InfoWorld articles from May 2006

InfoWorld archives from May 2006

Tales of heroic hacks and inspired work-arounds - Hands-on experts make IT miracles happen in surprising ways.(Editorial)(Brief article)
May 29, 2006... What does it mean to be a hacker? The mainstream media has long used the term as a kind of pejorative, calling to mind images of pale, skinny misanthropes launching denial-of-service attacks from their parents' basements. Real hackers know...

Running e-mail through a gauntlet - IronPort and Mirapoint appliances address manifold threats.(Mirapoint Message Server M-Series, IronPort C-Series)
May 29, 2006... E-mail security is a dire necessity these days, and it involves much more than anti-spam or anti-virus filtering. Phishing scams threaten to snare corporate users and their passwords for accessing business networks; other attacks target the...

Q1 hones in on network events - QRadar SEM has beautiful interface and reporting but lacks comprehensive data source support.(Q1 Labs, security event manager)
May 29, 2006... Prior to releasing the QRadar SEM (security event manager), Q1 Labs was one of a handful of vendors actively competing in the NBAD (Network Based Anomaly Detection) market. NBAD works by maintaining service profiles on every network device....

SecureSphere Database Security Gateway fortifies your database - Appliance shields your data from malicious acts and mistakes.
May 29, 2006... The scenario is simple: a user has rights to query the database's customer table. He usually queries one customer at a time through the application interface, but one night, he stays late, dumps the entire customer table into a text file, and...

Phishers use Microsoft Word hole as bait - Defense contractors targeted in spear phishing campaign.(Microsoft Corp. is developing patch for Microsoft Word )(Brief article)
May 29, 2006... Microsoft last week said it would rush to deliver a patch for a recently discovered hole in Microsoft Word that was being used in sophisticated online attacks. The company plans to release a fix for the hole in Word XP and Word 2003 on...

IBM releases SOA switches, services - New gear and services to boot for secure SOA.(Datapower Inc.)(service oriented architecture)(Brief article)
May 29, 2006... XML security appliance provider DataPower got gobbled up by IBM last fall, but the role of DataPower's technology in IBM's SOA strategy wasn't clear until last week, when IBM announced three new appliances that use it, and an array of Global...

Vista, virtualization news dominate WinHEC - Microsoft release updates for Vista, Office, Longhorn.
May 29, 2006... Microsoft pulled off what might be the software development world's equivalent of horse racing's exotic trifecta last week, releasing beta versions of three major products simultaneously at the its annual Windows Hardware Engineering...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Free Software Foundation: Free as in "do what I say" - Stallman-headed group's increasing politicization leaves a sour taste.
May 29, 2006... When Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985, it was organized around a radical idea: Software should be free, not just as in free of charge, but free as in the concept of liberty. During the next 20 years that...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Send us your hacks - Also: Readers weigh in on a world without Microsoft.
May 29, 2006... Do you have a hack you're particularly proud of? (And by hack I mean an ingenious fix-it job that may not follow established procedures but gets the task done.) I ask because this week's cover story, "Heroic Hacks and Inspired Work-arounds"...

SECURITY ADVISER: Bruce Schneier: Channeling common sense - This mastermind's teachings and advice lead back to a singular goal: a common-sense approach to security.(Bruce Schneier)
May 29, 2006... Have you ever had one of those moments where something you knew to be certain was turned upside down and you learned you had been wrong... for years? A lot of Bruce Schneier's writing gives me moments like that. Bruce Schneier, CTO of...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Dell-AMD love flowers, Microsoft charges by the hour - Grumpy gossip hound examines his hardware and finds it wanting.
May 29, 2006... Microsoft recently announced the hardware requirements for Vista, and the answer is: more than you got. PCs that meet the minimum specs will be dubbed "Vista Capable" -- which, if history is any indication, means they'll run slower than a...

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Tech jobs take stress to whole new levels - Feeling the strain? A new study suggests you'll just have to get in line.(Survey)
May 29, 2006... Attention all you laid-back IT professionals: a new study claims that IT is the most stressful occupation, ahead of engineering, sales, finance, HR, and pretty much everything else. [Talkback: Feeling the strain] The study,...

STORAGE INSIDER: Was Veritas sleeping with the enemy? Either company could win the Symantec-Microsoft dispute, but you and I will certainly lose.
May 29, 2006... I had planned to write about another topic this week, but it will have to wait -- last week's news has me revisiting Symantec and its storage machinations. The lawsuit was a surprise because, just like anyone else who has ever touched...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Yes, Virginia, there is an Office server - A sneak peek at MOSS 2007 reveals that the latest cycle of Office may be worth the upgrade hassle.(Correction notice)
May 29, 2006... See correction below Office 2007 is set to release nigh the end of this fine year. I managed to get a real early look at the client package this past December. But a fresh client look and the addition of several smart client features are...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Shut down technology's black market - Make software and system counterfeiting impossible first, then negotiate to make it illegal.
May 29, 2006... The news of counterfeit Intel-based Macs surfacing in Asia shocked me into seeing the magnitude of the piracy/counterfeiting threat. Counterfeit or cloned Macs (I don't know if thieves are bothering to mimic the chassis designs) create the...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: Easing app deployment with an open source sandbox - Simple administrative tools help a small university experiment and explore its application needs.
May 29, 2006... I've just returned from a day at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., where I participated in the annual Faculty Academy on Instructional Technologies. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to give a keynote talk on 21st...

REALITY CHECK: Imagining a day without Microsoft - If the company we love to hate disappeared tomorrow, we'd be in for still more headaches.(Editorial)
May 29, 2006... Did you ever hear the warning, "be careful what you wish for, it might come true?" Well, because Microsoft is the company most people love to hate, I decided to ask a cross section of industry cognoscenti this simple question: What would...

OFF THE RECORD: When someone is stealing your hardware - To catch a thief, this IT manager became a private investigator. Too bad no one was willing to listen.(Column)
May 29, 2006... By Anonymous Just call me Philip Marlowe. Several years ago I took a job working for a large telecommunications firm as the desktop support manager, and somehow I got assigned to the most loathsome of all duties in our shop: hardware...

Hack Tales: Air-gap networking for the price of a pair of sneakers - Cheap USB storage and a little ingenuity made all the difference.
May 29, 2006... Federal IT managers face troubling times when it comes to synchronizing an air-gap network. And just in case you're thinking "air gap" refers to a new brand of sneakers... well, you're almost right. In high-security situations, various...

Hack Tales: Keeping thin clients synced from coast to coast - Ingenuity and creative Perl did away with laborious system configuration.(Column)
May 29, 2006... I once consulted for a medical-records company that was rolling out thin clients to nearly 50 offices around the United States. The goal was to build a large Citrix MetaFrame farm over WAN links to the main datacenter, which was located...

Hack Tales: Keeping track of tools the wireless way - This Wi-Fi hack meant tools need never go missing again.(real estate industry uses Trapeze Networks RingMaster)
May 29, 2006... "Who has that damn cart now?" During a network build-out for a large New York commercial real estate manager a few years back, that phrase got shouted often enough to become a stress mantra. This company had several midsize businesses...

Hack Tales: Virtualization helps swing an Exchange upgrade - Microsoft's thorny install path was no problem with the help of virtual servers.
May 29, 2006... A while ago I was asked to help a customer upgrade an aged Exchange 2000 installation to new hardware and Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition. My customer secured the new server loaded up with SBS 2003; my job was to...

Hack Tales: Network auditing on a shoestring - Complete map of network shares and access rights kept business auditors happy.
May 29, 2006... What do you do when the auditors are breathing down your neck, wanting to see an exhaustive report on the Windows network security of a 2,000- user network across eight sites? That's easy. Break out a text editor and start writing some Perl....

Hack Tales: E-mail archiving the home-brew way - Custom code allowed one company to sidestep costly management solutions.
May 29, 2006... Compliance is a painful reality for many IT administrators. Among the growing list of tasks, e-mail archiving is becoming a major requirement. Not only are various government audits interested in e- mail archiving data, but legal actions have...

Oversize monochrome printers from HP, Lexmark, and Xerox prove practical yet pricey - Speedy models demonstrate versatility.(Product/service evaluation)
May 22, 2006... Drab, discreet, and ordinary? Or affordable, reliable, and fast? What you see in monochrome laser printers depends on what you look for -- though from any perspective, printing monochrome documents is an essential part of the office...

Dell tape library is built to scale - PowerVault ML6000 has first-class management features, module structure.
May 22, 2006... Tape libraries recently experienced a dramatic evolution, changing from monolithic brontosaurs that you had to carefully size according to present and future demands, into more congenial devices, easily scalable for capacity and performance....

QEMU simulates with style - Open-source QEMU straddles virtualization- emulation line with aplomb.
May 22, 2006... Imagine walking up to a friend running Windows on a laptop and asking to borrow the machine for a moment. You plug a pendrive into its USB port, open a window that boots into Linux, log on to a Web site, and download a file, then close the...

Enterprise Search goes after BI - OneBox has Bigger Vendors talking BI, too.(business intelligence, MasterCard International Inc.)
May 22, 2006... Baseball is a tough game. It would be even tougher if the umpires decided to, say, change the distance between the bases. Consider, then, how IT and compliance folks at online merchants are feeling after a MasterCard International official...

PCI standard to require application scans - Application vulnerability scans required by June.
May 22, 2006... Baseball is a tough game. It would be even tougher if the umpires decided to, say, change the distance between the bases. Consider, then, how IT and compliance folks at online merchants are feeling after a MasterCard International official...

SSA buy spawns new software giant - Chairman Schaper says SOA platform will be non-proprietary.(SSA Global Technologies Inc.)(Brief article)
May 22, 2006... Roll over, Oracle. Infor's acquisition of SSA Global for $1.4 billion last week creates a new enterprise software giant that claims to be ready to do battle with the big players. The combined company will have more than 37,000 customers...

Verizon-NSA case puts companies on notice - Legal questions dog NSA data requests.
May 22, 2006... A shadowy "three letter" U.S. government agency calls your company and asks for copies of your private customer data... the kind you don't share with outsiders and can get sued for losing. The agency says it needs the data to track...

NetSuite gets the boot, E3 nixes birthday suits - Pay no attention to the man behind the voting booth curtain.(Netsuite Development Corp.)(Electronic Entertainment Expo)(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers rejected the advancement of domain names)
May 22, 2006... So it turns out that hacking a Diebold touchscreen voting machine is just slightly harder than opening a box of Cracker Jack and stealing the prize inside. All you need is a PC Card, a little know-how, and a few minutes alone with the machine...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Lessons in learning - Ongoing education can be an effective employee retention policy.(Editorial)
May 22, 2006... You certainly can't accuse us of following the pack. Here it is, late May, with the world fixated on graduation and summer plans, and what's InfoWorld hawking? A special "Back to School" package, with one article on IT pros polishing up their...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: Sun still not answering the call to open source Java - Despite hints to the contrary, Sun is unlikely to give up lucrative license fees.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
May 22, 2006... Have you heard? Sun Microsystems is open sourcing Java. "I think it's not a question of whether, it's a question of how," Rich Green, Sun's vice president of software, said at last week's 2006 JavaOne Conference. Cheers all around. ...

SECURITY ADVISER: Wrestling with Windows' hidden "features" - Windows- IE desktop integration issues may not be huge security risks, but they're still a bit scary.(Column)
May 22, 2006... One of the reasons Microsoft Windows frustrates so many people is its list of unexpected desktop integration issues that can lead to security issues. Is it a feature or a security bug? When I was teaching in Brazil last week, Jose...

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Datacenter power crunch - Soaring energy costs are fueling server consolidation and systems virtualization.
May 22, 2006... If you watch the nightly news, it's hard to miss the relentless coverage about rising energy prices and the "pain at the pump." Occasionally they'll mention how oil companies are working to add refinery capacity or improve efficiency....

STORAGE INSIDER: Symantec looks beyond storage - Post-Veritas acquisition, Symantec trumpets its battle plans for total datacenter management at Vision 2006.(Column)
May 22, 2006... Last week in San Francisco was my first time at the Symantec Vision event, and I was surprised by the number of attendees (a crowd that would make Steve Jobs jealous) and by the relentless sequence of hands- on training and break-out...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Windows Server 2003 R2 makes printer management a snap - Enhanced features ease setup and deliver a one-screen view of printers on your network.(Column)
May 22, 2006... I've been doing a lot of "hack" coverage lately -- cool things you can do with stuff you already own instead of having to go beg for new stuff. I'm looking to do another one of those for this column, but that'll take a little while to put...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: Web-based alternatives to PowerPoint - Online tools can deliver presentations that are just as rich, but a little less evil.
May 22, 2006... When Edward Tufte famously declared that PowerPoint is evil, I violently agreed. "If your words or images are not on point," he wrote, "making them dance in color won't make them relevant." PowerPoint isn't the only villain. I feel the...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Apple closes down OS X - Client kernel has gone proprietary, but it's not too late to set things right.(Column)
May 22, 2006... Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's OS X is now a proprietary operating system. Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source...

REALITY CHECK: The evolution of office document standards - OpenDocument may be the Homo sapien to Microsoft Office's native-format Neanderthals.
May 22, 2006... In high tech it has always been the same. What to an outsider may seem like an inconsequential piece of new technology, to an insider is visionary. This is the case with the recent ISO preliminary vote approving the OpenDocument format as a...

OFF THE RECORD: IT heroes -- and villains -- of 9/11 - Getting financial services back online after the planes hit involved some unexpected hazards.(Column)
May 22, 2006... By Anonymous In 2001, I worked for the Pittsburgh office of a large financial- services firm. I was engaged in a straight-through processing project, attempting to pass financial information to all parties involved in a transaction...

Five technology skills for the global economy - Changing with the times demands acquiring skills spanning business barriers and cultural divides.
May 22, 2006... IT pros hoping to climb the corporate ladder need to understand how technology integrates with core business functions such as finance, marketing, operations, and compliance issues. To get ahead in the emerging global economy, new expertise...

Developing your IT staff demands new thinking - The boundaries are blurring between formal education programs and innovative on-the-job learning environments.
May 22, 2006... Forward-thinking IT leaders recognize how important it is for employees to have broad and deep technical and business knowledge, and not just a list of skills that looks good on a resume. They need employees who show good judgment as well as...

IT careers: It's not just about the title - A series of successful assignments is often viewed as preferable to a string of titles.
May 22, 2006... One of the bigger barriers companies face when developing IT professionals is tradition -- the one that says employees have to climb a career ladder. Employees steeped in this tradition resist assignments that don't move them to the next...

High-tech MBAs target the IT pro - Reaching the next level in a global environment means integrating constantly changing technology into core business functions.(master of business administration)
May 22, 2006... With 16 years' experience doing everything from coding to systems management, Scott Nease thought he was ready to step up to the big chair. But when he enrolled in a six-month executive education program geared for teaching business skills to...

Fabric7 promises high-end servers at low cost - An array of inexpensive Opteron processors plus commodity virtualization underlie the new, muscular server architecture developed by Fabric7's innovative engineering team.(Fabric7 Systems Inc.)
May 15, 2006... Server virtualization technologies are getting monstrous amounts of buzz because they encourage cost savings, permit greater deployment flexibility, and increase utilization rates. Today, most virtualization technologies focus on software...

Zimbra's Web-based platform takes aim at conventional e-mail - Using AJAX, Zimbra delivers a surprisingly rich Web-based e-mail client, but its mail server and extensive integration capabilities are equally impressive.
May 15, 2006... Managing a high-volume e-mail system using traditional tools can be a demanding and costly task. That's why Zimbra wants to rewrite the book on enterprise messaging. "It's a clean-slate view of the world," says CEO Satish Dharmaraj. The...

Charting startup investment trends - Our examination of the venture fabric turns up some common threads -- and some interesting possibilities for the near future.
May 15, 2006... Several clear trends emerged as we reviewed hundreds of startups in the course of researching this article. Venture capitalists have poured smart money into a host of enterprise technology areas, but security, virtualization, and -- cutting...

High-availability Exchange made easy - Azaleos and Teneros appliance- style solutions provide maximum uptime with minimal pain.(Azaleos OneServer)(Teneros ACA 2500E)
May 15, 2006... The obvious solution for bringing HA (high availability) to your Exchange server is to use Microsoft's own Exchange clustering features. Although Exchange's clustering is reliable and robust, this isn't an easy configuration to set up. It's...

Fonality packs Asterisk PBX in a box - Low-cost, feature-rich PBX appliance sports ASP management model.
May 15, 2006... When I looked at the open source Digium Asterisk PBX last year, one of things I noted is that implementation can be difficult, and that it would probably be necessary to call in an expert to set up an Asterisk phone system. Fonality aims to...

IBM's collaboration tools evolve - Lotus Notes and Domino 7 integration improvements advance productivity for admins, developers.(International Business Machines Corp.)
May 15, 2006... Introduced in 1989, IBM Lotus Notes 7 stays true to the original's ideals of efficient collaboration. In this release, Notes e-mail and calendar entries are even easier to manage, and the Domino 7 server embraces more standards, including Web...

Product previews.(Sun Microsystems Inc. introduces Solaris 10.0)(Network Appliance Inc.'s FAS6070 and FAS6070)(Business Objects S.A. (San Jose, California)'s Crystal Vision Server)
May 15, 2006... Sun Solaris 10 rev to include ZFS and PostgreSQL; Mercury Interactive unveils Change Control Management; Sun extends StorageTek virtual tape solutions; Business Objects bundle combines reports and dashboards; Bluesocket WLAN gear taps MIMO...

EMC's focus still on virtualization, security - Kashya purchase, new services part of strategy.(Interlink Group Inc.)
May 15, 2006... EMC continued its buying spree last week by picking up Kashya, maker of data replication and protection software, for $153 million, and the Interlink Group, a professional services firm that specializes in Microsoft environments. The...

Analysts, users disagree on Vista pros, cons - Enterprise reality could dampen Vista's shock.(Microsoft Windows Vista)
May 15, 2006... As Microsoft slouches toward its first full operating system release in five years, code-named "Vista," Microsoft-watchers are beginning to debate the impact of the system's security enhancements, which could be more pain than gain. New...

IBM updates bring SOA to mainframes - Rational tools, software updates target younger crowd.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... The desire to access mainframe data and business logic has inspired many grand tech initiatives, including client-server, XML, and SOA. It's fair to say that most big, mature SOA implementations have been built on a foundation of mainframe...

Symantec sorting out Veritas mega-merger - Vision Conference offers promises, not products.(VERITAS Software Corp.)
May 15, 2006... Nearly a year after Symantec's $13.5 billion merger with Veritas Software, customers of both companies got a view of the new face of Symantec at the company's Vision 2006 user conference last week in San Francisco. After weathering a...

Companies may miss 20 percent of network printers - Stealth printers damage profits, compliance.
May 15, 2006... It's 10:30 a.m. Do you know where your printers are? In most enterprises, the answer, sadly, is "No." Even worse, IT's inability to locate and track printers is costing companies thousands -- even millions -- of dollars a year. A new...

EDITOR'S LETTER: Upstart startups - Today's agile enterprises are ready to bet on products from young companies.(Editorial)
May 15, 2006... Startups aren't typical fodder for InfoWorld stories. For that matter, we don't devote all that much ink to tech companies in general, preferring to focus on technologies, products, and strategies that help IT do what it needs to do. And...

OPEN ENTERPRISE: No love lost between Microsoft and OpenDocument - Third-party plug-in proves Microsoft's bad intentions toward the free document format.
May 15, 2006... Could any subject be less interesting than electronic document formats? Even programmers start to glaze over when the conversation shifts to how an application stores its data. For software end-users, the topic seldom even comes up. How...

SECURITY ADVISER: Blasting away security myths - Rethinking conventional wisdom can be a smart way to bolster security.
May 15, 2006... During my nearly two-decade computer security career, I've always been amazed by how many security myths are propagated as fact by readers, instructors, leaders, and writers. Just because most people say it's so doesn't make it correct....

FROM THE ANALYSTS: Coping in a world of IP-based telecom - Plus, will Microsoft's ploy against Google for online ad revenue pay off?
May 15, 2006... With all the talk about on-demand software, I'm amazed there isn't as much buzz about other on-demand services, such as telecom. That may be starting to change. Last week Forrester came out with a report titled "The Four Stages of...

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: Microsoft swoons, tech banker croons - Will the Feds ever learn how to use Google?(Microsoft stock price decreases)(Roger McNamee appreciation)(case between Apple Computer Inc. and Apple Records Inc.)
May 15, 2006... Are terrorists using video games as recruiting tools? That's the claim by U.S. Department of Defense officials, who point to a video sequence from Electronic Arts' Battlefield 2 in which fighters dressed in Arab garb shoot at American...

ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: Clustering the Microsoft way - If you have the need and the dough, Microsoft Compute Cluster 2003 is worth checking out.
May 15, 2006... I can't talk about the embargoed Longhorn meeting I had Tuesday, except to say that I got one Microsoft rep to say that Redmond doesn't think there'll be any more service packs after Longhorn sees daylight. But then he burst out laughing, so...

STORAGE INSIDER: Storage vendors rewrite the rules of the game - Market competition ramps up as EMC and Dell, IBM and LSI Logic, and NetApp unveil new products.
May 15, 2006... It seems inevitable, like death and taxes. Every year, storage vendors renew their portfolios, delivering significant changes if not complete redesigns of critical product lines. This week almost simultaneous major announcements from...

STRATEGIC DEVELOPER: A casting call for my screencasting experiment - Getting involved with screencasting could have benefits for InfoWorld's readers.
May 15, 2006... I'd like to invite some of you to join me in a journalistic experiment. As you know if you've been following my work through the years, I preach what I practice. My analytical perspectives flow from my own hands-on work. However, my...

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Tech junkies don't want to hear that choice is bad - No one in the tech industry benefits from maintaining the pretense of a level playing field.
May 15, 2006... I saw Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's new CEO, speak at a pre-recession trade conference. It wasn't a conference to announce the recession, although Sun would have been the outfit to sponsor that shindig. Schwartz uttered three words that stuck in...

OFF THE RECORD: Doing IT the Army way - Want to sell software to the military? Keep your head down and watch out for incoming fire.
May 15, 2006... By Anonymous Perhaps you've wondered why gazillions of tax dollars go to the military while our soldiers in Iraq have to buy their own body armor. I don't have insight into the body armor issue, but I think this story illuminates the...

REALITY CHECK: Gartner weighs in on the state of IT - My conversation with a Gartner fortune-teller reveals troubling times ahead.
May 15, 2006... Promising a reporter an exclusive is like dangling a sausage link in front of your dog. So of course when Gartner Fellow Ken McGee offered me an advance look at Gartner's presentation on the current state of IT -- to be unveiled at the...

Splunk combs log files for hidden problems - Plumbing the depths of log files and other metadata, Splunk helps IT find the telltale patterns that reveal what's really going on.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... More and more IT systems generate a glut of metadata -- log files, systems states, and so on. "And more and more of the IT budget is spent trying to keep systems up and running," says Michael Baum, CEO of Splunk. Much of that cost can be...

Sxip simplifies identity management across domains - How do you reconcile user identities across organizational boundaries? Sxip wants you to use its appliance.(Simple Extensible Identity Protocol)
May 15, 2006... Most enterprises have worked hard to properly authenticate users and manage access to systems. But as more enterprises subscribe to SaaS (software as a service) offerings or other provisioned services, managing identities and access...

TrueDemand keeps retailers from running out of stock - Too much or too little inventory can kill a business. TrueDemand's heavy-duty analytics software keeps the supply of goods on track.
May 15, 2006... For 30 years, retail supply chains -- manufacturers, warehouses, delivery systems, and retailers -- have struggled to eliminate running out of stock. Not only does it kill sales for a given item, but studies show it also causes some buyers to...

XenSource rolls out cross-platform virtualization - Xen, the open source alternative to VMware and Microsoft Virtualization Server, goes commercial.
May 15, 2006... Thanks to its paravirtualization technology, the Xen open source hypervisor has won acclaim as a speedy competitor to commercial server- virtualization products such as Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware. The paravirtualization approach uses...

Akimbi virtualizes the application test bench - With Akimbi's virtual environments, IT can test and deploy multiple configurations with far less overhead.(Akimbo Systems Inc.)
May 15, 2006... In the average datacenter, a lot of IT resources are spent on preproduction application testing. Servers, networks, databases, and applications must all be deployed, followed by a series of installs and uninstalls for various versions of the...

Zenprise spots Microsoft Exchange failures - Once Zenprise gets to know an enterprise's e-mail patterns, its knowledge base and adaptive analysis simplify mail server management.
May 15, 2006... If there's one enterprise application that bedevils IT, it's Microsoft Exchange. It can be difficult to manage, difficult to troubleshoot, and requires specialized storage management support in large enterprises. Not to mention that its...

ConSentry locks down the network - With ConSentry's LANShield appliance, enterprises gain new control over network access without new switches or sluggish software solutions.
May 15, 2006... Traditionally, enterprise networks have been built on trust: Anyone connected is assumed to be authorized because they have to be on the premises. But the growing prevalence of wireless networks, remote access, and nonstaff workers have...

Determina pre-hacks applications against intruders - By drilling into applications, predicting what an attack would look like, and monitoring behavior, Determina's Memory Firewall provides a new line of defense.
May 15, 2006... Malicious hackers are constantly exploiting software vulnerabilities. Vendors and IT staff alike spend countless hours racing to update protection signatures and install patches before their exposed systems can be compromised. It's a...

Fortify scours code for security vulnerabilities - Fortify offers a code-level line of defense against those who would attack enterprise Web applications to wreak havoc or reap ill-gotten gains.
May 15, 2006... The old adage that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure sums up Fortify's approach to securing homegrown enterprise applications, which are frequently enticing targets for hackers and their malicious exploits. "It's these...

Gigamon offers one view of many monitoring systems - Today's network uses a range of monitoring systems; Gigamon's switch manages traffic into and out of them.
May 15, 2006... Compliance requirements, security threats, and the need for operational visibility require more and more monitoring of activities on the network. Vendors have responded by offering plug-and-play appliances to fill specific needs, yet nobody...

Jitterbit shakes up application integration - Do you really need a mile-high stack of middleware to integrate? Jitterbit thinks it can be a lot simpler than that.
May 15, 2006... Integrating applications usually involves at least one of three costly approaches: hand-coded software, complex EAI platforms, or design and deployment of an SOA. Jitterbit offers a fourth approach: integration by business analysts with...

JotSpot delivers enterprise wikis and mashups - Take the wiki concept a fathom deeper, and you'll find JotSpot's platform for enterprisewide collaboration.
May 15, 2006... More and more IT departments uses wikis -- those Web pages that all authorized users can add to and edit -- as the platform for everything from document management to project planning to knowledge bases. They're easy to set up, easy to use,...

Tech startups to watch - InfoWorld selects 15 startups whose technologies meet tough IT challenges and introduce intriguing new capabilities.(Brief article)
May 15, 2006... Startups are back! or at least, startup fever is back. Scan the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and you won't find any hockey sticks -- the level of investment in enterprise-related technology startups has actually remained fairly...

Akimbi makes virtual labs real - Akimbi Slingshot brings impressive automation to virtualized testing environments.
May 8, 2006... Akimbi Slingshot is one of several products in a nascent product category called virtual lab automation. Slingshot and other tools, such as Surgient's Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS), enable IT test sites to make good use of...

BlueSocket improves wireless gateway - Version 5.1 of BlueSecure controller, plus BlueView management and sensor APs, sport solid security, flexibility.
May 8, 2006... With Version 5.1 of its BlueSecure 5000 controller (BSC 5000), BlueView Management Suite, and companion APs, BlueSocket goes a long way toward eliminating IT managers' concerns about the risks of wireless networking. For example, you can...