IT Week (UK) articles from January 2006

IT Week (UK) archives from January 2006

Windows-based Palm Treo ships.
January 9, 2006... Palm last week launched its first Treo smartphone running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software - a move that could attract interest from corporate IT buyers. Initially the Treo 700w is available only in the US from carrier Verizon on its...

Rising cost of power shifts priorities.(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. IT departments could face a shortfall in their budgets this year, as soaring electricity prices drive up the cost of running datacentres and other operations. As power costs rise, datacentre hosting firms are...

Dual-core Centrino raises bar for laptops.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Daniel Robinson and Martin Veitch. Intel's new laptop platform looks set to offer buyers significantly improved performance compared with its previous Centrino technology. Early tests suggest new dual-core systems are more than 40...

Oracle fees favour Sun users.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. Oracle's latest licensing changes could be good news for Sun buyers and suggest that the old axis between the firms is being welded together again. Late last year, Oracle announced new tariffs for servers using...

Firms offshoring to India urged to review security.
January 9, 2006... Byline: James Murray. UK firms using Indian IT and back-office facilities are being urged to upgrade their security in the wake of a suspected terrorist attack on Bangalore, the country's technology hub and a popular offshore destination...

Microsoft rushes out fix.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Madeline Bennett. Microsoft yielded to intense pressure from customers last week and rolled out an emergency patch to fix a serious Windows Metafile (WMF) flaw. The move followed the launch of unofficial fixes, which some security...

Symantec buys into IM.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Madeline Bennett. Symantec has kicked off the new year by adding to its security portfolio with the acquisition of instant messaging (IM) software specialist IMlogic. IMlogic's systems are designed to control and secure IM...

Delisting adds to Mercury's woes.
January 9, 2006... Speculation is mounting about the future of Mercury Interactive after the firm was last week knocked off the Nasdaq stock exchange. The delisting was due to Mercury failing to meet a second deadline to restate its financial results...

Microsoft shows latest Vista.
January 9, 2006... Bill Gates showed the latest pre-release of Windows Vista at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Highlights included Flip 3D, a way of toggling between applications and windows; and Slideshow, which allows next-generation PCs...

Netgear puts Skype on Wi-Fi.(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Netgear will launch a Wi-Fi-only mobile handset with a Skype voice-over-IP (VoIP) client later this year. The device will let users make free and low-cost calls over the internet via home and office WLANs and public access Wi-Fi hotspots. The...

Citrix updates remote access.
January 9, 2006... Citrix last week launched a new version of its web-based remote access system, GoToMyPC, which it said will make performance up to four times faster. New features include enhanced colour and a function that lets users drag and drop files and...

Next-generation PoE switches.
January 9, 2006... Power over Ethernet (PoE) pioneer PowerDsine has announced its new 6500 PoE Midspan series of 6-, 12-, 24- and 48-port switches. Included with the switches is PowerDsine's new PowerView Pro network management system, while the 24-port model...

HP may take stake in CSC.
January 9, 2006... HP and private equity firm Blackstone Group are considering a bid for US-based IT services giant CSC, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. A deal would see HP taking a minority interest in CSC, which has a large government and...

IBM ends 2005 with buying spree.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. IBM closed a busy year for IT mergers and acquisitions by agreeing to purchase a brace of firms that will take it deeper into network management and software integration. For UK IT buyers the better known of the...

Siemens services sell-off.(acquisitions between Siemens Business Services, Wipro Ltd. , Fujitsu Siemens Computers)(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Byline: James Murray. Engineering giant Siemens ended months of speculation about its loss-making Siemens Business Services (SBS) unit last month by agreeing to sell the division's Product Related Services (PRS) activities to Fujitsu...

Firefox to offer content sharing.(Mozilla Firefox browser has added AllPeers add-on which enables file sharing)(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... According to reports on the web last week, the Mozilla Firefox browser is to gain an add-on that enables content sharing. The AllPeers add-on is an open-source media-sharing tool that enables users to share files through an online album as...

Report calls for Whitehall IT overhaul.(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Phil Muncaster. Economic policy think-tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) last week called for the establishment of an Office of IT to provide a coherent e-government strategy and enable more responsive online public services. ...

Comment - IT's serious problem with silly input.(Column)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Les Hatton. Better input checking would prevent many of today's system errors, so why is it not being done? One of the most consistently successful ways of screwing up programs is to give them silly inputs. In a good program,...

Comment - In the bleak midwinter, Sun is hot again. The Unix giant has got its mojo back thanks to a pioneering approach to servers, licensing and software.(Column)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. Whisper it for now but it might just be that Sun has done it again. The firm that has had more comebacks than The Who is trying to repeat the trick, steering a luminous course back into the datacentre. Nobody...

Enterprise Week - Server admin suite controls rival platforms.(new product Likewise from Centeris)(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Roger Howorth. Server management tools vendor Centeris is getting ready to launch its cross-platform suite for managing Linux and Windows servers in Europe this month. The news follows worldwide beta testing of the startup...

Enterprise Week - Exchange moves to 64bit path.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Roger Howorth. Many firms are considering new mail server options now that Microsoft has ended support for its aging Exchange 5.5 mail server. Microsoft's move followed the start of beta testing of what is unofficially known as...

Enterprise Week - Comment - Revelations of Windows Vista. The leader of the Windows Vista kernel design team is refreshingly frank about the challenges.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Roger Howorth. I've often wondered how many people it takes to write a Windows kernel, and at last Microsoft seems to have provided the answer, which is a surprisingly small number. My source is Rob Short, corporate...

Internet Week - Shoppers flock online for Xmas.(Phil Muncaster)
January 9, 2006... Byline: Phil Muncaster. Over a third of Christmas shopping was done over the internet, according to the results of a survey released last week by pollster YouGov. The survey also revealed that 53 percent of shoppers spent more online last...

Internet Week - Wi-Fi set for Cloud nine.(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Wireless hotspot provider The Cloud is rolling out extensive access zones across the UK. This spring the company plans to roll out access in nine cities, and it estimates that the service will be within reach of some four million people. ...

Internet Week - Comment - Is the internet good or bad? Discuss. AOL's new advertising campaign could start an interesting debate on the way the web is used.
January 9, 2006... Byline: David Neal. Somewhere in the fog of New Year's Day I saw a rather strange TV commercial. In the ad, John Hurt, using his most menacing tones, seemed to be suggesting that the internet should be as welcome in my house as a...

Client Week - Intel debuts dual-core laptop chip.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Daniel Robinson. Intel has launched its first laptop platform with dual-core processor chips. The technology is designed to boost performance without compromising battery life, and will enable lighter laptops, Intel said. The...

Client Week - Comment - Incentives grow for recycling[SO] ITWEEK; Pressure from charities could force IT vendors to pay more attention to green issues this year.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Alistair Dabbs. [SH] Pressure from charities could force IT vendors to pay more attention to green issues this year. [BB] Alistair Dabbs. [PP] 16 [PL] UK Faced with compelling evidence that leather belts do not, after all,...

Client Week - XDA Mini S Review - Mini handheld is good for voice and messaging. O2's XDA Mini S features a slide-out qwerty keyboard, high-resolution screen and a wide range of PDA tools.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Daniel Robinson. The XDA Mini S from O2 is a compact PDA/phone handset that offers quad-band GSM capability plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless functions. It also has a hideaway qwerty keyboard that makes it easier to write emails...

Network Week - Broadband lines near 10 million.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Dave Bailey. The UK now has more broadband users than France, and substantial growth is likely this year, according to analyst firm Point Topic. It estimates that at the start of this year the UK had 9.8 million broadband lines...

Network Week - Flexible virtual private LAN rolls out across UK.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Dave Bailey. Ethernet service provider Exponential-e last week rolled out a virtual private LAN service (VPLS)-enabled network to support companies wishing to run bandwidth-intensive applications or converged voice and data. ...

Network Week - Comment - Will remote staff pick up speed? The three main factors affecting the speed of broadband services are location, location, location.
January 9, 2006... Byline: Dave Bailey. With NTL tipped to up its offer to acquire Virgin Mobile and so compete with the likes of Sky and BT in the fixed, mobile, internet and TV services "quad-play" market, there were some fears that business users might be...

Management Week - Standardised BI lifts efficiency.(usage of Business Intelligence software)
January 9, 2006... Byline: James Murray. More and more companies are trying to cut the costs of business intelligence (BI) systems by standardising around a single BI supplier. That is according to BI vendors, who forecast that in 2006 organisations will...

Management Week - Councils just miss e-target.(Brief Article)
January 9, 2006... Inflexible outsourcing contracts and legal restraints have been blamed for local councils' narrow failure to meet government targets to have all services online by the start of 2006. According to figures published last month by the Office...

Management Week - Comment - Power and responsibility go together. The need to produce electricity on site will keep IT managers busy monitoring new systems.
January 9, 2006... Byline: James Woudhuysen. You've heard about business continuity. In 2006, you'll be hearing about energy continuity. The man to watch is energy minister Malcolm Wicks. In the course of 2005, energy and climate change emerged as the key...

Mini handheld is good for voice and messaging.
January 9, 2006... Mini handheld is good for voice and messaging O2's XDA Mini S features a slide-out qwerty keyboard, high-resolution screen and a wide range of PDA tools The XDA Mini S from O2 is a compact PDA/phone handset that offers quad-band GSM...

Intel debuts dual-core laptop chip.
January 9, 2006... Intel debuts dual-core laptop chip Daniel Robinson Intel has launched its first laptop platform with dual-core processor chips. The technology is designed to boost performance without compromising battery life, and will enable lighter...

Incentives grow for recycling.
January 9, 2006... Incentives grow for recycling Pressure from charities could force IT vendors to pay more attention to green issues this year Faced with compelling evidence that leather belts do not, after all, shrink with regular usage, I have decided...

Standardised BI lifts efficiency.(business intelligence )
January 9, 2006... Standardised BI lifts efficiency James Murray More and more companies are trying to cut the costs of business intelligence (BI) systems by standardising around a single BI supplier. That is according to BI vendors, who forecast that in...

Councils just miss e-target n Inflexible outsourcing contracts and legal restraints have been blamed for local councils' narrow failure to meet government targets to have all services online by the start of 2006. According to figures published last month.
January 9, 2006... Councils just miss e-target n Inflexible outsourcing contracts and legal restraints have been blamed for local councils' narrow failure to meet government targets to have all services online by the start of 2006. According to figures...

Will remote staff pick up speed?(NTL Inc. acquired Virgin Mobile Telecoms Ltd.)
January 9, 2006... Will remote staff pick up speed? The three main factors affecting the speed of broadband services are location, location, location With NTL tipped to up its offer to acquire Virgin Mobile and so compete with the likes of Sky and BT in...

Power and responsibility go together.(for information technology services industry)
January 9, 2006... Power and responsibility go together The need to produce electricity on site will keep IT managers busy monitoring new systems You've heard about business continuity. In 2006, you'll be hearing about energy continuity. The man to watch...

In the bleak midwinter, Sun is hot again.
January 9, 2006... In the bleak midwinter, Sun is hot again The Unix giant has got its mojo back thanks to a pioneering approach to servers, licensing and software Whisper it for now but it might just be that Sun has done it again. The firm that has had...

Revelations of Windows Vista.
January 9, 2006... Revelations of Windows Vista The leader of the Windows Vista kernel design team is refreshingly frank about the challenges I've often wondered how many people it takes to write a Windows kernel, and at last Microsoft seems to have...

Server admin suite controls rival platforms Roger Howorth n Server management tools vendor Centeris is getting ready to launch its cross-platform suite for managing Linux and Windows servers in Europe this month. The news follows worldwide beta testing.
January 9, 2006... Server admin suite controls rival platforms Roger Howorth n Server management tools vendor Centeris is getting ready to launch its cross-platform suite for managing Linux and Windows servers in Europe this month. The news follows...

IBM ends 2005 with buying spree.
January 9, 2006... IBM ends 2005 with buying spree Martin Veitch IBM closed a busy year for IT mergers and acquisitions by agreeing to purchase a brace of firms that will take it deeper into network management and software integration. For UK IT...

Siemens services sell-off.
January 9, 2006... Siemens services sell-off James Murray Engineering giant Siemens ended months of speculation about its loss-making Siemens Business Services (SBS) unit last month by agreeing to sell the division's Product Related Services (PRS)...

Firefox to offer content sharing.
January 9, 2006... Firefox to offer content sharing According to reports on the web last week, the Mozilla Firefox browser is to gain an add-on that enables content sharing. The AllPeers add-on is an open-source media-sharing tool that enables users to...

Report calls for Whitehall IT overhaul.
January 9, 2006... Report calls for Whitehall IT overhaul Phil Muncaster Economic policy think-tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) last week called for the establishment of an Office of IT to provide a coherent e-government strategy and enable more...

Flexible virtual private LAN rolls out across UK.
January 9, 2006... Flexible virtual private LAN rolls out across UK Dave Bailey Ethernet service provider Exponential-e last week rolled out a virtual private LAN service (VPLS)-enabled network to support companies wishing to run bandwidth-intensive...

Broadband lines near 10 million.
January 9, 2006... Broadband lines near 10 million Dave Bailey The UK now has more broadband users than France, and substantial growth is likely this year, according to analyst firm Point Topic. It estimates that at the start of this year the UK had 9.8...

Is the internet good or bad? Discuss.
January 9, 2006... Is the internet good or bad? Discuss AOL's new advertising campaign could start an interesting debate on the way the web is used Somewhere in the fog of New Year's Day I saw a rather strange TV commercial. In the ad, John Hurt,...

Shoppers flock online for Xmas.
January 9, 2006... Shoppers flock online for Xmas Phil Muncaster Over a third of Christmas shopping was done over the internet, according to the results of a survey released last week by pollster YouGov. The survey also revealed that 53 percent of...

Wi-Fi set for Cloud nine n Wireless hotspot provider The Cloud is rolling out extensive access zones across the UK. This spring the company plans to roll out access in nine cities, and it estimates that the service will be within reach of some four mi.
January 9, 2006... Wi-Fi set for Cloud nine n Wireless hotspot provider The Cloud is rolling out extensive access zones across the UK. This spring the company plans to roll out access in nine cities, and it estimates that the service will be within...

Exchange moves to 64bit path.
January 9, 2006... Exchange moves to 64bit path roger howorth Many firms are considering new mail server options now that Microsoft has ended support for its aging Exchange 5.5 mail server. Microsoft's move followed the start of beta testing of what is...

Rising cost of power shifts priorities.
January 9, 2006... Rising cost of power shifts priorities Martin Veitch IT departments could face a shortfall in their budgets this year, as soaring electricity prices drive up the cost of running datacentres and other operations. As power costs...

Windows-based Palm Treo ships.
January 9, 2006... Windows-based Palm Treo ships n Palm last week launched its first Treo smartphone running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software -- a move that could attract interest from corporate IT buyers. Initially the Treo 700w is available...

Dual-core Centrino raises bar for laptops.
January 9, 2006... Dual-core Centrino raises bar for laptops Daniel Robinson and Martin Veitch Intel's new laptop platform looks set to offer buyers significantly improved performance compared with its previous Centrino technology. Early tests suggest...

Symantec buys into IM.
January 9, 2006... Symantec buys into IM Madeline Bennett Symantec has kicked off the new year by adding to its security portfolio with the acquisition of instant messaging (IM) software specialist IMlogic. IMlogic's systems are designed to control...

Microsoft rushes out fix.
January 9, 2006... Microsoft rushes out fix Madeline Bennett Microsoft yielded to intense pressure from customers last week and rolled out an emergency patch to fix a serious Windows Metafile (WMF) flaw. The move followed the launch of unofficial fixes,...

Delisting adds to Mercury's woes.
January 9, 2006... Delisting adds to Mercury's woes Speculation is mounting about the future of Mercury Interactive after the firm was last week knocked off the Nasdaq stock exchange. The delisting was due to Mercury failing to meet a second deadline to...

Firms offshoring to India urged to review security.
January 9, 2006... Firms offshoring to India urged to review security James Murray UK firms using Indian IT and back-office facilities are being urged to upgrade their security in the wake of a suspected terrorist attack on Bangalore, the country's...

Will Intel Macs tempt businesses?
January 16, 2006... Byline: Daniel Robinson. Last week's launch of a new range of Intel-based Macs brings Apple systems closer in price to Windows PCs and could tempt businesses to switch, according to experts. However, current Microsoft infrastructures could...

IT degrees leave gaps in expertise.(Information technology graduates lack in technical skills)(Brief Article)
January 16, 2006... UK IT graduates leave university without a good grounding in technology, a new study suggests, with courses dwelling too much on soft skills. IT recruitment specialist FDM found almost half of UK technology graduates felt their courses did...

US pays to make open source safer.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Phil Muncaster. Open-source software may become more attractive to enterprises, after the US government last week pledged over $1m funding to help root out bugs in projects such as Linux, Mozilla and Apache. Stanford...

HP and CSC merger talk puts services in spotlight.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. Rumours of a merger between HP and CSC continued to swirl last week as analysts said that such a deal could make sense. According to recent reports, private equity firm Blackstone Group could lead a bid with HP...

Host promises to simplify CRM.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch and Madeline Bennett. The hosted customer relationship management (CRM) market is getting a boost this month, as a new entrant launches, and established players NetSuite and Salesforce.com expand. Though hosted...

EMC beefs up services.
January 16, 2006... Byline: James Murray. Storage giant EMC has continued its recent spending spree, announcing two acquisitions in the last fortnight while also confirming 1,000 job losses. In a move designed to bolster its consultancy capabilities, EMC...

Electricity costs cause a rethink.(data centers)(Brief Article)
January 16, 2006... More datacentre hosts are considering charging per kilowatt in the face of rising electricity costs. "Power is included in our pricing but if prices continue to rise, at some point we would have to pass that onto customers," said John...

Sun and Oracle packages.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. Sun and Oracle cemented their 20-year-old partnership last week by detailing plans to bundle Oracle database licences with Sun's high-end servers. The firms announced that high-end Sun Fire servers based on...

Microsoft security patches.
January 16, 2006... Microsoft released two critical patches last week in its monthly security advisory. The first fix is for a flaw in the embedded web fonts used by Windows, while the second is a patch for Outlook and Exchange Server to fix the way that Transport...

OFR requirement under review.
January 16, 2006... Friends of the Earth last week applied to the high court for a judicial review to investigate claims that the government acted unlawfully when it failed to consult stakeholders before scrapping the Operating and Financial Review (OFR)...

IT spending flattens out.
January 16, 2006... IT spending will grow only slightly over the coming year, according to analyst Forrester, which predicts that European firms will spend just 1.6 percent more than last year. Security software applications such as antivirus and host...

Oracle boosts financial tools.
January 16, 2006... Oracle has revealed details of the next versions of its Financial Consolidation Hub and Internal Controls Manager. The new versions integrate preparation of financial statements with the assessment of companies' internal controls. The Hub...

BlackBerry Googles maps.
January 16, 2006... BlackBerry users can now use the Google Local maps and services finder, and within the next few months they will be able to use the Google Talk messaging service. The services will be available via free downloads from the URL below. ...

Flash memory to rival hard disks.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Martin Veitch. Samsung will start producing 16 gigabit Nand Flash chips this year, nudging the memory technology towards use in notebook PCs and maybe even edging out hard drives in some products in the next few years. Nand...

Novell helps guard Linux.
January 16, 2006... Byline: Phil Muncaster. Novell last week launched the AppArmor project, an open-source initiative intended to boost application security for the Linux operating system. The project is based on the firm's AppArmor intrusion prevention...

Mercury boosts SOA capabilities.(Mercury Interactive Corp. acquires Systinet Corp.)(service-oriented architecture)(Brief Article)
January 16, 2006... Mercury Interactive has beefed up its service-oriented architecture (SOA) side after agreeing to acquire SOA governance specialist Systinet. Systinet's products include a registry that records and manages components used to build business...

Red Hat finally adds Mono to Fedora.(Red Hat Inc. introduces Fedora Core Linux operating system which includes open-source Mono framework)(Brief Article)
January 16, 2006... Byline: Roger Howorth. The next release of the Fedora Core Linux operating system will include the open-source Mono framework, according to the manager of Red Hat's desktop group. This move means applications written for dot-Net should run...

Microsoft software support.
January 16, 2006... Microsoft is changing the schedule for ending product-support lifecycles to match releases of its monthly security update. In the past, support finished at the end of calendar quarters, while patches were released mid-month.

Pinder to oversee school IT.
January 16, 2006... Former e-envoy Andrew Pinder has been named as chairman of Becta, the government body for IT in education. Pinder, appointed by secretary of state Ruth Kelly, will work alongside Becta chief executive Owen Lynch. www.becta.org.uk.

Sage buys payment processor.
January 16, 2006... Sage last week announced it is to splash out around [pounds sterling]184m to buy Verus Financial Management, a US-based credit card and cheque processing company. Sage is planning to integrate Verus' products into its own accounting software,...

Checks for call centres.
January 16, 2006... Contact centre specialist MX Digital is offering a new health-check service to ensure telemarketing companies comply with the latest Ofcom and Direct Marketing Association regulations. The service analyses firms' predictive diallers to improve...

IT security training for all.
January 16, 2006... The Training Camp last week announced a new two-day course designed purely for non-IT staff. The course will ensure employees can identify potential security threats, such as viruses and trojans, and know when to alert a member of the IT staff....

Virtual Tape Library advances.
January 16, 2006... Storage specialists 3PAR and FalconStor have launched a joint Utility Virtual Tape Library (VTL) system. The product combines the plug-and-play FalconStor VTL product with 3PAR's scalable, full-tiered Utility Storage system, to help firms scale...