InfoWorld.com articles from September 2007

InfoWorld.com archives from September 2007

Is IT working hard for the money? When we hit the phones and interviewed a random sample of respondents to July’s InfoWorld Compensation Survey, we got an earful about what’s really happening in IT.
September 3, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz In InfoWorld’s recent Compensation Survey for IT, we crunched the numbers and ended up with a clear picture of the major trends. Overall, the respondents said they were satisfied with their salaries, bonuses,...

SignaCert appliance sorts good from bad; SignaCert’s Enterprise Trust Server maintains legitimate system consistency and detects malware modifications.
September 3, 2007... Byline: Roger A. Grimes One of the biggest challenges in deploying a HIDS (host-based IDS) is determining whether the host you are installing the IPS on is safe and secure to begin with. How can you detect malicious deviations from a...

FBI: Enterprises need counterintelligence; The FBI is asking more companies to join its Counterintelligence Domain Program so that together, they can proactively fight against hacks and data theft.
September 4, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines The Chinese government has denied involvement in a series of hacks carried out against IT systems at the Pentagon in June this week, but the threat of technology-driven espionage has forced the FBI to push businesses and...

BEA offers per-instance pricing for virtualization; The decision moves away from standard per-CPU model and may herald a change in how virtualization software is priced.
September 4, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Capitalizing on the industry's virtualization trend, BEA Systems has fashioned a per-instance model for its virtualization software in an attempt to do what a company official said better reflects usage patterns. ...

Microsoft releases Silverlight 1.0 video technology; Company also working with Novell on Linux variant of Web apps software.
September 4, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft is releasing its Silverlight 1.0 plug-in for video on the Web Wednesday and also will participate in Novell's porting of Silverlight to Linux via the Moonlight project. Silverlight represents Microsoft's...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Everything the iPhone isn’t; Want a phone that can do *real* work? Here’s what a serious mobile device should look like.(Editorial)
September 4, 2007... Byline: Steve Fox You wouldn’t know it from the Apple fanboy hallelujahs and breathy press coverage, but the iPhone isn’t the only game in town. In fact, as much as many InfoWorld staffers may admire the iPhone’s whizzy...

Supersmart phones for extreme mobility; We pick seven serious business phones -- with all the bells and whistles, plus the power and flexibility that real mobile professionals need. Part I: BlackBerry 8800 and Nokia E61i.
September 4, 2007... Byline: Tom Yager The iPhone is wonderful for well-heeled consumers and status-conscious gadget freaks (see my review, "iPhone: The $1,975 iPod"), but business users need more… much more. The iPhone also misses the mark with...

Unified communications: Here at last? So far, IP communications that follow users across voice, IM, e-mail, and other media have benefited a narrow group. That may be about to change.
September 4, 2007... Byline: Leon Erlanger While Todd Sharp is driving down the highway between Charlotte and Atlanta, a new sales order triggers a lookup for the customer phone number and salesperson (that would be Todd) assigned to it. The system then polls...

Apple puts Wi-Fi in iPod Touch; Steve Jobs also unveils updates to iPod Nano and iPod Classic, all of which will be ready to ship for holiday buying season.
September 5, 2007... Byline: Jason Snell and Peter Cohen, Macworld.com Steve Jobs took the stage at San Francisco's Moscone West expo center promptly at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning to thunderous applause from the crowd. "Today we're here to talk about...

Forrester security show stresses risk management; Enterprise security workers are starting to warm to the concept of comprehensive IT restructuring instead of simply adding new technology to the fold.
September 5, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Enterprise security decision makers have long been more likely to be swayed by flashy new technologies than by the notion of comprehensive IT restructuring to protect data and other corporate assets, but the situation is...

HP launches five iPaq models; Mobile units include two converged devices and a GPS system.
September 5, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Hewlett-Packard unveiled late on Wednesday five new iPaq handheld devices, two 3G mobile phones, a GPS device it calls a personal navigation device, and two traditional PDAs, without cellular connectivity. [...

Microsoft touts cost savings of Vista over XP; Study finds running new OS saves $605 yearly over Windows XP on mobile PCs.
September 5, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft released details of a study it commissioned that found that total cost of ownership for Windows Vista on mobile PCs is $605 less annually than Windows XP. According to research conducted by Wipro and GCR...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Last call: Oliver's parting shot; Oliver Rist bids InfoWorld farewell but offers a peek of what's to come.
September 5, 2007... Byline: Oliver Rist Back in the saddle again… Yup, I'm out of here. As of next week, I'll be the lead analyst for networking and SMB over at PC Magazine. Stop by in a few weeks; we're going to have some fun. (First, we're turning...

Coghead launches low-cost SaaS apps; At $10 per user, per month, Web 2.0 platform developer lowers the bar for entry into the digital age for very small businesses.
September 6, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Coghead, an early pioneer in the creation of a Web 2.0 application development platform, announced a deal on Thursday with British Telecom (BT) that will give Coghead developers access to BT's telephony services...

IBM syndicating technical content via 'gizmos'; Information and technical resources from IBM's developerWorks site can be sent to computers and mobile devices, including the iPhone.
September 6, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill IBM is launching a free syndicated content service Friday enabling access to technical resources and emerging technologies via systems ranging from computers to devices like the popular iPhone. The effort involves...

Rich Web technologies debated; AJAX, Silverlight, Flex cited as key players in the increasingly crowded rich Web development technology space.
September 6, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill While the landscape for rich Web development technologies is getting crowded, industry dignitaries at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Thursday nonetheless saw a place for the various entrants in...

Congress holds new hearing on immigration bill; The STRIVE Act may still be in play and, with it, higher H-1B caps.
September 6, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz It appears that the STRIVE (Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy) Act of 2007 isn't quite dead after all. On Thursday, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees Border...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: Are you the IT guy for family and friends? As an InfoWorld reader, chances are you're the go-to person. Here's how to keep from spending all your leisure time on other people's problems.
September 6, 2007... Byline: David L. Margulius Support is a top IT cost center these days, one we're all focused on measuring and reducing. Yet one aspect of IT support doesn't appear on any budget or balanced scorecard: the amount of time we spend supporting...

SaaSy eXpresso gives a jolt to Excel workgroups; Smooth collaboration service enables Excel file sharing, provides change alerts, and offers compliance auditing.
September 6, 2007... Byline: Mike Heck You'd be hard-pressed to find any organization that doesn't depend on Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean spreadsheets are treated as an enterprise resource, and here's where the SaaS (software as a service)...

Mobile business apps middleware catches on; Software makers are partnering with third-party wireless applications providers to develop their mobile systems.
September 7, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Industry experts maintain that many business applications vendors are still struggling to successfully port their tools to mobile handsets. But some software makers claim that by partnering with wireless specialists to...

Web, AJAX slammed for deficiencies; JSON founder goes through list of issues, including security holes and difficult programming models.
September 7, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill The Web and AJAX have many deficiencies, including security holes, and much more needs to be done to iron out these problems, according to a keynote speaker at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif., on...

AJAX pioneer emphasizes user experiences; Technology products are related to as if they are people, says Jesse James Garrett, who coined the term AJAX.(Conference notes)
September 7, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill The inventor of the term AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), urged attendees at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Friday to emphasize user experience when designing products. Jesse James...

SECURITY ADVISER: Continuing the Web Server Security Wars: Is IIS or Apache More Secure? The facts of web servers don't necessarily match the myths when it comes to security.
September 7, 2007... Byline: Roger A. Grimes Continuing the theme from my previous column on the relative security of Internet Information Service (IIS) vs. Apache, I've come across more studies to support my initial conclusion. If you remember, I was...

STORAGE INSIDER: Web services meet storage as a service; Startup Nirvanix takes on Amazon S3, sets up shop with storage for rent.
September 7, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella Are you ready for Internet storage? I mean, would you even consider tapping capacity that doesn't come from a pile of storage devices in your datacenter but instead originates somewhere in the cloud? I wouldn't...

Shunra VE 5.0 takes away app performance guesswork; Latest Shunra models networks for application testing.
September 7, 2007... Byline: Keith Schultz It's always nice to know how an enterprise application will perform before it goes live – before your phone lights up with calls from annoyed users. One way to cut down on angry calls is to use a WAN simulation...

Cisco extends NAC product lineup; Cisco adds new tools that promise to push network authentication to a broader array of devices and office settings.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Cisco announced a pair of additions to its Network Admission Control (NAC) product line on Monday, launching new tools that promise to extend the authentication system to a greater variety of devices and office...

Cisco says acquisitions don't impede best-of-breed; At the Security Standard Conference, Cisco deflected criticism that its acquisitions are hurting innovation by pointing to the maturing security market.(Conference news)
September 10, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Cisco executives speaking at the ongoing Security Standard Conference claim that the networking giant hasn't sapped innovation in the security companies it has acquired in its efforts to add to its own expanse of IT...

Microsoft touts RFID, EDI in BizTalk Server upgrade; Edition for hub-and-spoke architectures also unveiled as Microsoft expands the horizons of its business process management platform.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft is adding capabilities for RFID and EDI to its BizTalk Server business process management platform as well as making BizTalk friendlier for application developers. Being released Monday, BizTalk Server 2006...

Web-based desktop apps get serious; A big-five consultancy introduces a new Google Apps practice, as corporate IT takes a hard look at productivity applications that live in the cloud.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Juan Carlos Perez Capgemini , a major global services provider, has just partnered with Google to enable large-scale adoption of the enterprise version of Google Apps. Capgemini will provide training, support, integration, and...

Sun accommodating Linux in Solaris; Virtualization capability to enable users to run rival OS and apps as well as Solaris on the same computer.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill With an incremental update to its Solaris 10 OS, Sun is extending the platform's virtualization capabilities to accommodate Linux and Solaris on the same computer. Sun will add to the Solaris Containers capability,...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Cooler weather brings hotter news; Fast chips, upcoming conferences, open source software heat up Fall.(Conference news)(Editorial)
September 10, 2007... Byline: Steve Fox Finally, the long, languid, slow news days of summer are behind us. New products are rolling out, people are heading to a myriad of conferences (including, I hope, our own Virtualization Executive Forum, two weeks away),...

Best of open source applications; Top offerings in CRM, ERP, portals, content management, and collaboration platforms.
September 10, 2007... Byline: James R. Borck, Mike Heck, Tom Yager A hunger for lighter-weight and lower-cost sales and CRM applications has brought great success to SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com, and also lifted the fortunes of open source offerings in...

Best of open source in enterprise monitoring; GroundWork, Hyperic, Qlusters, and Zenoss put the Tivolis and OpenViews on notice.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Matt Prigge Open source software has had a foothold in the enterprise monitoring sphere for almost as long as open source has existed. One only needs to look at the sheer ubiquity of small applications such as MRTG (Multi Router...

Introducing the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies; InfoWorld editors and reviewers award the Best Open Source Software for the enterprise.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Tom Yager Not too long ago, open source meant starving developers; scant documentation; an ugly, outdated Web site; and software that lived in perpetual beta. Now open source software is becoming big business. “Now...

Best of open source in networking; The prizewinning VoIP telephony, directory services, streaming media, network protocol analysis, and wireless sniffer software.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Paul Venezia, Tom Bowers, Tom Yager If we had to pick the most significant trend in networking today, the VoIP phenomenon might well top the list. And open source is playing no small part. While enterprises remain reluctant to rip...

Best of open source in platforms and middleware; Our picks among operating systems, app servers, Web servers, databases, service buses, and virtualization platforms.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Andrew Binstock, James R. Borck, Paul Venezia Open source cut its teeth on operating systems, earned its street cred on Linux and Apache, and never looked back, continuing ever since to extend the kingdom to databases, middleware,...

The best open source programming language; Is Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby best? Do Java and JavaScript count?
September 10, 2007... Byline: Martin Heller When we started working on the Bossies, we divided the broad Application Development group into many subcategories, including Language. It seemed like a good idea at the time. [ See Bossie slideshows: Applications...

Best of open source in security; Top projects in vulnerability scanning, intrusion prevention, anti-virus, anti-spam, firewalls, VPNs, and security testing.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Tom Bowers In areas such as CRM software and portals, open source gained a foothold because users were willing to compromise -- less could be more, because the price was right. In security, open source rushed in because commercial...

Best of open source in software development; Our choices among enterprise IDEs, rich Internet app platforms, AJAX toolkits, business rule management systems, and continuous integration servers.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Andrew Binstock, Steven NA*A[+ or -]ez The wealth of open source software development goodies is heaven for the developer community, but it's hell on an awards committee. Considering IDEs, debuggers, defect trackers, code coverage...

Best of open source in storage; Top picks among file systems, file servers, storage networking software, and benchmarking tools.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella, Paul Venezia Combining “open source” and "storage” in the same sentence used to trigger a sardonic grin, but no longer. The availability of free and open software is as true today for storage as it...

Dell bulks up storage appliance; Dell PowerVault MD3000i adds iSCSI to already solid appliance.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella On September 10, Dell is adding a new iSCSI storage array to its portfolio: the PowerVault MD3000i -- a fully redundant enclosure that can pack dual power supplies, dual RAID controllers and 15 SAS (serial attached...

Exclusive: NetApp crowns new entry-level storage array king; High-capacity FAS2020 raises bar for manageability, performance.
September 10, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella NetApp today is announcing new heirs to the thrones of its entry-level storage arrays, the FAS250 and FAS270. These crown princes, the FAS2020 and the FAS2050, yield more capacity, better performance, and improved...

CommuniGate launches Flash-based Pronto; Client is one of the first rich Internet applications for unified communications.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Unified communications (UC) vendors continue to pile on new products as UC begins to include more high-tech categories in its feature set. This week, CommuniGate Systems announced its latest version of Pronto,...

Hackers update malware tool kit with zero-day code; Newest iteration of IcePack kit is the first to include attack code aimed at exploiting unpatched Microsoft bug.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Gregg Keizer, Computerworld A new version of the IcePack hacker exploit tool kit has been released, security researchers warned Tuesday, and for the first time it includes attack code designed to exploit an unpatched, or zero-day,...

Microsoft releases Patch Tuesday security updates; September's patches fix flaws in MSN Messenger, Windows, 2000, and Unix services for Wndows, including a critical fix for Microsoft Agent.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Robert McMillan Microsoft has released its security patches for September, fixing known vulnerabilities in its MSN Messenger software and Unix services for Windows as well as a critical bug in Windows 2000. In total, Microsoft...

Mozilla shows mock-up of Firefox 3.0's Places; Unified history and bookmark manager for popular open source browser set to debut later this year or early next year after missing deadline for inclusion in Firefox 2.0.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Mozilla has posted mock-ups of Places, one of the most-awaited new features in the upcoming Firefox 3.0, on its Web site. As part of the weekly Firefox 3.0 status update that Mozilla posts to a wiki,...

BEA, Adobe forge rich Internet apps partnership; Flex technology key to arrangement, which utilizes both SOA and Web 2.0 concepts.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill BEA Systems and Adobe Systems are partnering on rich Internet application development in an arrangement incorporating both SOA and Web 2.0 concepts. The deal is being announced Tuesday at the BEAWorld San Francisco...

BEA touts Genesis project for next-gen apps; CEO Chuang stresses legacy, packaged systems will no longer suffice as mashups and other composite dynamic apps take center stage.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill BEA Systems is planning a dynamic application infrastructure codenamed "Project Genesis," for building next-generation business applications that incorporate technologies including mashups. BEA sees a new generation...

BEA's Genesis to back open source, scripting languages; Details of next-generation apps platform fleshed out by executives.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill BEA Systems' planned next-generation application platform, called Project Genesis, will feature an open source component and accommodate scripting languages such as Ruby and Perl, BEA officials said at the BEAWorld San...

Expert do's and don'ts for dealing with data breaches; A data breach victim shares his advice for addressing leakage incidents, while another expert highlights the missteps taken by TJX in dealing with its information theft.
September 11, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Organizations that experience data breaches must move quickly to assuage the fears of their constituents and go beyond expectations to address the situations effectively, according to those most familiar with the...

MS Project Server 2007 pleases; Smorgasbord, Part IV: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Project Server 2007 make a smart combination for team management.
September 12, 2007... Byline: Brian Chee, Oliver Rist Welcome back to the great Office Server smorgasbord. There’ll be a related review soon covering a couple of open source answers to SharePoint, including Liferay and Plone. And come October,...

BEA upgrades app server with SOA, Web 2.0 capabilities; Interoperability with Microsoft's .Net and modular downloading are also added to the Weblogic Server Java application center.
September 12, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill BEA Systems will fit its Weblogic Server Java application server with improvements geared to Web 2.0, SOA and interoperability with Microsoft's .Net platform, the company said at the BEAWorld San Francisco conference on...

FaceTime to launch unified communications appliance; Unified communications poses perplexing problems for IT managers, but FaceTime's standardized appliance is designed to avoid many common hurdles.
September 12, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz FaceTime Communications, a maker of network security appliances, announced the USG (Unified Security Gateway), one of the first devices directed at the full gamut of UC (unified communications) services, this week....

Learning to love regulatory compliance auditors; Lack of communication, trust among business execs, IT workers, and auditors is one of the biggest challenges in achieving compliance.
September 12, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Companies working to achieve passing grades in their regulatory compliance audits can greatly improve their ability to meet the requirements if they can somehow bridge the cultural gap that commonly exists between IT...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Eight great Microsoft reviews and analyses; With a new Enterprise Windows on the horizon, we pause to look back at some in-depth looks at Microsoft wares.
September 12, 2007... Byline: InfoWorld Test Center staff Oliver Rist is gone, but his memory will live on, both in our hearts and in the databases of InfoWorld.com. While you may very well have read each and every Enterprise Windows column he wrote over the...

Salesforce.com unveils user interface as a service; The next step in Platform-as-a-Service is hosting a highly customizable, build-it-yourself user interface.
September 13, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Next Monday, Salesforce.com will, in the words of one industry analyst, "extend the value proposition of software as a service" when it introduces Visualforce at its Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco. The...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: Meetup madness: Slumming it in startup land; Odyssey of face-to-face meet-ups rivals golf as a good waste of time.
September 13, 2007... Byline: David L. Margulius Ever wish you could take a one-year sabbatical from your corporate job, then (after six months of golf) dive into the vibrant, energizing world of grassroots technology innovation? You'd travel to Silicon...

Badware hunters tame wild Webmasters, hosts; PayPal and VeriSign throw their support behind the StopBadware project, which has so far netted a list of over 600,000 suspect apps.
September 14, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines If hijacked sites and hosting companies that fail to police malware distribution sources represent two of the most serious threats to Internet security, there may be hope for improvement, according to researchers working...

SECURITY ADVISER: Trust key to Internet security; Five rings of trust could be the key to a more secure, more useful Internet.
September 14, 2007... Byline: Roger A. Grimes A few of my previous columns discussed my vision of creating a more secure Internet. It involved replacing the Internet's default anonymity with pervasive authentication, from the hardware initialization, through...

STORAGE INSIDER: Corralling VMware virtual machines; V-Commander promises to bring order to the swarm of VMs crowding your datacenter.
September 14, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella The proliferation of VMs in today's datacenter has many IT professionals scratching their heads as to the true extent of virtualization's hold on day-to-day operations. Unfortunately, the complexity of virtualized...

PHP developers get Eclipse boost; Eclipse PHP Development Tools 1.0 provides editing and debugging tools and can also work with a variety of plug-ins.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill The Eclipse Foundation will make available Tuesday the 1.0 release of the Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) project, featuring tools and frameworks to enhance developer productivity with the PHP scripting language ...

Salesforce expands product categories for on-demand; Pioneer SaaS company will offer content management and collaborative services.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Although the major news at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce developer conference in San Francisco this week was Visualforce , CEO Marc Benioff had a few other surprise announcements up his sleeve to keep an overflow...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Open source hippies and opinionated bloggers; This week, the sniping is fast and furious while the software is slow and tedious.(Editorial)
September 17, 2007... Byline: Steve Fox According to basic e-mail etiquette, mass-forwarding an e-mail message is annoying, inconsiderate, and just plain bad form. (And don’t get me started on those “REPLY ALL” scoundrels-- grrrr!). But...

7 reasons why your software is so slow; Ever wonder why your PC keeps choking on that slick, new corporate app? Here are the chief culprits bogging down the latest software's performance.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister In terms of computing power, we've come a long way since 1981. Today's average desktop CPU is more than 600 times faster than that of the original IBM PC. Throw in blazing-fast graphics cards, mind-boggling amounts...

Chip advances leave developers in the dust; Culprit No. 1: Capitalizing on multicore requires a new mode of development.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister Ever since Gordon Moore's 1965 proclamation in Electronics Magazine, we've come to expect processing power to double every two years. So why don't the latest CPUs seem significantly faster than those made even five...

Code bloat abounds; Culprit No. 2: Sales-driven software cycles beg the question of upgrades.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister Application vendors love to wow customers with bells and whistles packed into each new version of their software. But after a few successive releases, the sheer number of features in an app can start to weigh it...

Usability remains an afterthought; Culprit No. 3: Flashy UIs devoid of documentation sap productivity.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister Have you ever tried to do something with your PC only to discover that you couldn't? It isn't that the software can't handle it -- the function you need is in there somewhere, as advertised on the packaging or in...

Security saps system performance; Culprit No. 4: The hidden cost of security is a hit to processing.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister The tremendous benefits of computing in the Internet Age have come at a price. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, DDoS attacks, spyware, phishing -- the list of network-based threats seems to grow longer every day. In...

Lack of standards stifles agility; Culprit No. 5: Vendor lock-in muddles interoperability, prevents shifts to faster solutions.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister If you aren't happy with the performance of your software, the solution should be simple: Switch to different software. In practice, however, jumping ship is seldom that easy, and vendor lock-in is a reality with...

Centralizing IT gives rise to bureaucracy; Culprit No. 6: Heavy-handed IT policies often hamstring IT operations.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister When you're having problems with your enterprise laptop or workstation, who do you call? Is your IT staff just down the hall, or are they on the other side of the globe? At one time, staffing each branch office...

Computing trends overburden the network; Culprit No. 7: Bottlenecks abound when business asks too much of the network.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Neil McAllister Don't call it "client/server." Today's database-driven applications are a world apart from the green-screen terminal apps of decades past. And yet, in this age when "the network is the computer," more and more data...

Adaptec's little SAN that can; Exclusive: Snap Server 720i, an entry-level iSCSI SAN, packs big features in a small format.
September 17, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella Many different combinations of drives, controllers, and software are available in storage arrays for small and midsize businesses, but one example that you should not miss is the Snap Server 720i that Adaptec trotted...

Fear of insider threats hits home; IT security technology soaks up a lot of the security budget, but companies are starting to see that the insider threat posed by employees is just as important.
September 18, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines The more money that companies spend on securing their IT operations from external attack, the more it seems they become aware that the potential threat posed by their own employees remains their most significant risk....

Infrastructure threats: Botnets show DoS who's boss; Malware-infected botnet PCs have overtaken denial-of-service attacks as the top security issue facing ISPs and other Web hosting companies.
September 18, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Malware-infected botnet PCs have overtaken DoS attacks as the top security issue facing Internet service providers and other Web infrastructure hosting players, according to a new survey of the organizations. Arbor...

Oracle links business process analysis, SOA; Closed-loop support allows for analyst and IT collaboration as Oracle pledges tighter alignment between development stages.
September 18, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Oracle is announcing Wednesday an enhanced version of its business process analysis software that enhances collaboration between process modelers and implementers. Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite 10.1.3.3...

Coverity adds Boolean concept to software analysis; Technique helps eliminate potentially costly defects in source code.
September 18, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Coverity on Wednesday is announcing a software analysis engine based on the concept of "Boolean satisfiability," or SAT. Featured in the Coverity Prevent SQS (Software Quality System) product, the SAT engine uses a...

AT&T: Network perimeter security should be virtual; AT&T says companies will save time and money by ceding the process of fighting threats such as botnets, spam, and DoS attacks to ISPs.
September 20, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines Enterprise companies will soon begin offloading many of their network security responsibilities to telecommunications and Internet service providers and save vast amounts of time and money doing so, if AT&T has its way....

PayPal claims gains against phishers; PayPal is using partnerships with ISPs and security technologies such as electronic signatures to eliminate phishing attempts before they reach users' in-boxes.
September 20, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines PayPal security chief Michael Barrett isn't ready to claim a victory in the fight against phishing schemes, but he said that his company is slowly turning the tide using a set of new partnerships and technological means....

Security outsourcing on the rise; As companies get more comfortable with outsiders managing security, the amount of security services being outsourced is growing steadily.
September 20, 2007... Byline: Matt Hines As one of the world's largest outsourcing providers, Wipro Technologies is ramping up its security services business in a big way. While the massive Indian company has had a security practice in place since 1998,...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: The end of booth-babe culture? IT isn't immune to the sexism rampant in other industries, but there's something you can do about that.
September 20, 2007... Byline: David L. Margulius The Wall Street Journal last week ran a page-one, above-the-fold, front-and-center article on a topic you don't normally read much about: the role of sexuality on the sales side of the IT business. [ See...

Vontu 7 covers your end point; On top of end point monitoring, new version adds configurable dashboards, database encryption.
September 20, 2007... Byline: Mike Heck Information leak prevention solutions have evolved predictably. First, they identified, and then blocked, sensitive data moving around your networks. Next, the cycle repeated with information resting in data repositories....

JackBe readies Presto Wires mashup composer; The tool, which uses a drag-and-drop interface to integrate Web services and is aimed at business analysts as well as developers, is set to debut at AJAXWorld.
September 21, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Raising the stakes in the burgeoning mashup development tools field, JackBe is unveiling Presto Wires, a visual enterprise mashup composer, at the AJAXWorld conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Monday. The tool...

SECURITY ADVISER: Beware the browser within; For a more secure network, stop people from clicking on things they shouldn’t.
September 21, 2007... Byline: Roger A. Grimes I travel the world helping people make their computers and networks more secure. A question I get asked every week is, "What are the best steps I can take to protect my network?" I can understand the concern....

STORAGE INSIDER: NetApp-Sun rivalry heats up; Litigation, acquisition, and an unholy alliance have everyone wondering what's brewing at Sun.
September 21, 2007... Byline: Mario Apicella Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, as the old proverb goes, but who can be flattered by imitation that may violate one's intellectual property? As recent sparring between NetApp and Sun proves, such...