- Plugging the leaks: IDC points to the need for outbound compliance
- SOA specification is readied by IBM, BEA, others
- Cyber Monday: pretty much a big fat lie
- Sun to shed more light on software strategy
- ComponentOne boosts Delphi developers
- Japan's automotive industry also leads world in being green
- Total Recall body scanner becomes reality
- Second beta release of BizTalk Server 2006 is set
- Mono is upgraded
- Microsoft open Office shot heard around the world
November 30, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Plugging the leaks: IDC points to the need for outbound compliance
The growth of IM, e-mail, blogs and other types of message traffic, as well well-publicized leaks of customer records and other sensitive corporate information is forcing enterprise IT managers to bolster security of outbound data, IDC says.
The IT research and consulting company has even created a new name for the trend - outbound content compliance (OCC) - and says the new security market will swell to $1.9 billion in 2009.
"There is growing demand for solutions that will combat potentially devastating content distribution and violations of government and industry regulations," Brian Burke, manager of IDC's security products and services research, said Wednesday in a research note on IDC Website. "These demands are being met through a range of OCC solutions that monitor, secure/encrypt, filter, and block outbound content contained in email, instant messaging, P2P, file transfers, Web postings, and other types of messaging traffic. "OCC plays a key role in enforcing corporate compliance with both external regulatory requirements and internal corporate policies."
Corporations are now scambling to secure their electronic communications as government and industry regulations addressing the issue become institutionalized.
"Addressing the insider threat is becoming more complex," said Burke. "The increasing use of corporate email, Web email, instant messaging, peer-to-peer, and other channels for distributing data and the proliferation of mobile devices that allow employees to carry sensitive information outside the organization's boundaries make the control of outbound content increasingly difficult."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 30, 2005 12:29 PM
November 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
SOA specification is readied by IBM, BEA, others
Focusing on SOA, several major software vendors on Wednesday are announcing a specification called Service Component Architecture (SCA), intended to foster development of composite applications.
SCA will allow developers to focus on writing business logic in the building and packaging of applications, according to a source familiar with the announcement. Participating vendors include BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Iona, Siebel and Sybase, the source said. The specification is expected to be submitted to an industry standards body, possibly OASIS, for consideration as an industry standard.
SCA is designed for SOA, unlike platforms such as J2EE, which have been adapted to SOA. SCA is intended to allow development of application assemblies without regard to middleware or language. It features the notion of a service, which is to be defined by an interface that includes a set of operations.
With SCA, a developer, for example, could build a quote to cash application that unites a CRM system with an order management system. Service Data Object technology, for simplifying how applications handle data, is key to SCA.
SCA uses the notion of declarative policies for elements such as security, transactions and reliable messaging. Built for composite applications, it is able to describe assemblies of components that have been written in a variety of programming models and protocols.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 29, 2005 09:29 PM
November 29, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cyber Monday: pretty much a big fat lie
Upon waking Monday morning I groggily flipped the radio dial to NPR to start the process of reviving my body from its holiday food coma and getting back into workaday mode.
What NPR story greeted my ears? It was a news piece about Cyber Monday, which is the name that has been given to the Monday after Thanksgiving for being, as the story claimed, the biggest online shopping day of the year.
I listened as experts in e-commerce explained the reasoning. After the traditional brick and mortar retail blitz of Black Friday comes Cyber Monday, when workers return to the office where high speed Internet connections can be counted on to continue the post-Thanksgiving shopping spree.
Another reason behind Cyber Monday, according to the NPR story and many others like it, is that shoppers get all kinds of holiday gift ideas while hoofing it around the mall and, tired of fighting the crowds, rejoice in the quiet of bargain hunting via keyboard and monitor. It all made sense.
However, Truthful Tuesday arrives and turns out the dividends of Cyber Monday may have been exaggerated. According to an article published today by Business Week, Cyber Monday is only the 12th busiest online shopping day of the year, and the term was coined just last week by Shop.org, a retailers' association looking to create a little buzz around online buying.
Well it worked. Hundreds of online, print, and radio stories were penned and spoken touting Cyber Monday as the Web equivalent of a shopping mall horde. Internet traffic watcher comScore Networks is planning to publish data on Wednesday that they say will reveal the actual online shopping traffic numbers from pseudo "Cyber" Monday. We'll see then if Cyber Monday was anything more than a marketing mirage.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 29, 2005 03:04 PM
November 28, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun to shed more light on software strategy
Sun Microsystems on Wednesday is set to make what the company is describing as a "significant" software strategy announcement.
While revealing no precise clues as to exactly what the announcement is, Sun's bulletin said that Sun President/COO Jonathan Schwartz and John Loiacono, Sun executive vice president of software, will host a teleconference to announce "an important software development for the company and the computer industry."
The Wednesday teleconference follows a November 17 teleconference held to discuss Sun's support of the PostgreSQL database and other open source efforts.
Wednesday's announcement was described by a Sun representative on Monday morning as bigger than the November 17 announcement and definitely a shift in the company's software strategy.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 28, 2005 09:58 AM
November 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
ComponentOne boosts Delphi developers
ComponentOne on Wednesday released ComponentOne Studio Enterprise for Borland Delphi 2006.
Integrated with the Borland Developer Studio product, ComponentOne Studio Enterprise for Borland Delphi 2006 features components for grid, reporting, charting, data, user interface and e-commerce for both .Net and ASP.Net development.
ComponentOne seeks to provide the Delphi community with tools to enhance productivity and build applications that add to the end user experience, the company said. The ComponentOne product includes a development and deployment license for select ComponentOne Enterprise .Net (Windows Forms) and ASP.Net (WebForms) components, the company said.
ComponentOne Studio Enterprise for Borland Delphi 2006 costs $995.95. Borland Delphi 2006 users can upgrade to the package for $599.95.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 23, 2005 01:41 PM
November 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Japan's automotive industry also leads world in being green
The U.S. auto industry, which I used to cover regularly, is once again coming up short.
First it was in the 70s when gas shortages drove car buyers to the Japanese products that offered superior mileage. Then it was the 80s when the Japanese decided to enter the luxury car market and made superior products.
Then in the early 90s while General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, when there was a Chrysler, ridiculed the idea of electric cars the Japanese already had hybrids on the drawing boards.
Unfortunately, the auto industry, as represented by GM still doesn't get it. Instead of building hybrid cars, that are superior in quality and mileage, they compete by promising their share holders to close 12 plants and lay off 30,000 employees.
Brilliant competitive strategy don't you think?
One final thought on that before I go on to being green.
Why isn't the CEO of GM and other senior level executives getting the blame for this? How come the person on the assembly line has to suffer for years of incompetent management?
But now, the Japanese are leading the way in yet another area, recycling of hazardous material from autos and designing new products that are more environmentally safe and easier to recycle.
To put it at its most provocative, I can only make the assumption that an industry that helps its customers save money at the pump, builds safer cars that last longer and worriers about its contribution to a better environment, cares more about their customers as people not just as a sales order, than our American car companies do?
You might agree or disagree but first let me explain what the Japanese Automotive Manufacturing Association of Japan [JAMA], not to be confused with the Journal of the American Medical Association also JAMA, is doing.
Here's a rough sketch of how it works.
All Japanese auto manufacturers are required to notify their customers of an automotive recycling program.
Car owners receive incentives to report when a part is replaced in their car. An owner might go to a Web site, plug in his or her VIN number and notify the dealer that the original muffler is being replaced and the part number of the new muffler.
It is a program in Japan only but I heard of this because IBM was brought in as an advisor to the initial JAMA team.
IBM Services group was asked to consult on how best to define and administer this program because of the massive amounts of data and infrastructure required, and to ensure the data is properly provided.
In what Mark Wilterding, Partner, Global Product Lifecycle Management Leader, IBM Business Consulting Services, calls one of the first examples of true closed loop PLM, all of the information on the old and new replacement part is linked back from the dealer to the distributor, to the supplier, to the manufacturer.
Here's a link to IBMs PLM group.
The data on the old and new part is used everywhere, from the perspective of product innovation management, market planning, investment portfolio management, conceptual design, engineering, production engineering , distribution, and once again end of lifecycle disposal.
When the car makers produce the next model car all of that design thinking is incorporated into the process and over time products found to be non-environnmental friendly, can be taken out of the design. Now that new part, that new muffler, becomes part of the car's inventory of parts.
This is planning for recycling from the ground up.
It's also an example of where an industry can take what might at first sight seem to them as yet another onerous environmental regulation and turn it into a way of using the data to keep in touch with customers about new products.
JAMA is a quasi-governmental organization, Wilterding tells me but obviously they are not opposed to taking innovative steps to help create a better environment for all of their customers, current and future.
Here's another lesson the American car companies would be well to learn instead of solving all of their problems by laying off workers.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 23, 2005 11:22 AM
November 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Total Recall body scanner becomes reality
Replete with a privacy algorithm to hide "the important [body] parts," no not your brain, the vice president of operations of SafeView, Karen Meyer, gave me the rundown on the Scout 100 and Scout 360 people scanners.
This baby is much closer to the scanner in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall than the current generation of two-dimensional x-ray scanners.
It is fast and because it produces a three dimensional image in one pass there is no need for a person to turn around and around for the scanner to image the entire body.
And unlike those dangerous x-rays these scanners emit 10,000 times less power than a cell phone.
How good is this technology?
Well, according to Meyer you could tape a memory stick to your inner thigh, my suggestion not hers, and because the Scout 360 takes a 360-degree view of your body, the scanner would most likely find it.
The Scout 100 only takes a 270-degree of your bod.
Although SafeView scanners are now in full production there aren't many deployed for the simple reason that the "logistics of managing security", says Meyer changes completely.
For example, with one of these babies you don't need to pat anyone down.
There are plenty of potential buyers including prisons, airports, border crossings, and even one company that is using it to scan employees as they leave work.
The scanner uses what is called “active millimeter wave scanning technology” which reflects objects off the skin and can do a scan in 1.4 seconds or about 400 people per hour.
The technology was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Lab and licensed by SafeView.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 22, 2005 02:09 PM
November 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Second beta release of BizTalk Server 2006 is set
Microsoft on Tuesday released beta 2 of its BizTalk Server 2006 business integration software.
The new beta, which follows a first beta that was released in August, was described by a Microsoft representative as being more developed than the original beta. A Community Technology Preview, which is a preview version that does not have a designated Microsoft support team like a beta release, was made available on November 7.
The general release of the product is due in the first half of 2006. BizTalk Server 2006 is set to feature increased business activity monitoring and will have 26 application and technology adapters bundled in with the Enterprise and Standard editions of the product.
Registered users of BizTalk Server can access the new beta on Microsoft's BetaPlace Web site.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 22, 2005 11:29 AM
November 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Mono, which is an open source platform for developing and running .Net applications on multiple operating systems, has been upgraded.
Version 1.1.10 of Mono offers ASP.Net application configuration capabilities and the ability to work with virtual hosts. Windows.Forms support also is highlighted. Code access security has been enhanced as well.
Platforms supported by Mono include Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows and Unix.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 21, 2005 04:19 PM
November 21, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft open Office shot heard around the world
Microsoft's announcement Monday that it will offer its Word, Excel and PowerPoint document formats as open standards creates a tremor in the software industry that will be felt far and wide.
"We have a few barriers [with government contracts]," said Alan Yates, general manager for Microsoft Office. "It will give governments more long-term confidence."
That's one immediate issue. But it seems Microsoft is taking a huge step towards open software that will impact the plans of IBM, Sun, Google and many others.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 21, 2005 03:05 PM
November 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Managing the human side of BPM
You can't have a process without people, right? Calendaring software vendor Meeting Maker believes that the next generation of BPM will be squarely focused on the role people play in process management.
To that end, Meeting Maker this week acquired U.K.-based PeopleCube, which makes an application that focuses on the human role in BPM. In addition, Meeting Maker is changing its name to PeopleCube and is calling this new linkage between processes and people HPM (Human Process Management).
The concept of HPM isn't new. IBM, SAP, and others, for example, right now are hammering out a specification to extend the Web Services Business Process Execution Language to address the role of people in business processes. Cutely dubbed BPEL4People, the technology is still in development.
The new PeopleCube will continue to develop and support the existing Meeting Maker calendaring and scheduling software line of products. The company also is planning to combine BPM with scheduling and calendaring technologies in an effort to gain more visibility into the people who implement and manage processes, according to PeopleCube officials.
PeopleCube's BPM offering, called ProcessCube, is an on-demand application based on Microsoft .Net. It includes an embedded BizTalk Server 2004 framework and a SharePoint Portal Server. Features of ProcessCube's BPM app include information about people's availability and skill sets, real-time analytics, and dashboards.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 18, 2005 05:03 PM
November 18, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Edify, a maker of voice response systems, is being acquired by Intervoice for $33.5 million in cash.
Intervoice, which makes converged voice and data solutions, is purchasing Edify from Edify parent company S1, according to S1 and Intervoice. The acquisition is intended to strengthen Intervoice's position in the voice automation market, the companies said. The merger will unite Intervoice's development tools, applications and global presence with Edify's Web-based tools, natural language applications and North American presence, the vendors said.
The merger is expected to close in December. Intervoice President and CEO Bob Ritchey will continue in these same roles with Intervoice while Edify President and CEO Mitch Manditch will stay with the company through a transition period. The Edify name goes away as a result of the merger.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 18, 2005 03:59 PM
November 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
BEA Systems on Thursday named Rob Levy its chief technology officer, replacing Mark Carges, who becomes executive vice president in charge of the company's Business Interaction Division.
Levy joins BEA from Computer Associates, where he had been senior vice president and chief technology strategist responsible for driving CA's global technology strategy. At BEA, he will lead efforts to incubate new technology areas and foster the company's commitment to innovation and open standards, according to BEA. He will report to Wai Wong, executive vice president of products at BEA.
Carges, a nine-year BEA veteran who will report to BEA CEO Alfred Chuang, will lead the Business Interaction Division's focus on the company's AquaLogic brand. This division will emphasize enterprise portals, collaboration, and composite applications.
BEA also said its recently acquired Plumtree products have been rebranded the AquaLogic User Interaction suite of products.
"Portals are becoming a key integration point for the service-enabled enterprise," Chuang said in a prepared statement released by BEA. "With our acquisition of Plumtree and appointment of Mark to run this new division, BEA leads the market for multi-platform, transactional and collaborative portals. Standalone software stacks will be increasingly replaced by portals that access modular software components linked via SOA for a more personal user experience."
Posted by Paul Krill on November 17, 2005 04:22 PM
November 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun releasing Solaris file system to open source
Continuiing on its plan to offer Solaris OS technologies via open source, Sun Microsystems on Thursday is releasing the ZFS (Zettabyte File System) file system for Solaris. Previously, Sun has released source code for the entire operating system as part of the company's OpenSolaris endeavor. Sun on Thursday also will reveal other Sun technologies to be made available via open source.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 17, 2005 11:08 AM
November 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie starts new blog
He referred to it as Ray's Weblog v3. The reason: Before taking the CTO spot at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie had more than one blog of his own.
Now he's back in the blogosphere, this time as a Microsoft executive. Ozzie wrote in this inaugural post that he intends to converse with readers rather than simply plugging Microsoft products.
"We've got plenty of mechanisms -- old school and new -- that work well for that sort of thing. But to the extent that I'm excited about something, or I think there might be a different angle that you might be interested in, I'll chime in," he explained.
For instance, Ozzie and others are currently working on "a fun little project" that the involved parties have not yet begun to discuss publicly for lack of the right mechanism to spread the word. So, Ozzie might introduce that via his blog. "Next week, perhaps," he wrote.
(Thanks to Betanews for the link.)
Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 17, 2005 06:37 AM
November 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)
RFID is smarter than some columnists think
Much as I hate to disagree with a fellow InfoWorld columnist, I find it necessary to do so today.
Tom Yager, in his rant against RFID, cited the following as his main reason for his antipathy to the technology.
"I have a lot of reasons for being no fan of RFID, but RFID has one serious, show-stopping shortcoming that trumps the others: It’s stupid. A passive RFID tag is incapable of learning, logging, sensing the world around it, or doing anything on its own. If the tag is separated from the reader, or the reader is separated from the back end, the system is going to miss something."
So as Yager states, "an RFID tag is incapable of learning, logging, sensing the world around it, or doing anything on its own."
Yes, well, that's like calling the eye stupid. It takes a picture of the world around it but can do nothing with that information.
The eye alone can't learn, log, or sense the meaningfulness of what it sees in the world around it, or is it capable of doing anything on its own.
The eye needs to be connected.
The same is true of RFID. It needs to be connected to a database that takes the identification information, just like a license plate number, and match it to thousands of pieces of data about the item so identified.
Then, using an application that is connected via circuitry ultimately to a microprocessor, it can even make decisions about what to do with that data.
For example, RFID tags on pallets of lettuce sitting on the dock at Ningbo, China get identified and when the reader sends the information back to the server it might also be time stamped. Now a sensor reads the temperature at the dock. This too is sent back to the server.
The software analyzes and puts one event [time of arrival of lettuce] next to the other event [temperature] and lo and behold the owner of all those heads of lettuce gets an alert saying his perishable lettuce has been on the dock for 36 hours in 80-degree Fahrenheit.
Now a decision has to be made. Should the lettuce be loaded for shipment or should he take it back and sell it locally?
And it all starts with RFID. Not so dumb is it?
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 16, 2005 01:41 PM
November 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Report questions inevitability of China, India tech supremacy
The growing technology prowess of China and India is in evidence everywhere these days in a depressing stream of news about U.S. investment abroad and foreign outsourcing siphoning off work at home.
Now, Forrester Vice President Navi Radjou argues that the end of U.S. tech dominance is not at all a sure thing.
In, "How India, China Redefine the Tech World Order," Radjou says these countries are changing the nature of global IT as they grow in strength.
"India and China - with their fast-growing markets and rapidly-expanding innovation capabilities - are threatening to redefine the historical US-centric - and unipolar - world order for the tech industry," Radjou writes. "But instead of throwing up barriers and viewing India and China as competitive threats, U.S. tech vendors are building global high-tech Innovation Networks: multipolar ecosystems that exploit the huge markets and the growing talent pools in India and China."
Now, the U.S. must manage these relationships to best advantage. "In pursuit of a new global organizational model, U.S. Vendors are integrating with Indian and Chinese partners (for) new market structures that let tech firms fluidly match global innovation demand with worldwide talent supply."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 15, 2005 04:31 PM
November 15, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Guidance offered for moving Web apps to Visual Studio 2005
Microsoft has posted a guide for converting Web projects from earlier versions of the Visual Studio toolset to the new Visual Studio 2005 offering. The guide features best practices.
Visual Studio 2005 was formally launched on November 7.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 15, 2005 11:33 AM
November 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun to expand open source initiatives
Having already offered its Solaris OS via open source, Sun Microsystems on Thursday will reveal new open source initiatives involving its software portfolio, a Sun representative confirmed.
While not providing specific details, the representative did acknowledge that Java-based technology would be part of the equation.
Sun President/COO Jonathan Schwartz previously has expressed intentions by the company to eventually offer all of its software for free.
Some other Sun software products include the Sun Java Enterprise System middleware, Sun Java Desktop System and development tools such as Sun Java Studio Creator. As far as offering the Java programming language itself via open source, Sun has declined to do so in the recent past, preferring to keep Java under the jurisdiction of the Java Community Process.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 14, 2005 02:42 PM
November 11, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Marc Benioff says Microsoft Live is Dead
Marc Benioff, head honcho at Salesforce.com appears to agree with me that Microsoft is still stuck on the C: drive.
Although, he does have a more colorful way of putting it.
"Microsoft has a new version called 'Live.' It's the new on demand offering that will not be compatible with the current product line. So, perhaps they should rename their entire Microsoft product line, Microsoft Dead. It's the analog to Microsoft Live, the new on demand offering that does not even exist."
But as usual, he goes overboard. On the one hand Benioff says Microsoft Live doesn't even exist yet, this is true. But then how can he know it is not compatible?
Nevertheless, Benioff makes an excellent point when he says services companies will supplant many traditional software applications.
"Microsoft finds itself in a worse position today facing not just the obsolescence of a technology model, but a business model as well."
I do have one final complaint, however, not to Benioff so much as his PR team.
Quit sending out to the media these so-called "internal" emails that you claim Benioff just happen to write to his Salesforce.com employees.
Reporters may not be rocket scientists but we can sure tell the difference between a real email meant for employees and a press release.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 11, 2005 10:55 AM
November 09, 2005 | Comments: (0)
There's an interesting interview with SAP Chief Executive Officer Henning Kagermann conducted by John Blau from the IDG News Service.
Kagerman appears to reinforce a point I've been trying to make in my coverage of companies like Salesforce.com that offer software as a service [SaaS] solutions.
Salesforce and other SaaS-based companies offer meat and potatoes solutions for standard business operations. However, by using multi-tenant architecture which requires volumes of customers on a single instance of the database, it cannot give companies the kinds of differentiators they need to increase sales or gain market share.
Andy Mulholland, CTO at Capgemini calls it the 80-20 rule. SaaS does 80 percent of what every company needs. But that final 20 percent that sets a company apart from its competitors cannot be provided by SaaS technology.
Differentiation will require the enterprise to seek out more traditional vendors who have specific industry expertise.
Giving users the ability to customize field names as you can in a Salesforce.com service is not what we're talking about.
Here's how Kagermann put it in the interview.
"If you compare SAP with others from a competitive differentiation perspective, the most important differentiator is our broad experience in the area of applications. We are the leader in nearly all industries and have a very broad footprint with key companies in world. We know how they do business today and have a good idea of how their business will look in future."
Here's another telling Kagermann comment.
"Companies will compete more on business model innovation, which is empowered by IT. The question many of them ask is how they can differentiate themselves from their competitors? I tell them that such differentiation can't be achieved with today's architectures without considerable investment and sometimes modification to applications."
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 9, 2005 03:09 PM
November 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Cultural roadblocks to SOA development
When you hear about challenges companies are running up against in SOA development and deployment you probably think of technology-related stumbling blocks.
But a more human challenge was echoed by many company executives speaking here at InfoWorld's SOA Executive Forum in New York.
Getting buy-in from the business side of an organization is often a big hurtle to overcome, as is getting agreement between technology and business groups about expectations of an SOA.
This may be true when developing any new technology strategy, but with the sweeping nature of an SOA, the cultural challenge seems to be an overriding trend.
When asked about the biggest roadblock to their SOA deployment, Tom Myers, application architect at financial services company Evergreen Investments/Wachovia Corp. said it was getting alignment between business and IT groups.
"We had buy-in from [the] technology [side] but had to work to get the business side to understand that it wouldn't be just another siloed project. That we are trying to integrate data and free your data and make it available to everyone," Myers said.
Ed Vazquez, group manager of Web service integrations and SOA implementations at Sprint-Nextel, agreed that getting the business side of the enterprise to agree with the technology side about the SOA deployment was one of the biggest roadblocks.
The business people "don't care if it's an SOA or anything else, what they want to know is how is it going to drive new revenue, what problems it will solve, what's the ROI?" he said.
Fortunately, SOA's promise of supreme flexibility and of a framework that can change as business requirements change fits pretty well with business needs.
"They want an architecture that will change as fast as they can ask for change. That is what we were promising them and hoping to deliver to them," said Myers.
To ensure success of the project it is also critical to get specific about requirements from both the business and tech side of an enterprise, according to Vazquez.
"It's important to get both business and tech requirements, including reporting. You need to have measurement [capabilities] in place [in order] to gauge the success of your project," he said.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 8, 2005 02:24 PM
November 08, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Latest FCC E911 decision rankles VoIP providers
The FCC's decision this week to reverse an earlier requirement that Internet telephony providers must cut off existing customers if they don't have enhanced 911 emergency dialing service, as reported by IDG News Service, is being greeted with a sigh of relief by many in the industry.
The reversal came after an outcry from many industry leaders and some lawmakers.
But a new FCC statement saying VoIP providers have to stop marketing new service to new customers if they can not provide E911 service is giving many heartburn.
"While the decision not to compel service shut-offs is an important move in the right direction by the FCC, I am not aware of any other instance in which the FCC has prevented a new technology from being marketed where it does not have a full E911 solution -- wireless, wireline, satellite, or MLTS all lack E911 in areas where they are marketed and sold," Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver wrote in his blog. "I am still baffled as to why the FCC has felt compelled to single out the nascent IP-based communications industry as subject to more onerous regulation."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 8, 2005 11:37 AM
November 07, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Databases get more interesting for enterprises this week as Microsoft unveils SQL Server 2005, along with the Visual Studio development environment.
InfoWorld's Doug Dineley and Paul Krill lay out the specs and the perspective.
"Data Transformation Services has been completely redone, emerging as the more powerful and flexible SQL Server Integration Services," they write. "Beefed up admin and monitoring tools promise to ease management of large and distributed databases. And database mirroring, fail-over clustering, and online maintenance features promise new highs in availability and uptime."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 7, 2005 10:44 AM
November 04, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Office Live and Windows Live represent Microsoft's next-gen platform strategy - Gartner
With its big SaaS push, Microsoft plans to leverage its desktop-rich clients to extend its .NET vision with Office Live and Windows Live, Gartner said Friday.
The aftershocks will be felt for some time. "Not highlighted within Microsoft's "Live" announcements - though of far more strategic significance - is the evolution of the company's broader platform strategy beyond Windows," Gartner said.
"Recognize that Microsoft's announcement is an important statement regarding the direction its corporate strategy will take," Gartner said. "Though its first target will be consumers and very small businesses, other constituents should not ignore it. The "consumerization" of IT and the continued impact of Internet technologies ensure that these offerings will eventually affect all enterprises."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 4, 2005 04:20 PM
November 03, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Ford pickups to get 'mobile office' makeover
Drivers today have a wide selection of tech gadgets to distract them from the boring task of driving. In addition to the non-tech standby fast food, drivers can jump around from cell phones, BlackBerry e-mail devices, GPS navigators, iPods, and DVD players for the kids in the back seats.
Soon pickup truck drivers will have another diversion in which to engross themselves: a complete mobile office. Presumably while the car is safely in Park, drivers will be able to conduct office tasks such as printing or navigating a touch screen computer --all without stepping out from behind the wheel.
Ford is ramping up PR on the new truck/office hybrid model of the Ford F-Series pickup due in dealerships next year.
At first the pickup truck seemed a curious vehicle choice for an office cubical on wheels, but apparently the F-Series pickup will be marketed at contractors, plumbers, cable installers--anyone who conducts business on the road, according to Ford officials.
"Instead of driving your truck to the office, it will soon be possible to bring the office to your truck," Ford's marketing blurb reads.
The mobile office, which will be offered as a dealer-installed accessory package for F-Series trucks, will include options for a printer, a GPS-enabled hand-held computer with a touch-screen, a digital camera, and a credit card scanner. Ford worked with Microsoft and a company called Stargate Mobile to pull it off.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 3, 2005 04:42 PM
November 03, 2005 | Comments: (0)
BEA makes Java technology acquisition
BEA Systems on Thursday announced its acquisition of SolarMetric, an an object persistence company whose object persistence engine, Kodo, supports EJB 3.0 and Java Data Objects programming models.
The acquisition is intended to boost developer productivity and simplify Java development, according to Marge Breya, BEA senior vice president. SolarMetric enables developers to take advantage of XML and data stores without having to know where the data is stored, she said during a conference call on Thursday morning.
"The combination between BEA and SolarmMetric I think is pretty straightforward," Breya said. BEA provides Java technologies and customer support and SolarMetric's technology helps developers be more database- and data store-agnostic.
SolarMetric technology is planned for inclusion of the next major release of the BEA WebLogic 9.0 Server application server next year, BEA officials said. That release may be called WebLogic Server 9.5, according to BEA. Kodo also will be sold separately and supported in the company's WebLogic Workshop developer tool
"My feeling is that this is a part of our overall acquisition strategy that will help us leapfrog the competition," said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop products group. Kodo provides an object persisence engine that offers developers better productivity in dealing with databases, Roth said. Persistence enables objects to be stored in memory for use later.
The acqusition was the company's fifth in recent months. Previously, the company has acquired portal vendor Plumtree Software; M7, which makes Eclipse-based development tools; RFID technology provider Connectera and collaboration software vendor Compoz.
BEA did not reveal the cost of the SolarMetric acquisition but the company still has $1.6 billion in the bank, Breya said.
Posted by Paul Krill on November 3, 2005 08:54 AM
November 02, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Study adds more fuel to the outsourcing fire
A new report that says offshore outsourcing lowers production costs for IT vendors and leads to creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs is being attacked by the Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA), an association for U.S. IT workers.
The study, by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), says 337,000 jobs will be created by 2010 as a byproduct of offshoring, IDG News Service reported.
Ron Hira, chairman of the IEEE-USA's research and development policy committee, said laid off workers don't find new jobs easily as the study seems to assume.
Coupled with recent efforts by the ITAA and several tech vendors for the U.S. to increase the number of foreign workers allowed under H-1B visas, IT workers in the U.S. are under siege, Hira said.
The bottom line, "is that U.S. software workers are losers," he said. "And ITAA continues to undercut U.S. software workers by arguing for more H-1Bs."
Infoworld's Ephraim Schwartz, in his Reality Check column, recently outlined arguments that said tech vendors are chiefly interested in paying low wages when they seek foreign workers.
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 2, 2005 03:18 PM
November 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Study: Most execs sleep their way to the top
Results released this week from an online poll by a data visualization software company reveals that 71 percent of business executives surveyed have fallen asleep or felt sleepy during dull presentations.
The survey of 382 business managers was conducted by San Diego-based Infommersion. In addition to the 71 percent who admitted to dozing off, another 43 percent have caught other people napping during presentations.
The most difficult types of presentations to stay awake through were individual speeches, followed by training sessions, and then general meetings, according to the Infommersion poll. Interestingly, Webcasts were said to be the easiest type of conference to stay alert though with only 11 percent of respondents saying they were difficult to sit through, the company reported.
Survey participants said that the most important elements for a successful presentation were an 'animated and enthusiastic' speaker (at 51 percent), followed by an 'interesting and interactive' presentation (at 36 percent of the votes). It helped if the presenter was 'good looking,' 3 percent of respondents said.
Infommersion makes a Windows application that converts data from databases, Web services, and Excel spreadsheets into visual and interactive dashboards, scorecard, charts, and graphs.
The survey may be a gimmicky way to get a little media attention but at least those executives who have dozed off during presentations now know they aren't alone.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on November 1, 2005 03:17 PM
November 01, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Linux vendor Red Hat outlined a roadmap Tuesday that follows a virtualization route for 2006 and plans for next-generation engineering on the Linux kernel itself.
Brian Stevens, Red Hat's newly appointed chief technology officer, and Timothy Yeaton, senior vice president for marketing, said the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, due out late next year, will include a server virtualization capability integrated into the OS, IDG News Service reported.
The company's development efforts focus on cutting IT infrastructure costs by developing an OS that encompasses security and storage management as well as a management platform, Yeaton said.
Additionally, the company plans to ramp up open-source programming, and has brought together 34 programmers to take a lead role in engineering the Linux kernel.
"The move signals a more active phase in Red Hat's engineering efforts, which generally have incorporated software changes once they've attained broad support among open-source programmers," writes Matt Asay in his OPEN RESOURCE blog. "Now the company is trying to rapidly respond to specific customer requests for its software, even if it has to work more on its own."
Posted by Jack McCarthy on November 1, 2005 10:46 AM
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