InfoWorld articles from October 2003

InfoWorld archives from October 2003

Siebel takes on hosted CRM.
October 6, 2003... CRM heavyweight Siebel Systems is prepared to once again dive into the hosted applications market, this time in partnership with longtime ally IBM. The two companies have sealed a deal to offer a $70 per-user, per-month service, making...

Microsoft launches SMB server.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Demonstrating its ability to blend disparate server offerings, Microsoft this week will launch two versions of its Windows Small Business Server 2003. The company wants to entice companies with fewer than 100 employees with an integrated...

Future of Web services takes center stage.
October 6, 2003... The innovation rate, complexity, and current economic model associated with Web services came under attack last week. Such topics came into the spotlight during the same week that Actional, AmberPoint, and Empirix all released products to...

Hitachi rolls out Thunder array.
October 6, 2003... Hitachi Data Systems is sharpening its focus on enabling customers to consolidate their datacenters, with the goal of stealing high-end market share from EMC. This week HDS will unveil an ILM (information lifecycle management) strategy, a third...

SPS 2003 offers tight Office integration, easy personalization.
October 6, 2003... Portal solutions generally take one of two approaches: the centralized, "corporate" approach, or the distributed, "team-based" approach. Neither is perfect. Centralized information portals simply aren't flexible enough to meet the needs of the...

SnapGear packs big firewall into small package.
October 6, 2003... As broadband connections become nearly ubiquitous, so too are paperback-sized firewalls. At first glance, SnapGear's SME550 appears to be another, albeit smaller than most. This impression is shattered once you get a look at the Web...

Portals plant new integration style.
October 13, 2003... Portal vendors are changing their products into independent architecture layers that span a broad set of infrastructure pieces. As a result, the technology is enabling a new style of integration conducted by end-users at the browser level. ...

SANS Lists Top Vulnerabilities.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... The SANS Institute has released its annual list of security vulnerabilities. This year's top-20 list includes peer-to-peer software and Microsoft Outlook for the first time. Also new to the list are five Windows vulnerabilities and three...

Critics Say IE Changes Premature.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Microsoft has been charged by skeptics with claims that the company is forcing developers to rewrite large portions of the Web, based on changes Microsoft said it will make to the Internet Explorer browser due to a software patent ruling...

Digital Media Gets Boost.(Kontiki's Delivery Management System 3.0 and Business Media Services)(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Kontiki has unveiled the DMS (Delivery Management System) 3.0 and Business Media Services, which are key components of its business video communication solution. New features include a secure delivery plug-in, flexible grid management,...

Siebel fires up integration engine.
October 13, 2003... Buoyed by a hosted product and partnership, Siebel Systems is reinvigorating its focus on the UAN (Universal Application Network) integration platform. But users and analysts said that UAN must reduce integration costs to become a...

Microsoft, IBM ramp up SMB battle.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Microsoft accelerated its push into the SMB (small to midsize business) market at its annual partner conference last week by launching two updated versions of its SBS (Small Business Server). Both the Standard and Premium Editions of the...

BEA unlocks first security product.(WebLogic Enterprise Security)
October 13, 2003... Out to change the way developers secure applications, BEA Systems this week will release WLES (WebLogic Enterprise Security), its first stand- alone security software product. The product features a distributed security architecture that...

IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu roll out new notebooks.(IBM ThonkPad R50, Fujitsu LifeBook P5000 and Toshiba A10 and A20)(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... IBM refreshed its ThinkPad line, Toshiba introduced three desktop replacement notebooks, and Fujitsu added a LifeBook to its fleet last week. IBM's model R50 comes armed with APS (Active Protection System), which senses sudden movements and...

Apple unveils Mac OS X, Panther.(Brief Article)
October 13, 2003... Apple last week announced the release of Mac OS X Panther and Panther Server, the latest major updates to its Unix-based operating system. Highlights of the new OS version include an updated Finder interface. The software also includes faster...

BI brews with Java.
October 13, 2003... The Java platform's maturity is driving the emergence of embedded BI reporting tools that infuse applications with critical reporting. These embedded tools take advantage of Java's security, stability, and administration. They are seen as...

iSeries' changing colors.
October 13, 2003... Quick! Do you know which platform can concurrently run multiple operating systems, including multiple Linux and Windows servers; execute your Web services and J2EE strategy; integrate with .Net; and host Web applications and data warehouses...

iSeries' shades of autonomic computing.
October 13, 2003... iSeries already has some key pieces of IBM's autonomic computing vision under its hood, including several self-configuring, self-healing, self- protecting, and self-optimizing technologies. Autonomic computing builds support into systems so...

LeftHand Networks looks beyond DAS.(eLeftHand Networks Distributed Storage Matrix 4.2)
October 13, 2003... Many storage solutions can expand only up to a point, limited by the number of disk enclosures their controllers support. After crossing that threshold, you're back to managing discrete storage systems, although not as many as you would with...

No easy path to improved Exchange.
October 13, 2003... The exchange e-mail server is a good barometer of Microsoft's strengths and weaknesses. After all, Windows NT had to adapt the Exchange directory service for its own use back in the mid-1990s, and after the release of Windows 2000 and the...

Exchange upgrade woes.
October 13, 2003... In my book, there are two kinds of upgrades: the unnoticed and the long-remembered. With the first kind, no one notices that there's an upgrade in process. The second is a lot more dramatic, and while the long-term benefits of such a process...

Longhorn hinges on security.
October 20, 2003... Previews of Microsoft's forthcoming server-stack software reveal a company brooding over improving its security. At the company's Professional Developers Conference next week in Los Angeles, developers will get an in-depth technical review...

IDC, Gartner Say PC Shipments Up.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... PC shipments are back on track, posting double-digit gains in this year's third quarter, according to IDC and Gartner. Overall, PC vendors shipped 38.4 million PCs in the third quarter, up 15.7 percent from last year's third quarter, IDC said....

Siebel Buys UpShot.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... After re-entering the CRM ASP fray by way of partnerships with IBM and Sun Microsystems earlier this month, Siebel Systems last week bought one of the hosted CRM market's leading vendors, UpShot, in a deal that may be worth as much as $70...

BMC Builds Out BSM.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... BMC Software said it will work with Symantec, EMC, and Accenture on its BSM (Business Service Management) initiative, a strategy aimed at better tying IT services to business objectives. The companies will work together to offer tightly...

IBM, webMethods acquisitions boost integration.
October 20, 2003... IBM and webMethods have each swallowed integration companies in order to nourish their respective offerings. At the same time, SeeBeyond has upgraded its suite, and an integration startup has thrown its first software product in the ring last...

Microsoft, HP, Dell bolster wireless.(Brief Article)
October 20, 2003... Wireless technologies were bolstered on several fronts last week as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell detailed plans to inject products with Bluetooth and WLAN, and wireless services providers aligned to add hot spots. Microsoft...

Closing the XML security gap.
October 20, 2003... If you use a firewall as part of your network security strategy, you might be feeling smug, thinking that you've closed access to thousands of ports and vulnerabilities. What you may not realize is that your firewall is most likely blithely...

Motorola stacks mobile chip, memory.(MXC (Mobile Extreme Convergence) architecture)(Brief Article)
October 27, 2003... In hopes of providing device-independent mobile development, Motorola has unveiled a mobile architecture that combines processor cores for communications and applications in a single package with a shared- memory subsystem. The MXC (Mobile...

Dell switches make waves.(Product/Service Evaluation)
October 27, 2003... With miniscule margins on personal computers and servers, it's not surprising that Dell is branching out with forays into other aspects of the datacenter. What is surprising is that they're doing it very well. Server and workstation...

Maxxan switch makes storage virtualization easy.(Maxxan MXV320 Intelligent Application Switch)
October 27, 2003... Just as Ethernet networking devices have evolved from straightforward hubs to layer 2 switches to layer 7 application-aware switches, so are SAN switches evolving. The Maxxan MXV320 Intelligent Application Switch corresponds to a layer 7...