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But Wait, There's More
Linuxcare Changes Name to Levanta, Pushes Provisioning
If you need high-end Linux server provisioning, then maybe you should take a look at Levanta, which has just pushed out Levanta Release 3 of its software. Levanta is, of course, none other than Linuxcare, which was founded as a Linux services vendor in 1998, which was nearly acquired by commercial Linux distributor Turbolinux in early 2001, and which in October 2001 hunkered down on the provisioning market that Turbolinux was chasing with its TurboCockpit software. In August 2003, the company tweaked TurboCockpit and relaunched it as Levanta Release 2.0, which was aimed at provisioning virtual Linux servers on IBM mainframes. The program cost $150,000 for a license on Big Blue's machines, which is not cheap unless you are used to paying millions of dollars a year for MVS, DB2, and WebSphere.
Last summer, the company said that Levanta could be extended to non-mainframe platforms, and with Levanta Release 3, the company has not only changed its name from Linuxcare to Levanta, but it has done just that--got its software working on X86 servers. With Release 2, Levanta added state-based rollback and restore for Linux instances, and also extended the provisioning and change management features of the software so it could handle middleware and databases running in virtual the Linux instances. Pricing information for the X86 edition of Levanta Release 3 was not available at press time. The company has signed up gaming company Electronic Arts to use the code, which it is using to manage the servers behind its online gaming site.
Linus Uses Linux on Power
So what does Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, use as his workstation at work at Open Source Development Labs? The man who created a free Unix-alike operating system for cheap X86 boxes said in a recent posting on the Real World Technologies forum that he has ditched his X86 workstation for an Apple G5 PowerMac running Linux. Torvalds did not say why he made such a jump a few months ago, but he did say that Flash content didn't work right, and in another posting he made a slight faux pas by saying he did not believe that IBM made 64-bit workstations. IBM has made 64-bit Power workstations for years. He also complained that the G5 machine is not a quite machine. "I realize that people rag on PC hardware all the time," Torvalds said in the post. "But the fact is, with the amount of choice there is in the PC marketplace, you can select the kind of machine that fits your needs the best. And apparently you can't get a really quiet G5."
If you are wondering what distribution of Linux he uses, it is probably a no-brainer that he is using the open source distribution of Linux and compiling the OS himself. But maybe not. It would be a very interesting thing if Torvalds used a commercial Linux distro on his own desktop.
Network Associates Adds Antivirus for Linux
Network Associates, the maker of antivirus and security software that is in the midst of renaming itself after the McAfee software it acquired a few years ago, announced last week that it had created a new product called McAfee LinuxShield for protecting Linux servers from what will probably be a growing threat to Linux servers as they proliferate in corporations and on the Internet.
You might wonder why it took so long for Network Associates to get a Linux antivirus program on the market. The company was undoubtedly waiting for a critical mass of Linux customers and the first rumblings of trouble from the hacker community. The fact that McAffee LinuxShield is available is possibly itself a leading indicator that Linux has gone mainstream and is therefore prone to sustained attacks. But, the fact remains that even if Linux cannot be infected with the viruses, worms, and other nasties that predominantly affect Windows systems, Linux systems are often the gateway machines that allow such rogue programs to pass into the corporate network. Putting LinuxShield on the Linux servers stops this from happening. LinuxShield is available for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3 and Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 platforms. LinuxShield costs $22 per server for up to 25 servers, and the price quickly drops as companies cover thousands of machines.
IBM Adds Solaris, Linux Support to SAN File System
When IBM rolled out its "StorageTank" SAN File System, in December 2003, it was not a fully functional, heterogeneous product. However, IBM is promising that, by the end of June, SAN File System 2.1 will fix many of the issues that have been holding back the adoption of the software. StorageTank is a global file system that spans storage area networks and different server and storage architectures. The idea is to aggregate the control and administrative points for file systems and to have a policy-based rules engine for when and where to place data in the SAN such that storage administrators, who wickedly overprovision storage, no longer do this. Overprovisioning, which has been necessary because of the complexity and difficulty of acquiring and setting up storage for servers, costs companies big bucks. Some polls of data centers show that only 25 percent of the storage allocated to applications is actually used.
With SAN File System 1.1, IBM supported its own midrange and high-end disk arrays running in conjunction with its own AIX Unix variant and Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server. With the 2.1 update coming out in a month, IBM will support Red Hat's Linux Enterprise Server 3.0 and Sun Microsystems' Solaris 9. Presumably, Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, HP-UX, and Windows 2003 support are in the works. IBM also will support disk arrays made by Hewlett-Packard, EMC, Sun, and others. SAN File System 2.1 costs $10,000 per processor on the central metadata server that acts as the controller for StorageTank, plus $5,000 per processor for each application server linked to the system.
IBM's JS20 Blade Delayed by Memory Issues
IBM said this week that shipments of the two-way PowerPC 970-based JS20 blade servers for its BladeCenter machines will slip from early March to June 11. These Power blades were announced with much fanfare in November 2003, as IBM began to ramp up the marketing machine on its Linux-on-Power strategy.
The reason why the JS20 Power blades didn't ship immediately in November, and why IBM dillydallied throughout the summer of 2003 before announcing them, was as much because it was having chip yield issues and shortages of the PowerPC 970s as it was that the company was not sure what to do with a Power blade. The latest delay, according to our sources at IBM, is not related to problems with the PowerPC 970 processors. The story, so we are told, is that one customer using the new Power blades in an atypically hot environment discovered come issues with memory. Our sources would not be more specific about what exact memory components were affected, but they were adamant in saying that it was not a chip-yield or bug issue. IBM is committed to shipping in volume on June 11, and says further that it has the problem licked and is now spending time going through its rigorous testing processes. For the most part, the delay only affects Linux customers, since AIX support is not slated for the JS20 blades until AIX 5L 5.3 ships in the third quarter, probably in September or October.
Big Hack Attacks Doubled At Financial Services Firms in 2004
If you think your IT job is tough, try working in the IT departments of the world's financial services companies. According to a survey performed by accountancy Deloitte & Touche, hack attacks against financial services companies more than doubled this year, compared with a study done this time last year. The company's "2004 Global Security Survey" indicates that 83 percent of the financial institutions that responded have had their IT systems compromised in the past 12 months, compared with 39 percent this time last year. Some 40 percent of those who were hit said that they sustained financial losses due to the attacks.
Ironically (unless you read Dilbert), of the 100 big financial firms polled, more than a quarter said they were not spending any more on IT security in 2004 than they did in 2003, and 10 percent of the companies actually cut their security budgets. Even more shocking was the finding that only 87 percent of respondents claim to have fully capable antivirus countermeasures, down from 96 percent in 2003. Not a winning strategy, clearly. But, hey, it's your money they are playing with, right?
ERP Spending to Grow in 2004
The global market for ERP applications is expected to grow by nearly 7 percent this year, according to a new study by IT analyst IDC. The Massachusetts firm said last week that $26.7 billion will be spent on ERP software this year, up from the nearly $25 billion spent in 2003. And by 2008, IDC said, ERP spending will increase by almost 35 percent, to $36 billion. Considering that many people thought ERP was dead, in lieu of the new era of e-business, just a few years ago, this has to be very promising news for ERP vendors. IDC also said market consolidation will continue this year, although it won't produce any jaw-dropping numbers. The top-10 ERP vendors secured 46 percent of the market in 2003, compared with 44.5 percent in 2002 and 42 percent in 2001, IDC said. Though the firm said it released a list of the top-10 ERP vendors, the press release only listed the top five: SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sage. IDC had not provided the rest of the top 10 list at press time, so we decided to take a stab at numbers six through 10 ourselves and came up with Geac, with $456 million in fiscal year 2003 revenue, Intentia, with $384 million (2927 million SEK), Lawson Software, with $344 million, IBS, with $315 million (2,400 million SEK), and SSA Global, with $285.4 million. (These revenue figures are for the companies' fiscal 2003 years, which vary and therefore aren't direct comparisons, but this gives you an idea of how the rest of the ERP market shapes up.)
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SUSE LINUX
