Sony has developed a hand-powered digital still camera prototype envisaged for children in developing countries where electricity or batteries might not always be readily available.
The device is the first working concept to come from Sony Design's "odo" project that is attempting to come up with kinetically-powered devices that stimulate a child's creativity, curiosity and energy.
The camera prototype is styled after a flower.
Imagine a magnifying glass with a large hole through the middle of the glass and you've got the shape. The camera is held by the handle and the image sensor and other related electronics are also packed in there. The ring on the end is where the energy is generated. By running it along a table top an outer ring spins and charges up an internal battery. After a few pushes it's ready to take a picture.
When the picture is taken the camera can be placed in a USB cradle styled like a flower-pot (of course) and transferred to a PC.
The Odo project got its start at Sony's design center in Los Angeles and a team in Tokyo is also working on ideas.
"It grew from trying to figure out how these people's children will be able to enjoy music and video," said Mitsuhiro Nakamura, a member of the sustainable design team at the Sony Creative Center. "They don't have electric power so we have to think about how to generate electricity. So we started looking at electricity generation from kinetic energy. So we came up with these Odo products that children can enjoy."
Non-working design concepts already shown include a video camera that is powered by a crank on the side of its body, a second digital camera that is powered by sticking fingers through two holes in the body and spinning the camera end-over-end, a photo viewer with a roller on the base to generate power and a pair of stereo headphones with built in radio that is charged when a cord is pulled from the ear piece.
If this is all too much effort, a final concept is a solar-charged battery that can be used to power Odo devices when it's been charged in the sun.
The work revolves around a single question: How can Sony set a good example through socially responsible product models? Sony says the concepts developed so far represent one answer to that question.
There are no plans to commercialize the prototypes.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Mundie: Google owes business to Microsoft
Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said Tuesday that competitor Google owes its business in part to Microsoft, and that his company is not concerned about losing its position as an innovator in the technology market to the search and advertising leader.
"If we didn't succeed at the PC, they wouldn't have a business," Mundie said of Google, in comments made via Webcast at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
He said Google was able to grow so quickly because it introduced a new business model for the Web at just the right time. "It wasn't that many years ago that Google didn't exist," Mundie said. But now that the industry and competitors like Microsoft are catching up to Google's online advertising strategy, "I don't think they can do anything we can't do," he said.
In fact, Microsoft's longevity versus its relatively new competitor gives it a substantial advantage long term over Google, Mundie said. "I'd like to think we're strategically open-minded, we've made adjustments [to our business model]," Mundie said. "I'd like to see Google and someone else come up with something that really threatens our business model."
Part of that business model is to combine forces with Yahoo to compete with Google in the advertising market. Microsoft is currently in the middle of what could end up becoming a hostile takeover of Yahoo, after the company rejected the software giant's US$44.6 billion cash and stock offer. Microsoft is now rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for Yahoo.
While Mundie acknowledged that he couldn't discuss much about the ongoing Yahoo proceedings publicly, he did concede that Microsoft is eager to acquire the company and move ahead on the Web. "Right now we'd just like to close the Yahoo deal," he said.
Even if the deal does not go through, however, he said Microsoft is confident its own Web strategy, fueled by a combination of software and services rather than an entirely Web-based portfolio, will eventually help the company catch up to Google -- barring a "major screw-up" on Microsoft's part.
Moreover, Microsoft has a multiyear lead on Google in providing software in mobile phones, another area where the Internet company aims to compete. "They're sort of late to the cell-phone thing," Mundie said, noting Microsoft's success with its Windows Mobile OS, which powers millions of smart phones worldwide.
"If we didn't succeed at the PC, they wouldn't have a business," Mundie said of Google, in comments made via Webcast at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
He said Google was able to grow so quickly because it introduced a new business model for the Web at just the right time. "It wasn't that many years ago that Google didn't exist," Mundie said. But now that the industry and competitors like Microsoft are catching up to Google's online advertising strategy, "I don't think they can do anything we can't do," he said.
In fact, Microsoft's longevity versus its relatively new competitor gives it a substantial advantage long term over Google, Mundie said. "I'd like to think we're strategically open-minded, we've made adjustments [to our business model]," Mundie said. "I'd like to see Google and someone else come up with something that really threatens our business model."
Part of that business model is to combine forces with Yahoo to compete with Google in the advertising market. Microsoft is currently in the middle of what could end up becoming a hostile takeover of Yahoo, after the company rejected the software giant's US$44.6 billion cash and stock offer. Microsoft is now rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for Yahoo.
While Mundie acknowledged that he couldn't discuss much about the ongoing Yahoo proceedings publicly, he did concede that Microsoft is eager to acquire the company and move ahead on the Web. "Right now we'd just like to close the Yahoo deal," he said.
Even if the deal does not go through, however, he said Microsoft is confident its own Web strategy, fueled by a combination of software and services rather than an entirely Web-based portfolio, will eventually help the company catch up to Google -- barring a "major screw-up" on Microsoft's part.
Moreover, Microsoft has a multiyear lead on Google in providing software in mobile phones, another area where the Internet company aims to compete. "They're sort of late to the cell-phone thing," Mundie said, noting Microsoft's success with its Windows Mobile OS, which powers millions of smart phones worldwide.
E.U. fines Microsoft another €899M for antitrust abuse
The European Commission fined Microsoft a massive €899 million ($1.3 billion) for continued failure to honor the 2004 antitrust ruling against it, Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes said Wednesday.
Europe's top competition authority has already fined the company €777.5 million -- €497 million in the original ruling plus a further €280.5 million for noncompliance.
The latest punishment brings the total of fines to just under €1.7 billion "for a clear disregard of its legal obligations," Kroes said in a news conference.
"The Commission's latest fine is a reasonable response to unreasonable actions by Microsoft," Kroes said.
Microsoft finally came into compliance with the 2004 ruling last October. Kroes said the latest fine -- the biggest yet -- is for noncompliance up to Oct. 22, 2007.
The software giant has over the past four years repeatedly tried to avoid complying with part of the Commission's ruling that ordered the company to detail communications protocols used by its Windows server operating system so that other manufacturers could build systems that interoperate smoothly with Windows.
The latest fine punishes Microsoft for failing to licence those protocols to open source software developers at what the Commission views as a reasonable price.
Microsoft said it is reviewing the Commission's action. "The Commission announced in October 2007 that Microsoft was in full compliance with the 2004 decision, so these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved," it said in a statement. "We are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future."
Anticipating new fines, the company announced last week that it will make its biggest effort yet to help other companies make their products interoperate with its most popular software, including Windows and the Office suite which includes Word, Powerpoint and the Outlook e-mail program.
The Commission reacted with scepticism, pointing out that it had heard similar promises before, and added that the move only addresses one of two new antitrust probes into Microsoft's business practices, which were opened last month.
Both new cases build on the same legal arguments that underpinned the 2004 ruling: one looks into the company's failure to share essential interoperability information in Office. The other is looking into whether the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows amounts to an abuse of antitrust law.
The second case is based on the part of the 2004 ruling that dealt with the tying -- or bundling -- of Media Player to Windows. Microsoft was ordered to sell a second version of Windows with Media Player stripped out. The company complied, but the remedy was deemed useless because the second version was sold at the same price as the version bundled with a media player, and no one bought it.
The size of the fine failed to impress some of those who had helped make the case against Microsoft.
"That's not a fine, that's just a way of getting their attention," said Jeremy Allison, co-creator of the open-source workgroup file and print server software Samba.
The communications protocols that the 2004 ruling forced Microsoft to disclose will benefit projects like Samba. The developers of the current version of Samba, which interoperates with servers and desktop PCs running Windows, were forced to reverse-engineer the format of the messages Microsoft uses because documentation was not publicly available.
Legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Carlos Piano also said it's not about the fine.
"The most important achievement in this case is not the fine, it's not the disclosure, it's the change in the law," he said, referring to the way in which Microsoft was forced to disclose the protocols on license terms friendly to open source software projects.
(With additional reporting by Peter Sayer in Geneva.)
Europe's top competition authority has already fined the company €777.5 million -- €497 million in the original ruling plus a further €280.5 million for noncompliance.
The latest punishment brings the total of fines to just under €1.7 billion "for a clear disregard of its legal obligations," Kroes said in a news conference.
"The Commission's latest fine is a reasonable response to unreasonable actions by Microsoft," Kroes said.
Microsoft finally came into compliance with the 2004 ruling last October. Kroes said the latest fine -- the biggest yet -- is for noncompliance up to Oct. 22, 2007.
The software giant has over the past four years repeatedly tried to avoid complying with part of the Commission's ruling that ordered the company to detail communications protocols used by its Windows server operating system so that other manufacturers could build systems that interoperate smoothly with Windows.
The latest fine punishes Microsoft for failing to licence those protocols to open source software developers at what the Commission views as a reasonable price.
Microsoft said it is reviewing the Commission's action. "The Commission announced in October 2007 that Microsoft was in full compliance with the 2004 decision, so these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved," it said in a statement. "We are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future."
Anticipating new fines, the company announced last week that it will make its biggest effort yet to help other companies make their products interoperate with its most popular software, including Windows and the Office suite which includes Word, Powerpoint and the Outlook e-mail program.
The Commission reacted with scepticism, pointing out that it had heard similar promises before, and added that the move only addresses one of two new antitrust probes into Microsoft's business practices, which were opened last month.
Both new cases build on the same legal arguments that underpinned the 2004 ruling: one looks into the company's failure to share essential interoperability information in Office. The other is looking into whether the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows amounts to an abuse of antitrust law.
The second case is based on the part of the 2004 ruling that dealt with the tying -- or bundling -- of Media Player to Windows. Microsoft was ordered to sell a second version of Windows with Media Player stripped out. The company complied, but the remedy was deemed useless because the second version was sold at the same price as the version bundled with a media player, and no one bought it.
The size of the fine failed to impress some of those who had helped make the case against Microsoft.
"That's not a fine, that's just a way of getting their attention," said Jeremy Allison, co-creator of the open-source workgroup file and print server software Samba.
The communications protocols that the 2004 ruling forced Microsoft to disclose will benefit projects like Samba. The developers of the current version of Samba, which interoperates with servers and desktop PCs running Windows, were forced to reverse-engineer the format of the messages Microsoft uses because documentation was not publicly available.
Legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Carlos Piano also said it's not about the fine.
"The most important achievement in this case is not the fine, it's not the disclosure, it's the change in the law," he said, referring to the way in which Microsoft was forced to disclose the protocols on license terms friendly to open source software projects.
(With additional reporting by Peter Sayer in Geneva.)
Google ad drop may not signal problems
A report by Internet market researcher ComScore detailing a 7 percent decline in the number of times U.S. consumers clicked on ads next to Google search results in January sent analysts scurrying to explain the decline.
Some analysts say the decline, the second straight for Google, shows that business on the Web is slowing down.
The news certainly hit Google's stock, which fell 4.6 percent, or US$22.25 on the Nasdaq to end trading at $464.19 Tuesday. The shares fell further in after-market trading, to $463.
But rival Internet number cruncher Hitwise says there may indeed be no problem at all, and pointed to different data to support the idea that the amount of Web traffic going from Google to retail sites continues to rise.
"Google traffic to retail, on a monthly basis, is on the increase compared to previous years. If we focus in on daily data (year-over-year comparison) we see that Google traffic to retail is also up on a daily basis when we compare January/February 2007 with 2008," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, in a blog posting.
If economic troubles in the U.S. are really affecting Internet search, then the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites should show a decline, he said. Instead, Hitwise data shows a 13.3 percent rise over the past three years, and a steady increase in January over the same time last year.
Some analysts say the decline, the second straight for Google, shows that business on the Web is slowing down.
The news certainly hit Google's stock, which fell 4.6 percent, or US$22.25 on the Nasdaq to end trading at $464.19 Tuesday. The shares fell further in after-market trading, to $463.
But rival Internet number cruncher Hitwise says there may indeed be no problem at all, and pointed to different data to support the idea that the amount of Web traffic going from Google to retail sites continues to rise.
"Google traffic to retail, on a monthly basis, is on the increase compared to previous years. If we focus in on daily data (year-over-year comparison) we see that Google traffic to retail is also up on a daily basis when we compare January/February 2007 with 2008," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, in a blog posting.
If economic troubles in the U.S. are really affecting Internet search, then the amount of traffic going from Google to retail sites should show a decline, he said. Instead, Hitwise data shows a 13.3 percent rise over the past three years, and a steady increase in January over the same time last year.
Server revenue could slow in 2008, after strong 2007
The global server market could be headed for a slowdown this year, market researcher IDC said Wednesday, after one of the strongest years ever in 2007.
Server revenue in 2008 could be impacted as the market looks for an economic slowdown in 2008, IDC said.
"The impact of the economy on the IT infrastructure market will depend on the duration and severity of the downturn," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president at IDC. The housing and mortgage crisis in the U.S. could have a ripple effect around the globe and slow down consumer spending, Eastwood said.
"Some projects may well be deferred and this could have some impact on the market and flatten out growth during 2008," Eastwood said. However, he doesn't expect a massive reduction in server spending to occur in 2008.
That said, slower spending could give legs to initiatives such as consolidation of IT resources and virtualization which have fairly short paybacks and high return on investments. "These types of projects will be largely recession proof particularly in the enterprise space," Eastwood said.
Concerns for a server market slowdown in 2008 come on the heels of strong revenue growth in 2007, which was driven by increased IT spending and a growing adoption of x86 and blade servers.
Server revenue hit US$15.65 billion in the fourth quarter, boosting 2007 to its highest level since 2000, said Jean Bozman, research vice president at IDC.
Full year server revenue reached $54.42 billion, the highest since it topped $61.6 billion in 2000, following which the dot-com bust contributed to an economic downturn and dropped server revenue, Bozman said. Worldwide server unit shipments for 2007 were 8 million, an increase of 6.7 percent from the previous year.
IBM topped the 2007 full year server revenue rankings at $17.3 billion, for a 31.9 percent market share and 1.1 percent yearly growth. Hewlett-Packard was second at $15.4 billion in revenue, followed by Dell, which had $6.15 billion and recorded the strongest yearly growth, 12.4 percent.
The fourth quarter of 2007 was the seventh straight quarter in which server revenue posted gains, Bozman said. It was driven by a rapid rise in blade server revenue, which countered a quarterly year-over-year fall in revenues from high-end and mid-range servers.
During the quarter, blade server revenue grew 54.2 percent and shipments increased 35.6 percent, IDC said. The server infrastructure is moving towards modularization, adopting technologies like blade servers that drive up scalability without huge investments, IDC said.
IBM retained the top spot in fourth-quarter revenue, hauling in $5.75 billion, up 0.5 percent over the previous year and good for a 36.7 percent share of the market. Hewlett-Packard, in second place, had server revenue of $4.34 billion, up 6.3 percent. Dell took third place, recording revenue of $1.58 billion, a 6.8 percent increase. Sun's server revenue dropped 2.4 percent year-over-year to $1.46 billion, and it fell to fourth from third place in the ranking. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens saw quarterly revenue shoot up 7.1 percent to $666 million to come in fifth.
Though Windows OS servers generated the largest quarterly revenue, Linux-based servers grew the most in terms of revenue, according to IDC. Linux-based servers generated $2 billion in revenue, growing 11.6 percent year-over-year and representing 12.7 percent of market share. Windows server revenue was $5.7 billion for the quarter, a 36.6 percent market share and 6.9 percent growth. The revenues were all-time highs for both platforms, IDC said.
Unix server revenue grew only 1.5 percent to $5.2 billion. The growth was mainly driven by IBM's strong System p business, IDC said.
Revenue for x86 servers was $7.8 billion during the fourth quarter, a 7.6 percent year-over-year increase. HP led in x86 server revenues, with 35 percent, followed by IBM and Dell, with 20 percent apiece.
The study calculated revenue from high-end servers, mid-range servers, blade servers and servers that ship in volume, like x86 servers.
Server revenue in 2008 could be impacted as the market looks for an economic slowdown in 2008, IDC said.
"The impact of the economy on the IT infrastructure market will depend on the duration and severity of the downturn," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president at IDC. The housing and mortgage crisis in the U.S. could have a ripple effect around the globe and slow down consumer spending, Eastwood said.
"Some projects may well be deferred and this could have some impact on the market and flatten out growth during 2008," Eastwood said. However, he doesn't expect a massive reduction in server spending to occur in 2008.
That said, slower spending could give legs to initiatives such as consolidation of IT resources and virtualization which have fairly short paybacks and high return on investments. "These types of projects will be largely recession proof particularly in the enterprise space," Eastwood said.
Concerns for a server market slowdown in 2008 come on the heels of strong revenue growth in 2007, which was driven by increased IT spending and a growing adoption of x86 and blade servers.
Server revenue hit US$15.65 billion in the fourth quarter, boosting 2007 to its highest level since 2000, said Jean Bozman, research vice president at IDC.
Full year server revenue reached $54.42 billion, the highest since it topped $61.6 billion in 2000, following which the dot-com bust contributed to an economic downturn and dropped server revenue, Bozman said. Worldwide server unit shipments for 2007 were 8 million, an increase of 6.7 percent from the previous year.
IBM topped the 2007 full year server revenue rankings at $17.3 billion, for a 31.9 percent market share and 1.1 percent yearly growth. Hewlett-Packard was second at $15.4 billion in revenue, followed by Dell, which had $6.15 billion and recorded the strongest yearly growth, 12.4 percent.
The fourth quarter of 2007 was the seventh straight quarter in which server revenue posted gains, Bozman said. It was driven by a rapid rise in blade server revenue, which countered a quarterly year-over-year fall in revenues from high-end and mid-range servers.
During the quarter, blade server revenue grew 54.2 percent and shipments increased 35.6 percent, IDC said. The server infrastructure is moving towards modularization, adopting technologies like blade servers that drive up scalability without huge investments, IDC said.
IBM retained the top spot in fourth-quarter revenue, hauling in $5.75 billion, up 0.5 percent over the previous year and good for a 36.7 percent share of the market. Hewlett-Packard, in second place, had server revenue of $4.34 billion, up 6.3 percent. Dell took third place, recording revenue of $1.58 billion, a 6.8 percent increase. Sun's server revenue dropped 2.4 percent year-over-year to $1.46 billion, and it fell to fourth from third place in the ranking. Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens saw quarterly revenue shoot up 7.1 percent to $666 million to come in fifth.
Though Windows OS servers generated the largest quarterly revenue, Linux-based servers grew the most in terms of revenue, according to IDC. Linux-based servers generated $2 billion in revenue, growing 11.6 percent year-over-year and representing 12.7 percent of market share. Windows server revenue was $5.7 billion for the quarter, a 36.6 percent market share and 6.9 percent growth. The revenues were all-time highs for both platforms, IDC said.
Unix server revenue grew only 1.5 percent to $5.2 billion. The growth was mainly driven by IBM's strong System p business, IDC said.
Revenue for x86 servers was $7.8 billion during the fourth quarter, a 7.6 percent year-over-year increase. HP led in x86 server revenues, with 35 percent, followed by IBM and Dell, with 20 percent apiece.
The study calculated revenue from high-end servers, mid-range servers, blade servers and servers that ship in volume, like x86 servers.
Yahoo releases APIs for more detailed search results
Yahoo is opening up its search platform to enable publishers to serve up more task-oriented, detailed search-page results as part of a larger strategy to encourage third-party development on its Internet platform.
Through a new publisher program called the Yahoo open-search platform, Yahoo is providing APIs to all of its publishers so they can create feeds including structured data -- such as reviews, photos and contact information -- that can be displayed on a search-results page, said Amit Kumar, a Yahoo director of product management.
Using that information, results displayed through the feeds will provide search users more direct access to the results they're looking for, as well as provide a more customized look to the results that reflects the Web pages they link to, he said.
For example, a user typing in a search for "blue shoes," might be delivered a link to an eBay auction for shoes that allows the user to "bid now," or an Amazon.com link to purchase shoes with an accompanying photo, Kumar said.
The new program only focuses on organic search results and does not affect sponsored and paid-search results, nor does it affect results ranking, he added. Search results from the new program should appear on Yahoo in the next few months, Kumar said.
All of Yahoo's publishers, whether large sites such as Yelp, The New York Times, WebMD and the like, or smaller Web sites, will have equal access to the APIs (application programming interfaces) and can send structured data to the Yahoo search engine, Kumar said.
Yahoo unveiled the program in a posting on the Yahoo Search Blog Monday evening. The company also will discuss the news Tuesday at the Search Engine Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California.
Earlier this year in a keynote speech at CES, CEO Jerry Yang said the company would be allowing third parties to create more customized interfaces and content for its Web platform by releasing APIs in an effort to compete with Google, which already gives access to APIs to allow third parties to develop on its Web platform.
However, while Google allows similar task-oriented results that link to its own services, such as Google Maps, it has not opened this feature for publisher content, Kumar said.
Yahoo appears to be moving ahead with its own search plans even as it faces a possible takeover by Microsoft, which made a US$44.6 billion bid for the company on Feb. 1. Yahoo's board rejected the bid, but Microsoft is rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for the company.
Through a new publisher program called the Yahoo open-search platform, Yahoo is providing APIs to all of its publishers so they can create feeds including structured data -- such as reviews, photos and contact information -- that can be displayed on a search-results page, said Amit Kumar, a Yahoo director of product management.
Using that information, results displayed through the feeds will provide search users more direct access to the results they're looking for, as well as provide a more customized look to the results that reflects the Web pages they link to, he said.
For example, a user typing in a search for "blue shoes," might be delivered a link to an eBay auction for shoes that allows the user to "bid now," or an Amazon.com link to purchase shoes with an accompanying photo, Kumar said.
The new program only focuses on organic search results and does not affect sponsored and paid-search results, nor does it affect results ranking, he added. Search results from the new program should appear on Yahoo in the next few months, Kumar said.
All of Yahoo's publishers, whether large sites such as Yelp, The New York Times, WebMD and the like, or smaller Web sites, will have equal access to the APIs (application programming interfaces) and can send structured data to the Yahoo search engine, Kumar said.
Yahoo unveiled the program in a posting on the Yahoo Search Blog Monday evening. The company also will discuss the news Tuesday at the Search Engine Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California.
Earlier this year in a keynote speech at CES, CEO Jerry Yang said the company would be allowing third parties to create more customized interfaces and content for its Web platform by releasing APIs in an effort to compete with Google, which already gives access to APIs to allow third parties to develop on its Web platform.
However, while Google allows similar task-oriented results that link to its own services, such as Google Maps, it has not opened this feature for publisher content, Kumar said.
Yahoo appears to be moving ahead with its own search plans even as it faces a possible takeover by Microsoft, which made a US$44.6 billion bid for the company on Feb. 1. Yahoo's board rejected the bid, but Microsoft is rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for the company.
EMC plans to release online services software after Pi buy
EMC will roll out software for online services this year from its acquisition of Pi, aimed at boosting its cloud computing strategy, Pi CEO Paul Maritz said Tuesday.
The products, Pi Worx and Smart Desktops, are being beta tested with Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service and will be components of EMC's cloud computing initiative to offer storage and other applications as services over the Internet to business customers and consumers, he said.
The Pi software will also be offered as part of EMC's cloud-computing storage offering, Maritz said. It will further be available as part of a stack of EMC software to partners, such as telecommunications services providers who want to offer the services themselves, he added.
EMC announced Thursday that it plans to complete the acquisition of Pi, based in Seattle, in the first quarter of this year for an undisclosed sum in an all-cash deal. Maritz will join EMC's executive management team as president and general manager of a newly formed Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division after the acquisition is complete, the company said. Pi will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC, with its products under the Pi brand name, Maritz said.
Pi Worx, one of the products to be introduced this year, will allow the creation of personal information banks on a Web site that stores and organizes information on criteria chosen by the user. Computer users can work offline with information automatically backed up the next time the computer connects to the Internet, Maritz said.
Although the software will initially support computers running Microsoft's Windows, the objective is to expand. Devices running Linux will more likely be supported in the next phase because Pi software runs on Linux at the back-end, Maritz said. "Our basic philosophy is that the browser forms the principle UI whether you are working remotely or locally," he added.
Currently, the software transfers data to and from Windows applications, like Outlook, and the online repository. EMC's strategy is to also provide native browser-based applications online.
"We will develop the core applications that average folks use," Maritz said. Pi already offers an e-mail application online, and a document editor is under development. The software will also be opened for third-party developers to offer applications, Maritz added.
Smart Desktops, the second product from Pi, will focus on the desktop and help users better organize information in Outlook and Windows.
The products, Pi Worx and Smart Desktops, are being beta tested with Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service and will be components of EMC's cloud computing initiative to offer storage and other applications as services over the Internet to business customers and consumers, he said.
The Pi software will also be offered as part of EMC's cloud-computing storage offering, Maritz said. It will further be available as part of a stack of EMC software to partners, such as telecommunications services providers who want to offer the services themselves, he added.
EMC announced Thursday that it plans to complete the acquisition of Pi, based in Seattle, in the first quarter of this year for an undisclosed sum in an all-cash deal. Maritz will join EMC's executive management team as president and general manager of a newly formed Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division after the acquisition is complete, the company said. Pi will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC, with its products under the Pi brand name, Maritz said.
Pi Worx, one of the products to be introduced this year, will allow the creation of personal information banks on a Web site that stores and organizes information on criteria chosen by the user. Computer users can work offline with information automatically backed up the next time the computer connects to the Internet, Maritz said.
Although the software will initially support computers running Microsoft's Windows, the objective is to expand. Devices running Linux will more likely be supported in the next phase because Pi software runs on Linux at the back-end, Maritz said. "Our basic philosophy is that the browser forms the principle UI whether you are working remotely or locally," he added.
Currently, the software transfers data to and from Windows applications, like Outlook, and the online repository. EMC's strategy is to also provide native browser-based applications online.
"We will develop the core applications that average folks use," Maritz said. Pi already offers an e-mail application online, and a document editor is under development. The software will also be opened for third-party developers to offer applications, Maritz added.
Smart Desktops, the second product from Pi, will focus on the desktop and help users better organize information in Outlook and Windows.
50 ways to make your software do more
Stuck with a boring browser? Wish that Word could handle more tasks? Feel hemmed in by Photoshop? You don't have to toss (or upgrade) your existing software to get new features and tools. Sometimes a plug-in, an add-on, or even a simple tweak can enable your computer to do tricks you never even thought of before. We rounded up more than 50 of our favorite tools and tips for unlocking extra value from popular browsers, productivity applications, and multimedia tools.
Browser Boosters
Web browsers--especially Firefox--are built with plug-ins in mind. Thousands of these code snippets are available, but here we present some of the most useful add-ons, plus a few tips that don't require any extra code.
Nuke Web ads: Though decried by many Webmasters for cutting into a lucrative revenue stream, Adblock Plus is practically a mandatory addition to Firefox, due to an increasingly onerous glut of Web advertising. (IE users can try Ad Muncher free for 30 days and then pay US$30) Put simply, Adblock Plus blocks ads--not just pop-ups, but regular banners, towers, rich-media stuff, and Google's ubiquitous advertisements. Adblock Plus doesn't stop everything, but it nabs enough that you'll notice the difference immediately.
Many PCs, one set of bookmarks: If you use numerous computers, you have undoubtedly had to deal with separate browsers on each of those PCs, each with its own set of bookmarks that must be managed separately--unless you have a bookmark synchronizer, that is. Foxmarks is one of a number of tools that can sync Firefox bookmarks among multiple machines. Just install Foxmarks as an add-on to the Firefox installation on each system, and never worry about manual syncing again. As a bonus, you can access your bookmarks on the Foxmarks Web site, too.
Put an FTP app into Firefox: Even the most casual Web developer needs an FTP application, but many of these are cumbersome and unintuitive--and they require installing yet another full-blown program. FireFTP turns Firefox into an impromptu and speedy two-way FTP application. Once installed, FireFTP appears in the Tools menu. Click it and a new FTP tab opens up, offering a simple two-pane system that lets you easily copy files between your desktop and your remote site.
Get a handle on downloaded files: If you are a download junkie who always has something in the queue to leech off the Web, you need a download manager to help handle everything. FlashGet is a free and extremely popular download manager that can help you organize and queue up HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, and other types of downloads, working in the background and letting you pause and resume downloads. It can even tell your computer to shut itself down when the downloading is done. Works on any browser.
Restore embedded passwords to IE URLs: Several years ago, Microsoft disallowed Internet Explorer to use an embedded password as part of a URL (of the format https://username:password@server.com) when a user goes to a protected Web site; instead the person must type in the password manually at the pop-up log-in screen. (This restriction was a response to phishers' employing phony password fields to deceive unsuspecting users.) Restoring IE's original ability takes a Registry tweak. Run Regedit and browse to the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_HTTP_
USERNAME_PASSWORD_DISABLE
Here, create two new DWORD values: iexplore.exe and explorer.exe. Leave the default DWORD value for each of these at '0'. Restart IE.
Grab a hard copy of any Web page: Did you ever print a hard copy of a Web page only to have it come out garbled, missing images, and otherwise nigh unreadable? One reason that may happen is because the newfangled Web 2.0 standards don't play well with 0.1-era printers. Solution: Grab a screen shot of a Web page, and select Print. But how do you do that, when a single page has enough content to fill up three display screens? Simple: Install Screengrab for Firefox, which lets you save a full page, the visible portion of a page, or just the tidbit you'd like to keep. IE Screenshot performs similar tricks for the Microsoft browser. Save images as digital files or print them out.
More Browser Boosters
Copy any Web video: Various Web services let you punch in the URL of a YouTube flick or other Web video and receive a copy you can save to your hard drive. But they're often slow and buggy, and you never know if they'll work on less popular video-sharing sites. Orbit Rich Media Downloader adds a context-sensitive set of new menu items to your right mouse button in your Web browser. Now when you see a vid on Dailymotion or hear a song on MySpace that you like, just click to save it to your PC.
Save protected media files: Some Web sites cruelly disable the right-click button on images and other media, preventing you from easily downloading them. Orbit Rich Media Downloader is one workaround, but it's overkill if all you want to do is to save an image occasionally. Good news: Firefox has a quick, built-in way to save protected media files without the hassle. Visit the Web page you want, right-click anywhere on the page (not in the image), and select View Page Info. Click the Media tab to see a list of all images on the page; scroll through the list (a preview will appear at the bottom of the window), and click Save As when you find the one you want.
One click to something new: Collected quotes of Albert Einstein? Winners of the "I Look Like My Dog" contest? Pictures of real-life sea monsters? All of these Web pages can be yours at the touch of a button if you install StumbleUpon, a plug-in and toolbar available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. StumbleUpon, like social news sites such as Digg, takes user submissions to point other users to cool stuff on the Web. Click the thumbs up button if you like what you see, or thumbs down if you don't. Over time, StumbleUpon refines its suggestions for you, making it (eventually) the perfect time-waster, and one that's always at your fingertips.
Easy access to deals and discounts: Smart shoppers perform a quick search for a coupon code before buying anything online, but forgetting to do so is easy. RegisteredCoupons.com's toolbar for Internet Explorer simplifies bargain hunting by putting the information right where you're most likely to see it: A utilitarian drop-down box lets you select the retail outlet where you're shopping. Click the store in question, and current coupon codes and promotions instantly arrive in their own window.
Relocate the Firefox sidebar: Want to move the sidebar to the right side of your screen? Edit your userChrome.css file or create a new one in your profile/chrome folder. Find it in C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxx\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yyyyyyyy.default\chrome, where xxxxx is your username, and yyyyyyyy is a random set of eight characters. (If you don't see the Application Data file in your user folder, go to the Tools menu, click Folder Options and then the View tab, and select Show Hidden Files and Folders.) Rename the example file there userChrome.css, and then add the following code to the bottom of the file:
/* Place the sidebar on the right edge of the window */
hbox#browser { direction: rtl; }
hbox#browser > vbox { direction: ltr; }
Keep track of Adsense earnings: If you use Adsense on your Web site or blog, you can use the Adsense Notifier Firefox plug-in to keep track of your daily earnings within the browser, in real time. Just check the bottom right corner for total ad impressions, CPM, and your total daily earnings as they accrue.
Five Essential Browser Add-Ons
1. IE Tab: If you use Firefox as your primary browser, you probably get stymied occasionally by Web sites that don't look right in its windows. Don't fire up Internet Explorer (which maintains a separate history and won't have your bookmarks); instead, use the IE Tab plug-in to instruct Firefox to temporarily use Internet Explorer's rendering engine. IE Tab resides in the bottom right corner of your browser. Click the Firefox icon to switch to IE mode and vice versa.
2. Duplicate Tab: Want a copy of the current window you're visiting, complete with the history of that browsing session? IE users can accomplish this without having to install and use a plug-in: Press Ctrl-N to open a new window with the entire history of the current window. For Firefox users, Duplicate Tab lets you obtain such a history with a single shortcut keystroke; or you can use the tool to merge multiple open windows into a series of tabs.
3. ErrorZilla: The standard "server not found" page is useless if you're looking for a Web site that's gone AWOL. ErrorZilla adds a series of buttons to the bottom of the standard "Firefox can't find the server" message, providing instant access to the Wayback machine, Google Cache, Whois lookup, and more.
4. Inline Search: IE users can obtain search-as-you-type functionality that works the same way it does in Firefox with this free, simple extension.
5. Extended Statusbar: This plug-in supplements the data that Firefox provides about a Web page and your Internet connection, providing such details as the total size (in KB) of the page, the transfer speed, and the load time.
Office Optimizers
Get more out of Microsoft Office by adding a few extras. Watch Word, Excel, and Outlook perform tricks you never dreamed were possible!
Open Office 2007 files with older Office versions: Microsoft changed its default file format in Office 2007, so you won't be able to open files saved in the new format with older versions of the Office suite. However, if you have any of three prior versions of Office--2000, XP, or 2003--you can install the Office Compatibility Pack and thereby establish forward compatibility with the new format.
Open old files with Office 2003: Conversely, with Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disallowed opening file formats that predate Office 97, citing security concerns. To re-enable Office to open these files, you have to run a series of Registry hacks. Fortunately, Microsoft has created Registry scripts to make this task easy. Download them, right-click them, and then select Merge. At once, you'll be able to open old files again.
Put offline docs online in a jiffy: Online document-processing tools are wonderful for people who are working on files as a group, but getting files online--and keeping online versus offline versions straight--can be a hassle. The Zoho Plug-In for Microsoft Office simplifies uploading your offline documents to the Web service and downloading online documents from it, all without your having to leave your Office application.
Make PDF files inside Office: You don't need full-blown Adobe Acrobat to create and edit PDF files. CenoPDF lets you build PDFs without leaving Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. After installing CenoPDF, simply print your .doc files and choose the PDF printer option--or build PDF-based forms using text-entry fields, buttons, and boxes to be filled out electronically. The program is free to try, though PDFs are watermarked; it costs $29 to buy.
Add holidays to Outlook: Want to avoid manually adding Memorial Day and Christmas to your Outlook calendar each year? You can input 12 months' worth of holidays at once by clicking ToolsOptions, Calendar Options (on the Preferences tab). On the next screen, click Add Holidays, select the appropriate country or countries, and click OK.
Organize and prioritize Outlook data: The ClearContext Information Management System offers tools that are useful for organizing your Outlook data, starting with a dashboard that provides a consolidated look at your tasks and calendar items. ClearContext allows you to assign topics (which you define) to messages; then it automatically files subsequent messages in the thread. The system flags your most important contacts based on how often you deal with them, and it color-codes messages based on the sender's importance. ClearContext reduces inbox clutter by "snoozing" noncritical messages--that is, by removing them from the Inbox for a specified period of time. The program is free for 30 days, and then costs $90 to buy.
Become a meeting power user: MeetingSense takes Outlook's rudimentary calendar system and turns it into a powerhouse. An extensive meeting dashboard gives you a hub for making agendas, creating minutes, and sending out summaries, all while providing a centralized meeting space where you and other MeetingSense users can share files, make notes, and create action items. It's perfect for scattered groups that meet frequently. After a 14-day free trial, the software costs $199.
More Office Optimizers
Import Outlook contacts to Lotus Notes, and vice versa: Moving your contacts list from Lotus Notes to Outlook (or making the opposite migration) is a snap using the Personal NAB (Notes Address Book) Import/Export Utility, a no-cost download from Lotus's Web site. Open the utility the same way you would any Notes database, and you'll see a simple form where you can point to the file that you wish to convert, choose the desired operation, and hit a button to start the conversion. It's very useful if you're migrating to a new platform, for example.
Get a bird's-eye view of your contacts: "Xobni" is inbox spelled backward, but there's nothing misdirected about Xobni Insight's cool interface, which provides information about each person that you correspond with as you read messages from them. Xobni (currently available only if you sign up for a private beta invitation) lives on the right side of your Outlook window. It provides a graphical look at e-mail frequency, contact information, and old conversations with each contact. Don't miss the Xobni Analytics feature, which tracks how much e-mail you send and receive every day.
18 ways to tweak Outlook: MAPILab Toolbox is a pile of 18 Outlook add-ins bundled into one big package. Some of the tools are simple; one, for instance, hides fax numbers in contact searches. Others are pure genius, such as a plug-in that scans outgoing e-mail for phrases like "see the attachment" and then pops up a reminder in case you forget to attach anything. The toolbox is free for 30 days, $24 thereafter.
Redact text in Word: You know how the feds black out sections of documents they deem too sensitive (or embarrassing) for public consumption? You can too, if you download Microsoft's Word Redaction add-in for Office 2003. You can read your own redacted text; but when you export the documents in redacted form, the marked portions cannot be read (or edited, if you choose this limitation).
Share Excel files without groupware: You can share an Excel file without using a Web-based collaboration system: The eXpresso Plug-In for Excel (a 2007 Innovations Award winner) lets you store the file while working in Excel, locking it while one user meddles with it, and then making it available for others to edit. E-mail alerts tell when the file is unlocked. You can even lock specific portions of a spreadsheet to prevent others from editing them.
Swell your spreadsheets with demographic data: An Excel spreadsheet is only as good as its data. But manually adding information (such as the population in an area code or the average income in a zip code) is tiresome. CDXStreamer does the heavy lifting: Install this Excel plug-in, and configure it to find information about a region or a stock ticker you are interested in. CDXStreamer then grabs the latest content from the Web, automatically. Over 100 pieces of demographic data are indexed to each zip code. The free trial lasts 14 days; regular CDXStreamer service costs $30 per month.
Add real-time stock quotes to Excel: Obsolete stock data in a spreadsheet does you no good. The MSN Money Stock Quotes for Excel add-on inserts MSN stock prices (which are delayed by 15 minutes) into any Excel spreadsheet, with updates every time you change the spreadsheet.
Five Essential Office Add-Ons
1. International Character Toolbar: Add this toolbar to Office to gain one-click access to a palette of the most common special characters used in the foreign language(s) of your choosing. Warning: You may have to sign on to the Office Genuine Advantage program to get this add-on.
2. ToolbarToggle: Not thrilled with Office 2007's radical new "ribbon" design in lieu of good old menus and toolbars? ToolbarToggle restores the 2003 suite's arrangement. A single-user license costs $20 after a free five-day trial.
3. Word Frequency Count: This shareware application (full name: Word Frequency Count in Multiple Text & HTML Files) adds up the number of times that every word occurs in multiple text, HTML, and Word documents. Unlocking the full utility will cost you $30.
4. Remove Hidden Data: You probably sometimes receive files filled with embarrassing "track changes" information and personal data that the creator accidentally left in. Don't be that person yourself. Thank Microsoft for this free add-in.
5. ClearType Tuner: Part of the Windows XP PowerToys suite (and available in an online version, as well), this add-on gives you fine-grain control over how fonts look on your LCD screen. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference a slight alteration in font thickness and smoothing can make on your eyes.
Multimedia Muscle Builders
From music players to image editors, add-ons abound in the world of multimedia. To upgrade your audio or make your photos and videos pop, check out our favorite plug-ins for iTunes, Windows Media Player, Photoshop, and other popular programs.
Make music friends, get worthwhile recommendations: iLike is a plug-in for Apple iTunes that expands your music listening options. A standard (and popular) social networking component turns you on to people with musical tastes similar to yours, but the "related music" system seals the deal. Choose a song in your library, and iLike offers other music you might like (with instant previews you can play), along with free, similar MP3s from independent artists.
Use Variable Bit Rate encoding in iTunes: No matter what overall bit rate you rip tunes at, Variable Bit Rate (VBR) delivers the best-quality music while keeping file sizes small. Finding the option in iTunes isn't easy. To get there, click EditPreferencesAdvanced, click the Importing tab, and then click the Setting drop-down menu. Choose Custom, and check the Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding box. A transfer rate of 192 kbps and Medium High quality for VBR yield exceptional results; aim higher if you think you can hear the difference.
Give WMP an upgrade: Windows Media Player may not be the most exciting application on its own, but the free Windows Media Bonus Pack add-on for Windows XP gives WMP considerably more oomph. Extras include additional visualizations, skins, and sound effects, plus new features such as the ability to export your playlist to Excel and a better tool for finding missing artwork and other metadata on your audio tracks.
Upload to Flickr in bulk: Sending 10, 20, 50, or more photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site can be dull and time consuming. Download the Flickr Uploader (now in version 3.0) for a quick and easy way to upload photos in bulk, all in a stand-alone application. The program also plugs into Windows Explorer. Right-click any image (or group), and you'll get a 'Send to Flickr' menu item, which opens the Flickr Uploader application and gets your shots ready to go.
Upload to Flickr by e-mail: Don't have Web access? You can send pictures to your Flickr account by e-mail from any PC or even by phone. First, find your custom upload e-mail address. Use the subject line of your message for the photo's title and the body for a description. Flag any tags by prefacing them with the phrase "tags:" on their own line.
Quickly shrink those pics: It's wise to take photos at the highest resolution that your camera supports, but your friends and family members probably don't want to be custodians of an inbox full of 4MB files. If firing up a full-blown image editor such as Photoshop seems like overkill, use Microsoft's Image Resizer PowerToy to right-click any image and open a Resize Pictures menu for easily making pics smaller. To resize in bulk, select multiple shots.
More Multimedia Muscle Builders
Make GIMP look like Photoshop: GIMPshop, a tweaked version of the free, open-source GIMP image editor, mimics the look and feel of Photoshop, so you can use this full-featured application without having to learn any new commands. Think of it as a GIMP mod that doesn't require you to install GIMP before getting started.
An avalanche of art effects: Filter Forge offers a monster collection of methods (including more than 4000 filters) for tweaking and digitally adding textures and lighting tricks to your photographs. Photoshop jockeys can create their own filters and upload them to the Filter Forge community. Contributors get the plug-in for free; everyone else pays $99 to $299, depending on the resolution they require.
Apply film effects to stills: OptikVerve VirtualPhotographer, a Photoshop plug-in, lets you apply dozens of preset film styles (extra grain, soft focus, high contrast, and so on) to photos in just a couple of clicks.
Silence noisy photos: On some cameras, ISO modes as high as ISO 3200 tempt a lot of people to shoot pictures in the dark--leading to disappointment with the resulting noisy photos. Noise Ninja cleans up grainy, pixelated shots. Plug the app into Photoshop and select noisy areas by hand, or use the Noise Brush to swipe your pointer over trouble spots. The program costs $45 for home use, and $80 for pros.
Give pics the TV treatment: Looking for a way to crop a photo onto a television screen and make the resulting image look realistic? Namesuppressed Design's Autointerlace plug-in for Photoshop adds telltale horizontal lines to your image, just as if you had photographed your old CRT.
Expand your 3D library: Adobe's free Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse lets you search and import 3D models from Google's online repository of photorealistic art.
Get the best possible color from your PC: Printed photos don't look the same as photos on a monitor. Reconciling the two (and images from other sources, like scanners) involves installing a color profile for each device. The Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP enables you to switch among all the profiles on your machine; if you have multiple monitors or printers, you can easily tweak output to look its best on the device you're using.
Five Essential Multimedia Add-Ons
1. Picasa to flickr: This plug-in for Picasa is free, handy, and platform-independent. It uses a simple Java applet to let you zip files from the popular image editor directly to the equally popular Flickr photo-sharing service.
2.The Filter: Your party starts in 15 minutes and you forgot to make the music playlist. No problem--seed this iTunes and Windows Media Player add-on with a handful of tunes you like. Not only will it generate a killer party sound track, but it will dredge up hot tracks that you might even have forgotten you had.
3. EvilLyrics: This free download gets rid of the junk code that accompanies most lyrics search results by looking for lyrics in the background whenever you play a song in iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player, or another application. The results aren't perfect, but they're on target more often than not.
4. ffdshow: Dodge the hassle of juggling multiple video formats by turning to this versatile plug-in, which supports most video players and provides all the video codecs you are likely to need.
5. Plugin Galaxy: This collection of free effects and filters for Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro offers a range of warping and blurring effects, plus handy features like a "page curl" for image corners, all accessible within a single interface.
Browser Boosters
Web browsers--especially Firefox--are built with plug-ins in mind. Thousands of these code snippets are available, but here we present some of the most useful add-ons, plus a few tips that don't require any extra code.
Nuke Web ads: Though decried by many Webmasters for cutting into a lucrative revenue stream, Adblock Plus is practically a mandatory addition to Firefox, due to an increasingly onerous glut of Web advertising. (IE users can try Ad Muncher free for 30 days and then pay US$30) Put simply, Adblock Plus blocks ads--not just pop-ups, but regular banners, towers, rich-media stuff, and Google's ubiquitous advertisements. Adblock Plus doesn't stop everything, but it nabs enough that you'll notice the difference immediately.
Many PCs, one set of bookmarks: If you use numerous computers, you have undoubtedly had to deal with separate browsers on each of those PCs, each with its own set of bookmarks that must be managed separately--unless you have a bookmark synchronizer, that is. Foxmarks is one of a number of tools that can sync Firefox bookmarks among multiple machines. Just install Foxmarks as an add-on to the Firefox installation on each system, and never worry about manual syncing again. As a bonus, you can access your bookmarks on the Foxmarks Web site, too.
Put an FTP app into Firefox: Even the most casual Web developer needs an FTP application, but many of these are cumbersome and unintuitive--and they require installing yet another full-blown program. FireFTP turns Firefox into an impromptu and speedy two-way FTP application. Once installed, FireFTP appears in the Tools menu. Click it and a new FTP tab opens up, offering a simple two-pane system that lets you easily copy files between your desktop and your remote site.
Get a handle on downloaded files: If you are a download junkie who always has something in the queue to leech off the Web, you need a download manager to help handle everything. FlashGet is a free and extremely popular download manager that can help you organize and queue up HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, and other types of downloads, working in the background and letting you pause and resume downloads. It can even tell your computer to shut itself down when the downloading is done. Works on any browser.
Restore embedded passwords to IE URLs: Several years ago, Microsoft disallowed Internet Explorer to use an embedded password as part of a URL (of the format https://username:password@server.com) when a user goes to a protected Web site; instead the person must type in the password manually at the pop-up log-in screen. (This restriction was a response to phishers' employing phony password fields to deceive unsuspecting users.) Restoring IE's original ability takes a Registry tweak. Run Regedit and browse to the following Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_HTTP_
USERNAME_PASSWORD_DISABLE
Here, create two new DWORD values: iexplore.exe and explorer.exe. Leave the default DWORD value for each of these at '0'. Restart IE.
Grab a hard copy of any Web page: Did you ever print a hard copy of a Web page only to have it come out garbled, missing images, and otherwise nigh unreadable? One reason that may happen is because the newfangled Web 2.0 standards don't play well with 0.1-era printers. Solution: Grab a screen shot of a Web page, and select Print. But how do you do that, when a single page has enough content to fill up three display screens? Simple: Install Screengrab for Firefox, which lets you save a full page, the visible portion of a page, or just the tidbit you'd like to keep. IE Screenshot performs similar tricks for the Microsoft browser. Save images as digital files or print them out.
More Browser Boosters
Copy any Web video: Various Web services let you punch in the URL of a YouTube flick or other Web video and receive a copy you can save to your hard drive. But they're often slow and buggy, and you never know if they'll work on less popular video-sharing sites. Orbit Rich Media Downloader adds a context-sensitive set of new menu items to your right mouse button in your Web browser. Now when you see a vid on Dailymotion or hear a song on MySpace that you like, just click to save it to your PC.
Save protected media files: Some Web sites cruelly disable the right-click button on images and other media, preventing you from easily downloading them. Orbit Rich Media Downloader is one workaround, but it's overkill if all you want to do is to save an image occasionally. Good news: Firefox has a quick, built-in way to save protected media files without the hassle. Visit the Web page you want, right-click anywhere on the page (not in the image), and select View Page Info. Click the Media tab to see a list of all images on the page; scroll through the list (a preview will appear at the bottom of the window), and click Save As when you find the one you want.
One click to something new: Collected quotes of Albert Einstein? Winners of the "I Look Like My Dog" contest? Pictures of real-life sea monsters? All of these Web pages can be yours at the touch of a button if you install StumbleUpon, a plug-in and toolbar available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. StumbleUpon, like social news sites such as Digg, takes user submissions to point other users to cool stuff on the Web. Click the thumbs up button if you like what you see, or thumbs down if you don't. Over time, StumbleUpon refines its suggestions for you, making it (eventually) the perfect time-waster, and one that's always at your fingertips.
Easy access to deals and discounts: Smart shoppers perform a quick search for a coupon code before buying anything online, but forgetting to do so is easy. RegisteredCoupons.com's toolbar for Internet Explorer simplifies bargain hunting by putting the information right where you're most likely to see it: A utilitarian drop-down box lets you select the retail outlet where you're shopping. Click the store in question, and current coupon codes and promotions instantly arrive in their own window.
Relocate the Firefox sidebar: Want to move the sidebar to the right side of your screen? Edit your userChrome.css file or create a new one in your profile/chrome folder. Find it in C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxx\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\yyyyyyyy.default\chrome, where xxxxx is your username, and yyyyyyyy is a random set of eight characters. (If you don't see the Application Data file in your user folder, go to the Tools menu, click Folder Options and then the View tab, and select Show Hidden Files and Folders.) Rename the example file there userChrome.css, and then add the following code to the bottom of the file:
/* Place the sidebar on the right edge of the window */
hbox#browser { direction: rtl; }
hbox#browser > vbox { direction: ltr; }
Keep track of Adsense earnings: If you use Adsense on your Web site or blog, you can use the Adsense Notifier Firefox plug-in to keep track of your daily earnings within the browser, in real time. Just check the bottom right corner for total ad impressions, CPM, and your total daily earnings as they accrue.
Five Essential Browser Add-Ons
1. IE Tab: If you use Firefox as your primary browser, you probably get stymied occasionally by Web sites that don't look right in its windows. Don't fire up Internet Explorer (which maintains a separate history and won't have your bookmarks); instead, use the IE Tab plug-in to instruct Firefox to temporarily use Internet Explorer's rendering engine. IE Tab resides in the bottom right corner of your browser. Click the Firefox icon to switch to IE mode and vice versa.
2. Duplicate Tab: Want a copy of the current window you're visiting, complete with the history of that browsing session? IE users can accomplish this without having to install and use a plug-in: Press Ctrl-N to open a new window with the entire history of the current window. For Firefox users, Duplicate Tab lets you obtain such a history with a single shortcut keystroke; or you can use the tool to merge multiple open windows into a series of tabs.
3. ErrorZilla: The standard "server not found" page is useless if you're looking for a Web site that's gone AWOL. ErrorZilla adds a series of buttons to the bottom of the standard "Firefox can't find the server" message, providing instant access to the Wayback machine, Google Cache, Whois lookup, and more.
4. Inline Search: IE users can obtain search-as-you-type functionality that works the same way it does in Firefox with this free, simple extension.
5. Extended Statusbar: This plug-in supplements the data that Firefox provides about a Web page and your Internet connection, providing such details as the total size (in KB) of the page, the transfer speed, and the load time.
Office Optimizers
Get more out of Microsoft Office by adding a few extras. Watch Word, Excel, and Outlook perform tricks you never dreamed were possible!
Open Office 2007 files with older Office versions: Microsoft changed its default file format in Office 2007, so you won't be able to open files saved in the new format with older versions of the Office suite. However, if you have any of three prior versions of Office--2000, XP, or 2003--you can install the Office Compatibility Pack and thereby establish forward compatibility with the new format.
Open old files with Office 2003: Conversely, with Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disallowed opening file formats that predate Office 97, citing security concerns. To re-enable Office to open these files, you have to run a series of Registry hacks. Fortunately, Microsoft has created Registry scripts to make this task easy. Download them, right-click them, and then select Merge. At once, you'll be able to open old files again.
Put offline docs online in a jiffy: Online document-processing tools are wonderful for people who are working on files as a group, but getting files online--and keeping online versus offline versions straight--can be a hassle. The Zoho Plug-In for Microsoft Office simplifies uploading your offline documents to the Web service and downloading online documents from it, all without your having to leave your Office application.
Make PDF files inside Office: You don't need full-blown Adobe Acrobat to create and edit PDF files. CenoPDF lets you build PDFs without leaving Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. After installing CenoPDF, simply print your .doc files and choose the PDF printer option--or build PDF-based forms using text-entry fields, buttons, and boxes to be filled out electronically. The program is free to try, though PDFs are watermarked; it costs $29 to buy.
Add holidays to Outlook: Want to avoid manually adding Memorial Day and Christmas to your Outlook calendar each year? You can input 12 months' worth of holidays at once by clicking ToolsOptions, Calendar Options (on the Preferences tab). On the next screen, click Add Holidays, select the appropriate country or countries, and click OK.
Organize and prioritize Outlook data: The ClearContext Information Management System offers tools that are useful for organizing your Outlook data, starting with a dashboard that provides a consolidated look at your tasks and calendar items. ClearContext allows you to assign topics (which you define) to messages; then it automatically files subsequent messages in the thread. The system flags your most important contacts based on how often you deal with them, and it color-codes messages based on the sender's importance. ClearContext reduces inbox clutter by "snoozing" noncritical messages--that is, by removing them from the Inbox for a specified period of time. The program is free for 30 days, and then costs $90 to buy.
Become a meeting power user: MeetingSense takes Outlook's rudimentary calendar system and turns it into a powerhouse. An extensive meeting dashboard gives you a hub for making agendas, creating minutes, and sending out summaries, all while providing a centralized meeting space where you and other MeetingSense users can share files, make notes, and create action items. It's perfect for scattered groups that meet frequently. After a 14-day free trial, the software costs $199.
More Office Optimizers
Import Outlook contacts to Lotus Notes, and vice versa: Moving your contacts list from Lotus Notes to Outlook (or making the opposite migration) is a snap using the Personal NAB (Notes Address Book) Import/Export Utility, a no-cost download from Lotus's Web site. Open the utility the same way you would any Notes database, and you'll see a simple form where you can point to the file that you wish to convert, choose the desired operation, and hit a button to start the conversion. It's very useful if you're migrating to a new platform, for example.
Get a bird's-eye view of your contacts: "Xobni" is inbox spelled backward, but there's nothing misdirected about Xobni Insight's cool interface, which provides information about each person that you correspond with as you read messages from them. Xobni (currently available only if you sign up for a private beta invitation) lives on the right side of your Outlook window. It provides a graphical look at e-mail frequency, contact information, and old conversations with each contact. Don't miss the Xobni Analytics feature, which tracks how much e-mail you send and receive every day.
18 ways to tweak Outlook: MAPILab Toolbox is a pile of 18 Outlook add-ins bundled into one big package. Some of the tools are simple; one, for instance, hides fax numbers in contact searches. Others are pure genius, such as a plug-in that scans outgoing e-mail for phrases like "see the attachment" and then pops up a reminder in case you forget to attach anything. The toolbox is free for 30 days, $24 thereafter.
Redact text in Word: You know how the feds black out sections of documents they deem too sensitive (or embarrassing) for public consumption? You can too, if you download Microsoft's Word Redaction add-in for Office 2003. You can read your own redacted text; but when you export the documents in redacted form, the marked portions cannot be read (or edited, if you choose this limitation).
Share Excel files without groupware: You can share an Excel file without using a Web-based collaboration system: The eXpresso Plug-In for Excel (a 2007 Innovations Award winner) lets you store the file while working in Excel, locking it while one user meddles with it, and then making it available for others to edit. E-mail alerts tell when the file is unlocked. You can even lock specific portions of a spreadsheet to prevent others from editing them.
Swell your spreadsheets with demographic data: An Excel spreadsheet is only as good as its data. But manually adding information (such as the population in an area code or the average income in a zip code) is tiresome. CDXStreamer does the heavy lifting: Install this Excel plug-in, and configure it to find information about a region or a stock ticker you are interested in. CDXStreamer then grabs the latest content from the Web, automatically. Over 100 pieces of demographic data are indexed to each zip code. The free trial lasts 14 days; regular CDXStreamer service costs $30 per month.
Add real-time stock quotes to Excel: Obsolete stock data in a spreadsheet does you no good. The MSN Money Stock Quotes for Excel add-on inserts MSN stock prices (which are delayed by 15 minutes) into any Excel spreadsheet, with updates every time you change the spreadsheet.
Five Essential Office Add-Ons
1. International Character Toolbar: Add this toolbar to Office to gain one-click access to a palette of the most common special characters used in the foreign language(s) of your choosing. Warning: You may have to sign on to the Office Genuine Advantage program to get this add-on.
2. ToolbarToggle: Not thrilled with Office 2007's radical new "ribbon" design in lieu of good old menus and toolbars? ToolbarToggle restores the 2003 suite's arrangement. A single-user license costs $20 after a free five-day trial.
3. Word Frequency Count: This shareware application (full name: Word Frequency Count in Multiple Text & HTML Files) adds up the number of times that every word occurs in multiple text, HTML, and Word documents. Unlocking the full utility will cost you $30.
4. Remove Hidden Data: You probably sometimes receive files filled with embarrassing "track changes" information and personal data that the creator accidentally left in. Don't be that person yourself. Thank Microsoft for this free add-in.
5. ClearType Tuner: Part of the Windows XP PowerToys suite (and available in an online version, as well), this add-on gives you fine-grain control over how fonts look on your LCD screen. You'll be amazed at how much of a difference a slight alteration in font thickness and smoothing can make on your eyes.
Multimedia Muscle Builders
From music players to image editors, add-ons abound in the world of multimedia. To upgrade your audio or make your photos and videos pop, check out our favorite plug-ins for iTunes, Windows Media Player, Photoshop, and other popular programs.
Make music friends, get worthwhile recommendations: iLike is a plug-in for Apple iTunes that expands your music listening options. A standard (and popular) social networking component turns you on to people with musical tastes similar to yours, but the "related music" system seals the deal. Choose a song in your library, and iLike offers other music you might like (with instant previews you can play), along with free, similar MP3s from independent artists.
Use Variable Bit Rate encoding in iTunes: No matter what overall bit rate you rip tunes at, Variable Bit Rate (VBR) delivers the best-quality music while keeping file sizes small. Finding the option in iTunes isn't easy. To get there, click EditPreferencesAdvanced, click the Importing tab, and then click the Setting drop-down menu. Choose Custom, and check the Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding box. A transfer rate of 192 kbps and Medium High quality for VBR yield exceptional results; aim higher if you think you can hear the difference.
Give WMP an upgrade: Windows Media Player may not be the most exciting application on its own, but the free Windows Media Bonus Pack add-on for Windows XP gives WMP considerably more oomph. Extras include additional visualizations, skins, and sound effects, plus new features such as the ability to export your playlist to Excel and a better tool for finding missing artwork and other metadata on your audio tracks.
Upload to Flickr in bulk: Sending 10, 20, 50, or more photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site can be dull and time consuming. Download the Flickr Uploader (now in version 3.0) for a quick and easy way to upload photos in bulk, all in a stand-alone application. The program also plugs into Windows Explorer. Right-click any image (or group), and you'll get a 'Send to Flickr' menu item, which opens the Flickr Uploader application and gets your shots ready to go.
Upload to Flickr by e-mail: Don't have Web access? You can send pictures to your Flickr account by e-mail from any PC or even by phone. First, find your custom upload e-mail address. Use the subject line of your message for the photo's title and the body for a description. Flag any tags by prefacing them with the phrase "tags:" on their own line.
Quickly shrink those pics: It's wise to take photos at the highest resolution that your camera supports, but your friends and family members probably don't want to be custodians of an inbox full of 4MB files. If firing up a full-blown image editor such as Photoshop seems like overkill, use Microsoft's Image Resizer PowerToy to right-click any image and open a Resize Pictures menu for easily making pics smaller. To resize in bulk, select multiple shots.
More Multimedia Muscle Builders
Make GIMP look like Photoshop: GIMPshop, a tweaked version of the free, open-source GIMP image editor, mimics the look and feel of Photoshop, so you can use this full-featured application without having to learn any new commands. Think of it as a GIMP mod that doesn't require you to install GIMP before getting started.
An avalanche of art effects: Filter Forge offers a monster collection of methods (including more than 4000 filters) for tweaking and digitally adding textures and lighting tricks to your photographs. Photoshop jockeys can create their own filters and upload them to the Filter Forge community. Contributors get the plug-in for free; everyone else pays $99 to $299, depending on the resolution they require.
Apply film effects to stills: OptikVerve VirtualPhotographer, a Photoshop plug-in, lets you apply dozens of preset film styles (extra grain, soft focus, high contrast, and so on) to photos in just a couple of clicks.
Silence noisy photos: On some cameras, ISO modes as high as ISO 3200 tempt a lot of people to shoot pictures in the dark--leading to disappointment with the resulting noisy photos. Noise Ninja cleans up grainy, pixelated shots. Plug the app into Photoshop and select noisy areas by hand, or use the Noise Brush to swipe your pointer over trouble spots. The program costs $45 for home use, and $80 for pros.
Give pics the TV treatment: Looking for a way to crop a photo onto a television screen and make the resulting image look realistic? Namesuppressed Design's Autointerlace plug-in for Photoshop adds telltale horizontal lines to your image, just as if you had photographed your old CRT.
Expand your 3D library: Adobe's free Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse lets you search and import 3D models from Google's online repository of photorealistic art.
Get the best possible color from your PC: Printed photos don't look the same as photos on a monitor. Reconciling the two (and images from other sources, like scanners) involves installing a color profile for each device. The Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP enables you to switch among all the profiles on your machine; if you have multiple monitors or printers, you can easily tweak output to look its best on the device you're using.
Five Essential Multimedia Add-Ons
1. Picasa to flickr: This plug-in for Picasa is free, handy, and platform-independent. It uses a simple Java applet to let you zip files from the popular image editor directly to the equally popular Flickr photo-sharing service.
2.The Filter: Your party starts in 15 minutes and you forgot to make the music playlist. No problem--seed this iTunes and Windows Media Player add-on with a handful of tunes you like. Not only will it generate a killer party sound track, but it will dredge up hot tracks that you might even have forgotten you had.
3. EvilLyrics: This free download gets rid of the junk code that accompanies most lyrics search results by looking for lyrics in the background whenever you play a song in iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player, or another application. The results aren't perfect, but they're on target more often than not.
4. ffdshow: Dodge the hassle of juggling multiple video formats by turning to this versatile plug-in, which supports most video players and provides all the video codecs you are likely to need.
5. Plugin Galaxy: This collection of free effects and filters for Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro offers a range of warping and blurring effects, plus handy features like a "page curl" for image corners, all accessible within a single interface.
Jonathan Schwartz talks up MySQL buy
Sun announced Tuesday that its US$1 billion deal to buy open-source database vendor MySQL has closed, and with the news came a bold proclamation from Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
"In my view, this is the most important acquisition in Sun's history, and the most important in the modern software industry," Schwartz said during a conference call.
MySQL's CEO, Marten Mickos, is now senior vice president of a new database group within Sun's software division. "In terms of the business model, technology and culture, the fit with Sun is perfect," he said.
During the conference call, Schwartz acknowledged that Sun's acquisition plans aren't over, but said future deals will likely concern "more tuck-in assets."
"MySQL was the crown jewel of the open-source marketplace. As far as we can see, there are no more higher-value assets we can acquire," he said.
Despite Schwartz's characterization of the MySQL deal as a pinnacle moment for Sun, its price tag is much lower than other acquisitions, such as the $4.1 billion it paid for StorageTek in 2005.
In addition, Schwartz's boasts belie the fact that deals from other vendors -- such as the $8.5 billion Oracle is plunking down for middleware vendor BEA Systems, an acquisition announced in January -- dwarf the MySQL buy.
Schwartz acknowledged that "in terms of relative valuation, the financials are one way to look at it."
But "looking forward, MySQL is profound for a very basic reason," he said. "It has a customer base in the millions, if not tens of millions."
However, since the acquisition was first announced, users have urged Sun to deal with various performance and scalability limitations within MySQL.
Teams are already working on such issues, particularly regarding scalability, said Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun's software group, in an interview following the conference call. "It's a really high priority for us to deal with the improved scalability issue. We're all over it." Green declined to provide a release road map.
Despite the potential scale of the business Sun could build around MySQL, its partner relationships with makers of proprietary databases will not be affected, Green asserted.
"The simple answer is, that's going to go unchanged," he said. "We've built an enormous customer base with companies like Oracle and Sybase. We're going to go full speed in those partnerships."
In an interview, Mickos said his initial job will be to ensure business runs as usual for existing MySQL customers: "The first thing is to do no harm."
The new Sun executive cited the "energy" generated by MySQL's user base as one of its key strengths.
One question is how being acquired will alter MySQL's relationship with its community. "I think it will change. I think it will improve," Mickos said, adding, "there will always be someone upset with something. If nobody is upset, that means nobody cares."
Sun is now offering subscriptions and services for MySQL's full range of products. It is also introducing MySQL Enterprise Unlimited. For a flat annual fee, customers can deploy an unlimited number of MySQL Enterprise Servers.
More than 100 million copies of MySQL's database have been downloaded and distributed, according to Sun. The daily rate has grown from 50,000 to more than 60,000 since it announced its plans to buy MySQL, Sun said.
"In my view, this is the most important acquisition in Sun's history, and the most important in the modern software industry," Schwartz said during a conference call.
MySQL's CEO, Marten Mickos, is now senior vice president of a new database group within Sun's software division. "In terms of the business model, technology and culture, the fit with Sun is perfect," he said.
During the conference call, Schwartz acknowledged that Sun's acquisition plans aren't over, but said future deals will likely concern "more tuck-in assets."
"MySQL was the crown jewel of the open-source marketplace. As far as we can see, there are no more higher-value assets we can acquire," he said.
Despite Schwartz's characterization of the MySQL deal as a pinnacle moment for Sun, its price tag is much lower than other acquisitions, such as the $4.1 billion it paid for StorageTek in 2005.
In addition, Schwartz's boasts belie the fact that deals from other vendors -- such as the $8.5 billion Oracle is plunking down for middleware vendor BEA Systems, an acquisition announced in January -- dwarf the MySQL buy.
Schwartz acknowledged that "in terms of relative valuation, the financials are one way to look at it."
But "looking forward, MySQL is profound for a very basic reason," he said. "It has a customer base in the millions, if not tens of millions."
However, since the acquisition was first announced, users have urged Sun to deal with various performance and scalability limitations within MySQL.
Teams are already working on such issues, particularly regarding scalability, said Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun's software group, in an interview following the conference call. "It's a really high priority for us to deal with the improved scalability issue. We're all over it." Green declined to provide a release road map.
Despite the potential scale of the business Sun could build around MySQL, its partner relationships with makers of proprietary databases will not be affected, Green asserted.
"The simple answer is, that's going to go unchanged," he said. "We've built an enormous customer base with companies like Oracle and Sybase. We're going to go full speed in those partnerships."
In an interview, Mickos said his initial job will be to ensure business runs as usual for existing MySQL customers: "The first thing is to do no harm."
The new Sun executive cited the "energy" generated by MySQL's user base as one of its key strengths.
One question is how being acquired will alter MySQL's relationship with its community. "I think it will change. I think it will improve," Mickos said, adding, "there will always be someone upset with something. If nobody is upset, that means nobody cares."
Sun is now offering subscriptions and services for MySQL's full range of products. It is also introducing MySQL Enterprise Unlimited. For a flat annual fee, customers can deploy an unlimited number of MySQL Enterprise Servers.
More than 100 million copies of MySQL's database have been downloaded and distributed, according to Sun. The daily rate has grown from 50,000 to more than 60,000 since it announced its plans to buy MySQL, Sun said.
Virtualization shakes up backup strategy
Virtualization is causing customers to rethink their backup strategies, with technology that combines pieces of traditional and well-understood enterprise backup with some pieces that are unique in the virtualized world.
In the past, traditional enterprise backup in the vast majority of shops has included spinning disk for short-term and intermediate data use, archival tape for long-term storage, and software such as IBM Tivoli and HP StorageWorks.
But some say that's no longer enough in a virtualized world.
"You definitely can't take a wait-and-see approach with backup, especially now that more and more companies are using server virtualization in critical production environments," says Stephanie Balaouras, a senior analyst for virtualization strategies at Forrester Research Inc. "Backup is going to become a major challenge if companies haven't explored their options."
Traditional backup systems have a one-to-one relationship with servers. These tried-and-true backup systems and associated software already support storage-area networks (SAN), fiber optics, and the latest operating system and server hardware updates. But they are not geared specifically for the complex world of virtualization, which involves multiple guest operating systems on the same box.
Dave Russell, Gartner Inc.'s vice president of research for servers and storage, outlined three popular strategies for virtualization backups. The most common is putting software agents on each virtual machine (VM) and then using traditional enterprise backup software. A second approach is to create an image of the VM and either use a storage service hosted elsewhere or take daily snapshots of the logical unit number (LUN).
A third strategy is to use VMware consolidated backup (VCB) that incrementally archives the VM -- meaning it copies only what has changed since the last backup. In this way, companies can restore a single file, even from one of 30 guest operating systems that all reside on a single physical server.
"Most companies gravitate toward the backup agents and traditional backup software, which they are used to doing with a physical server, and it feels very natural and easy," says Russell. "But this approach has proven to be cost prohibitive because of the number and scale of VMs and the licensing required."
Backup agents are included with VMware and other virtualization products to help administrators integrate VMs into the traditional backup process. The main advantage is cost: The agents are free or add a relatively minimal fee. On the downside, agents force administrators to use a fairly simplistic approach: Admins can archive an entire virtualized server, but not pick and choose volumes or guest operating systems. Nor can server administrators restore specific portions of data, or substantiate (verify the data integrity) of VM volumes.
VM snapshots
A new trend is for companies to create mirrors of the VM volumes, says Russell, because it provides more flexibility, reduces costs and allows a company to substantiate an entire location, which fits into an enterprisewide backup strategy for disaster recovery.
For example, at the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) -- part of the University of California clinical research group in San Francisco -- virtualization backups have become not just a part of disaster planning, but they actually help researchers with clinical trials to fight new diseases.
ITN archives the LUN, or the specific address of the hard disk drive. Using data de-duplication algorithms that weed out redundant data, it keeps multi-terabyte archives of virtual servers. Researchers can request additional archival LUNs, a process that would be difficult or impossible with physical servers.
"The traditional method of putting a tape in a backup system serving multiple servers is outdated," says Michael Williams, ITN's executive director of IT. "Once you move to virtual storage and separation of the volume from the physical disk, you can do very interesting things. The first thing we do when we provision a LUN is we oversubscribe it. A researcher believes they have 2TB volumes -- and they do."
But in reality, the LUNs are thin-provisioned, or allocated just enough storage space on a physical disk, based on snapshot policies, and they might only be 20GB each. That volume of data is backed up every four hours. This is equivalent to a hard crash backup (a complete archive of data that can be restored to a prior state), Williams says.
Williams explains that the archives -- created using Network Appliance Inc.'s SnapShot and SnapMirror -- are then moved to an off-site location in Herndon, Va., and archived further using Veritas NetBackup over a wide-area network to create a full-image backup on low-cost Serial Advanced Technology Attachment drives.
He describes the snapshot process as beneficial to the researchers because it is easier to request a restore and faster than it was in previrtualization days, but it is still complex for IT. A scientist could request a data retrieval, which is similar to a traditional storage-restore request, and not have to wait for IT to access a library of tapes and make the restore. But the virtual restore process is more complex for IT, because staffers might have to, say, find and mount a virtual LUN from a restore point located on a separate backup system, such as a Veritas archive. The end user can access the data in a matter of hours instead of the much longer time frames required by tape.
Another advantage involves data de-duplication, a process in which the backup software is smart enough to see the same data multiple times and keep only one archive of it. At ITN, for example, there are 150 virtual servers, and there may be as many as 100 Windows machines. NetApp can make one copy of an identical 8.5GB image for Windows and create a fingerprint file (a reference point) for each additional archive, which saves on disk space because NetApp does not make multiple backups of the same Windows data.
Continuous data protection
The third popular backup strategy for virtualization is to use a continuous data protection system such as Vizioncore vRanger or PHD Technologies Inc.'s esXpress.
Health First Inc., a group of hospitals and trauma centers based in eastern Florida, is using this strategy. The company runs 300 guest machines on 19 VMware ESX servers connected to a 150TB SAN. Health First uses IBM Tivoli for traditional backup, but because of its large virtual server infrastructure, the company decided to add a continuous backup system.
"We needed faster rebuild time in case of a disaster," says Jeff Allison, a Health First network engineer in charge of virtualization planning. "We use Vizioncore vRanger for hot backups of every virtual machine we have every night," he says. "Backups start at 5:00 p.m. on two different machines and by 2:00 a.m., we have backups for 230 boxes." The remaining 70 VMs are archived by the morning, and performance for the clinical applications is "not affected by the hot backups," Allison says.
Allison explains that the environment is more demanding in terms of uptime requirements for trauma centers and clinics, because data loss at a health facility could mean loss of life.
He describes one scenario where a controller failed on one test/development physical server that caused 80 VM development servers to be unavailable and unusable until a lengthy restore process could be initiated. On average, it could take several hours, he says. With a continuous backup system, the restore would now take about an hour and require perhaps one technician instead of several.
Indiana University presents another case for continuous backups, as opposed to VM mirroring or agents, because of the faster disaster recovery time and more granular data-archiving benefits.
A virtual machine is contained within a file that can be quiesced (archived incrementally) via a snapshot file, says Robert Reynolds, a senior software analyst at the university. "For the majority of our VMs, that quiesced file is stable enough to be then copied as a [disaster recovery] backup," he says. "Obviously, database servers and other transaction in-flight servers need more care in creating a DR backup.
"We run weekly jobs on each of our VMware ESX servers, using PHD's esXpress virtual backup appliances, to create the DR backups for our VMs," Reynolds says. "We create a copy on the local storage of the ESX server and we are in the process of developing a second phase to FTP the DR backup to another server where it will be picked up by Tivoli Storage Manager and sent offsite to Indianapolis, roughly 50 miles from Bloomington."
A blend of approaches
"In the near term, a blend of these technologies might be the best approach -- taking an image-level backup and indexing those files continuously so that companies could do a single file restore, taking snapshots very rapidly, using a traditional backup application and VM agents to index the content on servers," says Gartner's Russell. "It does add more management complexity and another layer of abstraction to traditional backup, but the storage-resource tools are now catching up."
In the past, traditional enterprise backup in the vast majority of shops has included spinning disk for short-term and intermediate data use, archival tape for long-term storage, and software such as IBM Tivoli and HP StorageWorks.
But some say that's no longer enough in a virtualized world.
"You definitely can't take a wait-and-see approach with backup, especially now that more and more companies are using server virtualization in critical production environments," says Stephanie Balaouras, a senior analyst for virtualization strategies at Forrester Research Inc. "Backup is going to become a major challenge if companies haven't explored their options."
Traditional backup systems have a one-to-one relationship with servers. These tried-and-true backup systems and associated software already support storage-area networks (SAN), fiber optics, and the latest operating system and server hardware updates. But they are not geared specifically for the complex world of virtualization, which involves multiple guest operating systems on the same box.
Dave Russell, Gartner Inc.'s vice president of research for servers and storage, outlined three popular strategies for virtualization backups. The most common is putting software agents on each virtual machine (VM) and then using traditional enterprise backup software. A second approach is to create an image of the VM and either use a storage service hosted elsewhere or take daily snapshots of the logical unit number (LUN).
A third strategy is to use VMware consolidated backup (VCB) that incrementally archives the VM -- meaning it copies only what has changed since the last backup. In this way, companies can restore a single file, even from one of 30 guest operating systems that all reside on a single physical server.
"Most companies gravitate toward the backup agents and traditional backup software, which they are used to doing with a physical server, and it feels very natural and easy," says Russell. "But this approach has proven to be cost prohibitive because of the number and scale of VMs and the licensing required."
Backup agents are included with VMware and other virtualization products to help administrators integrate VMs into the traditional backup process. The main advantage is cost: The agents are free or add a relatively minimal fee. On the downside, agents force administrators to use a fairly simplistic approach: Admins can archive an entire virtualized server, but not pick and choose volumes or guest operating systems. Nor can server administrators restore specific portions of data, or substantiate (verify the data integrity) of VM volumes.
VM snapshots
A new trend is for companies to create mirrors of the VM volumes, says Russell, because it provides more flexibility, reduces costs and allows a company to substantiate an entire location, which fits into an enterprisewide backup strategy for disaster recovery.
For example, at the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) -- part of the University of California clinical research group in San Francisco -- virtualization backups have become not just a part of disaster planning, but they actually help researchers with clinical trials to fight new diseases.
ITN archives the LUN, or the specific address of the hard disk drive. Using data de-duplication algorithms that weed out redundant data, it keeps multi-terabyte archives of virtual servers. Researchers can request additional archival LUNs, a process that would be difficult or impossible with physical servers.
"The traditional method of putting a tape in a backup system serving multiple servers is outdated," says Michael Williams, ITN's executive director of IT. "Once you move to virtual storage and separation of the volume from the physical disk, you can do very interesting things. The first thing we do when we provision a LUN is we oversubscribe it. A researcher believes they have 2TB volumes -- and they do."
But in reality, the LUNs are thin-provisioned, or allocated just enough storage space on a physical disk, based on snapshot policies, and they might only be 20GB each. That volume of data is backed up every four hours. This is equivalent to a hard crash backup (a complete archive of data that can be restored to a prior state), Williams says.
Williams explains that the archives -- created using Network Appliance Inc.'s SnapShot and SnapMirror -- are then moved to an off-site location in Herndon, Va., and archived further using Veritas NetBackup over a wide-area network to create a full-image backup on low-cost Serial Advanced Technology Attachment drives.
He describes the snapshot process as beneficial to the researchers because it is easier to request a restore and faster than it was in previrtualization days, but it is still complex for IT. A scientist could request a data retrieval, which is similar to a traditional storage-restore request, and not have to wait for IT to access a library of tapes and make the restore. But the virtual restore process is more complex for IT, because staffers might have to, say, find and mount a virtual LUN from a restore point located on a separate backup system, such as a Veritas archive. The end user can access the data in a matter of hours instead of the much longer time frames required by tape.
Another advantage involves data de-duplication, a process in which the backup software is smart enough to see the same data multiple times and keep only one archive of it. At ITN, for example, there are 150 virtual servers, and there may be as many as 100 Windows machines. NetApp can make one copy of an identical 8.5GB image for Windows and create a fingerprint file (a reference point) for each additional archive, which saves on disk space because NetApp does not make multiple backups of the same Windows data.
Continuous data protection
The third popular backup strategy for virtualization is to use a continuous data protection system such as Vizioncore vRanger or PHD Technologies Inc.'s esXpress.
Health First Inc., a group of hospitals and trauma centers based in eastern Florida, is using this strategy. The company runs 300 guest machines on 19 VMware ESX servers connected to a 150TB SAN. Health First uses IBM Tivoli for traditional backup, but because of its large virtual server infrastructure, the company decided to add a continuous backup system.
"We needed faster rebuild time in case of a disaster," says Jeff Allison, a Health First network engineer in charge of virtualization planning. "We use Vizioncore vRanger for hot backups of every virtual machine we have every night," he says. "Backups start at 5:00 p.m. on two different machines and by 2:00 a.m., we have backups for 230 boxes." The remaining 70 VMs are archived by the morning, and performance for the clinical applications is "not affected by the hot backups," Allison says.
Allison explains that the environment is more demanding in terms of uptime requirements for trauma centers and clinics, because data loss at a health facility could mean loss of life.
He describes one scenario where a controller failed on one test/development physical server that caused 80 VM development servers to be unavailable and unusable until a lengthy restore process could be initiated. On average, it could take several hours, he says. With a continuous backup system, the restore would now take about an hour and require perhaps one technician instead of several.
Indiana University presents another case for continuous backups, as opposed to VM mirroring or agents, because of the faster disaster recovery time and more granular data-archiving benefits.
A virtual machine is contained within a file that can be quiesced (archived incrementally) via a snapshot file, says Robert Reynolds, a senior software analyst at the university. "For the majority of our VMs, that quiesced file is stable enough to be then copied as a [disaster recovery] backup," he says. "Obviously, database servers and other transaction in-flight servers need more care in creating a DR backup.
"We run weekly jobs on each of our VMware ESX servers, using PHD's esXpress virtual backup appliances, to create the DR backups for our VMs," Reynolds says. "We create a copy on the local storage of the ESX server and we are in the process of developing a second phase to FTP the DR backup to another server where it will be picked up by Tivoli Storage Manager and sent offsite to Indianapolis, roughly 50 miles from Bloomington."
A blend of approaches
"In the near term, a blend of these technologies might be the best approach -- taking an image-level backup and indexing those files continuously so that companies could do a single file restore, taking snapshots very rapidly, using a traditional backup application and VM agents to index the content on servers," says Gartner's Russell. "It does add more management complexity and another layer of abstraction to traditional backup, but the storage-resource tools are now catching up."
IBM redefines 'virtual' data center
IBM is giving new meaning to the phrase "virtual data center." And it looks a lot more like Second Life than VMware.
Rather than build a virtual world for online gaming or to give users an alternative reality, Big Blue made a virtual world where IT executives can examine and manipulate hardware running in their very real data centers. The IBM project -- called 3-D Data Center -- gives IT shops a 3-dimensional, real-time virtual view of their data center resources, even if they are spread across the globe.
"It's a new way to look at systems and interact with them," says IBM researcher Michael Osias, the man behind this new idea. "Objects aren't just visualizations. You can think of them as little machines."
So instead of battling wizards and warriors, data center administrators get to play with their servers and storage. And it does look something like a game, even if it is not one, Osias notes. IBM contends its new technology will help businesses identify underutilized machines that can be eliminated, distribute workload among data centers, monitor power and cooling, and move processing to cooler sites depending on the weather.
Using avatars, IT operations executives move through their virtual data centers, viewing "a tailored 3-D replica of servers, racks, networking, power and cooling equipment."
A combination of open source software and IBM-built tools, the virtual data center can provide visualizations of any type of hardware, regardless of the vendor, as long as it has a network API. Instead of reading text describing the conditions of a data center, IT managers can look out for flames showing hotspots, examine visualizations that show server utilization rates, or receive alerts about system failures.
Just to make things linguistically confusing, you can even use the virtual world to modify virtual servers (the kind made possible by VMware) in a real data center.
"We have an ability to basically funnel events through the virtual world and back into the real world. Right now it's focused on power management but we'll continue to extend that functionality," Osias explains.
"We can kick off power management of a virtual machine," he continues. Taking an action in the IBM virtual world can send a command to IBM's Enterprise Workload Manager, which executes the corresponding act in a real-life data center.
3-D Data Center was conceived by Osias and colleagues as an experiment last year when IBM was pursuing a big initiative around virtual worlds. Osias decided to build a system of Web-based tools that could aggregate geographically dispersed data center resources into one virtual setting.
IBM built a few basic models, one suited to the banking world, another for the automotive industry, and a third that looks like something out of Star Trek, according to Osias. To make it secure, the virtual world for each customer is hosted on an Intranet rather than the World Wide Web. The virtual world will be deployed in each customer's intranet through an IBM service engagement. IBM officials would not say how much these service engagements cost or how much money Big Blue poured into the project.
There is only one customer fully up and running so far, as the project is just now moving from prototype to beta offering and is being revealed publicly Thursday. The customer is Implenia, a Swiss construction, building services and real estate company that uses 3-D Data Center to manage eight sites.
"The key element in the work for Implenia is IBM's virtual world integration middleware, Holographic Enterprise Interface (HEI), that links real-world data center operations in cyberspace to their Building automation interface," IBM states in a press release. "HEI has a modular and flexible design that allows clients to customize the desired interactions between real and virtual worlds. Each physical data center linked through this technology has an HEI instance that will transmit messages over the private network using Internet standard protocols to the 3-D virtual world server."
IBM's software that renders the 3-D environment is based on OpenSimulator, an open source virtual world creator. The virtual data center used by Implenia and potentially other customers allows for multiple users, enabling collaboration related to a customer's data center. Osias says 3-D Data Center should be generally available later this year, and that IBM will try to add features such as management of disaster recovery.
Rather than build a virtual world for online gaming or to give users an alternative reality, Big Blue made a virtual world where IT executives can examine and manipulate hardware running in their very real data centers. The IBM project -- called 3-D Data Center -- gives IT shops a 3-dimensional, real-time virtual view of their data center resources, even if they are spread across the globe.
"It's a new way to look at systems and interact with them," says IBM researcher Michael Osias, the man behind this new idea. "Objects aren't just visualizations. You can think of them as little machines."
So instead of battling wizards and warriors, data center administrators get to play with their servers and storage. And it does look something like a game, even if it is not one, Osias notes. IBM contends its new technology will help businesses identify underutilized machines that can be eliminated, distribute workload among data centers, monitor power and cooling, and move processing to cooler sites depending on the weather.
Using avatars, IT operations executives move through their virtual data centers, viewing "a tailored 3-D replica of servers, racks, networking, power and cooling equipment."
A combination of open source software and IBM-built tools, the virtual data center can provide visualizations of any type of hardware, regardless of the vendor, as long as it has a network API. Instead of reading text describing the conditions of a data center, IT managers can look out for flames showing hotspots, examine visualizations that show server utilization rates, or receive alerts about system failures.
Just to make things linguistically confusing, you can even use the virtual world to modify virtual servers (the kind made possible by VMware) in a real data center.
"We have an ability to basically funnel events through the virtual world and back into the real world. Right now it's focused on power management but we'll continue to extend that functionality," Osias explains.
"We can kick off power management of a virtual machine," he continues. Taking an action in the IBM virtual world can send a command to IBM's Enterprise Workload Manager, which executes the corresponding act in a real-life data center.
3-D Data Center was conceived by Osias and colleagues as an experiment last year when IBM was pursuing a big initiative around virtual worlds. Osias decided to build a system of Web-based tools that could aggregate geographically dispersed data center resources into one virtual setting.
IBM built a few basic models, one suited to the banking world, another for the automotive industry, and a third that looks like something out of Star Trek, according to Osias. To make it secure, the virtual world for each customer is hosted on an Intranet rather than the World Wide Web. The virtual world will be deployed in each customer's intranet through an IBM service engagement. IBM officials would not say how much these service engagements cost or how much money Big Blue poured into the project.
There is only one customer fully up and running so far, as the project is just now moving from prototype to beta offering and is being revealed publicly Thursday. The customer is Implenia, a Swiss construction, building services and real estate company that uses 3-D Data Center to manage eight sites.
"The key element in the work for Implenia is IBM's virtual world integration middleware, Holographic Enterprise Interface (HEI), that links real-world data center operations in cyberspace to their Building automation interface," IBM states in a press release. "HEI has a modular and flexible design that allows clients to customize the desired interactions between real and virtual worlds. Each physical data center linked through this technology has an HEI instance that will transmit messages over the private network using Internet standard protocols to the 3-D virtual world server."
IBM's software that renders the 3-D environment is based on OpenSimulator, an open source virtual world creator. The virtual data center used by Implenia and potentially other customers allows for multiple users, enabling collaboration related to a customer's data center. Osias says 3-D Data Center should be generally available later this year, and that IBM will try to add features such as management of disaster recovery.
SOA spend up despite unclear benefits
The number of companies investing in service-oriented architecture (SOA) has doubled over the past year in every part of the world, with a typical annual spend of nearly US$1.4 million, according to a new research report from the analyst firm AMR Research that surveyed 405 companies in the U.S., Germany and China.
And SOA is used in a variety of industries 59 percent of retailers have actually used SOA in at least one project, as have 58 percent of distributors, 54 percent of telecoms, and 42 percent of financial services firms. Financial services spend the most on SOA; 63 percent spend more than $1 million, followed by retail with 30 percent spending at least $1 million.
That's the good news.
A mishmash of benefits drives SOA but could slow broad adoption
Now the bad news: "Hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested pursuing these markets in 2008, much of it wasted," said AMR analyst Ian Findley.
The AMR survey found that most companies don't really know why they are investing in SOA, which Findley said makes long-term commitment iffy. Often, there are multiple reasons cited within any organization, letting SOA appear as a buzzword justification for unrelated individual priorities. "People more easily rally around a thing rather than five things," Findley said. That lack of a rallying purpose for SOA calls its momentum into question, he added.
AMR's survey shows the diversity of motivators for SOA investments 16 percent do so to build IT skills in an important new technology area, 18 percent because they believe SOA is the best technology to meet requirements of an individual project, 17 percent do so to reduce IT costs through reuse, 22 percent use SOA to change systems faster, more cheaply, and with less risk, and 14 percent use SOA to modernize their system architecture.
But Findley is concerned that SOA may not get picked up much beyond the early adopters -- mainly financial services, telecommunications, and government organizations that are more often than not predisposed to the value of architecture and thus more willing to pursue SOA for less-quantifiable benefits -- unless a coherent set of benefits is made clear. (Retailers are also early adopters, though mainly as an integration mechanism, not as much for new initiatives, he noted.)
"If we can crystallize the key benefits, other people may follow on," he said. Because SOA affects multiple parts of an organization, Findley said that the specific benefits will be different for the CFO, CIO, software developer, and business unit managers. "There doesn't need to be one common benefit, but these individual benefits should be interlinked," he recommended.
Agility, not reuse, is the real benefit seen
Another danger seen from the SOA survey is that the main benefit that the vendors sell around SOA -- code reuse -- is not the real benefit that early SOA adopters have gotten. Often the code from project A is irrelevant to project B, he noted. That focus on reuse can cause organizations to dismiss SOA's benefits because they're looking at the wrong metric, Findley said.
Early adopters have discovered a harder-to-measure but more practical benefit to SOA: increased agility, Findley said. "Agility" in this context means being able to deploy new projects faster based on having adopted SOA as the fundamental approach to IT, in turn letting the business reap benefits from its IT initiatives faster.
Findley noted that the projects don't happen faster because of code reuse. Instead, it is the changed mindset that SOA brings to development and management of technology as a whole that provides the real benefit, Findley said.
SOA adopters do typically see that improved agility, regardless of what led them to SOA, Findley said: "Very few decide it's not worth it."
And SOA is used in a variety of industries 59 percent of retailers have actually used SOA in at least one project, as have 58 percent of distributors, 54 percent of telecoms, and 42 percent of financial services firms. Financial services spend the most on SOA; 63 percent spend more than $1 million, followed by retail with 30 percent spending at least $1 million.
That's the good news.
A mishmash of benefits drives SOA but could slow broad adoption
Now the bad news: "Hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested pursuing these markets in 2008, much of it wasted," said AMR analyst Ian Findley.
The AMR survey found that most companies don't really know why they are investing in SOA, which Findley said makes long-term commitment iffy. Often, there are multiple reasons cited within any organization, letting SOA appear as a buzzword justification for unrelated individual priorities. "People more easily rally around a thing rather than five things," Findley said. That lack of a rallying purpose for SOA calls its momentum into question, he added.
AMR's survey shows the diversity of motivators for SOA investments 16 percent do so to build IT skills in an important new technology area, 18 percent because they believe SOA is the best technology to meet requirements of an individual project, 17 percent do so to reduce IT costs through reuse, 22 percent use SOA to change systems faster, more cheaply, and with less risk, and 14 percent use SOA to modernize their system architecture.
But Findley is concerned that SOA may not get picked up much beyond the early adopters -- mainly financial services, telecommunications, and government organizations that are more often than not predisposed to the value of architecture and thus more willing to pursue SOA for less-quantifiable benefits -- unless a coherent set of benefits is made clear. (Retailers are also early adopters, though mainly as an integration mechanism, not as much for new initiatives, he noted.)
"If we can crystallize the key benefits, other people may follow on," he said. Because SOA affects multiple parts of an organization, Findley said that the specific benefits will be different for the CFO, CIO, software developer, and business unit managers. "There doesn't need to be one common benefit, but these individual benefits should be interlinked," he recommended.
Agility, not reuse, is the real benefit seen
Another danger seen from the SOA survey is that the main benefit that the vendors sell around SOA -- code reuse -- is not the real benefit that early SOA adopters have gotten. Often the code from project A is irrelevant to project B, he noted. That focus on reuse can cause organizations to dismiss SOA's benefits because they're looking at the wrong metric, Findley said.
Early adopters have discovered a harder-to-measure but more practical benefit to SOA: increased agility, Findley said. "Agility" in this context means being able to deploy new projects faster based on having adopted SOA as the fundamental approach to IT, in turn letting the business reap benefits from its IT initiatives faster.
Findley noted that the projects don't happen faster because of code reuse. Instead, it is the changed mindset that SOA brings to development and management of technology as a whole that provides the real benefit, Findley said.
SOA adopters do typically see that improved agility, regardless of what led them to SOA, Findley said: "Very few decide it's not worth it."
Embedded virtualization set to lure SMBs
Some of the biggest server vendors are starting to ship machines with built-in support for VMware virtualization software. Fujitsu-Siemens began to ship servers with embedded VMware technology Tuesday, while Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM will jump on the bandwagon within 60 days.
All the servers will feature support for VMware's thinned-down ESX 3i hypervisor, which will simplify configuration and increase security.
"You just start the server, answer a couple of questions, and you'll be up and running in a couple minutes," said Robin Prudholm, senior systems engineer at VMware.
The hypervisor has been hardened for improved security, according to Prudholm. The hypervisor software's size, 32M bytes, also improves security by giving hackers a smaller attack surface.
"I think security conscious companies will choose ESX 3i over our normal package because of these improvements," said Prudholm.
Fujitsu-Siemens hopes their servers plus the ease of use of ESX 3i will convince small and medium-size companies to make the jump to virtualization.
"Companies that have a smaller number of servers and still want to consolidate," said Erik Aldrin, product marketing manager, standard servers, at Fujitsu-Siemens.
HP also thinks the introduction of servers with embedded virtualization will open new doors for the technology.
"So far virtualization has mainly been used by large enterprises. But with servers that are ready to go, we also see a potential for medium-sized companies," said Maarten Reinders, HP's industry standard server manager general in Western Europe.
Fujitsu-Siemens' Primergy RX330 S1 and RX300 S4 servers, featuring embedded VMware software, began to ship Tuesday with prices starting at €2,300 (US$3,409).
HP has said it will start shipping 10 Proliant servers with the VMware technology, including current versions of the Proliant DL360 and DL380, as well as its blade server BL460, on March 31.
All the servers will feature support for VMware's thinned-down ESX 3i hypervisor, which will simplify configuration and increase security.
"You just start the server, answer a couple of questions, and you'll be up and running in a couple minutes," said Robin Prudholm, senior systems engineer at VMware.
The hypervisor has been hardened for improved security, according to Prudholm. The hypervisor software's size, 32M bytes, also improves security by giving hackers a smaller attack surface.
"I think security conscious companies will choose ESX 3i over our normal package because of these improvements," said Prudholm.
Fujitsu-Siemens hopes their servers plus the ease of use of ESX 3i will convince small and medium-size companies to make the jump to virtualization.
"Companies that have a smaller number of servers and still want to consolidate," said Erik Aldrin, product marketing manager, standard servers, at Fujitsu-Siemens.
HP also thinks the introduction of servers with embedded virtualization will open new doors for the technology.
"So far virtualization has mainly been used by large enterprises. But with servers that are ready to go, we also see a potential for medium-sized companies," said Maarten Reinders, HP's industry standard server manager general in Western Europe.
Fujitsu-Siemens' Primergy RX330 S1 and RX300 S4 servers, featuring embedded VMware software, began to ship Tuesday with prices starting at €2,300 (US$3,409).
HP has said it will start shipping 10 Proliant servers with the VMware technology, including current versions of the Proliant DL360 and DL380, as well as its blade server BL460, on March 31.
Siemens to cut 3,800 jobs in telecom unit
Siemens plans to cut 3,800 jobs at its Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) subsidiary, including 2,000 jobs in Germany, the company announced Tuesday.
The layoffs are part of an effort to transform SEN into a telecom software and solutions provider from a telecom equipment unit, the company said.
Western telecom equipment makers have come under pressure as Asian manufacturers have ramped up production, driving down prices and profit margins in some product categories.
In addition to job cuts, SEN plans to sell its manufacturing operations, with 3,000 employees worldwide and nearly 1,200 employees in Germany. The SEN plant in Leipzig, Germany, with about 530 employees, and the telecommunications cable business, with about 60 employees, will be sold or dedicated to a partner's products, the company said. SEN is also looking for a partner with an IT partner for about 570 employees involved in direct sales to customers of small and medium-sized telecom systems, it said.
SEN intends to sell or find partners for facilities in Greece and Brazil, which have 270 and 470 employees, respectively. The company said it cannot rule out closing those facilities.
Call centers in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which employ about 1,100 people, are slated to be sold.
SEN declined to specify where the layoffs would be outside Germany. SEN has about 17,600 employees worldwide, said Marc Langendorf, a Siemens spokesman.
The layoffs are part of an effort to transform SEN into a telecom software and solutions provider from a telecom equipment unit, the company said.
Western telecom equipment makers have come under pressure as Asian manufacturers have ramped up production, driving down prices and profit margins in some product categories.
In addition to job cuts, SEN plans to sell its manufacturing operations, with 3,000 employees worldwide and nearly 1,200 employees in Germany. The SEN plant in Leipzig, Germany, with about 530 employees, and the telecommunications cable business, with about 60 employees, will be sold or dedicated to a partner's products, the company said. SEN is also looking for a partner with an IT partner for about 570 employees involved in direct sales to customers of small and medium-sized telecom systems, it said.
SEN intends to sell or find partners for facilities in Greece and Brazil, which have 270 and 470 employees, respectively. The company said it cannot rule out closing those facilities.
Call centers in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, which employ about 1,100 people, are slated to be sold.
SEN declined to specify where the layoffs would be outside Germany. SEN has about 17,600 employees worldwide, said Marc Langendorf, a Siemens spokesman.
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