But Wait, There's More

Police Arrest Two Zotob Suspects, with More Arrests Likely

The alleged writers of the Zotob worm that wreaked havoc on Windows 2000 systems two weeks ago have been caught. Turkish and Moroccan law enforcement authorities, working with the cooperation of the FBI and Microsoft, arrested two suspects and charged them with crimes related to the creation and distribution of the Zotob and Mytob worms. Meanwhile, Turkish authorities have reportedly identified an additional 16 suspects involved in the creation of the destructive worms, which made thousands of Windows 2000 computers unusable. Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, commended the response to the Zotob worm. "This arrest demonstrates the value of public-private collaboration--the first-class investigative work by the authorities and round-the-clock technical and investigative support provided by our Internet Crime Investigations Team here at Microsoft," Smith says. "The results show clearly that cybercriminals will be identified, apprehended and held accountable for their actions." The Zotob worm and related worms were the work of increasingly aggressive gangs of cyber criminals, according to anti-virus software companies that have analyzed the worms' source code. If additional suspects are arrested, it could be the largest such bust of virus writers in the history of the Internet.

Administrators Not Satisfied with Patch Management Offerings, SupportSoft Finds

The recent Zotob worm outbreak has resulted in conflicting reports about how quickly systems administrators are applying patches for software vulnerabilities from Microsoft, and how seriously they're taking the patching process in general. Microsoft has said the relative quiet of the recent worm outbreak, when compared to really nasty ones, like Sasser, shows that administrators are taking patching and security seriously. However, had most administrators applied the critical patches the first day they were available, the Zotob worm would likely have been nipped in the bud. SupportSoft, a provider of patch management software, says the state of patching is woefully inadequate. The Northern California software company recently conducted a survey and found that nine out of 10 administrators at large companies are not satisfied with their patch management solution for desktop PCs. The survey, which was conducted by an independent organization on behalf of SupportSoft, found that 57 percent of managers found it difficult to reach remote and mobile computers with their patch management system. What's more, 50 percent said it took too long to deploy patches, and another 50 percent complained that it isn't possible to verify patch installation in real time, according to study results.

Siebel Taking Advantage of Microsoft 'Presence Awareness' Tools

Microsoft is working with Siebel Systems and several other business software developers to integrate "presence awareness" into their applications, it was announced last week. Presence awareness is a concept popularized by instant messaging (IM) programs that indicate whether a user is currently at their computer station, or even if they haven't touched the keys for a given amount of time. To make it easier for third-party vendors to build presence awareness and IM into their applications, Microsoft has published some controls and sample code for Office Live Communications Server 2005, its main presence awareness offering. These controls include the Presence Controls for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, which lets Visual Studio developers insert presence icons into applications to provide status information of contacts. It has also published sample code for building role agents, in which developers build an application where a group of users, such as customer service representative, will be available via IM. Lastly, Microsoft has included sample code for building custom applications that have presence awareness functionality, and which integrate with Active Directory. "Presence and collaboration are really about increasing the speed at which you can do business," says Skip Bacon, a vice president with Siebel. "Adding presence capabilities in our applications enables better teamwork, improved communication and, ultimately, faster customer response." In addition to Siebel, BrightWork, K2.net, Meridio, OSIsoft, and Singularity are using Microsoft's presence awareness tools.

Microsoft Offers Better Connection Between POS and Great Plains, Small Business Financials

Microsoft is improving the integration between its point-of-sale (POS) offering and its accounting software to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to track inventory, analyze transactions, and improve general ledger visibility, the software vendor announced last week. Starting tomorrow, users of Microsoft's Great Plains software will be able to use new integration points with Microsoft Retail Management System 1.2, Microsoft's POS offering. A similar integration for Small Business Financials 8.0 will become available October 1. The new integration points will benefit customers in different ways, says Mike Dickstein, director of POS offerings within Microsoft's Business Solutions Group. First, it will allow retailers to track their inventory all the way across the supply chain, he says. "This is accomplished through the enhanced ability to transfer both full and partial purchase order receipts from Microsoft Retail Management System into the purchase order processing modules." Secondly, users will have a better view of sales at the individual store level. "We're able to provide much more detailed integration between what's happening at the specific store level--sales data, credit card transactions, inventory movement--directly into Microsoft Great Plains and Small Business Financials," he says. Lastly, better integration between the POS system and the back-office apps' general ledgers will help to eliminate double entry of items like pay-outs, surcharges, and manual inventory adjustments, Dickstein says.

EVault Improves Windows Support with Online DR Offering

EVault, a Northern California provider on online backup and recovery solutions, last week announced support for Microsoft's Windows Clustering Services in both its software and services offering. EVault now supports the capability to run back-ups and perform recoveries on Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 clusters with the version 5.3 releases of its EVault InfoStage product and its EVault Protect managed service offering. "Companies with mission-critical applications running on clustered servers need a secure, reliable backup solution that is also easy to configure and use," said Tony Barbagallo, president of EVault. The company also delivered a new version of its EVault ProMail managed service that captures, monitors, and archives e-mail and attachments for regulatory compliance. There is also a new hosted option for companies that rely on ISPs to host their email. Other enhancements delivered in the new release of the InfoStage agent for Windows include: parallel backups of Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003; support for restores of Exchange 2000 server backups to Exchange 2003; new support for removable storage media and terminal services licensing databases, the IIS Metabase in Windows Server 2003, and Windows event logs; simplified back ups of SQL Server databases; integrated local Windows authentication; a re-designed user interface and wizards.

Usage of Perl, Python, and PHP Tools Declines in EMEA, Says Evans Data

In a stunning development that either signals a shift in open source in Europe regarding Web programming or a bad sampling of survey subjects, a new report by Evans Data indicates a dramatic drop off among European companies in regards to the deployment PHP, Perl, and Python in their software development projects. According to the survey, the number of developers using PHP for application development dropped by 25 percent in the past year and the number of developers who said that they would not use or evaluate the use of PHP in their software projects rose by 40 percent. Perl usage also dropped by 20 percent and the number of developers who said they would not evaluate or use Perl in future projects also raised by 20 percent compared to this time last year. The Python programming language did not fare any better, with usage down 25 percent in the past 12 months and 17 percent fewer developers saying that they intend to use or evaluate the use of Python in future projects. John Andrews, Evans Data's chief operating officer, attributed the declines to a lack of enterprise-class support from platform providers (server, operating system, and middleware) for the Three Ps of open source. The survey polled 400 developers in EMEA in June. It could be that what Web developers want is an integrated development environment that weaves together PHP, Perl, and Python in a single tool with enterprise-class support. Any takers to make the Three P Integrated Development Environment? Start with Eclipse and weave it in? Before you jump in, though, consider this: These tools have overlapping functions, are not necessarily easy to use, and perhaps cannot be integrated in an intelligent way. Maybe European developers really want .NET or Java? Or Cold Fusion/Flash/PDF? Or to work in management? Longer vacations than they already have?