InfoWorld.com articles from July 2004

InfoWorld.com archives from July 2004

Aspect-oriented programming forum draws crowd; JavaOne session packs in the curious.
July 1, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill SAN FRANCISCO -- If attendance at JavaOne sessions is any indication of what's on the minds of developers, then aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a technology whose day is coming. At the show on Wednesday a...

Open source Java debate rages; Panelists from IBM, Sun, Apache Software Foundation offer pros and cons.
July 1, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill San Francisco -- Should Java be available under an open source format? The debate is raging this week at the 2004 JavaOne conference here. One day after BEA Systems endorsed an open source stance for Java 2 Standard...

StorageTek's new tape rack: same size, double capacity; SL 500 holds 100TB.
July 1, 2004... Byline: Chris Mellor, Techworld.com Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) has produced a new 100TB tape library that slots into a standard rack size but provides twice as much capacity as competing products. The StreamLine (SL) 500 is...

SECURITY ADVISER: The worm that wasn’t quite; A new type of threat can make your life difficult in more ways than you think -- so it's time to rethink your policies.
July 2, 2004... Byline: Wayne Rash As I began writing this last week, a new type of worm began to establish itself on the Internet. This worm was particularly insidious because it spread by ways that were initially unexpected. Just in case you...

STORAGE INSIDER: A new page on PC protection; EMC and Connected bring remote backup ability to ISPs.
July 2, 2004... Byline: Mario Apicella Are you happy with your ISP? Sorry, silly question. How could you possibly be happy with a service that brings all kinds of nasty things to your home, including irritating junk mail, sexually explicit content,...

IBM Rational focuses on software quality; Open source Hyades effort touted, new initiative to be launched.
July 6, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill IBM Rational on Tuesday will announce plans to standardize its suite of automated software quality tools on the Hyades open source platform and is unveiling concurrently a software quality campaign dubbed...

Interview: IBM veteran Jim Stallings on Linux sophistication; Big Blue exec discusses enhancement to open source software during last 18 months, and the evolution of Linux.
July 6, 2004... Byline: Ed Scannell In his first 18 months as general manager of IBM's worldwide Linux team, Jim Stallings has seen dozens of corporate shops and governments around the world push Linux from the periphery to the heart of their IT...

Eclipse packaged with plug-ins for ease of use; Innoopract ships Yoxos distribution.
July 7, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill Eclipse-based tools provider Innoopract is shipping Yoxos, a $19.95 Eclipse 3.0 distribution that is equipped with popular plug-ins to ease the load on open source developers. The company is positioning Yoxos as a...

Interview: Sun’s Gosling defends Java open source stance; Technologist also questions Microsoft’s interoperability commitment.
July 8, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill James Gosling is a 20-year veteran of Sun Microsystems and wears many hats at the company, including vice president and Sun fellow and CTO for the vendor’s Java Development Platform and Tools group. But the...

Niku to launch open source Windows application; Free software pitched as Microsoft Project alternative.
July 8, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Next week, Niku, a vendor of IT management and governance software, will announce an open source version of its project scheduler, Workbench, re-named Open Workbench, for Windows-based desktops. Niku will offer...

PeopleSoft issues ALM product; Enterprise One Asset Lifecycle management software now generally available.
July 8, 2004... Byline: Tom Sullivan PeopleSoft made its Enterprise One Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) 8.1 generally available this week. This iteration adds features for condition-based maintenance and equipment cost analysis, according to company...

Groove touts performance in updated Virtual Office; Upgraded version coming next week.
July 9, 2004... Byline: Todd R. Weiss, Computerworld Collaboration software vendor Groove Networks Inc. next week plans to announce an updated version of its flagship software, which it said will offer better security, improved performance and new...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: You know you've got a browser problem when … CERT and even Slate say that users should switch to another browser until IE is secure.
July 9, 2004... Byline: Oliver Rist The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, otherwise known as Dancing with Big Brother, tells the world to stop using the Web browser you fought long and hard to tie into your operating system. That’s what happened...

SECURITY ADVISER: Should everyone always know where you are? Until some thorny security problems are solved, VoIP growth may be stifled by its limited use in emergency situations.
July 9, 2004... Byline: Wayne Rash There’s a car wreck in front of your house. It looks bad, so you pick up the phone and dial 911 before heading out to see whether you can help. As soon as you’re connected with the emergency operator, they...

STORAGE INSIDER: A midsummer storage dream; Turning figments of the imagination into reality is a common theme in newly released storage products.
July 9, 2004... Byline: Mario Apicella Are you enjoying summer? I am -- at least, I'm trying to, because the weather has been very unpredictable lately here in southeast Texas. By contrast, new storage products targeting small and large business alike...

Microsoft, AmberPoint link on Web services development; Visual Studio 2005 offering to be packaged with management tool.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft and AmberPoint are hooking up to boost Web services development in the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 tool box. AmberPoint Express, which is a developer version of the AmberPoint Web services management...

Microsoft, BT launch global conferencing alliance; Companies to link audio and Web conferencing services.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Cathleen Moore Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to muscle market share in the Web conferencing market, with its announcement on Monday of a global strategic alliance with European telecommunications provider BT. The agreement...

WLAN management vendors bombard IT with solutions; Four vendors with new products are just the tip of the access point.
July 12, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz With wireless LANs becoming a major component within an enterprise network, a new class of vendor offering distributed wireless monitoring and management is coming to the fore. This week AirMagnet will...

Cape Clear touts business processes in ESB; Service-oriented architectures enabled in package.
July 13, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill Cape Clear Software on July 21 will ship Cape Clear 5, an upgraded version of the company’s ESB (enterprise service bus) product package that adds support for BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). The...

Microsoft announces enhanced network protection; Network Access Protection to be available with Windows Server R2.
July 13, 2004... Byline: Ed Scannell TORONTO -- Microsoft at its Worldwide Partner Conference here on Tuesday will announce enhancements to the company’s Network Access Protection technology, expected to be a key piece of its next major release of...

PeopleSoft inks deal with Perfect Commerce; Goal is easy supplier, buyer connectivity.
July 13, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Looking to simplify the use of its procurement offerings for suppliers, PeopleSoft announced on Tuesday a deal with Perfect Commerce to bundle access to its Open Supplier Network as part of the PeopleSoft...

Wi-Fi to get print services; Silex set to ship wireless print hardware and software device.
July 13, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz With the promise of the paperless office still light years away, Silex Technology will introduce in the fourth quarter its WiPrint device, a wireless print hardware and software solution for sending print jobs over...

IBM buys BI company; AlphaBlox deal ratchets up Big Blue's BI plans.
July 14, 2004... Byline: Ed Scannell IBM added another piece to its ongoing business intelligence initiative on Wednesday, acquiring AlphaBlox, a small software company in Mountain View, Calif., that specializes in analytics software. AlphaBlox's...

IBM not expecting Oracle-PeopleSoft impact; Exec says company has business around both vendors; chatters pan presentation.
July 14, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill STANFORD, CALIF. -- IBM does not expect to be impacted should Oracle succeed in its hostile bid to acquire PeopleSoft, Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive for IBM's software group, said Wednesday at...

IBM looks to improve Web usage for visually impaired; Tool assesses Web pages for usefulness.
July 15, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill IBM on Thursday will preview technology intended to assess and grade Web sites on their accessibility to people who are visually impaired and blind. A Java-based developer tool called aDesigner is intended to ensure...

AlphaBlox deal anchors IBM's BI strategy; IBM general manager Janet Perna says, 'BI cuts through everything we're doing'.
July 15, 2004... Byline: Tom Sullivan, Ed Scannell After decades of being a technology used exclusively by IT administrators and professional researchers, IBM is trying to push business intelligence-based technologies out to the great gray mass of desktop...

IBM pursues software installation standard; W3C submission features XML-based packaging schema.
July 16, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill IBM on Friday is unveiling technology intended to reduce complexity in software installation and packaging and has submitted it to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for consideration as an industry standard. Dubbed...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Microsoft needs to open MOM up to more than Windows; Competition for Microsoft Operations Manager is heating, and Redmond can't ignore other platforms.
July 16, 2004... Byline: Oliver Rist After questioning Microsoft's response to the Linux desktop wars only a couple of weeks ago, I'm questioning yet another Redmond tack to fend off the steady slip in its uber-platform strategy. This time, it's the...

SECURITY ADVISER: Dropping Internet Explorer; You know you should avoid IE, but what are your more secure replacement options?
July 16, 2004... Byline: Wayne Rash Last week, InfoWorld columnist Oliver Rist recommended that you stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your browser. He had good reason: The latest vulnerability reports point out some significant security holes in IE...

FileNet P8 3.0 targets business process control; New version of ECM platform offers Web services-based-- access.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Cathleen Moore FileNet on Monday unwrapped Version 3.0 of its P8 ECM (enterprise content management) platform with new Web services support and business process management capabilities. The goal of P8 3.0 is to improve...

IBM readies 'Atlantic' tools plus open source effort; Platform upgrade focuses on testing, modeling, isolated developers.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill GRAPEVINE, TEXAS -- IBM at the Rational Software Development User Conference here Monday revealed a planned upgrade to its Rational and IBM tools portfolio, dubbed “Atlantic,” and also pledged to make some...

IBM advancing Workplace platform; Tools readied for developers with varied experience levels.
July 19, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill IBM on Monday is unveiling development tools intended to boost the IBM Workplace collaboration platform. The introductions will be made at the IBM Rational Software Development User Conference in Grapevine, Texas. ...

Rational exec envisions software prominence; OSes and middleware will become largely commoditized, Booch says.
July 20, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill GRAPEVINE, TEXAS -- Projecting what the world will be like in 2031, Rational Chief Scientist and IBM Fellow Grady Booch predicted that software would touch every aspect of life and, thusly, developers would only grow in...

IBM sets academic initiative; Open standards to be focus of efforts.
July 20, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill GRAPEVINE, TEXAS -- IBM at the Rational Software Developer User Conference on Tuesday here detailed an initiative to collaborate with educators to teach students open standards skills to enable them to keep pace with...

Digital Evolution links ID management to SOAs; Product relies on third-party packages identity services.
July 21, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill Digital Evolution on Wednesday is shipping what it calls its identity-based SOA (service-oriented architecture) management platform. The Digital Evolution Service Manager 2.3.2 is positioned as a Web services and SOA...

Salesforce launches summer 04 release; Many new features for the enterprise included.
July 21, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Salesforce.com unveiled today its summer 04 release which will include considerable enhancements to its Enterprise Edition. If the savvy marketing department at Salesforce.com picked the slowest time of the...

Jabber gateway aims to link XMPP, SIMPLE; IM interoperability gains boost with server-to-server gateway to Lotus IM.
July 22, 2004... Byline: Cathleen Moore Jabber this week announced a server-to-server gateway product designed to connect its Jabber XCP (Extensible Communications Platform) with IBM's Lotus Instant Messaging product. The competing enterprise IM...

Principal chooses IBM for disaster recovery; Financial group says it is a priority to have data back online, not just secure, in event of emergency.
July 22, 2004... Byline: Bob Francis The Principal Financial Group has completed installation of a new disaster recovery system from IBM designed to restore its IT and business systems in less than 24 hours following a disaster. Principal's previous...

BEA holds app server market lead but revenues drop; IBM sees dollars growth.
July 23, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill BEA Systems held a wide lead in the Unix and Linux portions of the application server software market in North America in 2003, but its overall revenues in this market shrank by 4.3 percent while IBM's grew by 6.4...

Interview: Rational’s Devlin touts merger with IBM; Exec co-founded company, is now an IBM official.
July 23, 2004... Byline: Paul Krill Mike Devlin is general manager of Rational Software as part of the IBM Software Group. Prior to IBM’s February 2003 acquisition of Rational Software for $2.1 billion, Devlin was Rational CEO and was a co-founder of...

Siemens to pilot RFID bracelets for health care; Others seek to implant data under the skin.
July 23, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Siemens Business Services announced this week a pilot project with Jacobi Medical Center in New York to track patients by incorporating RFID chips into the ubiquitous plastic band strapped onto patients' wrists...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Hoping MIIS isn’t a metamiss; Microsoft Identity Management gives admins a secure handle on data -- for a hefty price.
July 23, 2004... Byline: Oliver Rist There are multiple ways to make money with software products. You can add value directly with a cool, new, better-than-sliced-bread idea, which Microsoft has done a few times. You can copy someone else’s idea and...

SECURITY ADVISER: Security in surprising spots; In the world of VoIP, security turns up when and where you least expect it.
July 23, 2004... Byline: Wayne Rash I could see the frustration on the Spirent Communications engineer’s face as he attempted to run a series of tests on the new Siemens IP PBX. The tests had run properly when he’d tried previously on a smaller...

CA to unwrap WLAN management software; Wireless Site Management pulls together CA's overall wireless strategy.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Bob Francis, Tom Sullivan ISLANDIA, N.Y. -- Computer Associates later this year will release the final version of an entirely new software product for managing and securing wireless LANs (WLANs), dubbed Wireless Site Management...

IBM extends DB2 Content Manager with open standards; Project Cinnamon, JSR 170, new Web services capabilities demonstrated.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Cathleen Moore SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- IBM on Monday extolled the value of open standards as it revealed plans to expand Web services, XML, and Java interoperability in the next version of its DB2 Content Manager. During an event...

STORAGE INSIDER: Setting off storage fireworks; Between Adaptec's acquisition plans and rivalries between Quantum and Sony, summer storage news shows no sign of slowing.
July 26, 2004... Byline: Mario Apicella The Fourth of July was quite a few weeks ago but the fireworks in the storage industry -- regardless of the advanced summer season -- haven't stopped yet. It makes you wonder if the people working in this business...

Microsoft delivers Office Service Pack; SP1 spruces up OneNote, InfoPath.
July 27, 2004... Byline: Ed Scannell Microsoft on Tuesday made available for download its first Service Pack for Office System 2003, which features fresh capabilities to its OneNote and InfoPath applications, along with improvements to overall speed and...

Stalker unveils SIP support; New version of CommuniGate Pro server eyes unified messaging.
July 27, 2004... Byline: Cathleen Moore Stalker Software this week rolled out a new version of its enterprise messaging suite featuring support for the telephony standard SIP. CommuniGate Pro Version 4.2 Real-Time Communications builds on SIP to...

IBM, Cisco add support from rival vendors to TotalStorage; Move helps IT departments virtualize storage across multivendor platforms.
July 27, 2004... Byline: Bob Francis IBM has added support for third-party vendors to its TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) for the Cisco MDS 9000, which will allow IT departments with mixed storage vendor environments to virtualize storage across...

CA to revive dormant database; Company plans to release Ingres r3 to open source next week and aim it between SQL Server and Oracle.
July 28, 2004... Byline: Tom Sullivan ISLANDIA, N.Y. -- Computer Associates is looking to breathe new life into a long-quiet database and, in so doing, is gunning to make it perform better than Microsoft's SQL Server and Oracle's 10g. CA plans to open...

Sprint lands more broadcasters for streaming TV; Networks now producing custom shows for cell market.
July 28, 2004... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Still looking for the magic bullet that will keep cell phone users online and loyal, Sprint announced this week three new additions to its streaming TV service, MobiTV, with some programming produced specifically...

MCI ups the SLA ante; New services guarantee performance -- or your money back.
July 29, 2004... Byline: Bob Francis MCI Inc. has raised the bar on its Internet services, announcing new service-level agreements (SLAs) for Internet service performance that offer increased service thresholds and guarantees for IP traffic...

IBM gives CICS a kick; Tools integrate mixed environments.
July 30, 2004... Byline: Ed Scannell Coinciding with its 35th anniversary, IBM has updated its venerable CICS (Customer Information Control System) technology by shipping a new set of integrated mainframe tools designed to optimize the performance of...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: I know laptops, and you, PDA, are no laptop; Even the newest PDAs simply aren't worth the time or investment for corporate users.
July 30, 2004... Byline: Oliver Rist Thirteen grand. I'm looking at the quote, and it clearly says $13,000 — not including tax and shipping. Nor including all the consulting work I'm going to have to charge this guy for integration. Is this for a new...

SECURITY ADVISER: Security education works; If you keep trying, teaching people how to detect and deal with malicious code really will pay off.
July 30, 2004... Byline: Wayne Rash It was a simple e-mail from someone in the InfoWorld art department that tipped me off to the fact that there was evil afoot. Well, OK, there’s always evil afoot, but in this case, the particular evil was the...

STORAGE INSIDER: Bigger, smarter SANs; As networked storage solutions take on more of a multivendor shine, end-users stand to benefit.
July 30, 2004... Byline: Mario Apicella Judging from the products that major vendors are putting on the market (or promising soon, as is the case for EMC’s virtualization router that's expected to ship in 2005), networked storage solutions are losing...