IT NEWS
Microsoft takes stake in Chinese electronics make
Microsoft will invest
in Chinese electronics maker, Sichuan Changhong Electric, as part
of a project to link televisions and consumer entertainment
devices with the Internet.
Microsoft China agreed to buy 15 million, newly-issued Changhong
shares at a price of 6.27 renminbi per share, according to a
Changhong filing (in Chinese) with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Microsoft's planned stake in the company is worth 94.1 million
renminbi (US$12.3 million).
Changhong's announcement follows an agreement between the two
companies, signed Friday, to cooperate on a project called Media
Galaxy. The goal is to develop, manufacture and sell televisions,
computers and digital entertainment products that connect to the
Internet, Changhong said. It did not offer further details.
Terms of the investment deal require Microsoft to hold on to its
Changhong shares for at least three years.
Source: IDG News Service (Singapore Bureau)
Red Hat Linux gets top Government security rating
Red Hat Linux has received a new level of security
certification that should make the software more appealing to some
government agencies.
Last week, IBM was able to achieve EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3
certification for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, putting it on par with
Sun Microsystems' Trusted Solaris operating system, said Dan Frye,
Vice President of Open Systems with IBM.
"This is the highest level of security function that anybody has,"
Frye said. "We have delivered LSPP functionality in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 and we have certified that at the EAL4 level of
assurance."
This rating is awarded by the government-funded National
Information Assurance Partnership's (NIAP) Common Criteria
Evaluation and Validation Scheme for IT Security program, which
evaluates the security of commercial technology products.
Red Hat Linux has been certified EAL4 Augmented with ALC_FLR.3 on
IBM's mainframe, System x, System p5 and eServer systems.
“This level of security certification is not usually required for
enterprise contracts, but it is mandatory for some programs within
government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the
U.S. National Security Agency”, Frye said.
Linux had already been certified at the EAL4 level, but this is
the first time that the operating system has received the Labeled
Security Protection Profile (LSPP) certification, which relates to
its access-control features.
Linux developers have been working to add these "SE Linux" access
control features into the operating system for several years now.
SE Linux shipped as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and now it
has been certified for government use, Frye said. "You now have a
level of fine-grained control for everybody," he added. "You can
set security based on groups or based on individuals."
In addition to LSPP, Red Hat Linux has been certified with Role
Based Access Control Protection (RBAC), and that too is
noteworthy, said Red Hat.
"Historically, OS vendors have required you buy a separate
branched OS to get something that is LSPP and RBAC certified," the
company said in a statement. "This is something completely unique
for commercial operating systems because the support for
multilevel security is native to the OS."
According to Frye, the certification is "big news for the Linux
industry" because it shows that open-source software can be used
for sensitive computing tasks. "If anyone had any doubts that you
could do this with an open-source operating system, we've proved
them wrong”.
Source: IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
IBM starts testing
next version of 'Viper' database
Beta of DB2 9 upgrade adds new workload management and
auditing features.
IBM has made a public beta release of a major update to its DB2 9
database available for download.
DB2 Viper 2, the next release of DB2 9 for Linux, Unix and Windows
servers, adds new workload management tools for improved query
governance and monitoring, auditing capabilities for regulatory
compliance purposes, and security and high availability features,
according to a blog posting Monday by Chris Eaton, an IBM product
manager.
The planned upgrade also includes simplified memory management and
enhancements to the data compression features already available in
DB2 9, Eaton wrote.
IBM released DB2 9, codenamed Viper, last July. At the time, IBM
touted the database's ability to natively store both relational
data and unstructured XML content, such as audio, video and Web
pages.
Bolstered by its purchase of Informix Corp.'s database technology
in 2001, IBM stole the database market-share crown from Oracle
Corp. that year. Since then, however, Oracle has regained and
steadily increased its lead.
Despite the release of Viper, figures released publicly this week
by Gartner Inc. showed Oracle controlling 47.1% of the worldwide
relational database market last year, with IBM holding 21.1% --
down from 22.1% in 2005.
Source: Computerworld
TRENDS
Climate change: Motorola good, Apple not great
Motorola is tops, Apple near the bottom of a new list that
rates companies based on efforts to stop climate change.
Bad news for environmentally conscious people who want an iPhone:
Apple Inc. is near the bottom of a new list that rates companies
based on their efforts to stop climate change.
While it doesn't have quite the cache, Motorola Inc. would make a
better choice of cell phone, if you care about efforts the vendor
is making to improve its carbon footprint, according to the
Climate Counts list.
Motorola got a score of 60, compared to Apple's 2, meaning it has
set goals to reduce its energy use and has already succeeded in
doing so. The highest score a company can get is 100.
Climate Counts, a new nonprofit organization, plans to update the
list every year and encourages consumers to base their buying
decisions on companies' climate change efforts.
The list currently includes 56 companies in a range of industries
and scores them based on four criteria: how well the company has
measured its climate footprint, reduced its impact on global
warming, supports positive climate change legislation and publicly
discloses their climate change actions.
Despite recent green initiatives, including building the largest
solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., Google got
a score of 17. Google got poor marks in part for failing to do a
good job tracking corporate emissions or reporting on efforts to
improve. At the recent launch of an initiative to improve energy
efficiency in computer power supplies, a Google executive said
that he knew Google's carbon footprint but he declined to share
it.
Other tech companies that scored poorly include Amazon.com Inc.,
which got a score of zero, and eBay Inc., which matches Apple with
a 2. Yahoo Inc. got a 36 and Microsoft Corp. a 31.
Shoppers can either visit the Climate Counts Web site to check up
on companies or they can ask for information about companies via
short message from their mobile phones. Consumers can text the
message "cc" followed by the company name to 30644 and receive the
company's score by return text message.
Climate Counts is funded by Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company, and
is in collaboration with Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit that
promotes ways to slow global warming. GreenOrder, a company that
advises businesses on sustainability and corporate responsibility
issues, verified the scoring results for accuracy.
Requests for comment to Apple, Amazon.com and Google about their
scores were not immediately returned.
Source: IDG News Service
Cutting-edge technologies create
opportunities for entrepreneurs
BOSTON -- Emerging technologies, which can
enable the creation of new products and services, can also disrupt
existing markets and create new ones, according to participants in
a panel discussion today at the TIECon East 2007 conference here.
"If you're looking for new opportunities for starting a new
company, emerging technologies are important because as they take
hold, they create very big disruptions, and with those disruptions
there are a lot of opportunities," said Leon Sandler, moderator
and executive director of the Deshpande Center for Technological
Innovation at MIT. "The new technology is sort of like a fire that
rages through a forest destroying all the old trees, but it clears
the way for growth, and entrepreneurs bubble up after the fire and
start up these new companies."
Sandler said automobiles, PCs, the Internet and cell phones have
enabled people to do things they have never done before, but they
have also created huge disruptions in supply chains, markets and
distribution. As a consequence, he said, entrepreneurs looked for
opportunities and created thousands of new businesses. So the
question, according to Sandler, is how do you go about finding all
these business opportunities?
Over the next decade or two, there will be a revolution of sorts
in the area of energy and energy consumption, particularly in the
area of transportation, said Dave Vieau, CEO of A123 Systems in
Watertown, Mass., a company that makes advanced lithium ion
technology batteries.
"There are opportunities coming down the road managing the
maintenance and the installation and distribution of large power
systems on a nationwide basis," Vieau said.
Entrepreneurs will also find opportunities in the area of solar
energy, wind energy and bio fuels, especially in the
transportation industry.
"We see the same problems. How are these systems going to be
installed, how are they going to be deployed, how are they going
to be maintained, how are we going to communicate?" he said.
Another emerging technology is the femtocell, a technology that
will improve in-home mobile coverage, allowing carriers to deliver
enhanced IP services to mobile phone customers, according to Asa
Kalvade, co-founder and chief technology at Tatara Systems in
Acton, Mass.
A femtocell is a small cellular base station that can be used in
homes or small business offices. Kalvade said the femtocell
connects to the service provider's network via a broadband
connection such as DSL or a cable modem and allows service
providers to extend service coverage inside a home or office
without the need for expensive cellular towers. The femtocell,
sometimes called a home base station, can also route mobile phone
traffic through an IP network, she said.
Amir Alexander Hasson, founder of United Villages Inc. in
Cambridge, Mass., said his company has developed technology that
wirelessly connects remote villages in rural India to the Internet
using Wi-Fi.
People in isolated villages can buy prepaid cards with a phone
number and e-mail address assigned to them to write e-mails or
record phone messages and then save this information at computer
kiosks installed in schools and community halls. A wireless
network called DakNet, which uses buses, motorcycles and trucks
with short-range Wi-Fi antennas as mobile access points
automatically, picks up and delivers the stored messages and data
to cities all over India with Internet connectivity, Hasson said.
The panelists said that, just as they had done, future
entrepreneurs could convert these and other emerging technologies
into commercial products.
Source: Computerworld
Plunging prices
squeeze hard disk drive industry
Prices came under pressure through intense
competition among the six major hard disk drive suppliers,
particularly in the market for mobile-PC storage.
The hard disk drive industry in the first quarter got hit with
a double whammy of plunging prices and declining shipments, a
market research firm said.
Shipments for the quarter increased by 12.2% from the same period
a year ago, but fell by 4.7% from the fourth quarter of 2006,
iSuppli said. The sequential decline came as a surprise, because
of strong demand in the computer market. Shipments of 114 million
units in the quarter fell below iSuppli's forecast of 118 million
units.
Prices came under pressure through intense competition among the
six major hard disk drive (HDD) suppliers, particularly in the
market for mobile-PC storage, iSuppli said. Fujitsu, Hitachi
Global Storage Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Seagate
Technology, Toshiba, and Western Digital competed over price with
similar products for the fast-growing notebook market.
Lower HDD prices led to reductions in the cost of PCs, good news
for consumers and businesses. In addition, price drops made HDDs
more competitive in the notebook market with the alternative
solid-state drives (SSD) based on flash memory.
SSDs are becoming more common in notebooks. The devices are more
durable than HDDs, use less power, and generate less heat, making
SSDs a strong alternative in ultraportable notebooks. However,
they're also considerably more expensive, and lower HDD prices are
expected to delay the penetration of SSDs in notebooks.
As a result of stiff price competition, market leader Seagate saw
its gross margin fall to 21.3% in the quarter from 24.3% a year
ago, iSuppli said. Net income dropped to $212 million from $274
million.
Western Digital also suffered a decline in gross margin to 15.7%
from 19.3%, but the company managed to increase net income to $121
million from $103 million a year ago. Hitachi GST's net loss
widened in the first quarter to $150 million from $46 million a
year ago.
To improve gross margins, HDD manufacturers are expected to
pressure suppliers to reduce the cost of disks, heads, motors,
casings, and other materials. As a result, iSuppli expects
suppliers to be pushed to lower HDD manufacturers' costs by as
much as 5%.
In terms of market share, Seagate remained on top in the quarter
with a 34.6% share of global shipments, which was flat from the
previous quarter. Western Digital increased its market share 1% to
21.5%. Hitachi held steady at 17.2%, and Samsung was up slightly
at 11%. Toshiba was down 1% to 7.3%, and Fujitsu fell by less than
a half percent to 7.1%.
Source: InformationWeek
STUDIES
Online search dangers: music and tech are the riskiest
McAfee's study found that AOL returned the safest
results, while searching for words like "digital music" and "tech
toys" runs the highest risk.
Every month, users make about 276 million searches that lead them
to risky Web sites, according to a new study from McAfee.
Despite coming up with such a large number, McAfee's researchers
report in a release that it's actually down by 1%. The study also
showed that people who do their searches on advertising-sponsored
sites are at much greater risk than people using non-sponsored
sites.
"We're encouraged to see some improvement in search engine safety
this year. But with four out of five Web site visits starting with
a search engine query, consumers are still exposed to hundreds of
millions of risky searches per month," said Tim Dowling, VP of
Consumer Growth Initiatives at McAfee, in a written statement. "In
fact, an active search engine user, one that performs more than 10
searches per day, is likely to visit a dangerous site at least
once a day."
McAfee reported that its researchers studied the five major U.S.
search engines -- Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com -- which
account for 93% of all search engine use. The security company
analyzed the first 50 search results returned by each search
engine for 2,300 popular keywords. The keywords were selected from
lists like Google Zeitgeist and Yahoo Buzz. Each result was
compared with McAfee SiteAdvisor's Web safety database of 8.2
million site safety ratings.
Red ratings are given to sites that have adware, spyware, viruses,
exploits, excessive pop-ups, or strong affiliations with other red
sites. Yellow ratings are given to sites that merit some caution
before use.
McAfee also found that:
• Four percent of all search results link to risky Web sites.
• AOL returns the safest results, with 2.9% given a red or yellow
rating. That's down from 5.3% in May 2006. Yahoo returned the most
red or yellow results with 5.4%.
• Categories related to music and technology continues to be among
the most dangerous search terms. "Digital music" returns the
highest percentage of risky sites at 19.1%, followed by "tech
toys" and popular keywords like "chat" and "wallpaper."
• Sponsored results contain 2.4 times as many risky sites as
organic sites. In fact, 6.9% of all sponsored results are rated
red or yellow. This does, however, represent an improvement from
8.5% last year, largely because of Google's improvements in paid
search safety.
• Searching for keywords related to file-sharing programs also
called up a lot of risky sites. Dangerous file sharing searches
include "Bearshare" (45.9% risky results), "limewire" (37.1%), "kazaa"
(34.9%), and "winmix" (32%).
• Among adult keyword search results, risky sites increased by
17.5% since December, and risky sites now number 9.4% of all adult
search results.
Source:
InformationWeek
Financial services
firms bullish on outsourcing, according to EquaTerra perspective
research studies.
Houston and London – Multiple EquaTerra
research studies have concluded that financial services
organizations plan to expand their outsourcing initiatives into
new geographies, business units and emerging processes more than
other industries. The firm’s research also found that
organizations in this industry are among the heaviest users of IT
outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO). These
findings, as well as financial services industry outsourcing
satisfaction levels, complexities, drivers, anticipated benefits
and a wide range of other topics are detailed and analyzed in a
new EquaTerra perspective paper titled, “Outsourcing Trends in the
Financial Services Industry.”
According to EquaTerra research, IT is the back-office process
most commonly outsourced by financial services organizations,
followed by call centers and then HR. Other industry specific
processes commonly outsourced include claims, transaction (e.g.,
credit card, equity trading) and check processing activities. The
firm’s research also identified emerging trends in financial
services outsourcing, including an increase in the outsourcing of
content and document management, as well as “knowledge process
outsourcing” or KPO. The former is an important issue for
financial services organizations since they generate huge amounts
of electronic and paper documents particularly when undertaking
capital markets and M&A work for their clients, and stringent
regulatory requirements around the management of these documents
drives up costs. Financial services firms, therefore, are
exploring all options, including the use of third party service
providers to help support these efforts.
KPO, a relatively new area, continues to gather momentum and
encompasses a broad array of processes such as market research,
financial analysis, M&A due diligence and related M&A legal work.
The Indian market is particularly well-suited to KPO not only due
to its lower costs, but also because of its reservoir of highly
educated workers albeit with limited experience and context around
some of the business processes they support.
Said John Boyle, EquaTerra’s Managing Director, Financial
Services, “The growth in KPO is intriguing because it involves
work that was traditionally viewed as too strategic to outsource,
or where outsourcing was not viable because candidate services
providers lacked the skills or experience required to perform the
work. But these perceptions are changing. While in most cases KPO
today involves rote work and number crunching, the breadth and
depth of work being performed is expanding as buyers gain comfort
with the model and suppliers’ skills and levels of context
improve.” He added, “However, KPO work, particularly in the
financial services industry, is not always outsourced in the true
sense. Larger financial services companies are at the forefront in
establishing captive operations to perform KPO and related work.”
EquaTerra research also found that financial services firms have
greater future outsourcing investment plans than do other
industries. For instance, 36 percent of financial services
respondents whose firms had outsourced one or more of the defined
process areas planned to expand outsourcing into new geographies
or business units, as compared to 30 percent overall in the study.
Twenty-eight percent planned to expand outsourcing into new
process areas. Financial services firms will continue to invest in
multiple forms of service delivery models including shared
services operations, captive centers and the use of outsourcing
providers. While the nature of the industry complicates efforts,
the potential rewards of adopted blended service delivery models,
particularly impact on bottom line and share price, outweigh the
additional constraints and complexities.
EquaTerra believes the most innovative financial services firms
will lead the way by showing innovation in their strategies around
service delivery models and balancing that innovation with
execution excellence and cost efficiency. Those institutions that
have already outsourced and are looking for ways to increase the
value of their investment should consider the points below, among
others:
• Is the outsourcing initiative achieving the value sought at the
beginning of the relationship?
• Is your outsourcing governance team utilizing all the tools in
the marketplace to effectively manage the relationship?
• Have changes in the regulatory environment put your firm at risk
relative to outsourcing efforts? Can you ensure your service
providers are maintaining the regulatory integrity of your
operations?
Source: Sourcingmag
Carrier ethernet growth will be slow and
steady, study finds
The availability of metropolitan-area Ethernet services
from most major data service providers will drive the industry,
which is expected to bring in $1.4 billion this year.
The carrier Ethernet market is expected to grow to nearly $6
billion by 2012, according to a report released Monday.
The Insight Research Corporation announced this week that the
availability of metropolitan-area Ethernet services from most
major data service providers will drive the industry, which is
expected to bring in $1.4 billion this year.
Insight Research's report, "Carrier Ethernet Services 2007-2012,"
defines carrier or public Ethernet as any Layer 2 public network
carrier that extends Ethernet beyond the LAN and connects to
customers through Ethernet interfaces.
That encompasses transparent or native LAN, Ethernet, Gigabit
Ethernet, GigE, metro Ethernet, Ethernet private line (EPL),
Ethernet virtual private line (EVPL), Layer 2 virtual private
network (VPN), Ethernet access, virtual private LAN service (VPLS),
among others. Ethernet sales, between points within a metro area,
have accounted for the largest market share, but that is about to
change with the introduction of long-haul Layer2 VPNs, according
to Insight.
The E-LAN service grows the fastest in the carrier Ethernet space
because the economic advantages of Ethernet actually increase
exponentially in relation to the number of points connected
(rather than increasing proportionally), Robert Rosenberg,
president of Insight Research, said in a prepared statement.
"Though we expect to see an accelerating pace of Ethernet adoption
across the board, we are not ready to predict that Ethernet is
ready to take over the world," he said. "Generally speaking,
private line and frame relay customers are not ready to or
interested in deserting longstanding services, so the migration to
Ethernet is going to be slow and steady."
The 145-page report -- available for $3,995 -- analyzes spending
and use patterns, regional domain, and various bandwidth levels.
Source: InformationWeek
