Computerworld articles from April 2006

Computerworld archives from April 2006

Fast exploits of flaws test Microsoft's patching policy: users want fixes sooner, but not from third parties.(NEWS)
April 3, 2006... The growing number of zero-day exploits seeking to take advantage of unpatched security flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s products is exposing some of the limitations of the company's monthly software update schedule, IT managers and analysts said...

Nissan corrects steering on IT under new CIO: turns to in-house and multisourcing.(Nissan North America Inc.)
April 3, 2006... Seven years ago, during the heyday of mega outsourcing deals, Nissan North America Inc. was one of the companies at the forefront of the rush to hand off IT operations to a single vendor. But times have changed, and so has Nissan's IT...

Business skills tip hiring scale: outweigh tech savvy for new hires.(NEWS)
April 3, 2006... Rupak Shah's computer science degree from the prestigious University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, coupled with his strong technical skills, might help him land a job interview with a corporate IT organization. But the 22-year-old...

Georgia agency's database breached.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... A Georgia Technology Authority database containing confidential data on more than 570,000 members of the state's pension plans was breached last month by an unknown hacker who took advantage of an unpatched flaw in an undisclosed security...

U.S. urges EU to treat Microsoft fairly.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... U.S. officials last week urged the European Commission to be fair to Microsoft Corp. in its closed-door hearings on the EC's antitrust charges against the vendor. According to a memo from U.S. officials, Microsoft complaints about the case...

Smither promoted to CIO at Ford Motor.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Nick Smither has been named vice president and CIO at Ford Motor Co., replacing Marv Adams, who has resigned as senior vice president and CIO to join Citigroup Inc. as CIO. Both moves become effective April 21. Smither, who joined Ford 26 years...

Several charged in card fraud cases.(debit-card fraud)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... The U.S. Secret Service has made several arrests in connection with a wave of debit-card fraud that forced several banks and credit unions to reissue millions of cards in recent months. The arrests were part of a broader Secret Service...

Nortel overhauls services, offers multivendor repairs: says it will handle maintenance of products from networking rivals.(Nortel Networks Corp.)
April 3, 2006... NORTEL NETWORKS Corp. last week said it is reorganizing its services offerings and adding several new ones, including a service that makes Nortel a single point of contact for maintenance of its telecommunications equipment and products from...

Attacks target DNS servers in U.S., Germany: Network Solutions, Joker.com fend off denial-of-service hits.(NEWS)
April 3, 2006... In similar incidents separated by only a few days, Domain Name System (DNS) servers at Network Solutions Inc. and a domain name registrar in Germany were hit by denial-of-service attacks that temporarily disrupted their systems. Network...

U.S. Navy extends EDS agreement.(Electronic Data Systems Corp.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... The U.S. Department of the Navy has extended a multibillion-dollar outsourcing contract with Electronic Data Systems Corp. through September 2010. The extension adds more than $3 billion to the value of the contract, which covers the...

U.K. forces $450m Accenture charge.(Accenture Ltd.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Accenture Ltd. said a charge to cover expected losses from two contracts to upgrade the U.K. National Health Service's IT infrastructure led to a steep drop in its second-quarter profit. Accenture reported a charge of $450 million to cover...

Parliament OKs national ID cards.(BRIEFS)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Both houses of the U.K.'s Parliament have reached a compromise on a bill to move ahead with an effort to issue national identification cards. The House of Lords and the House of Commons both approved bills making the card optional until Jan. 1,...

Sony buys 10% stake in SGI Japan.(Sony Corp.)(SGI Japan Ltd.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Sony Corp. has bought a 10% stake in workstation and supercomputer sales and integration company SGI Japan Ltd. Sony and SGI Japan also signed an agreement to work jointly on selling computer systems to broadcasting organizations. NEC Corp. and...

You are how you type, and ...(BioPassword Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ... BioPassword Inc. says it can prove it. The Issaquah, Wash.-based security software vendor has released what it claims is a one-of-a-kind, multilevel authentication tool that validates who you are based on how you type. CEO Mark Upson says...

Keeping end users away from ...(Google Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ... forbidden corporate data is just as important as leading them to the right material. That's the message from two search-engine CEOs who both took shots at Google Inc.'s enterprise search appliance, which needs augmenting from external...

Tape continues to be a cost-effective ...(Exabyte Corp.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ... data-backup technology. That claim comes--no surprise--from a tape drive vendor. Kelly Beavers, vice president of product marketing at Exabyte Corp., says that the Boulder, Colo.-based company's new VXA-172 drive will cost 17 cents per...

Data storage is a big budget item, but a ...(CreekPath Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ... Byzantine IT backwater. Few of you will dispute that storage is taking a big slice from your IT budgets. Fewer will claim that managing storage is uppermost in your mind. And fewer still know how much storage capacity different business...

BPO deals increase, but users face hurdles: lack of standards hampers efforts to reduce costs through outsourcing.(NEWS)
April 3, 2006... PRUDENTIAL Financial Inc. is just four years into a seven-year business process outsourcing contract. But Sharon Taylor, Prudential's vice president of corporate human resources, has the authority of a veteran when she describes her experiences...

SAS touts its integration, storage tools for BI projects.(Business intelligence)
April 3, 2006... SAS Institute Inc. last week unveiled a strategy aimed at persuading companies to use its storage and data-integration tools rather than transactional databases to build business intelligence systems. Executives at the Cary, N.C.-based...

Qualcomm files suit against Broadcom.(QUALCOMM Inc.)(Broadcom Corp.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Qualcomm Inc. has filed a third lawsuit against Broadcom Corp., asking a federal judge in San Diego to freeze the production of wireless chip sets by its rival. This suit brings the number of patents that Qualcomm has accused Broadcom of...

Hackers attack Florida bank sites.(Premier Bank, Wakulla Bank and Capital City Bank)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... The Web sites of three regional Florida banks--Premier Bank, Wakulla Bank and Capital City Bank--were compromised last month by hackers. The attackers hacked servers run by the Internet service provider that hosted the banks' Web sites and...

Microsoft Exchange mail services debut.(BRIEFS)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Microsoft Corp. has brought out four managed services it gained from its purchase of FrontBridge Technologies Inc. last year. Microsoft said it has rebranded the e-mail managed services, which include Exchange Hosted Filtering, Exchange Hosted...

Google to issue more shares to raise $2.1b.(Google Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Google Inc. plans to issue an additional 5.3 million shares of stock to raise $2.1 billion for working capital, expenses and possible acquisitions of complementary businesses and technologies. Google made the move despite holding $8 billion in...

Microsoft plans all-out assault on NAS market: will launch iSCSI initiator this week, clustered enterprise NAS system later.(network-attached storage )
April 3, 2006... MICROSOFT CORP. this week plans to launch an iSCSI initiator that allows servers to perform diskless boots from storage-area networks without expensive and specialized host bus adapter (HBA) network cards. The company is also expected to...

Vendors target small, midsize firms at SNW event.(Storage Networking World in San Diego)
April 3, 2006... SEVERAL VENDORS at Storage Networking World in San Diego this week plan to unveil small, relatively inexpensive products that target small and midsize businesses. For example, Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. are unveiling a jointly developed...

Girding for seismic shifts.(Service oriented architecture)
April 3, 2006... The metaphor of IT being part of an organization's foundation is no longer apt; the 21st century enterprise is built with information, and the technology that enables its flow, embedded in every beam of the structure. And there are important...

Pulling together an SOA strategy: SOA is the most important concept yet for building business and IT alignment. But it requires a clear strategy--because it will change IT forever.(Service-oriented architecture)
April 3, 2006... The concept of service-oriented architecture has gained real steam among CIOs in the past year, promising a way to more quickly build and adapt software functionality to deliver new, more flexible business processes. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

The SOA toolbox: focus on the functions you need, not what to buy.(service-oriented architecture)
April 3, 2006... Mike Kronenwetter has big dreams for his service-oriented architecture: He wants it to align his IT efforts more closely with the needs of the business. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But Kronenwetter, vice president of technology management...

An SOA state of mind.(Service-oriented architecture)
April 3, 2006... Service-oriented architecture is not the next "rapid prototyping," "extreme programming" or other trendy IT development technique. Done right, it's a state of mind for your entire business. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] And it's one that's...

State workers warned of Florida data leak: sensitive employee data may have been compromised by offshore contractors.(NEWS)
April 3, 2006... Personal information of state employees in Florida may have been compromised after work on the state's People First payroll and human resources system was improperly subcontracted to one or more firms in India. About 108,000 current and...

Cognos updates BI suite.(Cognos Inc.)
April 3, 2006... Cognos Inc. last week brought out an updated version of the Cognos 8 business intelligence (BI) tool set, adding a new search capability and access to enterprise applications. Cognos 8.1.2 is the first major release of the Ottawa-based...

Microsoft appeals ruling in South Korea.(An International IT News Digest)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... MICROSOFT CORP. last week appealed a ruling by South Korea's antitrust regulators that would force the company to offer versions of Windows without its Media Player and MSN Messenger software. The appeal, filed in the Seoul High Court,...

Livedoor CEO promises new start after arrests.(Livedoor Co appoints Kozo Hiramatsu )(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... THE NEW CEO of Livedoor Co. is vowing to revive the beleaguered Internet company following the recent arrests of its founder and two other executives for alleged violations of Japanese securities laws. "We will rebuild our company and keep...

BMC buys Israeli firm for $150m.(BMC Software Inc.)(Identify Software Ltd.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... BMC SOFTWARE INC. last week said it has agreed to buy Identify Software Ltd., an application problem-resolution software vendor based here, for $150 million in cash. Houston-based BMC plans to make Identify Software the centerpiece of a...

SAP AG.(Increasing the workforce)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... SAP AG last week said it plans to more than quadruple the staff at its research and development facility in Shanghai by 2008. The workforce at SAP Labs China, which develops software for small and midsize businesses in Asia, Europe and North...

Toshiba Corp.(Briefly Noted)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Toshiba Corp. has won an intellectual property lawsuit in Tokyo District Court against the Japanese unit of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. Toshiba was awarded [yen]7.8 million ($66,000 U.S.) in damages plus an injunction barring Seoul-based Hynix...

Siemens AG.(EPCOS AG)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Siemens AG last week unloaded its remaining 12.5% stake in Munich-based electronic components maker Epcos AG for a total of about [euro]90 million ($108 million U.S.). A week earlier, Siemens sold its 18% stake in Infi-neon Technologies AG,...

Oracle bringing Fusion plan to users, exec says: Wookey also outlines road map for shipping acquired applications.(Q & A)(Interview)
April 3, 2006... As senior vice president of applications development at Oracle Corp., John Wookey faces the considerable task of crafting the vendor's next-generation suite of business software, dubbed Fusion. In an interview with Computerworld, Wookey talked...

Filling a void.(Column)
April 3, 2006... THE PROBLEM that arises when there's a big clamor over things that don't matter is that it tends to obscure things that do. Take the brouhaha over the recently announced contract under which the U.S. State Department is buying $13 million worth...

Making the best of bad situations.(business management.)(Column)
April 3, 2006... I HAD GIVEN myself 75 minutes to drive the 45 miles from Napa to Oakland. I could barely see the taillights of the car in front of me as rain pummeled the windshield. I was on my way to Mills College, where I was to be a guest lecturer...

A double standard on standards question.(READERS' LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 3, 2006... DON TENNANT'S editorial "Standard Procedure" [March 20] traffics in a standard rant by those peddling OpenDocument format "goodness and light": Opposing views are automatically specious, infirm and unsanctified, and those pushing those views...

Columnist was right about the CIO's role.(READERS' LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 3, 2006... I READ MARK Hall's column " CIOs (Should) Rule" [Feb. 20], and I couldn't have said it better myself. I was the CIO at an NYSE-listed company for eight years, reporting most of that time to the CEO. I am now the CEO of a small private company....

A maverick writes.(READERS' LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
April 3, 2006... I CAN'T REMEMBER the last time I took the time to respond to something I had read, but Mary K. Pratt's article on the challenges of managing mavericks was such an eye-opener, I felt compelled to write ["Managing Mavericks," Feb. 13]. Thank you...

Power struggle: increasing power demands in data centers are stressing both power distribution and cooling systems. Here's how IT managers are coping.(TECHNOLOGY)
April 3, 2006... WHEN Tom Roberts oversaw the construction of a 9,000-square-foot data center for Trinity Health, a group of 44 hospitals, he thought the infrastructure would last four or five years. A little more than three years later, he's looking at adding...

Bits to atoms (and atoms to bits): in MIT's Fab Lab, Neil Gershenfeld has already come up with $1 Internet nodes. Now he's looking toward fungible servers and personal fabrication.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)(Interview)
April 3, 2006... Neil Gershenfeld says we're on the threshold of the third digital revolution, one in which matter and information merge. He has kicked off the revolution in a fabrication laboratory, dubbed the Fab Lab, at MIT, where he's the director of the...

Robots down on the farm.(A STROLL THROUGH THE TECHNOLOGY LANDSCAPE)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ROBOTS ARE CONTINUING to make inroads into the last bastion of labor-intensive industry--farming and horticulture. In England, University of Warwick researchers are working on a number of robotics and automation products that could vastly...

Georgia tech plots path to carbon-based electronic devices.(Georgia Institute of Technology)
April 3, 2006... GRAPHITE, THE MATERIAL that gives pencils their marking ability, could be the basis for a new class of nanometer-scale electronic devices that have the attractive properties of carbon nanotubes but could be produced using established...

Rationalist roots.(Gottfried Leibniz' works)
April 3, 2006... The ancient Indian mathematician Pingala is credited with the first known description of a binary numeral system in the third century BC (coinciding with his discovery of the concept of zero). However, it was Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th...

Using data we have to improve data we get: our manager plans to justify his long budget wish list by using data from tools he has already deployed.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)(Column)
April 3, 2006... IT'S BUDGET time, and my work is cut out for me. Let's face it: As a security manager in the IT department of a company that isn't in the security field, I'm not exactly generating revenue. Most of the budget goes to the engineers who make the...

Security bookshelf.(SECURITY LOG)(Brief article)(Book review)
April 3, 2006... How to Break Web Software: Functional and Security Testing of Web Applications and Web Services, by Mike Andrews and James A. Whittaker (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006). With most vendors making their applications available via the Web, this...

Trojan horse sellers sentenced.(SECURITY LOG)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... An Israeli couple convicted of developing and selling a Trojan horse program have both been sentenced. Ruth Brier-Haephrati was sentenced to four years in prison, and her husband, Michael Haephrati, to two. The couple sold the program to...

Germany puts teeth in piracy law.(SECURITY LOG)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Under new legislation in Germany, people convicted of downloading movies and music for private use could face penalties of up to two years in prison; those who download movies for commercial use could face up to five years. The new law takes...

Greenplum to offer database apps.(Greenplum Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Greenplum Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., has created a Web portal to offer its open-source and proprietary database applications to businesses for trial use and testing. Available on the newly launched Bizgres Network (http://bgn.greenplum.com) are...

IAnywhere releases BlackBerry software.(Anywhere Solutions Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Dublin, Calif.-based Anywhere Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Sybase Inc., has rolled out Afaria 5.4 for managing Black-Berry handheld devices from Research In Motion Ltd. Afaria 5.4 allows a company to manage BlackBerry, Windows Mobile Pocket...

Symbol offers mesh networking.(Symbol Technologies Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Symbol Technologies Inc. has unveiled new wireless network infrastructure improvements, including mesh networking. Mesh networking with Holtsville, N.Y.-based Symbol's new 5131 access points allows companies to add access points for Wi-Fi...

It all begins with endpoints.(network endpoints.)
April 3, 2006... THE LOWLY ENDPOINT has long been the Rodney Dangerfield of networking, getting no respect while shouldering critical tasks in providing services. But all that anonymity is becoming history as the demands of more robust services push the...

From build to buy: Freddie Mac wrestles with the cultural challenges of a huge software shift.(MANAGEMENT)(Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.)
April 3, 2006... "Change" is the operative word at Freddie Mac these days. Following an accounting scandal in which the McLean, Va.-based mortgage purchaser understated its earnings by almost $5 billion between 2000 and 2002, Freddie Mac, formally known as...

Earned value management: what it is, how it works and why your projects need it.(MANAGEMENT)(Column)
April 3, 2006... If YOUR IT shop isn't using earned value management, you may want to start thinking about it. EVM, which has its roots in the U.S. Department of Defense, is moving into private industry. More important, it's coming to IT. When used...

It's about trust: IT auditors want to see their clients succeed.(WHO'S WHO IN IT)(Interview)
April 3, 2006... How long have you been in IT? Prior to becoming an IT auditor, I held various positions in IT over 13 years, from programmer to systems programmer, with my last position being a data center manager. I was fortunate to receive a broad exposure...

Winning the 3-Legged Race: When Business and Technology Run Together.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 3, 2006... Winning the 3-Legged Race: When Business and Technology Run Together, by Faisal Hoque, V. Sambamurthy, Robert Zmud, Tom Trainer and Carl Wilson (Prentice Hall, 256 pages, $27.99). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IF YOU WANT a book that is...

Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 3, 2006... Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out, by Douglas Rushkoff (HarperCollins, 336 pages, $23.95). I'VE ALWAYS despised cliches and prefabricated expressions in business. And "think outside the box" is right at the top (or is it...

IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step: Unlocking the Business Value of Technology.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 3, 2006... IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step: Unlocking the Business Value of Technology, by Bryan Maizlish and Robert Handler (John Wiley & Sons, 400 pages, $49.95). ALTHOUGH MOUNTAINS of books have been written about IT management and even...

The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage.(Brief article)(Book review)
April 3, 2006... The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage, by Peter Navarro (Wharton School Publishing, 272 pages, $27.99). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WELL-RUN BUSINESSES like General Electric Co. manage to prosper...

DiamondCluster hires new partner.(EXEC TRACK)(Chris C. O'Brien)(DiamondCluster International Inc.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... CHRIS C. O'BRIEN, former CIO for the city of Chicago, has been named a partner in the public-sector practice of IT consulting firm DiamondCluster International Inc. O'Brien has been a member of Mayor Richard M. Daley's cabinet for the past six...

Ingram named CIO at Argonaut Group.(EXEC TRACK)(Robert C. Ingram III )(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... ROBERT C. INGRAM III was named senior vice president and CIO, a new post, at Argonaut Group Inc., a San Antonio-based national insurance underwriter. He will report to CEO Mark E. Watson III. Ingram previously was a director at IBM and an...

Vitesse chooses ho, Browne for IT Posts.(EXEC TRACK)(Vitesse Semiconductor Corp.)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Vitesse Semiconductor Corp., a Camarillo, Calif.-based supplier of Ethernet products to resellers, announced the appointments of CHI FAI HO as chief technology officer and PAUL BROWNE as vice president of engineering for its Ethernet products...

Ventresca Joins Charles River Labs.(EXEC TRACK)(Charles River Laboratories International Inc.)(Nicholas Ventresca)(Brief article)
April 3, 2006... Charles River Laboratories International Inc., a Wilmington, Mass.-based maker of systems to facilitate the pharmaceutical development process, has appointed NICHOLAS VENTRESCA corporate senior vice president and CIO. Prior to joining Charles...

Learning with peers.(MANAGEMENT)(Column)
April 3, 2006... IF YOU WANT TO GROW as a leader or help others to become leaders, it's important to think carefully about the process of learning. Have you ever been in a great conversation and been surprised by something you said--whether it was your own...

Outsourcing market now favors multisourcing, CIO says.(Nissan North America Inc.'s Robert Greenberg)(Interview)
April 3, 2006... Nissan North America CIO Robert Greenberg spoke with Computerworld last week about the new IT management strategy he's implementing. Excerpts from that interview follow: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What's the direction that you've set for...

Patent pain.(Microsoft Corp. )(Column)
April 3, 2006... THIS is the way the real world works: A vendor creates a product that happens to use someone else's patented invention without permission. We buy the product. The patent holder sues the vendor. A jury decides that the product infringes the...

No half measures here.(Information Technology security pilot fish)
April 3, 2006... This user's PC is going haywire. Every time she tries to type, the cursor jumps around the screen. Rebooting doesn't help, and neither does swapping out the keyboard. "She didn't use the mouse much, but I noticed that when I did, the pointer...

Windows ups appeal of Macs: XP support makes Apple's hardware a more viable choice, say IT managers.(NEWS)
April 10, 2006... Apple Computer Inc.'s development of software that lets Intel-based Macintosh systems run Windows XP natively met with the approval of several Mac-friendly IT managers, who said last week that Apple's embrace of Microsoft's operating system...

New database rejects eligible Calif. voters: troubled system built to comply with federal law.(NEWS)
April 10, 2006... California's new voter registration database--whose creation the federal government once called a model for other states--may prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots in a June 6 statewide election, officials fear. Since...

Census counts itself as big handheld user: feds will roll out 500,000 devices at a cost of $600m.(NEWS)(U.S. Census Bureau )
April 10, 2006... Federal census takers will use wireless handheld computers instead of pens and paper when they next hit the streets in 2010, provided that a $600 million project designed to automate the collection of census data goes as planned. The U.S....

Microsoft to ship IE patch on Tuesday.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Microsoft Corp. is set to release five security patches tomorrow, including a fix for an Internet Explorer bug that hackers have been exploiting during the past two weeks. Microsoft will also offer fixes for three bugs in Windows and another...

SAP slowly enters hosted app business.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... SAP AG will gradually expand its hosted software business, as long as it doesn't "cannibalize" its enterprise software business, CEO Henning Kagermann told reporters last week. Kagermann said SAP will work to keep up with the on-demand business...

Turbolinux buys maker of PHP tools.(AT DEADLINE)(Zend Japan Ltd)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Linux operating system supplier Turbolinux Inc. has agreed to buy a 90% stake in Zend Japan Ltd., a maker of tools based on the PHP scripting language. Turbolinux bought the stake from Open Source Japan Ltd., Zend's parent company, with a view...

Hours-long outage affects MSN search.(AT DEADLINE)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Microsoft Corp.'s MSN search engine, the third most popular in the U.S., suffered an hours-long outage late last week as queries returned an error message instead of Web page results. The outage began around 8:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time last...

Multisourcing adds to IT management load: disciplined approach is needed to control multiple outsourcing vendors.(NEWS)
April 10, 2006... NONE OF the IT managers in the audience at a Gartner Inc. outsourcing conference here last week seemed to bat an eye when they were warned that a lack of discipline in managing multisourcing relationships could result in "large-scale business...

IT execs criticize storage pricing models: they contend that software, services and equipment costs are inflated.(NEWS)(Discussion)
April 10, 2006... Several IT officials expressed their disdain for inflated storage costs--whether equipment, management software or maintenance--during a panel discussion at Storage Networking World here last week. Todd Thomas, CIO of Austin Radiological...

IBM downplays industry pricing, EMC/Intel pact.(Q & A)(International Business Machines Corp.)(Interview)
April 10, 2006... IBM officials expressed little concern that the company's storage sales to small and midsize businesses (SMB) will be hurt by Intel Corp.'s agreement to resell EMC Corp. systems, announced at last week's Storage Networking World conference...

Intel agrees to resell EMC arrays.(NEWS)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... EMC CORP. said that Intel Corp. has agreed to resell its low-end storage array through its cadre of value-added resellers. Intel said the Intel R212PP Storage System, based on EMC's Clariion AX150 and AX150i arrays, is expected to be...

Microsoft purchases BI tool maker.(BRIEFS)(ProClarity Corp)(Brief article)
April 10, 2006... Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire ProClarity Corp., a maker of business analysis and visualization software for culling information from Microsoft SQL Server and exposing it to business users. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft...

Sun updates its analytics software.(BRIEFS)(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
April 10, 2006... Sun Microsystems Inc. has rolled out an upgraded version of its business analytics software for storage. Version 5.0 of Sun's StorageTek Business Analytics system is based on technology gained last year from the company's $4.1 billion...