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Posts Tagged ‘ IBM ’

Google disputes bug patching report

By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld (US)
September 1, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Google on Monday said that a recent report claiming it failed to patch a third of the serious bugs in its software had the facts wrong.

IBM’s X-Force security company, which released the report last week, acknowledged the error and issued a revised chart that shows Google patched all the vulnerabilities rated “critical” or “high” in its online services.

“We questioned a number of surprising findings concerning Google’s vulnerability rate and response record, and after discussions with IBM, we discovered a number of errors that had important implications for the report’s conclusions,” said Adam Mein, a security program manager at Google, in an entry on a company blog .

Last week, X-Force’s report claimed that 9% of all Google bugs disclosed in the first half of 2010 were unpatched, and 33% of the vulnerabilities ranked as critical or high had not been fixed.

According to IBM’s revised tabulations, Google patched every vulnerability revealed in the first six months of this year.

“After we released our trend report … we received feedback from two software vendors regarding the severity and remedy information for some of the vulnerabilities behind this chart,” said Tom Cross, a researcher with X-Force, in a mea culpa blog posted on Saturday. “As a consequence of this feedback, we have manually reassessed the CVSS scoring, remedy information, and vendor information for every vulnerability that impacted the percentages that appear in this chart.”

Cross’ blog post included a revamped table that showed the new numbers.

Although Cross did not name the other vendor that complained about the patching results, Sun Microsystem’s numbers also changed dramatically. Where the original table had Sun letting 24% of all first-half 2010 bugs and 9% of the most serious flaws go unfixed, the recalculated figures were 8% and 0%, respectively. The changes dropped Sun from the vendor with the largest percentage of unpatched vulnerabilities to the one in fifth place.

In April, Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun for $7.4 billion ; X-Force listed the two companies’ vulnerabilities separately.

Other vendors’ unpatched percentages also decreased after X-Force re-examined its data, including Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s, as did the catch-all category of Linux.

What caught Google’s eye, said Mein, was X-Force’s assertion that one-in-three critical bugs had not been patched.

“We learned after investigating that the 33% figure referred to a single unpatched vulnerability out of a total of three — and importantly, the one item that was considered unpatched was only mistakenly considered a security vulnerability due to a terminology mix-up,” Mein said.

Mein pointed to a 2009 blog post by Jonathan Ness, a member of Microsoft’s security team, as proof of what he called mistaken identity. Ness’ blog discussed the difference between “stack overflows” and “stack buffer overflows,” and said the former were not security vulnerabilities because they could not be used on their own to insert attack code onto a PC.

It’s not unusual for software vendors to dispute the findings of independent security researchers. Mozilla, for instance, has repeatedly disagreed with reports that claim Firefox has more bugs than rival browsers, calling some of those reports “misleading” because Mozilla’s open-source approach requires that all vulnerabilities be disclosed while Apple and Microsoft can fix flaws without revealing that they were ever there.

At times, developers also quarrel with researchers over the severity of a bug, or even whether a flaw should be labeled a vulnerability. More than two years ago, Microsoft first claimed that a Windows bug was a “design flaw,” then weeks later changed its mind and called it a security problem.

X-Force has also had problems with its vulnerability counts and calculations. In the report it issued last week, the company admitted that the methodology it used to compile the 2009 edition was flawed and said it had corrected the problem to make the results more accurate in the mid-2010 report.

Cross said that X-Force would release a revised report this week.

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IBM: Vulnerabilities hit record high for first half of 2010

By Fei Lumbania on September 1, 2010

By Anuradha Shukla
MIS Asia
September 1, 2010

SHENZHEN, CHINA - Global security threats have increased significantly, having reached record highs in the first six months of 2010, according to IBM’s X-Force 2010 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report.

New vulnerabilities

In the report, IBM’s X-Force Research and Development team said that 4,396 new vulnerabilities were recorded from January to June of 2010—an increase of 36 per cent from the first half of 2009. About 55 per cent of the companies reporting these problems also indicated that they did not have a vendor-supplied patch.

Of these threats, Web application vulnerabilities were the most commonplace; more than half of the publicly disclosed threats, 55 percent, were caused by these vulnerabilities.

Secondly, covert attacks or Advanced Persistent Threats, which are designed to be undetectable by traditional security, have increased in sophistication and are often hidden within PDF and JavaScript formats. 37 per cent more activity involving PDF attachments was observed in the first half of 2010.

The report also added that phishing activity has significantly declined, over 82 per cent as compared to 2009, but financial institutions are still a primary target, having been targeted by 49 per cent of all phishing emails.

Key trends

The X-Force Report also identifies key trends that are gaining ground. Virtualisation and cloud computing are noted as important security topics. Thirty-five percent of vulnerabilities that affect virtualisation systems were found to impact the hypervisor, meaning that attackers may be able to gain control of more than one virtual system running on the same machine.

For organisations seeking to switch to cloud computing, the team says that it is important to start by determining the security requirements of workloads to be hosted in the cloud in order to stave off security risks.

Alex Li, brand manager of Tivoli, Software Group, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited, said that looking at unfolding trends such as these involving threat dynamics makes it crucial to prepare for the future. Li said that threats are on the rise, but the industry has become far more vigilant about reporting them, underscoring the increased focus on better security solutions and risk management.

IBM’s X-Force team is a premier security research group. Since 1997, it has taken note of and analysed upwards of 50,000 vulnerability disclosures, and has published a mid-year Trend and Risk Report that helps clients learn about and avoid security threats.

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IBM breathes new life to mainframes with zEnterprise release

By JM Tuazon on August 25, 2010

by John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
August 25, 2010

While everybody was all too caught up with the massive IT hype that is cloud computing, IT solutions giant IBM announced recently an upgrade to its mainframe offering, aptly called zEnterprise.

zEnterprise, visiting IBM executives claim, will hopefully address current challenges in the market, especially that data centers are coming down with immense pressure from various fronts to perform better and more efficiently.

Richard Pape, business executive of the System z for IBM growth markets, said zEnterprise will “redefine the playing field in order to enable clients to manage data centers differently.”

Pape shared that today, 78% of CIOs want to improve their use and management of data, but only 30 cents per dollar are actually spent towards innovating their current infrastructure. “At least seven out of ten global companies need to modify their data centers to meet increasing needs for power, cooling, as well as physical space,” he added.

One approach to address such pressing concerns for data center innovation is putting all the workload onto a single platform, “but it doesn’t happen,” Pape lamented. “Users [usually] select the right platform for the application. The problem arises when management of the systems happen in siloes,” he added.

zEnterprise, according to Pape, can be that central platform where management of siloed systems can take place. The zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager is the key to using mainframe quality of service attributes, including security and reliability, to benefit workloads running on select Power and System x BladeCenter systems, IBM said.

From a performance standpoint, zEnterprise is the most powerful mainframe system from IBM ever. Its core server, zEnterprise 196, contains 96 microprocessors clocking 5.2Ghz speeds, capable of executing more than 50 billion instructions per second.

Cloud vs Mainframe
It begs the question, however, why IBM would still push for companies to use their mainframe servers, despite the growing popularity of the cloud as the logical next step for computing. “A large number of companies are looking at the cloud right now, especially to address the problem of server sprawl,” Pape surmised.

Cost, however, is one of the compelling reasons why enterprises should look at mainframes for their various needs. “This is a box to manage other systems,” explained Ooi Sze Kai, business unit executive, System z software, IBM software group-ASEAN. “The mainframe is good for OLTP environments, because its CMOS chip is designed to handle tough workloads.”

Several competitors of IBM in the server business have actually formed a group to urge the global regulatory body to open up its mainframe technology. “They see the mainframe as a strategic platform for the cloud, because it is reliable, secure, and scalable,” related Rafael Andaya, System z platform manager, systems and technology group, IBM.

“Traditional traits are what clients require, so we continue to evolve [the mainframe] to make it relevant,” Pape added.

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IBM releases new Power7 servers for mid-market

By Fei Lumbania on August 25, 2010

By Kathleen Lau
ComputerWorld Canada
August 25, 2010

TORONTO - IBM Corp. has released new Power7-based 700-series servers primarily for the mid-market, including one high-end and four low-end servers. The servers are essentially “book-ends for our (700-series) portfolio,” said one executive with the Armonk, NY-based company.

The high-end Power 795 server affords customers scalability, energy-efficiency, support for large workloads, and saves on data centre space, said Steve Sibley, IBM’s worldwide Power Systems platform marketing manager based in Austin, Tx.

On the lower-end, IBM released four servers: Power 710, 720, 730 and 740 Express.

While the new systems are targeted primarily at mid-market customers, Sibley said certain large enterprises will also find value in products.

“That’s really giving our clients the ability to leverage the Power7 technology,” said Sibley. “For smaller clients who want the performance and the scalability and resiliency … or even large enterprises with distributed environments or workloads.”

But the new lower-end systems are really about helping mid-market organizations leverage their IT infrastructure to deploy new services and “to capitalize on almost large enterprise computing capabilities as they deploy new applications,” said Sibley.

IBM also released a Power7 processor-based Smart Analytics System for real-time analytics of large amounts of data. Based on Power 740 Express and new technologies like solid state Flash drives, Sibley said the analytics system has greater capacity and performance.

The announcement follows IBM’s February unveiling of its Power7 chip and Power 755 Express as well as 770 and 780, which Sibley said “have done very well” since the launch.

One customer of IBM’s Power Systems line is GHY International, a Winnipeg-based customs brokerage services vendor that uses the technology to run AIX, IBM i and Linux operating environments. The company’s vice-president of information technology Nigel Fortlage said that sort of flexibility allows him to run an entirely virtualized environment that includes VMware as well as IBM’s PowerVM.

Fortlage also said the energy efficiency capabilities are dramatic between Power7 and its predecessor Power5. “When I stood behind the Power5, I could blow dry my hair. And if I stood behind the Power7 it just gives me a warm breeze,” said Fortlage.

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Acquisitions blunting security innovation, say users, analysts

By Fei Lumbania on August 23, 2010

By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
August 23, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Some IT managers and analysts today said the planned $7.7 billion Hewlett-Packard-McAfee deal and HP’s acquisition of Fortify this week are the latest examples of a trend that could threaten long-term innovation in the security industry.

This week’s moves are the latest in a long line of merger and acquisition activity in the security industry in recent years.

The McAfee acquisition marks a completely unexpected entry into the security market by Intel. But the chip giant’s move follows similar ones by other major vendors like IBM, Cisco, EMC and Symantec — and HP — to pick up security vendors.

On one hand, the acquisitions underscore the continuing robustness of the security market — Intel agreed to pay close to $8 billion for a company with less than $2 billion in 2009 revenue. Analysts say the price tag is a sign of just how valuable security companies have become.

At the same time, though, as major vendors gobble up large and small security tool makers, the main loser could be innovation. “I think there’s a big impact [on innovation],” said Jan Oltsik, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Acquisitions typically don’t help as small, innovative companies become product features or divisions of large companies.”

Oltsik cited TippingPoint, which was acquired by 3Com in 2005 and then by HP late last year, and Internet Security Systems, which was acquired by IBM in 2006 for $1.3 billion.

“ISS and TippingPoint were two of the more innovative security companies around until they were acquired,” he said. “While it looks like HP will re-invest in TippingPoint, the company languished for a few years and really lost its innovative edge. The same is true of ISS,” Oltsik said.

Oltsik said the bigger vendors would do well to focus on developing tightly integrated security products, Oltsik said. “The government is ready to fund these kinds of solutions. Companies such as Cisco, Juniper, RSA, and Symantec need to recognize that there is will be a huge market for new types of security solutions in the near future,” he said.

The acquisitions have been driven largely by the need for big IT companies to have security products in their portfolio, said Matt Kesner, CIO at Fenwick & West, a San Francisco-based law firm “I suspect that what is driving the trend are customers that want to hear about the security implications when they buy any IT product, large or small,” he said.

Nonetheless, he agreed that such purchases can have a negative impact on innovation.

“I am a little sad about the wave of acquisitions of security vendors,” Kesner said. The current threat environment requires ‘real innovation’ on the part of security vendors, Kesner said. “That kind of innovation tends to come from smaller companies.”

Jim Kirby, director of engineering at Dataware Services, called Intel’s planned purchase of McAfee “rather odd,” though he acknowledged that such odd moves are becoming somewhat typical among security companies. “As far as a trend goes, I’m not really seeing anything other than typical market grabs,” Kirby said.

“Small, good security companies have been getting gobbled up — and their products ruined — for the last 10 years,” he said. Kirby cited Symantec’s purchase of Sygate as one example. “I’m not really seeing anything different” with the announcement today, he said.

Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT-Harvest, did note that the continuing investments in the security market do accompany a comtinuing robustness in demand for products. He noted that the security business is growing at a 22% annual rate and that some of the more innovative smaller companies are doubling in size each year.

“Even with the continuous acquisition activity there are 1,400 vendors in this space,” Stiennon said. “That is a net gain of 200 over the past three years.”

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IBM unleashes 256-core Unix server, its biggest yet

By Fei Lumbania on August 18, 2010

By James Niccolai
IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
August 18, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - IBM has strengthened its hand in the Unix business with new systems based on its Power7 processors, including a server for large enterprises that scales to 256 cores.

The Power 795 is IBM’s biggest Unix server to date. It’s aimed at companies that run large-scale database applications or want to consolidate multiple Unix or Linux workloads onto a single system using IBM’s PowerVM virtualization software.

IBM also launched several low-end Power7-based servers, each with one or two processors. Combined with the mid-range systems it launched earlier this year, the new servers round out IBM’s Power7 line-up from top to bottom.

All the new systems are offered with Linux or IBM’s AIX or i operating systems (i is the new name for IBM’s i5/OS). They’ll compete with Unix servers from Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, which acquired Sun’s hardware business when it bought the company earlier this year.

Few organizations need a box as big as the 795 to run a single, large application, and IBM expects most customers to use it for consolidation projects, which can help reduce energy use and conserve data center floor space, said Steve Sibley, IBM’s worldwide marketing manager for Power systems.

The box can be carved into 254 partitions today, and IBM has said it will increase that number to 1,000 next year when it completes the required testing. “You may need a firmware update to do that, but right now we don’t anticipate customers having to do anything,” Sibley said.

The 795 has 8TB of main memory and uses eight processor “books,” as IBM calls them, each with four Power7 processors. The chips each have eight processor cores, up from two on the Power6, and IBM says the new processors are compatible with Power6-based servers. That means customers can slide Power7 books into an existing Power 695 chassis without any other upgrades required, Sibley said.

IBM is launching the systems into a soft market. Unix server sales have been in decline, with revenue dropping 22 percent between 2008 and 2009, to $13.1 billion, according to IDC. The analyst company expects the market to pick up slightly this year and next.

IBM has been doing better than its rivals in those poor conditions. It sold the most Unix gear in each of the last three years, according to IDC, expanding its share of revenue to 40.3 percent in 2009, compared to 26.2 percent for HP and 25.3 percent for Sun.

The new systems could strengthen its position further. “On a hardware basis, it’s pretty clear IBM is in the lead in raw performance,” according to Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting.

Still, IBM’s growth came in a period of turmoil for its rivals, said IDC analyst Jean Bozman. HP has been transitioning customers from its PA-RISC chip to Intel’s Itanium processor, and Sun’s future was clouded for a long time during talk of an acquisition.

After some delays, HP has now launched new servers based on Itanium 2, and Oracle is finally discussing a road map for Sun’s hardware business. That puts them in a better position competitively. Still, Bozman said, “IBM is in a very strong position.”

Even IBM doesn’t know exactly how customers will respond to the 256-core system. ‘This is the first time we’ve gone from 64 cores to 256, so it will be interesting to see the demand,” Sibley said. A handful of customers have applications that are large enough to run across a entire system, “but we do see hundreds of partitions being the norm,” he said.

The company offers a “capacity on demand” payment model, so customers can order a fully loaded system and pay for the processors as they are activated.

IBM didn’t provide a price for the 795, except to say it starts at $500,000. Sibley said customers end up getting about twice the number of processor cores on a Power7 system as they would for a Power 6 system of the same price.

For low-end servers, IBM disables some of the Power7 cores to offer four- and six-core chips. Those processors are offered in the Power 710, 720, 730 and 740 systems, which were also launched Tuesday in one- and two-socket rackmount and tower formats. The servers start from $6,385, Sibley said.

The company also launched a new Smart Analytics system, the 7600, which comes preinstalled with IBM’s DB2 data warehousing software on a system built for data analytics. It’s the Power7 upgrade of a Power 6 system IBM launched in April.

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The short list for HP’s next CEO could be long

By Fei Lumbania on August 13, 2010

By Patrick Thibodeau
Computerworld (US)
August 13, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Analysts are developing a short list of possible candidates to replace former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd, who resigned Friday. But it’s worth noting that Hurd’s name didn’t come up often, if at all, as a contender in 2005, when he was tapped for the HP job.

At the time, he was a veteran of NCR Corp., where he had served as its CEO and president.

During that search, The Wall Street Journal said executive recruiters envisioned the ideal successor to be “a star CEO at a company with at least $40 billion in annual sales.” NCR had revenue totaling just over $6 billon, making Hurd something of a surprise choice.

With Hurd now out — he resigned after HP’s board found fault with his relationship with a contractor and related expense reports filings , the succession guessing game is in full swing. Analysts are brushing off their 2005 lists and some familiar names are emerging as hot prospects.

Among those mentioned, once again, is Michael Capellas, the former CEO of Compaq, and Joseph Tucci, the CEO of EMC . The names of executives at IBM , Microsoft and Oracle are also being bandied about.
HP executives who were likely considered in 2005 and are seen as contenders now include Ann Livermore, the executive vice president of the company’s enterprise business and Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP’s imaging and printing group. New to the list is Todd Bradley, a former Palm CEO and president who is now executive vice president of HP’s personal systems group.

An easier task, perhaps, than trying to guess names is to determine what type of management style HP’s board will want in its next CEO.

Chuck House, an HP veteran who now heads Stanford University’s Media X , was especially critical of Hurd’s management style in his blog . He outlined in an e-mail what he hopes the board will look for in Hurd’s replacement. (Media X is affiliated with the H-STAR Institute (Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute) at Stanford, and works with industry and academics to study the impact of information and technology on society.)

House hopes the new CEO is someone who is “innovation appreciative” and is willing to spend research and development dollars, a leader who employs “management by walking around…, which implies caring and compassion and regard with dignity for employees.”

House also believes that HP needs to change its employee reward system by “getting rid of huge bonuses for the few, and restoration of profit sharing and much smaller, but meaningful, stock options for the many,” he said. “This is an easy signal to implement, and relatively cheap to do in actuality,” he said.

House, co-author of The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation, added that HP needs a listener and a supporter of “collective intelligence” rather than “father-knows-best” management style, he said.

Rob Enderle, an independent analyst in San Jose, Calif., said any internal candidates at HP could have an edge.

“This time around they have internal candidates that could do the job, though external candidates with the needed breadth will be rare,” said Enderle. He noted the emergence of board director Mark Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape who has launched other companies and is a venture capitalist, “as a power player” at HP.

Andreessen “may want to put someone vastly younger and more dynamic in the role than any of the traditional internal or external candidates,” Enderle said. “I think the odds favor either an internal candidate or an unanticipated candidate at the moment, depending on how quickly they need to fill the job and how much influence Andreessen actually does have.”

Another important area for the next CEO will be ethics. Hurd wasn’t directly involved in the company’s pretexting scandal in 2006, when HP acquired phone records under false pretenses to learn the identity of a leaker. That incident prompted HP to emphasize its business conduct rules — rules that eventually led to Hurd’s ouster.

“I would expect the company to say publicly that it is strongly committed to ethics and internal compliance, and I imagine that whoever becomes CEO will also say publicly that she/he is strongly committed to ethics and internal compliance and quickly moving beyond this episode,” said Miriam Baer, assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.

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Linux compliance program a response to surging open source use

By Fei Lumbania on August 13, 2010

By Jaikumar Vijayan
Computerworld (US)
August 13, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - The Open Compliance Program announced by the Linux Foundation on Tuesday is a response to the surging growth in the use of open source technologies within enterprises, and by makers of consumer electronic and mobile devices, analysts say.

Much of the program appears to be directed at addressing what many analysts said is a continuing confusion among makers of embedded devices about open source licensing requirements. But enterprises can benefit from the program as well, they added.

The Linux Foundation, a non-profit group that is focused on fostering Linux growth, announced a set of open source tools, training materials and a self-assessment checklist , designed to help companies comply with open source license requirements.

The program is supported by several large vendors, including Google , Novell, IBM , HP and Intel . Also supporting the effort are organizations such as the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), which provides free legal representation for developers of open source software, and gpl-violations.org which is focused on raising awareness of open source license violations.

The impetus for the initiative comes from the skyrocketing use of Linux as an embedded operating system in mobile, consumer electronic and numerous other products, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the foundation.

The goal is to help companies fulfill their license obligations in as straightforward and low-cost a manner as possible, Zemlin said in a conversation with Computerworld today.

“Market adoption of open source software has reached a scale that is unprecedented,” Zemlin said. Companies ranging from embedded systems manufactures, to those with large super-computer clusters are all using open source software these days because of the cost and technology benefits, Zemlin said.

Many though appear not to understand or be fully-informed about their obligations to share their source code with the broad community as they are required to, he said.

“The Linux kernel alone has a $10 billion value, and that value comes from the fact that people are sharing it,” he said. The compliance program will ensure that all of the technical and cost benefits that companies are deriving from open source software “is matched by their ability to comply with the legal requirements of open source licenses,” Zemlin said.

Eben Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and a law professor at Columbia Law School said the new effort is being driven largely by what’s happening in the embedded world.

Most of the violations that the SFLC has observed and pursued have occurred among manufactures of embedded devices, Moglen said. In most cases, the violations stemmed from a lack of experience in open source use. Enterprise use of open source software for the most part appears to be more mature and in line with open source license practices, he said.

What the Linux Foundation is doing is “to provide operations advice that should make it easier for device manufactures and distributors to comply with Free and Open Source Software license at minimum cost,” Moglen said.

But enterprises that are using open source technologies will also benefit from the Linux Foundation’s newly released tools for identifying and reporting source code components, and for ensuring that the code is safe and ready for public consumption.

“Companies wanting to use or contribute to the open source world are complex mixes of developers, business management, and operational management such as the internal legal team,” said Stephen Walli, technical director of CodePlex Foundation, a non-profit that facilitates exchange of code among software companies and open source communities.

The Open Compliance Program will increase corporate contribution and participation in the open source world, and alleviate some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds open source licensing, he said.

“I think the Open Compliance Program is an important next step in the industry as more and more companies use and contribute to the open source software ecosystem,” Walli said.

“There’s a growing maturity and understanding in the software industry around intellectual property practices over the past two decades, but that understanding isn’t uniformly present across all participants,” he said. “The OCP fills that gap providing tools and education for all to use.”

The Open Compliance Program comes at a time when there are indications that adoption of open source software may have reached a turning point. A survey by Accenture of 300 IT managers in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland showed 69% expected investments in open source tools to increase this year, while about 40% said they planned on migrating mission-critical software to open source in a year.

More than 75% of the survey respondents cited quality as a primary driver of open source adoption.

The Linux Foundation’s move highlights problems being raised by the continued broadening of Linux and open source use, said Jay Lyman, an analyst with The 451 Group.

While it has extended to new markets and devices, open source software and its licensing model … are still very new to many organizations and verticals, so this type of compliance and facilitation,” is needed for continued growth, Lyman said.

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IBM to accelerate mobile unified communications

By Fei Lumbania on August 10, 2010

By Tim Greene
Network World (US)
August 10, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Keeping Microsoft and Cisco in its sights, IBM is planning to introduce variety of collaboration tools for mobile platforms where it wants to create full-featured unified communications endpoints and become the mobile collaboration vendor of choice.

MICROSOFT EXCHANGE IN THE CLOUD: FOUR MIGRATION TIPS

Initially these mobile tools will enable calling features that, for example, determine the least expensive mode for making a phone call, but that will be expanded to include the full range of IBM collaboration and conferencing features, said Alistair Rennie, general manager of IBM Lotus During an interview at IBM’s new and sprawling software development facility in Littleton, Mass. With the most recent release of Lotus SameTime Unified Communications collaboration software last week, the platform now supports Blackberry 5.0 and Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 clients.

As it accelerates its mobile plans, IBM expects to exploit its already extensive interoperability with other platforms including its major competitor in UC — Microsoft. Its mobile support will also challenge competitor Avaya and its mobile clients. Over time, as businesses deploy 4G handhelds, IBM will fully support mobile collaboration “on the mobile device of choice” and treat the collaboration features as services, not a stack of available features but an always-available set of tools, Rennie said.

He expects customers will adopt SameTime for mobile devices via its cloud-based collaboration suite LotusLive, starting with a core of instant messaging, presence, Web meetings and some video. That will grow over time to include voice integration with corporate directories as well as full video services.

Rennie also said the company would respond to customer demand for appliances that can be used to more easily bring collaboration tools into their networks, much the same way that they can add security platforms to their networks via IBM security appliances.

IBM is also building a downloadable, browser-based plug-in so anyone can join SameTime conferences even if their machines lack SameTime clients. Later this capability will be deployed from LotusLive clouds so, for example, a bank could call a conference to talk to high-value customers and have them participate with relative ease, said Rob Ingram, IBM senior product manager for UC. The clients are already available for Web conferencing and IM, and the browser-based client for video is scheduled for the first quarter of 2011. After that the company may look into a mobile browser-based client as well, he said.

Meanwhile, the company is working with videoconferencing vendors to build adapters to communicate with IBM video infrastructure so, for example, IBM desktop video participants could join conferences anchored by Polycom videoconferencing gear, he said. The user case they’re working on is collaboration with business partners who might not have IBM videoconferencing infrastructure, Ingram said. The list of those participating includes Cisco and Polycom but not Cisco’s Tandberg gear or HP conferencing.

Even as he looks ahead to mobile collaboration, Rennie noted that businesses over the past 18 months have altered their view of UC, which blends presence and various modalities of real-time communication — IM, phone calls, video — with collaboration tools integrated with calendaring and corporate directories, and non-real-time communication such as texting and e-mail. Elements of IBM’s UC offerings include Notes/Domino for messaging and calendaring; Lotus Connections for social collaboration; Lotus Quickr for team collaboration; SameTime for Unified Telephony; Lotus Live for on-premise or cloud collaboration. Avaya, Cisco Microsoft, Siemens and others rank among major competitors.

Whereas customers may have regarded UC as a package of tools that could be bought and installed, they now look at specific business processes, such as order fulfillment, from a desktop perspective rather than as a back-end resource, Rennie said. UC might have been deployed before for a siloed purpose such as a tool for contact-center agents, but now businesses see it with wider applications, he said.

CFOs, for instance can see the cost-saving benefits of enabling a business-analytics dashboard that pushes through work to the next stage by notifying the right person to handle it and pulling together conferences when needed. “We call it collaboration-enabled business processes,” Rennie said.

Such an idea is in contrast to just promoting attractive UC features, such as finding people in a directory with appropriate skills for a task and whose presence information shows they are available in the right modality and then clicking on their name to reach them. That is the way IBM has been selling UC in the past, and that needed to change, says Don Van Doren, a principal with Unicomm Consulting.

“You can use the quick-to-communicate stuff,” Van Doren says. “It’s useful, but it doesn’t touch the central concepts of unified communications and impact how companies can function differently. You need to get to the business guys and say there’s a business-process bottleneck that costs them two days out of every business development cycle.” And then show how UC can remove the bottleneck. But the task is daunting because that means pulling in top executives and line-of-business managers to help make the technology decisions with the IT staff, Van Doren says.

Even with that challenge, IBM is aligned to do well in battling its primary competitor, Microsoft, he says. Other UC vendors such as Cisco and Avaya come from the telephony end of communications, and he feels that software vendors with control of desktop software have the edge. One of IBM’s strengths is that it already has desktop productivity software widely deployed in corporate networks where users are comfortable with it. And it is interoperable with Microsoft platforms, he says, making it possible to use products they have already bought. Specifically, IBM’s strategy to enable putting IBM SameTime presence inside Microsoft’s Outlook and SharePoint, making it attractive to businesses that have already invested in the Microsoft technologies, he says.

Van Doren also ranks IBM as being far ahead in its social networking software for business with Lotus Connections tied into presence and with its capabilities for mining information within the corporate network to enhance finding the right people for specific tasks. “They’ve been working on this four or five years,” he says. “Cisco is just starting to do it.”

IBM also seems to be opening up its platforms more to third-party developers, he says. UC needs ecosystems that independent developers can work in, and Van Doren thinks IBM may be getting to that point. Earlier, the company seemed to want to make releases rock solid before opening up to partners, but it may serve the company better to be more open to third-party developers sooner. “It’s a much better strategy to get [products] out there with more people finding things that need to be fixed. The winner will be the company that opens up and supports best their ecosystem.”

Has IBM turned a corner? “Man, I hope so. We need another strong player in this industry,” Van Doren says.

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Google, IBM named top cloud tech providers

By Fei Lumbania on July 23, 2010

By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 23, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Google and IBM came out on top as the leading cloud computing vendors in a survey of developers revealed this week by Evans Data.

The biannual Evans Cloud Development Survey 2010, which polled more than 400 software developers, found that more than 40 percent cited Google as the public cloud leader. Nearly 30 percent identified IBM as the top private cloud provider.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Canonical and IBM aligned for cloud deployments this week. | Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in the InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]

Google is perceived as leader for setup, infrastructure, and application management in public clouds while IBM is viewed as leading in these attributes in private clouds.

”Most developers expect to be in a hybrid situation going forward with respect to application deployment in the cloud,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, in a statement released by the company. “And these two vendors are perceived of as best filling the two main requirements for either public or private clouds, i.e., security and reliability. With no other vendors even close in perceived leadership, it’s likely that we’ll see IBM and Google dominating the cloudscape for the foreseeable future.”

Developers, Evans said, want to move applications between public and private clouds.

Public clouds are generally considered to be third-party data centers available for Internet-based application deployment, from companies such as Amazon. Private clouds are usually thought of as internal networks of systems that utilize cloud-based application deployment techniques.

In other findings in the survey included the following:

o More than 80 percent of respondents feel it is important for cloud providers to offer 100 percent backward compatibility as a cloud infrastructure matures.
o Sixty percent were concerned with government geographical restrictions with cloud deployments.
o Better data encryption is the most sought-after security improvement for public clouds.

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IBM’s new mainframe, the zEnterprise 196, is a leviathan

By Fei Lumbania on July 23, 2010

By Patrick Thibodeau
Computerworld (US)
July 23, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Every new IBM mainframe says something about the times we live in, and today’s latest mainframe release is no different. The zEnterprise system, as it is now called, has become a cross-platform management system, a sovereign of other systems.

IBM has given its new mainframe, announced today, the ability to manage Power and x86 IBM blade systems from the mainframe consol. The system, which can have as many as 96 processors, will support up to 114 blades with eight cores.

IBM officials characterize the zEnterprise system as their most significant change to the mainframe platform in at least two decades, and it is being coupled with some the other products to take advantage of it.

In terms of hardware capability alone, the zEnterprise 196 — that’s IBM’s name for just the server itself — includes a 5.2-GHz quad processor and up to 3TB of memory. That’s double the memory of the preceding system, the z10, which had a 4.4-GHz quad processor.

IBM’s mainframe has always been a system with a larger focus that seemingly shifts from release to release.

With the arrival of the z9 in 2005, for instance, the emphasis was on security and encryption, a leading concern post 9/11. The z10 in 2008 , which IBM called a “business supercomputer,” moved from a single core to quad processor and was aimed at CPU-intensive applications and server consolidation. The goal there: reduce data center footprints and energy needs.

The security and energy requirements remain and, IBM, for instance, says that its latest mainframe has a 60% performance gain without using any more power than the z10. But the big concern across vendors now is for management systems that improve the utilization of all compute resources in a virtualized data center.

Brad Day, an analyst at Forrester Research, called the new system “very different from anything that has happened before,” and a “real departure.”

Day believes that IBM’s approach is to focus on consolidation and virtualization, especially as it sees a lot of its MIPS growth coming from users who are running Linux on the mainframe.

IBM’s System z mainframe revenue fell 24% in the most recent quarter; sales typically fall before release of a new system.

The latest zEnterprise system is built around an IBM-centric approach that requires IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and a Unified Resources Manager

Whether IBM expands the mainframe’s dominion to include systems from other vendors remains to be seen. But for now it sees the best approach as focusing on managing an environment that includes z/OS, Linux, AIX on the z196, Power and System X BladeCenter Systems.

Karl Freund, IBM’s System z strategy and market segment manager, said that the system can deliver “tight management, and for us to deliver that management at the level of security and availability that customers demand for a mainframe, then we have to ship the right blade and test the blade in the environment.”

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Canonical bundles Linux, IBM database for the cloud

By Fei Lumbania on July 22, 2010

By Paul Krill
InfoWorld (US)
July 22, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - Canonical is offering enterprises a chance to try cloud computing via a virtual appliance that bundles Ubuntu Linux with the IBM DB2 Express-C database running on the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) public cloud platform.

The free appliance, which features Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04, also can be deployed in private cloud configurations.

[ See InfoWorld's report on Novell working with VMware on Linux-based software appliances. ]

DB2 Express-C enables developers to test applications to see if they can be used in a cloud, said Neil Levine, Canonical vice president of commercial services. Applications such as data analysis and Web frameworks can be tested, he said.

“This is a very easy way for the enterprise to try out [cloud computing],” Levine said.

IBM endorsed Canonical’s cloud effort.

“Customers are quickly adopting DB2 software on Linux for both on-premise and cloud computing deployments,” said Robert Sutor, vice president for open source and Linux in the IBM Software Group, in a statement released by Canonical. “The combination of Ubuntu and DB2 provides users with a highly integrated and tested virtual cloud appliance.”

Canonical is making the announcement at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland.

Canonical is talking with IBM about possibly bundling Ubuntu Linux with an enterprise level version of DB2, Levine said.

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IBM acquires BigFix for data centers

By Fei Lumbania on July 2, 2010

By Chris Kanaracus
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
July 2, 2010

BOSTON - IBM announced Thursday that it plans to buy systems management software vendor BigFix. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, were not provided.

BigFix’s platform includes a range of modules for areas such as patch management, security configurations and power management.

The software’s workload is distributed over all devices under management, and a special query language BigFix developed minimizes performance hits to the machines under management, according to its Web site.

IBM’s move ups the competitive stakes between itself and the industry’s other big players in data center automation: Hewlett-Packard, BMC and CA Technologies.

Although IBM’s Tivoli IT management software line is already sizable, BigFix’s technology should still be additive, according to one observer.

“Nowadays, IBM can have surprising holes in its portfolio when it comes to desktop management and automation,” said Redmonk analyst Michael Coté. “While there’s plenty of monitoring, asset management, and so on, Tivoli can always use more of this type of thing, rather than partnering to get it.”

“The kind of ‘model your desired and compliant configuration and then enforce it’ stuff that BigFix does aligns well with existing Tivoli customers,” Coté added. In addition, “the scale at which BigFix can run matches the scale of IT that Tivoli looks to manage,” he said.

Privately held BigFix has roughly 200 employees and more than 700 customers. It will be rolled into IBM’s Software Group.

IBM is expected to discuss the acquisition further during a conference call Thursday.

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IBM Launches “Earn As You Learn Program”

By Melba Bernad on June 28, 2010

By Emmanuel Amador
Computerworld Philippines
June 28, 2010

The University of Cebu (UC) and IBM Philippines launched a partnership called the “Earn As You Learn” (EAYL) Program in simple ceremonies at the school’s Banilad campus in Cebu City last June 22.

The first of its kind in the Philippines, the UC-IBM partnership is based on a successful collaboration between IBM and the University of Ballarat in Australia. The EAYL program consists of a new undergraduate course that combines a specialized curriculum with real-world experience in a professional IT environment. The EAYL is incorporated into UC’s eight-semester degree program, Bachelor of Science in Information Technology - Professional Practice.

IBM worked with UC to design the new course, recommending subjects to supplement the curriculum. IBM training material on topics such as business conduct, data security and privacy, database management, data analytics, and software quality assurance will also be provided. IBM subject matter experts will lecture on special topics and conduct continuous training for UC faculty.

“We are excited to work with one of the giants in the IT industry,” said Ms. Candice Gotianuy, UC Chancellor. “When IBM approached us and inquired if we were interested, we didn’t just say yes, we asked ‘when?’”

The EAYL officially began at the start of the 2010-2011 school year last June 15 with 16 scholars. The scholars were formally accepted into the program at the launch event, which was attended by the scholars’ parents’, top IBM executives, school and city government officials, and the media.

This is something exciting for both the university an the students,” said Dr. Ofelia Maña, UC - Banilad Campus Director. “If we provide our students with the right IT skill set and relevant work experience, we help ensure a healthy pipeline of competent IT graduates for the future,” she added.

GEOGRAPHIC EXPANSION

The partnership with UC is part of IBM Philippines’ geographic expansion efforts to reach new markets and transfer technology beyond its traditional Metro Manila client base. “Global demand for IT is growing is growing now more than ever. It spurs economic growth across all industries and economies. This collaboration will help address issues that collectively impact the IT industry,” said Mr. James Velasquez, President and Country General Manager of IBM Philippines. “It will help bridge gaps and address the shortage of competent IT professionals in Cebu City.”

Velasquez further explained that what would attract further investment from large players such as IBM would be a city’s openness to innovation, responsiveness to the demands of industry, and cooperation from the local government.

The launch was also attended by outgoing Cebu City Mayor and Congressman-elect Tomas Osmeña, who expressed appreciation for the new and timely training opportunities brought about by the EAYL program. Osmeña noted that for the first time, Cebu was not facing a shortage of jobs but instead a surplus of job openings particularly in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry without qualified candidates to fill them.

“We can’t keep on doing the same old routine of just cranking out graduates without a clear idea of where they will be going,” Osmeña said. He added that he was confident the new local administration of Cebu City would work with the private sector to train competent graduates who can qualify for high-paying jobs.

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IBM “Smarter Planet” Strategy Expands to Cebu

By Fei Lumbania on June 28, 2010

By Emmanuel Amador
Computerworld Philippines
June 28, 2010

As part of its Smarter Planet strategy, IBM Philippines presented its succesful teamup with Cebu-based Philippine Spring Water Resources, Inc. (PSWRI) at IBM’s Geographic Expansion roadshow held at the Hilton Cebu Resort and Spa last June 21.

PSWRI has chosen IBM to implement what it has dubbed as “PROD 888″, the company’s implementation of SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. PROD 888 is part of PSWRI’s effort to restructure its business processes and improve operational efficiencies to ensure customer satisfaction.

PSWRI is the manufacturer and nationwide distributor of the popular Nature’s Spring brand bottled water. The company also manufactures custom PET bottled water products. It is owned, operated and managed entirely by Filipinos.

PROD 888 is expected to seamlessly integrate the company’s various businesses and provide improved visibility across the enterprise, resulting in control over operations and quick access to real time information across its various locations and businesses. IBM provided Model 3600 and 3800 servers, IBM SAN switches, IBM Blade Center systems, IBM DS 5100 System Storage, Red Hat oprating system software, and VMWare software for virtualization for PSWRI to implement SAP ERP (ERP Central Component 6.0) company-wide.

“Most companies choose to put off investment until the sagging economy improves, but few realize that this is an opportunity to improve overall business operations and systems. The main caveat is that companies need to be smarter than ever in doing so. That is why Nature Spring is embarking towards the full integration and automation of its ERP systems,” said Charles Capilitan, Special Assistant to the President and PSWRI Project Director. “This entire project contributes greatly to PSWRI’s success. IBM, with its proven track record and industry expertise, gives us a stable platform to run our SAP ERP system.”

“This is a great example of IBM’s dedication to help bring smarter business and technology solutions to small and medium businesses outside of Metro Manila. IBM has the right tools to help companies like PSWRI thrive in today’s global economy,” said Charis Fiel, South Philippines Business Manager for IBM Philippines. “We are committed to enable businesses in Cebu and the rest of the region with access to world class expertise and technology, helping the area become better equipped to seize greater opportunities and to be an integral part of the Philippines’ economic growth as well.”

SMARTER PLANET

IBM’s geographic expansion efforts to reach new markets outside of its traditional Metro Manila clientele is part of its Smarter Planet vision, a strategy focusing on using technology to make cities better and urban services more efficient and accessible, explained Lope Doromal, chief technologist at the IBM Innovation Network. PSWRI is one example of how IBM is bringing smarter solutions for business operations in key cities.

The foreseeable future will be marked by more people concentrated in cities instead of the coutnryside. With this urbanization will come increased instrumentation and connectedness, resulting in an “internet of things” that is more intelligent and can generate massive amounts of data, Doromal said.

The challenge is how to manage this data to improve key services in urban areas, Doromal noted. These services include public safety, transportation, education, energy and utilities, telecommunications, healthcare, and government services.

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IBM to set new mobility strategy with launch of software development lab

By Fei Lumbania on June 16, 2010

By Matt Hamblen
Computerworld (US)
June 16, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - IBM will unveil its enterprise mobile software strategy to industry analysts on Wednesday as part of a grand opening of a new software development laboratory in Littleton, Mass.

The strategy will involve IBM services and IBM software, a company spokeswoman said, without explaining further. Some new initiatives will involve middleware software used to support mobile users, but the crux of the event will be about collaboration and “using mobile devices to manage your business,” she said.

Several analysts said they welcomed IBM’s input, given some concerns about IBM’s direction in the mobile space, especially when compared with the company’s historic role in many prominent software products, such as Websphere for application integration that first appeared in 1998, and Lotus software products including Notes for e-mail that started with desktop computers in the 1980s.

Today, with the emergence of multiple smartphone operating systems such as the iPhone OS and Android, and their tens of thousands of smartphone apps, the timing would seem right for IBM to play a bigger role than it has, several analysts told Computerworld.

“IBM, except for its professional services side, has lost its way in mobile,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

He said the implementations of WebSphere inside enterprises has been costly, and a partnership with Research in Motion to extend Notes e-mail and instant messaging to BlackBerry users through Lotus Notes Traveler and Sametime, had only achieved limited success.

“IBM does not have a strong presence in mobility on a standardized product basis and must modernize to support multiple [mobile] platforms to gain share,” Gold said. “It has to be seen as offering a compelling solution to the market at a reasonable cost, but has a lot of work to do.”

Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said that given IBM’s pivotal role in creating landmark software for decades, it “should be doing much better than they are in mobility.”

He said IBM has been late with mobile products and has made promises it hasn’t kept, but he didn’t elaborate.

Neither of the analysts have been briefed so far about IBM’s expected announcement, but said it could involve Websphere application integration for mobile devices or extension of Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime or Lotus Connections.

Gold said that one highly speculative guess is that IBM could be entering the business of outsourcing the hosting of mobile apps.

Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group, said that he expects IBM to announce more tools and apps for the IBM Lotus series, along with more mobile development tools for its Eclipse software.

Howe was more generous in judging IBM, noting the company doesn’t make smartphones or provide an OS for them. “Their mobility strategy is entirely about software and services for mobility, which is higher up the value stack” than an OS.

“If Apple , Google and RIM are in the mobile horse race, then IBM is running the stables that keeps the horse fed and watered. They get paid no matter which horse wins,” Howe said.

To some extent, IBM competes with Hewlett-Packard in the mobile software space, as well as Sybase, which SAP is in the process of acquiring . But IBM’s Lotus products offer direct functions that users deploy, something more than tools used by IT for managing mobile devices, or building and managing mobile applications.

“IBM makes basic meat and potatoes software and it’s not glitzy like iPhone apps and mobile moviemaking,” Howe said. “But IBM has a multi-billion dollar business in meat and potatoes software. It’s not glamorous, but it does pay the bills.”

IBM appears to be prepared to address mobile computing more directly, but noted it already has a central role with more than 1 billion phone subscribers using IBM software daily, and that 80% of smartphone software was developed with IBM technology.

As many analysts have noted, IBM recognizes that more users will reach the Internet via mobile devices than desktop computers within five years, although some industry observers say they believe that mark will be reached in only two years.

The IBM spokeswoman said Wednesday’s announcement follows the company’s efforts in mobile software for many years and would “reassure any attendees of IBM’s continuing interest in the mobile software space.”

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Global collaboration seeks to empower local SMEs

By JM Tuazon on June 1, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
June 1, 2010

In order to help local SMEs gather much-needed funding from financial institutions to further their businesses, a global collaboration of three large institutions recently launched SMEToolkit, a website which contains valuable resources for SMEs.

While the website (http://philippines.smetoolkit.org) has been live since 2002, it didn’t contain interactive tools and resources as it did now, thanks to more than five million dollars in investments funneled to the cause by global tech giant IBM since 2006.

The SMEToolkit initiative is a collaborative effort by the IFC (International Financial Corporation), IBM, and local SME bank Planters Development Bank (PDB). There are 32 others of its kind in other countries, mostly developing nations.

“This truly is a one-stop shopping for small businesses as it levels up the playing field,” remarked James Velasquez, country general manager, IBM Philippines. “We know the tools that large enterprises use most and we know the role technology can play in leading to growth. Now, every business can have the same chance to succeed. It’s vitally important that we help small businesses who are the major employers and growth engines in the country.”

The refurbished website has been rebuilt on an open source platform to feature Web 2.0 elements such as live chat, online forums, business directories and survey forms in order to fuel collaboration among SMEs here and abroad.

This way, SMEs, will have relevant information at their fingertips, and would not have to be shy about asking for help regarding funding and other things that concern their businesses. “[The website hopes to] contribute to the reduction of self-censorship among SMEs,” related Luc Villancourt, program manager for access to finance, IFC.

Villancourt shared that in a 2003 study, only 16% of local SMEs had access to funding, due mainly to their apprehension to approach banks and other financial institutions, in fear of being rejected anyway.

“The toolkit helps SMEs understand how to apply for funding and to be confident enough to apply for it,” the IFC executive added.

In the Philippines, the global initiative’s local bank partner, PDB, has been very eager in promoting the site’s use. “SMEs are asking us for articles that can help them with their business,” remarked Bernadette Ratcliffe, SME solutions treasurer, PDB.

Ratcliffe said they have started to see real potential for the program to benefit SMEs all over the country, which prompted them to conduct over 30 roadshows around the country to promote the initiative. “SMEs [we’ve talked to] have been very enthusiastic about it so far,” she recalled.

PDB has touched base with over 1,800 SMEs across the country, Ratcliffe said, conducting intimate discussions with about 30 to 50 SMEs per visit. “There have been a lot of inquiries from them so far,” she added.

The group has also started planning for new content to add to the website, aside from eyeing more roadshows and a more aggressive online marketing in the future. “We are negotiating with the Ateneo Graduate School of Business to get more content online, such as videos and online tutorials,” Ratcliffe detailed, adding that they have also forged a pact with DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) and BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) to post their respective publications, such as tax calendars and tax codes.

“We see the toolkit as a good introduction for SMEs to get involved with technology,” Ratcliffe proposed. “We expect even more participation from tech-savvy second-generation SMEs.”

The IFC has been a major investor for public developments in the country, pooling $2 billion worth of investments for the country since 1962. It has set up its office in Manila in 1977, and has expanded to Davao recently in 2006. Its second largest investment in the country goes to projects promoting access to finance, next only to public infrastructures.

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AusCert 2010: IBM spruiks free malware

By Fei Lumbania on May 26, 2010

By Darren Pauli
Computerworld Australia
May 26, 2010

SYDNEY - IBM has apologised for distributing malware-laden USB keys to delegates at Australia’s biggest security conference last week.

The IT giant alerted delegates via an email two days after it left the AusCERT 2010 conference last Wednesday.

IBM Australia chief technology officer, Glenn Wightwick, said in the letter it suspects all USBs are infected.

“Unfortunately we have discovered that some of these USB keys contained malware and we suspect that all USB keys may be affected,” WightWick said.

The malware was created in 2008 and affects Windows desktops and servers through an infected setup executable and autorun.ini.

The blunder comes two years after Telstra and reportedly Hewlett-Packard issued malware-infected USBs at AusCERT 2008.

IBM said affected users should contact their administrators and offered a do-it-yourself removal process.

1. Turn off System Restore [StartProgramsAccessoriesSystem toolsSystem Restore] Turning off System Restore will enable your anti virus software to clean the virus from both your current system and any restore points that may have become infected.

2. Update your antivirus tool with the latest antivirus definitions [available from your anti virus vendor of choice].

3. Perform a full system scan with your AV tool to confirm the existence of the infection. If malware is detected allow your AV to complete a clean.

4. On completion of this process, complete a second scan using a different anti virus product. Free anti virus products are available from known companies such as AVG, Avira, Panda Software, or Trend Micro.

5. Once a second scan has been performed and it is determined that your workstation is free of any known malware, as a precautionary measure we recommended that you perform a back up of all vital files on your workstation and perform a full re-installation of the operating system. This process will remove the risk of other unknown or undetected malware that may be present on your machine.

Wightwick said users should contact the IBM Security Operations Team at secops@au1.ibm.com if they experience difficulties.

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Six Best Practice for Analytics Today

By Fei Lumbania on May 17, 2010

By Alden Christian Basbas, IBM
May 17, 2010

The need for information in the 21st century continues to intensify and shows no sign of abating. Today’s decision makers need to make sense of a tremendous volume and variety of information, leading more enterprises to deploy analytics that not only help them sense and respond to key business issues, but also help them make predictions and act based on real-time data.

Infact Business analytics derive their value through the ability to extract specific and changing data from a wide variety of heterogeneous sources for smarter decision-making. Potential sources extend far beyond the classic IT portfolio of enterprise resource planning (ERP) transaction systems, databases, and data warehouses to include information from external sources, such as customer surveys, market research, and buyer behavior trends. Analytics applications transform this information in real time (or near real time) to deliver fresh insights.

According to Springboard Research, from a recent executive brief entitled “Asia Pacific IT Market Predictions 2010”, one of the top 10 trends that will shape enterprise IT in the Asia Pacific region in 2010 includes Analytics, and the Evolution Towards ‘Intelligent Solutions’ which more broadly, is emerging as a key driver of new Business Value.

For example, business analytics can help organizations monitor blood supplies, report on carbon footprints, or increase visibility across their supply chains. Retail outlets can determine the best end-cap product positioning based on customer preferences for Coke or Pepsi. Police services are using analytics to put crime information into the hands of patrol officers so they can quickly identify problems and associate trends and locations of crimes. Recently, IBM and the NYPD (New York Police Department) announced efforts to develop predictive analytics using the massive amounts of data that the latter generates everyday. The largest police department in the world has a real-time crime database about people who have committed all kinds of crimes — starting from silly stuff such as writing graffiti on the walls or littering the road, to more serious offences such as theft and murder. If warehousing such data is a challenge, what is even more so is using it to predict criminal activity. IBM’s consultants, programmers and researchers are working in tandem with NYPD to take the analytics to the next level of prediction via video recognition. Through massive video feeds, facial recognition or portions of the face such as ears or eyes will be used to deliver patterns in a crowd, by which they can spot trouble or terrorists.

How can data management professionals ensure that their performance management and analytics initiatives are set up for success? Here are six best practices that can help you overcome the twin challenges of increasing user demands and more complex data sourcing requirements.

1. Cast a wide net

Making decisions and developing processes based on only part of the picture can negatively impact business performance. The first step, therefore, is to make sure that your analytics implementation has direct access to all relevant, available data no matter where it resides. The analytics system should also serve as the authoritative source for all historical and transactional data, so you can properly glean insights on trends and make decisions that will impact future performance. One-off dashboards, custom-developed programs, or stand-alone spreadsheets that don’t connect back to the trusted pool of data are generally not reliable, sustainable, or scalable. Each solution adds its own layer of query and reporting complexity and introduces associated reconciliation and usability challenges.

Analytics solutions need a rich variety of information to yield meaningful insights. With so much data fragmented across any number of systems, you need a broad reach to ensure you can connect to any and all transactional systems, warehouses (relational and online analytical processing [OLAP]), flat files, and legacy systems, as well as XML, Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) sources.

Casting a wide net helps you break down the data silos that hamper analysis and allows you to deliver a timely and complete enterprise view of relevant information. Plus, when new data sources become accessible, all analytics capabilities can access that data immediately.

2. Plan a caching strategy

Performance optimization is a critical part of fast reporting and interactive analysis. Switching between different backend systems to access data is a familiar requirement, but it can seriously hinder performance if done on the fly. Instead, create a caching strategy to both improve system performance and minimize any negative impact on the performance of source systems caused by repeated requests for data. Common techniques include enterprise information integration (EII); virtual caching; OLAP caching; caching to disk or local database; event-driven, scheduled, and manual refreshes; and advanced hybrid memory/disk utilization options.

3. Adopt a common, multilingual business model

Once the IT team has accessed and integrated the data needed to provide a complete view of the organization, modelers must convert it into information that is meaningful to business users. They must also ensure that the right information reaches the right users at the right time and is delivered in the right way.

The key to delivering this information in terms that business users understand is a common metadata business model that applies consistent business rules, dimensions, and calculations to all data regardless of its source. This makes it easier for a business to accurately report and analyze information such as sales invoices, general ledger charges, and order receipts. A common business model provides the single view of the organization necessary for reliable, cross-enterprise reporting for all roles, locations, and languages. This approach not only supports a level of information consistency that leads to confident decisions, but reduces the cost of maintaining the modeling environment. It also reduces report proliferation by allowing a single report to be produced for all geographies.

4. Model once, package for many

Large data warehouses can overwhelm those trying to produce reports and analyses because there are simply too many data objects to choose from. Instead, build one model and publish sections of it that address the needs of different business users or communities. Whenever possible, create reusable objects and build multi-tier models that separate physical models from business models. This will decrease the downstream effect of changes and enable you to evolve your models more easily, as well as add or change data sources and sourcing strategies.

By publishing sections of a single common business model, you avoid the pitfalls of duplication and divergence. This strategy helps decrease model proliferation, supports consistency across the enterprise, and reduces the time required to deliver different models for different user groups- and it ensures that each user community receives only the specific information it requires.

5. Establish role-based security

Similarly, just because you have a single common business model fueling your analytics engine doesn’t mean you want every user to see every analysis or report. Assign rolebased user access to avoid the pain and expense of generating separate models or reports. The single model also restricts authorized users to only their view of the data, which may also help you comply with data governance and privacy regulations.

6. Develop models collaboratively

It’s not easy to quickly build, deploy, and maintain an effective model, so organizations typically employ teams of data modelers to accomplish this task. To maximize productivity, craft processes and deploy tools that enable modeling teams to work collaboratively. For example, data modelers will need the ability to work on different parts of the model simultaneously, without jeopardizing one another’s changes or creating “downstream ripples” before aggregating the segments into a single view.

Business analytics projects are gaining ground in the Philippines across various industries — telco, banking, retail and government. The complexity of the analytics requirements varies from one industry to another depending on how dynamic the industry is. In telco and retail for instance, we’re seeing more and more executives clamoring for real-time analytics. In other words, gaining insight on real-time data so that it can drive “action” and not just decision-making.

Now, to successfully implement these business analytics projects, business leaders will also need to drive support across their organizations. A key ally will be CIOs who seem to be in lock step with this objective according to a separate IBM study. In the recently released IBM Global CIO Study, 83 percent of CIOs identified business intelligence and analytics as their number-one priority to enhance their organizations’ competitiveness. This foresight of the importance of business analytics will be a key agenda in all CIO’s notebook for a long time to come.

Alden Christian Basbas is the Sales Manager for Information Management Software at IBM Philippines

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ERP boosts Uratex’s profitability

By Melba Bernad on May 13, 2010

Computerworld Philippines Staff
May 13, 2010

Uratex, a family-owned Philippine-based business which specializes in foam, plastic and metal products for the automotive, industrial and domestic consumer markets, announced that they have gained significant improvements in profitability and operational efficiency since partnering with IBM and Bayantrade. Their collaboration was to implement an SAP Business All-in-One solution on an IBM System x server, leveraging the business benefits of IBM System Storage and the operational strengths of IBM DB2 software. The ERP solutions initially ran at just two sites but grew eventually across the entire organization, composed of 11 manufacturing sites with around 1,600 employees.

Each Uratex manufacturing site had its own business system, and even between locations there were difficulties in exchanging information. Sales order information would frequently be re-keyed several times into different production systems, and overproduction and overstocking inventories was common. In addition, each unit operated its own general ledger, inventory, point of sale and order handling system.

With the SAP solution in place, finished goods inventory was cut by 90 percent from two months to five days, releasing cash to the business. The integrated order-to-cash process ensured that production volumes match sales orders, reducing waste and increasing efficiency.

Uratex chose SAP Business All-in-One largely for the embedded business practices, and chose to run it on IBM technology because of its excellent reputation for quality and reliability.

The SAP software runs on an IBM System x3650 server, more than capable of handling the workload of the entire Uratex group, as it can be upgraded to meet the rising workload via disk capacity increase, offering a stable and reliable solution for continuing operations. Uratex selected IBM DB2 to provide information management as it offers easy database integration with SAP applications and easy database administration, which will help reduce costs and boost efficiency.

“Before, we literally had tens of thousands of products, and a large order might be manufactured across several sites. Multiple data entry was a waste of effort and it tended to introduce errors, so sites would often over-produce ‘just to be on the safe side,’ so to speak,” said Peachy Medina, Managing Director of Uratex.

Medina relates there was no embedded process control. For example, when an under-pressure sales person could not find the correct product code, it was quicker simply to enter a new code in the relevant field in order to process the order. Or again, if a customer returned an order, it was easier to generate a credit and sort out whether the goods had actually arrived at a later stage. “In both cases, although we offered speedy and helpful customer service, our lack of discipline made it very hard to identify true profitability and improve our business processes,” Medina explained.

According to Medina, the solution has immediately resulted in better process controls and a simpler way of working that makes it easier for the company to build the business.

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IBM points predictive analytics at social Web

By JM Tuazon on May 12, 2010

By Chris Kanaracus
IDG News Service (Boston Bureau)
May 12, 2010

BOSTON - The next time you choose an emoticon to spice up a comment about a company, product or service online, know this: There’s a chance that a software program is capturing the sentiment expressed by your smiley or frowny for analysis.

The capability is part of a new release of IBM’s SPSS Modeler text mining and analytics software, which also allows customers to parse information from social media sites and feeds.

Emoticons’ meaning tend to be obvious, but written comments aren’t always so, due to industry-specific jargon and slang. To that end, the new release includes 180 “semantic networks” with taxonomies for verticals like life sciences or consumer tech. For example, in a banking context, the software would recognize that a “variable rate mortgage” and an “adjustable rate mortgage” are the same thing, IBM said.

Many companies already use demographic information, sales data and other structured sources to build predictive models in an effort to understand customer behavior and connect with new ones. IBM contends that integrating information from the social Web will add further insight.

SPSS customer Money Mailer, a direct marketing services provider, definitely sees the potential of social media in its business, but is still in the early stages of figuring out how to use it, said John Gramata, vice president of marketing.

Historically, Money Mailer has used SPSS tools for purposes like creating “look-like” customer models, he said. He cited a regional garden center that had a dedicated customer base but was looking to add more. Money Mailer took a sample of information from the company’s “loyalty club” database and developed a model for spotting likely targets aggregated from other contact databases.

Money Mailer has an in-house statistician that works with SPSS, but the software’s interface has proven easy for some business analysts to work with, Gramata said.

While generally happy with the software overall, Gramata is looking forward to expected speed improvements in the new release, as very large data sets tended to result in a performance hit. “It’s always been a fast tool but … any kind of improvements in speed is definitely a welcome enhancement.”

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EMC, IBM extend agreement for storage interoperability

By Computerworld Philippines on May 6, 2010

By Computerworld Philippines Staff
May 6, 2010

EMC and IBM recently extended their technology licensing agreement for storage interoperability and technical support that allows customers to continue to deploy combinations of EMC storage and IBM Power Systems Technologies.

The five year agreement is both an extension and expansion of the two firm’s initial agreement in March 2006. It provides EMC with certain interfaces for storage interoperability and technical support for the IBM i operating environment.

“This agreement underscores IBM’s commitment to open innovation and is consistent with our drive towards industry interoperability. The ability for IBM i clients to attach IBM or EMC storage provides them with broad industry choices to meet their growing workload needs,” said Jim Herring, director of IBM Power Systems Hardware Business Line.

According to Barbara Robidoux, vice president of EMC’s storage product marketing, the extension and expansion of the licensing agreement with IBM will help EMC in strengthening its commitment to provide mutual customers using the IBM i operating environment with industry leading storage systems, software and services.

The executives, however, did not disclose financial terms. The development is the latest in a series of agreements between EMC and IBM for the last seven years.

In October 2003, EMC and IBM announced a licensing agreement that provided EMC with access to a range of storage interfaces and functionality for other IBM Systems lines and agreed to a mutual exchange of open-standards based interfaces for improved manageability and interoperability.

Two years later in June 2005, the companies extended their cooperative support agreement, which facilitates mutual response to joint customer issues including, the IBM Power System and all other IBM Systems lines.

Later in June 2007, the companies extended their licensing agreement for the zSeries attachment architecture which enables the interoperability of EMC Symmetrix family of storage systems with IBM System z. – Tom S. Noda

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IBM pushes industry framework for ‘smarter’ government

By JM Tuazon on April 30, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
April 30, 2010

A full year into its ‘smarter planet’ initiative, IT behemoth IBM is now pushing nations to adopt its government industry framework, which seeks to translate the same streamlined processes found in most enterprises into the public sector.

The framework consists of implementing technologies that will read through various government data, extract pertinent information such as names and relations, and create structured information out of it.

The proposed framework can be applied to areas in government concerning safety and security, tax and revenue management, social services and security, metro, transport and roads, and in establishing an integrated urban infrastructure.

“The framework suggests that it’s not anymore about developing solutions,” said Sayaji Shinde, public sector solution sales executive for ASEAN, IBM software group, “but providing a common way for government to adopt existing models and projects.”

Shinde said the framework will act as a technology blueprint which will establish standards where governments can pick and choose which is applicable for their nations, and will provide a foundation to allow users to build on top of.

Annie Cheung, vice president for smarter planet initiatives – ASEAN, IBM, highlighted the example of a recent food safety incident in Japan, where contaminated products sourced from Vietnam penetrated the market.

“Thailand immediately picked up demand for the frozen shrimp, because they have a technology known as ‘traceability,’ Cheung explained, adding that implementing traceability has provided Thailand with a steep competitive advantage against neighboring countries.

Traceability, according to Cheung, is a means of tagging and identifying different kinds of products “from farm to folk.” This technology provides users the guarantee that they are getting quality products, because they can identify that they came from quality sources.

Locally, Shinde said, there are still a lot that needs to be done when it comes to having a smart government. “We are in coordination with agencies and the CICT when it comes to determining governance and ICT policies that push towards this direction,” he added.

Shinde likewise disclosed that the Philippine National Police is looking closely at crime data warehousing, a technology which houses all criminal data across all line agencies into a single system.

“Data by itself isn’t useful. In fact, it can be overwhelming—unless you can extract value from it. And now we can. With the right tools, we’re beginning to see patterns, correlations, and outliers,” Cheung quipped.

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One firm’s story: The mainframe goes, but Cobol stays behind

By JM Tuazon on April 21, 2010

By Patrick Thibodeau
Computerworld (US)
April 21, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - A lot of Cobol-based applications have a plot line similar to the first Star Trek movie.

In it, the crew of the Enterprise discovers a huge, intelligent cloud they called “Veeger.” It turns out (plot spoiler alert), though, that Veeger was an unmanned spacecraft called Voyager that had been launched from Earth some 300 years earlier and then readapted by alien forces.

That Star Trek movie was released in 1979. The Cobol-based ERP application suite used by Owens & Minor Inc., a medical supply company, began its life in the 1980s as a packaged application. Over time, the company adapted the ERP software to meet its specific needs, creating a highly customized system with 10 million lines of code.

Today, the ERP system runs the company’s core business systems, including order and inventory management, purchasing, pricing, accounts receivable and accounts payable. Nearly 130 years old, Owens & Minor reported about $8 billion in revenue last year.

Unlike Veeger, the ERP system over time got a lot bigger, but not necessarily a lot better. Each green screen application had a different user interface, which required that the company buy larger and larger monitors to display the multiple windows, according to Rick Mears, CIO of the Mechanicsville, Va.-based firm.

Owens & Minor is in the process of modernizing its ERP system but the software will remain Cobol-based .

Managers decided not to replace the system with a new one or to rewrite the code in a more modern programming environment like Microsoft’s .Net. The company instead took a third path — moving the Cobol-based ERP system, including its Unix-emulator, off a mainframe computer to an x86 server and Windows clients. Mears said the business logic built into the ERP system was too valuable to lose.

A lot of companies replace Cobol systems or rewrite them because they don’t like the interface, Mears said. He compared such a move to razing a house that only needs restoration. “There are all sorts of stories of companies taking on nine figure rewrite projects. I don’t understand the payback for that,” he said.

Mears said he is convinced that either replacing or rewriting the ERP system would have cost $100 million to $200 million more than what the firm is paying to move it from the mainframe to the x86 servers.

“Many companies who purchase an off-the-shelf ERP system proceed to spend tens or even hundreds of millions to modify the package to meet their business requirements,” he said.

The Owens & Minor approach to modernize the ERP system allowed it to reduce spending on hardware. Although the Owens & Minor isn’t disclosing exact figures, the cost of operating the new x86 system including migration cost was less than half of the cost of operating its 700 MIPS (millions instructions per second) mainframe.

The argument of whether to use mainframe and distributed environments is longstanding among IT shops, where there are strong opinions on each side.

Bank of America, for instance, is so committed to the mainframe that the company works with IBM to ensure that colleges and universities produce sufficient numbers of graduates with the skills needed to run and use them.

IBM mainframe revenue had been consistently rising until last year when it declined nearly 29%. But that result wasn’t unexpected in bad economic times. In fact, 2009 worldwide server revenue for systems by all makers declined by almost 19% to $43.2 billion, according to IDC. In addition, IBM is releasing a new System z computer this year, and its mainframe revenue typically declines prior to the release of a new one.

IBM accounted for about 33% of overall server revenue worldwide last year.

Owens & Minor has so far moved the ERP software to two Hewlett-Packard HP ProLiant DL785 servers each with eight quad core AMD Opteron chips rated by HP at 3,200 MIPS. One server is for failover. The system was brought into production late last year.

Mears said that recent improvements in the x86 hardware platform helped with the decision to port the ERP system there. The new servers are 50% larger than the hardware Owens & Minor originally evaluated three years ago, while the cost remained about the same.

Owens & Minor worked with a number of vendors on the project, including the Dell Perot Health Care Systems Group and Micro Focus Ltd., to move the code to Windows Server 2008, which has built-in Unix emulator. New user interfaces were and are being developed, included a composite that combines business functions, such as customer support, the various processes employees need to access.

The change for users was dramatic.

For instance, previously the firm’s 400-plus customer service representatives had to access at least four different systems — the order management system, which had information about the customer and order; the warehouse management system; the product management system that stores all information about the products; and the accounts receivable system — to resolve an issue. Each of the systems had its own separate screens and business logic. Now, the information is brought together in a GUI instead of a green screen, increasing processing speeds and improving order accuracy.

The company is now in the process of modernizing other screens with a Windows GUI.

The new environment also has a plug-in to Microsoft Visual Studio.

Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC, said that in general terms “it is probably not the best thing to do to extend the life of Cobol application in a Windows environment because the user interface is wrong and your don’t really get a lot of the benefits you would get from moving to a more current system,” he said.

But Gillen also said that Owens & Minor’s “business logic was embedded in the Cobol” and “for better or worse that wasn’t easily replaceable.”

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Integrated Service Management for a Decade of Smart

By Fei Lumbania on April 20, 2010

By Cris Magallona
IBM Philippines
April 20, 2010

About a year ago, IBM began a global conversation about how the planet is becoming smarter. Here at IBM, we realized that intelligence was, and is, being infused into the systems and processes that enable services to be delivered, touching every facet of our daily experiences; our finances, the movement of people and money to water and food, the heating and cooling of our homes, traffic in our cities, and even how we shop for goods and services.

Computing power is now being built into things we would never recognize as a computer, creating an explosion of digital devices soon to number in the trillions, giving us the opportunity to turn massive amounts of computing data into intelligence. In these next 10 years, more than ever before, we will find ways to make the analysis of the information we collect actionable to change the way people live for the better. These changes will be driven by the development of leading edge software, because on our smarter planet, software is already changing the way people live. At IBM, we call this the Decade of Smart. Organizations out there are also seeing this trend, and could be calling it something else, but make no mistake about it - this is becoming a reality.

In the Decade of Smart, it is envisioned that we will be able to anticipate, forecast and predict changes like never before. Businesses, governments and industries are already utilizing leading edge software to analyze information to create smarter transportation systems, waterways, workplaces and energy grids. These new services are drastically changing the way we work and live. The work force has moved well beyond physical branch offices and onto virtual platforms providing dispersed workers a place to collaborate.

With these capabilities come new challenges for people like you and me, who are charged with maintaining the privacy and security of our IT environments. The risk and complexity of operating our organizations has grown. Regardless of the industry, your infrastructure must be ready to handle a flood of data while maintaining the security controls of how and when information is accessed, and by whom. People are becoming more dependent on security in everyday life as it is progressively viewed as every individual’s right.

The complexity of the smarter planet is here to stay and it creates “dark” areas, where people with bad intensions can do bad things. We must ensure that our organizations are pro-actively identifying all types of business risks, and have the security and resiliency plans in place to address any threat or disruption. Whether you are dealing with cybersecurity, protecting a critical infrastructure or dealing with the issues of privacy and identity, it is universal, we always have to be ahead of the bad guys.

To stay ahead of the bad guys, you have to be able to see what is happening with the infrastructure from a service operations and security operations perspective. You have to be in control. In a controlled environment, we strive to have everything in a desired state. You have to be able to visualize what is happening right now in that desired state and you have to make sure that you stay within the control limits and understand the risks that are associated with moving in and out of that desired state. Control also requires automation, because we’ve seen in our work with clients worldwide that vulnerability surfaces from people choosing not to follow repeatable defined processes. This is a very powerful value proposition and it resonates with businesses, industries and governments across our smarter planet; this proposition is called Service Management.

Clients are interested in this notion of Integrated Service Management as it is a client value proposition based on a core premise; the most important thing clients do with the technology infrastructures they deploy, is to deliver a service which supports a business process that is important to a business outcome. The prime piece of importance is that the service, from a security perspective, is built on a set of physical assets with built-in intelligence, storing, processing or collecting huge amounts of information, that are network connected. It is important to note that these intelligent and connected assets span multiple classes; they can be transportation vehicles, they can be traffic control devices, they can be buildings and they could be digital assets, like graphic images or software that supports composite applications. All of these things can now be part of the Smarter Planet-part of the service that you deliver. A key element in the Smarter Decade will be the capability to manage all of the assets across this spectrum with one set of software capabilities, because you have to be able to see what’s happening with the entire infrastructure from a service operations and a security operations perspective.

Integrated Service Management also includes the integration of processes and best practices from different sources, like ITIL, COBIT and ISO 27001. The integration of these best practices allows organizations to make sure that they are functioning properly within a set control limit, to deliver the services that are expected or mandated. We have found that adherence to the disciplines of Integrated Service Management sets the highest performers in the area of security management apart.

So, at IBM we talk to our clients about this idea of Integrated Service Management as the “operating system” for the Smarter Planet. It drives down the cost of implementing and maintaining service infrastructure, it minimizes human error, and it provides the data and insights to measure and prove compliance. It is also integral to the creation of software and development processes, resulting in the security that is built into the software applications we use to create new services for the smarter planet. Every business and every government, regardless of their industry or home continent, will need strong integrated service management capabilities to deliver the Smarter Bridges, Smarter Utility Grids, Smarter Farms, and Smarter Banks of our future.

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Google hosts 400 CIOs, updates Docs

By Computerworld Philippines on April 13, 2010

By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service (Miami Bureau)
April 13, 2010

MIAMI - Google’s enterprise division is hosting several hundred CIOs on Monday at its headquarters, where it will unveil enhancements to its Docs office suite, including a revamped code base.

Docs, which Google has in the past acknowledged doesn’t match the sophistication or the features of Microsoft Office, is now architected in a way that will allow for faster and significant improvements, according to a Google official.

“We have built a brand-new technology foundation that lets us innovate more quickly,” said Anil Sabharwal, a Google Enterprise product manager.

Docs, a free, Web-hosted office productivity suite, is available as a standalone product and also as part of the broader Google Apps collaboration and communications suite.

While Google has all along touted the collaboration capabilities that its software-as-a-service model gives Docs, the office suite has lacked enough features to prevent organizations from using it as a complete replacement for Microsoft Office.

In particular, users have complained about difficulty formatting word processing documents, forcing them to export Docs files to Microsoft Office for things like pagination and setting margins.

So far, the strongest feature in Apps has been its Gmail component, which has proven a viable alternative to messaging platforms like Microsoft Exchange and IBM’s Lotus Notes.

Now, Google intends to give Docs a big boost, so that it becomes a stronger competitor to Microsoft Office, not just a Web-hosted complement to it.

Google is announcing improvements in the formatting area for its Docs word processing application, including what it calls better “fidelity” when importing and exporting documents to and from Microsoft Office, improved margins and tab stops, better image layout and an enhanced in-document comments system.

The word-processing document editor features what Google calls real-time editing collaboration, meaning people can see others making changes “character by character.” Also new is a chat window for collaborators to communicate via instant messaging.

The spreadsheet application now has a formula bar for editing cells, and auto-complete and drag-and-drop capabilities. In addition, the drawing editor now lets users collaborate in real time.

The new word processing, spreadsheet and drawing editors allow up to 50 collaborators to simultaneously edit. Docs in general will now be faster thanks to its new infrastructure.

A downside, which Google promises will be temporary, is the disabling of the Gears offline technology in Docs as of May 3. Google expects to bring back the ability to work when disconnected from the Internet soon, taking advantage of HTML 5. Gmail and Calendar will continue to use Gears.

The Docs improvements sound interesting to Kristi Graning, senior vice president of IT and e-business at global real estate company RE/MAX International.

“I want to get my hands on Google Docs and try it out myself,” said Graning, who attended Google’s Atmosphere event for IT executives on Monday.

RE/MAX International doesn’t use Google Apps. The company has relied for years on Microsoft Exchange, Outlook and Office. But Graning is intrigued by cloud-based applications as a possible alternative, not only to cut costs but also to provide tools that give its corporate employees and real estate agents an edge over the competition.

She had a chance to hear from CIOs at the event who successfully migrated thousands of employees from Exchange and IBM’s Lotus Notes to Google Apps. “It has been a great opportunity to hear more about cloud computing,” she said.

Graning also likes the style of communication from Google’s enterprise team. “They educate, they provide information, they share. It’s not a hard-sell type of environment like at other software vendors,” she said. “That’s the right attitude to have.”

Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann calls the improvement to Docs necessary and incremental, but not earth-shattering. “These are all things users are looking for. Do these enhancements make Docs a replacement for Microsoft Office tomorrow? No,” she said.

Nonetheless, the upgrades make Docs a more credible alternative to Microsoft Office, which helps Google in its campaign for adoption of the cloud-based Apps in the enterprise, she said.

“Google’s model is to get people to move to the cloud. The more attractive Google makes its tools, the easier it is to convince organizations about this,” Wettemann said.

Google hopes that Apps, which has been adopted mostly by small companies, continues gaining momentum among large organizations with its Premier edition, which costs US$50 per user per year and has management, security and compliance features that enterprise IT departments require.

Google maintains that Apps, built from the ground up with a cloud computing architecture, is a better, less expensive alternative to traditional communication and collaboration platforms from vendors like Microsoft, IBM and Novell designed to be installed on customers’ premises and servers.

However, Microsoft, IBM, Novell and other collaboration vendors are busy retooling their software to take advantage of the cloud computing model.

It’s important and significant to see Google keep improving Docs, said Ted Schadler, a Forrester Research analyst. “Google continues to invest in this product. That more than anything else is the story. They’re not just going to let this thing sit there. They’re going to go for it and continue to use the cloud delivery model as a way to innovate faster,” he said.

These continuous improvements will go a long way to help Docs and Apps in the enterprise, even if Docs isn’t yet on par feature-wise with Microsoft Office, he said. “I don’t see this as a replacement strategy but more as an augmentation strategy,” Schadler said. “CIOs and IT executives aren’t really looking to get rid of Microsoft Office. They’re looking to solve employee problems not well-solved by Office. A big one is collaboration scenarios.”

As such, Docs offers enterprises an office suite that makes it easier for employees to collaborate, instead of having to resort to e-mailing back and forth files that are stored in their PCs, he said. “Docs provides a better alternative,” Schadler said.

A big concern about enterprises remains moving their data out of their on-premise servers and entrusting it to cloud vendors, such as Google, Wettemann said.

Google will likely address that thorny topic on Monday at its Atmosphere cloud computing conference, to which it has invited about 400 CIOs.

In addition to announcing the Docs enhancements at the event, Google will trot out some high-ranking officials to address the CIOs, including Bradley Horowitz, enterprise vice president of product management, Mario Queiroz, Android vice president of product management, Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products & User Experience, and Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise.

Also speaking will be Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Engineering Jeff Huber and Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist. In addition to a CIO panel, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff and Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels will also take the stage.

It is the second time Google is holding Atmosphere, but the first time in the U.S. The first edition was held in London last year.

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Cisco launches new servers, switches, SANs to sweep through the data center

By Computerworld Philippines on April 6, 2010

By Jim Duffy
Network World (US)
April 6, 2010

FRAMINGHAM - Cisco this week rolled out a bevy of data center products ranging from servers to switches to SANs, all designed to further broaden the company’s reach beyond networking and into IT infrastructure.

Slideshow: Cisco’s data center deluge
A test of Cisco’s Nexus 5000 data center switch

Cisco’s new offerings include blade and rack servers incorporating Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor, and supporting the company’s FEXlink switching fabric extension architecture. Cisco also unveiled two new Nexus fabric extenders supporting speeds above and below Gigabit Ethernet; an 8Gbps fixed configuration MDS FibreChannel SAN switch; and an appliance for provisioning services to virtual machines.

The sum of the parts indicates Cisco’s intention to play in virtually every facet of data center IT – not just the network and not just virtualization, analysts say.

“The targeting is the big news,” says Jonathan Eunice of Illuminata. “Cisco got into the server business with very narrow targeting: [CEO John] Chambers said, we’re not really after the server business, we’re after the virtualization business. This announcement changes that. [Cisco is] going after any workload, virtual or non-virtual. The specificity is gone.”

This means Cisco will compete more directly with data center server incumbents IBM, HP and Dell. But the company is still looking to differentiate itself by targeting “high-value” sales of server complexes instead of single, standalone servers, Eunice says; and Cisco is still stressing overall data center consolidation, virtualization and automation.

“Even though they’re relaxing their targeting, they’re still very much going for the high-value workload and they’re going for the infrastructure-by-the-ton (sale),” Eunice says. “They don’t want to sell you one; they want to sell in volume for a very standardized kind of infrastructure.”

In that vein, Cisco rolled out two new UCS blade and rack servers: the B440 M1 and the C460 M1. Both are based on Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor and both – like the other switching and storage access components of UCS now do – support Cisco’s FEXlink architecture for increased performance, bandwidth and access to other resources in the data center.

FEXlink extends the switching fabric of a data center – the mesh of bandwidth configured from multiple core, end of row and top of rack switches — closer to the servers and server racks themselves. This results in a 4x increase in server bandwidth, or 160Gbps per blade, Cisco says. It also allows the blades to harness 8Gbps uplinks to FibreChannel switches, increasing bandwidth to storage resources by 50%, and support more virtual interfaces per NIC, the company says.

This, combined with the new processors, allow the B440 M1 and C460 M1 to support a fourfold increase in compute capacity, making UCS a more general purpose data center physical workload workhorse – not just one optimized for virtual workloads, analysts say.

The B440 M1 and C460 M1 will be available this summer. Cisco claims to have at least 400 customers to date for the platform, and expects $1 billion in revenue this year. But analysts note that demand seems to be lukewarm and that deployments are still mostly trial – not production.

“I think it’s still in the kicking the tires phase,” Eunice says. “Cisco is not a traditional vendor in the server space. This is really not even through the first full year of shipment. They have not disclosed a long list of massive sale, whereas you go to HP or IBM they have tons of references for any size sale.”

To extend the market appeal of FEXlink, meanwhile, Cisco introduced two new Nexus 2000 fabric extenders scaling above and below the 2148T Gigabit Ethernet version unveiled in January, 2009. The Nexus 2232 supports 32 10Gbps Ethernet ports and can extend the FibreChannel over Ethernet capabilities of the Nexus 5000 switch down to the server rack; the 2248 is a 48-port 10/100Mbps Ethernet configuration of the line. Cisco also unveiled a fabric extender transceiver module intended to lower the per port price points of the fabric extenders – down to about $300 per 10Gbps port, Cisco says.

“It lets you take the Nexus fabric and scale it to as much as you want,” says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group. “It’s a good way to get people started (with Nexus switching) at relatively low price/points and extend it without waiting for the (higher-end Nexus) 7000.”

Cisco says it has 2,000 customers and 1 million ports shipped of the Nexus 2000 line. The 2232 and 2248 are both available this quarter at an entry price of $9,000.

For pure FibreChannel deployments, Cisco unveiled the MDS 9148 SAN switch. It supports 48 8Gbps FibreChannel ports in a 1 RU footprint. It is intended as a complement to the existing 8Gbps FibreChannel modules for the chassis-based MDS 9500 SAN switch.

Analysts say the density of the 9148 in that configuration is impressive, but that Cisco is late to the 8Gbps FibreChannel party, which Cisco previously acknowledged.

“Eight gig FibreChannel’s been out there for a while so it’s hard to get too excited about it,” Kerravala says. Users began migrating to 8Gbps FibreChannel in the second half of 2008.

The MDS 9148 will be available from Cisco partners this quarter.

Cisco also rolled a dedicated appliance for provisioning virtual switching service to virtual machines. The Nexus 1010 hosts virtual services, such as the Nexus 1000V virtual switch, to ease installation and bestow “ownership” of virtual services to the network administrator instead of the server administrator. The Nexus 1010 also supports network analysis down to the virtual machine layer.

The Nexus 1010 costs $25,000 and will be available this quarter.

Read more about data center in Network World’s Data Center section.

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Ex-IBMer Moffat pleads guilty in insider-trading case

By Computerworld Philippines on March 30, 2010

By Agam Shah
IDG News Service (New York Bureau)
March 30, 2010

NEW YORK - IBM’s former server chief, Robert Moffat, on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case connected to an insider-trading scandal.

Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for July 26. The conspiracy charge carries a potential penalty of five years in prison, while the insider-trading charge has a maximum of 25 years.

Moffat is the latest technology executive to plead guilty in a case involving illegal trades that generated millions of dollars in illicit profits. Ten others have already pleaded guilty in connection with the case, including Rajiv Goel, formerly Intel treasury’s managing director of investments.

Moffat entered a guilty plea in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Moffat was arrested and charged in October along with Goel and three Wall Street traders including Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group and Danielle Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New York-based New Castle Funds.

Chiesi and Rajaratnam allegedly tapped into a network of high-ranking corporate executives and insiders, including Moffat, to obtain confidential details about quarterly earnings and takeover activity of companies like Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Akamai Technologies, Sprint Nextel and Advanced Micro Devices, according to a court document filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in October. In the wake of the SEC investigation, the DOJ has taken over prosecution of the case.

Moffat last week waived his right for grand-jury indictment, and the DOJ filed a notice of intent to bring criminal charges in the case. Ten others involved in the case have already pleaded guilty for their involvement in the alleged scam.

Moffat, formerly senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, allegedly leaked insider information about IBM considering acquiring Sun to Chiesi. Chiesi allegedly made trades on behalf of New Castle Funds based on the tips and generated about US$1 million in illegal profits.

Chiesi worked along with Rajaratnam, who raked in close to $25 million in illegal profits, according to prosecutors.

Moffat was placed on a leave of absence shortly after he was arrested in October. His leave became permanent soon after, and it wasn’t clear if he resigned or was fired by IBM.

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IBM turns SPSS China lab into global analytics R&D hub

By JM Tuazon on March 26, 2010

By Teresa Leung
Computerworld Hong Kong
March 26, 2010

XI’AN, CHINA - IBM announced Tuesday in Xi’an, China that the previous SPSS lab in the city of Xi’an has become Big Blue’s global hub for analytics development.

Big Blue paid US$1.2 billion to buy the Chicago-based high-end analytics software company in mid-2009.

According to Steve Mills, senior vice present and group executive of IBM Software Group, the Xi’an facility now serves as a gateway to China’s remote western region and well as a global hub for analytics development that will help clients around the world adopt predictive analytics capabilities tailored for their industry-specific requirements.

As part of IBM’s China Development Laboratory, the Xi’an lab will include a dedicated team of more than 200 software engineers and IT architects, said Mills.

Mills declined to provide details on additional R&D investment and headcount growth to be brought by this current move, but a spokesperson from the Xi’an facility estimated that headcount for the lab will grow from 202 last year to 219 in 2010.

Prior to the IBM acquisition, the Xi’an lab established in 2004 was already SPSS’ most important R&D facility worldwide, said the lab spokesperson, adding that the lab had more than half of SPSS’ R&D resources and contributed to all product lines of the analytics firm.
According to IDC (www.idc.com), market opportunity for business analytics in China is expected to grow 10 percent annually from 2009 to 2013, faster than the average IT market growth of 8 percent. The demand is driven by risk management, compliance mandates, and the desire to adopt business analytics into their operations, said IDC.

On the same day, IBM also announced a west China business unit for its software group and a development lab for the west region that Big Blue has high expectations.

In 2000, the Chinese government launched the western region development strategy to help the under-developed regions catch up with the coastal provinces in eastern China. Driven by stimulus investment, the average annual growth for the past 10 years was 11.6 percent, which was significant to the 370 million people, said IBM.

“Xi’an is the largest and most developed city in the west. In its course of further industrialization and urbanization, software helping decision-making is on higher demand,” said Mills.

According to IBM, Xi’an City Commercial Bank is working with Big Blue’s Xi’an lab to explore how it can transform its operations through improved insight on their business information and predict new outcomes for improved customer service.

The bank is the first foreign invested commercial bank in western China, said IBM, adding that it is becoming one of the most profitable domestic commercial banks in the region with 113 branches and 2,000 employees.

The bank has also expanded into the newly opened Guanzhong - Tianshui Economic Zone in the province of Shaanxi where Xi’an is the provincial capital.

“The second ten-year plan for the western region development is about to be in action,” said Jing Junhai, Vice Governor of Shaanxi Province. “We appreciate and welcome that IBM is enhancing investment in Xi’an. We hope more vendors will come to Xi’an to help make our city better and the western region more developed.”

On a global basis, IBM said it has invested more than $12 billion to build a business analytics portfolio which includes organic innovation and acquisitions. With 4,000 analytics consultants, the company is working with more than 250,000 clients worldwide on predictive analytics, including 22 of the top 24 global commercial banks, 18 of the world’s top 22 telecommunication carriers and 11 of the top 12 US specialty retailers, said IBM.

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BRMS to resurrect ailing insurance industry after crisis: IBM

By JM Tuazon on March 25, 2010

By John Mark V. Tuazon
Computerworld Philippines
March 25, 2010

The insurance and financial services industry can turn their gaze on a relatively emerging technology called BRMS (business rules management system), which can dramatically improve speed to market and streamline their complex business processes, an IBM executive remarked Tuesday.

BRMS, according to Maneeza Malik, industry practice leader for financial services, insurance & healthcare, ILOG software group, AIM division of IBM, is a form of decisioning software that helps companies manage their rules, policies and procedures.

“The financial industry is mostly governed by rules, which they use to determine eligibility of loans, claims, settlements, and other services,” Malik explained. With a centralized BRMS operating within the enterprise, companies can get a better view of the risks involved with every transaction that goes through, and manage them accordingly.

Common pain points associated with siloed and manual processes include the lack of flexibility and rule transfer. Rules take at least one to three months to get updated system-wide, posing problems in delivering services quickly. “And rules change very regularly,” Malik noted.

With a BRMS system in place, enterprises can build better applications to service their needs, gain transparency and consistency of the rules, and deploy regulatory challenges quickly.

In an example given by Malik, a major life insurance firm in China was able to process 432,000 policy claims in just 24 hours, a feat which would need over 2,000 underwriters to achieve. “They have also achieved a pass-through rate of 80%, accelerating their growth,” Malik added.

Pass-through rate is when a policy claim submitted by an insurance holder is screened and approved. It serves as the barometer for growth and revenue in the insurance industry.

Additionally, a BRMS system ensures there is transparency and accountability in the rules writing process, which is important when an audit trail is needed. “Manual systems don’t have this kind of transparency. With BRMS, everyone can determine who wrote and changed what rules,” Malik pointed out.

With this kind of system, companies can gain the agility they need in delivering services in such a stiffly competitive industry. “Insurance companies can respond to changes in the market and regulation quickly, despite widespread cut-throat competiton,” she added.

As a fringe benefit, deploying a BRMS system can align business and IT more efficiently, Malik said. “Business users now have the power to write the rules themselves, instead of having to depend on IT to change the rules for them,” she explained. “It delivers more value to the hands of business users.”

IBM recently entered into the BRMS provisioning market with its acquisition of ILOG, a decisioning software provider, in 2009. With the acquisition, IBM brings to ILOG’s 3,000-strong customers across the globe the “most comprehensive” BRMS suite available in the market.

In Asia Pacific, Malik said China is their fastest-growing market. “We have seen fast adoption in China recently, mainly because most firms there want to become major players in the global scene,” she explained, adding that BRMS enabled them to catch up and gain competitive advantage.

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