InfoWorld articles from January 2007

InfoWorld archives from January 2007

Dual-core desktop blues - Advances in end-user hardware outstrip software support.
January 1, 2007... Desktop microprocessors enjoyed key advances in 2006. All but the low- end x86 chips migrated to dual-core, in which two processor cores are placed on the same piece of silicon -- in effect giving consumers two processors for the price of one....

Microsoft ends 2006 with a bang - Office, Exchange, and Vista highlight a prolific year in Redmond.
January 1, 2007... Many companies had significant impacts on the IT technology landscape in 2006, but Microsoft stands alone in one special category: Prolific Tech Spewage. Vista, Office 2007, Office SharePoint Server, and Exchange Server 2007 are the four...

ProCurve switches work well for smaller (but growing) businesses - ProCurve 1800, 2810 models stuff a lot of management into small packages for managed-switch newbies.(Product/service evaluation)
January 1, 2007... Every organization has key growth points: earning the first dollar, hiring the first employee, moving from an unmanaged network switch to a managed device. Business consultants offer help with the first two, and HP's ProCurve Networking wants...

P-to-P goes Hollywood - BitTorrent co-founder talks up business plans and death of DRM.(Ashwin Navin)(Interview)
January 1, 2007... By InfoWorld Staff With all the legal disputes arising from P-to-P (peer to peer) file sharing networks such as Napster, Gnutella, and KaZaa in recent years, it's easy to forget that the concept of P-to-P networks is almost as old as the...

FFIEC deadline just the beginning - Support costs, fine tuning keep spending high in 2007.(Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council)
January 1, 2007... What do you get when you combine deep-pocketed, IT-dependent enterprises with tough-worded federal regulations and the threat of big penalties? A Silicon Valley bonanza, for one thing. That was the case throughout 2006, as U.S. banks and...

Privacy, patents on agenda for new Congress - Dems give data protection, patent reforms new life.
January 1, 2007... With our political process morphing into something resembling a perpetual campaign season, the Democratic leaders who captured both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in November will have to move darned quick if they want to make...

Telelogic offers free UML tool - Free tool may spur UML adoption.(unified modeling language)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Enterprise Lifecycle Management firm Telelogic is looking to spread the use of model-driven application development with the release this week of Telelogic Modeler, a free UML (Unified Modeling Language) design environment. UML is used in...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: The free multimedia opportunity - With Windows Vista on the horizon, the fate of desktop Linux could rest in open media formats.
January 1, 2007... As 64-bit processing becomes mainstream, the next major computing platform shift is due to arrive by 2008. If the open source community doesn't step up to the plate and address major impediments to widespread desktop adoption, Linux could be...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Technology of the Gods - Looking forward to a year of rapid change in IT.(Editorial)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who reportedly was able to look both forward and back. So for our Jan. 1 issue, we pay homage to the mythological immortal with our seventh annual Technology of...

SECURITY ADVISER: New year's resolution No. 1: Get OpenBSD - Kick off 2007 with a new, more secure operating system.(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... Although many readers think I'm a Windows-only zealot, one of my other favorite OSes is OpenBSD. I run a few flavors of Linux as well, but I use OpenBSD as my honeynet (a network of honeypots) firewall and to explore the criminal side of the...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Microsoft tech support swoons, Google promises the moon - When 21st century software meets 12th century bureaucracy.
January 1, 2007... Cringefan and computer science prof. Georges M. was trying to set up a Web site using Office Live Basics when his home page got corrupted. So he bravely contacted Microsoft support. He got back an e-mail asking him to answer 15 questions, try...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: Gadget envy? Just give in - Your own vision quest is the only excuse you need to buy that nifty new novelty.
January 1, 2007... Sometimes, around this time of year, it's good to set practicalities aside and remind yourself how fun technology can be. That's why we got into IT to begin with, right? Not because of budgets, audits, and Gantt charts. I got a reminder of...

STORAGE INSIDER: Data deduplication: Too much of a good thing - Quantum joins the crowd of deduplication solutions.
January 1, 2007... Deduplication was without a doubt one of the hot topics in storage last year. It should stay so in 2007. The rationale behind deduplication is that it's simple to the point of being obvious: Reducing the amount of data moved from Point A to...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Microsoft, Version 2007 - From Longhorn to Crossbow, next year is shaping up to be a big one for Redmond.(Microsoft Windows Vista)(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... Happy holidays, everyone. I'm writing this from The Inn at Spanish Bay, right off of 17-Mile Drive near Carmel, Calif. Man, if only I'd bought Microsoft stock in high school, maybe I could afford to live here now. But I didn't, so all I can do...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: 2007: Something for everyone - From the beauty of OS X Leopard to the brutality of the Intel/AMD rematch.(Column)
January 1, 2007... Some Decembers, I look to the coming year and pray that I can earn my keep on the unpredictable visits from my muse that result in a departure from some of my more done-to-death subjects. It's something of a relief to leave behind 2006, a year...

REALITY CHECK: Sea change at SAP - The poster child for software complexity will leverage the emerging Web to keep it simple in the new year.(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... If anyone doubts that competition spurs change, let them sit down with Dennis Moore, general manager for emerging solutions at SAP, and talk about what SAP has on tap for 2007. As I see it, what's coming out of SAP this year represents a sea...

OFF THE RECORD: Why many software projects fail - Trapped in the middle of a municipal culture war, an IT professional fights for survival.(Column)
January 1, 2007... By Anonymous Several years ago, I was hired as IT manager at the convention center of a well-known Gulf Coast metropolis. There was plenty of action, with one big show after another. For the first few weeks, my job revolved around...

2007 Technology of the Year Award Winners - Selected by Test Center editors and reviewers from more than 230 products tested during 2006, these 41 hardware and software products represent the best and most innovative in their class.
January 1, 2007... By InfoWorld Test Center staff PLATFORMS Best Server Virtualization (Hardware Virtualization) VMware Infrastructure 3 infoworld.com/4791 Rich VM management features reinforce VMware's standing as the virtualization leader...

Budgeting for SOA success - Invest in training, security, and emerging technologies to ensure long-term SOA results.(service oriented architecture )
January 8, 2007... SOA has been an enterprisewide rallying cry for the past few years, as companies have sought to unlock Web services' potential to augment the value of existing IT resources. Yet most activity around service- oriented architecture has been...

Wikis evolve as collaboration tools - Latest offerings get users swapping knowledge quickly.(Traction TeamPage 3.7)(Socialtext Workspace 2.3)(Near-Time)(Atlassian Confluence 2.2.10)(Product/service evaluation)
January 8, 2007... Content management systems usually won't work as collaboration tools. Although a CMS does ease content creation, the resulting Web sites have rigid navigation and formal publishing workflows. Wikis, on the other hand, empower users to create...

Infosys looks beyond Nasdaq 100 - Global ambitions for pioneering Indian firm.(V. Balakrishnan of Infosys Technologies Ltd.)(Interview)
January 8, 2007... By InfoWorld Staff The news in early December that Infosys would become the first Indian company to join the likes of Dell, Google, and Microsoft on the Nasdaq 100 generated considerable media buzz both in the United States and in India...

Apple's New Years Hangover: Lawsuits, Hackers - Company's 2007 starts with legal woes, hackers.(Editorial)
January 8, 2007... Apple Computer in the past decade has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own managerial incompetence to attain new heights of profitability (up 27 percent in fourth-quarter 2006 to $546 million), market capitalization ($74 billion at...

Cisco to buy IronPort for $830M - Company expands security portfolio with IronPort anti-spam, messaging hardware.(Cisco Systems Inc. and IronPort Systems Inc.)
January 8, 2007... Cisco Systems said on Thursday it is buying privately held IronPort Systems for $830 million in cash and stock. The deal for IronPort, which makes e-mail, Web, and security management appliances, will add expertise in spam and messaging...

Oracle links database developer tool to rivals - Users can access other data management systems.(Oracle SQL Developer Release 1.1)
January 8, 2007... Oracle on Monday is shipping an upgrade to its free database development tool, adding a number of enhancements, including the capability to access competing databases such as Microsoft Access and MySQL. Oracle SQL Developer Release 1.1...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Balancing IT budgets - Why is it that training always seems to get short shrift?(Editorial)(Brief article)
January 8, 2007... No matter how carefully you plan and manage your slice of the IT budget, you're going to mess up somewhere. Invariably, you'll spend more than you should in some technologies, and less than you should in others. The trick -- as detailed in...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Cleversafe dreams of distributed mass storage service - Open source software makes possible reliable storage of petabytes of data.
January 8, 2007... Cleversafe is one of the few enterprise storage technologies that began life as an open source project, but that's not the only thing that makes the company unusual. The organizations interested in Cleversafe's open source storage software...

SECURITY ADVISER: Getting a grip on better password hashes - New rainbow table distributed computing project aims to create large, free resource for more complete and complex password security.
January 8, 2007... Many of today's computer passwords are stored and transmitted in a cryptographic hashed form. A strong password hash algorithm ensures that if the password hash is obtained by unauthorized parties that it is non-trivial to convert the hash back...

STORAGE INSIDER: A storage benchmark in the making - Five years from its inception, the Storage Performance Council sets out to reach a wider audience.
January 8, 2007... No other storage topic is more sensitive for vendors and more important for potential customers than performance measurement. I've had vendors refuse to send me a product for review because of disagreements on which speed benchmarks to use...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Apple's credibility lacking, aide sacked for hacking - Will Gates run for President, despite a shaky platform?(Todd Shriber, Bill Gates)
January 8, 2007... Following a stirring endorsement from Dilbert creator Scott Adams, the Bill Gates for President movement has launched an online petition. At press time 127 visionary souls had signed it, roughly a third of them from foreign countries. Perhaps,...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: CIOs should resolve to change - For the bold at heart: Seek out innovators and fund their schemes with up to 3 percent of your budget.(chief information officers)(Column)
January 8, 2007... Well, we're one week into 2007, which means it's time to revisit those New Year's resolutions from 2006 and delete them (or pretend they never existed). Or we could drag them forward into 2007, as part of our ongoing guilt list with no specific...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Microsoft Collaboration 101 - From SharePoint to Groove, it's tricky to keep Redmond's collaboration platforms straight.
January 8, 2007... I spent my second holiday season in a row at Pebble Beach. I won't gloat too much about that, except to say that when you're standing on the 7th at Pebble, the word Vista takes on a whole new meaning. Everything was great until I got back to...

OFF THE RECORD: Clueless manager duped by product demo - Your assignment: Build an Internet portal nobody needs with software that doesn't work.(Column)
January 8, 2007... By Anonymous My IT career began just as the Internet boom was ramping up. Not surprisingly, when my company's management team noticed our competitors moving onto the Web, it decided we needed to be there too. After several meetings, all...

REALITY CHECK: Keeping up with crimeware - Polymorphing botnet worms are among the exploits crackers will bank on in 2007.
January 8, 2007... If you are a cracker who has written an exploit, you have a choice between fame and fortune. In the good old days, crackers chose fame. But now fortune appears to be far more appealing. Crimeware is a multibillion-dollar economy, according...

Managing content in a rich media world - IT is finding new solutions for indexing, searching, and accessing libraries of A/V content.
January 8, 2007... For years, directors at the Dallas Museum of Art faced a daunting problem that threatened to stifle the growth of the century-old organization. The prolific use of computer-generated content was requiring them to store ever more videos, audio...

Getting data asset management right - A clear vision and metadata based on open standards are two keys to success.
January 8, 2007... So your organization has decided to take the plunge into DAM (digital asset management). Now what? Analysts who follow the space, and IT professionals who have already implemented DAM systems, say there's a right way and a wrong way to go...

IT success requires just the right spending mix - When it comes to budgeting, it pays to be strategic. We break down seven IT project domains to expose where you'll overindulge and where you'll come up short this year.(Brief article)
January 8, 2007... Beneath IT's moderate projected spending growth of 6.6 percent for 2007 lies a considerable amount of volatility. Ongoing cost-cutting measures and emerging tech trends have many organizations on the move, initiating significant enterprisewide...

Agile scripting: Bigger bang for app-dev bucks - Mashups and SOA are fueling a shift toward scripting and agility -- invest in skill sets accordingly.
January 8, 2007... Enterprises will spend too much this year creating monolithic apps -- the sort of server-side efforts that involve formal requirements and tie up dozens (or hundreds) of architects, coders, and testers. Most would be better off using scripting...

As-needed networking rollouts pay off - Buying into the buzz of VoIP, Gigabit, and IPSes may result in less-than-optimal benefits.(Editorial)
January 8, 2007... Networking buzzwords have had little impact on the core of most infrastructures in the past few years. Yet Gigabit, VoIP, and IPSes continue to receive attention, with many enterprises planning 2007 deployments. Unless absolutely necessary,...

Capitalize on emerging collaboration options - Foregoing licenses in favor of emerging alternatives will free funds to train employees to collaborate effectively.
January 8, 2007... Messaging vendors have long been packing their wares with features in hopes of providing an all-encompassing platform that fulfills every enterprise's collaboration needs. Rather than shell out far too much again this year for seldom or...

Weighing the cost of compliance - Certain to spend too much adhering to regulations this year, IT may be putting the enterprise at risk.(Editorial)
January 8, 2007... From Sarbanes-Oxley to HIPAA to PCI/DSS, chances are your company is subject to myriad compliance requirements. And although the goals of such regulations are noble, the chunk taken out of your security budget to uphold them is considerable, in...

Pay to protect your data or pay the consequences - Shifting your focus to information protection is this year's safest security bet.(Editorial)
January 8, 2007... 2006 may have been a wash in terms of overall computer security, but if you're banking on status quo in 2007, chances are your budget won't have the right mix. And if there's one area you're sure to come up short in this year, it's information...

Bank on virtualization for bottom-line relief - Tap into server virtualization to free up funds for strategic endeavors.(Editorial)
January 8, 2007... Companies not making a virtualization play in 2007 stand to spend far too much maintaining their datacenters. The ongoing energy squeeze has many enterprises already making the switch to virtualization -- and for good reason, as innovation in...

Blade server shootout: Dell vs. HP vs. Sun - InfoWorld's head-to-head comparison proves blade servers are sharp enough for enterprise use.(Sun Blade 8000 Modular System)(HP BladeSystem c-Class)(Dell PowerEdge 1955 Blade System)(Product/service evaluation)
January 15, 2007... Dawn broke over Diamondhead on Oahu as I shrugged off my jetlag and drove to the Advanced Network Computing Lab at the University of Hawaii. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, but there was to be no lying on the beach today. By the time 6...

Exclusive: AppSight gets the bugs out of your apps - Latest version of logging software puts faster bug location, reproduction in developers' hands -- for a steep price.(version 6.0)(Product/service evaluation)
January 15, 2007... Two of the most time-consuming aspects of debugging software are reproducing the problem and locating the cause of the bug. And as software becomes more complex -- with Web services integrating business processes and desktop environments moving...

Gordano closes in on Exchange - Enhanced messaging suite brings better management and polished features.(Gordano Messaging Suite 12.0)(Editorial)(Product/service evaluation)
January 15, 2007... The last time Oliver Rist and I looked at Gordano Messaging Suite, we were impressed enough to give it a Technology of the Year award for Best Exchange Killer Application of 2006. At the time we saw it as a system that, despite a little...

Cisco injects old 7200 with new power - New core modules let admins upgrade routers without unracking.(Cisco Systems Inc.)
January 15, 2007... It's not terribly often that hardware vendors are so forward-thinking that they can retrofit a whole new class of hardware into an existing chassis. Cisco Systems, however, seems to be able to do this with ease. The new Cisco 7200 router is a...

Video Blogging from a war zone - Creator of Alive in Baghdad sees future in TV-Internet convergence.(Brian Conley)(Interview)
January 15, 2007... Mainstream media outlets were making lots of hay about announcements out of last week's Consumer Electronics Show, such as Sony's promise to equip most of its televisions with a module that can receive Internet video content. But what will...

Apple has urge to converge - Mac is the prologue, the iPhone is the future.(Macworld Expo)
January 15, 2007... Steve Jobs delivered this year's Macworld Expo keynote to an overcapacity crowd. He boasted that the Mac's PowerPC-to-Intel transition had been completed in seven months, grinned about having sold half of new Macs to newcomers to the platform,...

CES spotlights office technologies to come - Consumer show highlights an all-IP world.(Consumer Electronics Show)(Editorial)
January 15, 2007... The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), once a bastion of electronic toys, now also serves as a herald for the future of the tech industry, in general, including -- some argue -- enterprise technology. Certainly the appearance of Microsoft's...

Liberty Alliance, Microsoft discuss identity protocols - Integration of WS- and Web Services Framework discussed.
January 15, 2007... Despite a screaming need for integration, enterprise identity-and- access management continues to be a Tower of Babel of competing platforms and standards. In recent years, a big obstacle to cross-platform integration has been the war of...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Soft sell for open source apps - When vendors aren't counting licenses, they're free to concentrate on quality code.(Editorial)
January 15, 2007... Enterprise software vendors that use open source business models may be few and far between, but they are out there. I recently spoke to Peter Schroer, president and founder of Aras, about his company's decision to open source its suite of...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Learning to consume - The enterprise has seen the light, and it's coming from a consumer device.(Editorial)(Brief article)
January 15, 2007... We tried. We really tried. We had every intention of sticking to our knitting -- reporting on a slate of enterprise computing topics, from blade servers to SOA deployment strategies. But in a week when Steve Jobs rolled out the iPhone and a...

SECURITY ADVISER: Customers lose when vendors refuse to patch - Qualcomm will not close exploit hole, so Eudora WorldMail users are on their own.(Eudora WorldMail Mail Management Server 3.1.x )
January 15, 2007... I can't believe my eyes. Eudora WorldMail Mail Management Server has an open exploit hole and Qualcomm says they have no plans to patch. Tipping Point and the Zero Point Initiative reported last week that Eudora WorldMail 3.1.x Mail...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: All aboard: Galloping to CES - Sensory overload ushers wave of nostalgia; plus, IT hiring on the rise?(Consumer Electronics Show)(Editorial)
January 15, 2007... As you contemplate all the hot product announcements that came out of CES last week, consider this: In 1855, just more than 150 years ago, nobody had any devices whatsoever. Almost all Americans were farmers in 1855, doing backbreaking work...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Apple goes mobile, Disney's less than noble - The big question: Will Jobs ditch the jeans and the turtleneck?(iPhone)(Lenovo ThinkPad T60p)(NetSuite Inc. appointed Billy Beane )
January 15, 2007... Apple Computer is now Apple Inc. That was the news from Macworld Expo, where Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, not to be confused with the iPhone that Cisco's Linksys division announced last month. I hear Jobs has challenged Cisco CEO John...

STORAGE INSIDER: Driving toward a faster boot - Competing disk-drive technologies address Vista performance at CES.(SanDisk SSD UATA 5000)(Consumer Electronics Show)
January 15, 2007... Maybe it's because of my fixation on storage gear, but lately it seems as if the IT world is revolving around disk drives more that ever before. CES 2007 is no exception, from what I hear. Before I dive into interesting CES news tidbits,...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Microsoft holds out on Home Server - Company could have bolstered product's usefulness and security with existing solutions.(Microsoft Home Server 1.0)(Consumer Electronics Show)
January 15, 2007... For the second year in a row, I'm braving the wilds of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), now in its 40th straight year. Again, I'm doing it on my own dime because InfoWorld enjoys torturing me just a little, which means I'm staying with...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: IT is calling the shots again - Vendors find long- term road maps need redrawing as IT finds its own path.(information technology)(Column)
January 15, 2007... The start of 2007 finds IT vendors at the top of the food chain squirming at being treated like the help. Vendor royalty such as Microsoft, Dell, and Intel, along with consultants who have insinuated themselves as IT's empowered insider, don't...

REALITY CHECK: Managing mobility - When it comes to securing your data assets, post-holiday gadgets bring new woes.(Editorial)
January 15, 2007... Ah, it's good to be back from the holidays, showing off the latest gadgets you received as gifts from your family. That new Apple iPod, for example, will be great for storing files, especially because your company won't allow you to take home...

OFF THE RECORD: Cabling blunder fouls up DoD network - Something strange was going on in the ceiling, but armed guards wouldn't let us look.(Department of Defense)(Column)
January 15, 2007... By Anonymous Back in the days of RG-58 Ethernet co-ax and Novell NetWare servers, I worked for a small networking firm. One of the VPs had friends at the Pentagon, and one day -- to everyone's amazement -- we landed a lucrative contract to...

Five surefire ways to make your SOA a success - SOA resists easy answers. But a handful of guiding principles can keep the most important initiative you may ever launch on track.(service oriented architecture)
January 15, 2007... SOA isn't just trendy, it's here and it's working. Most large enterprises have already launched some sort of SOA initiative, the objective being an agile architecture that can respond to business needs in near-real time. Along the way, SOA...

Will EMC's information gamble work? One-time storage player banks its future on information management and data security.(EMC Corp. (Hopkinton, Massachusetts) acquired RSA Security Inc.)
January 22, 2007... In June 2006, EMC announced that it would acquire RSA Security for $2.1 billion, only to be met with a healthy dose of analyst skepticism and a 3 percent drop in its stock price. Many on Wall Street considered the price tag too high in light of...

Office SharePoint: The best reason to upgrade? Permissions and communication are key to reining in what users can devise with MOSS 2007.(Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007)(Editorial)(Product/service evaluation)
January 22, 2007... Far more flexible and powerful than the InfoWorld Test Center anticipated when we first took it into the lab, MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 2007 oozes customization. With that name, you may be thinking basic Office extensions --...

Upgrading to Vista? Proceed with caution - If you're thinking of leading your enterprise into Vista country, adding Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 might make the trip worthwhile.(Editorial)
January 22, 2007... Certainly no coincidence, Microsoft has decked out its much-anticipated OS upgrade with beautiful landscape wallpapers -- vistas, to be exact. But, as calming as these background images may be for end-users getting acquainted with Vista, for IT...

DevPartner Fault Simulator takes on .Net fault handling - Version 2.0 improves integration, helps developers and testers "ruggedize" .Net code.(Product/service evaluation)
January 22, 2007... In electronics engineering, a fault simulator predicts what will happen to a circuit when a component malfunctions, without having to actually install a bad component in the circuit. DPFS (DevPartner Fault Simulator) applies a similar idea to...

The smart business of diversity - Carly Fiorina on women in IT.(Interview)
January 22, 2007... Carly Fiorina served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company. After she was ousted, along with a $21 million exit package, Fiorina did what a lot of us would do if we had millions of dollars in...

Earnings woes threaten Intel, Symantec - Companies join SAP, AMD in earnings hole.(Advanced Micro Devices Inc.)
January 22, 2007... It was the best and worst of times on Wall Street last week, as earnings announcements made a star of Apple, and monkeys of tech giants Intel and Symantec. After wowing the media with its stunning-looking iPhone at the annual MacWorld...

Salesforce ups the ante - Apex language gives developers a new way to compete with the big players.(Brief article)
January 22, 2007... Celebrating its eighth year and the 21st generation of CRM software as a service, Salesforce.com delivered on its 2006 promise to give ISVs and corporate developers a new programming language called Apex with its Winter '07 release. Apex...

Sun jumps on - To join Oracle and Microsoft in challenging Red Hat's open source dominance.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
January 22, 2007... Sun Microsystems is joining in the pricing pig pile atop Red Hat, the leading Linux software company. Sun said last week that it will join the likes of Oracle and Microsoft to challenge Red Hat's open source dominance. Sun's strategy...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Seven ways Solaris can beat Linux - Sun needs to make a splash if it wants to win back its Unix OS market share.
January 22, 2007... At a recent Sun Microsystems press event, Sun execs talked up plans to market the company's Solaris Unix OS to startups and small-to-midsize businesses. "Open source is what [customers] want to go after," said Peder Ulander, Sun's vice...

EDITOR'S LETTER: EMC demystified - While no one was looking, this little storage company went big-time.(EMC Corp. (Hopkinton, Massachusetts))(Brief article)
January 22, 2007... Reporters just love EMC. After all, there's always something new to write about, given that the company has spent the past three years on a punch-drunk buying spree, acquiring shiny new companies at a rate of roughly one every other month. ...

SECURITY ADVISER: A tale of two Internets - Creating a verified, authenticated alternative to today's Internet would be good for business -- and everyone's overall security.
January 22, 2007... One third of all U.S. adults had their identity and financial information stolen or lost in 2006 alone. Bogus messages make up 90 percent of the e-mail traffic on the Internet. Ninety-nine percent of all malware exists to steal your money. Tens...

STORAGE INSIDER: Is storage management already past its prime? IT needs a remedy to complicated management and monitoring of storage resources.(Column)
January 22, 2007... It may sound hasty to dismiss a technology that many companies have yet to deploy or even evaluate, but some of the vibes I am getting lately from vendors suggest that storage management applications may become obsolete before becoming...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: HP fraudster cops a plea; OnRebate responds to me - Jobs may be many things, but boring isn't one of them.(Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation into Apple Inc.'s stock options)(identity theft by Brian Wagner at Hewlett-Packard Co.)(OnRebate services)
January 22, 2007... Despite Apple's "there's nothing to see here, please move along" response to the scandal surrounding Steve Jobs' $75 million stock options, the Feds appear to have other ideas. According to The Wall Street Journal, the SEC is investigating...

ENTERPRISE INSIGHT: Even in IT, sex sells - Plus, new study suggests marketers take a lesson from software companies.(Editorial)
January 22, 2007... Attention all IT marketers: There's no limit to how sexy you can make technology sound, if you put some creativity into it. Case in point, the Fall/Winter issue of Conduit, the glossy computer science alumni magazine from my alma mater,...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Brace for Exchange 2007 bumps - Microsoft's forthcoming e-mail server suffers hardware and interoperability issues.(Microsoft Exchange Server 2007)
January 22, 2007... CES is over, I'm 41, the Jesuits have gone home, and I'm sick as a dog. It's been an eventful week. I'll be posting my business-oriented CES hits on my SMB IT blog throughout the week -- and there were more than a few. Today, though, I'm...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: A glimpse at a true superphone - Not so fast: Manufacturers still must rise to the BlackBerry challenge.(Apple iPhone)(Column)
January 22, 2007... iPhone, along with ultra-converged handsets shown at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) from Nokia, Samsung, and others, all look like the devices I have longed to bring with me on the road. Finally, I've got a shot at that mobile Holy Grail: a...

OFF THE RECORD: Corporate catastrophe follows botched beta - Sometimes, even when you see trouble coming, there's no way to duck.(Port Portal's product development procedures)(Column)
January 22, 2007... By Anonymous Early in 2000 I signed on as an engineering associate with a West Coast software vendor I'll call "Port Portal." The guy who hired me, "Alan," was CTO and VP of Engineering. As it happens, he had just been hired himself;...

REALITY CHECK: Tabblo's approach to rich Internet apps - Community- developed RIAs are harbingers of things to come.
January 22, 2007... If you want a peek into the future of RIAs (rich Internet applications), take a look at Tabblo (tabblo.com). The model that Tabblo has set into motion for photographers -- both amateur and professional -- will soon be adopted by enterprise IT...

Oracle sows the seeds for SOA - Enriched suite yields a crop of enhancements.(service oriented architecture, Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3 )
January 22, 2007... An SOA (service oriented architecture) has the appealing allure for reducing costs and improving your company's agility. But, before digging up your existing IT roots, you'll need assurances there's a fortified and fertile ecosystem waiting to...

Cast Iron puts application integration in a box - Cast Iron iA3000 appliance simplifies EAI -- perhaps too much.(Cast Iron iA3000 v3.5 enterprise application integration system)(Editorial)(Product/service evaluation)
January 29, 2007... Enterprise application integration can quickly take on nightmarish proportions: multiple applications requiring complex workflows, data that must change form from one app to another, and massive management snarls. Consequently, most EAI...

Packeteer iShared yields mixed WAN optimization results - Appliances delivers a hefty CIFS boost but stumbles on other data.(wide area networks)(Editorial)(Product/service evaluation)
January 29, 2007... Poorly performing WAN links continue to be the bane of many network administrators. Wherever there is a WAN link, there will be performance degradation caused by latency and chatty protocols. Simply adding bandwidth is not the answer. Using...

Second Life and the future of the operating system - Linden's Miller says search, voice in Second Life's Future.(Interview)
January 29, 2007... Linden Lab's Second Life isn't the first virtual community to spring up on the Internet -- text-based MUDs (multi-user domains) date back to the mid-1970s. Nor is it the largest virtual environment. That honor likely belongs to World of...

Vista launch starts upgrade clock ticking - Compatibility worries make IT Pros Vista-shy.(Microsoft Windows Vista)
January 29, 2007... Moses crossing the desert. The Red Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino. Microsoft getting shrink-wrap around a Vista box. All involved more than their share of blood, sweat, toil, and tears. But for the folks out in Redmond, Wash., the day...