Oracle said Wednesday that its third-quarter revenues were up 21 percent to US$5.3 billion compared to the same quarter last year, defying the widespread malaise in the U.S. economy.
Earnings per share grew 30 percent to $.26 per share compared to the same quarter in 2007. Net income for the quarter, which ended February 28, rose 30 percent to $1.3 billion.
Total software revenues grew 21 percent to $4.2 billion, with new license revenue for databases and middleware up by 20 percent, and for applications by 7 percent. Service revenues rose 21 percent to $1.1 billion over the same period in 2007.
Excluding one-time charges, net income was up 22 percent to $1.6 billion and earnings per share grew 23 percent to $.30, Oracle said.
"I think in the context of the economy we delivered a good quarter," said Oracle's president, Charles Phillips, during a conference call. "We've been through this before and we know how to adjust. It is an [economic] environment that favors large, stable providers."
He and other company executives predicted that Oracle's fortunes would improve in its next earnings report.
"A lot of people have annual buying cycles around our Q4," Phillips said. "Customers think they're going to get a better deal if they wait until Q4."
Oracle has been on a high-dollar buying spree for the past few years, most notably its recent $8.5 billion bid for middleware rival BEA Systems.
Some have suggested that the acquisition strategy would help shield Oracle from revenue losses. In addition, like rival IBM, a significant portion of Oracle's revenue comes from overseas sales, meaning it can weather tough economic conditions stateside and also benefit from the ongoing weakness in the dollar.
Roughly half of the company's Q3 revenues came from outside the U.S. Revenue in the Americas stood at $2.7 billion, with $1.87 billion coming from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and $771 million in Asia-Pacific.
CEO Larry Ellison said the pending acquisition and subsequent integration of BEA and its product line should go smoothly compared to past integrations.
"It's a shorter process because both BEA and Oracle develop middleware according to industry standards. It's very easy for us to consolidate the products," he said. "The integration of BEA should happen more quickly, both on the selling side and on the development side, than any of our other acquisitions."
The 7 percent increase in Oracle's application revenue should be viewed in the proper context, Ellison argued. "We just had a very strong quarter a year ago," he said. That makes the most recent quarter's growth look small by comparison, he said. "We think our Q3 applications business was quite good," Ellison said.
Shares of Oracle fell about $1.81 to $19.13 in after-hours trading.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Google's paid search growth soft again in February
For the second straight month, a comScore report suggests that Google's revenue engine is slowing down, highlighting again the perils of the company's overwhelming dependence on a single type of online advertising to fuel its business.
The report is available only to comScore clients, but a comScore spokesman said that its findings are accurately rendered in a note authored Wednesday by Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney and James Samford.
A key takeaway from the Citigroup analysts: In February, clicks on Google's U.S. search ads grew only 3.1 percent year-on-year. Considering that February had 29 days, the growth rate would probably have been flat without the extra day, Mahaney and Samford wrote.
Coupled with a 0.3 percent year-on-year decline in January, also per comScore, a trend is emerging that Google's pay-per-click (PPC) ad business may be losing steam, after powering the search giant to mindblowing levels of revenue and profit growth for years.
While the news is of concern mostly to investors, it is also of interest for companies investing in Google's enterprise software products, like the fee-based version of the Google Apps suite and the Google Search Appliance. This is because the robust growth of Google's PPC ad business is what has allowed the company in recent years to fund its endeavors in enterprise search and hosted collaboration and communication suites. Should the PPC business slow down significantly, it will be interesting to see how that may affect Google's investment in its enterprise software unit, which generates a small percentage of the company's revenue.
Unfortunately for Google, it lacks a complementary revenue stream at the moment, despite years of actively trying to diversify into other forms of online ads, like banner ads, and into offline ads, like magazine, radio and TV advertising. Google still depends almost entirely on the PPC text ads it delivers along with its search results and in third-party partner sites.
Citigroup has been expecting a paid clicks growth of about 20 percent year-on-year for Google in the first quarter. "So if the comScore data is accurate and holds for Q1, and if it is representative of Google’s global trends -- not just U.S. -- then it could imply risk to Q1 estimates," the analysts wrote.
Google executives, aware that the company is long overdue for diversifying its revenue mix, are promising concrete results this year and in 2009 in display advertising, such as banners, now that the DoubleClick acquisition has been finalized.
In November, Yahoo ranked first in the U.S. in display ad impressions with a 19 percent share, followed by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive at 16.3 percent, while Microsoft came in third with 6.7 percent, according to comScore. Google took seventh place with 1 percent.
In midafternoon trading on Thursday, Google shares were down 2.8 percent to US$445.36, about $300 below the 52-week high.
When comScore issued its paid clicks report for January, which also included the fact that Google's paid clicks had suffered a 7 percent sequential decline from December, Google officials tried to put a positive spin on the news. They said the decline was due in large part to the company's initiative to improve the quality of ads' delivery, meaning that with more precise ad targeting, users had to click on fewer ads.
On Thursday, Google declined to comment about comScore's February report.
The report is available only to comScore clients, but a comScore spokesman said that its findings are accurately rendered in a note authored Wednesday by Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney and James Samford.
A key takeaway from the Citigroup analysts: In February, clicks on Google's U.S. search ads grew only 3.1 percent year-on-year. Considering that February had 29 days, the growth rate would probably have been flat without the extra day, Mahaney and Samford wrote.
Coupled with a 0.3 percent year-on-year decline in January, also per comScore, a trend is emerging that Google's pay-per-click (PPC) ad business may be losing steam, after powering the search giant to mindblowing levels of revenue and profit growth for years.
While the news is of concern mostly to investors, it is also of interest for companies investing in Google's enterprise software products, like the fee-based version of the Google Apps suite and the Google Search Appliance. This is because the robust growth of Google's PPC ad business is what has allowed the company in recent years to fund its endeavors in enterprise search and hosted collaboration and communication suites. Should the PPC business slow down significantly, it will be interesting to see how that may affect Google's investment in its enterprise software unit, which generates a small percentage of the company's revenue.
Unfortunately for Google, it lacks a complementary revenue stream at the moment, despite years of actively trying to diversify into other forms of online ads, like banner ads, and into offline ads, like magazine, radio and TV advertising. Google still depends almost entirely on the PPC text ads it delivers along with its search results and in third-party partner sites.
Citigroup has been expecting a paid clicks growth of about 20 percent year-on-year for Google in the first quarter. "So if the comScore data is accurate and holds for Q1, and if it is representative of Google’s global trends -- not just U.S. -- then it could imply risk to Q1 estimates," the analysts wrote.
Google executives, aware that the company is long overdue for diversifying its revenue mix, are promising concrete results this year and in 2009 in display advertising, such as banners, now that the DoubleClick acquisition has been finalized.
In November, Yahoo ranked first in the U.S. in display ad impressions with a 19 percent share, followed by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive at 16.3 percent, while Microsoft came in third with 6.7 percent, according to comScore. Google took seventh place with 1 percent.
In midafternoon trading on Thursday, Google shares were down 2.8 percent to US$445.36, about $300 below the 52-week high.
When comScore issued its paid clicks report for January, which also included the fact that Google's paid clicks had suffered a 7 percent sequential decline from December, Google officials tried to put a positive spin on the news. They said the decline was due in large part to the company's initiative to improve the quality of ads' delivery, meaning that with more precise ad targeting, users had to click on fewer ads.
On Thursday, Google declined to comment about comScore's February report.
Beleaguered BitTorrent search engine shuts down
Expensive legal battles have caused TorrentSpy, the search engine for the BitTorrent file-sharing service, to shut down.
A note on the home page of TorrentSpy's Web site said it is shutting down "not due to any court order or agreement," but because of a team decision.
TorrentSpy has spent the past two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars "defending the rights of our users and ourselves" in a legal climate that was "hostile" to torrent files, according to the note, which is attributed to the TorrentSpy team.
"Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users -- permanent shutdown," the team said.
TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.
In December, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright infringement case against TorrentSpy that it had filed in 2006. TorrentSpy argued that its site doesn't contain any copyrighted works or links to copyrighted works, does not promote copyright infringement and can't be held liable for the actions of visitors once they leave its Web site. The site lost its case because the court ruled it had tampered with evidence.
A note on the home page of TorrentSpy's Web site said it is shutting down "not due to any court order or agreement," but because of a team decision.
TorrentSpy has spent the past two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars "defending the rights of our users and ourselves" in a legal climate that was "hostile" to torrent files, according to the note, which is attributed to the TorrentSpy team.
"Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users -- permanent shutdown," the team said.
TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.
In December, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright infringement case against TorrentSpy that it had filed in 2006. TorrentSpy argued that its site doesn't contain any copyrighted works or links to copyrighted works, does not promote copyright infringement and can't be held liable for the actions of visitors once they leave its Web site. The site lost its case because the court ruled it had tampered with evidence.
Beleaguered BitTorrent search engine shuts down
Expensive legal battles have caused TorrentSpy, the search engine for the BitTorrent file-sharing service, to shut down.
A note on the home page of TorrentSpy's Web site said it is shutting down "not due to any court order or agreement," but because of a team decision.
TorrentSpy has spent the past two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars "defending the rights of our users and ourselves" in a legal climate that was "hostile" to torrent files, according to the note, which is attributed to the TorrentSpy team.
"Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users -- permanent shutdown," the team said.
TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.
In December, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright infringement case against TorrentSpy that it had filed in 2006. TorrentSpy argued that its site doesn't contain any copyrighted works or links to copyrighted works, does not promote copyright infringement and can't be held liable for the actions of visitors once they leave its Web site. The site lost its case because the court ruled it had tampered with evidence.
A note on the home page of TorrentSpy's Web site said it is shutting down "not due to any court order or agreement," but because of a team decision.
TorrentSpy has spent the past two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars "defending the rights of our users and ourselves" in a legal climate that was "hostile" to torrent files, according to the note, which is attributed to the TorrentSpy team.
"Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users -- permanent shutdown," the team said.
TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.
In December, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright infringement case against TorrentSpy that it had filed in 2006. TorrentSpy argued that its site doesn't contain any copyrighted works or links to copyrighted works, does not promote copyright infringement and can't be held liable for the actions of visitors once they leave its Web site. The site lost its case because the court ruled it had tampered with evidence.
Microsoft vs. Apple: Who patches 0-days faster?
Apple's teasing commercials that imply its software is safer than Microsoft's may not quite match the facts, according to new research revealed at the Black Hat conference on Thursday.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology looked at how many times over the past six years the two vendors were able to have a patch available on the day a vulnerability became publicly known, which they call the 0-day patch rate.
They analyzed 658 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple. They looked at only high- and medium-risk bugs, according to the classification used by the National Vulnerability Database, said Stefan Frei, one of the researchers involved in the study.
What they found is that, contrary to popular belief that Apple makes more secure products, Apple lags behind in patching.
"Apple was below 20 [unpatched vulnerabilities at disclosure] consistently before 2005," Frei said. "Since then, they are very often above. So if you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple."
It's generally good for vendors to have a software fix available when a vulnerability is disclosed, since hackers often try to find out where the problem is in order to write malicious software to hack a machine.
For a vendor to have a patch ready when the bug is detailed in public, it needs to get prior information from either its security analysts or external ones. Otherwise the vendor has to hurry to create a patch, but that process can be lengthy, given the rigorous testing needed to test the patch to ensure it does not conflict with other software.
Apple only started patching 0-day vulnerabilities in late 2003, Frei said.
"We think that Apple had fewer vulnerabilities early on, and they were just surprised or not as ready or not as attentive," Frei said. "It looks like Microsoft had good relationships earlier with the security community."
Over the past few years, Microsoft has tried to cultivate a closer relationship with the security community in order to encourage researchers to give it a heads-up about software problems. Apple, however, doesn't appear to have that same sort of engagement yet, and, "based on our findings, this is hurting them," Frei said.
Curiously, both vendors' abilities to have 0-day patches ready at disclosure seemed to dip in the six months before a major product release. That trend was most pronounced in 2004 and 2005. Frei theorized that the buildup to big software releases took away software engineering resources.
Andrew Cushman, director of Microsoft's Security and Research, said he couldn't pinpoint what might cause that trend. But in 2004 and 2005, Microsoft had a rash of vulnerabilities pop up in its Office products that it did not get advance notice of, which may have contributed to a higher percentage of unpatched publicly disclosed bugs.
However, the study proved to be such a glowing affirmation of Microsoft's increased focus on security in the past few years that it prompted Cushman to ask Frei, "Did Microsoft fund this research?"
"This is independent academic research," Frei replied.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology looked at how many times over the past six years the two vendors were able to have a patch available on the day a vulnerability became publicly known, which they call the 0-day patch rate.
They analyzed 658 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple. They looked at only high- and medium-risk bugs, according to the classification used by the National Vulnerability Database, said Stefan Frei, one of the researchers involved in the study.
What they found is that, contrary to popular belief that Apple makes more secure products, Apple lags behind in patching.
"Apple was below 20 [unpatched vulnerabilities at disclosure] consistently before 2005," Frei said. "Since then, they are very often above. So if you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple."
It's generally good for vendors to have a software fix available when a vulnerability is disclosed, since hackers often try to find out where the problem is in order to write malicious software to hack a machine.
For a vendor to have a patch ready when the bug is detailed in public, it needs to get prior information from either its security analysts or external ones. Otherwise the vendor has to hurry to create a patch, but that process can be lengthy, given the rigorous testing needed to test the patch to ensure it does not conflict with other software.
Apple only started patching 0-day vulnerabilities in late 2003, Frei said.
"We think that Apple had fewer vulnerabilities early on, and they were just surprised or not as ready or not as attentive," Frei said. "It looks like Microsoft had good relationships earlier with the security community."
Over the past few years, Microsoft has tried to cultivate a closer relationship with the security community in order to encourage researchers to give it a heads-up about software problems. Apple, however, doesn't appear to have that same sort of engagement yet, and, "based on our findings, this is hurting them," Frei said.
Curiously, both vendors' abilities to have 0-day patches ready at disclosure seemed to dip in the six months before a major product release. That trend was most pronounced in 2004 and 2005. Frei theorized that the buildup to big software releases took away software engineering resources.
Andrew Cushman, director of Microsoft's Security and Research, said he couldn't pinpoint what might cause that trend. But in 2004 and 2005, Microsoft had a rash of vulnerabilities pop up in its Office products that it did not get advance notice of, which may have contributed to a higher percentage of unpatched publicly disclosed bugs.
However, the study proved to be such a glowing affirmation of Microsoft's increased focus on security in the past few years that it prompted Cushman to ask Frei, "Did Microsoft fund this research?"
"This is independent academic research," Frei replied.
YouTube rolls out usage analytics
YouTube account holders will now be able to access usage statistics for the videos they upload, such as where viewers are geographically located and how they found the clips.
The feature, called YouTube Insight, had been in high demand from partners that use the video-sharing site to market their products and services and, as such, want detailed metrics to determine the efficacy of their YouTube campaigns.
The announcement, made early Thursday, wasn't a complete surprise. Earlier this month, YouTube sales team manager Brian Cusack said that the Google unit was planning to provide its members with more data about video viewership.
"YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet," Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit in Miami.
Now, marketers will have a better understanding of clips' reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales, according to YouTube.
"With YouTube Insight, we've turned YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups. Insight will help advertisers optimize their marketing efforts, determine how successful they were, and discover previously unknown marketing opportunities," an official YouTube blog posting reads.
The metrics will also give a better understanding of clips' popularity and viewership to people who upload videos for fun without commercial or marketing purposes.
YouTube Insight doesn't collect or display personally identifiable information on viewers, but rather provides uploaders with aggregated data on viewers' geographic location and on the time and day when clips were viewed, a Google spokesman said via e-mail. Google will "soon" turn a feature to let uploaders discover how viewers found a clip, such as via a Google search, browsing YouTube's "related videos" suggestions or clicking on an e-mail or Web site link, he said.
The feature, called YouTube Insight, had been in high demand from partners that use the video-sharing site to market their products and services and, as such, want detailed metrics to determine the efficacy of their YouTube campaigns.
The announcement, made early Thursday, wasn't a complete surprise. Earlier this month, YouTube sales team manager Brian Cusack said that the Google unit was planning to provide its members with more data about video viewership.
"YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet," Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit in Miami.
Now, marketers will have a better understanding of clips' reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales, according to YouTube.
"With YouTube Insight, we've turned YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups. Insight will help advertisers optimize their marketing efforts, determine how successful they were, and discover previously unknown marketing opportunities," an official YouTube blog posting reads.
The metrics will also give a better understanding of clips' popularity and viewership to people who upload videos for fun without commercial or marketing purposes.
YouTube Insight doesn't collect or display personally identifiable information on viewers, but rather provides uploaders with aggregated data on viewers' geographic location and on the time and day when clips were viewed, a Google spokesman said via e-mail. Google will "soon" turn a feature to let uploaders discover how viewers found a clip, such as via a Google search, browsing YouTube's "related videos" suggestions or clicking on an e-mail or Web site link, he said.
Waste Management sues SAP over ERP implementation
The trash-disposal giant Waste Management is suing SAP, saying top SAP executives participated in a fraudulent sales scheme that resulted in a failed ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation.
Waste Management said it is seeking recovery of more than US$100 million in project expenses, as well as "the savings and benefits that the SAP software was promised to deliver to Waste Management."
An SAP spokesman said via e-mail Thursday that "as a matter of policy SAP does not comment on ongoing litigation."
In 2005, Waste Management was looking for a new revenue management system, according to a company statement. "SAP proposed its Waste and Recycling product and claimed it was a tested, working solution that had been developed with the needs of Waste Management in mind," the Waste Management statement reads in part.
SAP promised that the software could be fully implemented throughout all of Waste Management within 18 months, according to the statement.
"From the beginning, SAP assured Waste Management that its software was an 'out-of-the-box' solution that would meet Waste Management's needs without any customization or enhancements," the statement reads. "Unfortunately, Waste Management ultimately learned that these representations were not true."
Waste Management said product demonstrations by SAP prior to the deal employed "'fake software environments, even though these demonstrations were represented to be the actual software."
Waste Management's original complaint, filed in Harris County, Texas district court, said senior SAP executives, including SAP Americas' president and CEO, Bill McDermott, participated in the "rigged and manipulated" demos.
The company filed suit against SAP Americas and SAP AG on March 20 after "months of discussions with SAP and a recent consensual, three-day mediation that SAP ended after day two," according to the statement.
The action followed a lengthy initial courtship and falling out between the companies, detailed at length in Waste Management's court filing.
SAP officials held meetings with the company throughout the summer and fall of 2005, according to the complaint. Shai Agassi, a former executive board member, was among the SAP executives present at one meeting on June 17, 2005, in Walldorf, Germany, according to the complaint.
"At that meeting, SAP AG executives and engineers represented that the software was a mature solution and conducted a demonstration consisting of what they represented was the actual SAP Waste and Recycling software," the complaint states. The company later discovered that the software was a "mock-up version of that software intended to deceive Waste Management," according to the complaint. SAP has admitted to this in "internal documents," the complaint states.
SAP also demonstrated the "fake software" at subsequent sales presentations, according to the complaint.
Waste Management ultimately signed a sales pact with SAP on Oct. 3, 2005, according to the court filing.
"Almost immediately following execution of the agreements, the SAP implementation team discovered significant 'gaps' between the software's functionality and Waste Management's business requirements," it states.
"Waste Management has discovered that these gaps were already known to the product development team in Germany even before the SLA was signed. Instead of admitting what it knew at the time -- that the software lacked basic functionality to run Waste Management's business -- SAP undertook an elaborate fraud to perpetuate the original fraud and to recover additional money from Waste Management."
Members of SAP's implementation team blamed Waste Management for the functional gaps and submitted change orders requiring that Waste Management pay for fixing them, according to the complaint.
In addition, the complaint alleges, SAP originally promised that a pilot phase in New Mexico would be up and running by Dec. 15, 2006, "but it is not even close to being completed today."
Eventually, SAP conducted a "Solutions Review" and by summer 2007 determined the software was not an "enterprise solution" for Waste Management's needs, according to the complaint.
SAP said that if Waste Management wished to have the software implemented on a companywide basis, it would have to "start over" and agree to let SAP build a new version of the product with an updated version of its enterprise application platform, according to the complaint.
"SAP's 2007 proposal is precisely the kind of risky, expensive and time-consuming project that Waste Management rejected from other companies two years earlier," the complaint states. "Indeed, the development project that SAP proposed would drastically lengthen the implementation timetable from the original December 2007 end-date to an end-date sometime in 2010 without any assurance of success."
A Waste Management spokeswoman said the company would have no comment beyond the statement and complaint.
Waste Management said it is seeking recovery of more than US$100 million in project expenses, as well as "the savings and benefits that the SAP software was promised to deliver to Waste Management."
An SAP spokesman said via e-mail Thursday that "as a matter of policy SAP does not comment on ongoing litigation."
In 2005, Waste Management was looking for a new revenue management system, according to a company statement. "SAP proposed its Waste and Recycling product and claimed it was a tested, working solution that had been developed with the needs of Waste Management in mind," the Waste Management statement reads in part.
SAP promised that the software could be fully implemented throughout all of Waste Management within 18 months, according to the statement.
"From the beginning, SAP assured Waste Management that its software was an 'out-of-the-box' solution that would meet Waste Management's needs without any customization or enhancements," the statement reads. "Unfortunately, Waste Management ultimately learned that these representations were not true."
Waste Management said product demonstrations by SAP prior to the deal employed "'fake software environments, even though these demonstrations were represented to be the actual software."
Waste Management's original complaint, filed in Harris County, Texas district court, said senior SAP executives, including SAP Americas' president and CEO, Bill McDermott, participated in the "rigged and manipulated" demos.
The company filed suit against SAP Americas and SAP AG on March 20 after "months of discussions with SAP and a recent consensual, three-day mediation that SAP ended after day two," according to the statement.
The action followed a lengthy initial courtship and falling out between the companies, detailed at length in Waste Management's court filing.
SAP officials held meetings with the company throughout the summer and fall of 2005, according to the complaint. Shai Agassi, a former executive board member, was among the SAP executives present at one meeting on June 17, 2005, in Walldorf, Germany, according to the complaint.
"At that meeting, SAP AG executives and engineers represented that the software was a mature solution and conducted a demonstration consisting of what they represented was the actual SAP Waste and Recycling software," the complaint states. The company later discovered that the software was a "mock-up version of that software intended to deceive Waste Management," according to the complaint. SAP has admitted to this in "internal documents," the complaint states.
SAP also demonstrated the "fake software" at subsequent sales presentations, according to the complaint.
Waste Management ultimately signed a sales pact with SAP on Oct. 3, 2005, according to the court filing.
"Almost immediately following execution of the agreements, the SAP implementation team discovered significant 'gaps' between the software's functionality and Waste Management's business requirements," it states.
"Waste Management has discovered that these gaps were already known to the product development team in Germany even before the SLA was signed. Instead of admitting what it knew at the time -- that the software lacked basic functionality to run Waste Management's business -- SAP undertook an elaborate fraud to perpetuate the original fraud and to recover additional money from Waste Management."
Members of SAP's implementation team blamed Waste Management for the functional gaps and submitted change orders requiring that Waste Management pay for fixing them, according to the complaint.
In addition, the complaint alleges, SAP originally promised that a pilot phase in New Mexico would be up and running by Dec. 15, 2006, "but it is not even close to being completed today."
Eventually, SAP conducted a "Solutions Review" and by summer 2007 determined the software was not an "enterprise solution" for Waste Management's needs, according to the complaint.
SAP said that if Waste Management wished to have the software implemented on a companywide basis, it would have to "start over" and agree to let SAP build a new version of the product with an updated version of its enterprise application platform, according to the complaint.
"SAP's 2007 proposal is precisely the kind of risky, expensive and time-consuming project that Waste Management rejected from other companies two years earlier," the complaint states. "Indeed, the development project that SAP proposed would drastically lengthen the implementation timetable from the original December 2007 end-date to an end-date sometime in 2010 without any assurance of success."
A Waste Management spokeswoman said the company would have no comment beyond the statement and complaint.
Monday, March 24, 2008
X Prize Foundation offers $10M for 100 mpg, green automobile
An insurance company and a non-profit group Thursday announced plans to give away US$10 million to the team that designs, builds and brings to market the most viable and efficient vehicle that can get 100 miles per gallon.
Progressive Insurance and the X PRIZE Foundation jointly made the announcement at the New York International Auto Show.
The international competition, called the Progressive Automotive X Prize, was launched to help break the world's addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change, according to the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit group that sponsors contests encouraging innovation.
The foundation billed the contest as independent and technology-neutral, open to teams from around the world that can design green vehicles that people want to buy, and that meet market needs for price, size, capability, safety and performance.
"The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE is a call to action to promote and inspire innovation," said Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, in a statement. "The environmentally friendly cars created as a result of this competition will affect everyone who drives in ways we can't even imagine today."
The foundation said that so far, more than 60 teams from nine countries have signed a Letter of Intent to compete. Four teams and their vehicles were on hand at the auto show during the announcement Thursday.
"Development of a super-efficient car would be a major step forward in the fight against global warming, and it would help us reach our goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in New York City by 30% by 2030," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who attended the press conference Thursday. "The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE is an excellent example of how the private sector can spur solutions to our most complex challenges."
The foundation will be accepting applications for the competition until mid-year.
Teams and their plans will be examined for safety, cost, business plans and production feasibility. The teams that are accepted into the competition will race their vehicles across the U.S. in various legs in 2009 and 2010. Overall performance will be rated, along with emissions standards and their placement in the races.
Host cities for the races will be announced "soon", according to the X Prize Foundation.
In 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation awarded a $10 million prize in a global competition to design a private suborbital spacecraft.
Progressive Insurance and the X PRIZE Foundation jointly made the announcement at the New York International Auto Show.
The international competition, called the Progressive Automotive X Prize, was launched to help break the world's addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change, according to the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit group that sponsors contests encouraging innovation.
The foundation billed the contest as independent and technology-neutral, open to teams from around the world that can design green vehicles that people want to buy, and that meet market needs for price, size, capability, safety and performance.
"The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE is a call to action to promote and inspire innovation," said Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, in a statement. "The environmentally friendly cars created as a result of this competition will affect everyone who drives in ways we can't even imagine today."
The foundation said that so far, more than 60 teams from nine countries have signed a Letter of Intent to compete. Four teams and their vehicles were on hand at the auto show during the announcement Thursday.
"Development of a super-efficient car would be a major step forward in the fight against global warming, and it would help us reach our goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in New York City by 30% by 2030," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who attended the press conference Thursday. "The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE is an excellent example of how the private sector can spur solutions to our most complex challenges."
The foundation will be accepting applications for the competition until mid-year.
Teams and their plans will be examined for safety, cost, business plans and production feasibility. The teams that are accepted into the competition will race their vehicles across the U.S. in various legs in 2009 and 2010. Overall performance will be rated, along with emissions standards and their placement in the races.
Host cities for the races will be announced "soon", according to the X Prize Foundation.
In 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation awarded a $10 million prize in a global competition to design a private suborbital spacecraft.
OpenOffice 3.0 promises to bash Office
Microsoft's Office suite could have plausible challenger on the desktop for the first time since Lotus gave up trying to take on Redmond a decade ago.
With developers struggling to get OpenOffice 2.4 out the door, details are emerging of the features users have to look forward to in the upcoming bullet point release, version 3.0.
A sneak peek on a developer blog OpenOffice Ninja shows a new and easier-to-understand start screen featuring the main applications, and overhauls of the Writer application to better compete with Microsoft's Word. That application can now display pages side by side, allows notes to be added in the margins of copy a la Word, while the Calc spreadsheet also features a large number of small tweaks to improve usability.
The suite will be able to cope seamlessly with Office 2007's XML-based file formats, though the blogger notes that the current development skeleton manages this with mediocre results.
Thus far the Sun-sponsored OpenOffice suite has remained an outsider, used mostly by open source enthusiasts or just those too tight to pay the high price ticket of Office. Despite offering a usable alternative to Office, it has made no noticeable impression on its sales figures.
One element that will remain missing is a rival to Microsoft's industry standard email app, outlook.
"For years, there have been talks of including Mozilla's Thunderbird and Lightning (calendar) application with OpenOffice.org. However, not much has come of it yet. Perhaps with the financial resources of the new Mozilla Messaging Corporation, the Mozilla Calendar will get the boost it needs," says the author.
It's also apparent that OpenOffice 3.0 appears to be modelled on a layout one generation behind Microsoft's Fluent interface, which admittedly not everyone has taken to .
Others maintain that the whole model of deskbound productivity applications is obsolete, foreseeing a future in which businesses and individuals instead use lightweight online applications such as Google's Docs . It is likely, however, that all models will flourish in their own way-- desktop behemoths such as Office, alternatives such as OpenOffice, and online apps -- being embraced by users for different purposes.
With developers struggling to get OpenOffice 2.4 out the door, details are emerging of the features users have to look forward to in the upcoming bullet point release, version 3.0.
A sneak peek on a developer blog OpenOffice Ninja shows a new and easier-to-understand start screen featuring the main applications, and overhauls of the Writer application to better compete with Microsoft's Word. That application can now display pages side by side, allows notes to be added in the margins of copy a la Word, while the Calc spreadsheet also features a large number of small tweaks to improve usability.
The suite will be able to cope seamlessly with Office 2007's XML-based file formats, though the blogger notes that the current development skeleton manages this with mediocre results.
Thus far the Sun-sponsored OpenOffice suite has remained an outsider, used mostly by open source enthusiasts or just those too tight to pay the high price ticket of Office. Despite offering a usable alternative to Office, it has made no noticeable impression on its sales figures.
One element that will remain missing is a rival to Microsoft's industry standard email app, outlook.
"For years, there have been talks of including Mozilla's Thunderbird and Lightning (calendar) application with OpenOffice.org. However, not much has come of it yet. Perhaps with the financial resources of the new Mozilla Messaging Corporation, the Mozilla Calendar will get the boost it needs," says the author.
It's also apparent that OpenOffice 3.0 appears to be modelled on a layout one generation behind Microsoft's Fluent interface, which admittedly not everyone has taken to .
Others maintain that the whole model of deskbound productivity applications is obsolete, foreseeing a future in which businesses and individuals instead use lightweight online applications such as Google's Docs . It is likely, however, that all models will flourish in their own way-- desktop behemoths such as Office, alternatives such as OpenOffice, and online apps -- being embraced by users for different purposes.
Sony charges $50 to remove laptop bloatware
Sony is offering to remove some of the trial software it crams onto the hard disks of new laptops -- for a fee.
Buyers of the configure-to-order versions of its Vaio TZ2000 and Vaio TZ2500 laptops can opt to have Sony remove the some of its own applications, in addition to trial software and games.
The "Fresh Start" option, billed as a software optimization, costs US$49.99, and is only available to customers choosing to pay an additional $100 to upgrade the operating system to Windows Vista Business from the Windows Vista Home Premium edition offered as standard.
PC manufacturers are often paid by software publishers to include such trial versions on the computers they ship. Bloatware, as it is often called, poses problems for businesses because it reduces system performance and available hard disk space, makes it harder to maintain a consistent software image across PCs from different sources and may introduce additional security vulnerabilities or -- in the case of games -- unwanted distractions for workers.
Dell was one of the first PC manufacturers to offer to remove bloatware. Last July it introduced Vostro, a range of PCs for small businesses designed to be simpler to manage. Everex followed suit a week later, saying it would eliminate bloatware from a $300 desktop machine for consumers.
Customers opting for Sony's Fresh Start will miss out on software including Microsoft Works SE 9.0 bundled with a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office, Sony's Vaio Creation Suite Photo Software bundled with a 30-day trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro; the Click to Disc video editor; WinDVD, and a free edition of QuickBooks Simple Start that can only track 20 customers.
Sony justifies the $49.99 fee by saying it covers removal of the unwanted software before shipment -- although selecting the option appears to have no consequences on the estimated shipping date.
Although Sony has other laptops with configure-to-order options, including the FZ, SZ, AR and CR ranges, none of those are available with Fresh Start.
Buyers of the configure-to-order versions of its Vaio TZ2000 and Vaio TZ2500 laptops can opt to have Sony remove the some of its own applications, in addition to trial software and games.
The "Fresh Start" option, billed as a software optimization, costs US$49.99, and is only available to customers choosing to pay an additional $100 to upgrade the operating system to Windows Vista Business from the Windows Vista Home Premium edition offered as standard.
PC manufacturers are often paid by software publishers to include such trial versions on the computers they ship. Bloatware, as it is often called, poses problems for businesses because it reduces system performance and available hard disk space, makes it harder to maintain a consistent software image across PCs from different sources and may introduce additional security vulnerabilities or -- in the case of games -- unwanted distractions for workers.
Dell was one of the first PC manufacturers to offer to remove bloatware. Last July it introduced Vostro, a range of PCs for small businesses designed to be simpler to manage. Everex followed suit a week later, saying it would eliminate bloatware from a $300 desktop machine for consumers.
Customers opting for Sony's Fresh Start will miss out on software including Microsoft Works SE 9.0 bundled with a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office, Sony's Vaio Creation Suite Photo Software bundled with a 30-day trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro; the Click to Disc video editor; WinDVD, and a free edition of QuickBooks Simple Start that can only track 20 customers.
Sony justifies the $49.99 fee by saying it covers removal of the unwanted software before shipment -- although selecting the option appears to have no consequences on the estimated shipping date.
Although Sony has other laptops with configure-to-order options, including the FZ, SZ, AR and CR ranges, none of those are available with Fresh Start.
India rejects Office Open XML again
A technical committee in India has rejected Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard.
In the meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) technical committee Thursday, 13 members voted against the standard, while five members, including some outsourcing companies, and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) voted for making Open XML a standard.
Nasscom is in favor of multiple standards, including Open XML and ODF (Open Document Format), the association said in a statement. It added that technology neutrality and competition will lead to falling prices of IT products.
The technical committee was constituted by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India's national standards body, after moves by Microsoft and other organizations to make Open XML a standard of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
BIS is a founder member of ISO, and represents India at the ISO.
The BIS committee had voted in August against making Office Open XML a standard, although some participants said at the time that Open XML may be again reconsidered as a standard by the technical committee and BIS after Microsoft makes the required changes to the document format.
The India vote comes ahead of a March 29 deadline for ISO members to reconsider their votes if they wished.
While disappointed by the decision of the BIS committee, Microsoft said Thursday that it was however encouraged by the support of IT industry players like Nasscom, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys who voted in favor of Open XML becoming an ISO standard.
In the meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) technical committee Thursday, 13 members voted against the standard, while five members, including some outsourcing companies, and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) voted for making Open XML a standard.
Nasscom is in favor of multiple standards, including Open XML and ODF (Open Document Format), the association said in a statement. It added that technology neutrality and competition will lead to falling prices of IT products.
The technical committee was constituted by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India's national standards body, after moves by Microsoft and other organizations to make Open XML a standard of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
BIS is a founder member of ISO, and represents India at the ISO.
The BIS committee had voted in August against making Office Open XML a standard, although some participants said at the time that Open XML may be again reconsidered as a standard by the technical committee and BIS after Microsoft makes the required changes to the document format.
The India vote comes ahead of a March 29 deadline for ISO members to reconsider their votes if they wished.
While disappointed by the decision of the BIS committee, Microsoft said Thursday that it was however encouraged by the support of IT industry players like Nasscom, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys who voted in favor of Open XML becoming an ISO standard.
Multicore boom needs new developer skills
More than charity lies behind Microsoft and Intel's announcement this week that they will donate US$20 million to a pair of U.S. colleges in the hope of spurring advances in parallel, or multicore, programming research, as a Microsoft research scientist readily acknowledged.
"There is a worldwide shortage of people experienced in parallel computing experience, for sure," said Dan Reed, director of scalable and multicore computing at Microsoft. "One of the collateral reasons is to raise awareness in the academic community, because that's where the next generation of developers will come from."
While for years, ever-higher clock speeds almost guaranteed that application code would run faster and faster, the rules are different for the multicore processors of today.
The difference has been compared to a sports car and a school bus. While the first is capable of blazing speed, the other moves more slowly but can move far more people at once.
The problem is, simply adding more cores to a computer's CPU doesn't increase the speed or power of conventional application code, as a recent Forrester Research report notes.
"To gain performance from quad-core processors and prepare for the denser multicore CPUs that will follow, application developers need to write code that can automatically fork multiple simultaneous threads of execution (multithreading) as well as manage thread assignments, synchronize parallel work, and manage shared data to prevent concurrency issues associated with multithreaded code," the authors wrote.
In other words, complex work is required to fill all those seats on the bus.
And the quad-core processors common today will soon give way to radically more advanced designs, Forrester notes. "Expect x86 servers with as many as 64 processor cores in 2009 and desktops with that many by 2012."
The situation has had chip makers and major software vendors making broad-based efforts to raise awareness of both the promise and challenges of programming for multiple cores.
TopCoder, a software development company that invites its membership to work on various aspects of a project through competitions, just began a series of special contests, along with chipmaker AMD, that focuses on multithreading.
Mike Lydon, TopCoder's chief technology officer, said multicore programming remains the province of an elite few. "What we've seen from the skill set perspective is, it varies quite a bit," he said. "As you would expect, the high-end developers are familiar with threading. After that it drops off pretty quickly."
"It's surprising to me because multithreading programming isn't new," he added. Indeed, one instructional article available on a Microsoft's MSDN Web site dates to 1993.
"I think it stems primarily from the collegiate level," Lydon said. "I've heard very little about colleges teaching multithreaded programming, but I would think and hope that it's changing very quickly."
However, Forrester's report suggests the urgency isn't being felt across the board. It notes that major operating systems and most middleware products are already prepared for multithreaded operation and for "near term" multicore processors, and that corporate development shops may look to ISVs (independent software vendors) to solve the problem through development tools and platforms that can better handle multicore-related tasks.
But Microsoft's Reed believes that multithreading over time will become "part of the skill set of every professional software developer."
In the meantime, most of the parallel computing resources available now don't necessarily hide the complexity of coding for multiple threads. "Development pros have options today, but most of them are low-level language extensions and libraries," Forrester said.
For example, in February AMD open-sourced more than 3,200 software routines under a project called Framewave, which it said will help coders build multithreaded applications for x86-type processors.
"Libraries can't provide a complete answer, but we see these as iterative steps," said Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions and software strategy at AMD. "There's things that you can do today as you're waiting for those [more advanced] tools that can increase the multi-threadedness of your applications," she said.
There are some higher-level products already on the market, such as the platform sold by RapidMind, which takes single-threaded C++ code and then, through an abstraction layer, "parallelizes" it across a number of cores.
However, it would be "fairly idealistic" to think that better tools alone will be enough, Lydon argued. "When you actually get into the points in code where you're going to leverage performance by spawning multiple threads, it takes a human mind to see where the benefits could take place."
"There is a worldwide shortage of people experienced in parallel computing experience, for sure," said Dan Reed, director of scalable and multicore computing at Microsoft. "One of the collateral reasons is to raise awareness in the academic community, because that's where the next generation of developers will come from."
While for years, ever-higher clock speeds almost guaranteed that application code would run faster and faster, the rules are different for the multicore processors of today.
The difference has been compared to a sports car and a school bus. While the first is capable of blazing speed, the other moves more slowly but can move far more people at once.
The problem is, simply adding more cores to a computer's CPU doesn't increase the speed or power of conventional application code, as a recent Forrester Research report notes.
"To gain performance from quad-core processors and prepare for the denser multicore CPUs that will follow, application developers need to write code that can automatically fork multiple simultaneous threads of execution (multithreading) as well as manage thread assignments, synchronize parallel work, and manage shared data to prevent concurrency issues associated with multithreaded code," the authors wrote.
In other words, complex work is required to fill all those seats on the bus.
And the quad-core processors common today will soon give way to radically more advanced designs, Forrester notes. "Expect x86 servers with as many as 64 processor cores in 2009 and desktops with that many by 2012."
The situation has had chip makers and major software vendors making broad-based efforts to raise awareness of both the promise and challenges of programming for multiple cores.
TopCoder, a software development company that invites its membership to work on various aspects of a project through competitions, just began a series of special contests, along with chipmaker AMD, that focuses on multithreading.
Mike Lydon, TopCoder's chief technology officer, said multicore programming remains the province of an elite few. "What we've seen from the skill set perspective is, it varies quite a bit," he said. "As you would expect, the high-end developers are familiar with threading. After that it drops off pretty quickly."
"It's surprising to me because multithreading programming isn't new," he added. Indeed, one instructional article available on a Microsoft's MSDN Web site dates to 1993.
"I think it stems primarily from the collegiate level," Lydon said. "I've heard very little about colleges teaching multithreaded programming, but I would think and hope that it's changing very quickly."
However, Forrester's report suggests the urgency isn't being felt across the board. It notes that major operating systems and most middleware products are already prepared for multithreaded operation and for "near term" multicore processors, and that corporate development shops may look to ISVs (independent software vendors) to solve the problem through development tools and platforms that can better handle multicore-related tasks.
But Microsoft's Reed believes that multithreading over time will become "part of the skill set of every professional software developer."
In the meantime, most of the parallel computing resources available now don't necessarily hide the complexity of coding for multiple threads. "Development pros have options today, but most of them are low-level language extensions and libraries," Forrester said.
For example, in February AMD open-sourced more than 3,200 software routines under a project called Framewave, which it said will help coders build multithreaded applications for x86-type processors.
"Libraries can't provide a complete answer, but we see these as iterative steps," said Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions and software strategy at AMD. "There's things that you can do today as you're waiting for those [more advanced] tools that can increase the multi-threadedness of your applications," she said.
There are some higher-level products already on the market, such as the platform sold by RapidMind, which takes single-threaded C++ code and then, through an abstraction layer, "parallelizes" it across a number of cores.
However, it would be "fairly idealistic" to think that better tools alone will be enough, Lydon argued. "When you actually get into the points in code where you're going to leverage performance by spawning multiple threads, it takes a human mind to see where the benefits could take place."
Security chief quits OLPC amid restructuring
A drastic internal restructuring underway at the One Laptop Per Child Project has caused a director of security to resign from the nonprofit effort.
Citing differences with OLPC's aims and shift of focus, Director of Security Architecture Ivan Krstic resigned from his post three weeks ago, Krstic revealed in a blog entry this week.
"I cannot subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic. Having exhausted other options, three weeks ago I resigned my post at OLPC," Krstic said.
The MIT Technology Review named Krstic one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 for his work on the OLPC security platform, Bitfrost.
In an interview with BusinessWeek in early March, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said OLPC was operating "almost like a terrorist group, doing almost impossible things," and that the organization needed to be managed "more like Microsoft."
Negroponte said OLPC was searching for a new CEO and reorganizing departments into four operating units -- technology, deployment, market development, and fundraising and administration.
Calling OLPC "more a second home than a workplace," Krstic said he had been asked to stop working with OLPC President of Software and Content Walter Bender, whom he highly respected. "I was to report instead to a manager with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology," Krstic said.
OLPC did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The group has been dogged by problems since it launched the effort to develop a US$100 XO laptop for children in developing countries three years ago. It has struggled to realize the ambitious vision, facing delays, rising costs and reduced orders.
In January, OLPC lost Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen, who started an organization to commercialize parts of the OLPC's technology, including the screen and battery. A few days later, Intel said it was quitting OLPC after the nonprofit insisted that Intel abandon its effort to develop and distribute Classmate PC, a rival low-cost laptop. OLPC later said that it would welcome Intel back to the effort.
Citing differences with OLPC's aims and shift of focus, Director of Security Architecture Ivan Krstic resigned from his post three weeks ago, Krstic revealed in a blog entry this week.
"I cannot subscribe to the organization's new aims or structure in good faith, nor can I reconcile them with my personal ethic. Having exhausted other options, three weeks ago I resigned my post at OLPC," Krstic said.
The MIT Technology Review named Krstic one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 for his work on the OLPC security platform, Bitfrost.
In an interview with BusinessWeek in early March, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said OLPC was operating "almost like a terrorist group, doing almost impossible things," and that the organization needed to be managed "more like Microsoft."
Negroponte said OLPC was searching for a new CEO and reorganizing departments into four operating units -- technology, deployment, market development, and fundraising and administration.
Calling OLPC "more a second home than a workplace," Krstic said he had been asked to stop working with OLPC President of Software and Content Walter Bender, whom he highly respected. "I was to report instead to a manager with no technical or engineering background who was put in charge of all OLPC technology," Krstic said.
OLPC did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The group has been dogged by problems since it launched the effort to develop a US$100 XO laptop for children in developing countries three years ago. It has struggled to realize the ambitious vision, facing delays, rising costs and reduced orders.
In January, OLPC lost Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen, who started an organization to commercialize parts of the OLPC's technology, including the screen and battery. A few days later, Intel said it was quitting OLPC after the nonprofit insisted that Intel abandon its effort to develop and distribute Classmate PC, a rival low-cost laptop. OLPC later said that it would welcome Intel back to the effort.
Elitegroup announces Eee PC rival with HSDPA
Taiwan's Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has revealed plans to launch a low-cost laptop to compete against Asustek's Eee PC, but which uses 3G (third-generation mobile telecommunications) networks to keep users connected wirelessly.
Elitegroup plans to allow users to choose from several versions of the Simply Smart ECS G10IL laptop family. The top-end model comes with a 10.2-inch screen and takes advantage of tri-band mobile phone networks to keep users connected to the Internet wirelessly with HSDPA and HSUPA (High Speed Downlink/Uplink Packet Access). The technology ensures users can tap into mobile broadband from just about anywhere mobile phone coverage is offered.
The G10IL also connects to Wi-Fi networks, carries a 56 kbps analog modem on board for wireline Internet connections, supports Bluetooth wireless and comes with a four-in-one card reader.
The laptop family in general will run on Intel's Atom microprocessor paired with an Intel 945 GSE chipset. Users will have a choice of machines running Microsoft Windows XP or a Linux OS, as well as a smaller screen size of 8.2-inches. The laptops can take up to 2G bytes of DRAM (dynamic RAM), but the company does not specify how much will come with each model. Hard disk drives and solid state drives will both be offered for storage, and batteries with either four-cells or six-cells.
Pricing will depend on the configuration of the laptop, and has not been set yet.
The company could not be reached immediately for comment on when the laptops might be for sale.
Asustek started the trend toward low-cost laptops by launching its Eee PC to great fanfare and projecting sales of as many as 5 million units this year.
Elitegroup plans to allow users to choose from several versions of the Simply Smart ECS G10IL laptop family. The top-end model comes with a 10.2-inch screen and takes advantage of tri-band mobile phone networks to keep users connected to the Internet wirelessly with HSDPA and HSUPA (High Speed Downlink/Uplink Packet Access). The technology ensures users can tap into mobile broadband from just about anywhere mobile phone coverage is offered.
The G10IL also connects to Wi-Fi networks, carries a 56 kbps analog modem on board for wireline Internet connections, supports Bluetooth wireless and comes with a four-in-one card reader.
The laptop family in general will run on Intel's Atom microprocessor paired with an Intel 945 GSE chipset. Users will have a choice of machines running Microsoft Windows XP or a Linux OS, as well as a smaller screen size of 8.2-inches. The laptops can take up to 2G bytes of DRAM (dynamic RAM), but the company does not specify how much will come with each model. Hard disk drives and solid state drives will both be offered for storage, and batteries with either four-cells or six-cells.
Pricing will depend on the configuration of the laptop, and has not been set yet.
The company could not be reached immediately for comment on when the laptops might be for sale.
Asustek started the trend toward low-cost laptops by launching its Eee PC to great fanfare and projecting sales of as many as 5 million units this year.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Wireless auction yields mixed results for consumers
The completion of the 700MHz wireless spectrum auction on Thursday should bring more choice and new types of services for end users, although the results were not as rosy as some observers had hoped for.
For the first time in such an auction, the FCC required winners of some of the spectrum to allow any phone and any application to run on their new networks. These "open access" terms mean that end users should be able to choose from a wider selection of devices, along with new types of Web 2.0 services to run on them.
The change affects mainly Verizon, which won almost all of the licenses that must follow the open access rules. Google entered the auction but did not win any licenses, although its participation was seen by many as way to promote the open access requirement, rather than as an attempt to become a network operator.
Verizon and AT&T, another big winner, will most likely use the spectrum to offer high-speed data services -- either mobile or fixed line -- which would provide an alternative to cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Internet services. The networks will probably use the new LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular technology. Trials could begin by the end of next year, although broad availability probably won't come until 2010 or 2011, said Bill Ho, an analyst with Current Analysis.
The new networks are unlikely to deliver cheaper services for users as some had hoped, however, at least not for a while. The operators will need to pay off the billions of dollars they pledged for the spectrum, in addition to the investment in the new networks. "It won't be cheap right off the bat," said Ho. "At some point there will be mainstream adoption, and then the price goes down."
Nor did the auction result in completely new types of companies entering the wireless market, which had been another possibility when the auctions were announced. Some said they expected all along that the incumbent operators would dominate.
"The whole thing was set up from them beginning for [the incumbents] to win all the licenses," said Vince McBride, who won just two licenses at the auction, covering only a small geographic area. The big winners in the auction picked up hundreds of licenses.
A former mail carrier, McBride has been trying his luck at FCC auctions since 1996. He said new rules for the auction favored large companies with deep pockets. For example, the FCC shortened the amount of time that the winners would have to build their networks. "All that did was prevent small businesses from coming in. They were scared of the build-out requirements," he said.
Still, the open access rules lead some to call the auction a success. In a blog post, Google called it a victory for end users.
"Consumers soon should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices," wrote Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel for Google, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel.
Many insiders didn't expect that Google would bid to win in the auction, even though it entered the contest. "It would have been foolish on their part to try to run a network," said Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research. "It's not their core competency."
Google has developed its own mobile phone software platform, called Android, and stands to benefit from the open access rules in any case.
"They're trying to become bigger and looking at means to expand their advertising into other areas beside the PC without incurring the cost," Manjaro said. "They accomplished that. They got the networks opened up."
The high price the operators paid for the spectrum may also have an upside, since they may have to come up with innovative services to recoup their costs, she said. "They'll have to be more creative to pay for these networks,"
One potential casualty could be the rural telephone companies. That's because the 700MHz spectrum is ideal for supporting services across long distances. That means the operators may use it as an easier and cheaper way to deliver DSL-like service to rural areas -- where rural telephone companies have a lock on the market today, Manjaro said.
For the first time in such an auction, the FCC required winners of some of the spectrum to allow any phone and any application to run on their new networks. These "open access" terms mean that end users should be able to choose from a wider selection of devices, along with new types of Web 2.0 services to run on them.
The change affects mainly Verizon, which won almost all of the licenses that must follow the open access rules. Google entered the auction but did not win any licenses, although its participation was seen by many as way to promote the open access requirement, rather than as an attempt to become a network operator.
Verizon and AT&T, another big winner, will most likely use the spectrum to offer high-speed data services -- either mobile or fixed line -- which would provide an alternative to cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Internet services. The networks will probably use the new LTE (Long Term Evolution) cellular technology. Trials could begin by the end of next year, although broad availability probably won't come until 2010 or 2011, said Bill Ho, an analyst with Current Analysis.
The new networks are unlikely to deliver cheaper services for users as some had hoped, however, at least not for a while. The operators will need to pay off the billions of dollars they pledged for the spectrum, in addition to the investment in the new networks. "It won't be cheap right off the bat," said Ho. "At some point there will be mainstream adoption, and then the price goes down."
Nor did the auction result in completely new types of companies entering the wireless market, which had been another possibility when the auctions were announced. Some said they expected all along that the incumbent operators would dominate.
"The whole thing was set up from them beginning for [the incumbents] to win all the licenses," said Vince McBride, who won just two licenses at the auction, covering only a small geographic area. The big winners in the auction picked up hundreds of licenses.
A former mail carrier, McBride has been trying his luck at FCC auctions since 1996. He said new rules for the auction favored large companies with deep pockets. For example, the FCC shortened the amount of time that the winners would have to build their networks. "All that did was prevent small businesses from coming in. They were scared of the build-out requirements," he said.
Still, the open access rules lead some to call the auction a success. In a blog post, Google called it a victory for end users.
"Consumers soon should begin enjoying new, Internet-like freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices," wrote Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel for Google, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel.
Many insiders didn't expect that Google would bid to win in the auction, even though it entered the contest. "It would have been foolish on their part to try to run a network," said Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research. "It's not their core competency."
Google has developed its own mobile phone software platform, called Android, and stands to benefit from the open access rules in any case.
"They're trying to become bigger and looking at means to expand their advertising into other areas beside the PC without incurring the cost," Manjaro said. "They accomplished that. They got the networks opened up."
The high price the operators paid for the spectrum may also have an upside, since they may have to come up with innovative services to recoup their costs, she said. "They'll have to be more creative to pay for these networks,"
One potential casualty could be the rural telephone companies. That's because the 700MHz spectrum is ideal for supporting services across long distances. That means the operators may use it as an easier and cheaper way to deliver DSL-like service to rural areas -- where rural telephone companies have a lock on the market today, Manjaro said.
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