Thread: I.T News For 2010

Software AG opens BPM social networking beta test

By Peter Sayer
March 2, 2010 03:20 PM ET

IDG News Service - Software AG opened a beta version of its social network for business process management (BPM) on Tuesday, a year after it first announced the service.

ArisAlign runs in Amazon Web Services' cloud and is based on ARIS, a business process modeling tool developed by IDS Scheer, another German company Software AG acquired last July.

Software AG first announced its plans for the social network, then called AlignSpace, at the Cebit trade show last year. It said that business process modeling practitioners would be able to use it for everything from exchanging tricks of the trade to the early stages of modeling specific projects. At that stage, though, the company offered little more than screen shots of the service, with no real interaction.

At this year's show it is offering live demonstrations of a beta version of the service and free accounts to anyone who wants one.

ArisAlign includes forums where practitioners can discuss their problems and a social network where they can collaborate with people inside and outside the enterprise on the discovery of business processes.

To help non-specialists contribute to the discovery process, the site uses a metaphor of whiteboards and sticky notes to organize information. Anyone can add a new "sticky" to the workspace, each one representing an activity, with the activities organized into columns to represent the stages in a process. Users can add detailed comments and other information to the stickies through a tabbed interface.

The beta nature of the service shows up in its usability: Browsing the activities to find new details added by other users requires clicking on each sticky and flicking through the tabs, or consulting a Facebook-style stream of information about recent actions. Neither the stickies nor the stream is searchable, and the stream can't be filtered to show only information about particular activities.

"That's high on my wish list," said Software AG's Thomas Stoesser, one of those behind ArisAlign.

Software AG built ArisAlign on Amazon Web Services because "it's cost-effective, it saved us a lot in hosting fees," said Matt Green.

The company is still developing its software-as-a-service strategy and learning what it takes to move applications to the cloud, he said.

Going with Amazon Web Services allowed Software AG to reuse existing products, such as its own portal platform. Using Google's App Engine would have required a complete rebuild, he said.

Microsoft confirms free Office 2010 upgrade deal

By Gregg Keizer
March 2, 2010 03:57 PM ET

Computerworld - Microsoft's chief financial officer confirmed today that the company will offer a free upgrade to the upcoming Office 2010 suite starting this month.

In a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee program would kick off before the end of March.

Last month, details of the free Office 2010 upgrade program leaked to the Web when a Microsoft technology specialist posted information to the firm's partner community site. The site said that Microsoft would launch the Office 2010 upgrade deal on March 5 and run the program through Sept. 30.

According to the leaked information, customers who purchase an eligible copy of Office 2007 during that period will be allowed to download a corresponding edition of Office 2010 for free when the new suite launches in June. Users who want a DVD installation disc will have to pay a small shipping-and-handling fee.

Buyers of Office Home and Student 2007 will receive a free copy of Office Home and Student 2010, while buyers of Office Standard 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Home and Business 2010, a new addition to the Office lineup. Purchases of either Office Small Business 2007 or Office Professional 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Professional 2010.

Although Klein did not specify a launch date for the offer, it will come this month, and likely earlier rather than latter, since he told Wall Street analysts today that Microsoft would defer $300 million to $350 million from the quarter that ends March 31 to cover the costs of the upgrade.

Klein cited the increased integration of SharePoint and Exchange with the suite as a reason why enterprises should upgrade to Office 2010, and pointed to the integration with the impending free Office Web applications as a boon for consumers. "[An] Office [launch] is always a big deal for our company," Klein said. "There's something for everybody in [Office 2010]."

Free upgrade programs are nothing new for Microsoft. Last summer, Microsoft used the Windows 7 Upgrade Option to maintain sales of Vista, giving customers who bought a copy of the soon-to-be-replaced Vista between June 26 and Oct. 22 free copies of Windows 7 when it launched. The company also offered similar deals prior to releasing Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac.

Office 2010 is set to ship in June, and will be the first of its suite line to forego less-expensive upgrade editions. Some analysts have argued that Microsoft dumped upgrades to prevent business customers from using a loophole to avoid paying Microsoft's pricey software maintenance fees.

Office 2007 Home and Student currently sells for $104 at Amazon.com, $45 less than the planned $149 list price for Office Home and Student 2010

Oracle increases certification testing fees

By Chris Kanaracus
March 2, 2010 04:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - Oracle made significant increases this week in the cost of technical certification exams for Sun and Oracle technologies.

A full accounting of the fee changes was not immediately available, but one forum poster claimed the cost of a MySQL Certified Associate exam had more than doubled under the new pricing.

"It is in my opinion TOTALLY UNREASONABLE this is not treated as an (entry level) unproctored exam!," poster "bigdelboy" wrote on an official Oracle forum. "Remind me what guarantees Oracle gave to the EU about open source!!!!!!"

But one Oracle professional took the changes in stride.

"I think it falls under the category of 'that sucks ... oh well,' since certs are optional, employers often pay for them, you usually only take the test once and thus it's a one-time fee (that you may choose to repeat two years later to keep your cert up to date), it kind of falls under the realm of the optional, rare expense," said Kathryn Axelrod, an Oracle database administrator in Portland, Oregon, via e-mail.

The new fee structure represents "the first material exam price increase that Oracle has made since the inception of its program," according to an official blog post. "Prices may vary from country to country so please sure to check the links below or with your local site for details."

Both Internet-based exams and proctored ones conducted at testing centers are affected.

Under the new price schedule, "all non-proctored exams worldwide; proctored Sun exams for emerging-market countries and Oracle Database, Middleware and Linux exams for emerging-market countries" cost US$125.

In addition, proctored Oracle exams in developed nations and Oracle application exams in countries designated as emerging markets are priced at $195. Proctored Sun tests will cost $300 in developed countries.

Oracle's blog post stressed that prices will vary due to local currency and urged users to users to test administrator Pearson VUE's Web site for specific details.

Test vouchers purchased prior to the price changes, which went into effect Monday, remain valid. Discount vouchers will be honored at the same discount rate, but applied against the new pricing.

Those who signed up and submitted payment for a test before Mar. 1 will not be required to pay more money as long as they maintain their original exam date.

An Oracle spokeswoman did not respond to a request for additional information.

Meanwhile, over time Oracle intends to "migrate and offer Sun certification offerings to Oracle certification offerings," but for now existing Sun certifications will be recognized, the company said in a Feb. 22 blog post.

"Future certification offerings may require candidates to take an exam if they wish to upgrade," the post added.

Corsair releases its fastest USB flash drives yet

By Lucas Mearian
March 2, 2010 05:47 PM ET

Computerworld - Corsair today announced a new family of USB flash drives that the company said approach the maximum performance available from the USB 2.0 interface, which offers 480Mbit/sec throughput.

The Flash Voyager GTR family of USB flash drives have maximum read speeds up to 34MB/sec. and write speeds of up to 28MB/sec. If those read/write rates are accurate, they would surpass anything Computerworld has tested so far.

The fastest flash drive tested by Computerworld was the Ironkey secure drive, which had a maximum read rate of 27MB/sec. and a maximum write speed of 24MB/sec.

The Flash Voyager GTR drives will be available in densities of 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. The drives come in a water-resistant rubber housing and have a 10-year limited warranty.

"As we continue to digitize the sights, sounds, movies, and business of our everyday lives, we need better and better ability to transport our data and access it quickly," said John Beekley, president of Technical Marketing at Corsair. "The Flash Voyager GTR combines the best features of a USB flash drive and the performance of an external hard drive to provide the ultimate data portability tool."

Corsair did not offer any suggested retail pricing on its new drives.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on

Asustek unveils its first e-reader, the DR-900

By Dan Nystedt
March 3, 2010 01:46 AM ET

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IDG News Service - Netbook pioneer Asustek Computer unveiled its first e-reader, the DR-900, at the Cebit electronics show going on now in Hanover, Germany.

The DR-900 comes with a thin, 9-inch e-reader screen and includes Wi-Fi and optional 3G wireless connectivity, the company said in a statement. The e-reader is designed to ensure the batteries can last through 10,000 page turns, or around 20 or 30 novels, on a single charge.

"We deeply researched the habits of people who use e-readers and believe reading comfort and battery life are the two key factors," the company said.

A company representative said a price for the e-reader has not yet been decided, nor when Asustek will begin global sales.

Asustek CEO, Jerry Shen, said the e-reader will likely be launched to the market during the Computex electronics show in Taipei this June. He said Asustek planned to work with content providers in launching the e-reader.

Budget cuts pushing some IT managers to the cloud

By Patrick Thibodeau
March 5, 2010 12:14 PM ET

Computerworld - Budget cuts have reduced the city of Miami's IT staff from 102 to 80 positions, a significant contraction that could have lead to drastic services cuts and morale issues.

But instead of letting melancholy take over when many vacant positions were left unfilled, Miami's IT department is working to figure out how to use the cloud to cut costs and even generate revenue.

But before the company could act on such intriguing ideas, the city's IT personnel needed to have experience with a cloud platform.

That experience began this week with the launch of Miami's first cloud application, Miami 311. The online application, built internally using Microsoft's Azure, allows residents to monitor requests for services such as a list of reports of potholes, abandoned vehicles and code violations.

The potential of cloud services has also led city officials to consider revenue generating ideas such as creating custom data aggregation and mashup services that could be sold to businesses.

Budget cuts "have caused us to start evaluating everything," said James Osteen, Miami's assistant IT director, noting that more than half of the IT staff is now dedicated to maintaining the city's existing IT infrastructure.

Miami's situation represents the new world for IT managers -- looking closely at cloud services to offset tight to shrinking budgets.

But, say some IT managers, the cost savings of these services is easier to determine than user acceptance of them.

Jay Kenney, CIO of Lincoln Property Co. in Dallas, which for the past several months has been using the hosted Google Apps Gmail service, has measured both total cost of ownership (TCO) and the reaction of the 1,000 users of the cloud-based product. The company replaced its Novell Inc. GroupWise software with Google's hosted e-mail and collaboration system last September.

Kenney said the results of the TCO study roughly mirrored Forrester Research Inc.'s recent report showing the that cost of using Google's Gmail hosted e-mail at about $8.50 per user per month versus about $25 per user per month to support in-house systems like GroupWise.

Kenney's firm continues to use Microsoft's Office and SharePoint products.

Kenny said there was general dissatisfaction with GroupWise and when time came for the city to refresh its hardware systems led to an re-evaluation of its needs. "It was time to do a business case and get all the cost on the table," he said.

He calculated the TCO over five years and and the Google Apps product, from a financial perspective, came out as the best valure for the city.

For Kenney, the biggest issue was user acceptance of Gmail, including its calendar and chat features. The internal survey found that 65% of Lincoln Property users said Gmail is the same, better or much better than GroupWise, while 35% said it was worse or much worse.

W3C pulls former Novell CTO for CEO spot

By Joab Jackson
March 8, 2010 12:01 AM ET

IDG News Service - Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Jaffe will work alongside Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who will remain the organization's director. While Berners-Lee will concentrate primarily on the direction of the W3C's standards, Jaffe will look to streamline the W3C process of working with members.

The W3C establishes standards for Web technologies. With a membership of more than 350 organizations, a big part of what it does revolves around getting parties of different, even competing, interests to agree on things.

"Something I intend to put a lot of energy into is having an extremely open and active dialogue with all the stakeholders of W3C," Jaffe said in an interview. "W3C will have better engagement with the development community."

The job will require a lot of diplomacy, skills that Jaffe seems to have developed at Novell, where he worked as chief technology officer and executive vice president for products. He left that role at the end of January, following a companywide reorganization.

"If I look at where my time has been spent--a huge fraction has been cultivating significant partnerships; notably with Microsoft, SAP, and IBM," Jaffe wrote in a farewell post in his Novell blog.

Jaffe helped broker the company's high-profile partnership with competitor Microsoft, which he described in the Web page as an "arch-competitor" to Novell.

He expects these skills to come in handy at the new gig as well.

"One of the interesting things about the technology and business world is the diversity of partners and outlooks. Some companies have an open-source outlook. Some have a proprietary software perspective. There are large companies, medium companies, small companies. For the Web to work, it requires an environment of transparent openness and the ability to work with all types," he said.

Before working at Novell, Jaffe served as president for Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs Research and Advanced Technologies, and as a vice president for IBM.

The W3C has some challenges ahead. The standards body is developing the next generation of HTML, which will be able to better handle multimedia and application-level functionality. The W3C is also looking to extend the Web's reach, via mobile and low-cost devices, to as-yet-unconnected parts of the world.

"There are a large number of areas [of interest]. And that requires either more resources, more streamlined approaches of getting them done, or more priority calls. And so the operational focus of the organization becomes inseparable from what the priorities will be for the technical focus areas," he said.

W3C's last CEO, Steve Bratt, left the spot in 2008 to head the World Wide Web Foundation.

Jaffe, who reports for his first day Monday, will work from the W3C's Cambridge, Massachusetts, office.

The state of 4G in 2010

By Brad Reed
March 8, 2010 01:47 AM ET

Network World - If you were to think of 4G wireless technologies as Harry Potter movies, then the first half of 2010 promises to be like the time spent waiting in between new releases. You can expect lots of exciting trailers and teasers that will tide you over, but don't expect to see any real action until the latter half of the year.

By the end of 2010, Clearwire plans to have built out its 4G WiMAX network to all major markets in the United States and Verizon expects to be offering its 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) services commercially in between 25 to 30 major U.S. markets. Additionally, the GSM Association is hoping that its work on Voice over LTE (VoLTE) will be nearly finished and that LTE devices will have the ability to support voice and Short Message Service sometime in 2011.

4G technologies represent the next stage in the evolution of wireless data technologies and generally deliver average download rates of 3Mbps or higher. In contrast, today's 3G networks typically deliver average download speeds about one-tenth of that rate.

A 4G early adopter's tale
Broadly speaking, users will get 4G wireless connectivity through one of two standards, WiMAX or LTE. WiMAX is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard and will be deployed by Clearwire for wholesale use by Sprint, Comcast and Time-Warner Cable to deliver wireless broadband. LTE, on the other hand, is a GSM-based technology that will be deployed by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Let's start with Clearwire. The company has commercial WiMAX services available in 27 U.S. markets covering more than 34 million points of presence (POPs). By year-end, Clearwire will have built out a WiMAX network that spans all major U.S. markets and that covers 120 million POPs. So if your business is in a major metropolitan area it's very likely that you'll be able to access Clearwire's 4G network by the end of the year.

You won't likely know that you're getting your service through Clearwire, however. The company's plan is to build out the network and then wholesale access to companies with bigger brand names such as Sprint, Comcast and Time-Warner Cable. Clearwire is counting on these companies to aggressively promote its WiMAX services, especially since WiMAX is currently the fastest wireless technology available on the market. Clearwire's wholesale partners have also played a big role in funding the buildout of the network, as Clearwire raised $3.2 billion from its big cable partners as well as from big-name tech companies such as Google and Intel.

"Our wholesale business is going through extraordinary growth right now," says Clearwire Chief Commercial Officer Mike Sievert. "We ended up with more than 46,000 wholesale customers by the end of the fourth quarter last year and we're on pace to do significantly more than that this quarter. We've got Comcast, Sprint and Time-Warner Cable as our active wholesale partners and we believe that selling through those partnerships will be the primary growth strategy for our business.

Microsoft tries to lure NetSuite users with new deal
By Chris Kanaracus
March 11, 2010 01:44 PM ET




IDG News Service - Microsoft is offering financial enticements to customers of on-demand ERP vendor NetSuite to switch over to Microsoft's Dynamics family of business applications.

NetSuite customers will be credited up to $850 for each user who converts to Dynamics GP, NAV or SL. The promotion is in effect until June 25 and available to U.S. customers.

Microsoft's announcement has a ring of familiarity, as NetSuite itself has made a string of similar marketing efforts in the past against other vendors.

No single ERP (enterprise resource planning) deployment method, whether on-demand or on-premises, will be appropriate for every business, Microsoft said in a statement. Microsoft offers Dynamics as an on-premises application or it can be hosted through partners, but it has not moved to the multi-tenant SaaS (software as a service) model used by NetSuite.

With multi-tenancy, many customers share the same instance of an application, with their data kept private from other customers. The model saves computing resources and makes version or feature upgrades easier, since all customers can be served at once.

Microsoft's ERP strategy also includes a series of on-demand extensions for Dynamics.

NetSuite didn't immediately respond to a request for comment today.

Microsoft's announcement raises questions, such as how SaaS vendors like NetSuite can counter vendors who can provide a range of deployment models, said 451 Group analyst China Martens via e-mail. "Will the SaaS pure-plays end up turning to partners to turn their SaaS into on-premises apps as well?"

Meanwhile, the fact Microsoft has singled out NetSuite as a rival should be music to NetSuite's ears, Martens said. "It's more validation for NetSuite."

Can the iPad make it as an e-textbook reader for students?

By Matt Hamblen
March 16, 2010 05:56 AM ET

Computerworld - Apple's iPad, which arrives April 3, is already regarded as a high-end, color e-reader and multimedia device. But its potential as an e-textbook reader for students remains debatable.

College students, a prime Apple demographic, might be willing to fork over at least $499 for a Wi-Fi-capable iPad -- at least partly because Wi-Fi is so prominent on college campuses. "The iPad hardware would certainly be a great platform" for reading content over a school's Wi-Fi network, said Van Baker, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

"Textbooks may be the initial killer app" for the iPad, said another Gartner analyst, Allen Weiner.

Clearly, the iPad's touch-screen keyboard could be used to create some documents and related content, and the device can be used to view videos and listen to music. College students could also use it to read bestselling books, newspapers and magazines.

But if they expect to be able to read textbooks via the iPad, they're likely to be disappointed -- at least for now, said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc.

While Apple has already announced deals with several publishers, mainly of bestsellers, and with The New York Times for its iBook store, the business model for publishing digital textbooks hasn't really emerged for most e-readers and tablets. "Overall, I'm unimpressed with the value proposition for textbooks on e-readers," Howe said.

He explained his skepticism, noting that digital rights management rules mean that an e-textbook can't be resold, even though college students are accustomed to reselling a used paper textbook for half or less of what they paid. Some e-texts have already hit the market, and even with DRM and a lack of resale value, they can still cost two-thirds to three-fourths of the price of the paper version. For a technical text in the sciences, that could amount to hundreds of dollars.

"Add in the fact that an iPad starts at $500, and e-textbooks are likely to be significantly more, rather than less, expensive overall for consumers," Howe said.

Baker sees it differently. The savings students would see by buying e-textbooks "would easily pay for the price of an iPad over a four-year college stint," Baker said.

Even if e-texts could be resold and were a better deal than printed books, Howe warned that e-readers and the iPad let you look at only one book at a time. In contrast, many students may want to peruse several books at once when doing intense research.

"No matter how good the iPad hardware is, I think most students will find it a poor substitute for paper books in doing in-depth research," Howe said. "Its best application as a textbook reader will be for those courses such as literature, where the focus is on a single book at a time."

When the iPad first emerged, Howe praised it. He still sees it as a "hit," though he added, "I just don't see textbook reading as its killer app."

Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat, sees "potential" for tablets like the iPad to become e-text readers -- as long as manufacturers make college texts and reading materials available the same way they do other books.

McGregor said the iPad, which weighs 1.5 lbs., is probably going to be a little too heavy to rely on mainly as an e-reader, especially if users carry it around a lot. "There are e-readers out there that are a better option [for heavy reading] because they are light and look good in the light," he said.