Computerworld articles from October 2003

Computerworld archives from October 2003

Pentagon moves on massive HR system--slowly: prime contractor chosen for $320M project two years after purchase of PeopleSoft apps.(In Depth)
October 6, 2003... More than two years after it chose PeopleSoft Inc.'s software for a massive human resources system, the U.S. Department of Defense is finally ready to start development work on the $320 million-plus project. But it will take another four years...

Cisco reiterates WLAN threat: attack tool targets authentication code; long passwords urged.(Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol algorithm )
October 6, 2003... Cisco Systems Inc. last week said it plans to issue a new--and better publicized--warning about a security threat to its user authentication technology for wireless LANs, after it was told that a tool for attacking the software would be...

IBM hosting goes on-demand: remote data center service takes ASP tack; offshore is an option.
October 6, 2003... A plan unveiled by IBM last week may ultimately help make the location of a corporate data center largely irrelevant, even allowing for data centers that are outsourced offshore. IBM has broadened its remote Virtual Server Services, which...

QuickPoll results.(Online)
October 6, 2003... Is the Decay of Code Inevitable? DEVELOPMENT: Developers often want to rewrite code that they are given to maintain. Maybe this practice should be required. * 41717 It's All in the Interoperability STORAGE: The CEO of The Storage...

IBM makes cuts at IT services unit.(At Deadline)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... IBM said that about 720 U.S. workers at its IT services unit are being laid off as part of a reassessment of the operation's staffing and skill needs. The cutback at IBM Global Services follows a similar layoff that was announced late last...

Siebel expects Q3 loss, lower sales.(At Deadline)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... CRM software vendor Siebel Systems Inc. said it expects to report a loss of about $60 million for the third quarter on revenue of about $320 million. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company said it would be profitable if not for onetime expenses,...

Microsoft targets small businesses.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Microsoft Corp. this week plans to release small-business software bundles that are built around Windows Server 2003 and tailored to companies with fewer than 100 workers and 50 PCs. The Windows Small Business Server 2003 offering includes a...

HP tries to lure Sun users to Linux.(At Deadline)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Hewlett-Packard Co. announced a program aimed at converting users of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Unix servers to Linux systems. HP said it will offer users $25,000 worth of assessment, porting and migration services at no cost.

Data problems thwart effort to count H-1Bs: systems lack ability to share information.(News)
October 6, 2003... FEDERAL OFFICIALS don't know how many H-1B visa holders are working in the U.S. because the two systems that collect critical data on visa holders aren't integrated. That problem was detailed in a long-awaited General Accounting Office...

HP rolls out stackable Gigabit Ethernet switches.(HP ProCurve switches)
October 6, 2003... Hewlett-Packard Co. today will announce several networking products, including a pair of stackable edge switches that it said can support Gigabit Ethernet transmission speeds. The new HP ProCurve switches are priced at about $100 per port,...

CIOs holding on to their jobs longer: weak economy, push for stability reduce turnover for execs.(News)
October 6, 2003... As companies finalize their IT budgets for next year, some CIOs are finding themselves eyeing their calendars for an altogether different reason: to mark the increasing amount of time they're spending at their current jobs. Consulting firm...

SCO threatens to revoke SGI's Unix license rights: users say they don't see a reason to be concerned.(News)
October 6, 2003... Add Silicon Graphics Inc. to the list of technology companies that have been dragged into The SCO Group Inc.'s Unix copyright infringement dispute. In an Aug. 13 letter addressed to SGI's legal department and released to the media last...

Sun predicts big loss, revises Q4.(2003)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Sun Microsystems Inc. said it will report a first-quarter loss that's larger than Wall Street analysts had forecast as a result of "intense" competition. The loss will trigger a $1.05 billion tax charge, which Sun is applying to the results for...

Best Buy, EDS sign help desk contract.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. said it has signed a five-year contract to outsource help desk and IT problem management operations for its stores and corporate offices to Electronic Data Systems Corp. in Plano, Texas. The value of the deal...

Verizon offers to buy out managers.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... New York-based Verizon Communications said it's offering a voluntary buyout deal to virtually all of its 74,000 management workers, including 9,300 people in IT. A Verizon spokeswoman predicted that several thousand employees will accept the...

IBM said it has signed a 10-year, $2.56 billion outsourcing deal with Nordea AB, a Stockholm-based bank.(Short Takes)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... IBM said it has signed a 10-year, $2.56 billion outsourcing deal with NORDEA AB, a Stockholm-based bank. About 900 of Nordea's 2,900 IT workers will be shifted to an IBM-run joint venture....

Agile Software Corp. has bought Tradec Inc., a maker of manufacturing cost management tools.(Short Takes)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... AGILE SOFTWARE CORP. has bought TRADEC INC., a maker of manufacturing cost management tools. Both companies are based in San Jose.

Keeping users off-line is the way to secure ...(On The Mark)
October 6, 2003... ... your network, jokes Stacey Lum of InfoExpress Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. While noting the impracticality of the idea, the CEO of the 10-year-old boutique security vendor does get his hackles up because companies seldom enforce the few...

Marimba upgrades tool to track app use.(Software Usage Solution 6.0)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Marimba Inc. today will announce an upgraded application-tracking tool that can measure how often end users run the programs installed on their systems. Like similar products from rival vendors, the beefed-up tool is designed to help IT...

Iron Mountain service assesses e-mail retention policies, systems: targets financial firms facing need to meet SEC rules.(Financial Focus)
October 6, 2003... IRON MOUNTAIN INC. last week announced a consulting service aimed at helping financial services firms comply with increasing pressure from regulatory agencies to store internal and external electronic correspondence. Boston-based Iron...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
October 6, 2003... In our Sept. 29 Field Report titled "Growing Into a Data Center," the name of the CEO of Occupational Health + Rehabilitation Inc. was Misspelled. His name is John Garbarino.

EMC releases NAS devices tied to its midrange arrays: gateway products support integration of network-attached storage, SANs.(News; EMC NS600GS; EMC NS600G; EMC NS600S)
October 6, 2003... EMC Corp. announced last week a pair of network-attached storage (NAS) devices that connect to its midrange Clariion disk arrays for integration with systems on storage-area networks (SAN). The Hopkinton, Mass.-based company also introduced...

IBM acquires app porting business.(from Spector 7)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... IBM said it has acquired an application porting services business focused on its Linux and Unix servers from Austin-based Sector7 USA Inc. for an undisclosed price. The deal included most of Sector7's assets and the intellectual property for...

Microsoft agrees to settle lawsuit.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Microsoft Corp. said it has agreed to pay a total of about $10.5 million to settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit involving users that bought Windows directly from the company. The settlement deal needs to be approved by a U.S. District Court...

Nortel, Solectron alter product deal.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Nortel Networks Ltd. and Solectron Corp. said they have revised a 3-year-old contract under which Milpitas, Calif.-based Solectron manufactures products for Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel. The deal, which was due to expire next year, was...

Cassatt Corp.(Short Takes)
October 6, 2003... CASSATT CORP., a Menlo Park, Calif.-based start-up headed by former BEA Systems Inc. CEO Bill Coleman, plans to offer a set of autonomic computing tools....

The OPENSSL project.(Short Takes)
October 6, 2003... THE OPENSSL PROJECT said it has patched three security holes in its open-source version of the Secure Sockets Layer protocol.

Laws, concern for corporate image make privacy a priority: failure to keep data private could put companies in jeopardy on several fronts.(News; PrivacyCon 2003 conference )
October 6, 2003... REGULATORY requirements and the need to protect corporate reputations are making it crucial for companies to implement comprehensive data privacy programs, said users at the PrivacyCon 2003 conference here last week. A failure to do so...

DHS initiates real-time cybersituation project: feds look for immediate security incident data.(National Cyber Security Division working with SRI International, Symantec Corp. and Computer Associates International Inc.)(and related article)
October 6, 2003... The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division is spearheading an aggressive new project to create a real-time cybersituation-awareness system, a senior DHS official said last week. The aim of the system is to provide a...

InfraStruXure[TM] is the key to stronger NCPI.(network-critical physical infrastructure )
October 6, 2003... APC InfraStruXure[TM] architecture is the industry's new benchmark for on-demand network-critical physical infrastructure (NCPI). The foundation of IT networks, NCPI consists of power, power distribution, racks, cabling, cable distribution,...

Fired @stake CTO says Microsoft critique was 'business as usual': geer defends decision to involve CCIA in security report's release.(Q&A)(Dan Geer)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... Dan Geer was fired from his job as chief technology officer at @stake Inc. on Sept. 25, one day after he and six other security researchers released a report that criticized Microsoft Corp.'s dominance of the software industry as a fundamental...

Hyperion sets plan to meld its software with Brio's data tools.(News)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Hyperion Solutions Corp., which expects to complete a buyout of struggling Brig Software Inc. on Oct. 16, last week said it plans to begin delivering integration hooks between its line of data analysis products and Brig's query and reporting...

Cisco, Huawei look to Settle software-copying lawsuit: Cisco's claims put on hold pending review of product changes.(News)
October 6, 2003... Cisco Systems Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co. last week announced an agreement that moves them toward a settlement of a lawsuit Cisco filed in January charging Huawei with pirating its internetworking software and infringing on at least five...

Palm's tungsten device adds bluetooth, widescreen support.(On The Move)(Palm Tungsten T3)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Palm Inc. last week introduced three handheld devices, including a high-end model with Bluetooth short-range wireless capabilities and a 320-by-480-dpi color screen that can be used in either vertical or horizontal mode. Milpitas,...

Credibility at stake.(Opinion)(Column)
October 6, 2003... ANOTHER REPORT on Microsoft made front-page news last week, once again raising credibility questions and controversy. This time, the story [Anti-Microsoft Security Report Mired in Politics," QuickLink 41727] started out being about one thing--a...

Cleaning up the kingdom of content.(Opinion)
October 6, 2003... CONTENT may be king, but if so, the kingdom is a royal mess. Companies are bogged down trying to meld information from disparate departments, then pushing it through a cumbersome approval process only to be stymied by a publishing routine...

A new era of living data is coming.(Opinion)(Column)
October 6, 2003... RESEARCH being conducted in conjunction with the Managing the Information Resource Program at UCLA indicates that we are a mere 10 years away from the day when every molecule on this planet could be assigned an IP address. Such a possibility...

Readers reject, defend Rogue IT projects.(Reader's Letters)
October 6, 2003... ROGUE PROJECTS ["Dealing With Rogue IT." QuickLink 40666] are necessary. I've been part of a few, and a small number that I worked on are still in use alter many years. IT managers tend to plan projects to death, sometimes planning until the...

Moving toward meltdown: ultradense 1U and blade server racks are blazingly fast--and amazingly hot. Keeping them from burning up is more complicated than you might think.(Technology)
October 6, 2003... JOHN SAWYER manages data centers for corporate clients every day. His company, Johnson Controls Inc., has plenty of experience in data center design and management. Nonetheless, the Milwaukee-based company's carefully designed and planned data...

Weighing the change to blades: new advances are extending the range of applications for blade servers, but in many situations, a traditional server may still be the best choice.(Technology)
October 6, 2003... AS IBM, HEWLETT-PACKARD CO. and other system vendors push to market ever more powerful and lower-cost blade servers, evidence is mounting that these ultracompact servers may be ready to move beyond traditional applications such as Web server...

Cruise line changes BI tack: web-based reporting system promises returns in sales, marketing and management.(Case Study)(Holland America Line Inc.)
October 6, 2003... IN AN ATTEMPT TO NAVIGATE rough economic seas, Holland America Line Inc. is trading its cumbersome old big-iron-based business intelligence reporting system for a Web-based one that end users can more easily and flexibly access. The move...

Aspect-oriented programming.(Quick Study)
October 6, 2003... DEFINITION Aspect-oriented programming is a new way of creating common or similar functionality needed by different parts of a program. Programmers describe needed behavior in modules called aspects and then rely on specialized AOP...

Mop-up continues in worm aftermath: without automated tools in place, patch and virus signature update compliance become increasingly difficult to manage.(Security Manager's Journal)
October 6, 2003... IT HAS BEEN MORE than a month since the Blaster worm hit, and my company is still having problems. The main one is that we have thousands of desktops and my security team and I don't have a strong and fully automated way to identify and track...

Security bookshelf.(Incident Response and Computer Forensics, Second Edition)(Book Review)
October 6, 2003... Incident Response and Computer Forensics, Second Edition, by Chris Prosise, Kevin Mandia and Matt Pepe; McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003. The most difficult aspect of an intrusion investigation is the analysis of the forensic evidence....

Layer 7 offers web services security.(Security Log)(SecureSpan Solution products including SecureSpan Gateway)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Start-up Layer 7 Technologies Inc. has introduced SecureSpan Solution, a set of products for securing and connecting Web services that includes a gateway appliance, a software policy manager and an agent technology. SecureSpan Gateway...

IT spending: the CFOs strike back.(Technology)
October 6, 2003... IN 2000, the CIO Magazine Tech Poll reported a 22% annual growth rate in IT budgets. The same poll has recorded growth rates below 2% from January 2002 to the present. For the past two years, CIOs have persistently predicted a resurgence...

Outsourcing BI with control: whether you choose to farm out all or part of your Business Intelligence, you need to make sure the quality of your data won't suffer.(Management)
October 6, 2003... BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE--the collection and analysis of a company's most valuable data--seems an unlikely task to farm out to contractors. But some companies are doing exactly that. Why? Because they Lack the in-house skills needed to perform...

Agriculture cultivating e-business: agribusiness is using IT to track key products and make the supply chain more efficient.(Management)(Industry Overview)
October 6, 2003... THE AGRIBUSINESS industry hasn't been an IT leader, but it's making up for lost time with an ambitious effort to harness the efficiencies of e-business. More than 60 leading agricultural companies recently created an integrated database of...

Law firms open up: traditionally secretive, law firms are using extranets to give clients access to documents and a window into their operations.(Management)(and related article)(Industry Overview)
October 6, 2003... LOSING A CLIENT IS ONE of the costliest mistakes a law firm can make. So a growing number of them are using extranets as a collaborative tool to offer their best clients the best service and keep them in the fold. This is a big change in...

Coping with outages: this electric utility hopes IT will improve its response to blackouts and boost customer service from rock-bottom levels.(Management)(Nstar in Massachusetts)(and related article)
October 6, 2003... NSTAR, the largest investor-owned utility in Massachusetts, hopes two IT projects will help it achieve a very aggressive goal: to boost its customer-service rankings into the top 25% of Eastern U.S. power providers over the next five years,...

New CIO at the trading desk.(Q&A)(Barclays Capital PLC's Nancy Gloor)(Interview)
October 6, 2003... Barclays Capital PLC, the 6-year-old investment banking division of London-based Barclays Bank PLC, competes with some very large and experienced old-time financiers for a chunk of the trillions of dollars in the worldwide market for...

Banks' IT spending to hit $60b in '07.(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
October 6, 2003... IT spending in the banking industry will reach $60 billion in 2007 as banks continue their efforts to cut costs and increase revenue, according to an IDC survey of 27 U.S. banks. Respondents said they will devote most of their IT spending...

Nordson names Peet new CIO.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Nordson Corp. lest week appointed Shelly M. Pest as CIO at the Westlake, Ohio-based company. She joins Nordson following a 13-year career at TRW Inc. in Cleveland, where she most recently was director of information services. Pest holds degrees...

Entergy, Keane sign $12.3m deal.(Entergy Solutions Ltd.)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Keane Inc., an IT consulting firm in Boston, has signed a $12.3 million, five-year outsourcing contract with Entergy Solutions Ltd., a subsidiary of Entergy Corp., an $8 billion New Orleans-based energy services company. Keane will support...

Stop 'gathering' IT requirements.(Management)
October 6, 2003... OVER THE YEARS, I've come to the conclusion that one of the most destructive notions circulating inside technical groups involves "gathering requirements." For decades, virtually everyone in the industry has accepted that the first phase of...

IT careers: the Next Generation Data Center.(Advertising Supplement)
October 6, 2003... There was a time when data warehousing and data centers were primarily a hardware issue or deep research embedded within data management. Not so with the Next Generation Data Center, where data mining and statistics come out of the research...

Ugly screens.(Frankly Speaking)(Column)
October 6, 2003... THERE ARE SOME UGLY SCREENS in your applications. Your users know them all too well. They're the screens where users have to copy information with a pencil and paper, or where one wrong keystroke will wipe out 15 minutes of work, or where the...

Logging out the hard way.(Shark Tank)
October 6, 2003... This control-freak IT manager just has to have the same rights that his mainframe programmers and operators have. Then one day, the entire transaction system vanishes suddenly for 400 users. "Even stranger, a crisis had occurred, and the boss...

Microsoft CEO promises better 'patch experience': Ballmer details plan for streamlined patch management, training.
October 13, 2003... During a keynote speech at last week's Microsoft World wide Partner Conference here, Steve Ballmer didn't shy away from discussing the security woes that have beset his company and its customers. On the contrary, Microsoft Corp.'s CEO...

Military orders suppliers to use RFID technology: radio frequency tags required on pallets, cases by start of 2005.(News)
October 13, 2003... The U.S. Department of Defense last week said it will require all of its suppliers to put radio frequency identification tags on their shipping pallets and cases by January 2005, a mandate that likely will have an even bigger impact than a...

QuickPoll Results.
October 13, 2003... QuickPoll results. How much do you rely on analyst reports before making major IT decisions? Not much 46.6% A lot 15.8% Some 37.6% Take this week's QuickPoll at www.computerworld.com. Note: table...

Market research providers confront credibility concerns; IT chiefs say they want ethics policies and disclosures stated more clearly.(News)(Industry Overview)
October 13, 2003... RECENTLY PUBLISHED reports that have prompted questions about the credibility of some market research firms have spurred two of the biggest names in the field to make substantial changes to their ethics and disclosure policies. And that's...

Microsoft tests reporting software.(At Deadline)
October 13, 2003... Microsoft Corp. released the first public beta-test version of software designed to add reporting capabilities to its SQL Server 2000 database. The new technology, called SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, will be marketed as an add-on to the...

Hitachi ugrades high-end arrays.(At Deadline)
October 13, 2003... Hitachi Data Systems Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif., announced upgrades of its two high-end disk array lines, including the addition of software that lets its Lightning 9900V devices mimic the WORM (write once, read many) capabilities of optical...

Short takes.(At Deadline)(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... HEWLETT-PACKARD CO. CEO Carly Fiorina was named to a committee that will advise incoming California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on political appointments.... COREL CORP. laid off 18% of its workforce, or about 125 people. The cuts came two...

Correction.(News)(Correction Notice)
October 13, 2003... An error was discovered in a story on page 20 in this week's issue ("Microsoft Releases Small-Business Bundles") after that page had already gone to press. The Fischer Group spent $20,000 in connection with its original installation of...

Fujitsu unveils new sparc chips, systems ...(On the mark)
October 13, 2003... ... tomorrow at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose. The company will announce that it has two more versions of its Sparc V CPU in the pipeline. The new chips are expected to bump processing speed for the RISC microprocessor from the current...

IBM extends Tivoli Management to zSeries.(News)
October 13, 2003... IBM today will announce that Tivoli systems management technology is being extended to its zSeries mainframe management products. This extension has become necessary partly because some companies are moving back to centralized computing,...

Microsoft extends Java support plan.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. announced a deal that lets Microsoft continue supporting its Java virtual machine software through next September, nine months longer than originally planned. The companies said the deal is designed to...

SAP, PeopleSoft boost Q3 forecasts.(2003)
October 13, 2003... Business applications rivals SAP AB and PeopleSoft Inc. both said their third-quarter financial results will be better than expected. SAP said its success rate at closing sales improved during the quarter, although the company noted that its...

Oracle announces low-end database.(Oracle Standard Edition One )(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Oracle Corp. released an entry-level version of its Oracle Database log software aimed at departmental use as well as small and midsize companies. The Oracle Standard Edition One database runs on single-processor servers and costs $5,995 for an...

SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, N.C., said it's buying Marketmax Inc. a Wakefield, Mass.-based vendor.(Short Takes)(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... SAS INSTITUTE INC. in Cary, N.C., said it's buying MARKETMAX INC. a Wakefield, Mass.-based vendor of retail planning and data analysis applications...

MIT.(Short Takes)(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... MIT named Jerrold Grochow as its vice president of information systems and technology, effective Nov. 1.

Siebel bids to broaden use of its CRM software: upgrades integration tools, plans new release of applications for next spring.(News)
October 13, 2003... FACED WITH a continuing decline in revenue, CRM software vendor Siebel Systems Inc. last week tried to soothe users by announcing a planned upgrade of its applications and further moves to simplify the process of integrating its products with...

HP e3000 users are facing tough migration choices: software vendors have varied plans for porting MPE apps to new platforms.(News)
October 13, 2003... HEWLETT-Packard Co.'s decision to end support of its HP e3000 system is forcing users such as Greg Brown, IT manager at Peerless Pump Co., to make some very difficult decisions affecting his entire IT infrastructure. The HP e3000 runs a...

Scare tactics no longer guarantee security funding.(News)
October 13, 2003... Chief security officers used to be able to get the funding they wanted for critical IT security projects by using newspaper clippings detailing security failures that cost other companies millions of dollars. Those were the good old days,...

Three CA execs quit after inquiry.
October 13, 2003... Computer Associates International Inc. said its chief financial officer and two other finance executives are leaving after a preliminary investigation into the software vendor's past accounting practices. CA said it asked the executives to...

Jury ruling spurs browser changes.
October 13, 2003... Microsoft Corp. said it's making "minor changes" to its Internet Explorer Web browser after a U.S. District Court jury ruled against it in a patent infringement suit filed by Chicago-based Eolas Technologies Inc. and the University of...

Sybase upgrades enterprise database.
October 13, 2003... Sybase Inc. announced an upgrade of its enterprise-class database software that includes new self-management capabilities, performance improvements and expanded support for Web services and XML. Dublin, Calif.-based Sybase said the Adaptive...

Microsoft.(Short Takes)
October 13, 2003... MICROSOFT was awarded a patent for an instant messaging feature that alerts end users when other people are typing messages to them..

Information Builders Inc.(Short Takes)
October 13, 2003... INFORMATION BUILDERS INC.'s iWay Software Inc. unit in New York said it's buying the software adapter business of Actional Corp. in Mountain View, Calif.

BEA pitches shared security services model; middleware allows delegation of security, access-control management functions.(News)
October 13, 2003... BEA SYSTEMS INC. this week will roll out middleware technology aimed at helping companies build a shared security infrastructure for authenticating, authorizing and auditing user access to both Web-based and legacy applications. The...

Microsoft unveils its plans for Web services management packs; software maker to add set of modules to Microsoft Operations Manager 2004.(News)
October 13, 2003... MICROSOFT CORP. disclosed last week that the next version of its operations management software will introduce a set of packages to monitor Web services. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2004, due next summer, will include an end-to-end...

Microsoft releases small-business bundles; upgrades are based on windows server 2003; early adopters focus on added collaboration tools.(News)
October 13, 2003... Microsoft Corp. last week released two versions of its software bundle for small businesses, combining Windows Server 2003 with a variety of its other server-level products. The Windows Small Business Server 2003 package will be sold in...