen stated.
There are markets underserved by Linux, which lacks the functionalities of Solaris such self-healing and dynamic tracing, Goguen said. Solaris also offers functionality such as high-end symmetric multiprocessing, and that is lacking in Linux, he said. Additionally, Solaris offers advantages in addressing multicore chips, he said.
"Red Hat's [Linux] offering is incapable of scaling as well as Solaris today,” Goguen said.
Sun with open source Solaris hopes to stem defections to Linux, said analyst Gordon Haff, senior analyst at Illuminata.
"In terms of being sort of the mass-market alternative to Linux, that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon. But I think Sun’s real focus here is more on its customer base and developer community that are still in the Solaris camp," Haff said.
The move is not likely to attract Windows users because Windows is quite a different system from Solaris, Haff said.
Sun still will offer the commercial version of Solaris, but future commercial releases will be based on the development going on as part of OpenSolaris, Goguen said.
Sun made the dynamic tracing feature of Solaris, known as DTrace, available through open source in January. Some administrative and install technologies will be kept out of the OpenSolaris release on Tuesday. Sun still must perform due diligence to ascertain that there are no third-party encumbrances pertaining to any of the code, according to Goguen.
OpenSolaris will be available at www.opensolaris.org.
The OpenSolaris Project plan also calls for future releases of test suites, a tool to manage bug and patch submissions, a code management solution, and design documents.
- By Paul Krill
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 14, 2005 05:37 PM
June 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Intel unveils compilers for multi-core platforms
Intel on Tuesday announced compilers intended to help developers build threaded applications and optimize performance on multi-core hardware platforms.
The Intel Compilers version 9.0 for C++ and Fortran feature an auto-parallelization option that seeks out opportunities in applications to create multiple execution threads, according to Intel. The OpenMP 2.5 standard, for creating and managing multi-threaded software, is supported by the compilers.
The compilers allow developers to debug optimized code generated within the compilers themselves. Also featured is application-level security for Linux, to reduce buffer overflow vulnerabilities.
Version 9.0 of the Intel C++ Compiler is available now starting at $399 for Windows or Linux. The Version 9.0 Intel Fortran Compiler is shipping now starting at $499 for Windows or Linux.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 14, 2005 01:01 PM
June 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Industry heavyweights form software quality council
Software quality and cost issues will be the focus of a newly formed industry council featuring heavyweights such as IBM and SAP.
The BPM Forum, which promotes business performance management techniques and technologies, on Tuesday announced formation of the Software Economics Council, to address issues impacting the effectiveness and value of software.
Formed in response to the growing dependency of organizations on software to run their operations and drive business performance, the council will communicate virtually and in-person.
Noting that software quality remains a sore point, the council will discuss issues such as the gaps between softward design and delivery, software lifecycle management, open source technologies and strategies to elevate the value of software with licensed, open source and on-demand models.
The leadership committee for the council consists of executives from a wide range of software companies. Included are: Adobe Systems, Aztec Software, Azul Systems, BEA Systems, Borland Software, BroadvVision, Cognizant, Deloitte, Dendrite International, EDS, IBM, Informatica, Leverage Software, Mercury, Novell, Oracle, Salesforce.com, Santeon, SAP, Siebel Systems and Sybase.
Absent from the list are Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. But these two vendors will be invited to participate, said Shirish Netke, chief strategy officer for Aztec Software and chairman of the council's leadership committee.
"They have not been intentionally excluded from this," Netke said. Current participants, however, have demonstrated more of an active role in dealing with the issues pertinent to the council, he said. Both Sun and Microsoft are members of the BPM Forum.
The council is being referred to by the acronym, SECO.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 14, 2005 10:54 AM
June 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sony Ericsson launches souped up mobile phones
Sony Ericsson unveiled five mobile phones Monday, including a 3G high-data speed phone that offers enhanced features such as video conferencing, music and games.
The announcement as rival Nokia launched seven new phones, including its own 3G phone.
Sony Ericsson, a partnership of the two companies, announced the W600, a version of its Walkman music phone for at North American users; the S600, targeted for the youth market; a clamshell-shaped phone named the Z520; and the J210, for mainstream functions such as calling and writing messages.
IT also unveiled a 3G phone called the K608. "This latest in the K600 family of 3G phones supports all the major operators' 3G services, including video confer-encing and fast downloads of music, games, videos and other multimedia content," Sony Ericsson said in a statement.
Wireless analyst Gerry Purdy said many more 3G mobile phones are expected to hit the market in the next two years as carriers are able to handle the technology. "You will see 3G handsets coming out that feature high-speed data and video and other features," said Purdy, principal analyst for MobileTrax.
In addition to Sony Ericsson and Nokia, Samsung is also expecting a launch of new phones, he said.
Sony Ericsson said global 3G network subscriptions are growing rapidly. "We are building our 3G portfolio to support this growth, producing handsets that effortlessly handle the diversity of services on offer," said Jan Wareby, Corporate Executive, Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing of Sony Ericsson. "The K608 is a classic addition to the family that consumers will immediately find appealing and intuitive."
The K608 is featured with a suite of business applications that handle personal information management and PC-synchronization via USB or Bluetooth, Sony Ericsson said.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 13, 2005 05:00 PM
June 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Money can't buy me love: The 2005 InfoWorld Compensation Survey shows surprising results
Corporate heath is improving and, along with it, salaries and bonuses. But IT discontent over years of budget cuts, pay freezes and layoffs continues, the 2005 InfoWorld's Compensation Survey shows.
"Going by salary alone, the warming trend hinted at in last year's survey has proved true, as the overall average reported salary increased for the first time in three years, up 2.7 percent," Senior Copy Editor Jason Synder reports.
But IT managers are thinking about more than money. "If anything, a closer look at survey responses reveals that years of tackling mounting workloads with less money and depleted staffs have taken their toll on IT morale," Synder writes.
The survey covers a broad range of pay categories and related subjects, including salary comparisons by job title, executive bonuses and employee feedback on job security.
If you want to evaluate your status in relation to the rest of the industry, this is a must read.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 13, 2005 01:39 PM
June 13, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Nokia reaching out and touching Apple, other partners
Nokia reached out and touched several partners this week to offer some additional options to its enterprise telephony customers.
With Apple, Nokia is collaborating on developing a mobile browser using similar components to Apple's Safari browser.
Nokia is also teaming up with Cisco, OnRelay, IBM and others on a strategy to offer a suite of advanced enterprise voice mobility options, such as intelligent and VoIP connectivity between mobile devices and company IP PBXs
Avaya and Nokia also announced they are moving to the next phase of their strategic collaboration to develop products to address the emerging market for enterprise Fixed to Mobile Convergence (FMC) voice solutions based on open industry standards.
Speaking at the annual Nokia Connection media event in Helsinki, Jaakko Olkkonen, Nokia's general manager for Enterprise Voice Solutions, described the strategy as a "fundamentally new way to marry the best of fixed and mobile telephony to provide cost savings and productivity to businesses and employees, new business opportunities for service providers, and simplicity and freedom for people in or out of the office."
Posted by Bob Francis on June 13, 2005 01:19 PM
June 10, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Michael Jackson suicide e-mail hoax is a Trojan attack
E-mails saying pop star Michael Jackson has attempted suicide are in fact a Trojan virus, according to Sophos, a British anti-virus company.
Sophos said it has identified hundreds of the spam messages that exploit public attention focused on Jackson, currently on trial on child molestation charges.
The spam e-mails, under the heading, "Re: Suicide aattempt," read, "Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt."
The e-mails offer a link to more information. However, when users click on the link they are taken to a Website that installs malicious code onto their PCs.
"If you click on the link the Website displays a message saying it is too busy, which may not surprise people who think it might contain genuine breaking news about Michael Jackson," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos. "However, this is a diversionary tactic - because behind the scenes the website is downloading malware onto the user's computer without their knowledge."
Sophos security experts analysed the code downloaded by clicking on the link, and determined that it itself attempts to download another Trojan horse which Sophos detects as Troj/Borobt-Gen.
Jackson's notoriety has attracted hackers in the past. In October 2004, Internet messages claiming that incriminating home videos belonging to Jackson had been discovered, actually linked to infected Web surfers with the Hackarmy Trojan horse, Sophos said. Janet Jackson's Superbowl wardrobe malfunction also inspired virus attack.
"The sick minds behind viruses and other malware often exploit celebrity names and news stories in an attempt to infect as many people as possible," Theriault said. "All computer users should be very careful about clicking on weblinks in unsolicited email or launching unknown attachments."
Sophos said it recommends companies automatically update their corporate virus protec-tion, and filter attachments which may contain malicious code at the email gateway with a consolidated solution to defend against viruses and spam.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on June 10, 2005 04:45 PM
June 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
BEA Systems on Thursday is rolling out several products as part of its service infrastructure strategy, which had been codenamed Project Free Flow.
The company also is launching the tagline, "Think liquid," as part of its goal to help users free up IT assets to become enterprise liquid assets.
New products include BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, which is an enterprise service bus formerly known as QuickSilver. Due this summer, the product will carry a list price not to exceed $45,000 per CPU.
The BEA AquaLogic Service Registry provides UDDI directory services for SOA governance and lifecycle management. The product is being made by Systinet but will carry the BEA name. Pricing is yet to be determined.
The Liquid Data product for offering a single view of data sources has been renamed the BEA AquaLogic Data Services Platform. It features read and write data capabilities as opposed its previous read-only capability. Availability is planned for this month, with list pricing starting at $10,000 per CPU.
The fourth product is BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Security, a security infrastructure formerly known as WebLogic Enterprise Security. Shipping now, it costs $75,000 for the administrative application and $10,000 per CPU for for security modules.
Future AquaLogic products may include Process, for services management; Portal, for information worker productivity; and Composer, a tool environment for AquaLogic products.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 9, 2005 10:29 AM
June 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple risks user disaffection in switch to Intel
There seem to be something the Apple hopeful are forgetting as they try to rationalize why Apple is making the switch to Intel.
Yes, every developer I spoke to explained that the transition is no big deal and should be relatively painless.
Yes, users should be able to switch even their current applications over to Intel thanks to Rosetta and I'm sure other utilities that will come down the pike.
If you want all of your questions answered about the transition I suggest you go to the MacWorld site and read their FAQs on the subject.
If you want the lastest news go to the InfoWorld story or you might even try Apple's own site.
And yes, Apple had no choice but to make the switch. Apple was just not a big enough customer for Big Blue to devote the kinds of R&D Apple needed to keep up with the Intel platform. For Intel, chips are all they have. For IBM, it's a small piece of their revenue stream.
However, what the Apple hopeful are forgetting is that even if the transition is seamless and even if we can all agree Steve Jobs had no choice and that he made the right move, it doesn't mean it is going to work.
Unfortunately it may be too late.
Apple will now find itself competing in terms of applications and pricing with the rest of the world.
It will lose that certain cache it always had. Yes, the industrial design will still be there but in a sense it will be a hollow design when at the end of the day it's just Intel inside, nothing special.
Of course, we also have the uncertainty over the transition period. As buyers get closer to the date when Apple moves 100 percent to Intel who's going to buy a Mac? And once a buyer leaves the fold, will they come back?
Even the good news for software developers who can write programs for the Mac and easily have a PC version as well, takes away from the uniqueness of the Mac.
Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end for Apple? Only time will tell but from where I sit it doesn't look good.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 8, 2005 02:50 PM
June 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Like Apple, IT shops are switching - to faster switches
Apple is not the only company making a big switch. The transition to GigE and 10GbE is definately on in IT shops, according to a new report by In-Stat.
The Layer 2/3 managed Ethernet switch market grew 23.5 percent by revenues and 23.8 percent in port shipments from 2003 to 2004, according to the report.
According to In-Stat, Fast Ethernet continued to represent the greatest overall number of ports shipped, but the transition to newer generations of switch technology is definitely on. GigE is now a mainstream switching technology and 10GbE grew exponentially in 2004.
"Strong worldwide economic growth, declining ASPs, and pent-up demand for networking equipment purchases after several years of IT budget cut-backs all contributed to above-average performance by the market," said In-Stat analyst Sam Lucero in a release.
The report also found that Cisco continued to lead the L2/3 managed Ethernet switch market in both port shipments and revenue in 2004, followed by HP, 3Com, and Nortel. In the unmanaged Ethernet switch market, D-Link led the market, followed by Linksys and Netgear.
According to the report, the L2/3 managed Ethernet switch market will grow more slowly this year. For more information on the report, click here.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 7, 2005 08:32 AM
June 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SeaWorld panel: Microsoft makes enterprise splash
Licensing was the only sore point noted by enterprise IT officials Monday evening during a panel session held for attendees of the Microsoft TechEd 2005 conference in Orlando. Microsoft received mostly rave reviews during the event, which was held at the nearby SeaWorld amusement park famous for its whale and dolphin shows.
The subject of Microsoft licensing, though, elicited some sharp comments.
"It's a completely different relationship that you have with Microsoft at [that] stage than at any other stage," said Robert Fort, director of information technology at Virgin Megastore. "It was a tough group," he said, and "concessions were tough to pull out."
Tim Kelly, director of distributed technologies at TSYS, said that when going into negotiations on multimillion-dollar contracts, "there wasn't a lot of smiles around the table." But TSYS did get some good concessions from Microsoft, Kelly said. TSYS processes credit card transactions.
"It's kind of like you can't afford to be on the Microsoft treadmill," Kelly said in response to a question about which panelists were on Microsoft's Software Assurance program and which would be renewing.
Nissan North America's Larry Berger, manager of computer services, said he found Microsoft pretty flexible with licensing but that a user has to look at what technologies will be changing.
Ross McKenzie, director of information systems at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, "I'm from higher ed and I know when to keep my mouth shut," in recognition of the educational discounts that Microsoft provides.
The rest of the discussion was primarily a Microsoft love-fest.
At the university, Microsoft Exchange was selected as the school's fifth e-mail system in 10 years, for example. "The best part of it was the migration. It took 40 hours. We were done in a weekend," McKenzie said.
The school has implemented an e-mail and calendaring system for 5,000 users, according to a press statement on the panel. Nissan, meanwhile, has adopted Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 for collaboration. Virgin is using Windows Server System and the .Net Framework for a business intelligence solution, while TSYS is using SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition to develop a real-time data warehouse.
The only time the subject of Linux came up during the discussion was when McKenzie noted that some Linux desktops were being replaced by Macintoshes by one group at the school. The group found that Linux required too much maintenance, he said.
Why not Windows instead of Macs, I asked. Well, it seems this particular department required high-end statistical analysis functions of Unix, McKenzie said.
-- Written By Paul Krill, who is attending TechEd
Posted by Caroline Craig on June 7, 2005 06:27 AM
June 06, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple has no choice but to switch to Intel
In June 04 I reported that Apple notebook technology was being stymied by IBM's inability or unwillingness to create a mobile PowerPC chip with better thermal requirements.
The current chips just run too hot.
With the simple confirmation from Apple last year that the 2.5GHz, G5 processor runs too hot for use in a notebook, Apple opened itself up to a raft of speculation over its long-term future.
I spoke with Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64, and one of the best microprocessor analysts in the country and he bluntly said, "Apple couldn't pay IBM enough" to design a better chip for Apple PowerBooks.
The Intel notebook market is at 21 percent [30 to 40 million units] of the overall market and growing at a rate of about 22 percent. Mac is 3 percent of the market.
And so Apple had no choice but to go with Intel which is considered the premier developer of low wattage mobile chip technology.
While Apple users may grumble at first, Jobs had no way out.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 6, 2005 10:00 AM
June 06, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft dials up VoIP partners
Microsoft today made a big move into the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) market by announcing strategic alliances with AT&T, Amdocs and Sylantro.
Microsoft made the announcement today at SuperComm, a telecom trade show in Chicago.
Microsoft's goal is to provide VoIP providers with tools and services to deliver new integrated products to the industry, according to Michael O'Hara, general manager for the service provider business at Microsoft. "We're focusing on collaborating with service providers to build software-powered service networks. We believe that by focusing on collaboration with service providers we can build software-powered service networks that will create new applications," he said.
Microsoft's primary offering in this space will be its Connected Services Framework, an integrated software product designed for building and managing complex services using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web service interfaces. Connected Services Framework will allow telecommunications operators to aggregate, provision and manage converged communications services for their subscribers, regardless of network or device, according to O'Hara.
Read the rest of the story here.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 6, 2005 09:38 AM
June 06, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's TechEd getting under way
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will kick off the Microsoft TechEd 2005 conference in Orlando today, focusing on workforce changes, demands on IT and investments Microsoft is making in tools and technologies, according to the company.
Ballmer will touch on themes such as optimism, with the company believing the coming decade to be the most exciting yet for IT professionals and developers. Other themes to be covered include IT and business impacts of changes in the workplace and platform differentiation.
The company said in e-mail previewing TechEd that it is investing in an information worker infrastructure, an applications infrastructure for developers, operations infrastructure and security.
On Tuesday, Microsoft's Paul Flessner, senior vice president of server applications, will talk about the company's Connected Systems vision and how the company plans to deliver a next-generation application platform. Flessner also will provide updates on the Windows Server System Common Engineering Criteria.
All told, 440 breakout sessions are planned and nearly 11,000 customers, partners and analysts are expected to attend the event. Check back frequently on InfoWorld.com for updates.
-- Written By Paul Krill, who is attending TechEd
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 6, 2005 06:16 AM
June 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Apple, Intel deal gathers steam
If the rumors are true, people in a certain very warm place may be doing Dorothy Hamill-like triples right now. The rumors floating around for the last few weeks that Apple will turn to Intel processors for future systems are now being moved from the rumor column to the confirmed column, according to some news organizations.
The official announcement may come Monday. The move is reportedly coming because Apple's current supplier, IBM, is not developing a line of PowerPC chips broad enough for Apple's needs. If the move does take place, there will be plenty of repercussions. It will mean some skull work for Apple software developers and Apple engineers who will have to adapt to the new technology. It may not be easy for customers either. They will have to deal with yet more transition.
And that doesn't even count those people who now have to learn to ice skate.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 5, 2005 09:29 PM
June 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
If the government has .gov and universities lay claim to .edu, its seems only fitting that pornography now has its own suffix on the Internet with .xxx.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) yesterday said it plans to establish a separate Internet domain for pornographic Web sites.
Soon, after technical and commercial contractual negotiations are worked out with the ICM Registry, porn Web sites will be able to sign up to use Internet addresses that end with .xxx.
Registering for the top level domain will be voluntary, but it may be in porn sites' interest to be pro-active about establishing a regulated and visible online presence.
Adult sites that register for the .xxx domain will be required to adhere to a list industry best practices including safeguarding children from being marketed to or targeted online by adult webmasters, defending customer privacy, using accurate meta-tagging, fighting spam, phishing and spoofing, and providing accurate contact information.
The primary benefit to Net surfers is that the .xxx domain will make it easier for filtering technology to block access to porn sites.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 2, 2005 05:22 PM
June 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun tape purchase gets sticky analyst reactions
Sun Microsystems agreed to acquire Storage Technology, better known as StorageTek, for $4.1 billion in cash today in a bid to bolster its information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy.
The move is designed to strengthen Sun's storage portfolio and also add to the company's ILM strategy, according to Scott McNealy, CEO at Sun. "With Sarbanes-"Oxley, HIPPA and other compliance issues, storage and data management are becoming more and more important," he said.
Unlike IBM or HP, Sun lacks a solid tape backup strategy, so the acquisition makes some sense. But many analysts question whether this was the right acquisition for cash-rich Sun. According to a research report from Merrill Lynch Shebly Seyrafi, the acquisition gives Sun a more complete ILM solution. Still, he questions Sun's decision to buy instead of partner with a tape company. "EMC, for example, has a reseller agreement with tape library company ADIC," according to the report.
Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett also has some questions on the acquisition. "Our bottom line is that we're skeptical on the acquisition being justified on the technology alone," he said. Gillett does believe the sales force consolidation could be a good thing. "It will be good to have a larger sales force out there selling Sun, but how to turn this into something more is not obvious to us at the moment," he said.
Tony Asaro, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, is another skeptic. "If they can pull off a good merger, it could work out. But we all know that most mergers just don't come out very well. We'll just have to wait and see," he said.
Posted by Bob Francis on June 2, 2005 03:19 PM
June 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Capping off a season packed with storage news, Sun Microsystems this morning declared its intentions to purchase StorageTek for $4.1 billion.
The companies, of course, claim that Sun's storage hardware, and its platform for virtualization and data services are a natural fit for StorageTek's line of data protection and intelligent archive products including its Storage Resource management software and virtual tape systems, as the IDG News Service reported.
The story, Sun to acquire StorageTek for $4.1 billion, described the purchase:
The acquisition is part of Sun's strategy to meet customers' needs to rationalize their datacenter purchases, helping them "free up time and dollars to focus on compliance, architectural integration, security and ... the bottom line," the company said in a statement.
The products and services currently offered by Sun and StorageTek complement each other and will form one of the most comprehensive storage and data management portfolios in the industry, the statement said.
Other storage vendors have been busy this spring as well.
On Monday, Brocade announced several new products designed to make SANs smarter. As the story written by my colleague Bob Francis points out, Brocade is hardly the only vendor doing this.
Late last week, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems extended an existing interoperability agreement the companies had regarding their storage systems. The deal calls for Hitachi's systems to support Big Blue's mirroring and replication software, and for the companies to collaborate on interoperability testing between Hitachi's storage system and IBM's zSeries mainframes.
In the middle of May, HP and EMC held dueling user shows at which HP made what executives referred to as the largest expansion of its StorageWorks line in company history.
EMC also pushed its virtualization strategy forward, and NetApp added to its midrange roster.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 2, 2005 07:44 AM
June 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Drools 2.0, an open source business rules engine, is now available via BSD licensing.
The declarative rules engine can be used in applications for setting of conditions for transactions, according to Bob McWhirter, founder of Codehaus and the originator of Drools. Codehaus is hosting Drools 2.0.
"With Drools, you can describe what needs to happen when certain conditions are met," McWhirter said. He cited as an example an insurance application that gives discounts to customers based on conditions such as age or marital status. Drools uses the Rete algorithm.
Version 2.0 is the first production-ready release of Drools.
Posted by Paul Krill on June 1, 2005 04:21 PM
June 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Mytob, Sober top virus lists for May, while Bagle rolls wild
In the middle of a week that has already seen new Mytob and Bagle variants, Kaspersky Lab and Sophos each released its monthly list of the top viruses for May.
Kaspersky breaks out the top twenty each month. Boiling down the list a bit, here are the top ten:
1 Mytob.c -- 24.22%
2 NetSky.q -- 15.5%
4 netSky.b -- 4.00%
5 Zafi.b -- 3.71%
6 LovGate.w -- 3.30%
7 Sober.p -- 3.21%
8 Mytob.u -- 3.17%
9 Zafi.d -- 3.05%
10 Mytob.q -- 2.91%
The full list is here.
Mytob, which continues atop the list, reared its face again this week. The new Mytob.bi poses as an administrator and replicates by scanning infected systems' hard drives then sending out copies of itself to e-mail addresses it finds in the Windows Address Book. The latest Bagle worms, three or four of which are currently spreading, came in the guise of empty subject lines and e-mail bodies.
Anti-virus firm Sophos, on the other hand, listed Sober-N as the most prevalent worm, displacing Zafi.d after it topped the charts for five straight months. Sophos's list counts the top 10 and contains these:
1 Sober-N -- 43.8%
2 Zafi-D -- 14.5%
3 Netsky-P -- 13.1%
4 Netsky-D -- 3.1%
5 Zafi-B -- 2.0%
6 Mytob-AZ -- 1.6%
7 Mytob-Z -- 1.5%
8 Netsky-Z -- 1.5%
9 Mytob-E -- 1.5%
10 Netsky-N 1.4%
Viruses, meanwhile, are not the only cause for concern among users. The University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center conducted a study that determined Internet users are not as aware as they should be about the type of data Web site owners collect from them and just how that data gets used.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 1, 2005 02:44 PM
June 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
The industry is abuzz with rumors that SAP is working on a software as a service CRM solution.
I called SAP and asked.
Of course they don't comment on rumors but an official spokesperson was kind enough to say that the source of the rumor was most likely a "slim" SFA [Sales Force Automation] on demand solution demoed at its big user show in Copenhagen this past April.
I guess it takes time for rumors to get across the Atlantic and all the way to the West Coast.
I also asked what slim might mean and the spokesperson said they could not elaborate.
Nevertheless, the demo, that the spokesperson described as being "solely for the purpose of getting customer feedback," is a darn good reason to start such a rumor.
My guess is they will announce something by the end of the year.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 1, 2005 02:39 PM
June 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
IDC tells of 'guarded' optimism among IT purchasers
Numbers that analyst house IDC released this morning suggest that IT buyer optimism, though improving somewhat, remains guarded. The positive take-away is that IT shops are now less focused on cost-cutting than in the recent past.
The IDC FutureScan report states that "buyer optimism continues to be dampened by macroeconomic realities."
While expectations for IT spending over the next 12 months continue to hold steady at just over 7 percent, more than two percentage points higher than IDC's current forecast, enough uncertainty exists to keep any optimism in check.
Buyer expectations got a boost in May from the slight rebound in the stock market and favorable prospects for corporate profits in the second half of the year. However, the impact of higher oil prices and ongoing concerns about the U.S. trade imbalance are contributing to a conservative outlook toward the months ahead, particularly among