Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff | November 2007

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November 2007

November 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft eyes developers with portal launch

Microsoft on Friday launched its Unified Communications Developer Portal, featuring SDKs and APIs to help developers build applications on Microsoft's unified communications platform.

This platform features Microsoft's Office Communications Server, which provides capabilities such as on-premise Web-conference and enterprise voice for Microsoft Office system applications and upcoming Microsoft ERP and CRM applications. Also featured in the platform is Office Communicator 2007, offering client communications options such as instant messaging, voice and video.

Through the portal, accessible here, developers can build solutions for contextual collaboration, business process communication and "anywhere" information access, according to an interview with Microsoft's Kirt Debique, general manager for the Microsoft Office Communications Platform & Solutions Group, on the Microsoft PressPass Web site, found here.

"Developers will take unified communications in directions that we haven’t even imagined yet. Going forward, we’re focused on delivering even more powerful APIs based on .Net and Web services supported by easy-to-use, familiar and integrated tools," Debique said in the PressPass interview.

Contextual collaboration enables collaboration within applications and processes. Business process communications refers to automated communications in the context of business workflows. Anywhere information access extends the reach of business information and services to phones and mobile devices.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 30, 2007 02:51 PM

November 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

OpenSolaris demo'd on mainframe

Sun Microsystems, IBM and Sine Nomine Associates this week demonstrated the OpenSolaris code base running on the IBM mainframe, Sun and IBM said.

The demonstration at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas followed Sine Nomine's 2006 announcement of a plan to do the port. IBM and Sun in August said they would investigate a project to port OpenSolaris to the System z mainframe. Sine Nomine Associates is a research and engineering firm. OpenSolaris is open source code for the Solaris operating system.

In the demonstration, OpenSolaris runs within the mainframe's z/VM virtualization technology.

"The future of the data center lies in virtualization's ability to reduce skyrocketing energy and maintenance costs," said James Stallings, general manager for IBM System z, in a statement released by the company. "Corporations around the world have for years relied on the IBM mainframe - which pioneered virtualization - to run their businesses. The Solaris operating system is similarly prevalent in data centers. It makes perfect sense to marry these two stalwarts in a virtualized mainframe environment."

IBM also has endorsed Sun's xVM virtualization initiative.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 30, 2007 10:27 AM

November 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft readies parallel development tools

Recognizing the growing prominence of multi-core processors and its effects on application development, Microsoft released Thursday a preview of Parallel Extensions to the .Net Framework (ParallelFX), according to a Microsoft executive's blog on Thursday.

"The shift to multi- and many-core processors that is currently underway presents an exciting opportunity for everyone in the software industry," said the executive, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in his blog. " With an expected increase of 10 to 100 times today’s compute processing power, the opportunities to deliver powerful and immersive new user experiences and business value are just awesome.

"Today we released an early preview of the Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework (ParallelFX) technology, available for download on MSDN. This release contains new APIs to make programming on the .Net Framework simpler as well as supporting documentation and samples," Somaseger said.

ParallelFX runs on .Net FX 3.5 and relies on features available in C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0. Among the features are parallel data and task parallelism APIs and a concurrency runtime to enable lightweight tasks and map and balance concurrency expressed in code to concurrent resources on the execution platform.

Microsoft also has released an MSDN dev center dedicated to concurrent programming. Featured is a collection of whitepapers, including one that describes Microsoft's broader vision for parallel computing.

"Although we understand the shift to parallel computing is a gradual road ahead for our whole industry, we are excited by the prospect and believe that the ParallelFX library is a large step in the right direction," Somasegar said.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 29, 2007 02:41 PM

November 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BEA, Accenture partner on innovation center

Accenture and BEA Systems are announcing the opening Thursday of the "Accenture Innovation Center for BEA," located at BEA headquarters in San Jose, Calif.

Clients using the center can work with BEA and Accenture to build solutions such as SOA and "dynamic" business applications, the companies said. The center will be headed by Robert Calloway, lead of Accenture's SOA practice in North America. The facility will provide a collaborative environment for testing conceptual solutions and expanded uses of BEA technology.

Users can access integration and business process management assets that have helped companies such as Pacific Gas & Electric; expertise from BEA and Accenture and integration business process management best practices.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 29, 2007 08:47 AM

November 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Krugle adds former Borland executives

Krugle, which offers code search technology, has brought aboard several former Borland Software officials, Krugle said on Wednesday.

Former Borland CEO Dale Fuller has been added to Krugle's board of directors. Also, Matt Graney, who was a product management official at Borland, has joined Krugle as senior director of product management.

Mike Rich, a former sales director for Borland, is now Krugle vice president of sales. Former Borland engineer Rashmi Jagada is now working for Krugle as a senior software engineer.

Borland has shifted its emphasis from software development tools to the application lifecycle space. But Krugle's hirings do not mean Krugle plans to become a full-fledged ALM vendor apart from offering its search technology, said Krugle rerpresentative Mike Maney. Instead, Krugle's code-searching participates in the ALM space by aiding efforts of companies such as IBM, Yahoo and CollabNet.

In an internal email, Steve Larsen, Krugle CEO, said the company was attracting attention from senior managers and executives in ALM because they understand Krugle's significant contribution in the space and know Krugle customers.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 28, 2007 03:22 PM

November 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Study: .Net overtakes Java

Microsoft's .Net software development platform is more popular than Java in the enterprise, according to one industry analyst firm's report detailed on Wednesday

Info-Tech Research Group said its research found .Net the choice over Java among enterprises of all sizes and industries. Entitled, "It's Official: .Net Roasts Java's Beans," the study explored the relative prevalence of Java and .Net across different types of enterprises and found .Net has gained considerable market share and become the favorite of many enterprises.

In conducting its study, Info-Tech said it recently surveyed more than 1,850 organizations of different sizes. Info-Tech's research is not sponsored, a company representative said.

Almost half of all enterprises responding to the survey focus primarily on .Net with an additional 12 percent focused exclusively on .Net, the research found. This compares with just 20 percent of enterprises focusing primarily on Java and only 3 percent standardizing solely on it, Info-Tech said.

Java is not out of the game yet, the company said. But in offering hope for Java devotees, Info-Tech likens Java to legacy code. The company said .Net may emerge as a means of stitching together diverse applications but the immense amount of Java code will remain in the tradition of other legacy systems such as Cobol. Java also has "incredibly strong allies" in Sun Microsystems, IBM and Oracle, Info-Tech said.

Sun, which developed Java, declined to comment on the Info-Tech report. Sun recently decided to change its identification on the Nasdaq stock exchange from SUNW to JAVA, in recognition of its bread-and-butter brand.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 28, 2007 01:07 PM

November 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Novell offers real-time Linux

Novell announced availability Tuesday of Suse Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, which is an open source real-time operating system for high-performance, time-sensitive applications.

Enhancements include technologies that reduce system latency or delay and improve predictability. Among the improvements are CPU shielding and priority inheritance.

With this operating system, financial organizations can more quickly respond to changing markets and new information, Novell said. Application reliability and predictability also are improved with this release, the company said.

Suse Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is available for a suggested annual subscription price of $2,500.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 27, 2007 11:23 AM

November 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test tool readied for agile development

ThoughtWorks Studios, the product arm of the ThoughtWorks software development consultancy, plans to offer a testing tool tuned to the agile and lean software development space.

Codenamed Tide and due in February, the product is unlike existing testing tools, which are built for testing at the end of the process, said Cyndi Mitchell, managing director for ThoughtWorks Studios. With Tide, ThoughtWorks is acknowledging that testing is done more frequently in the short iterations of development used in agile development processes.

"[With agile] testing is very much more at the center of the process. It plays in at the very beginning, it plays in at the middle and it's [important] in the maintenance of the system as well," Mitchell said.

Tide is a tool to do refactoring and restructuring of tests as software is being developed, she said. "It's for writing specifications, writing the tests for those specifications and writing the code that fulfills those specifications and being able keep the three of those in sync," Mitchell said.

Tide resides on top of the open source Selenium project, for functional testing. ThoughtWorks developed Selenium; ThoughtWorks Studios plans to expand Tide for use with other open source testing tools as well.

ThoughtWorks Studios currently offers Mingle, a tool for project management. Also on the agenda for ThoughtWorks Studios is a proprietary version of CruiseControl, for continuous software integration. The product will support large test suites and different software environments.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 26, 2007 12:16 PM

November 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spring founders rename company

Interface21, the consulting firm that has been the developer of the open source Spring Framework for Java, has changed its name to more closely associate with its bread-and-butter technology.

As of Monday, the company is now known as SpringSource. "We created Spring. Now our name says it all," says the company's Web page.

SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson cited the success of Spring in explaining the name change in his blog.

"When I founded Interface21 in 2004, I had to pick a name. I believed Spring to be the future of enterprise Java, and 'Interface21' reflected those feelings—the framework for the 21st century," Johnson said. "Now we’re well into the [21st] century. Spring has proven to be more successful than I could have dreamed, and has become a de facto standard for enterprise Java."

Spring also is becoming popular with .Net developers and millions worldwide have downloaded Spring Portfolio products, he said.

"All the major Spring committers work here," Johnson added. It has been confusing to have a company name that is distanced from the product the company created, he said.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 19, 2007 03:23 PM

November 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SOA spec goes to OASIS committee

OASIS said on Thursday it has formed a technical committee to advance the Service Data Objects (SDO) specification, which is intended to simplify the way SOA applications handle data.

With SDO, application programmers can access and manipulate data from heterogeneous sources such as relational databases, XML data sources, Web services and enterprise information systems.

"By offering a common facility for representing collections of data, regardless of data source type, SDO gives application developers a more simple, unified programming model and enables tools to work across heterogeneous data sources consistently," said Shawn Moe of IBM, who is convening the OASIS SDO Technical Committee, in a statement released by OASIS.

The committee will be affiliated with the OASIS Open Services Architecture Member Section, where the Service Component Architecture (SCA) family of specifications is being developed. SDO is part of SCA. Together they define a language-neutral programming model letting developers exploit SOA, OASIS said.

SCA has been focused on defining models to build and assemble service components to for SOA. SDO is intended to provide a consistent method for data-handling within SOA applications. The technologies were turned over to OASIS in March.

SCA and SDO were launched in late-2005, with the support of companies such as BEA Systems, IBM and Oracle. BEA, IBM, Progress Software and SAP issued statements supporting formation of the committee.

"(SDO) is a standard that can help enable a service-oriented approach to data integration, which represents a critical aspect of any comprehensive SOA platform deployment," said Ed Cobb, vice president of Emerging Technology and Standards at BEA, in a statement released by OASIS.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 15, 2007 04:14 PM

November 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Foundation Classes update planned

Microsoft's C++ team is working on a "significant" update to the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), enabling developers to build applications with the look and feel of Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio, a Microsoft executive said in a recent blog.

"We will be delivering this as an update to Visual Studio 2008 in the first half of 2008," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division. "We will have a preview of the same sometime around the early part of the new year."

The Visual Studio 2008 software development platform is due to ship by the end of this month.

Some specific features of the MFC update include the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon bar look, Internet Explorer look with rebars and task panes and the Visual Studio look with sophisticated docking functionality, Somasegar said. "You can also enable your users to customize your application through live drag and drop of menu items and toolbar buttons," he said.

Also planned is support for Technical Report 1 (TR1), which is a draft document specifying additions to the C++ Library such as regular expressions and random number generators.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 15, 2007 07:03 AM

November 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Web's inventor tackles mobile

While Al Gore is busy polishing his Nobel Peace Prize -- one some people question the veracity of based on the fact that he didn't do more to address environmental issues when he was actually in office -- the guy who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web was in Boston on Wednesday talking to a room full of people interested in the convergence of the Internet and mobile devices.

Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C), stepped to the podium at the Mobile Internet World conference after business leaders from MTV and Sprint Nextel spoke about their own plans for wireless.

The scientist recounted his decision-making in exercising an open approach when first joining hypertext and the Net, and said that enlisting an open architectural blueprint was critical to the eventual explosion of the Web.

Berners-Lee essentially warned the assembled device, software and content development honchos that they should knock down the walled-off mobile Web environments they've built over the past few years in favor of supporting more industry standards.

The use of open standards is also a central tent of the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative, he said, which is aimed at advancing handheld browsing technologies.

The good news for the expert was that the other conference speakers seemed largely in agreement, with many harping on the same themes and promising to work together via efforts such as Google's recently-announced Open Handset Alliance consortium -- which backs use of the search giant's new Android mobile Linux platform.

Excerpts from Berners-Lee's original speech follow, and summarize some of the points he made:

"We are at an epic point in telecommunications history, when the mobile platforms discussed here, and the Internet platforms which have enabled such a spectacular growth and innovation, are poised, if we manage this well, to merge."

"There are plenty of ways in which we could fail to pull this off, and leave ourselves incapacitated, with innovation stifled. By 'we' here I mean the whole community of manufacturers, service providers, content providers, consumers, and to a limited extent, legislators."

"I wanted to design the World Wide Web, as I decided to call it, to be usable for any data on any system. I had watched the failure of so many sophisticated documentation access systems which constrained their users to use one type of computer, or operating system. If really anything could be on the Web, then the Web technology should demand almost nothing of its users."

"The Web is designed, in turn, to be universal: to include anything and anyone. This universality includes an independence of hardware device and operating system, as I mentioned, and clearly this includes the mobile platform."

"The Web worked because of a number of technical and social reasons. It worked because there was no central bottleneck for traffic, no central link database to be kept consistent, no central place to go and register a new page or a new Web site."

"So what else does it take to make an open Internet platform? It takes, mainly, common standards. The innovation of the WWW was possible because the standards for TCP/IP were already implemented in an interoperable way all over the planet, in advance of the innovation."

"When you want to make a foundation technology, you need to look ahead. You need to put aside the short term return on investment questions and look at the long term.
A great example of this is the patent question. In 1989 my colleagues in the Internet community would not have dreamed of patenting the ideas in the Internet protocols."

"One of the most difficult things for some companies to learn is that this is not a zero-sum game. We are so used to battling over a fixed market, or battling over fixed resources, that we tend to assume everything is such that we can only win what our competitors lose. But when we make a whole new market space, like the Web, or like GSM actually, then we are in fact together battling the human condition such as inefficiency, poverty and ignorance."

"The choice is the new platform being a privately owned walled garden , or a competitive open platform. Both models can work in the medium term. But the open model opens up new things which we can only try to imagine."

"So when we look at the choices for the mobile devices, it is clear that they must continue on the path to an open Web platform. That is what the Mobile Web Initiative is about. Huge new markets, and huge opportunities for humanity, depend on this. We know in general how to do it. But there is a lot to do."

Posted by Matt Hines on November 14, 2007 08:47 PM

November 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Vista, Linux to be on more desktops

At least one-third of enterprises are expected to begin deploying Windows Vista enterprise-wide by mid-2008, according to a Forrester Research report released this week that gauged the plans of PC decision makers in North America and Europe.

These deployments will occur as more applications are certified and hardware refreshed to run Vista, Forrester said in a report entitled, "How Windows Vista will Shake Up the State of the Enterprise Operating System." The report was authored primarily by Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray.

According to the report, an additional 17 percent of enterprises surveyed plan to go to Vista in 2009 or beyond. But a larger percentage of European enterprises have no plans at any stage for Windows Vista deployments, when compared to North American enterprises.

By the middle of next year, Forrester predicts Vista will be deployed on at least a quarter of PCs in North America and Europe. But Linux is expected to experience a growth on the desktop as well. Forrester receives a high volume of inquiries about Linux, indicating it is not going away anytime soon, the report said.

"Expect Linux to experience growth over the next year as the distributors work hard to make it an enterprise-class offering," the report said. But the percentage of enterprise PCs running either Mac OS or Linux now stands at just 1 percent each in North America.

Thus far, Vista deployments have been limited to early adopters and testing environments but more aggressive rollouts are "inevitable," Forrester said. Enterprises have continued standardizing on Windows XP but are cautious about rolling out a new OS; Vista does not break this pattern.

Vista adoption was at just 2 percent in the first six to eight months of 2007. Meanwhile, Windows 2000 deployments dropped from 24 percent last year to 11 percent this year.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 14, 2007 03:35 PM

November 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Haley Systems acquired by Australia-based RuleBurst Limited

Pittsburgh-based BRMS (business rule management system) vendor Haley Systems has been acquired by Australian company RuleBurst Limited, the companies announced today.

The pairing of RuleBurst and Haley Systems makes the fourth largest BRMS provider, after Fair Isaac, ILOG, and Computer Associates, and it opens up new vertical markets and geographies for each partner, according to RuleBurst.

For Haley Systems, the new era begins without the company's founder and rule system pioneer Paul Haley, who left the company before the acquisition. His departure was not announced.

RuleBurst gains in Haley Systems a natural language rule system that complements its own natural language technology, and that differentiates the two vendors from competitors such as Fair Isaac and ILOG. Aimed at reducing the need for technical rule experts or training in a proprietary rule language, the Haley and RuleBurst solutions are designed to capture rules directly from business analysts or policy experts, who can express rules in the form of plain English expressions, or graphically in Microsoft Visio diagrams, or in spreadsheet format using Microsoft Excel.

RuleBurst boasts government and financial services customers throughout Asia Pacific, the UK, and Europe, and global partnerships with SAP, Microsoft, and IBM. Haley Systems touts mainly financial services, insurance, and technology customers in the US, and partnerships with Oracle, Adobe Systems, and Lagan.

Peter Still, VP of Strategy at RuleBurst, said the combined company will have greater resources to compete on a global basis, with more than 25 developers devoted to R&D, more than 40 professional services staff, and more than 40 people in sales and marketing. He noted that the RuleBurst and Haley product lines would continue to be supported by new releases, and that the rule authoring metaphors and other innovations would be shared across products.

Still said that the Haley Systems brand will live on in the US, and as a result of the acquisition, will gain greater exposure to the Asia Pacific and European markets. He added that the joint company will be focused on delivering vertical solutions, starting with solution packs for government and insurance customers.

Posted by Doug Dineley on November 14, 2007 09:15 AM

November 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Brand hijackers ready for the holidays

The holiday season doesn't officially begin until next week, but fear not -- just as your local big box retailers have been busy putting up their yuletide decorations ahead of Thanksgiving -- phishers and other online fraudsters have been similarly preparing to cash-in on the annual consumer shopping binge.

According to the latest "brandjacking" report issued by researchers at MarkMonitor, which tracks the manner in which criminals are trying to piggyback their efforts on the images of legitimate businesses (think eBay phishing scams), the fraudster set is ramping up in preparation for the glut of Web-surfing newbs who dip their toes into the e-commerce waters over the next two months.

Based on the firm's Autumn 2007 Brandjacking Index -- which is focused on data that was gathered from approximately 134 million public Web domains over the course of calendar Q3 -- phishing attacks carried out against retail brands jumped by 1,100 percent, compared to Q2 of this year.

In total, phishing campaigns involving retailers and online auction sites accounted for 39 percent of all attacks that MarkMonitor observed.

The United States continues to lead the world in the sheer volume of hosted phishing sites, at least as far as the researchers could tell, accounting for roughly 25 percent of the fraudulent URLs.

MarkMonitor researchers said that phishing techniques are also becoming more sophisticated, with increased use of so-called "rock phishing" tools used to manage multiple fraud sites. The criminals are also making their sites more resilient by using so-called fast flux networks -- which include botnets armies of infected computers -- to support their online operations.

Phishers also continue to serve as a hungry audience for botnets that are being made available for rent by their operators, the researchers said.

The company said that spam-based offers for retail gift cards are a favorite among phishers in 2007, with most trying to steal personal data of their targets.

It said that 33 percent of paid search listings it tested for major retail brands misdirected consumers to questionable Web sites that didn't appear to be genuine.

Cyber-squatting, or the practice of launching URLs that attempt to lure end users by utilizing a legitimate company's name, or a closely-derived iteration thereof, also continues to find favor among the cyber-criminal set.

According to the study, an average 484,251 accounts of online brand abuse were measured by the firm each week, including 342,512 instances of cyber-squatting, registration of unauthorized domain names containing a legitimate brand name, or which used marketing slogans or trademarks to which the site registrants had no discernable right.

MarkMonitor said that instances of cyber-squatting rose 19 percent during the quarter, compared to Q3 2006, and reported that the practice of "domain kiting" -- or using the 5 day grace period allowed to URL registrants by ICANN to test the viability of their sites, which phishers and other fraudsters have used to launch short-lived attacks -- rose by 48 percent during the third quarter.

In an interesting twist on the yearly holiday-phishing fiasco, MarkMonitor found that a relatively large number of unsavory individuals are also trying to sell toys via the Web that have recently been recalled by their manufacturers for issues related to the use of lead paint, and other defects.

The company estimates that 30 percent of online auctions for recalled toys continue to do business after the recalls have been announced, with 83 percent of all auctions for recalled toys coming from the U.S. -- more than all other countries combined (so much for blaming China for the lead paint problem).

Even worse -- from a consumer products industry perspective -- is that 8 percent of the B2B exchange sites MarkMonitor tracked that sell toys are still listing recalled item for sale.

"The toy recall and gift card findings vividly demonstrate the contrast between how brands are protected in the Internet world vs. the physical," Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer for MarkMonitor, noted in a report summary.

"Brand holders need to develop comprehensive and aggressive strategies to protect consumers who not only trust their names in stores, but in online venues as well; they also need to recognize the Internet has the potential to contaminate supply chains to brick and mortar vendors," he said. "If brand holders don't move aggressively, they put their customers, reputations and revenues at risk."

Posted by Matt Hines on November 13, 2007 09:18 AM

November 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Analysis: Long odds for Google's ambitious Android

Mobile Java is ubiquitous, but woefully limited. Android wants to put Linux and Java desktop power in mobile developers' hands. Can Google remake mobile application development against the grain of powerful, entrenched competitors?

Virtually all mobile devices, from consumer cell phones to full-featured PDAs, are equipped with miniaturized Java virtual machines and classes that are standardized across devices and platforms. On Windows Mobile devices, Java is a third-party guest, but sufficiently well implemented that Midlets, applications built to the MIDP (mobile information device profile), run just about anywhere. Even with the aid of standards, examples, and documentation, it must be said that developing mobile Java applications is a chore, and developers must often rely on platform-specific system software for user interfaces and for access to phone and PDA features. Because of this, mobile application developers tend to skip Java and code directly to their target platform's native languages and libraries. Of mobile devices, only BlackBerry treats Java as its native language, and even there, platform-specific extensions, some of which are locked away by the vendor, are required.

Google, whose future depends on a pervasive cross-platform mobile applications model -- Google Maps and Talk are examples of applications that could not be done as so-called "Web 2.0" apps -- has an obvious need to create a cross-platform mobile SDK for its own use. Some mobile device manufacturers and wireless operators have realized the benefits that gathering around a cross-device, cross-vendor, cross-operator mobile platform would bring to their customers and bottom lines. It's no great leap of logic that if Google requires a standard platform to support its mobile applications, manufacturers and carriers have a strong financial incentive to get in line. To this end, Google created the Open Handset Alliance, and its first tangible product is Google's mobile application platform, Android.

Android is not a set of extensions to existing phone software. It seeks to supplant, or at least provide an alternative to, disparate mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile and Symbian. Android has the ambitious mission of creating a total mobile device software platform, from the chip level to the user GUI, based on Linux 2.6 and implementing a custom Java virtual machine, a WebKit-based browser, SQL database, and full application access to device hardware. It's every mobile developer's dream, but right now, Android is a set of Java classes, some rough-hewn tools, and a device emulator, the last of these giving Android a shot at pull from end users.

See today's Strategic Developer for a "Hello, World!" example in Android.

Android's mission is so astonishingly broad that it will likely take years before it is realized in a handset. Mobile developers have been waiting for eons for a unified platform, and if Android finds form in a physical device, it could turn mobile software on its ear. Google doesn't want developers to wait for hardware; it has offered a $10 million bounty for applications that make best use of the Android platform. Then again, while $10 million is a tasty sum for contestants, it's play money for Google.

The bounty isn't just to get developers excited. It's to spur Open Handset Alliance members to turn intentions and beneficial PR into reality. Google hopes that if developers and users get hooked on a sampling of knockout Android applications, Alliance members will hurry to turn that buzz into revenue. Without the promise of riches to spur the Alliance into fast action, the Open Handset Alliance will plod along at the sorry pace of the mobile industry as a whole, where progress is measured in decades.

In this early SDK, Android does begin to address one of the greatest pain points for cross-platform mobile application developers, that being graphical user interfaces. Like the rest of Android, its UI support is in an early stage, with a limited set of widgets (GUI objects like buttons and text editor windows), but it offers the option of using Android Java UI classes or an XML representation for application graphical interfaces. The XML UI option is an enticing one, not only because it promises to provide a developer- (and user-) extensible means for drawing and interacting with cross-platform mobile forms, but because over time, 2D widget sets and layouts will become more powerful and attractive without requiring application changes. Developers will make extensive use of Android's ability to give an application ownership of the entire display for 2D graphical applications, so what the Android GUI doesn't provide, developers can create themselves. Android also wraps OpenGL ES 1.0 for 3D graphics, and has inherent support for all relevant digital media types.

An essential aspect of Android is its reliance on the Google-built Dalvik Java Virtual Machine, a component that Google is likely to hold proprietary, a fact that may rub some developers the wrong way. Dalvik is necessary because while mobile Java is covered by standards, Java access to device hardware is, shall we say, at manufacturers' discretion. With Linux running device hardware and the Dalvik JVM wired tightly into Linux, applications' ability to drive the device on users' behalf, and with excellent performance, is potentially unlimited, but the operative word there is "potentially."

The Android platform's reach will be determined by its presence in devices and support on wireless carriers' networks. The list of Open Handset Alliance members includes major players Motorola and HTC, but 800-pound gorillas Nokia, Research in Motion, and Microsoft are absent, and up-and-comer Apple doesn't do alliances. While NTT DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Sprint, and China Mobile Communications Corporation offer the potential for worldwide network coverage, AT&T is not on the roster of Alliance members. Google managed to assemble a quorum of semiconductor manufacturers including Texas Instruments, Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm, SiRF Technology, and Broadcom. So if Android takes off, it won't be hard to get for those customers who set out to find it, or whose operators have a monopoly hold on their market, but many customers are unlikely to come across Android by serendipity, as they do with mobile Java now. It bears pointing out that while the world of technology is planted thick with alliances and consortia, they can amount to little more than bet-hedging; if some wild idea happens to take off, it's wise not to be last in line.

It will take guts, figuratively and literally, to get Android off the ground. Some device manufacturer will open its goods to Google, Aplix, and Wind River, and some wireless operator will have to open its network to that device. The buzz around iPhone gives Google some hope of convincing Alliance members that some millions of end users will buy into desktop-grade handsets. At least Motorola has floated a couple of trial balloons in the form of Linux handsets, although these are not Android phones. To succeed, Android will have to battle it out with Microsoft, Nokia, and Adobe, all of which have well-established platforms or frameworks and familiar, if not consistently welcoming, developer tools.

Google is betting, although not too heavily, that it has the clout to push the mobile industry into a standard that aligns with Google's application platform desires. Google's aspirations are admirable, but the likelihood of Android succeeding as a full metal-to-screen platform, while parallel efforts are being worked by vendors with traction and experience, is fairly slim. Perhaps Google will manage to move the goalposts a bit, or light a fire under the sleepy mobile industry, and if Android achieves either of these ends, it should be praised as a success.

Posted by Tom Yager on November 12, 2007 03:28 PM

November 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft to offer Vista updates

Microsoft this week plans to release three service updates for Windows Vista designed to fix top issues impacting the platform, according to a company representative.

To be released over the Windows Update service, the updates impact compatibility, performance, USB core components and other issues.

Specifically, the system compatibility, reliability and stability update extends the battery life for mobile devices and improves stability of network services, among other things.

The USB update primarily affects systems returning from sleep or hibernation while an update for Windows Media Center affects interaction between Windows Media Center PC and Xbox 360.

Nick White a Windows Vista product manager, has released a blog about the updates.

"With Windows Update, we can regularly service Windows as quickly, effectively and unobtrusively as possible, so that keeping your Windows OS up-to-date is easier and more convenient for you," White said in the blog. "All you have to do is make sure you are signed up to have updates installed automatically, and you’re good to go."

Posted by Paul Krill on November 12, 2007 12:57 PM

November 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

JRuby upgrades offered

Sun Microsystems has revealed two updates this week to JRuby, which is an open source implementation of the Ruby programming language for the Java virtual machine.

JRuby 1.1 beta 1 is the first pre-release of JRuby 1.1, which focuses on speed and refinement, according to Sun. With the compiler in version 1.1, Ruby code can be compiled in "Ahead of Time" or "Just In Time" mode. Also, less memory is used than in previous releases.

The final release of JRuby 1.1 is planned for December.

Also offered is JRuby 1.0.2, a minor release of the stable 1.0 branch of JRuby, according to Sun. Featured are fixes to low-risk compatibility issues. Periodic point releases of JRuby are designed to support production users of JRuby.

Release 1.0.2, according to Sun engineer Thomas Enebo, one of the project's developers, takes care of the following concerns:

* Fixed several "nasty issues" for users on Windows. One issue involved problems that occurred when JRuby was installed in a location that contained spaces.
* Fixed network compatibility issues.
* Includes support for Rails 1.2.5.
* Offers a reduced memory footprint.
* Improves file IO performance.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 8, 2007 10:46 AM

November 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

PCI Council launches payments apps standard

While the National Retail Federation's call for the PCI Security Standards Council to lower the potential for data breaches by dropping businesses' cardholder data retention requirements has yet gone unanswered, the payment card industry group has launched a new effort aimed at helping companies eliminate libraries of customer information unnecessarily stored in some point-of-sale and transactional systems.

On Wednesday, the PCI Council announced its intention to create -- and eventually enforce -- a new regulation known as the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) which it claims will help developers of payment applications to do away with product features that may have led to superfluous storage of sensitive information in the tools.

While the PCI Data Security Standard -- on which the new mandate was based -- orders that companies such as retailers shouldn't use point-of-sale systems that store information that it has specifically banned them from gathering -- including full magnetic card stripe identifiers, CVV2 (name and address) details and PIN data -- the reality is that many existing applications in use today still aggregate some of those specifics.

The PCI Council said that the new measure is based on payment application best practices (PABP) developed by Visa, one of its founding members, and that is has distributed preliminary draft of the regulation to its Board of Advisors for feedback.

Among those participating in the review process are the group's Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) and Approved Scanning Vendors (ASVs). The PCI Council said that it will consider any feedback from those parties and then publish a final version of the PA-DSS sometime in the first quarter of 2008.

The group said that Visa initially created the best practices to aid software vendors and other developers in building payment applications that do not store prohibited data. For the record, proprietary applications developed by merchants themselves will not be made subject to the PA-DSS regulation, but they will still be required to meet the terms of the broader PCI Data Security Standard.

PCI Council claims that roughly 200 point-of-sale systems and transactional tools already in use by retailers and other companies have previously been validated against Visa's standard.

Payment applications adhering to the PA-DSS will "minimize the potential for security breaches and the resultant fraud," the group said in a statement.

"With the PA-DSS managed by the council, we will ensure that payment application providers and their products are subject to data security requirements consistent with the current PCI Data Security Standard," Bob Russo, general manager of the PCI Security Standards Council, said in an announcement.

"As criminals become more sophisticated and payment application vulnerabilities are realized by our membership, we must ensure that all components of the payments process are subject to rigorous standards that are supported by all of the global payment card brands with a single goal in mind: to protect cardholder data and combat fraud," Russo said.

The group is asking developers of payment system to join in its latest effort, and said that individual components of the PA-DSS program will be rolled out following the publication of the standard -- including the requirements and training programs for security assessors and a list of applications that have been validated under the measure.

In September, the PCI Council assumed responsibility for the PIN Entry Device (PED) Security Requirements that were previously administered by payment card giants JCB, MasterCard and Visa.

The PED Security Requirements were designed to help secure personal identification number (PIN)-based transactions, and apply to devices that accept PIN entry for transactions.

Meanwhile, the NRF and its members would clearly prefer it if the PCI backers would stop creating new rules that ask companies to improve their systems, and simply scale back the card issuers' requirements that force retailers and other payment card processors to retain customer data in the first place -- especially as the potential for fines and other penalties that will be levied against those responsible for breaches have grown.

But in the end, and most importantly, consumer privacy appears to be the big winner of these efforts, regardless of how all the inter-industry posturing plays out.

Posted by Matt Hines on November 7, 2007 11:12 AM

November 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Web 2.0 company changes name

ActiveGrid, which has billed itself as the enterprise Web 2.0 company, has changed its name to WaveMaker Software and is announcing this week a new corporate brand and product strategy.

The strategy will address the growing demand for technology to simplify the assembly of Web applications, the company said. The strategy also is intended to meet the architectural, security and governance policies of CIOs.

Under the leadership of new CEO Christopher Keene, the company will integrate current technology with capabilities gained through the acquisition of TurboAJAX. The new WaveMaker offering eliminates the competing priorities of business-level developers who require visual assembly tools and rapid deployment, as well as CIOs, who need solutions that comply with architectural, security and data policies, WaveMaker said.

The company's vision is to be the PowerBuilder of Web 2.0, providing an easy-to-use visual tool for building Web applications. WaveMaker products include WaveMaker Developer Studio, which is a visual builder featuring pre-built Web 2.0 components, and WaveMaker Deployment Server, featuring a deployment platform for Java or LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl/Python/PHP) environments.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 6, 2007 09:38 PM

November 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

What's the (next) deal with the DLP business?

Now that Symantec has finally announced its deal to acquire data leakage prevention (DLP) market darling Vontu, some security industry watchers have predicted that MNA-related interest in the remaining independent vendors in the space will wane.

However, others believe that the fun is only just getting started.

Including the recently-consummated marriages of Symantec and Vontu, EMC and Tablus, Raytheon and Oakley Networks, Trend Micro and Provilla, and WebSense and PortAuthority -- along with a number of smaller deals -- market analysts chart the amount of money already spent on DLP acquisitions at roughly $1.62 billion, and that's only counting deals carried out since mid-2006.

And with many observers questioning the long-term viability of remaining standalone DLP technology providers, of which there are roughly 35, it would seem an ideal environment for a continued, and rapid, roll-up of many of the independent players left standing.

Among the most visible DLP targets left for potential sale are (in alphabetical order) Credant, Code Green, ControlGuard, Eagle Eye, Fidelis, GTB Technologies, GuardianEdge, NextLabs, Orchestria, Reconnex, RedCannon, Safend, Verdasys, Vericept and Workshare.

Among the most likely buyers, according to some industry watchers, are names including 3Com's TippingPoint, AT&T, BT Counterpane, Check Point, Cisco, Fortinet, IBM, Juniper, Secure Computing, and VeriSign.

And some believe that Symantec and rival McAfee -- which recently purchased SafeBoot, a company with a mix of DLP and encryption strengths, and previously bought Onigma, a relatively small DLP vendor -- still have more buying plans ahead.

Symantec executives didn't rule out further buyouts. In a phone conversation on Tuesday, Ken Schneider, CTO of the company's Security and Data Management group, said the firm will continue to assess its needs to "build, buy or partner" in the DLP space.

Schneider said he also wouldn't be surprised to see McAfee make another move, or multiple MNA deals, as he doesn't believe that the SafeBoot acquisition gives his rival as significant of a footprint in DLP functionality as some have credited it with publicly.

Yet, others question which IT companies that haven't done so already truly need to jump into the DLP space, at least from a buying perspective.

Jon Oltsik, analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, remains unconvinced that a large number of DLP acquisitions will be forthcoming.

"It's tough to think of who is left that might be very attractive, there are definitely more sellers than buyers, and it's difficult to guess who else might buy someone, and why," he said. "Before the Vontu deal it seemed like everyone who was still looking was bottom-fishing; someone relatively large like Check Point might still be looking, but they may also be planning to build something in-house."

The analyst said that some DLP firms may have been caught out playing "chicken" with potential buyers and missed out on their chance to get paid, in many cases because they were asking too high of a buying price.

"People were wondering if that was what happened to Vontu, because if you hold out too long and everyone makes their play, this is probably too narrow of a space to do an IPO," he said. "The venture capitalists will eventually want their money back; Vontu lucked out, but the heat is on everyone who is left."

One of the names that comes up frequently among analysts in terms of vendors who may have missed their chance for acquisition is Vericept, who was rumored to be a target of EMC before the Oakley deal was announced.

"I haven't seen any big customer wins, there's not a lot of traction there, and it seems that they were banking on being acquired by EMC," said one financial analyst who asked not to be named in print. "When the EMC acquisition was on the table it was for $150 million, and then Vericept talked about it and told everyone; EMC backed away and bought Tablus and got a comparable technology at one-third of the price."

Some other industry watchers believe that the DLP fire sale has only just begun to smolder.

Nick Selby, analyst with the 451 Group, said that all of the potential buyers named above -- and many more -- could be looking to add DLP to their products, ranging from desktop security suites to back-end storage architectures -- especially if their targets can be had at a discounted price.

Selby said he definitely expects McAfee to add more DLP, specifically by bringing onboard a network appliance-type product. Symantec is getting a package of DLP tools that already meshes well with its other technologies in Vontu, but it may also need additional pieces, he said.

Among the two DLP camps -- if one separates agent-based systems from network-based systems -- the expert believes that the agent-oriented companies, such as Code Green, Credant, Guardian Edge, Red Cannon, Safend and Verdasys, will sell first.

"People prefer to unify security agents, largely because they are expensive and tough to build from scratch," said Selby. "It's also easier to sell agent-based DLP than network-based; agents are most often judged by their potential to integrate with other proven agents, and that's an easier case to build than with network-based systems, which are harder to scale in the enterprise."

Among the network-based DLP vendors left standing, Selby said that Fidelis may be the most attractive MNA candidate.

"For one thing, IBM Global Services has partnered with Fidelis on the network and Verdasys on the agent; so those companies will be valued higher than some of their peers, that's obviously a big endorsement for them that could drive interest," he said.

Posted by Matt Hines on November 6, 2007 01:41 PM

November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BEA to open books to Icahn

BEA Systems said Monday it plans to provide confidential information to disgruntled investor Carl Icahn about why the recently expired $17-per-share bid for the company submitted by Oracle was too low.

"We are pleased to be able to share non-public information about BEA's business with Mr. Icahn," said CEO Chairman/CEO Alfred Chuang, in a statement released by the company. "We are confident this information will enable him to appreciate that the $17-per-share bid from Oracle significantly undervalues BEA in a sale."

Chuang in the statement also said he wanted to dispel any speculation that the company would engage in "scorched earth" transactions at shareholders' expense or discourage a fully valued acquisition of the company.

BEA's goal has been to maximize shareholder value, Chuang said. Icahn has sought a BEA shareholder meeting to take bids on the company.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 5, 2007 02:40 PM

November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft readies Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft will ship Visual Studio 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 by the end of November, the company revealed on Monday.

Visual Studio 2008 is considered the release of Microsoft's software development platform that is geared to developing for the Windows Vista OS. .Net Framework 3.5 features core development technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Presentation Foundation. Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which simplifies how database and XML queries are written in C# and Visual Basic, and ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), for building Web experiences, also have been planned for version 3.5.

Microsoft also is changing the Visual Studio 2008 licensing terms to provide better support for interoperability with other developer tools and cross-platform scenarios, the company said. Partners are no longer limited to building solutions on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft platforms only.

A shared source licensing program for Premier-level Microsoft partners in the Visual Studio Industry Partner program will let partners view Visual Studio source code for debugging purposes and simplify integration between Visual Studio 2008 and partner products.

The release of Sync Framework CTP, meanwhile, empowers developers to build solutions that enable peer-to-peer collaboration and online/offline synchronization.

Also, Microsoft also touted the availability of Popfly Explorer, which adds integration into Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008 and provides a way to add Silverlight gadgets built in Popfly to Web pages and publish HTML Web pages to Popfly.

Popfly features online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups.

Posted by Paul Krill on November 5, 2007 06:48 AM

November 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sun touts virtualization, OpenSolaris

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz in a speech at the Oracle OpenWorld conference on November 14 will unveil a Sun virtualization strategy, xVM, and new products to bridge the gap between virtualization and management, according to a Sun source.

Schwartz will talk about virtualization and how it will drive efficiencies across the enterprise. Sun xVM is intended to help customers better manage "virtualization sprawl." Also, industry partners will endorse Sun xVM and Sun will dedicate additional resources to virtualization.

Sun also has begun offering an OpenSolaris Developer Preview as part of its Project Indiana effort to release Solaris open source binaries to make Solaris more palatable to the Linux community. Sun had pledged to offer the preview in October. It is accessible here. The general release is expected in the first half of 2008; Sun previously has targeted March for the release.

The OpenSolaris Web site gave this description of the project: "The OpenSolaris Developer Preview is the first milestone of Project Indiana. It is a single CD combined live/install image: a core operating system, kernel, system libraries, a desktop environment and a package management system. It is not a final release and is intended for developers to try, test, and provide feedback."

OpenSolaris is about re-engineering OpenSolaris technology and making it more accessible to students, developers and startups.

The LiveCD of the preview only supports x86 now but SPARC support is coming soon, according to Sun. The CD includes a basic core operating system, the GNOME desktop environment and a new graphical installer, with the option to install an the operating system from the Live CD, Sun said. Following installation, additional packages can be downloaded by using the new Image Packaging System (IPS).

Posted by Paul Krill on November 2, 2007 06:46 AM

November 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Finally, Wi-Fi on the airlines

You've probably heard about the coming of in-flight Wi-Fi. In fact you have heard it from me when I wrote about Connexion by Boeing.

I thought that Connexion by Boeing was going to be real. But, unfortunately, Boeing closed it down. In fact, I am told it is up on the auction block with no takers so far.

But this time I'm very sure it will happen for a number of reasons.

In the summer of 06, a company called AirCell won the FCC auction for the 800-MHz spectrum, the only spectrum that is licensed to transmit air to ground [ATG]. They paid $31 million and beat out the former owners, AirPhone. AirPhone was the company that offered the in-flight phone service from the seat back in front of each passenger.

A little more than a year later AirCell's Broadband System will be available on American Airlines, in coach, business and first class, in the first half of 2008.

AirCell is also close to a signed deal with Virgin and is talking to all the others to offer in-flight Wi-Fi service at a cost similar to what you would pay for a hot spot connection on the ground.

AirCell is using cellular rather than satellite technology which may be one reason why it will succeed where Boeing failed.

Instead of having to send a signal 24,000 miles into space, the cellular technology travels only five miles to the ground, requiring half the weight of equipment on board the plane and doing it far more cheaply than the cost of satellite transmissions.

AirCell CTO Joe Cruz tells me if a plane arrives for an overnight stay at O'Hare Airport at midnight it can be retrofitted for Wi-Fi before the first flight in the morning.

You can expect a 3.1Mbps up-link performance to the plane and 1.8Mbps down link, according to Cruz.

Obviously, anything you can do over the Internet you will be able to do on the plane, including email, VPN, text messaging and surfacing the Web using any Wi-Fi-enabled device.

AirCell could be used for VoIP but Cruz said at this point it doesn’t appear to be a priority with customers.

For those interested, AirCell was able to get the spectrum because the license expired.

AirCell's service requires 92 ground stations to cover the continental U.S. and they expect to complete leasing deals for space on towers and in-building space for a couple of racks of equipment to house batteries, power and radio equipment before the year is out.

Of course, this takes away the last refuge of over-worked mobile warriors who used to be able to use time in flight as a legitimate communications blackout period to catch some Zzzzs.

-- By Ephraim Schwartz

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on November 1, 2007 11:45 AM

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