In a blow against the music industry, the European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that E.U. countries don't have to require Internet service providers to reveal subscriber data for use in civil cases.
The Luxembourg court said E.U. nations may decide on their own whether to require such disclosure, but advised them to seek a balance between disclosing personal information and protecting intellectual property.
Existing E.U. directives on intellectual property do not require disclosure of personal data to ensure effective protection of copyright, the court said in a news release.
The court's decision means that music and film industry groups may have to find other ways in some countries to identify those suspected of illegally sharing files without the permission of the copyright holder.
It also bolsters prevailing opinions in Europe that an IP (Internet protocol) address -- which identifies the computer used by a person -- is personal data that should be protected.
The case, initiated in June 2006, arose after Spanish operator Telefónica resisted turning over subscriber data to Promusicae, a nonprofit organization for music and video publishers in Spain.
Promusicae sought to identify people using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing program. Promusicae asked Telefónica to name the people who held accounts connected with the IP address of the computer used to share files.
Telefónica contended the data could only be released in the course of a criminal investigation or a national or public security matter.
The IP address of a computer can often be linked to the person who holds an account with an Internet service provider, although it won't indicate who was using the computer when the illegal activity happened.
Music industry groups have typically sought to receive damages from those found to be illegally sharing files. Those lawsuits, however, have often been filed against people who hold subscriptions with a provider. In those cases lawyers have argued, mostly unsuccessfully, that the alleged file sharing was perpetrated by people other than those who held the subscriptions.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
EBay unveils lower fees and tighter seller standards
EBay unveiled changes to its online marketplace Tuesday that the company characterizes as sweeping and historic and that are aimed at boosting sales by making the shopping experience simpler and safer.
The changes, which include lowering some fees and raising merchant standards, were announced at the company's eCommerce Forum by John Donahoe, who will succeed Meg Whitman as president and CEO in March.
The changes, which will be implemented at different points in the coming weeks and months, come at a time when eBay is struggling to boost growth of transaction volume and revenue amidst increased competition from the likes of Amazon.com, which in recent years has attracted many merchants away from eBay.
Donahoe said last week during a conference call to discuss eBay's fourth-quarter financials that the eBay marketplace business hasn't been growing as fast as he would like and that changes would be coming to make the shopping experience easier and safer.
EBay's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but its outlook for this year was considered generally disappointing. For example, the conservative 2008 forecast, coupled with slowing growth in the marketplace business, led Citigroup to downgrade the stock to "hold."
While eBay's marketplace "playbook" has served it well for the past 10 years, the e-commerce game has changed significantly so the company must now try bold, new plays, Donahoe said during Tuesday's presentation, which was webcast.
Specifically, buyers have much higher expectations about online shopping than 10 years ago, so eBay must adapt and make their experience on the marketplace a better one, he told more than 200 of the company's largest merchants at the Washington, D.C. event. Likewise, eBay has to do a better job of helping its best merchants be more successful, he said.
"The Web has evolved around us, and what sellers and buyers have come to expect has evolved right along with it. Today, buyers want a very high level of value, selection and convenience. They want to shop on their own terms in a safe, easy-to-use environment. Sellers want a platform that meets the reality of doing business online today and that scales to their needs," Donahoe said.
In short, eBay finds itself at a crossroads where it can't afford to make just incremental changes if it wants to remain a leader and meet its customers' expectations, said Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces. "We need to redo our playbook, we need to redo it fast and we need to take bold actions," he said.
Donahoe announced that eBay will introduce an insertion fee reduction in the U.S. Feb. 20 by cutting the cost of listing items by 25 percent to 50 percent. By reducing the impact of items that don't sell, eBay hopes merchants will list more products. In turn, eBay is increasing the so-called "final value" fees it charges merchants when items are sold. The insertion fee cuts apply to auction and fixed-price items.
For example, the insertion fee for a $25 auction or fixed-priced item will drop from $1.20 to $1.00, while the final value fee will increase from 5.25 percent to 8.75 percent. A full rundown of new fees can be found here.
EBay will also do away with fees it charges U.S. merchants for its "gallery" option, in order to encourage merchants to include more photos with their listings. Fee changes will vary by country.
These two changes will reduce fees for most eBay merchants and, while eBay will see a cut in its fees revenue, it believes the moves are necessary for the overall health of the marketplace, he said. "Our goal is to reduce your risk, improve the overall buyer experience and align our success with yours," he said.
In addition, eBay will alter its search engine so that merchants with lower rates of customer satisfaction get less exposure on search results. Meanwhile, sellers with higher buyer satisfaction ratings will get better exposure in search results.
In particular, eBay wants to penalize sellers that charge excessive fees for shipping and handling, which the company has found is a major turnoff for buyers, said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who spoke after Donahoe.
EBay will also require a "safe payment option," such as PayPal or a major credit card, from merchants with lower customer satisfaction and from those in product categories that generate many buyer complaints. This gives buyers more protection when transacting with these merchants, Cobb said. Moreover, eBay will also raise the requirements for qualifying as a PowerSeller and update its feedback system.
Regarding PowerSeller status, eBay will require, starting in July, that to qualify for the program a merchant have a minimum 4.5 DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) score, in addition to the existing requirements of a 98 percent positive feedback rating and a certain level of sales, Cobb said.
The DSR rating lets buyers not only leave an overall feedback rating of positive, neutral or negative, but also rate the seller specifically in four areas with a scale of one to five stars: accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.
DSR ratings will be used also to determine which merchants get heightened or lowered exposure in eBay's search rankings, Cobb said. "We're linking search with seller performance," Cobb said.
Moreover, for the first time, PowerSellers will get discounts based on high DSR ratings obtained in the previous 30 days. Those with at least 4.6 on all four DSR areas get 5 percent off final value fees, and 15 percent off with ratings of least 4.8.
If these discounts were in place today, about 60 percent of PowerSellers -- about 100,000 -- would qualify for them, Cobb said.
EBay will also revamp its feedback system, in particular to curb what Cobb called "a disturbing trend" of sellers using it to retaliate against buyers by giving them low ratings. This discourages buyers from leaving honest feedback and drives many of them away from eBay.
So, starting in May, sellers will only be allowed to leave positive feedback for buyers, Cobb said. However, eBay will also add protections for sellers against inaccurate feedback from buyers, such as removing negative and neutral feedback when a buyer fails to respond to an "unpaid item" inquiry. In addition, eBay will remove all the negative and neutral feedback from buyers who are suspended.
In addition, PowerSellers will get increased protection from PayPal, which will no longer require them to ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. PayPal is also lifting its $5,000 annual seller protection coverage limit for PowerSellers and making it unlimited, Cobb said.
More details about these and other changes can be found in a blog posting Cobb made on Tuesday morning.
The changes, which include lowering some fees and raising merchant standards, were announced at the company's eCommerce Forum by John Donahoe, who will succeed Meg Whitman as president and CEO in March.
The changes, which will be implemented at different points in the coming weeks and months, come at a time when eBay is struggling to boost growth of transaction volume and revenue amidst increased competition from the likes of Amazon.com, which in recent years has attracted many merchants away from eBay.
Donahoe said last week during a conference call to discuss eBay's fourth-quarter financials that the eBay marketplace business hasn't been growing as fast as he would like and that changes would be coming to make the shopping experience easier and safer.
EBay's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but its outlook for this year was considered generally disappointing. For example, the conservative 2008 forecast, coupled with slowing growth in the marketplace business, led Citigroup to downgrade the stock to "hold."
While eBay's marketplace "playbook" has served it well for the past 10 years, the e-commerce game has changed significantly so the company must now try bold, new plays, Donahoe said during Tuesday's presentation, which was webcast.
Specifically, buyers have much higher expectations about online shopping than 10 years ago, so eBay must adapt and make their experience on the marketplace a better one, he told more than 200 of the company's largest merchants at the Washington, D.C. event. Likewise, eBay has to do a better job of helping its best merchants be more successful, he said.
"The Web has evolved around us, and what sellers and buyers have come to expect has evolved right along with it. Today, buyers want a very high level of value, selection and convenience. They want to shop on their own terms in a safe, easy-to-use environment. Sellers want a platform that meets the reality of doing business online today and that scales to their needs," Donahoe said.
In short, eBay finds itself at a crossroads where it can't afford to make just incremental changes if it wants to remain a leader and meet its customers' expectations, said Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces. "We need to redo our playbook, we need to redo it fast and we need to take bold actions," he said.
Donahoe announced that eBay will introduce an insertion fee reduction in the U.S. Feb. 20 by cutting the cost of listing items by 25 percent to 50 percent. By reducing the impact of items that don't sell, eBay hopes merchants will list more products. In turn, eBay is increasing the so-called "final value" fees it charges merchants when items are sold. The insertion fee cuts apply to auction and fixed-price items.
For example, the insertion fee for a $25 auction or fixed-priced item will drop from $1.20 to $1.00, while the final value fee will increase from 5.25 percent to 8.75 percent. A full rundown of new fees can be found here.
EBay will also do away with fees it charges U.S. merchants for its "gallery" option, in order to encourage merchants to include more photos with their listings. Fee changes will vary by country.
These two changes will reduce fees for most eBay merchants and, while eBay will see a cut in its fees revenue, it believes the moves are necessary for the overall health of the marketplace, he said. "Our goal is to reduce your risk, improve the overall buyer experience and align our success with yours," he said.
In addition, eBay will alter its search engine so that merchants with lower rates of customer satisfaction get less exposure on search results. Meanwhile, sellers with higher buyer satisfaction ratings will get better exposure in search results.
In particular, eBay wants to penalize sellers that charge excessive fees for shipping and handling, which the company has found is a major turnoff for buyers, said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who spoke after Donahoe.
EBay will also require a "safe payment option," such as PayPal or a major credit card, from merchants with lower customer satisfaction and from those in product categories that generate many buyer complaints. This gives buyers more protection when transacting with these merchants, Cobb said. Moreover, eBay will also raise the requirements for qualifying as a PowerSeller and update its feedback system.
Regarding PowerSeller status, eBay will require, starting in July, that to qualify for the program a merchant have a minimum 4.5 DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) score, in addition to the existing requirements of a 98 percent positive feedback rating and a certain level of sales, Cobb said.
The DSR rating lets buyers not only leave an overall feedback rating of positive, neutral or negative, but also rate the seller specifically in four areas with a scale of one to five stars: accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.
DSR ratings will be used also to determine which merchants get heightened or lowered exposure in eBay's search rankings, Cobb said. "We're linking search with seller performance," Cobb said.
Moreover, for the first time, PowerSellers will get discounts based on high DSR ratings obtained in the previous 30 days. Those with at least 4.6 on all four DSR areas get 5 percent off final value fees, and 15 percent off with ratings of least 4.8.
If these discounts were in place today, about 60 percent of PowerSellers -- about 100,000 -- would qualify for them, Cobb said.
EBay will also revamp its feedback system, in particular to curb what Cobb called "a disturbing trend" of sellers using it to retaliate against buyers by giving them low ratings. This discourages buyers from leaving honest feedback and drives many of them away from eBay.
So, starting in May, sellers will only be allowed to leave positive feedback for buyers, Cobb said. However, eBay will also add protections for sellers against inaccurate feedback from buyers, such as removing negative and neutral feedback when a buyer fails to respond to an "unpaid item" inquiry. In addition, eBay will remove all the negative and neutral feedback from buyers who are suspended.
In addition, PowerSellers will get increased protection from PayPal, which will no longer require them to ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. PayPal is also lifting its $5,000 annual seller protection coverage limit for PowerSellers and making it unlimited, Cobb said.
More details about these and other changes can be found in a blog posting Cobb made on Tuesday morning.
Open Solutions Alliance creating European office
The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is adding a chapter based in Europe, the group is expected to announce Tuesday.
OSA, a nonprofit vendor alliance formed in early 2007, advocates for the use of open-source software and works on interoperability issues.
The group hopes that the European chapter will be followed by the additions of other regions, such as Asia and Latin America, according to OSA. The chapters are meant to cater to varying regulatory environments and cultural differences globally, the organization said.
Meanwhile, open-source software has gained major momentum in Europe, according to OSA. Citing figures from the research firm Pierre Audoin Conseil, OSA said the market in France alone for open-source software was €730 million (US$1.07 billion) in 2007, up 66 percent over 2006.
OSA Member companies in Europe include hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Openbravo, project-management company Onepoint and data-integration firm Talend.
Despite plans to create specialized chapters, OSA's overarching goal will remain the same. "We will all work together on interoperability projects -- interoperability is global," said Yves de Montcheuil, vice president of marketing at Talend.
OSA, a nonprofit vendor alliance formed in early 2007, advocates for the use of open-source software and works on interoperability issues.
The group hopes that the European chapter will be followed by the additions of other regions, such as Asia and Latin America, according to OSA. The chapters are meant to cater to varying regulatory environments and cultural differences globally, the organization said.
Meanwhile, open-source software has gained major momentum in Europe, according to OSA. Citing figures from the research firm Pierre Audoin Conseil, OSA said the market in France alone for open-source software was €730 million (US$1.07 billion) in 2007, up 66 percent over 2006.
OSA Member companies in Europe include hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Openbravo, project-management company Onepoint and data-integration firm Talend.
Despite plans to create specialized chapters, OSA's overarching goal will remain the same. "We will all work together on interoperability projects -- interoperability is global," said Yves de Montcheuil, vice president of marketing at Talend.
Intel likely to reveal details of Silverthorne next week
Intel will offer a detailed look at a new processor next week during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that should set the stage for an unexpectedly close battle with Taiwan's Via Technologies.
Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market.
The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor, just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue only one instruction at a time.
If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable computers.
Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.
Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing different operations at the same time.
The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.
Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company, is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate comparison of both chips won't be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked and assessed by independent observers.
Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture will offer 1M byte of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512K bytes of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.
But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it doesn't specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives no indication for how fast these cores will run.
Silverthorne, and a related processor called Diamondville, are widely expected to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.
Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market.
The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor, just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue only one instruction at a time.
If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable computers.
Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.
Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing different operations at the same time.
The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.
Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company, is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate comparison of both chips won't be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked and assessed by independent observers.
Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture will offer 1M byte of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512K bytes of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.
But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it doesn't specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives no indication for how fast these cores will run.
Silverthorne, and a related processor called Diamondville, are widely expected to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.
Bloggers: Early version of Windows 7 leaked to Web
Reports surfaced over the weekend that an early version of Windows 7 has appeared on the Web, but so far only a couple of users claim to have seen the OS, and Microsoft won't confirm such a version exists.
Several bloggers report that Windows 7 Milestone 1, which reportedly was sent out to OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners earlier this month, has appeared online for download via the BitTorrent protocol. While most reports said the torrents that are supposed to be the milestone do not actually contain the OS software, a couple of Web users claim to have installed and used the software.
A member of the Neowin.net user community, who goes by the online handle “Kenipnet,” claims in a post to the blog to have installed Windows 7 on his laptop, though the user claims he was "disappointed" by the OS because it didn't work very well. Neowin is an online community for technology enthusiasts.
"On my primary machine, it asked for my SATA driver (never happened when installing Vista, as my drives were set as IDE in BIOS)," "Kenipnet" wrote in the post. "After adding the driver from my USB thumb drive it would finally install. It didn’t boot after first restart, however. On my laptop it installed perfectly, but with no driver support for the video card. After numerous tries I gave up in the end, so Aero is now left in the dark."
A YouTube user called "zhouxiaohu" posted a video showing a computer that appears to be running Windows 7. The user, who is from China, insisted in English on his Web site that the screenshots of the OS are not fake.
"I’m not a person who makes himself complacent by faking something hot, neither will I be unhappy if someone denies the real information I posted," the post said. Most of the thinknext.net Web site, however, is not written in English.
Windows 7 is the follow-up to Windows Vista, and Microsoft has said it would likely be released in late 2009 or early 2010. Through its public relations firm Monday, Microsoft would not confirm that an early version went out to OEMs, despite reports in the blogosphere to the contrary. The company said it is not ready to discuss any specifics on the next version of Windows 7 and is instead focused on continued adoption of Vista.
It's still unclear if the Windows 7 reports are indeed valid, though it proved good fodder for Internet chatter. A post over the weekend on the Neowin Web site said most of the reports that Windows 7 was available online were false alarms, though users were still replying Monday.
"Anonymous pirates vying to snatch credit for the first Windows 7 torrent have only served to frustrate, with many of the downloaders later verifying the various submissions as fake zero byte ISO images," according to the post. "While we haven't been able to verify for ourselves if indeed a valid Win7 image has been leaked to the pirating community, it sure is stirring up a lot of interest in the past 24 hours!"
Several bloggers report that Windows 7 Milestone 1, which reportedly was sent out to OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners earlier this month, has appeared online for download via the BitTorrent protocol. While most reports said the torrents that are supposed to be the milestone do not actually contain the OS software, a couple of Web users claim to have installed and used the software.
A member of the Neowin.net user community, who goes by the online handle “Kenipnet,” claims in a post to the blog to have installed Windows 7 on his laptop, though the user claims he was "disappointed" by the OS because it didn't work very well. Neowin is an online community for technology enthusiasts.
"On my primary machine, it asked for my SATA driver (never happened when installing Vista, as my drives were set as IDE in BIOS)," "Kenipnet" wrote in the post. "After adding the driver from my USB thumb drive it would finally install. It didn’t boot after first restart, however. On my laptop it installed perfectly, but with no driver support for the video card. After numerous tries I gave up in the end, so Aero is now left in the dark."
A YouTube user called "zhouxiaohu" posted a video showing a computer that appears to be running Windows 7. The user, who is from China, insisted in English on his Web site that the screenshots of the OS are not fake.
"I’m not a person who makes himself complacent by faking something hot, neither will I be unhappy if someone denies the real information I posted," the post said. Most of the thinknext.net Web site, however, is not written in English.
Windows 7 is the follow-up to Windows Vista, and Microsoft has said it would likely be released in late 2009 or early 2010. Through its public relations firm Monday, Microsoft would not confirm that an early version went out to OEMs, despite reports in the blogosphere to the contrary. The company said it is not ready to discuss any specifics on the next version of Windows 7 and is instead focused on continued adoption of Vista.
It's still unclear if the Windows 7 reports are indeed valid, though it proved good fodder for Internet chatter. A post over the weekend on the Neowin Web site said most of the reports that Windows 7 was available online were false alarms, though users were still replying Monday.
"Anonymous pirates vying to snatch credit for the first Windows 7 torrent have only served to frustrate, with many of the downloaders later verifying the various submissions as fake zero byte ISO images," according to the post. "While we haven't been able to verify for ourselves if indeed a valid Win7 image has been leaked to the pirating community, it sure is stirring up a lot of interest in the past 24 hours!"
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Progress Software views BPM with Actional SOA tool
Progress Software is launching its Progress Actional 7.1 SOA management platform Monday, featuring visibility across business processes and into related services and IT infrastructure.
Business processes and BPM systems are tied into the underlying service infrastructure, said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional products at Progress. With Version 7.1, dependencies are revealed between business processes, services, middleware, and databases. Actional can provide proactive management or insight into why a business process failed.
"Now, we can relate the steps in the business process all the way down to the databases at the very end of that chain," so if a database goes down, Actional users can know which steps in the business process might be affected, Foody said.
Also, if a service needs to be changed, or versioned, users can understand the impact of that service alteration. Impacts on applications such as an order entry processing system can be gauged.
Actional's accommodations for BPM are needed, said analyst Frank Kenney, research director at Gartner. "It's something I think is very necessary, and it marks a different movement in the traditional SOA governance technology [space]. It starts to incorporate the notion of integrating with BPM technologies," Kenney said.
Actional is providing visibility into the lifecycle of processes, but it will need to explain its system to customers and prospects, he said.
"The story is incredibly sophisticated, given that many people embarking on SOA governance are still getting their arms around what is a registry and what is a repository," Kenney said.
Progress with Actional 7.1 also has integration with the Lombardi Teamworks BPM system and plans to add integrations with BPM systems from companies such as Software AG and Fujitsu.
Support for Kerberos security also is highlighted. "It makes it easier to tie Windows environments very securely into Unix environments that may be running other security systems like SAML," Foody said.
Also, Actional 7.1 can inspect the payload of messages not based on XML, such as RMI- or Enterprise JavaBeans-based messages. "[This capability] allows you to gain deeper insight into the applications that haven't yet been converted to Web services or may never get converted to Web services," said Foody.
Actional 7.1 is available now with prices starting at US$20,000. Progress acquired Actional about two years ago.
Business processes and BPM systems are tied into the underlying service infrastructure, said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional products at Progress. With Version 7.1, dependencies are revealed between business processes, services, middleware, and databases. Actional can provide proactive management or insight into why a business process failed.
"Now, we can relate the steps in the business process all the way down to the databases at the very end of that chain," so if a database goes down, Actional users can know which steps in the business process might be affected, Foody said.
Also, if a service needs to be changed, or versioned, users can understand the impact of that service alteration. Impacts on applications such as an order entry processing system can be gauged.
Actional's accommodations for BPM are needed, said analyst Frank Kenney, research director at Gartner. "It's something I think is very necessary, and it marks a different movement in the traditional SOA governance technology [space]. It starts to incorporate the notion of integrating with BPM technologies," Kenney said.
Actional is providing visibility into the lifecycle of processes, but it will need to explain its system to customers and prospects, he said.
"The story is incredibly sophisticated, given that many people embarking on SOA governance are still getting their arms around what is a registry and what is a repository," Kenney said.
Progress with Actional 7.1 also has integration with the Lombardi Teamworks BPM system and plans to add integrations with BPM systems from companies such as Software AG and Fujitsu.
Support for Kerberos security also is highlighted. "It makes it easier to tie Windows environments very securely into Unix environments that may be running other security systems like SAML," Foody said.
Also, Actional 7.1 can inspect the payload of messages not based on XML, such as RMI- or Enterprise JavaBeans-based messages. "[This capability] allows you to gain deeper insight into the applications that haven't yet been converted to Web services or may never get converted to Web services," said Foody.
Actional 7.1 is available now with prices starting at US$20,000. Progress acquired Actional about two years ago.
Cisco's Nexus is big -- and a big deal
It's hard to overstate how important the Nexus data-center switching platform, set to be unveiled Monday, is to Cisco Systems: for the dominant networking vendor's enterprise business, it's the biggest thing since the Catalyst 6000, which made its debut in 1999, according to the two key executives on the project.
At a dinner with press last week, they compared it to the CRS-1 (Carrier Routing System), a huge switch for the core of carrier networks that Cisco rolled out in 2004. To bring that platform to life, the company developed a new version of its flagship IOS (Internetworking Operating System) software and engineered the hardware to scale up to 92T bps (bits per second) of throughput. The core of the Internet is Cisco's turf, and it wasn't willing to give any ground to upstarts.
The Nexus brings Cisco into not just a new territory for its business, but a new product category: a unified switch that spans storage and computing in data centers and has security built in. Given the stakes, superlatives are natural.
- A single Nexus chassis will be able to handle more than 15T bps of traffic ripping through a data center, up from just 2T bps for a current Catalyst 6500 switch.
- At that rate, the switch could run 5 million concurrent transcontinental conferencing sessions using Cisco's TelePresence Collaboration system. It could also copy the entire searchable Internet in 7.5 minutes.
- One interface module for the Nexus 7000 chassis will come with 32 10G bps ports, and the platform is designed to support future interfaces including 100G bps.
- The company spent about $250 million on research and development for the new platform, and at its peak, the Nexus R&D team numbered more than 500 engineers, according to Tom Edsall, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center Business Unit.
As with the Catalyst 6000 Series and the CRS-1, Cisco developed the Nexus with an eye to long-term needs. Where the CRS marked the debut of IOS XR, the first modular version of IOS, the Nexus will have Cisco's first OS that can be fully virtualized, called NX-OS. The Nexus will also break new ground with its lossless switching fabric, a departure from traditional Ethernet -- though backward compatible with it, Cisco said.
The system also represents a gamble on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), a still-emerging standard for sending traditional Fibre Channel storage network traffic over Ethernet. Though the new standard will probably succeed with the backing of Cisco and other big vendors, the installed base of Fibre Channel is huge, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. There will be a proving period for Ethernet as a reliable, lossless data center transport, he said.
Cisco expects the uptake of the new platform to take time, just as it did with the CRS. The first Nexus product will go on sale in the second quarter of this year, and in the first year Cisco expects to see mostly trials of the new system, said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's data center group. Deployments will probably start to pick up in the second, third and fourth years after the introduction, she said.
But just as the opportunity was huge for the CRS, as video and other traffic rose fast on carrier networks, the chance to capture next-generation data centers is likely to justify Cisco's efforts on the Nexus line. Web-based services and applications, as well as outsourced computing offerings from Amazon.com and other companies, are powering the growth of massive data centers. Microsoft's MSN division is a test customer of the Nexus, said Ullal. Asked whether the mighty Google would buy in as well, Ullal said, "I would hope so."
At a dinner with press last week, they compared it to the CRS-1 (Carrier Routing System), a huge switch for the core of carrier networks that Cisco rolled out in 2004. To bring that platform to life, the company developed a new version of its flagship IOS (Internetworking Operating System) software and engineered the hardware to scale up to 92T bps (bits per second) of throughput. The core of the Internet is Cisco's turf, and it wasn't willing to give any ground to upstarts.
The Nexus brings Cisco into not just a new territory for its business, but a new product category: a unified switch that spans storage and computing in data centers and has security built in. Given the stakes, superlatives are natural.
- A single Nexus chassis will be able to handle more than 15T bps of traffic ripping through a data center, up from just 2T bps for a current Catalyst 6500 switch.
- At that rate, the switch could run 5 million concurrent transcontinental conferencing sessions using Cisco's TelePresence Collaboration system. It could also copy the entire searchable Internet in 7.5 minutes.
- One interface module for the Nexus 7000 chassis will come with 32 10G bps ports, and the platform is designed to support future interfaces including 100G bps.
- The company spent about $250 million on research and development for the new platform, and at its peak, the Nexus R&D team numbered more than 500 engineers, according to Tom Edsall, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Cisco's Data Center Business Unit.
As with the Catalyst 6000 Series and the CRS-1, Cisco developed the Nexus with an eye to long-term needs. Where the CRS marked the debut of IOS XR, the first modular version of IOS, the Nexus will have Cisco's first OS that can be fully virtualized, called NX-OS. The Nexus will also break new ground with its lossless switching fabric, a departure from traditional Ethernet -- though backward compatible with it, Cisco said.
The system also represents a gamble on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), a still-emerging standard for sending traditional Fibre Channel storage network traffic over Ethernet. Though the new standard will probably succeed with the backing of Cisco and other big vendors, the installed base of Fibre Channel is huge, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. There will be a proving period for Ethernet as a reliable, lossless data center transport, he said.
Cisco expects the uptake of the new platform to take time, just as it did with the CRS. The first Nexus product will go on sale in the second quarter of this year, and in the first year Cisco expects to see mostly trials of the new system, said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's data center group. Deployments will probably start to pick up in the second, third and fourth years after the introduction, she said.
But just as the opportunity was huge for the CRS, as video and other traffic rose fast on carrier networks, the chance to capture next-generation data centers is likely to justify Cisco's efforts on the Nexus line. Web-based services and applications, as well as outsourced computing offerings from Amazon.com and other companies, are powering the growth of massive data centers. Microsoft's MSN division is a test customer of the Nexus, said Ullal. Asked whether the mighty Google would buy in as well, Ullal said, "I would hope so."
Swedish prosecutors close in on The Pirate Bay
Swedish prosecutors have until Thursday to file charges against The Pirate Bay, one of the most widely used search engines for locating music and movies on the Internet.
The deadline was set by a Swedish court last year after The Pirate Bay asked the authorities to return servers seized in a raid, said Peter Sunde, one of The Pirate Bay's operators, on Monday.
Prosecutors may charge up to five people associated with The Pirate Bay with aiding copyright infringement, Sunde said. However, Sunde maintains the Pirate Bay does not violate Swedish law.
"There's nothing that says what we are doing is illegal," Sunde said.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for torrents, which are small information files that enable content to be downloaded via the BitTorrent protocol.
The content isn't hosted on The Pirate Bay's servers but instead on users' computers. The torrent, when dropped into a BitTorrent software program, will initiate the download of a file from other computers sharing it on the BitTorrent network.
Torrent search engines have come under legal fire before, and the Pirate Bay has since set up servers outside the country to avoid further trouble with Swedish authorities. Sunde said he has received 4,000 pages of material from the prosecutors documenting their investigation.
The Pirate Bay has been targeted by music and movie industry associations, which say it enables piracy of content under copyright and should be shut down.
BitTorrent itself is now a fledgling company that legally uses P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology. In 2005, it reworked its search engine, removing links to torrents that pointed to copyright content.
The Pirate Bay generates money from advertising on the site, although Sunde said the revenue only covers hosting and hardware costs. The site recently announced it has reached 10 million users with about 1 million torrents.
It's not the only legal case involving The Pirate Bay. Last September, The Pirate Bay filed a criminal complaint against content companies that hired MediaDefender, a company that specializes in disrupting P-to-P networks in hopes of making file sharing too frustrating.
The Pirate Bay alleges that MediaDefender attacked its operations by distributing fake torrent files and other methods.
The deadline was set by a Swedish court last year after The Pirate Bay asked the authorities to return servers seized in a raid, said Peter Sunde, one of The Pirate Bay's operators, on Monday.
Prosecutors may charge up to five people associated with The Pirate Bay with aiding copyright infringement, Sunde said. However, Sunde maintains the Pirate Bay does not violate Swedish law.
"There's nothing that says what we are doing is illegal," Sunde said.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine for torrents, which are small information files that enable content to be downloaded via the BitTorrent protocol.
The content isn't hosted on The Pirate Bay's servers but instead on users' computers. The torrent, when dropped into a BitTorrent software program, will initiate the download of a file from other computers sharing it on the BitTorrent network.
Torrent search engines have come under legal fire before, and the Pirate Bay has since set up servers outside the country to avoid further trouble with Swedish authorities. Sunde said he has received 4,000 pages of material from the prosecutors documenting their investigation.
The Pirate Bay has been targeted by music and movie industry associations, which say it enables piracy of content under copyright and should be shut down.
BitTorrent itself is now a fledgling company that legally uses P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology. In 2005, it reworked its search engine, removing links to torrents that pointed to copyright content.
The Pirate Bay generates money from advertising on the site, although Sunde said the revenue only covers hosting and hardware costs. The site recently announced it has reached 10 million users with about 1 million torrents.
It's not the only legal case involving The Pirate Bay. Last September, The Pirate Bay filed a criminal complaint against content companies that hired MediaDefender, a company that specializes in disrupting P-to-P networks in hopes of making file sharing too frustrating.
The Pirate Bay alleges that MediaDefender attacked its operations by distributing fake torrent files and other methods.
Cisco's Nexus forms core of data-center drive
As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.
On Monday, the company is set to unveil a data-center networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.
Cisco is already a leading player in data-center networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at US$75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.
Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management's current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it's hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.
"I'm looking at a little over ten years' capacity," Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15T bits per second. "The capacity to grow is huge," he said.
Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn't tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those data centers, he said.
Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of data centers that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.
At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.
Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.
The network's role in data centers is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It's now the "orchestrator" of the data center, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of data centers want to see total virtualization of the data center, which could boost efficiency, they aren't yet ready for it.
"We're just entering the very early stages of the virtual data center," Kerravala said. "This is probably at least two years away."
Cisco is best positioned to build the core of data centers because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.
"For Cisco, it's very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack," said IDC's Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of data centers won't be a walk in the park, she cautioned.
"Cisco's in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the data center is and are willing to invest the R&D dollars," Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco's peril, data center administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the "crown jewels" of the enterprise, she said.
On Monday, the company is set to unveil a data-center networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.
Cisco is already a leading player in data-center networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at US$75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.
Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management's current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it's hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.
"I'm looking at a little over ten years' capacity," Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15T bits per second. "The capacity to grow is huge," he said.
Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn't tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those data centers, he said.
Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of data centers that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.
At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.
Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.
The network's role in data centers is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It's now the "orchestrator" of the data center, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of data centers want to see total virtualization of the data center, which could boost efficiency, they aren't yet ready for it.
"We're just entering the very early stages of the virtual data center," Kerravala said. "This is probably at least two years away."
Cisco is best positioned to build the core of data centers because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.
"For Cisco, it's very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack," said IDC's Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of data centers won't be a walk in the park, she cautioned.
"Cisco's in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the data center is and are willing to invest the R&D dollars," Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco's peril, data center administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the "crown jewels" of the enterprise, she said.
Nokia to buy software developer Trolltech for $153M
Nokia has offered to buy Trolltech, the Norwegian developer of a widely used application framework, for 844 million Norwegian kroner (US$153 million) in cash. Nokia hopes the Trolltech development team will give its own software efforts a boost.
Trolltech develops Qtopia, a framework used to build user interfaces for mobile and embedded devices, and Qt, a cross-platform application development framework.
Nokia hopes to use Trolltech's expertise to improve the interfaces on its S40 mobile phone and S60 smartphone platforms, but Trolltech targets many software platforms with its application frameworks.
In 2006, Samsung unveiled a reference design for a mobile phone running Qtopia Phone Edition on top of a Linux operating system. And the Trolltech team has been working since late 2006 on a version of Qt for Microsoft's Windows CE and Windows Mobile platforms.
Qt is also used in a variety of widely used desktop software, including Skype's Internet telephony application, the Google Earth satellite photo browser, and Adobe Photoshop Album, now part of the Photoshop Elements image editor, according to Trolltech.
The framework is available under commercial and open-source licenses: it is also used by the developers of KDE, a desktop environment for Linux operating systems. Trolltech recently updated the licensing conditions for Qt, making the code available under the GPLv3 license in addition to the GPLv2 license it already uses.
The Trolltech team will become part of Nokia's research and development group, where it plans to continue its work with the developers of KDE.
Despite the close relationship Nokia will now have with the developers of KDE, the company will continue to use a rival software platform in its Linux-based N800 and N810 mobile Internet devices.
"Our platform for Internet tablets will continue to be based on the Gnome environment," said Kai Öistämö, Nokia's executive vice president for devices.
However, Nokia will use Qt in its S40 and S60 platforms, Öistämö said. He would not say when phones containing the code will reach the market.
Nokia has pledged to continue offering commercial and open source licenses for Qt and other Trolltech products as it continues their future development.
The two companies expect to complete the acquisition in the second quarter. The deal requires the approval of holders of 90 percent of Trolltech's shares. Nokia already has support from the holders of 66 percent of the shares, it said.
Trolltech develops Qtopia, a framework used to build user interfaces for mobile and embedded devices, and Qt, a cross-platform application development framework.
Nokia hopes to use Trolltech's expertise to improve the interfaces on its S40 mobile phone and S60 smartphone platforms, but Trolltech targets many software platforms with its application frameworks.
In 2006, Samsung unveiled a reference design for a mobile phone running Qtopia Phone Edition on top of a Linux operating system. And the Trolltech team has been working since late 2006 on a version of Qt for Microsoft's Windows CE and Windows Mobile platforms.
Qt is also used in a variety of widely used desktop software, including Skype's Internet telephony application, the Google Earth satellite photo browser, and Adobe Photoshop Album, now part of the Photoshop Elements image editor, according to Trolltech.
The framework is available under commercial and open-source licenses: it is also used by the developers of KDE, a desktop environment for Linux operating systems. Trolltech recently updated the licensing conditions for Qt, making the code available under the GPLv3 license in addition to the GPLv2 license it already uses.
The Trolltech team will become part of Nokia's research and development group, where it plans to continue its work with the developers of KDE.
Despite the close relationship Nokia will now have with the developers of KDE, the company will continue to use a rival software platform in its Linux-based N800 and N810 mobile Internet devices.
"Our platform for Internet tablets will continue to be based on the Gnome environment," said Kai Öistämö, Nokia's executive vice president for devices.
However, Nokia will use Qt in its S40 and S60 platforms, Öistämö said. He would not say when phones containing the code will reach the market.
Nokia has pledged to continue offering commercial and open source licenses for Qt and other Trolltech products as it continues their future development.
The two companies expect to complete the acquisition in the second quarter. The deal requires the approval of holders of 90 percent of Trolltech's shares. Nokia already has support from the holders of 66 percent of the shares, it said.
Gartner: HD DVD price cuts only prolong agony
Price cuts by Toshiba on its HD DVD players in the U.S. earlier this month may prove to be "useless resistance" in the battle against the rival Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, according to Gartner.
The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD (high definition digital video disc) in the consumer market by the end of 2008, becoming the next generation replacement for DVDs.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two, Paramount and Universal.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the U.S. Jan. 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to US$149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the U.S. company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a display of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
An Xbox 360 booth at the game show displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and games for the format, but a Microsoft spokesman could not be reached for comment on the total number of games already published in the format.
The market research company expects Blu-ray Disc to win the battle against HD DVD (high definition digital video disc) in the consumer market by the end of 2008, becoming the next generation replacement for DVDs.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content. Five of the seven major Hollywood studios now back Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two, Paramount and Universal.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the U.S. Jan. 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to US$149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the U.S. company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a display of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
An Xbox 360 booth at the game show displayed the HD DVD logo and showed movies and games for the format, but a Microsoft spokesman could not be reached for comment on the total number of games already published in the format.
PayPal buys Fraud Sciences for $169M
EBay's online payments division, PayPal, will pay $169 million for an Israeli security company specializing in detecting online fraud, the companies said Monday. The deal should close within 30 days.
Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions. That technology will be folded into PayPal's antifraud systems, which will be "significantly" improved this year, eBay said.
Fraud Sciences' Chief Operating Officer, Yossi Barak, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf will move to PayPal's technology and fraud management teams.
PayPal lets two users exchange money online via e-mail addresses. The ease at which people can transfer money has also made it one of the most highly targeted brands for phishing scams, where fraudulent Web sites mimicking real sites are set up in order to steal people's log-in details.
PayPal has taken other steps to shore up its defenses. Early last year, it began offering a keychain with a one-time numeric passcode that users enter in addition to their log-in and password. The passcode expires after 30-seconds, which greatly reduces a hacker's window of opportunity to get access to someone's account.
PayPal has also pushed for free e-mail providers to block e-mail sent without digital signatures. That would potentially mean fewer scam e-mails would land in people's inboxes, reducing the chance of fraud, although providers have yet to make a unified commitment.
Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions. That technology will be folded into PayPal's antifraud systems, which will be "significantly" improved this year, eBay said.
Fraud Sciences' Chief Operating Officer, Yossi Barak, and founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf will move to PayPal's technology and fraud management teams.
PayPal lets two users exchange money online via e-mail addresses. The ease at which people can transfer money has also made it one of the most highly targeted brands for phishing scams, where fraudulent Web sites mimicking real sites are set up in order to steal people's log-in details.
PayPal has taken other steps to shore up its defenses. Early last year, it began offering a keychain with a one-time numeric passcode that users enter in addition to their log-in and password. The passcode expires after 30-seconds, which greatly reduces a hacker's window of opportunity to get access to someone's account.
PayPal has also pushed for free e-mail providers to block e-mail sent without digital signatures. That would potentially mean fewer scam e-mails would land in people's inboxes, reducing the chance of fraud, although providers have yet to make a unified commitment.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Palm to close retail stores
Palm plans to close its retail stores in an effort to focus on fewer programs and better compete, the company said on Thursday.
All of Palm's eight branded retail stores, as well as its 26 stores within Airport Wireless shops, will close.
The move may stem from increased competition from Research In Motion's BlackBerry products. Prior to about a year ago, BlackBerry dominated the enterprise market and Palm was popular among prosumers, who typically buy devices in retail outlets, said Bill Hughes, an analyst at In-Stat. But since then, BlackBerry has grown more successful at selling its handhelds at retail, encroaching on Palm's traditional prosumer market, he said.
The stores didn't make much sense for Palm from the beginning, according to Hughes. "This doesn't really surprise me," he said. Usually, manufacturers open their own stores when their retail distribution strategy isn't working, he said. But Palm has reported a string of quarterly losses and may have decided to close the stores and boost its efforts to sell through other retail outlets as a way to cut costs.
Palm said the store closings come as the company continues to focus on core business initiatives, consolidating resources behind fewer programs. For a similar reason, it cancelled its controversial smartphone companion product, the Foleo, that was scheduled for release in the middle of 2007.
Palm has struggled over the past couple of years as the smartphone market grows increasingly crowded, and as it tries to phase out its PDA (personal digital assistant) business. The company is building a new Linux-based operating system that is scheduled to be released at the end of this year, with commercial products hitting the market shortly after. The software, which many thought would hit the market at the end of last year, will compete with Google's Android Linux-based smartphone operating system. Phones based on Android are expected to ship starting in the second half of this year.
All of Palm's eight branded retail stores, as well as its 26 stores within Airport Wireless shops, will close.
The move may stem from increased competition from Research In Motion's BlackBerry products. Prior to about a year ago, BlackBerry dominated the enterprise market and Palm was popular among prosumers, who typically buy devices in retail outlets, said Bill Hughes, an analyst at In-Stat. But since then, BlackBerry has grown more successful at selling its handhelds at retail, encroaching on Palm's traditional prosumer market, he said.
The stores didn't make much sense for Palm from the beginning, according to Hughes. "This doesn't really surprise me," he said. Usually, manufacturers open their own stores when their retail distribution strategy isn't working, he said. But Palm has reported a string of quarterly losses and may have decided to close the stores and boost its efforts to sell through other retail outlets as a way to cut costs.
Palm said the store closings come as the company continues to focus on core business initiatives, consolidating resources behind fewer programs. For a similar reason, it cancelled its controversial smartphone companion product, the Foleo, that was scheduled for release in the middle of 2007.
Palm has struggled over the past couple of years as the smartphone market grows increasingly crowded, and as it tries to phase out its PDA (personal digital assistant) business. The company is building a new Linux-based operating system that is scheduled to be released at the end of this year, with commercial products hitting the market shortly after. The software, which many thought would hit the market at the end of last year, will compete with Google's Android Linux-based smartphone operating system. Phones based on Android are expected to ship starting in the second half of this year.
Hackers hit Scientology with online attack
A group of hackers calling itself "Anonymous" has hit the Church of Scientology's Web site with an online attack.
The attack was launched Jan. 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing," according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous.
Anonymous claims to have knocked the Church's Web site offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which many computers bombard the victim's server with requests, overwhelming it with data in the hope of ultimately knocking the system offline. True to its name, Anonymous does not disclose the true identities of its members.
The attacks were spurred by the Church's efforts to remove video of movie star Tom Cruise professing his admiration for the religion, according to an Anonymous video manifesto posted to Youtube.
"For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form," a creepy computerized voice states in the video. Anonymous followed up this dispatch with a second video blasting the media for failing to completely report the group's criticisms of the church. This video was taken down Friday by Youtube, citing a "terms of use violation."
Anonymous has managed to generate a measurable attack against the Scientology.org Web site. Over the past few days, the site was hit with several DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which flooded it with as much as 220M bps of traffic, according to Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks, whose company compiles data on Internet attacks.
The Anonymous campaign shows some level of organization. "220M bps is probably about in the middle of attack sizes," Nazario said. "It's not just one or two guys hanging out in the university dorms doing this."
On average, the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and used up 168M bps of bandwidth. In the past year, Arbor has seen attacks on other sites hit 40G bps, or 200 times the strength of the Anonymous event.
Shortly after it was hit with the DDOS flood, the Scientology.org Web site was moved to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies, according to data compiled by Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company. Prolexic specializes in protecting companies from DDOS attacks.
A Prolexic spokeswoman confirmed that the Church of Scientology is one of the company's clients, but declined to offer more details on the matter. The Church of Scientology did not answer questions relating to the online attacks, but in a statement it said that the controversy over the Tom Cruise video had driven traffic to its Web site.
The secretive Church of Scientology's practices, including its efforts to use copyright law to restrict the dissemination of information about the church, have engendered a lot of criticism within the Internet community. But one Web site set up to criticize Scientology -- called Operation Clambake -- called the DDOS attacks a bad idea. "Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card," wrote Andreas Heldal-Lund, the Web site's owner. "They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy."
If publicity was Anonymous' ultimate goal, the group has had some success. Late in the day Friday, seven of the top 10 stories on the Digg.com news-linking site related to Scientology or to Anonymous' communiques.
Although the group's Web page exhorts participants to "begin bumping Digg," Anonymous did not manipulate the news site's promotional algorithm system, which determines which stories get top billing, according to Digg CEO Jay Adelson.
"They must have done a very good job of bringing in a diverse set of interests," he said. "It just happened to hit a nerve that the Digg community was interested in."
It is unusual for Digg's front page to be so dominated by a single topic, but not unprecedented, Adelson said. Last year's shootings at Virginia Tech and the 2005 terrorist bombings in London achieved a comparable level of coverage. "In the history of Digg, there's no question that the topic of Scientology has been of great interest to the community," he said. "I can't explain why."
The attack was launched Jan. 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing," according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous.
Anonymous claims to have knocked the Church's Web site offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which many computers bombard the victim's server with requests, overwhelming it with data in the hope of ultimately knocking the system offline. True to its name, Anonymous does not disclose the true identities of its members.
The attacks were spurred by the Church's efforts to remove video of movie star Tom Cruise professing his admiration for the religion, according to an Anonymous video manifesto posted to Youtube.
"For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form," a creepy computerized voice states in the video. Anonymous followed up this dispatch with a second video blasting the media for failing to completely report the group's criticisms of the church. This video was taken down Friday by Youtube, citing a "terms of use violation."
Anonymous has managed to generate a measurable attack against the Scientology.org Web site. Over the past few days, the site was hit with several DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which flooded it with as much as 220M bps of traffic, according to Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks, whose company compiles data on Internet attacks.
The Anonymous campaign shows some level of organization. "220M bps is probably about in the middle of attack sizes," Nazario said. "It's not just one or two guys hanging out in the university dorms doing this."
On average, the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and used up 168M bps of bandwidth. In the past year, Arbor has seen attacks on other sites hit 40G bps, or 200 times the strength of the Anonymous event.
Shortly after it was hit with the DDOS flood, the Scientology.org Web site was moved to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies, according to data compiled by Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company. Prolexic specializes in protecting companies from DDOS attacks.
A Prolexic spokeswoman confirmed that the Church of Scientology is one of the company's clients, but declined to offer more details on the matter. The Church of Scientology did not answer questions relating to the online attacks, but in a statement it said that the controversy over the Tom Cruise video had driven traffic to its Web site.
The secretive Church of Scientology's practices, including its efforts to use copyright law to restrict the dissemination of information about the church, have engendered a lot of criticism within the Internet community. But one Web site set up to criticize Scientology -- called Operation Clambake -- called the DDOS attacks a bad idea. "Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card," wrote Andreas Heldal-Lund, the Web site's owner. "They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy."
If publicity was Anonymous' ultimate goal, the group has had some success. Late in the day Friday, seven of the top 10 stories on the Digg.com news-linking site related to Scientology or to Anonymous' communiques.
Although the group's Web page exhorts participants to "begin bumping Digg," Anonymous did not manipulate the news site's promotional algorithm system, which determines which stories get top billing, according to Digg CEO Jay Adelson.
"They must have done a very good job of bringing in a diverse set of interests," he said. "It just happened to hit a nerve that the Digg community was interested in."
It is unusual for Digg's front page to be so dominated by a single topic, but not unprecedented, Adelson said. Last year's shootings at Virginia Tech and the 2005 terrorist bombings in London achieved a comparable level of coverage. "In the history of Digg, there's no question that the topic of Scientology has been of great interest to the community," he said. "I can't explain why."
Lenovo enters the server business
Lenovo announced its intent to jump into the server business by licensing x86 server technology from IBM, helping extend its product offerings to small and medium-sized businesses.
Under the agreement, Lenovo will manufacture one- and two-way x86 servers based on IBM's System x technology, which Lenovo will distribute under its own brand name.
The servers will add to Lenovo's corporate product lineup that includes ThinkPad laptops and Think workstations. The company also distributes IdeaPad notebooks for the consumer market.
This will be a new business for Lenovo, as the company does not sell servers outside China, said Ray Gorman, executive director of external communications at Lenovo. Lenovo will start distributing the servers worldwide within the next year.
IBM will continue to distribute System x servers under its own brand name, said Tim Breuer, an IBM spokesman. IBM is not worried about competition from Lenovo, Breuer said, adding that the deal would in fact boost IBM's licensing and financing business.
Lenovo also has an excellent reach to companies with less than 500 employees, so the deal will be a natural extension of IBM's server distribution channel, Breuer said. It will give IBM a better reach to SMB customers globally, Breuer said.
The companies have been partners since Lenovo bought IBM's PC business in 2004 for US$1.25 billion.
Lenovo will compete with HP and Dell in the global x86 server market, which grew at a clip of 9.5 percent in the third quarter of 2007, according to numbers from analyst firm Gartner. HP was the top vendor, with a 30 percent market share, followed by Dell and IBM.
Under the agreement, Lenovo will manufacture one- and two-way x86 servers based on IBM's System x technology, which Lenovo will distribute under its own brand name.
The servers will add to Lenovo's corporate product lineup that includes ThinkPad laptops and Think workstations. The company also distributes IdeaPad notebooks for the consumer market.
This will be a new business for Lenovo, as the company does not sell servers outside China, said Ray Gorman, executive director of external communications at Lenovo. Lenovo will start distributing the servers worldwide within the next year.
IBM will continue to distribute System x servers under its own brand name, said Tim Breuer, an IBM spokesman. IBM is not worried about competition from Lenovo, Breuer said, adding that the deal would in fact boost IBM's licensing and financing business.
Lenovo also has an excellent reach to companies with less than 500 employees, so the deal will be a natural extension of IBM's server distribution channel, Breuer said. It will give IBM a better reach to SMB customers globally, Breuer said.
The companies have been partners since Lenovo bought IBM's PC business in 2004 for US$1.25 billion.
Lenovo will compete with HP and Dell in the global x86 server market, which grew at a clip of 9.5 percent in the third quarter of 2007, according to numbers from analyst firm Gartner. HP was the top vendor, with a 30 percent market share, followed by Dell and IBM.
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