Progress Software is launching its Progress Actional 7.1 SOA management platform Monday, featuring visibility across business processes and into related services and IT infrastructure.
Business processes and BPM systems are tied into the underlying service infrastructure, said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional products at Progress. With Version 7.1, dependencies are revealed between business processes, services, middleware, and databases. Actional can provide proactive management or insight into why a business process failed.
"Now, we can relate the steps in the business process all the way down to the databases at the very end of that chain," so if a database goes down, Actional users can know which steps in the business process might be affected, Foody said.
Also, if a service needs to be changed, or versioned, users can understand the impact of that service alteration. Impacts on applications such as an order entry processing system can be gauged.
Actional's accommodations for BPM are needed, said analyst Frank Kenney, research director at Gartner. "It's something I think is very necessary, and it marks a different movement in the traditional SOA governance technology [space]. It starts to incorporate the notion of integrating with BPM technologies," Kenney said.
Actional is providing visibility into the lifecycle of processes, but it will need to explain its system to customers and prospects, he said.
"The story is incredibly sophisticated, given that many people embarking on SOA governance are still getting their arms around what is a registry and what is a repository," Kenney said.
Progress with Actional 7.1 also has integration with the Lombardi Teamworks BPM system and plans to add integrations with BPM systems from companies such as Software AG and Fujitsu.
Support for Kerberos security also is highlighted. "It makes it easier to tie Windows environments very securely into Unix environments that may be running other security systems like SAML," Foody said.
Also, Actional 7.1 can inspect the payload of messages not based on XML, such as RMI- or Enterprise JavaBeans-based messages. "[This capability] allows you to gain deeper insight into the applications that haven't yet been converted to Web services or may never get converted to Web services," said Foody.
Actional 7.1 is available now with prices starting at US$20,000. Progress acquired Actional about two years ago.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Cisco's Nexus is big -- and a big deal
It's hard to overstate how important the Nexus data-center switching platform, set to be unveiled Monday, is to Cisco Systems: for the dominant networking vendor's enterprise business, it's the biggest thing since the Catalyst 6000, which made its debut in 1999, according to the two key executives on the project.
At a dinner with press last week, they compared it to the CRS-1 (Carrier Routing System), a huge switch for the core of carrier networks that Cisco rolled out in 2004. To bring that platform to life, the company developed a new version of its flagship IOS (Internetworking Operating System) software and engineered the hardware to scale up to 92T bps (bits per second) of throughput. The core of the Internet is Cisco's turf, and it wasn't willing to give any ground to upstarts.
The Nexus brings Cisco into not just a new territory for its business, but a new product category: a unified switch that spans storage and computing in data centers and has security built in. Given the stakes, superlatives are natural.
- A single Nexus chassis will be able to handle more than 15T bps of traffic ripping through a data center, up from just 2T bps for a current Catalyst 6500 switch.
- At that rate, the switch could run 5 million concurrent transcontinental conferencing sessions using Cisco's TelePresence Collaboration system. It could also copy the entire searchable Internet in 7.5 minutes.
- One interface module for the Nexus 7000 chassis will come with 32 10G bps ports, and the platform is designed to support future interfaces including 100G bps.
- The company spent about $250 million on research and development for the new platform, and at its peak, the Nexus R&D team numbered more than 500 engineers, according to Tom Edsall, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center Business Unit.
As with the Catalyst 6000 Series and the CRS-1, Cisco developed the Nexus with an eye to long-term needs. Where the CRS marked the debut of IOS XR, the first modular version of IOS, the Nexus will have Cisco's first OS that can be fully virtualized, called NX-OS. The Nexus will also break new ground with its lossless switching fabric, a departure from traditional Ethernet -- though backward compatible with it, Cisco said.
The system also represents a gamble on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), a still-emerging standard for sending traditional Fibre Channel storage network traffic over Ethernet. Though the new standard will probably succeed with the backing of Cisco and other big vendors, the installed base of Fibre Channel is huge, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. There will be a proving period for Ethernet as a reliable, lossless data center transport, he said.
Cisco expects the uptake of the new platform to take time, just as it did with the CRS. The first Nexus product will go on sale in the second quarter of this year, and in the first year Cisco expects to see mostly trials of the new system, said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's data center group. Deployments will probably start to pick up in the second, third and fourth years after the introduction, she said.
But just as the opportunity was huge for the CRS, as video and other traffic rose fast on carrier networks, the chance to capture next-generation data centers is likely to justify Cisco's efforts on the Nexus line. Web-based services and applications, as well as outsourced computing offerings from Amazon.com and other companies, are powering the growth of massive data centers. Microsoft's MSN division is a test customer of the Nexus, said Ullal. Asked whether the mighty Google would buy in as well, Ullal said, "I would hope so."
At a dinner with press last week, they compared it to the CRS-1 (Carrier Routing System), a huge switch for the core of carrier networks that Cisco rolled out in 2004. To bring that platform to life, the company developed a new version of its flagship IOS (Internetworking Operating System) software and engineered the hardware to scale up to 92T bps (bits per second) of throughput. The core of the Internet is Cisco's turf, and it wasn't willing to give any ground to upstarts.
The Nexus brings Cisco into not just a new territory for its business, but a new product category: a unified switch that spans storage and computing in data centers and has security built in. Given the stakes, superlatives are natural.
- A single Nexus chassis will be able to handle more than 15T bps of traffic ripping through a data center, up from just 2T bps for a current Catalyst 6500 switch.
- At that rate, the switch could run 5 million concurrent transcontinental conferencing sessions using Cisco's TelePresence Collaboration system. It could also copy the entire searchable Internet in 7.5 minutes.
- One interface module for the Nexus 7000 chassis will come with 32 10G bps ports, and the platform is designed to support future interfaces including 100G bps.
- The company spent about $250 million on research and development for the new platform, and at its peak, the Nexus R&D team numbered more than 500 engineers, according to Tom Edsall, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center Business Unit.
As with the Catalyst 6000 Series and the CRS-1, Cisco developed the Nexus with an eye to long-term needs. Where the CRS marked the debut of IOS XR, the first modular version of IOS, the Nexus will have Cisco's first OS that can be fully virtualized, called NX-OS. The Nexus will also break new ground with its lossless switching fabric, a departure from traditional Ethernet -- though backward compatible with it, Cisco said.
The system also represents a gamble on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), a still-emerging standard for sending traditional Fibre Channel storage network traffic over Ethernet. Though the new standard will probably succeed with the backing of Cisco and other big vendors, the installed base of Fibre Channel is huge, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. There will be a proving period for Ethernet as a reliable, lossless data center transport, he said.
Cisco expects the uptake of the new platform to take time, just as it did with the CRS. The first Nexus product will go on sale in the second quarter of this year, and in the first year Cisco expects to see mostly trials of the new system, said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's data center group. Deployments will probably start to pick up in the second, third and fourth years after the introduction, she said.
But just as the opportunity was huge for the CRS, as video and other traffic rose fast on carrier networks, the chance to capture next-generation data centers is likely to justify Cisco's efforts on the Nexus line. Web-based services and applications, as well as outsourced computing offerings from Amazon.com and other companies, are powering the growth of massive data centers. Microsoft's MSN division is a test customer of the Nexus, said Ullal. Asked whether the mighty Google would buy in as well, Ullal said, "I would hope so."
Swedish prosecutors close in on The Pirate Bay
Swedish prosecutors have until Thursday to file charges against The Pirate Bay, one of the most widely used search engines for locating music and movies on the Internet.
The deadline was set by a Swedish court last year after The Pirate Bay asked the authorities to return servers seized in a raid, said Peter Sunde, one of The Pirate Bay's operators, on Monday.
Prosecutors may charge up to five people associated with The Pirate Bay with aiding copyright infringement, Sunde said. However, Sunde maintains the Pirate Bay does not violate Swedish law.
"There's nothing that says what we are doing is illegal," Sunde said.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for torrents, which are small information files that enable content to be downloaded via the BitTorrent protocol.
The content isn't hosted on The Pirate Bay's servers but instead on users' computers. The torrent, when dropped into a BitTorrent software program, will initiate the download of a file from other computers sharing it on the BitTorrent network.
Torrent search engines have come under legal fire before, and the Pirate Bay has since set up servers outside the country to avoid further trouble with Swedish authorities. Sunde said he has received 4,000 pages of material from the prosecutors documenting their investigation.
The Pirate Bay has been targeted by music and movie industry associations, which say it enables piracy of content under copyright and should be shut down.
BitTorrent itself is now a fledgling company that legally uses P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology. In 2005, it reworked its search engine, removing links to torrents that pointed to copyright content.
The Pirate Bay generates money from advertising on the site, although Sunde said the revenue only covers hosting and hardware costs. The site recently announced it has reached 10 million users with about 1 million torrents.
It's not the only legal case involving The Pirate Bay. Last September, The Pirate Bay filed a criminal complaint against content companies that hired MediaDefender, a company that specializes in disrupting P-to-P networks in hopes of making file sharing too frustrating.
The Pirate Bay alleges that MediaDefender attacked its operations by distributing fake torrent files and other methods.
The deadline was set by a Swedish court last year after The Pirate Bay asked the authorities to return servers seized in a raid, said Peter Sunde, one of The Pirate Bay's operators, on Monday.
Prosecutors may charge up to five people associated with The Pirate Bay with aiding copyright infringement, Sunde said. However, Sunde maintains the Pirate Bay does not violate Swedish law.
"There's nothing that says what we are doing is illegal," Sunde said.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for torrents, which are small information files that enable content to be downloaded via the BitTorrent protocol.
The content isn't hosted on The Pirate Bay's servers but instead on users' computers. The torrent, when dropped into a BitTorrent software program, will initiate the download of a file from other computers sharing it on the BitTorrent network.
Torrent search engines have come under legal fire before, and the Pirate Bay has since set up servers outside the country to avoid further trouble with Swedish authorities. Sunde said he has received 4,000 pages of material from the prosecutors documenting their investigation.
The Pirate Bay has been targeted by music and movie industry associations, which say it enables piracy of content under copyright and should be shut down.
BitTorrent itself is now a fledgling company that legally uses P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology. In 2005, it reworked its search engine, removing links to torrents that pointed to copyright content.
The Pirate Bay generates money from advertising on the site, although Sunde said the revenue only covers hosting and hardware costs. The site recently announced it has reached 10 million users with about 1 million torrents.
It's not the only legal case involving The Pirate Bay. Last September, The Pirate Bay filed a criminal complaint against content companies that hired MediaDefender, a company that specializes in disrupting P-to-P networks in hopes of making file sharing too frustrating.
The Pirate Bay alleges that MediaDefender attacked its operations by distributing fake torrent files and other methods.
Cisco's Nexus forms core of data-center drive
As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.
On Monday, the company is set to unveil a data-center networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.
Cisco is already a leading player in data-center networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at US$75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.
Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management's current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it's hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.
"I'm looking at a little over ten years' capacity," Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15T bits per second. "The capacity to grow is huge," he said.
Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn't tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those data centers, he said.
Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of data centers that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.
At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.
Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.
The network's role in data centers is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It's now the "orchestrator" of the data center, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of data centers want to see total virtualization of the data center, which could boost efficiency, they aren't yet ready for it.
"We're just entering the very early stages of the virtual data center," Kerravala said. "This is probably at least two years away."
Cisco is best positioned to build the core of data centers because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.
"For Cisco, it's very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack," said IDC's Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of data centers won't be a walk in the park, she cautioned.
"Cisco's in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the data center is and are willing to invest the R&D dollars," Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco's peril, data center administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the "crown jewels" of the enterprise, she said.
On Monday, the company is set to unveil a data-center networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.
Cisco is already a leading player in data-center networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at US$75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.
Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management's current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it's hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.
"I'm looking at a little over ten years' capacity," Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15T bits per second. "The capacity to grow is huge," he said.
Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn't tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those data centers, he said.
Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of data centers that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.
At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.
Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.
The network's role in data centers is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It's now the "orchestrator" of the data center, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of data centers want to see total virtualization of the data center, which could boost efficiency, they aren't yet ready for it.
"We're just entering the very early stages of the virtual data center," Kerravala said. "This is probably at least two years away."
Cisco is best positioned to build the core of data centers because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.
"For Cisco, it's very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack," said IDC's Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of data centers won't be a walk in the park, she cautioned.
"Cisco's in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the data center is and are willing to invest the R&D dollars," Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco's peril, data center administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the "crown jewels" of the enterprise, she said.
Nokia to buy software developer Trolltech for $153M
Nokia has offered to buy Trolltech, the Norwegian developer of a widely used application framework, for 844 million Norwegian kroner (US$153 million) in cash. Nokia hopes the Trolltech development team will give its own software efforts a boost.
Trolltech develops Qtopia, a framework used to build user interfaces for mobile and embedded devices, and Qt, a cross-platform application development framework.
Nokia hopes to use Trolltech's expertise to improve the interfaces on its S40 mobile phone and S60 smartphone platforms, but Trolltech targets many software platforms with its application frameworks.
In 2006, Samsung unveiled a reference design for a mobile phone running Qtopia Phone Edition on top of a Linux operating system. And the Trolltech team has been working since late 2006 on a version of Qt for Microsoft's Windows CE and Windows Mobile platforms.
Qt is also used in a variety of widely used desktop software, including Skype's Internet telephony application, the Google Earth satellite photo browser, and Adobe Photoshop Album, now part of the Photoshop Elements image editor, according to Trolltech.
The framework is available under commercial and open-source licenses: it is also used by the developers of KDE, a desktop environment for Linux operating systems. Trolltech recently updated the licensing conditions for Qt, making the code available under the GPLv3 license in addition to the GPLv2 license it already uses.
The Trolltech team will become part of Nokia's research and development group, where it plans to continue its work with the developers of KDE.
Despite the close relationship Nokia will now have with the developers of KDE, the company will continue to use a rival software platform in its Linux-based N800 and N810 mobile Internet devices.
"Our platform for Internet tablets will continue to be based on the Gnome environment," said Kai Öistämö, Nokia's executive vice president for devices.
However, Nokia will use Qt in its S40 and S60 platforms, Öistämö said. He would not say when phones containing the code will reach the market.
Nokia has pledged to continue offering commercial and open source licenses for Qt and other Trolltech products as it continues their future development.
The two companies expect to complete the acquisition in the second quarter. The deal requires the approval of holders of 90 percent of Trolltech's shares. Nokia already has support from the holders of 66 percent of the shares, it said.
Trolltech develops Qtopia, a framework used to build user interfaces for mobile and embedded devices, and Qt, a cross-platform application development framework.
Nokia hopes to use Trolltech's expertise to improve the interfaces on its S40 mobile phone and S60 smartphone platforms, but Trolltech targets many software platforms with its application frameworks.
In 2006, Samsung unveiled a reference design for a mobile phone running Qtopia Phone Edition on top of a Linux operating system. And the Trolltech team has been working since late 2006 on a version of Qt for Microsoft's Windows CE and Windows Mobile platforms.
Qt is also used in a variety of widely used desktop software, including Skype's Internet telephony application, the Google Earth satellite photo browser, and Adobe Photoshop Album, now part of the Photoshop Elements image editor, according to Trolltech.
The framework is available under commercial and open-source licenses: it is also used by the developers of KDE, a desktop environment for Linux operating systems. Trolltech recently updated the licensing conditions for Qt, making the code available under the GPLv3 license in addition to the GPLv2 license it already uses.
The Trolltech team will become part of Nokia's research and development group, where it plans to continue its work with the developers of KDE.
Despite the close relationship Nokia will now have with the developers of KDE, the company will continue to use a rival software platform in its Linux-based N800 and N810 mobile Internet devices.
"Our platform for Internet tablets will continue to be based on the Gnome environment," said Kai Öistämö, Nokia's executive vice president for devices.
However, Nokia will use Qt in its S40 and S60 platforms, Öistämö said. He would not say when phones containing the code will reach the market.
Nokia has pledged to continue offering commercial and open source licenses for Qt and other Trolltech products as it continues their future development.
The two companies expect to complete the acquisition in the second quarter. The deal requires the approval of holders of 90 percent of Trolltech's shares. Nokia already has support from the holders of 66 percent of the shares, it said.
Gartner: HD DVD price cuts only prolong agony
Price cuts by Toshiba on its HD DVD players in the U.S. earlier this month may prove to be "useless resistance" in the battle against the rival Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, according to Gartner.
The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD (high definition digital video disc) in the consumer market by the end of 2008, becoming the next generation replacement for DVDs.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two, Paramount and Universal.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the U.S. Jan. 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to US$149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the U.S. company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a display of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
An Xbox 360 booth at the game show displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and games for the format, but a Microsoft spokesman could not be reached for comment on the total number of games already published in the format.
The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD (high definition digital video disc) in the consumer market by the end of 2008, becoming the next generation replacement for DVDs.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two, Paramount and Universal.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the U.S. Jan. 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to US$149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the U.S. company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a display of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
An Xbox 360 booth at the game show displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and games for the format, but a Microsoft spokesman could not be reached for comment on the total number of games already published in the format.
PayPal buys Fraud Sciences for $169M
EBay's online payments division, PayPal, will pay $169 million for an Israeli security company specializing in detecting online fraud, the companies said Monday. The deal should close within 30 days.
Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions. That technology will be folded into PayPal's antifraud systems, which will be "significantly" improved this year, eBay said.
Fraud Sciences' Chief Operating Officer, Yossi Barak, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf will move to PayPal's technology and fraud management teams.
PayPal lets two users exchange money online via e-mail addresses. The ease at which people can transfer money has also made it one of the most highly targeted brands for phishing scams, where fraudulent Web sites mimicking real sites are set up in order to steal people's log-in details.
PayPal has taken other steps to shore up its defenses. Early last year, it began offering a keychain with a one-time numeric passcode that users enter in addition to their log-in and password. The passcode expires after 30-seconds, which greatly reduces a hacker's window of opportunity to get access to someone's account.
PayPal has also pushed for free e-mail providers to block e-mail sent without digital signatures. That would potentially mean fewer scam e-mails would land in people's inboxes, reducing the chance of fraud, although providers have yet to make a unified commitment.
Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions. That technology will be folded into PayPal's antifraud systems, which will be "significantly" improved this year, eBay said.
Fraud Sciences' Chief Operating Officer, Yossi Barak, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf will move to PayPal's technology and fraud management teams.
PayPal lets two users exchange money online via e-mail addresses. The ease at which people can transfer money has also made it one of the most highly targeted brands for phishing scams, where fraudulent Web sites mimicking real sites are set up in order to steal people's log-in details.
PayPal has taken other steps to shore up its defenses. Early last year, it began offering a keychain with a one-time numeric passcode that users enter in addition to their log-in and password. The passcode expires after 30-seconds, which greatly reduces a hacker's window of opportunity to get access to someone's account.
PayPal has also pushed for free e-mail providers to block e-mail sent without digital signatures. That would potentially mean fewer scam e-mails would land in people's inboxes, reducing the chance of fraud, although providers have yet to make a unified commitment.
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