Baseline articles from March 2007

Baseline archives from March 2007

Oracle Says to Buy Rival Hyperion for $3.3B.
March 1, 2007... NEW YORK--Oracle Corp., the world's largest database software maker, said on Thursday it would buy rival Hyperion Solutions Corp. for $3.3 billion, to boost its position in the market for performance management software. Oracle will pay...

5 Ways To Save Through Virtualization.
March 1, 2007... In a survey published last month, CIO Insight found that virtualization of servers and storage would get the highest percentage in I.T. spending this year. But with all the advantages virtualization offers, that shouldn't come as too much of a...

Oracle Buyout of Hyperion to Hasten BI Sector Consolidation.
March 1, 2007... Oracle's $3.3 billion acquisition of Hyperion Solutions, a specialist in the field of corporate performance management, has set the fox among the chickens in the broader business intelligence market. This has long been a relatively quiet...

Month of PHP Bugs Begins.(vulnerabilities in the HTML embedded scripting language)(Personal Home Page)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Security expert Stefan Esser has declared war on vulnerabilities in the PHP core with the "Month of PHP Bugs." PHP is an open-source HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. The month-long effort is an attempt to...

Novell's Revenue Sags, Linux Business Soars.
March 2, 2007... It's hard to say exactly what's happening with Novell's earnings, while it continues to audit its past stock-option practices. Still, while awaiting the results from the audit committee, Novell on March 1 announced preliminary financial results...

Nortel Fleshes Out Unified Communications Vision.
March 5, 2007... Nortel Networks at VoiceCon on March 5 will back up its unified communications vision with a series of new and enhanced products aimed at both enterprises and carriers. Nortel will extend its unified communications vision beyond the work...

Balsillie Resigns as RIM Chairman.
March 5, 2007... Research In Motion Chairman and co-CEO Jim Balsillie will step down as chairman of the Canadian maker of the popular BlackBerry device. The resignation comes in the wake of reports that the company misstated $250 million in stock options....

Sun Announces Ruby Support for NetBeans.
March 5, 2007... While the Eclipse open-source development community opens its EclipseCon conference, Sun Microsystems and the NetBeans community have announced an early-access release of the NetBeans Ruby Pack, which is a plug-in that provides support for the...

Report: Plugging Data Leaks Is High Priority.
March 5, 2007... In the wake of incidents such as TJX's potentially massive loss of data to theft, reported in January, it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that 90 percent of companies plan to plug in new technology to secure electronic copies of...

Best Buy Officials Concede Dual-Site System Caused by 'Human Error,' 'Employee Confusion'.
March 6, 2007... As it tries to navigate the minefield that today's multichannel retail strategies have become, Best Buy officials are conceding that "human error" and employee "confusion" were the reasons customers were shown a site displaying higher...

McAfee Gets (Another) New Head.(Dave DeWalt)(Brief article)
March 6, 2007... The latest twitch in McAfee's top-management shudderings came on March 5 when the anti-virus security vendor announced that its board has named Dave DeWalt as the company's new CEO and president. McAfee said in a release that DeWalt will...

Cybercrime and Punishment.
March 6, 2007... Cybercrime is getting cheaper all the time, as shady characters sell tools to help criminals spam, phish, hack and crash. And a new treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate could wind up passing the costs of combating cybercrime directly to American...

New Alliance Plans to Tackle Mountains of E-Waste.
March 6, 2007... OSLO (Reuters)--A new U.N.-led alliance will work out global scrapping guidelines to protect the environment from mountains of electronic trash such as computers, phones and televisions, the group said on Tuesday. Three U.N. agencies, 16...

Cybercrime Treaty: What it Means to You.
March 6, 2007... Cybercrime is getting cheaper all the time, as shady characters sell tools to help criminals spam, phish, hack and crash. And a new treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate could wind up passing the costs of combating cybercrime directly to American...

Cybercrime and Punishment.
March 6, 2007... Cybercrime is getting cheaper all the time, as shady characters sell tools to help criminals spam, phish, hack and crash. And a new treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate could wind up passing the costs of combating cybercrime directly to American...

BI Software Creates a Crystal Ball for College Hoops.
March 7, 2007... Millions of NCAA college basketball fans have experienced it--the agony of watching a carefully chosen bracket disintegrate. But college educators Jay Coleman and Allen Lynch have found a way to minimize that type of frustration by combining...

W3C to Develop New HTML Spec.
March 7, 2007... The World Wide Web Consortium has announced plans to create a new HTML standard and to enhance the XHTML specification. The move to update HTML comes as a nod to the developer and design communities as well as the browser manufacturers. The...

Verizon Service Combats Web Threats.
March 7, 2007... Verizon Business has expanded its presence in the managed security space with a new set of services targeted at enterprises. Verizon Business, based in Basking Ridge, N.J., is a unit of Verizon Communications. The company launched its...

Report: Some Companies Lose Data Six Times a Year.
March 7, 2007... TJX's massive data loss is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost seven out of 10 companies--68 percent--are losing sensitive data or having it stolen out from under them six times a year, according to new research from the IT Policy...

Intel Faces Up to E-Mail Retention Problems in AMD Lawsuit.
March 7, 2007... Intel is facing some big-time legal problems in its 2-year-old legal tussle with a major competitor, AMD--largely because its own internal e-mail archiving system apparently isn't doing the job. A U.S. federal judge on March 7 gave the...

Opinion: We Trained Them, We Should (Be Allowed To) Keep Them.(Brief article)
March 7, 2007... America is at its greatest when we combine the talents of those born here with those who choose to live here. We literally get the best of both worlds. It's not that we have much of a choice. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich...

Intel Faces Up to E-Mail Retention Problems in AMD Lawsuit.
March 7, 2007... Intel is facing some big-time legal problems in its 2-year-old legal tussle with a major competitor, AMD--largely because its own internal e-mail archiving system apparently isn't doing the job. A U.S. federal judge on March 7 gave the...

Source: Microsoft Web Search Exec Leaving Company.
March 7, 2007... SEATTLE (Reuters)--The Microsoft executive in charge of closing the gap on Web search leader Google is leaving the company, a source familiar with the situation said on March 7. Chris Payne, corporate vice president of Windows Live search,...

Midsize Firms Get More Value from Outsourcing.
March 7, 2007... While most small and midsize businesses use outsourcers, they are more finicky about how they use them, compared with larger organizations. Except for application development, hosting and integration, fewer than one in four mid-market companies...

Six Tips to Make Ideas Succeed.
March 7, 2007... One part of a CIO's job is making a convincing business case for complex ideas. How can you break through the acronyms and tech talk, and make those ideas understandable and memorable? In their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and...

IBM Readies New Services for the Mainframe.(Brief article)
March 8, 2007... When it comes to mainframe systems, IBM is taking a global view. The Armonk, N.Y., company is planning to unveil a new set of services for its System z mainframe systems March 8. The backdrop for this announcement is set to take place in...

5 Tips for Deploying On-Demand CRM.
March 8, 2007... Vendors can offer all kinds of suggestions on how to plan your deployment. Consultants can help with time lines and schedules. But if you're looking for some serious advice on how to kick-start your project--and see it through--who better to...

How To Plan for SOA 2.0.(service oriented architecture )(Brief article)
March 8, 2007... What's Ahead: Advanced SOA Organizations that have completed at least one service-oriented architecture project should move on to what analysts have begun calling "advanced SOA." What's the difference? Most current deployments are...

Getting Out of the In-Box.(Resortcom International's Alex Marxer)(Brief article)
March 8, 2007... Alex Marxer VP, Operations Resortcom International San Diego, Calif. www.resortcom.com MANAGER'S PROFILE: Oversees financial operations for provider of financial and managerial services to the vacation industry. ...

Credit Card Unions Team with Security Companies to Protect Data.
March 8, 2007... A shared branching network controlled by credit unions from around the globe has forged a partnership with two security vendors in the name of data protection. The FSCC (Financial Service Centers Cooperative), which has more than 1,000...

Gabetti Joins Virtual Land Rush in Second Life.(Gabetti Property Solutions)(Brief article)
March 8, 2007... MILAN (Reuters)--Italy's Gabetti Property Solutions has joined the Second Life land rush, laying claim to being the first real-life property company in the booming virtual world. Joining dozens of companies that have set up shop on Second...

Informatica Launches Salesforce.com Data Replication Service.(Brief article)
March 8, 2007... Informatica is expanding the software as a service concept from the enterprise applications sector into the data infrastructure realm with the March 8 introduction of its on-demand data integration service. Informatica's On Demand Data...

Microsoft Customers Irate over Daylight-Saving Time Woes.
March 8, 2007... The extension of daylight-saving time by a month in the United States is causing enormous grief for some IT administrators running Microsoft software, as many of the software programs running on their users' systems need to be individually...

Romanian Hacker Broadcasts eBay Customer Accounts.
March 10, 2007... eBay has confirmed that, early on the morning of March 8 EST, an alleged Romanian hacker calling himself "Born_To_Scam_American_Guys" posted records for 15 eBay users on an eBay forum for between 40-60 minutes before the company removed them....

HP Readies New Desktops for Enterprises.
March 12, 2007... Hewlett-Packard is ramping up its desktop line with additions to four models that will emphasize energy efficiency and long life cycles for business customers. As it has with other models in its Compaq line, the Palo Alto, Calif., company...

Linux for Beginners.
March 12, 2007... Linux is getting hotter and more mainstream all the time--enough so that even IT administrators who deal primarily with Windows would do well to get their feet wet with Linux. After all, even Microsoft, through its recent deal with Novell,...

Microsoft Quietly Rolls with Dynamics Technology Platform.
March 12, 2007... At its annual Convergence conference in San Diego March 11-14, Microsoft will make a plethora of announcements around its Dynamics brand of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management suites, from the release of Titan, its...

Survey: Project Managers in High Demand, Short Supply.
March 12, 2007... Do you have the IT skills managers covet? According to a study released March 8 by Forrester Research, recruiters are setting their sights on tech pros with project management, security and architecture skills in 2007, as the more routine...

The Looming CIO Shortage.
March 12, 2007... A shortage of qualified chief information officers looms in the next few years. Growing demand for CIOs is not being offset by an increasing supply of talented, well-prepared executives, according to a just-released report, "Grooming the 2010...

The Most Influential People Follow Their Own Paths.
March 12, 2007... As I see it, there are two ways to become a top influencer in any industry. One way is to be able to peer ahead, consider the trends specific to your industry as well as those in the social, technology, business and political climate, and...

Project Green is Dead--for the Foreseeable Future, at Least.(Brief article)
March 13, 2007... It's not a rumor. Project Green is dead or at least on life support. Converging Microsoft's Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management suites to a single code base is no longer the objective for the Dynamics development...

HP Sees Linux Desktop Nearing Critical Mass.
March 13, 2007... The good news, according to an HP executive, is that the company sees "the Linux desktop nearing critical mass." The bad news, for would be off-the-shelf Linux desktop buyers, is that it's still not there yet. Doug Small, HP's worldwide...

HSBC to Standardize on Novell's SUSE Linux.
March 13, 2007... HSBC, the British-based banking and financial services group that has more than 125 million customers globally, is moving to standardize on a single Linux distribution: Novell's SUSE Linux. The HSBC move is a direct result of the technical...

In Past Decade, IT Brought a $2 Trillion Economic Boost, Report Shows.
March 13, 2007... IT added $2 trillion to the U.S. economy in the past decade, according to a report released Mar. 13 by the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a technology-promoting public policy think tank. The report,...

Wellpoint Says Some Patient Info Disappeared: Report.
March 14, 2007... NEW YORK--Wellpoint Inc., a managed care firm, has begun notifying 75,000 members of its Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield unit in New York that a compact disc holding their vital medical and other personal information had disappeared, The New...

Lessig: Rewriting the Rules.
March 15, 2007... The world first learned about Lawrence Lessig when federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appointed him to the post of special master in the U.S. v. Microsoft case in 1997. While his appointment was appealed shortly thereafter and subsequently...

Brin, Page Show No Signs of Slowing Down.(Sergey Brin and Larry Page)
March 15, 2007... Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page made Ziff Davis Media's Top 100 Most Influential People in IT list for inventing technologies that rewrote expectations for Internet search engines and then building outward to establish a growing...

The End of Software, and a New Way of Doing Business.(Company overview)
March 15, 2007... Most days, at least in public venues, Marc Benioff wears a small white button pinned to his lapel that has the word "software" printed in the middle of a red circle with a thick red line drawn across it. The symbol translates to "The End of...

VMware's Greene: A Virtual Success Story.(Company overview)
March 15, 2007... If virtualization is the one of the hot technologies to watch for in 2007, then VMware President Diane Greene may have the best seat in the house. Greene, who along with her husband and three other engineers, founded VMware in 1998 as a...

Dalzell's Filling Amazon's Shopping Cart with Services.
March 15, 2007... Rick Dalzell's wish list at Amazon.com includes the original "Star Trek" series on DVD, a Sims computer game, and a book about trout and salmon that reflects his passion for fishing and outdoor life. Dalzell's wish list for Amazon.com,...

Ross: Firefox Goes Where Few Browsers Have Gone Before.
March 15, 2007... In 2002 the Mozilla Foundation released Mozilla 1.0, finally delivering on the promise of an open-source browser descended from the original Netscape Navigator browser code. But while Mozilla 1.0 received many kudos from reviewers...

Cisco and Webex: It Takes Two to Tango with Microsoft.
March 15, 2007... Cisco Systems' planned $2.9 billion acquisition of leading Web conferencing provider Webex sets up a complex and interesting dance between itself and Microsoft as both vendors work through the need to both cooperate and compete in the same...

SAP Announces Upgrades to Mid-Market Suite.
March 15, 2007... SAP AG announced March 15 at CeBIT another sweeping set of initiatives around its mid-market software, including service-oriented architecture versions of its SAP All-in-One suite released by partners, and the development of a Governance Risk...

Can a Rootkit Be Certified for Vista?
March 15, 2007... NEW YORK--Forget what Microsoft says about Vista being the most secure version of Windows yet. More to the point, what do the hackers think of it? In a nutshell, they think it's an improvement, but at the end of the day, it's just like...

U.S. Developers, Students Face Ever-Increasing Global Competition.
March 16, 2007... As the software development trend continues to grow more rapidly outside the United States&#151in parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world--not only do professional developers have to think about global competition, but...

Canadian Networking Firm Derives Gains From I.T. Controls.
March 16, 2007... If you've ever wondered whether configuration and audit controls are worth it, just ask Dan Chervenka. The director of security, business and I.T. systems at Axia NetMedia Corp., a Calgary, Alberta, firm that builds and manages open-access...

Top 100 Most Influential People in IT.(Brief article)
March 16, 2007... Slide Show: Who are the 100 most influential people in IT? Check out the listo--numbers 100-76. The Most Influential People Follow Their Own Paths Opinion: Whether you are a visionary or a fast problem solver, you must see beyond...

The Top 100: How We Ranked Them.(information technology professionals)
March 16, 2007... So, here you have it. The 2007 list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT. The leaders on the list represent the great cross-section of information technology. There are new-media pioneers, software and hardware engineers, corporate...

March 2007 Online Extras.
March 19, 2007... BASELINE ONLINE *Calculator: Does Software Consolidation Pay Off? How can you predict whether your company's software operations consolidation plan will be effective? Fill in your company's numbers and find out. *2007 I.T. Budget...

February 2007 Online Extras.
March 19, 2007... BASELINE ONLINE *Project Planner: Calculating Costs of a Product Life-Cycle Management System What approach should you take to scan for internal and external vulnerabilities? Figure out the best method for your company. *Calculator:...

Ellison: Oracle Poised to Outgrow SAP in ERP Market.
March 20, 2007... Oracle CEO Larry Ellison claimed that his company is a "strong No. 2" to SAP in the ERP applications business and has the product strategy in place to outgrow its archrival. Ellison made his comments on March 20 as Oracle reported...

State of the Enterprise IT Career.
March 21, 2007... What is the state of the enterprise IT workplace today? Employee rotation in and out of IT roles was the theme of the day at Forrester's Teleconference on the Enterprise IT Career March 19, correlated with more successful recruitment and...

Open SOA Group to Submit Specs to OASIS.
March 21, 2007... A group of 18 vendors in the service-oriented architecture space has announced that some of the key Service Component Architecture and Service Data Objects specifications have completed incubation and will be formally submitted to OASIS to...

Stolen TJX Data Used in $8M Scheme Before Breach Discovery.
March 21, 2007... Information stolen from the systems of massive retailer TJX was being used fraudulently in November 2006 in an $8 million gift card scheme, one month before TJX officials said they learned of the breach, according to Florida law enforcement...

Report: Offshoring's Cost Advantage Slips.
March 21, 2007... The cost advantage of offshoring declined in 2006, found the Global Services Location Index released by A.T. Kearney, a Washington-based global consulting firm. The report found that although the wage advantage of offshoring locations for...

Facts Behind the Decline of Women in IT.
March 22, 2007... It's true: Fewer women work in IT today than they did in 2000. Not only that: Women make up a smaller proportion of employed IT professionals in the United States, according to analysis of government labor data by CIO Insight. In 2000,...

Borders to Reopen Web Site, Sell/Close Stores: Report.
March 22, 2007... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Borders Group Inc. on Thursday plans to announce its intention to reopen its own branded e-commerce Web site in early 2008, ending an alliance with Amazon.com Inc. that had been the core of its online strategy, The Wall...

Oracle Sues Rival SAP, Charges 'Corporate Theft'.
March 22, 2007... SAN FRANCISCO--Oracle Corp. sued SAP AG on Thursday for "corporate theft on a grand scale," claiming its business software rival had stolen copyrighted software and other confidential materials. Oracle, engaged in a fierce battle with SAP...

Microsoft Says Vista Sales Strong.
March 26, 2007... More than 20 million copies of Windows Vista were sold globally in February 2007, the first month of sales since its widespread consumer release. That is significantly more than the 17 million copies of Windows XP that were sold in the...

Developers: Expect New Major Language Within Five Years.
March 26, 2007... LAS VEGAS--A group of software gurus gathered at TheServerSide Java Symposium here to discuss the future of programming, saying we should expect to see more dynamic languages and possibly a new major language in the next five years. During...

IBM Opens Business to Support Mortgage Industry.
March 26, 2007... BOSTON--International Business Machines Corp. said on Monday it formed a unit that will sell software and computers for processing mortgage applications and also manage processing of home-loan paperwork on behalf of lenders. IBM, the...

Trend Micro Moves Security into the Cloud.
March 26, 2007... Trend Micro officials hope to change the forecast for Web-based security threats with its new in-the-cloud Web site reputation technology. The technology is part of the company's Total Web Threat Protection strategy and a key component...

Next Draft of GPL 3 to Address Microsoft-Novell Deal.
March 26, 2007... The Free Software Foundation will release the third discussion draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3 on March 28, some eight months after the previous draft was made public. The move will push back the final release of GPL 3 by...

Tool Turns Any JavaScript-Enabled Browser into a Malicious Drone.
March 26, 2007... A new tool too dangerous to give away can turn any PC--Windows, Mac, Linux--or any device with a browser into a site attacker. The tool, called Jikto, is a Web application scanner that searches for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities....

Xen Xpansion: Ready for Prime Time.
March 26, 2007... In the roughly four years since a group of Cambridge University researchers delivered the paper "Xen and the Art of Virtualization" at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, the Xen hypervisor virtualization project has become the...

Dell, AMD 'DASH' Toward New Standards.
March 27, 2007... Dell is readying a new generation of its OptiPlex commercial desktops to meet new industry management standards. The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker is scheduled to announce on March 27 that the next generation of its OptiPlex desktops will...

Cingular Launches Mobile Banking with U.S. Banks.
March 27, 2007... ORLANDO, Florida--AT&T Inc. said on Tuesday it had taken a step toward the long-promised notion of phones replacing credit cards, checks and cash by signing agreements with Wachovia Corp. and several other banks. The agreements will allow...

RFID Feared as Possible Terrorist Target.
March 27, 2007... As if RFID chips in driver's licenses and passports weren't scary enough already, London's Royal Academy of Engineering is suggesting that someday a terrorist will be able to read personal details from a distance and, given the right antennas...

SAP Announces New Co-CEO, Resignation of Board Member.
March 28, 2007... On the heels of an explosive law suit from Oracle and two quarterly earnings misses, SAP AG announced on March 28 a major executive reshuffling that includes the resignation of Shai Agassi, the executive board member in charge of application...

Primer: Project Management Certification.
March 28, 2007... What is it? The most widely recognized project management certification, the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, recognizes an individual for a combination of formal study and practical project management experience. ...

BEA Unveils Enterprise Web 2.0 Software.
March 28, 2007... BEA Systems introduced its new enterprise Web 2.0 offerings at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. At the event on March 27, Adrian McDermott, BEA's vice president of engineering, introduced three new BEA technologies...

Microsoft Seeks to Boost Management Initiative.
March 28, 2007... San Diego, Calif.--Microsoft continued to move the ball forward on its Dynamic Systems Initiative at its Microsoft Management Summit on March 28 when company officials announced the beta release schedule for a handful of products that flesh out...

Rift Over Co-CEO Caused Agassi to Leave SAP.
March 28, 2007... Shai Agassi is leaving SAP AG to tackle climate and energy issues in Israel and not as a result of Oracle's recent lawsuit against SAP, or SAP's two missed quarters in fiscal 2006, according to SAP's chairman, Hasso Plattner. Rather,...

Latest Draft of GPL 3 Comes Under Fire.
March 28, 2007... Corporate reaction to the release of the third discussion draft of the GNU GPL (General Public License) has been swift, much of it critical of the changes with how patents are dealt with. The new draft, released on March 28 by the Free...