Security vendor Fortinet has uncovered a malicious SymbianOS Worm that is actively spreading on mobile phone networks.
Fortinet's threat response team warned on Monday that the worm, identified as SymbOS/Beselo.A!worm, is able to run on several Symbian S60 enabled devices. These include handsets such as Nokia 6600, 6630, 6680, 7610, N70 and N72 handsets.
The malware is disguised as a multimedia file (MMS) with an evocative name: either Beauty.jpg, Sex.mp3 or Love.rm. Fortinet warned this is deceiving users into unknowingly installing the malicious software onto their phones.
Unlike Microsoft Windows, SymbianOS types files based on their contents and not their extensions, so it is worth noting that recipients of infected MMS would still be presented with an installation dialogue upon "clicking" on the attachment. "Therefore, users could easily be deceived by the extension and unknowingly install the malicious piece of software," warned Fortinet.
After installation, the worm harvests all the phone numbers located in the phone's contact lists and targets them with a viral MMS carrying a SIS-packed (Symbian Installation Source) version of the worm. In addition to harvesting these numbers, the malware also sends itself to generated numbers as well.
Interestingly, all these numbers are located in China so far and belong to the same mobile phone operator. Some of these numbers have been verified to belong to actual customers, rather than being premium service numbers.
Guillaume Lovet, manager of Fortinet's Threat Response Team, EMEA, and the man who conducted the research and discovered this malicious activity, told Techworld that this is not just another 'theoretical' mobile worm that nobody will ever encounter.
"It is actual spreading in the wild," said Lovet, "although numbers are still pretty low." He confirmed that the worm only affects Symbian S60 enabled devices.
Lovet says Fortinet first became aware of the worm after one of his customers (a "large, large mobile operator") provided them with a sample. He says the worm seems to be spreading in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region, and Fortinet is investigating the Chinese angle, and is in touch with law enforcement officials.
"We really want to know why this worm is doing that (contacting Chinese mobile numbers)," said Lovet. "Perhaps it wants to seed itself pretty aggressively," he speculated.
"When you want to seed or inject worm in the wild, then you may want to seed in high populated areas," he continued. "The Chinese mobile operator concerned is the largest in the world with 300 million users, so maybe the virus writers thought it would be a good idea to go for mobiles in highly populated areas."
The advice from Lovet is simple. "Symbian users must not to say yes to any .jpg, .mp3, or .rm files trying to install themselves on your phone."
Of course, Fortinet says that its FortiClient Mobile automatically detects and removes the Beselo worm.
Fortunately, mobile malware is still pretty rare, but it has made the occasional appearance in the past, despite suspicions that these warnings were simply a way to promote a vendor's products.
A worm that could move from a Symbian phone to a PC was previously reported by security experts F-Secure in September 2006. Then in June last year, a 28-year-old man was arrested in Spain on charges that he created variants of the CommWarrior and Cabir mobile phone viruses.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Ciena to acquire World Wide Packets
Ciena has agreed to acquire World Wide Packets in a deal, valued at about US$290 million, that will bring together two players in the growing carrier Ethernet market.
The vendor of carrier gear will pay about $200 million cash plus 3.4 million shares for privately held World Wide Packets, which makes switches and software for Ethernet services offered by carriers. World Wide Packets, in Spokane Valley, Washington, will be merged into a wholly owned subsidiary of Ciena.
Carriers are beginning to build Ethernet networks across metropolitan areas so they can be more flexible in offering different speeds of service and deliver WAN (wide-area network) connectivity with the same technology most enterprises use for their LANs. Ethernet, which generally costs less than traditional metropolitan fiber networks, can also be used for wholesale data transport and backhaul of traffic from wireless networks to the Internet.
World Wide Packets has more than 100 customers in 25 countries and has shipped more than 70,000 units of its products, according to Ciena. The company offers a common operating system across its products, called LightningEdge Operating System, and network management tools.
Also on Tuesday, Ciena said it had won a multiyear contract to supply AT&T with platforms from World Wide Packets.
Based on the $26.52 closing price of Ciena's stock last Friday, the 3.4 million shares are worth about $90 million. Ciena will also assume as much as $15 million of the acquired company's debt. The acquisition requires regulatory approval and is expected to close in the second quarter of Ciena's 2008 fiscal year, which will end in April. World Wide Packets will keep operating from its locations in Spokane Valley and San Jose, California. Ciena is based in Linthicum, Maryland.
World Wide Packets had revenue of about $30 million in 2007, Ciena executives said on a conference call following the announcement. The company has 145 employees, most of them engineers, and Ciena is making arrangements to hold on to those workers, they said.
The product portfolio will let Ciena address everything from small offices to multitenant buildings, said Ciena CTO Stephen Alexander.
World Wide Packets has distinguished itself from other carrier Ethernet vendors by working out operational management and provisioning issues, Alexander said. Traditional Ethernet troubleshooting involves IT managers walking around a LAN and looking for problems, which isn't possible on a carrier network. World Wide Packets has cracked the problem of how to remotely provision Ethernet services and diagnose problems, he said.
The vendor of carrier gear will pay about $200 million cash plus 3.4 million shares for privately held World Wide Packets, which makes switches and software for Ethernet services offered by carriers. World Wide Packets, in Spokane Valley, Washington, will be merged into a wholly owned subsidiary of Ciena.
Carriers are beginning to build Ethernet networks across metropolitan areas so they can be more flexible in offering different speeds of service and deliver WAN (wide-area network) connectivity with the same technology most enterprises use for their LANs. Ethernet, which generally costs less than traditional metropolitan fiber networks, can also be used for wholesale data transport and backhaul of traffic from wireless networks to the Internet.
World Wide Packets has more than 100 customers in 25 countries and has shipped more than 70,000 units of its products, according to Ciena. The company offers a common operating system across its products, called LightningEdge Operating System, and network management tools.
Also on Tuesday, Ciena said it had won a multiyear contract to supply AT&T with platforms from World Wide Packets.
Based on the $26.52 closing price of Ciena's stock last Friday, the 3.4 million shares are worth about $90 million. Ciena will also assume as much as $15 million of the acquired company's debt. The acquisition requires regulatory approval and is expected to close in the second quarter of Ciena's 2008 fiscal year, which will end in April. World Wide Packets will keep operating from its locations in Spokane Valley and San Jose, California. Ciena is based in Linthicum, Maryland.
World Wide Packets had revenue of about $30 million in 2007, Ciena executives said on a conference call following the announcement. The company has 145 employees, most of them engineers, and Ciena is making arrangements to hold on to those workers, they said.
The product portfolio will let Ciena address everything from small offices to multitenant buildings, said Ciena CTO Stephen Alexander.
World Wide Packets has distinguished itself from other carrier Ethernet vendors by working out operational management and provisioning issues, Alexander said. Traditional Ethernet troubleshooting involves IT managers walking around a LAN and looking for problems, which isn't possible on a carrier network. World Wide Packets has cracked the problem of how to remotely provision Ethernet services and diagnose problems, he said.
User-group study: Mainframes live on through SOA
Mainframe systems are playing a key role in many SOA (service-oriented architecture) projects, according to a study released this week by IBM user group SHARE.
Mainframes such as IBM's System z are integral to SOA almost by default, since they contain a large portion of the world's business information, the study suggests. Thirty percent of respondents who work for companies with 10,000 or more employees said between 51 percent and 75 percent of their company's data is managed and stored on a mainframe, according to the study.
Meanwhile, nearly 23 percent of respondents said their company is undergoing a SOA project, and another third said a SOA is in the planning or consideration stages.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they are pursuing an enterprise-wide SOA, but in most cases the projects are confined to niche instances, such specific lines of business or divisions or within applications.
"Many of the applications that need to be SOA-enabled are mainframe applications," said Pamela Taylor, vice president of strategic development for SHARE and a solutions architect for a subsidiary of a Fortune 50 company. "System z tends to be absolutely critical to deployments."
While mainframes play a dominant role in hosting an enterprise's data, companies' interaction with that data faces constraints. At least 50 percent of the companies surveyed use hand-coded scripts to push mainframe-based data to other databases or platforms, according to the study. Such scripting is hard to maintain, particularly if the programmers who wrote it leave the organization, the study notes.
IBM has aligned System z with SOA.
The study notes that SOA can strain systems, such as through its use of XML-based messaging. "Rather than acquire more server hardware to attempt to address growing SOA performance issues, mainframes may represent a more cost-effective option for leveraging existing resources," the study states.
In turn, the abstraction layer a SOA provides can help enterprises more easily tap their existing mainframe applications and data, the study notes.
Sales for System z fell last year but IBM is banking on the launch of its next-generation mainframe in February.
Some 431 SHARE members responded to the survey, which was conducted by Unisphere Research. About 48 percent work for companies with 1,000 or more employees, and 26 percent of respondents' firms have more than US$1 billion in revenue.
Mainframes such as IBM's System z are integral to SOA almost by default, since they contain a large portion of the world's business information, the study suggests. Thirty percent of respondents who work for companies with 10,000 or more employees said between 51 percent and 75 percent of their company's data is managed and stored on a mainframe, according to the study.
Meanwhile, nearly 23 percent of respondents said their company is undergoing a SOA project, and another third said a SOA is in the planning or consideration stages.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they are pursuing an enterprise-wide SOA, but in most cases the projects are confined to niche instances, such specific lines of business or divisions or within applications.
"Many of the applications that need to be SOA-enabled are mainframe applications," said Pamela Taylor, vice president of strategic development for SHARE and a solutions architect for a subsidiary of a Fortune 50 company. "System z tends to be absolutely critical to deployments."
While mainframes play a dominant role in hosting an enterprise's data, companies' interaction with that data faces constraints. At least 50 percent of the companies surveyed use hand-coded scripts to push mainframe-based data to other databases or platforms, according to the study. Such scripting is hard to maintain, particularly if the programmers who wrote it leave the organization, the study notes.
IBM has aligned System z with SOA.
The study notes that SOA can strain systems, such as through its use of XML-based messaging. "Rather than acquire more server hardware to attempt to address growing SOA performance issues, mainframes may represent a more cost-effective option for leveraging existing resources," the study states.
In turn, the abstraction layer a SOA provides can help enterprises more easily tap their existing mainframe applications and data, the study notes.
Sales for System z fell last year but IBM is banking on the launch of its next-generation mainframe in February.
Some 431 SHARE members responded to the survey, which was conducted by Unisphere Research. About 48 percent work for companies with 1,000 or more employees, and 26 percent of respondents' firms have more than US$1 billion in revenue.
Record iPhone, Mac sales boost Apple's earnings
Apple reported strong quarterly earnings on Tuesday, boosted by record Macintosh computer and iPhone sales.
Apple recorded revenue for its first fiscal quarter, ended Dec. 29, of US$9.6 billion, a 35 percent year-over-year increase, beating estimates of $9.47 billion from analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
The company posted quarterly net profit of $1.58 billion, an increase from the $1 billion net profit from the year-earlier quarter. The company recorded earnings of $1.76 per share.
Unit shipments of the iPod were 22.1 million units, up 5 percent over the year-earlier period. Apple sold 2.3 million iPhones during the quarter, up from 1.12 million in its fourth fiscal quarter. It shipped 2.3 million Macintosh computers, a 44 percent growth from the year-earlier quarter.
Sales of the iPhone will continue to grow as the product enters Asia and other European countries in 2008, said Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, during a conference call to discuss the results. "We remain confident on hitting the 10 million goal for 2008," he said.
The number of iPhones that were bought to be unlocked, so that they can be used on other networks, was significant, and shows the heavy worldwide interest in the iPhone, according to Cook. The iPhone is locked to work only with certain wireless phone providers.
Asked to comment on plans to introduce 3G capabilities in the iPhone, Cook declined.
Apple is shifting its strategy around the iPod to position it less as a simple music player and more as a complete Wi-Fi and mobile application platform, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said on the call. The company recently introduced five mobile applications for the iPod Touch, including an application that allows users to watch movies from the iTunes store.
According to figures from IDC, Apple's PC shipments in the U.S. grew 30.9 percent to 1.06 million during the fourth quarter last year, with a 5.7 percent market share, behind Dell, Hewlett-Packard and HP. Apple was not among the top five vendors in PC shipments worldwide, according to IDC.
In the quarter just ended, Apple announced the Mac OS X Leopard operating system. It started the current quarter with a bang, announcing a movie rental service for iTunes and an ultrathin laptop, the MacBook Air, which CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed was the "world's thinnest notebook" during a keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.
A week prior to Macworld, Apple announced revamped versions of the Mac Pro workstations and Xserve servers powered by Intel's power-efficient Penryn processors.
Asked if the MacBook Air would cannibalize sales of other MacBook products, Cook did not address the question directly: "The customer reaction has been great, and the customer orders have been strong," Cook said. "The MacBook Air will appeal to travelers ... to different kinds of people who want to access a computer wherever they are," Cook said. The ultramobile segment is great for Apple and it will continue to pursue that space, Cook said.
The customer response to Leopard has also been strong, Oppenheimer said. About 19 percent of Mac OS X users have switched to Leopard, and the OS generated revenue of $170 million during the quarter, Oppenheimer said.
Apple's international revenue grew 46 percent year-over-year, he said. Revenue from Europe was $2.47 billion, up from $1.71 billion the previous year. Revenue from Japan was $400 million, up 40 percent.
Apple forecast revenue for the second quarter at $6.8 billion, up 29 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. That would be lower than the $6.98 billion forecast by analysts. Investors reacted poorly to the news, pushing Apple's shares down 11.4 percent to $137.85 in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq.
Apple recorded revenue for its first fiscal quarter, ended Dec. 29, of US$9.6 billion, a 35 percent year-over-year increase, beating estimates of $9.47 billion from analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
The company posted quarterly net profit of $1.58 billion, an increase from the $1 billion net profit from the year-earlier quarter. The company recorded earnings of $1.76 per share.
Unit shipments of the iPod were 22.1 million units, up 5 percent over the year-earlier period. Apple sold 2.3 million iPhones during the quarter, up from 1.12 million in its fourth fiscal quarter. It shipped 2.3 million Macintosh computers, a 44 percent growth from the year-earlier quarter.
Sales of the iPhone will continue to grow as the product enters Asia and other European countries in 2008, said Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, during a conference call to discuss the results. "We remain confident on hitting the 10 million goal for 2008," he said.
The number of iPhones that were bought to be unlocked, so that they can be used on other networks, was significant, and shows the heavy worldwide interest in the iPhone, according to Cook. The iPhone is locked to work only with certain wireless phone providers.
Asked to comment on plans to introduce 3G capabilities in the iPhone, Cook declined.
Apple is shifting its strategy around the iPod to position it less as a simple music player and more as a complete Wi-Fi and mobile application platform, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said on the call. The company recently introduced five mobile applications for the iPod Touch, including an application that allows users to watch movies from the iTunes store.
According to figures from IDC, Apple's PC shipments in the U.S. grew 30.9 percent to 1.06 million during the fourth quarter last year, with a 5.7 percent market share, behind Dell, Hewlett-Packard and HP. Apple was not among the top five vendors in PC shipments worldwide, according to IDC.
In the quarter just ended, Apple announced the Mac OS X Leopard operating system. It started the current quarter with a bang, announcing a movie rental service for iTunes and an ultrathin laptop, the MacBook Air, which CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed was the "world's thinnest notebook" during a keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.
A week prior to Macworld, Apple announced revamped versions of the Mac Pro workstations and Xserve servers powered by Intel's power-efficient Penryn processors.
Asked if the MacBook Air would cannibalize sales of other MacBook products, Cook did not address the question directly: "The customer reaction has been great, and the customer orders have been strong," Cook said. "The MacBook Air will appeal to travelers ... to different kinds of people who want to access a computer wherever they are," Cook said. The ultramobile segment is great for Apple and it will continue to pursue that space, Cook said.
The customer response to Leopard has also been strong, Oppenheimer said. About 19 percent of Mac OS X users have switched to Leopard, and the OS generated revenue of $170 million during the quarter, Oppenheimer said.
Apple's international revenue grew 46 percent year-over-year, he said. Revenue from Europe was $2.47 billion, up from $1.71 billion the previous year. Revenue from Japan was $400 million, up 40 percent.
Apple forecast revenue for the second quarter at $6.8 billion, up 29 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. That would be lower than the $6.98 billion forecast by analysts. Investors reacted poorly to the news, pushing Apple's shares down 11.4 percent to $137.85 in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq.
Worm fears shut down Skype video feature
Skype has been forced to turn off a video-sharing feature in its software because it could be misused to launch a self-copying worm attack against Skype users, security researchers said Tuesday.
A bug in the software, which was first reported last Thursday by security researcher Aviv Raff, stems from the way Skype uses an Internet Explorer component to render HTML.
Skype's video-sharing feature allows users to share videos hosted on two sites -- Dailymotion.com and Metacafe.com -- while chatting with other Skype users.
Last week Raff showed how attackers could exploit the bug to run unauthorized software on a Skype user's PC. But on Tuesday, the security researcher said the flaw was more serious than he'd first thought. It can "be triggered by simply visiting a Web site, or clicking on a link from your instant messaging application," he wrote in a blog posting, "Which basically means that this vulnerability is now wormable."
Skype appeared to have pulled the video feature from its client software on Tuesday as a result of the bug. Users who attempted to click on the "videos" button within a chat window were greeted with a message that the feature was unavailable "because of some security concerns."
"Our brightest engineers are rattling their wrenches to make things all right and bring the beloved videos back. Soon," the message read. "Sorry about this."
Skpe representatives did not return calls seeking comment. Last week, Skype spokesman Villu Arak confirmed that there was a security problem for Skype 3.5 and 3.6 users who visited the Dailymotion.com Web site, but users were still able to share videos using Metacafe.com.
On Tuesday, however, Skype pulled the video feature altogether after being informed of the new problem, Raff said.
Because Metacafe had a cross-site scripting flaw, a common type of programming error, Raff was able to run JavaScript on Metacafe.com, which could then be used to run unauthorized software on the victim's computer. Attackers could then forward a link to the malicious Web page to all of the Skype contacts in the victim's computer, spreading the infection.
For Raff's attack to work, an attacker would have to post a maliciously encoded video file to either of the Metacafe or Dailymotion Web sites. Metacafe said Tuesday that it's "highly unlikely" that this kind of malicious video would make it through the site's content-filtering process.
In a statement, the company said it expects Metacafe videos to be available to Skype users as early as Wednesday morning.
Raff said that because the attack could lead to a widespread worm outbreak, it would be better for Skype to fix the underlying problem before bringing Metacafe back online.
Raff believes that Dailymotion was probably susceptible to this type of attack as well, although he was unable to confirm this after Skype cut off access to the Web site.
The problem lies in the fact that Skype uses a Windows Internet Explorer (IE) component with inappropriate security settings, researchers say. Instead of processing pages it renders with the more secure "Internet Zone" security setting, Skype uses IE's "Local Zone" security setting, usually reserved for more trustworthy content.
Until Skype engineers make some changes to their software, more of these problems will continue to pop up, Raff said.
Another security researcher who has been studying the flaw agreed.
"If they keep their Skype client running in the Local Zone of IE, we will see more of these," said Petko Petkov of GNU Citizen via instant message. "Before killing Metacafe, anyone that owns the server would have been able to own every Skype user on the planet."
A bug in the software, which was first reported last Thursday by security researcher Aviv Raff, stems from the way Skype uses an Internet Explorer component to render HTML.
Skype's video-sharing feature allows users to share videos hosted on two sites -- Dailymotion.com and Metacafe.com -- while chatting with other Skype users.
Last week Raff showed how attackers could exploit the bug to run unauthorized software on a Skype user's PC. But on Tuesday, the security researcher said the flaw was more serious than he'd first thought. It can "be triggered by simply visiting a Web site, or clicking on a link from your instant messaging application," he wrote in a blog posting, "Which basically means that this vulnerability is now wormable."
Skype appeared to have pulled the video feature from its client software on Tuesday as a result of the bug. Users who attempted to click on the "videos" button within a chat window were greeted with a message that the feature was unavailable "because of some security concerns."
"Our brightest engineers are rattling their wrenches to make things all right and bring the beloved videos back. Soon," the message read. "Sorry about this."
Skpe representatives did not return calls seeking comment. Last week, Skype spokesman Villu Arak confirmed that there was a security problem for Skype 3.5 and 3.6 users who visited the Dailymotion.com Web site, but users were still able to share videos using Metacafe.com.
On Tuesday, however, Skype pulled the video feature altogether after being informed of the new problem, Raff said.
Because Metacafe had a cross-site scripting flaw, a common type of programming error, Raff was able to run JavaScript on Metacafe.com, which could then be used to run unauthorized software on the victim's computer. Attackers could then forward a link to the malicious Web page to all of the Skype contacts in the victim's computer, spreading the infection.
For Raff's attack to work, an attacker would have to post a maliciously encoded video file to either of the Metacafe or Dailymotion Web sites. Metacafe said Tuesday that it's "highly unlikely" that this kind of malicious video would make it through the site's content-filtering process.
In a statement, the company said it expects Metacafe videos to be available to Skype users as early as Wednesday morning.
Raff said that because the attack could lead to a widespread worm outbreak, it would be better for Skype to fix the underlying problem before bringing Metacafe back online.
Raff believes that Dailymotion was probably susceptible to this type of attack as well, although he was unable to confirm this after Skype cut off access to the Web site.
The problem lies in the fact that Skype uses a Windows Internet Explorer (IE) component with inappropriate security settings, researchers say. Instead of processing pages it renders with the more secure "Internet Zone" security setting, Skype uses IE's "Local Zone" security setting, usually reserved for more trustworthy content.
Until Skype engineers make some changes to their software, more of these problems will continue to pop up, Raff said.
Another security researcher who has been studying the flaw agreed.
"If they keep their Skype client running in the Local Zone of IE, we will see more of these," said Petko Petkov of GNU Citizen via instant message. "Before killing Metacafe, anyone that owns the server would have been able to own every Skype user on the planet."
Click-to-call, security among RIM software updates
Research in Motion is stepping up its game against Microsoft, Nokia and other rivals with several enhancements to its BlackBerry software that it will showcase at Lotusphere this week.
The updates, coming in new BlackBerry devices and device and server software versions in the first half of this year, will strengthen the platform's core e-mail capability while adding new messaging, manageability and security features.
RIM pioneered enterprise handheld connectivity with the BlackBerry's push e-mail system and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Competitors have since muscled in on this territory, while RIM has invested in software and devices to expand its appeal to the consumer market. With the new features, the company is looking toward a future in which almost all communication capabilities on the desktop are available on the road through a set of capabilities often called unified communications.
Among key new capabilities are features that merge voice with instant messaging. Users who run IBM Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Live Communications Server will be able to click on an instant-messaging (IM) contact on the BlackBerry phone in order to call them, or convert an ongoing IM session into a voice call. They will also be able to check whether their colleagues are going to be available before they send out meeting requests.
Enhanced e-mail handling will include several new features. Users will be able to search for and retrieve messages on their enterprise e-mail servers that are no longer stored on their BlackBerries. Also, the devices will be able to render HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and rich text e-mail messages, including font colors and styles, images, hyperlinks and other elements. After downloading Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, users will now be able to edit them on the BlackBerry, thanks to Documents to Go software from DataViz that is being integrated into the mobile platform.
Even within e-mail encrypted with PGP or S/MIME, BlackBerry users will be able to view attachments, according to the company.
RIM also has some good news for enterprises that want to more easily manage and lock down their employees' devices. They will be able to drill down and define which applications on a BlackBerry can access its GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality, as well as enable or shut down specific Bluetooth profiles and set how long the device is "discoverable" using Bluetooth. The less time a phone is discoverable by other Bluetooth devices, the less chance an intruder has to hack it, although this method of breaking into a phone hasn't been widely exploited.
A Web-based device management console is also coming, allowing users to control settings and install software from any Web-connected computer. In addition, administrators will now be able to update users' devices over the air.
To help third parties develop their own applications for the BlackBerry, RIM also announced the availability of some additional Java Micro Edition APIs (application programming interfaces). They include ones to support developing mobile Web services clients, software that uses MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and a single application that works for multiple languages and regions.
RIM expects to ship its BES version 4.1.5 software for IBM Lotus Domino and for Microsoft Exchange by the end of February. They will be free upgrades for customers with BES version 4.1.0 or later, while others can buy the upgrade for US$999 or purchase a Technical Support Services contract. The price of the BES for new customers will remain at $3,999 per server, with 20 user licenses included.
Version 4.5 of the BlackBerry device software will be required to use many of the end-user features; it will be available in the first half of the year, depending on carrier. It will be a free download from RIM and carrier Web sites. The ability to edit Word and PowerPoint documents will come with version 4.5, but Excel editing capability will be in a later release, expected in the latter part of this year.
The updates, coming in new BlackBerry devices and device and server software versions in the first half of this year, will strengthen the platform's core e-mail capability while adding new messaging, manageability and security features.
RIM pioneered enterprise handheld connectivity with the BlackBerry's push e-mail system and BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). Competitors have since muscled in on this territory, while RIM has invested in software and devices to expand its appeal to the consumer market. With the new features, the company is looking toward a future in which almost all communication capabilities on the desktop are available on the road through a set of capabilities often called unified communications.
Among key new capabilities are features that merge voice with instant messaging. Users who run IBM Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Live Communications Server will be able to click on an instant-messaging (IM) contact on the BlackBerry phone in order to call them, or convert an ongoing IM session into a voice call. They will also be able to check whether their colleagues are going to be available before they send out meeting requests.
Enhanced e-mail handling will include several new features. Users will be able to search for and retrieve messages on their enterprise e-mail servers that are no longer stored on their BlackBerries. Also, the devices will be able to render HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and rich text e-mail messages, including font colors and styles, images, hyperlinks and other elements. After downloading Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, users will now be able to edit them on the BlackBerry, thanks to Documents to Go software from DataViz that is being integrated into the mobile platform.
Even within e-mail encrypted with PGP or S/MIME, BlackBerry users will be able to view attachments, according to the company.
RIM also has some good news for enterprises that want to more easily manage and lock down their employees' devices. They will be able to drill down and define which applications on a BlackBerry can access its GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality, as well as enable or shut down specific Bluetooth profiles and set how long the device is "discoverable" using Bluetooth. The less time a phone is discoverable by other Bluetooth devices, the less chance an intruder has to hack it, although this method of breaking into a phone hasn't been widely exploited.
A Web-based device management console is also coming, allowing users to control settings and install software from any Web-connected computer. In addition, administrators will now be able to update users' devices over the air.
To help third parties develop their own applications for the BlackBerry, RIM also announced the availability of some additional Java Micro Edition APIs (application programming interfaces). They include ones to support developing mobile Web services clients, software that uses MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and a single application that works for multiple languages and regions.
RIM expects to ship its BES version 4.1.5 software for IBM Lotus Domino and for Microsoft Exchange by the end of February. They will be free upgrades for customers with BES version 4.1.0 or later, while others can buy the upgrade for US$999 or purchase a Technical Support Services contract. The price of the BES for new customers will remain at $3,999 per server, with 20 user licenses included.
Version 4.5 of the BlackBerry device software will be required to use many of the end-user features; it will be available in the first half of the year, depending on carrier. It will be a free download from RIM and carrier Web sites. The ability to edit Word and PowerPoint documents will come with version 4.5, but Excel editing capability will be in a later release, expected in the latter part of this year.
Microsoft offers new products for governments
In Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a product package aimed at local and regional e-government initiatives, in the midst of growing government opposition in Europe to proprietary software.
Microsoft's Citizen Service Platform includes applications and templates designed for local and regional governments primarily in Europe and the U.S. It is built on products including SharePoint, Office Live and Windows Server.
While Microsoft has been selling software to the public sector for years, it has recently begun focusing on local governments after discovering that many people interact with their local governments more often than the federal government, said Ralph Young, vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector group.
Europe alone has over 80,000 local and regional governments, Young said.
Governments can use the Citizen Service Platform to create portals, manage documents, deploy alert systems in the case of emergencies and create and manage citizen information databases that can be shared among different agencies.
Microsoft is introducing the product as it faces mounting opposition Europe. Some governments there are migrating to open-source products as a way to avoid being locked into a single vendor of proprietary software.
Others, such as the Netherlands, are taking a more extreme route. Late last year the Dutch parliament mandated that government organizations choose open source over proprietary software if a viable product is available. Agencies must also use open standards. The national government must comply with the new rules by May, with local governments following by the end of this year.
Young was unfazed by the mandate. "We have many opportunities in the Netherlands to work with local and regional governments," he said. "We don't see any federal mandates having real impact locally because of local jurisdictions' ability to make decisions in their best interest in terms of how to better serve citizens."
Microsoft could be counting on local governments having autonomy from such federal mandates, said Mark Anderson, a consultant and founder of the Strategic News Service. "There are a lot of times when a government will posture and it doesn't really intend that posture to be carried through the rest of the country," he said.
Still, some European government agencies may be predisposed to choose software other than Microsoft's, more so since the software giant began pushing its Open XML document format there, Anderson said. Microsoft is in the process of attempting to have Open XML be accepted as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization. Open XML competes with the Open Document Format promoted by IBM. Critics of Open XML accused Microsoft of stacking votes in the standardization process, souring some in Europe on Microsoft even further.
Microsoft thinks that cost will determine decisions for many local governments. "It's much less a religious discussion about open-source and commercial software as it is about what are the solutions available that governments can see value from," said Young. "Local governments are empowered to make decisions and if they say 'This is the best value for the dollar I spend over the life of a service capability, that will govern my decision making process.'"
Microsoft's Citizen Service Platform includes applications and templates designed for local and regional governments primarily in Europe and the U.S. It is built on products including SharePoint, Office Live and Windows Server.
While Microsoft has been selling software to the public sector for years, it has recently begun focusing on local governments after discovering that many people interact with their local governments more often than the federal government, said Ralph Young, vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector group.
Europe alone has over 80,000 local and regional governments, Young said.
Governments can use the Citizen Service Platform to create portals, manage documents, deploy alert systems in the case of emergencies and create and manage citizen information databases that can be shared among different agencies.
Microsoft is introducing the product as it faces mounting opposition Europe. Some governments there are migrating to open-source products as a way to avoid being locked into a single vendor of proprietary software.
Others, such as the Netherlands, are taking a more extreme route. Late last year the Dutch parliament mandated that government organizations choose open source over proprietary software if a viable product is available. Agencies must also use open standards. The national government must comply with the new rules by May, with local governments following by the end of this year.
Young was unfazed by the mandate. "We have many opportunities in the Netherlands to work with local and regional governments," he said. "We don't see any federal mandates having real impact locally because of local jurisdictions' ability to make decisions in their best interest in terms of how to better serve citizens."
Microsoft could be counting on local governments having autonomy from such federal mandates, said Mark Anderson, a consultant and founder of the Strategic News Service. "There are a lot of times when a government will posture and it doesn't really intend that posture to be carried through the rest of the country," he said.
Still, some European government agencies may be predisposed to choose software other than Microsoft's, more so since the software giant began pushing its Open XML document format there, Anderson said. Microsoft is in the process of attempting to have Open XML be accepted as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization. Open XML competes with the Open Document Format promoted by IBM. Critics of Open XML accused Microsoft of stacking votes in the standardization process, souring some in Europe on Microsoft even further.
Microsoft thinks that cost will determine decisions for many local governments. "It's much less a religious discussion about open-source and commercial software as it is about what are the solutions available that governments can see value from," said Young. "Local governments are empowered to make decisions and if they say 'This is the best value for the dollar I spend over the life of a service capability, that will govern my decision making process.'"
AT&T offering iPhone plans for enterprise customers
AT&T began offering enterprise data plans for iPhones this week, marking the first time the carrier has pitched its popular consumer device directly to businesses.
According to AT&T, each iPhone enterprise plan will require signing a two-year service agreement that will include an activation fee. All three enterprise plans offered by AT&T include unlimited domestic data services, such as Internet and e-mail. The plans offer three different options for Short Message Service, including a plan that allows 200 text messages per month (US$45), a 1,500-per-month text plan ($55) and an unlimited text message plan ($65).
Much like the consumer version of the iPhone, the enterprise iPhone offers Internet access through the Safari Web browser and built-in connection capabilities through Wi-Fi, EDGE and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The company says that enterprise iPhones will have VPN support, including RSA SecurID, which will provide access to corporate Intranets. The phones will also give users access to corporate e-mail through IMAP or POP3 services, the company says.
While AT&T's enterprise iPhone offering is sure to generate a lot of interest, the company still has to answer questions about whether the devices are compatible with corporate security infrastructure, as many security experts have warned companies about the potential dangers of allowing iPhones to connect to corporate networks. Last June, for instance, Gartner told IT executives to keep iPhones away from their networks, noting that the device lacks a firewall and does not support e-mail platforms such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, expressed similar concerns and noted that the devices lacked security management tools needed to manage which devices can and cannot connect to corporate networks.
Others, however, have argued that security concerns about the iPhone are overblown and that consumer devices are constantly encroaching upon corporate networks.
"If you are responsible for keeping data inside of your organization, for the love of everything that is holy, please don't spend too much time on the iPhone," said David Goldsmith, one of the principals at security consultancy Matasano Security said, in a posting to the Matasano blog last year. "Allow us to remind you about all of the data breaches that are happening thanks to insecure wireless access points, tape backups disappearing, wrapping your newspapers in customers' personal financial information and stolen laptops."
According to AT&T, each iPhone enterprise plan will require signing a two-year service agreement that will include an activation fee. All three enterprise plans offered by AT&T include unlimited domestic data services, such as Internet and e-mail. The plans offer three different options for Short Message Service, including a plan that allows 200 text messages per month (US$45), a 1,500-per-month text plan ($55) and an unlimited text message plan ($65).
Much like the consumer version of the iPhone, the enterprise iPhone offers Internet access through the Safari Web browser and built-in connection capabilities through Wi-Fi, EDGE and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The company says that enterprise iPhones will have VPN support, including RSA SecurID, which will provide access to corporate Intranets. The phones will also give users access to corporate e-mail through IMAP or POP3 services, the company says.
While AT&T's enterprise iPhone offering is sure to generate a lot of interest, the company still has to answer questions about whether the devices are compatible with corporate security infrastructure, as many security experts have warned companies about the potential dangers of allowing iPhones to connect to corporate networks. Last June, for instance, Gartner told IT executives to keep iPhones away from their networks, noting that the device lacks a firewall and does not support e-mail platforms such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, expressed similar concerns and noted that the devices lacked security management tools needed to manage which devices can and cannot connect to corporate networks.
Others, however, have argued that security concerns about the iPhone are overblown and that consumer devices are constantly encroaching upon corporate networks.
"If you are responsible for keeping data inside of your organization, for the love of everything that is holy, please don't spend too much time on the iPhone," said David Goldsmith, one of the principals at security consultancy Matasano Security said, in a posting to the Matasano blog last year. "Allow us to remind you about all of the data breaches that are happening thanks to insecure wireless access points, tape backups disappearing, wrapping your newspapers in customers' personal financial information and stolen laptops."
Polymer Vision readies roll-out of rollable e-reader
Polymer Vision plans to launch Readius, an e-reader with a flexible screen weighing little more than a cell phone, in the middle of this year, it said Tuesday.
The long-awaited gadget will be a boon to those who now get their daily news fix by scanning the headlines on an e-reader -- but who miss the way they could roll up their old newspaper and tuck it in a pocket when they had finished reading.
The key feature of the Readius is its flexible screen, 5 inches across the diagonal, with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels (QVGA) in 16 shades of gray.
It has mutated a little since Polymer Vision showed early prototypes of the wrap-around flexible screen a year ago: "The concept is the same, but we have added mobile phone functionality," said Thomas van der Zijden, vice president of sales and marketing.
The latest device, now ready for production, functions as a triband phone with a high-speed mobile wireless connection. Unlike Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader, which can only connect to U.S. wireless networks, the Readius will operate almost worldwide, as it works with the HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) 3G (third-generation) service favored by European, Asian and some U.S. operators.
Although the device will function as a phone, dialing unfamiliar numbers will be awkward, as it has only eight buttons. That's not a problem, according to Van der Zijden, as mobile phone users make most calls to numbers already in their address book -- and the Readius can be synchronized with a PC through its USB 2.0 connection or Bluetooth 2.0 wireless interface.
In addition, the wireless connection can be used to download e-mail using the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols, or from Web-based services such as Yahoo mail, Google's Gmail or corporate servers using the Webmail function of Microsoft Exchange, according to Polymer Vision.
The Readius weighs 115 grams and measures 115 millimeters by 57 mm by 21 mm when closed. It has a slot for Micro-SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards up to 8G bytes in capacity. One battery charge will allow up to 30 hours of continuous reading, and for those with tired eyes the device will even play audio books -- and podcasts and MP3 music files, the company said.
Polymer Vision is seeking content providers willing to sell material through a dedicated Internet portal offering wireless downloads for the Readius, and is also looking for mobile networks and retail outlets to provide additional distribution channels.
Content will have to be adapted to the small screen resolution, but there are no obstacles to that: the platform is open and can display PDF, HTML and ASCII text files, said Van der Zijden. The devices run the Windows CE operating system with a custom user interface, and can use the OMA 1.0 DRM (digital rights management) to prevent copying of content. Polymer Vision may add other DRM systems depending on demand from content providers, he said.
The company expects to have the Readius available to partners by the end of the second quarter, so that they can sell it early in the third quarter.
The price will depend on operator subsidies and contracts, but Van der Zijden expects it to be comparable with that for high-end smartphones such as Nokia's N95 8GB or Apple's iPhone.
One operator that expressed an early interest in the Readius is Italy's Telecom Italia. Polymer Vision is developing a special version for Italy that will include support for the DVB-H broadcast protocol, said Van der Zijden. While this is normally used to broadcast television signals, Telecom Italia plans to use it to deliver large quantities of data to a wide audience -- such as a daily newspaper that subscribers can then unlock.
The long-awaited gadget will be a boon to those who now get their daily news fix by scanning the headlines on an e-reader -- but who miss the way they could roll up their old newspaper and tuck it in a pocket when they had finished reading.
The key feature of the Readius is its flexible screen, 5 inches across the diagonal, with a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels (QVGA) in 16 shades of gray.
It has mutated a little since Polymer Vision showed early prototypes of the wrap-around flexible screen a year ago: "The concept is the same, but we have added mobile phone functionality," said Thomas van der Zijden, vice president of sales and marketing.
The latest device, now ready for production, functions as a triband phone with a high-speed mobile wireless connection. Unlike Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader, which can only connect to U.S. wireless networks, the Readius will operate almost worldwide, as it works with the HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) 3G (third-generation) service favored by European, Asian and some U.S. operators.
Although the device will function as a phone, dialing unfamiliar numbers will be awkward, as it has only eight buttons. That's not a problem, according to Van der Zijden, as mobile phone users make most calls to numbers already in their address book -- and the Readius can be synchronized with a PC through its USB 2.0 connection or Bluetooth 2.0 wireless interface.
In addition, the wireless connection can be used to download e-mail using the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols, or from Web-based services such as Yahoo mail, Google's Gmail or corporate servers using the Webmail function of Microsoft Exchange, according to Polymer Vision.
The Readius weighs 115 grams and measures 115 millimeters by 57 mm by 21 mm when closed. It has a slot for Micro-SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards up to 8G bytes in capacity. One battery charge will allow up to 30 hours of continuous reading, and for those with tired eyes the device will even play audio books -- and podcasts and MP3 music files, the company said.
Polymer Vision is seeking content providers willing to sell material through a dedicated Internet portal offering wireless downloads for the Readius, and is also looking for mobile networks and retail outlets to provide additional distribution channels.
Content will have to be adapted to the small screen resolution, but there are no obstacles to that: the platform is open and can display PDF, HTML and ASCII text files, said Van der Zijden. The devices run the Windows CE operating system with a custom user interface, and can use the OMA 1.0 DRM (digital rights management) to prevent copying of content. Polymer Vision may add other DRM systems depending on demand from content providers, he said.
The company expects to have the Readius available to partners by the end of the second quarter, so that they can sell it early in the third quarter.
The price will depend on operator subsidies and contracts, but Van der Zijden expects it to be comparable with that for high-end smartphones such as Nokia's N95 8GB or Apple's iPhone.
One operator that expressed an early interest in the Readius is Italy's Telecom Italia. Polymer Vision is developing a special version for Italy that will include support for the DVB-H broadcast protocol, said Van der Zijden. While this is normally used to broadcast television signals, Telecom Italia plans to use it to deliver large quantities of data to a wide audience -- such as a daily newspaper that subscribers can then unlock.
Mac users warned of bad year for security
The Mac is no longer immune to Windows-like software exploits, and its users should prepare for a rougher year, a report from security vendor Sophos has said.
According to the Sophos Security Threat Report for 2008, the platform now has a critical mass that makes it worthwhile for malware writers to target it in parallel to Windows.
The company notes Mac-specific hacks such as the OSX-RSplug of November 2007, which redirected DNS queries to a compromised website as a typical example of the new species of Mac-hating malware. The novelty of the attack was that the site could detect whether the visitor was a Mac or PC, delivering a different attack to Apple users. Indeed the very popularity of browsers made it much easier for malware to be repurposed for different platforms.
"There are gangs out there who are now writing malware for Macs. That is a big shift," said Graham Cluley of Sophos. "The conveyer belt has been started up for Apple. It is not yet an epidemic for Apple but it is a turning point," he predicted.
"If enough Apple Mac users resist clicking on unsolicited weblinks or downloading unknown code from the web then there's a chance they could send a clear message to the hackers that it's not financially rewarding to target Macs," he said.
He also suggested that the emerging class of Ultra-mobile PCs, such as the Asus EEE, which uses Linux, could in time fall prey to the same broadening of malware-writing horizons.
Sophos was now detecting 6,000 compromised websites a day -- equivalent to one every 14 seconds -- which made it almost impossible for users of any platform to protect themselves simply by not visiting certain types of websites. But only around 1 in 5 of these were hacker sites -- the rest were legitimate sites that had been compromised without their owners' knowledge, which rendered them especially dangerous.
The report mentions a long list of innocent-sounding examples, including art galleries, religious sites, and holiday property rental websites, as victims of malware compromise. Overall, most malware was still being written in China, the US, Russia, and a number of eastern European counties, with other European nations some way behind.
Worries over Apple security are nothing new, but have become more urgent in recent months, stating with Apple's Leopard OS. Mac users have even had a taste of the same scareware -- software that attempts to dupe users with bogus alerts - that rarely merits notice in the PC world.
According to the Sophos Security Threat Report for 2008, the platform now has a critical mass that makes it worthwhile for malware writers to target it in parallel to Windows.
The company notes Mac-specific hacks such as the OSX-RSplug of November 2007, which redirected DNS queries to a compromised website as a typical example of the new species of Mac-hating malware. The novelty of the attack was that the site could detect whether the visitor was a Mac or PC, delivering a different attack to Apple users. Indeed the very popularity of browsers made it much easier for malware to be repurposed for different platforms.
"There are gangs out there who are now writing malware for Macs. That is a big shift," said Graham Cluley of Sophos. "The conveyer belt has been started up for Apple. It is not yet an epidemic for Apple but it is a turning point," he predicted.
"If enough Apple Mac users resist clicking on unsolicited weblinks or downloading unknown code from the web then there's a chance they could send a clear message to the hackers that it's not financially rewarding to target Macs," he said.
He also suggested that the emerging class of Ultra-mobile PCs, such as the Asus EEE, which uses Linux, could in time fall prey to the same broadening of malware-writing horizons.
Sophos was now detecting 6,000 compromised websites a day -- equivalent to one every 14 seconds -- which made it almost impossible for users of any platform to protect themselves simply by not visiting certain types of websites. But only around 1 in 5 of these were hacker sites -- the rest were legitimate sites that had been compromised without their owners' knowledge, which rendered them especially dangerous.
The report mentions a long list of innocent-sounding examples, including art galleries, religious sites, and holiday property rental websites, as victims of malware compromise. Overall, most malware was still being written in China, the US, Russia, and a number of eastern European counties, with other European nations some way behind.
Worries over Apple security are nothing new, but have become more urgent in recent months, stating with Apple's Leopard OS. Mac users have even had a taste of the same scareware -- software that attempts to dupe users with bogus alerts - that rarely merits notice in the PC world.
Report: EBay CEO Whitman preparing to retire
EBay CEO Meg Whitman is planning to step down from the company she has led for the past 10 years, The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday.
Whitman has been delegating more tasks to deputies over the past few months and is expected to decide on her retirement in the coming weeks, the newspaper said, quoting "people familiar with the matter." John Donahue, who leads the company's auction business, is the leading candidate to succeed her, according to the newspaper.
EBay, which also operates the PayPal payment system and Skype Internet telephony service, is due to report earnings for the fourth quarter Wednesday. The quarter includes the traditionally strong year-end holiday period and estimates see eBay reporting earnings per share of US$0.38.
The company reported a net profit of US$1.1 billion in 2006 on the back of US$6 billion in revenue. For 2007 eBay expects revenue to jump to US$7.6 billion.
It's generally acknowledged that among Whitman's major hits was the acquisition of online payment services provider PayPal, while her misses include the acquisition of Skype. EBay recently wrote in an acknowledgment that it overpaid for the Internet telephony company.
The jury is also still out on eBay Express, a specialty site launched almost two years ago to attract more mainstream buyers. The site is generally considered to have failed to accomplish that main goal.
The retirement of Whitman, 51, might not be the only news coming from eBay in the near future, according to RBC Capital Markets. EBay will probably lower its financial expectations for 2008 and may be considering "a significant change" in business strategy, RBC analyst Jordan Rohan said in a research note Tuesday.
"We believe eBay will cut insertion fees, revamp the search algorithm, introduce category-specific pricing and offer volume discounts for sellers to respond to the challenge from Amazon," RBC said in the note, which was co-authored with other analysts.
Whitman's retirement could have the positive effect of speeding up changes in business strategies, which, according to RBC, should also include spinning off PayPal, selling Skype and cutting staff. RBC is lowering its 2008 revenue expectation to US$8.8 billion from $9.1 billion and its earnings per share expectation to $1.62 from $1.67.
Should Whitman retire, her tenure has to be considered one of the great runs in e-commerce history, said David Yaskulka, product marketing vice president at Kompolt, an online auction agency.
"There's no doubt about that," said Yaskulka, who from 2002 to 2006 was also CEO of eBay merchant Blueberry Boutique, which during his tenure attained eBay Platinum PowerSeller status, the second-largest type of eBay merchant in terms of sales volume.
Whitman deserves credit for steering eBay through an intense growth period during which the company expanded internationally, broadened its e-commerce scope and made important acquisitions, Yaskulka said.
Recently, Whitman has done well to again highlight the community aspects that differentiate eBay's marketplace from other e-commerce sites, he said.
This is something that her successor must continue to develop, because it's the mixture of e-commerce with community -- in the form of its many sellers and eBay-backed charitable efforts, for example -- that is eBay's "secret sauce," Yaskulka said.
Whitman could be faulted for not paying attention to security and safety concerns at eBay sooner, as well as to improving the buyer experience, which became a priority just in the past year, he said.
Whitman has been delegating more tasks to deputies over the past few months and is expected to decide on her retirement in the coming weeks, the newspaper said, quoting "people familiar with the matter." John Donahue, who leads the company's auction business, is the leading candidate to succeed her, according to the newspaper.
EBay, which also operates the PayPal payment system and Skype Internet telephony service, is due to report earnings for the fourth quarter Wednesday. The quarter includes the traditionally strong year-end holiday period and estimates see eBay reporting earnings per share of US$0.38.
The company reported a net profit of US$1.1 billion in 2006 on the back of US$6 billion in revenue. For 2007 eBay expects revenue to jump to US$7.6 billion.
It's generally acknowledged that among Whitman's major hits was the acquisition of online payment services provider PayPal, while her misses include the acquisition of Skype. EBay recently wrote in an acknowledgment that it overpaid for the Internet telephony company.
The jury is also still out on eBay Express, a specialty site launched almost two years ago to attract more mainstream buyers. The site is generally considered to have failed to accomplish that main goal.
The retirement of Whitman, 51, might not be the only news coming from eBay in the near future, according to RBC Capital Markets. EBay will probably lower its financial expectations for 2008 and may be considering "a significant change" in business strategy, RBC analyst Jordan Rohan said in a research note Tuesday.
"We believe eBay will cut insertion fees, revamp the search algorithm, introduce category-specific pricing and offer volume discounts for sellers to respond to the challenge from Amazon," RBC said in the note, which was co-authored with other analysts.
Whitman's retirement could have the positive effect of speeding up changes in business strategies, which, according to RBC, should also include spinning off PayPal, selling Skype and cutting staff. RBC is lowering its 2008 revenue expectation to US$8.8 billion from $9.1 billion and its earnings per share expectation to $1.62 from $1.67.
Should Whitman retire, her tenure has to be considered one of the great runs in e-commerce history, said David Yaskulka, product marketing vice president at Kompolt, an online auction agency.
"There's no doubt about that," said Yaskulka, who from 2002 to 2006 was also CEO of eBay merchant Blueberry Boutique, which during his tenure attained eBay Platinum PowerSeller status, the second-largest type of eBay merchant in terms of sales volume.
Whitman deserves credit for steering eBay through an intense growth period during which the company expanded internationally, broadened its e-commerce scope and made important acquisitions, Yaskulka said.
Recently, Whitman has done well to again highlight the community aspects that differentiate eBay's marketplace from other e-commerce sites, he said.
This is something that her successor must continue to develop, because it's the mixture of e-commerce with community -- in the form of its many sellers and eBay-backed charitable efforts, for example -- that is eBay's "secret sauce," Yaskulka said.
Whitman could be faulted for not paying attention to security and safety concerns at eBay sooner, as well as to improving the buyer experience, which became a priority just in the past year, he said.
EMC unveils first SaaS offerings after Berkeley buy
EMC Corp. Monday is set to unveil a hosted backup and recovery service based on technology gained from its $76 million acquisition of Berkeley Data Systems in September.
The new MozyEnterprise software-as-a-service product is the first offering in EMC's new Fortress line of hosted software. MozyEnterprise will provide subscription-based online backup and recovery services for remote PCs and remote Windows Server environments, EMC said.
Roy Sanford, vice president for EMC's new SaaS business unit, noted that files stored in the hosted system will be encrypted before they are stored on EMS host servers.
The MozyEnterprise for PC and laptop devices is priced at $5.25 a month plus 70 cents a month per gigabyte stored. For servers, the monthly price jumps to $9.25 plus $2.35 per gigabyte stored, noted Sanford. The service is available now in the U.S., he said.
The MozyEnterprise service combines three Mozy online backup products -- MozyHome, MozyPro and MozyEnterprise -- that EMC gained with its acquisition of Berkeley.
Currently, EMC is managing 5 petabytes of Mozy storage for more than 500,000 devices.
The new SaaS application will be hosted by EMC and sold by the company along with resellers like Verizon Business and Broadview Networks. The offering is targeted at home users, small-to-midsize companies and large enterprises, remarked Sanford.
Since the acquisition, several features have been added to the acquired Mozy technology, Sanford said. Those include RSA Security authentication, authorization and key-management capabilities and a physical data-seeding option that saves users time and bandwidth by storing the information on a hard drive that's uploaded directly by EMC onto its hosted systems. In addition, he said, the support operation has been beefed up.
Aimable Mugara, IT director for the nonprofit Free The Children organization in Toronto, said the data-seeding option should be a huge benefit to companies worried about clogging up bandwidth or spending long hours transitioning from physical to online storage. Mugara, who has been using MozyPro for six months to back up 1TB of data from his organization every two to three days, said he hopes that EMC's enhancements and improved support come as advertised.
Mugara said that as a much larger company, EMC should be able to provide better support than Berkeley.
Mugara, who is responsible for an IT operation serving a workforce scattered across the world, said online backup offers him a sense of comfort that critical project information is always accessible and will never fall victim to lost or stolen devices.
In fact, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, the case for online backup is becoming stronger for companies of all sizes. The research firm predicts that sales of hosted backup storage services will reach $715 million in 2011, up from $235 million in 2007.
The Mozy client software can be autoinstalled on each device under administrator control, EMC said. Data backups sent to EMC servers can be managed via a Web-based console over Internet Explorer. Restore options for recovering data include online, client-based, DVD, hard drive and virtual drive, said Sanford.
Sanford refused to elaborate on future SaaS offerings from Fortress. However, he did say that over time, EMC will entertain the idea of connecting third-party applications to its fledgling Fortress platform. Sanford said that at least in the near term, EMC does not envision Fortress competing against Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service hosted product, which is used by service providers to offer backup and other types of online services.
"We do not see ourselves in what we're announcing as an S3 competitor," he said. "[But] in the long-term scope, we never say never."
The new MozyEnterprise software-as-a-service product is the first offering in EMC's new Fortress line of hosted software. MozyEnterprise will provide subscription-based online backup and recovery services for remote PCs and remote Windows Server environments, EMC said.
Roy Sanford, vice president for EMC's new SaaS business unit, noted that files stored in the hosted system will be encrypted before they are stored on EMS host servers.
The MozyEnterprise for PC and laptop devices is priced at $5.25 a month plus 70 cents a month per gigabyte stored. For servers, the monthly price jumps to $9.25 plus $2.35 per gigabyte stored, noted Sanford. The service is available now in the U.S., he said.
The MozyEnterprise service combines three Mozy online backup products -- MozyHome, MozyPro and MozyEnterprise -- that EMC gained with its acquisition of Berkeley.
Currently, EMC is managing 5 petabytes of Mozy storage for more than 500,000 devices.
The new SaaS application will be hosted by EMC and sold by the company along with resellers like Verizon Business and Broadview Networks. The offering is targeted at home users, small-to-midsize companies and large enterprises, remarked Sanford.
Since the acquisition, several features have been added to the acquired Mozy technology, Sanford said. Those include RSA Security authentication, authorization and key-management capabilities and a physical data-seeding option that saves users time and bandwidth by storing the information on a hard drive that's uploaded directly by EMC onto its hosted systems. In addition, he said, the support operation has been beefed up.
Aimable Mugara, IT director for the nonprofit Free The Children organization in Toronto, said the data-seeding option should be a huge benefit to companies worried about clogging up bandwidth or spending long hours transitioning from physical to online storage. Mugara, who has been using MozyPro for six months to back up 1TB of data from his organization every two to three days, said he hopes that EMC's enhancements and improved support come as advertised.
Mugara said that as a much larger company, EMC should be able to provide better support than Berkeley.
Mugara, who is responsible for an IT operation serving a workforce scattered across the world, said online backup offers him a sense of comfort that critical project information is always accessible and will never fall victim to lost or stolen devices.
In fact, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, the case for online backup is becoming stronger for companies of all sizes. The research firm predicts that sales of hosted backup storage services will reach $715 million in 2011, up from $235 million in 2007.
The Mozy client software can be autoinstalled on each device under administrator control, EMC said. Data backups sent to EMC servers can be managed via a Web-based console over Internet Explorer. Restore options for recovering data include online, client-based, DVD, hard drive and virtual drive, said Sanford.
Sanford refused to elaborate on future SaaS offerings from Fortress. However, he did say that over time, EMC will entertain the idea of connecting third-party applications to its fledgling Fortress platform. Sanford said that at least in the near term, EMC does not envision Fortress competing against Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service hosted product, which is used by service providers to offer backup and other types of online services.
"We do not see ourselves in what we're announcing as an S3 competitor," he said. "[But] in the long-term scope, we never say never."
Yahoo to lay off hundreds
Yahoo will announce plans to lay off hundreds of its 14,000 employees as the faltering Internet giant continues trying to snap out of its financial funk and fine tune its business strategies, several media outlets are reporting.
Yahoo will let go hundreds of staffers as part of its ongoing efforts to improve its profitability and compete against Google, Facebook, MySpace and others, according to articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that cited anonymous sources.
However, the Journal said that Yahoo will hire new employees in other areas and that it plans to finish the year with about the same amount of employees it had at the end of 2007.
If Yahoo does in fact keep its headcount at last year's level, then the layoffs will probably be seen as a rebalancing of staff and less as a sign of financial distress at the company.
A Yahoo spokeswoman contacted by IDG News Service declined to comment about layoff plans but said in an e-mailed statement that, as part of its multiyear transformation plan, the company plans to "invest in some areas, reduce emphasis in others, and eliminate some areas of the business," based on its priorities.
"Yahoo continues to attract and hire talent against the company's key initiatives to create long-term stockholder value," she said on Tuesday.
Yahoo is still deciding the extent of the layoffs and the areas that will be affected, and it will likely announce concrete plans to reduce staff next Tuesday when it issues its fourth-quarter earnings report, the Times and the Journal reported.
Whatever ends up happening with the reported staff cuts, it's undeniable that Yahoo is still very much in reorganization and recovery mode.
Once viewed as a dominant provider of online advertising and consumer Internet services, Yahoo has in recent years looked out of sync with the latest technical innovations and business opportunities. For starters, it let Google run away with the market for Internet search and advertising, and failed to develop a leading social-networking site, letting MySpace and Facebook capitalize on that opportunity. Yahoo also largely missed the online video revolution, which Google latched on to with its YouTube acquisition.
Along the way, its sales and profits have been disappointing for the past two years, leading to several management shakeups in late 2006 and 2007.
By far, the most dramatic happened in June, when co-founder Jerry Yang took over as CEO and chairman from Terry Semel. At the time, Susan Decker, former chief financial officer and head of Yahoo's advertiser and publisher group, became president.
A week after Semel's demotion to non-executive chairman, Yahoo combined its search and display advertising sales teams in the U.S. It was an attempt to extend the company's long-standing, core display advertising client relationships to the pay-per-click business, which generates about 40 percent of the industry's online advertising and is dominated by Google.
In August, Yahoo again shook up its top management ranks when it announced that its top sales executive would leave and that a new global sales organization had been created.
In December 2006, Semel had rolled out a major reorganization, creating three main business units to focus on Yahoo's key customer segments: consumers, advertisers and publishers. At the time, Semel also announced that Dan Rosensweig, then chief operating officer, would leave the company.
That reorganization was preceded by a widely publicized internal memo that was leaked to the media in November and came to be known as the Peanut Butter Manifesto. In the scathing memo, Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's senior vice president of communications and communities, called for a major reorganization, saying the company lacked "a focused, cohesive vision" that had made it "reactive" and eager to be "everything to everyone."
Since the uproar over the Peanut Butter Manifesto and the ensuing shakeups, Yahoo has seen quite a few changes in its upper management ranks. In addition to Semel's demotion and Rosensweig's departure, also gone are Wenda Harris Millard, who was chief sales officer, and Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem. In June, The New York Times reported that, in addition to these executives, at least 17 others at vice president level or higher had left Yahoo since the December 2006 reorganization.
Yahoo will let go hundreds of staffers as part of its ongoing efforts to improve its profitability and compete against Google, Facebook, MySpace and others, according to articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that cited anonymous sources.
However, the Journal said that Yahoo will hire new employees in other areas and that it plans to finish the year with about the same amount of employees it had at the end of 2007.
If Yahoo does in fact keep its headcount at last year's level, then the layoffs will probably be seen as a rebalancing of staff and less as a sign of financial distress at the company.
A Yahoo spokeswoman contacted by IDG News Service declined to comment about layoff plans but said in an e-mailed statement that, as part of its multiyear transformation plan, the company plans to "invest in some areas, reduce emphasis in others, and eliminate some areas of the business," based on its priorities.
"Yahoo continues to attract and hire talent against the company's key initiatives to create long-term stockholder value," she said on Tuesday.
Yahoo is still deciding the extent of the layoffs and the areas that will be affected, and it will likely announce concrete plans to reduce staff next Tuesday when it issues its fourth-quarter earnings report, the Times and the Journal reported.
Whatever ends up happening with the reported staff cuts, it's undeniable that Yahoo is still very much in reorganization and recovery mode.
Once viewed as a dominant provider of online advertising and consumer Internet services, Yahoo has in recent years looked out of sync with the latest technical innovations and business opportunities. For starters, it let Google run away with the market for Internet search and advertising, and failed to develop a leading social-networking site, letting MySpace and Facebook capitalize on that opportunity. Yahoo also largely missed the online video revolution, which Google latched on to with its YouTube acquisition.
Along the way, its sales and profits have been disappointing for the past two years, leading to several management shakeups in late 2006 and 2007.
By far, the most dramatic happened in June, when co-founder Jerry Yang took over as CEO and chairman from Terry Semel. At the time, Susan Decker, former chief financial officer and head of Yahoo's advertiser and publisher group, became president.
A week after Semel's demotion to non-executive chairman, Yahoo combined its search and display advertising sales teams in the U.S. It was an attempt to extend the company's long-standing, core display advertising client relationships to the pay-per-click business, which generates about 40 percent of the industry's online advertising and is dominated by Google.
In August, Yahoo again shook up its top management ranks when it announced that its top sales executive would leave and that a new global sales organization had been created.
In December 2006, Semel had rolled out a major reorganization, creating three main business units to focus on Yahoo's key customer segments: consumers, advertisers and publishers. At the time, Semel also announced that Dan Rosensweig, then chief operating officer, would leave the company.
That reorganization was preceded by a widely publicized internal memo that was leaked to the media in November and came to be known as the Peanut Butter Manifesto. In the scathing memo, Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's senior vice president of communications and communities, called for a major reorganization, saying the company lacked "a focused, cohesive vision" that had made it "reactive" and eager to be "everything to everyone."
Since the uproar over the Peanut Butter Manifesto and the ensuing shakeups, Yahoo has seen quite a few changes in its upper management ranks. In addition to Semel's demotion and Rosensweig's departure, also gone are Wenda Harris Millard, who was chief sales officer, and Chief Technology Officer Farzad Nazem. In June, The New York Times reported that, in addition to these executives, at least 17 others at vice president level or higher had left Yahoo since the December 2006 reorganization.
Intel offers first dual-core Celeron processor
Intel is shipping a dual-core Celeron processor, the first low-end desktop processor from the company to ship with two cores.
The 1.6GHz Celeron Dual-Core E1200 processor is based on Intel's Core microprocessor architecture and is manufactured using a 65-nanometer process. The chip has 512K bytes of cache and uses an 800MHz front-side bus to connect with main memory and other components inside the PC.
Intel is selling the Celeron Dual-Core E1200 chips for $53 each, in quantities of 1,000 units.
The release of the E1200 underscores how prevalent dual-core chips have become. The Celeron family is the low end of Intel's mainstream processor range, below the mid-range Pentium family and top-end Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad lines. The release of the Celeron E1200 means Intel now has multi-core processors in each of these product families.
Intel already offers a range of dual-core chips in its Pentium line: the 1.6GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2140, 1.8GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2160, 2GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2180, and the 2.2GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2200. The Pentium Dual-Core chips are priced from $64 to $84, in 1,000 unit quantities,
The 1.6GHz Celeron Dual-Core E1200 processor is based on Intel's Core microprocessor architecture and is manufactured using a 65-nanometer process. The chip has 512K bytes of cache and uses an 800MHz front-side bus to connect with main memory and other components inside the PC.
Intel is selling the Celeron Dual-Core E1200 chips for $53 each, in quantities of 1,000 units.
The release of the E1200 underscores how prevalent dual-core chips have become. The Celeron family is the low end of Intel's mainstream processor range, below the mid-range Pentium family and top-end Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad lines. The release of the Celeron E1200 means Intel now has multi-core processors in each of these product families.
Intel already offers a range of dual-core chips in its Pentium line: the 1.6GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2140, 1.8GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2160, 2GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2180, and the 2.2GHz Pentium Dual-Core E2200. The Pentium Dual-Core chips are priced from $64 to $84, in 1,000 unit quantities,
IBM to make 'aggressive' run at SMBs
IBM is developing a new, "one-stop-shop" product offering, Lotus Foundations, aimed at companies with five to 500 employees, it said Monday.
Lotus Foundations will consist of on-premise software servers sold primarily through partners. IBM is also developing a set of accompanying Web-hosted services, now available in a beta version.
The company plans to bundle Lotus Domino, file management, directory services, firewall, backup and productivity tools in the initial offering of Lotus Foundations. Customers who need more power will be able to bring on additional servers, according to IBM. The company's partner community will also be able to integrate their own applications into the core platform.
The server software sold under Foundations will be autonomic or "self-healing," and therefore appropriate for small companies without paid IT staffers, IBM said.
Foundations will be the home of technology IBM acquired through its purchase last week of Net Integration Technologies. That deal is set to close later this year.
"Net Integration is a key part of our strategy here. That's why we bought them," said Mike Rhodin, general manager of Lotus, during a press conference Monday at IBM's Lotusphere show in Orlando, Florida.
IBM did not release pricing information on Monday, but Rhodin indicated the company plans to compete vigorously for market share.
"Our intent as we price the Foundations offering, to be blunt, is to be very aggressive," Rhodin said. "The total value we'll put around the solution is going to be pretty big for the customer and we're going to leave some room in there for the partner to make some money."
The Web-hosted services, on the other hand, will focus on helping businesses collaborate with each other, such as through contact and file sharing, or online chat and Web meetings. Interested users can register for the beta test at bluehouse.lotus.com.
The Bluehouse beta test represents a chance for IBM to fine-tune the economics of selling software as a service, according to Rhodin. "You don't find a lot of profitable software-as-a-service companies. The business model is in evolution," he said. "Our approach is going to be to work with partners and the marketplace to find out the best solution for them."
Also Monday, IBM and SAP said they are codeveloping a software product under the codename "Atlantic," which will integrate IBM's Lotus Notes collaboration and office productivity software with SAP's Business Suite.
The Atlantic project represents a further deepening of the long-standing relationship between IBM and SAP.
"We think the timing is just right," Rhodin said. "The timing for collaboration and business systems to come together is right now."
The first release of Atlantic is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of this year, and will feature support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics. It will also include the ability to use roles from within the Lotus Notes client, and tools for expanding these core capabilities, IBM said in a statement.
Lotus Foundations will consist of on-premise software servers sold primarily through partners. IBM is also developing a set of accompanying Web-hosted services, now available in a beta version.
The company plans to bundle Lotus Domino, file management, directory services, firewall, backup and productivity tools in the initial offering of Lotus Foundations. Customers who need more power will be able to bring on additional servers, according to IBM. The company's partner community will also be able to integrate their own applications into the core platform.
The server software sold under Foundations will be autonomic or "self-healing," and therefore appropriate for small companies without paid IT staffers, IBM said.
Foundations will be the home of technology IBM acquired through its purchase last week of Net Integration Technologies. That deal is set to close later this year.
"Net Integration is a key part of our strategy here. That's why we bought them," said Mike Rhodin, general manager of Lotus, during a press conference Monday at IBM's Lotusphere show in Orlando, Florida.
IBM did not release pricing information on Monday, but Rhodin indicated the company plans to compete vigorously for market share.
"Our intent as we price the Foundations offering, to be blunt, is to be very aggressive," Rhodin said. "The total value we'll put around the solution is going to be pretty big for the customer and we're going to leave some room in there for the partner to make some money."
The Web-hosted services, on the other hand, will focus on helping businesses collaborate with each other, such as through contact and file sharing, or online chat and Web meetings. Interested users can register for the beta test at bluehouse.lotus.com.
The Bluehouse beta test represents a chance for IBM to fine-tune the economics of selling software as a service, according to Rhodin. "You don't find a lot of profitable software-as-a-service companies. The business model is in evolution," he said. "Our approach is going to be to work with partners and the marketplace to find out the best solution for them."
Also Monday, IBM and SAP said they are codeveloping a software product under the codename "Atlantic," which will integrate IBM's Lotus Notes collaboration and office productivity software with SAP's Business Suite.
The Atlantic project represents a further deepening of the long-standing relationship between IBM and SAP.
"We think the timing is just right," Rhodin said. "The timing for collaboration and business systems to come together is right now."
The first release of Atlantic is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of this year, and will feature support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics. It will also include the ability to use roles from within the Lotus Notes client, and tools for expanding these core capabilities, IBM said in a statement.
Dell launches new PowerEdge blade servers
Dell is expected on Monday to add a new series of blade products to its PowerEdge server line, expanding its presence in a market dominated by rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard.
The PowerEdge M-Series of blades includes the fastest-performing and most power-efficient blade servers the company has, said Mike Roberts, senior product planning manager for Dell.
The PowerEdge M1000E, a 10U enclosure, will support the new Intel-based PowerEdge M600 and Advanced Micro Devices-based PowerEdge M605 blade servers, also announced Monday.
The M1000E enclosure supports a range of network connectivity options, including modules for Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand connectivity. The enclosure allows customers to upgrade or stack up on network hardware to boost networking speed.
The PowerEdge M600 blade server is a dual-socket server that supports up to two quad-core Intel Xeon processors, including processors in the Xeon 5400 series running at up to 3.16GHz. The dual-socket PowerEdge M605 servers support dual-core Opteron 2000 series processors running at up to 3GHz. Both blades support Windows Server 2003 and Linux OSes.
Targeted at data centers, the PowerEdge M1000E enclosure is priced at US$5,999, and the blades start at $1,849. The products will be available worldwide starting Monday.
Dell's OpenManage systems management technology, which will be bundled with the blades, includes energy management tools. Capabilities include real-time power reporting and the ability to set power usage by blade.
Power efficiency in blade servers is an important consideration for those looking to upgrade data centers, said Richard Doherty, cofounder and director of Envisioneering Group. Energy costs have become a big factor in considering hardware for data centers, and companies are taking a closer look at reducing their carbon footprints, Doherty said.
"Going greener can be a reason for an upgrade," Doherty said.
The new blade server gives Dell an opportunity to catch up with HP and IBM blade products, especially in small data centers, Doherty said. Dell's PowerEdge M-Series will compete with IBM's BladeCenter H and HP's BladeSystem c-Class blades.
In addition, the new blade servers will need strong management tools in order to succeed, Doherty said. Dell in the past has announced service and support initiatives that haven't panned out, and the company's OpenManage system management tools are not as strong as autonomic computing offerings from HP and IBM, Doherty said.
System management is a big concern for data centers, and customers are looking for the ability to manage systems without the need for additional IT engineers, Doherty said.
The PowerEdge M-Series of blades includes the fastest-performing and most power-efficient blade servers the company has, said Mike Roberts, senior product planning manager for Dell.
The PowerEdge M1000E, a 10U enclosure, will support the new Intel-based PowerEdge M600 and Advanced Micro Devices-based PowerEdge M605 blade servers, also announced Monday.
The M1000E enclosure supports a range of network connectivity options, including modules for Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand connectivity. The enclosure allows customers to upgrade or stack up on network hardware to boost networking speed.
The PowerEdge M600 blade server is a dual-socket server that supports up to two quad-core Intel Xeon processors, including processors in the Xeon 5400 series running at up to 3.16GHz. The dual-socket PowerEdge M605 servers support dual-core Opteron 2000 series processors running at up to 3GHz. Both blades support Windows Server 2003 and Linux OSes.
Targeted at data centers, the PowerEdge M1000E enclosure is priced at US$5,999, and the blades start at $1,849. The products will be available worldwide starting Monday.
Dell's OpenManage systems management technology, which will be bundled with the blades, includes energy management tools. Capabilities include real-time power reporting and the ability to set power usage by blade.
Power efficiency in blade servers is an important consideration for those looking to upgrade data centers, said Richard Doherty, cofounder and director of Envisioneering Group. Energy costs have become a big factor in considering hardware for data centers, and companies are taking a closer look at reducing their carbon footprints, Doherty said.
"Going greener can be a reason for an upgrade," Doherty said.
The new blade server gives Dell an opportunity to catch up with HP and IBM blade products, especially in small data centers, Doherty said. Dell's PowerEdge M-Series will compete with IBM's BladeCenter H and HP's BladeSystem c-Class blades.
In addition, the new blade servers will need strong management tools in order to succeed, Doherty said. Dell in the past has announced service and support initiatives that haven't panned out, and the company's OpenManage system management tools are not as strong as autonomic computing offerings from HP and IBM, Doherty said.
System management is a big concern for data centers, and customers are looking for the ability to manage systems without the need for additional IT engineers, Doherty said.
Sanyo to sell mobile phone unit to Kyocera
Japan's Sanyo is selling its mobile phone business to Kyocera as part of its ongoing restructuring, it said Monday.
The deal values the unit and its assets, which includes Sanyo's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) handset business and base station business, at ¥50 billion (US$468 million). However the total value of the unit drops to about ¥40 billion once debts have been taken into account. The transfer is expected to take place on April 1.
As part of the agreement Kyocera will be able to use the Sanyo brand on cell phones sold in Japan and North America, Sanyo's main markets.
The two companies have been working on the deal since they signed a tentative agreement in October last year.
The deal values the unit and its assets, which includes Sanyo's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) handset business and base station business, at ¥50 billion (US$468 million). However the total value of the unit drops to about ¥40 billion once debts have been taken into account. The transfer is expected to take place on April 1.
As part of the agreement Kyocera will be able to use the Sanyo brand on cell phones sold in Japan and North America, Sanyo's main markets.
The two companies have been working on the deal since they signed a tentative agreement in October last year.
Group points to VOIP flaw in DSL home gateway
A flaw in a DSL home gateway could lead broadband users to divulge personal information over the phone to someone they erroneously believe is calling from their bank, according to a group of self-styled ethical hackers.
BT's Home Hub, issued to the company's U.K. broadband subscribers, has an authentication vulnerability that enables a Web site rigged with malicious JavaScript to initiate a phone call, according to the group, GNUCitizen.
"We can tell your Home Hub to start a VOIP connection with any telephone number on the planet," said Adrian Pastor in a video posted on the group's blog.
Those at risk are subscribers using BT Home Hub firmware version 6.2.6.B with BT's Broadband Talk VOIP service, Pastor said.
For a successful attack, a person has to be lured to a Web site hosting the malicious JavaScript. That could be accomplished by sending a fraudulent e-mail from the person's bank saying he should to click on the link, which launches the JavaScript, said researcher Petko Petkov, in the same video.
Clicking on the link starts the attack. The victim's phone rings, and the gateway then initiates a call to another phone number. The victim thinks he is receiving a call, but actually he is making a VOIP call from his home gateway.
There are at least a couple scenarios for how a hacker could capitalize on the flaw. If the broadband subscriber thinks he is receiving a call from his bank, the person on the other end could persuade the victim to give up his bank account numbers.
The attacker could also make the victim's computer call a premium-rate phone line controlled by the hacker, who would receive a fee every time the number is called.
Pastor posted proof-of-concept code for the attack on a Web page. However, it wasn't immediately apparent if it works, as visitors would have to use BT's Home Hub with the correct software version.
BT said it's unlikely that the attack scenarios described by Pastor and Petkov could affect its customers, and no customers have reported such an attack, a BT spokesman said.
Nevertheless, the company is in the process of rolling out a patch that is automatically installed by the Home Hub, the spokesman said.
Pastor's public disclosure of the flaw on the blog is "highly irresponsible," the spokesman said.
How vulnerabilities are disclosed has often pitted security researchers -- and other proficient coders who drift more toward the hacking side -- against companies whose products or services are affected. GNUCitizen describes itself on its Web site as an "ethical hacker outfit."
Efforts to reach Pastor were unsuccessful.
BT's Home Hub, issued to the company's U.K. broadband subscribers, has an authentication vulnerability that enables a Web site rigged with malicious JavaScript to initiate a phone call, according to the group, GNUCitizen.
"We can tell your Home Hub to start a VOIP connection with any telephone number on the planet," said Adrian Pastor in a video posted on the group's blog.
Those at risk are subscribers using BT Home Hub firmware version 6.2.6.B with BT's Broadband Talk VOIP service, Pastor said.
For a successful attack, a person has to be lured to a Web site hosting the malicious JavaScript. That could be accomplished by sending a fraudulent e-mail from the person's bank saying he should to click on the link, which launches the JavaScript, said researcher Petko Petkov, in the same video.
Clicking on the link starts the attack. The victim's phone rings, and the gateway then initiates a call to another phone number. The victim thinks he is receiving a call, but actually he is making a VOIP call from his home gateway.
There are at least a couple scenarios for how a hacker could capitalize on the flaw. If the broadband subscriber thinks he is receiving a call from his bank, the person on the other end could persuade the victim to give up his bank account numbers.
The attacker could also make the victim's computer call a premium-rate phone line controlled by the hacker, who would receive a fee every time the number is called.
Pastor posted proof-of-concept code for the attack on a Web page. However, it wasn't immediately apparent if it works, as visitors would have to use BT's Home Hub with the correct software version.
BT said it's unlikely that the attack scenarios described by Pastor and Petkov could affect its customers, and no customers have reported such an attack, a BT spokesman said.
Nevertheless, the company is in the process of rolling out a patch that is automatically installed by the Home Hub, the spokesman said.
Pastor's public disclosure of the flaw on the blog is "highly irresponsible," the spokesman said.
How vulnerabilities are disclosed has often pitted security researchers -- and other proficient coders who drift more toward the hacking side -- against companies whose products or services are affected. GNUCitizen describes itself on its Web site as an "ethical hacker outfit."
Efforts to reach Pastor were unsuccessful.
Microsoft steps up assault on virtualization
Microsoft has laid out plans to become a bigger force in the market for virtualization software, stepping up its assault on established leaders such as VMware.
The plans announced Monday include the acquisition of a start-up company, Calista Technologies, whose graphics technology is designed to improve the end-user experience for people who access their Windows desktop remotely from a server, Microsoft said.
The company also loosened some of its licensing terms related to virtualization. Consumers who use the Home Basic and Home Premium editions of Windows Vista will now be able to run those OSes in a virtualized environment, Microsoft said. It also announced new licensing rates for corporate users.
Finally, Microsoft extended its partnership with Citrix Systems to make that company's Xen virtualization software work better with Microsoft's server and desktop software, it said.
Virtualization technologies separate the software on a computer from its underlying hardware, allowing it to be deployed in more flexible ways. Virtualization can allow multiple operating systems to run on one computer, for example, or allow application workloads to be shifted between computers more easily to improve hardware utilization.
The technology has been around for decades but was popularized in server environments recently by VMware and others. More recently, Apple introduced virtualization for its Macintosh desktops so that users can run both the Mac OS and Windows on the same machine.
Microsoft has not been a significant player in virtualization, but it hopes to change that with its announcements this week. It plans to discuss the changes at its Virtualization Deployment Summit, a two-day event for 300 of its customers and partners that starts Tuesday.
It argued that the virtualization market remains open for newer players like itself.
“Very few customers are able to reap the benefits of virtualization today,” Bob Muglia, senior vice present of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, said in a statement. “We estimate that less than five percent of companies are utilizing virtualization technology because it is simply too cost-prohibitive and complex."
Microsoft's strategy will be to offer a full range of virtualization products, including desktop, server and management software, and do so at a competitive price, Muglia said.
Customers with the Home and Home Premium editions of Vista can now run them as a guest operating system on a virtual machine, the company said. Among other things, that should mean that Apple Mac users who want to run Vista alongside the Mac OS can now do so without having to buy a more expensive version of Windows.
For businesses, customers who subscribe to Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance program can now get an annual subscription to Microsoft's desktop virtualization software for US$23 per desktop, the company said.
Citrix is developing a software tool that will make it easier for customers to transfer virtual machines between Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. A test version of the tool will be available in the second quarter, and the final version will be released along with Hyper-V, Microsoft said.
The technology from Calista aims to improve the experience for people who access their Windows desktops remotely from a server. It allows people to view multimedia content on a PC or thin client without the media player or software codecs they would normally need installed.
Microsoft will add Calista's graphics technology to future virtualization products, it said. Calista, of San Jose, California, is now a Microsoft subsidiary.
The plans announced Monday include the acquisition of a start-up company, Calista Technologies, whose graphics technology is designed to improve the end-user experience for people who access their Windows desktop remotely from a server, Microsoft said.
The company also loosened some of its licensing terms related to virtualization. Consumers who use the Home Basic and Home Premium editions of Windows Vista will now be able to run those OSes in a virtualized environment, Microsoft said. It also announced new licensing rates for corporate users.
Finally, Microsoft extended its partnership with Citrix Systems to make that company's Xen virtualization software work better with Microsoft's server and desktop software, it said.
Virtualization technologies separate the software on a computer from its underlying hardware, allowing it to be deployed in more flexible ways. Virtualization can allow multiple operating systems to run on one computer, for example, or allow application workloads to be shifted between computers more easily to improve hardware utilization.
The technology has been around for decades but was popularized in server environments recently by VMware and others. More recently, Apple introduced virtualization for its Macintosh desktops so that users can run both the Mac OS and Windows on the same machine.
Microsoft has not been a significant player in virtualization, but it hopes to change that with its announcements this week. It plans to discuss the changes at its Virtualization Deployment Summit, a two-day event for 300 of its customers and partners that starts Tuesday.
It argued that the virtualization market remains open for newer players like itself.
“Very few customers are able to reap the benefits of virtualization today,” Bob Muglia, senior vice present of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business, said in a statement. “We estimate that less than five percent of companies are utilizing virtualization technology because it is simply too cost-prohibitive and complex."
Microsoft's strategy will be to offer a full range of virtualization products, including desktop, server and management software, and do so at a competitive price, Muglia said.
Customers with the Home and Home Premium editions of Vista can now run them as a guest operating system on a virtual machine, the company said. Among other things, that should mean that Apple Mac users who want to run Vista alongside the Mac OS can now do so without having to buy a more expensive version of Windows.
For businesses, customers who subscribe to Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance program can now get an annual subscription to Microsoft's desktop virtualization software for US$23 per desktop, the company said.
Citrix is developing a software tool that will make it easier for customers to transfer virtual machines between Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. A test version of the tool will be available in the second quarter, and the final version will be released along with Hyper-V, Microsoft said.
The technology from Calista aims to improve the experience for people who access their Windows desktops remotely from a server. It allows people to view multimedia content on a PC or thin client without the media player or software codecs they would normally need installed.
Microsoft will add Calista's graphics technology to future virtualization products, it said. Calista, of San Jose, California, is now a Microsoft subsidiary.
Domino, Lotus roadmap revealed
The next version of Lotus Notes and Domino will ship in February and will feature an array of updates, including a new Web 2.0-style feature called My Widgets, IBM said Monday during its Lotusphere show in Orlando, Florida.
Lotus users will have a new panel for different types of widgets. Their interaction with the mini-programs will be enhanced through a technology, Live Text, that can analyze text, spot patterns and phrases and then link them to a widget that could be useful. For example, users could receive information about flights after clicking a flight number in an e-mail, IBM said in a statement.
The Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 release will also include Lotus Notes Traveler. The application will be able to push e-mail -- including associated content like attachments and calendars -- to Windows Mobile devices, IBM said.
In addition, IBM unveiled a new e-mail security appliance, IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security; and said the fourth beta of its free desktop software suite, Lotus Symphony, will be available by the end of this month.
Symphony has seen more than 400,000 users download the English version, IBM said. The software is available in 24 languages overall. IBM said a new plug-in, WebSphere Translation Server, will be available on the Symphony community site. The tool can provide real-time translation of content created in Symphony, according to IBM.
IBM also looked further down the road, saying that Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 will feature more Web 2.0-style capabilities, such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming, and RSS or ATOM content feeds.
The company's news comes as rival Microsoft is crowing about its success in luring Lotus users to its unified communications and collaboration platform.
Also Monday, IBM company also announced its Open Collaboration Client Solution will come in a version compatible with the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system.
The Open Collaboration Client Solution bundles together Lotus Notes; the Lotus Sametime messaging platform; Lotus Symphony; WebSphere Portal; the Lotus Connections social networking software; Lotus Quickr, document management and collaboration software for teams; and Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based development environment.
In addition, IBM and Red Hat announced a new partnership aimed at SMBs. The companies plan to sell an offering that combines Red Hat's Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform and Enterprise Linux Desktop with IBM's Lotus Notes client, Symphony and Domino server.
Lotus users will have a new panel for different types of widgets. Their interaction with the mini-programs will be enhanced through a technology, Live Text, that can analyze text, spot patterns and phrases and then link them to a widget that could be useful. For example, users could receive information about flights after clicking a flight number in an e-mail, IBM said in a statement.
The Lotus Notes and Domino 8.0.1 release will also include Lotus Notes Traveler. The application will be able to push e-mail -- including associated content like attachments and calendars -- to Windows Mobile devices, IBM said.
In addition, IBM unveiled a new e-mail security appliance, IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security; and said the fourth beta of its free desktop software suite, Lotus Symphony, will be available by the end of this month.
Symphony has seen more than 400,000 users download the English version, IBM said. The software is available in 24 languages overall. IBM said a new plug-in, WebSphere Translation Server, will be available on the Symphony community site. The tool can provide real-time translation of content created in Symphony, according to IBM.
IBM also looked further down the road, saying that Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 will feature more Web 2.0-style capabilities, such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming, and RSS or ATOM content feeds.
The company's news comes as rival Microsoft is crowing about its success in luring Lotus users to its unified communications and collaboration platform.
Also Monday, IBM company also announced its Open Collaboration Client Solution will come in a version compatible with the Linux-based Ubuntu operating system.
The Open Collaboration Client Solution bundles together Lotus Notes; the Lotus Sametime messaging platform; Lotus Symphony; WebSphere Portal; the Lotus Connections social networking software; Lotus Quickr, document management and collaboration software for teams; and Lotus Expeditor, an Eclipse-based development environment.
In addition, IBM and Red Hat announced a new partnership aimed at SMBs. The companies plan to sell an offering that combines Red Hat's Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform and Enterprise Linux Desktop with IBM's Lotus Notes client, Symphony and Domino server.
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