InfoWorld articles from December 2005

InfoWorld archives from December 2005

Data management - From better databases to smarter search engines, 2005 was a good year for data management.(Product/service evaluation)
December 19, 2005... By InfoWorld Test Center staff In 2005, the big news in databases was the long-awaited launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, an extreme makeover that aims to meet the demands of even the largest mission-critical applications. The year also...

Hardware - Multicore processors and x64 supercharged servers over the past year.(Product/service evaluation)
December 19, 2005... By InfoWorld Test Center staff The past year was great for server hardware, fueled by x64 and multicore processors. The cream of the crop included the Power5-based IBM eServers, the Opteron-based HP ProLiant DL585, and Sun Galaxy...

The Year in Reviews - A compendium of every product review -- all 309 of them -- conducted by the InfoWorld Test Center in 2005.
December 19, 2005... By InfoWorld Test Center staff Tech budgets zigzagged between mundane maintenance projects and bet- the-business initiatives in 2005, as more IT managers wore both support and strategy hats. This was a year when locking down systems and...

2005's top 10 moments in IT - A look at the major events of the year.
December 19, 2005... For every trend there's a defining moment. This year had more than its share of watershed events that will have lasting impact on enterprise IT. Here's our look back at 2005's wild mix of earth-shakers and underreported occurrences: ...

VC firms spot enterprise trends - Talk to the money men, and they'll tell you software as a service and open source are all the rage.(venture capital companies)
December 19, 2005... If you want to find out what's hot for the enterprise, follow the money: the venture capital money, that is. Interest in old-school business models and applications has waned, but startups that offer enterprises innovative, secure solutions...

Siebel sees components - Siebel Component Assembly breaks up CRM for deployment on BEA WebLogic Server 9.0.(Siebel Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
December 19, 2005... Ever since the web services trend gathered steam, enterprise application vendors, beginning with SAP, have promised to componentize their sprawling ERP, CRM, and SCM (supply chain management) offerings into services that can be deployed...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Tech reviews for the holidays - Pour yourself some eggnog and curl up with a year's worth of Test Center wisdom.(Editorial)
December 19, 2005... Even IT takes a holiday now and then. Same goes for the InfoWorld staff, which chills out by taking a one-week break following the publication of this, our 51st and final issue of the year. But before we bid adieu to 2005, we'd like to...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: High tech goes to heck - The dumb, dumber, and dumberest things of 2005.(Column)
December 19, 2005... Yes, it's that time of year: when we recognize all that is twisted and unholy in the world of high tech. Welcome to the third annual GUI Awards, for Greed, Underhandedness, and Imbecility. It's just like the MTV Music Video Awards, only...

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Show me the love, forever - Vendors must change how they deliver "the customer experience".
December 19, 2005... IDC is reporting that staffing of the "customer experience" function at major IT vendors will grow by more than 40 percent per year through 2008. Nice euphemism. I think what they really mean is "customer love"' teams -- the people who go in...

STORAGE INSIDER: Dreaming of holographic storage - More than figments of light, this technology has the potential to be disruptive -- and useful.(Column)
December 19, 2005... Let's explore a new storage technology that's finally becoming more reality than dream: holographic storage. You've probably heard of this fascinating technology for many years, but for all the hype, vendors had little to show until now: By...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Prepare for Microsoft's next circle of doom and salvation - Redmond's Client Protection suite may give you a scare, but consider the source.
December 19, 2005... The circle opens as I'm helping a client sort through computers and books he intends to donate to an international charity. We get to talking about Microsoft's new Client Protection suite, an amalgam of Windows Live Safety Center and Windows...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: How will Dell offset the loss of Intel's generosity? Dell's change of game plan signals the end is near for Intel's boosting of PC makers' margins.
December 19, 2005... By now, we should be enjoying a true commodity market in which the pricing trends of x86 CPUs track those of other PC components and semiconductors. Today, we're celebrating the $500 PC, even though economic forces should have that price...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: The two-way media Web - Hollywood's old producers- and-consumers model is stifling the potential of digital media.(Column)
December 19, 2005... For a blog entry this week, I wanted to quote an interesting remark by Iona CTO Eric Newcomer on how traditional distributed computing differs from XML-based Web services. If he'd made that remark on his blog, I'd simply have quoted the text....

REALITY CHECK: Do-it-yourself software services? What would it take to develop applications in-house for partners to consume as services?(Column)
December 19, 2005... If you're a regular reader of my column, you know that I've been looking closely at the pluses and minuses of the SaaS (software as a service) model recently. SaaS solutions let you easily deploy standard functionality across a wide spectrum...

OFF THE RECORD: A chilling IT holiday tale - Swapping out a server's power supply is an easy job -- or at least it should be.(Column)
December 19, 2005... By Anonymous It was an intensely cold Midwestern December, and there I was driving 120 miles through hard-blowing snow on icy roads to reach a customer whose mission-critical server was suffering with a failing power supply. I was a...

Application development - AJAX gained traction for Web apps in 2005.(Product/service evaluation)
December 19, 2005... By InfoWorld Test Center staff For Web apps, 2005 was the year of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). In addition to bringing rich GUIs to many high-profile commercial apps, AJAX got a boost from some top-notch toolkits including...

Applications - Salesforce.com dominated the CRM space while the enterprise service bus race sped up.(customer relationships management)(Product/service evaluation)
December 19, 2005... By InfoWorld Test Center staff We test more hosted CRM solutions every year, and none of them has yet topped Salesforce.com. Still, the competition is stiffening, especially from the likes of one-stop-shop NetSuite and Siebel CRM...

Scaling your applications to 64-bit computing - The key to deploying today's 64-bit CPUs is knowing where to use them.
December 12, 2005... At Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in April 2005, Bill Gates predicted that 64-bit hardware, operating systems, and software would "transform the way we work and play." Systems using 64-bit processors would...

The awful truth about compliance - Corporate America is doing its best to understand and meet regulatory demands, but many companies are losing their way.
December 12, 2005... Several years into an era of strict corporate-governance laws -- most notably Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA -- companies across a wide spectrum are still struggling to find their footing as they try to establish viable compliance frameworks. ...

Cisco: Poster child of regulatory compliance - Company culture and quick, skillful response helped Cisco get ahead of the regulatory curve.
December 12, 2005... The perfect storm that gave rise to Cisco Systems' compliance initiative -- often cited as exemplary -- started brewing in the mid- to-late 1990s as the tech industry was widely perceived as a sleigh ride to riches. Prime acquisitions in...

Product Previews.
December 12, 2005... HP to add new look to OpenView, Software AG boosts XML business processes, Mindreef Coral eases Web services collaboration, Arena PLM gains compliance tools By InfoWorld staff HP OpenView Offers New Vantage Point Hewlett-Packard...

Cisco eyes the application layer - With its new Service-Oriented Network Architecture, Cisco wants to expand its role in application integration.
December 12, 2005... Everyone seems to love the idea of an application-aware network that makes deploying and configuring middleware easier -- mainly because application and data integration remain the toughest work in IT. Cisco has made vague noises about smart...

IBM adds muscle to Open Document Format - An uprising against proprietary document formats is growing, but can Office be dethroned?
December 12, 2005... It may seem to have started in Massachusetts, but the ideal behind the industrywide clamoring for open document formats isn't just an isolated government crusade. A full-scale rebellion against Microsoft's proprietary document formats may be...

SAP brewing SOA, on-demand moves - CRM as a service, Enterprise Services Architecture on the way.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... SAP's near and short-term product road map, revealed last week, will follow the topical trends of on demand and SOA. In July, SAP will release the first public version of Mendocino, a joint project with Microsoft that aims to integrate...

Microsoft ships Windows Server 2003 R2 - Update focuses on virtualization, ID management.(Brief Article)
December 12, 2005... A long-awaited interim update to the current version of Microsoft's Windows Server OS, called Windows Server 2003 R2, is finally ready. The update, available to customers in 60 days, should be 100 percent compatible with apps running on...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Failures of regulatory compliance - Overzealous lawmakers keep piling on the regulations, and IT is paying the price.(Editorial)
December 12, 2005... Corporate America has a problem. It's struggling to make sense of Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations. According to Associate Editor Richard Gincel, who wrote "The awful truth about compliance", compliance is so expensive and the rules are...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Will Linux take the lead in server virtualization? Open source Xen software will make virtual machines readily available to everyone.
December 12, 2005... For server vendors such as Dell, Linux is a good thing because it lowers acquisition costs for customers. It's easier for a customer to commit to deploying a new server when software license fees are removed from the equation. You might...

SECURITY ADVISER: Controlling the uncontrollable user - Improve security by taking back control of software installation from employees -- it's for their own good.
December 12, 2005... A large percentage of computer security problems have origins in a common issue: end-users installing or running programs without administrative approval and control. Outside of buffer overflows and social engineering attacks, most...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: If the suit fits, wear it - Dell gets shelved, ICANN won't delve.
December 12, 2005... Several readers want to know where they can sign up for Match.com's "date an employee" service. But Cringester Barry W. asks, Shouldn't employees be the ones suing? Imagine being forced to date desperate, lonely, middle-aged men... not...

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Doctors turn to PDAs - TV doctors may fly by the seat of their pants, but in the real world, MDs increasingly rely on handhelds.
December 12, 2005... I don't usually watch ER-type TV shows, but I've lately been intrigued by the latest ABC hit, Grey's Anatomy. If you've seen it, then you know that the whole staff of Seattle Grace Hospital is young, has lots of sex, and hardly ever sleeps....

STORAGE INSIDER: Predictions for 2006: The storage saga continues - New technologies will sparkle, but more mundane needs for security, compliance, and better management tools will drive storage purchases.
December 12, 2005... It's that time of the year again: The festivities are closing in, the New Year is knocking at the door, and everyone committed to public writing feels compelled to dust off the crystal ball and impart their predictions for the coming year....

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Microsoft grooms Virtual Server to be a true VMware challenger - R2 brings better pricing, management, and a hint of broader OS support.
December 12, 2005... Virtual PC was nice for Windows power users. But for developers and sys admins testing against specific OS images and doing similar business- oriented tasks, Virtual Server 2005 is the only thing out of Redmond that might make us stray from...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: OS X and Powerbooks make life easier on the eyes - Whether you see perfectly or poorly, you'll see better on a Mac -- without all the dials, knobs, and buttons.(Column)
December 12, 2005... My wife's been giving me the stink-eye lately at seeing me basking in the electroluminescent glow of my 17-inch PowerBook G4. Finally, after several silent passes, she stopped and signaled that a lesson was about to ensue. I sat, expecting a...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: Beyond interactive voice response - Voice-enabled interfaces are only the first step in automating fundamentally human workflows.(Column)
December 12, 2005... I like to say that human beings are the exception handlers for all automated workflows. But, as those of us who endure automated customer service know only too well, human exception handlers are getting harder and harder to find. So a couple...

REALITY CHECK: The coming software revolution - The combination of software as a service and open source changes everything.
December 12, 2005... If Marc Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce.com, is the biggest spokesperson for SaaS (software as a service), then Greg Gianforte, CEO and founder of SaaS CRM competitor RightNow Technologies, is in the avant-garde of that software...

OFF THE RECORD: Building the 'next great thing' in five months - Motivational mumbo-jumbo won't make an IT project fly.(Column)
December 12, 2005... By Anonymous Don't get me wrong. I respect motivation as much as the next person -- but not when it turns into a religion. Some time back, the consulting firm I co-founded was hired by a startup company to help develop the "next...

Managing out-of-band management - Cyclades AlterPath OnBoard consolidates multiple, mixed service processors behind a single interface.
December 12, 2005... Service processors are the key to successful high-density rack applications, and they're just as handy for managing systems in the branch office, where intensive monitoring of each box or blade must take the place of being there. Lights-out...

Rethinking incident response - EnCase Enterprise 5 brings powerful investigative tools to bear on potential threats.
December 12, 2005... As businesses face increasing regulatory-compliance pressure from Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, many companies are finding themselves deploying intrusion detection systems, log analyzers, and other security tools to assist in...

SecureWave stops breaches at the source - Sanctuary Device Control prevents forbidden devices from plugging in to the network.
December 12, 2005... The most significant security breaches in the enterprise come from people who have easy access to the network, such as employees and approved contractors. With the influx of high-capacity portable storage technologies -- such as iPods,...

High-powered 1U servers make the grade - Four slim but mighty systems offer redundancy, high capacity.
December 12, 2005... Many administrators assume that 1U servers are intended only as nodes in a Web farm or high-performance computing cluster, where high availability is a function of the cluster rather than the individual node. However, a number of 1U servers...

Taking steps toward 64-bit processing - Upgrading to the latest generation of hardware doesn't mean you have to abandon today's applications.
December 12, 2005... A growing number of volume systems on the market today are incorporating the new 64-bit architectures from AMD and Intel. When you buy new hardware, you're part of the 64-bit revolution almost by default. But you still have a choice to make:...

C and C++ give way to managed code - Java and C# are becoming the application languages of choice for enterprise developers.
December 5, 2005... One important trend highlighted by this year's research is the ongoing transition away from C and C++ -- the two languages that have been programmers' mainstays for many years -- in favor of Java, and, more recently, C#. This shift might seem...

2005 survey spots trends in software development - Java, C#, and modeling gain momentum, while testing and QA are still widely lacking.
December 5, 2005... Software developers are often important augurs of IT technologies' direction and rate of adoption. Managers who responded to trends among developers would have been the first to detect the growth of Linux and the open source movement, the...

Product Previews.(Cape Clear Software will introduce Cape Clear 6.5)(Microsoft upgraded the hosted collaboration service)(new product AmberPoint SOA from AmberPoint Inc.)
December 5, 2005... Cape Clear expands ESB software, Microsoft bolsters hosted messaging, AmberPoint eases SOA management, Check Point boxes up security tools By InfoWorld staff Cape Clearexpands ESB CapeClear Software this week will release Cape...

Firefox 1.5 browser debuts - New release brings UI, standards compliance, and security improvements.(Brief Article)
December 5, 2005... Last week, the Mozilla Corporation unveiled the first major update to its popular Firefox Web browser. Version 1.5 offers improved support for Web standards, including JavaScript 1.6 compatibility and the ability to render SVG (Scalable...

SOA customer turns vendor - SOA Software purchases Web services-based interface from Merrill Lynch.(Brief Article)
December 5, 2005... Last month, SOA Software -- formerly Digital Evolution -- proudly announced that financial giant Merrill Lynch was a customer. Today, the tables were turned when SOA Software revealed that it is purchasing technology from Merrill Lynch -- in...

Sun's software stack: Free for download - Solaris Enterprise System rolls up Sun's enterprise software offerings -- and gives them away.(Brief Article)
December 5, 2005... In yet another ploy to attract enterprise customers, Sun Microsystems has decided to package a huge bundle of developer tools and middleware as the Solaris Enterprise System, anchored by the Solaris OS. And, just like Solaris itself, the...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Beating the competition - Successful companies use IT to differentiate, not duplicate.(Editorial)
December 5, 2005... If InfoWorld were seeking a mantra, we might just opt for "IT is the business," a quote from Netflix's Tom Dillon. Interviewed in this week's cover story, "Why IT gives business a competitive edge", the movie-rental company's COO was...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Firefox 1.5 turns up the heat in the browser market - Its focus on open architectures and open standards gives Firefox continued momentum. Will Internet Explorer catch up?
December 5, 2005... Google's stock price is up past $400 per share. Venture capitalists are sniffing around IT startups again, looking for that next big thing. Instead of ASPs (application service providers), this time we've got SaaS (software as a service)...

SECURITY ADVISER: Controlling information leaks - When data ends up in the wrong places for too long, it's a recipe for disaster.
December 5, 2005... Last week I vented about Congress' proposed weakening of personal- information protection and disclosure laws with the pending vote on the Data Accountability and Trust Act. But if you're the CEO or security officer of a company that stores...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Symantec installs snafu, dating site gets sued - Jilted journo wishes for a dish.
December 5, 2005... CringesterPeter B. asks a perfectly reasonable question: Why haven't I bid for dishy housefrau Deborah Hale and her Denver home? The answer: $600K is a ton of scratch for an ink-stained wretch. Watching "Desperate Housewives"with Apache is a...

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Why IT needs strong leaders - Governance systems are no substitute for executives with a penchant for getting things done.
December 5, 2005... Dispatch from Pearlz Cybercafe, Fredericksburg, Texas -- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man credited with winning the Pacific Theater for the United States during World War II, was born in this dusty town and, according to the local...

STORAGE INSIDER: Enterprise storage needs to go green - Sun touts new eco-friendly chip for servers; storage should follow suit to reduce energy consumption.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
December 5, 2005... You probably heard Sun's recent announcement of the UltraSparc T1 processor. The new chip has many features to spark (pardon the pun) interest on its own merits, but at its launch Sun chose to focus on just one aspect: its power consumption...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Windows 2003 Server branches out - Microsoft has prepped R2 to meet companies' growing remote-office needs.
December 5, 2005... As Windows 2003 Server R2 release time draws closer, Redmond is getting more and more detailed with us on what's really going to be included in the new release. Turns out those 120MB are going to include a whole bunch of stuff. One lesser...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: Why data synchronization still matters - Centralized, networked applications aren't a cure-all for data management concerns.
December 5, 2005... The physics of data management used to dictate that your data could be either consistent or highly available but never both at the same time. The discipline of data synchronization sits uncomfortably on the horns of this Heisenbergian...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Reviving native traditions - As CPUs slow down, virtualize, and chill out, developers must compensate with native applications.
December 5, 2005... I was once renowned and reviled for my lack of regard for Visual Basic. I have since reformed, realizing that we all benefit from languages that target developers at different skill levels and shorten the distance between concept and...

OFF THE RECORD: When new software destroys productivity - Joan of Arc in a leather jacket saves the day with a late-night hack.(Column)
December 5, 2005... By Anonymous Paranoia strikes deep -- and without warning. Some upper-level executive at the big insurance company where I head IT must have read an article about security disasters because one day my boss told me the company was...

REALITY CHECK: Software as a service moves beyond the sales force - Outsourcing and partnering are creating a need for easy-to-deploy collaboration solutions.
December 5, 2005... There's no denying that SaaS (software as a service) and Salesforce.com have together reshaped the CRM segment of enterprise software. I've written about the pluses and minuses of SaaS before. This time I thought I would look at some other...

Sun charges Sun Fire T2000 with UltraSparc - Midrange server is primed for running multithreaded apps.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 5, 2005... Not long ago, Sun announced the newest UltraSparc CPU, code-named Niagara, and officially dubbed the T1. What was readily apparent was that this newcomer wasn't your daddy's Sparc. Sun's newly released Sun Fire T2000 UltraSparc T1-based...

Find things quickly and naturally - exalead one:desktop Professional Edition may be a sign of better enterprise search to come.
December 5, 2005... On the surface, exalead one:desktop doesn't seem to offer anything revolutionary. Type in a search term and a lot of results appear. The well-designed interface shows familiar classification options to narrow results, such as e-mail sender,...

Nick Carr takes the middle path - Refining his inflammatory statement of two years ago, Carr allows that IT might have an effect after all.(Nicholas G. Carr)(Interview)
December 5, 2005... In 2003, Nicholas G. Carr published his inflammatory Harvard Business Review article, "IT Doesn't Matter," in a shot heard 'round the IT world. Then, last year, he published a book: Does IT Matter? IT and the Corrosion of Competitive...

Why IT gives business a competitive edge - Smart companies like JetBlue, NetFlix, and BNSF Railway are reaping sustained rewards by weaving IT into the fabric of their business.(JetBlue Airways Corp., Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.)(Company Profile)
December 5, 2005... When Nicholas G. Carr wrote IT's obituary in his famous 2003 article, "IT Doesn't Matter," few thought IT would soon be returning from the dead. Carr's argument -- that IT was becoming commoditized and could no longer provide a competitive...

Check Point and Sygate corral end points - Similarly strong network access control solutions make for a hard choice.(new products Check Point Integrity 6.0, Sygate Enterprise Protection 5.0)
December 5, 2005... At their core, Check Point Integrity and Sygate Enterprise Protection are effectively policy-based firewalls. That's the cake. The icing is their capability to monitor other applications for compliance with configuration requirements and send...

ASE 15 addresses the need for database speed - Partitioning, function- based indexes give newest version of Sybase database a boost.(Adaptive Server Enterprise 15)
December 5, 2005... If I had to state an overall theme for the newest version of Sybase's flagship database server, it would be one word: performance. The recently released ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) 15 has significant changes, from partitioning to...