But Wait, There's More

Microsoft Identifies 22 New Flaws, and 7 Are 'Critical'

Microsoft released a slew of new security patches yesterday, including seven patches that fix "critical" vulnerabilities that could leave a computer open to remote code execution. A total of 22 flaws were identified that affect a wide range of Microsoft products, including the Windows NT 4, XP, and Server 2003 operating systems and Internet Explorer, Exchange, Office, Excel, and Excel for Mac. Windows XP Service Pack 2 is affected by some of the flaws, such as the vulnerability in zipped folders that could allow remote code execution (see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-034), but XP SP2 is not affected by others. Microsoft recommends that users install the critical patches immediately. For a complete list of the vulnerabilities announced yesterday, go to Microsoft's Security Bulletin for October 2004.

Pfizer Awarded for Fast Response to News About Lipitor

Drug giant Pfizer's rapid response to a Food and Drug Administration ruling this summer earned it a Pharmaceutical Innovation Award from software giant Microsoft at the Pharmaceutical Marketing Congress in Philadelphia last week. In August, when the FDA approved Lipitor for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, Pfizer used Microsoft technology to promptly disseminate the information to its business partners. Microsoft says the Pfizer solution, which included Windows Server 2000, SQL Server, the Microsoft .NET Framework, and mobile tablet PCs, allowed the drug company to "accelerate the pathway of knowledge" from researchers to doctors and from doctors to patients. And by distributing the information electronically, instead of using traditional printed materials, Pfizer also saved money. "Effective communication between Pfizer's Cardiovascular Healthcare Representatives and our customers regarding the ever-increasing and complicated pharmacological choices is critical in ensuring that physicians have the most current and relevant information available so they can make the best possible decisions about patient care," said David Helgans, senior director/group leader in the Cardiovascular/Metabolic Group at Pfizer.

PeopleSoft Probably Not in the Cards As a Microsoft Acquisition

Since it was disclosed earlier this year that IT juggernaut Microsoft and ERP software giant SAP entertained thoughts of a merger, there have been numerous rumors about what companies Microsoft might try to acquire. And acquire it will, according to Microsoft's chief financial officer, John Connors, who said at a recent speaking engagement that the vendor is considering some large acquisitions of vendors with more than $1 billion in revenues. With Oracle continuing its hostile takeover bid of PeopleSoft, many have speculated that Microsoft could play the role of PeopleSoft's "white knight," although Microsoft has downplayed the possibility. While nobody really believes that Microsoft wouldn't like to play in the tier-one ERP market (despite what Microsoft executives have said publicly), the PeopleSoft deal would be a hard one for Microsoft to stomach, especially with PeopleSoft standardizing on IBM's middleware stack, a deal that appears to provide stability to PeopleSoft at a crucial time in its history as well as some vendor lock-in for IBM, which Oracle (or any other potential acquirer that competes in the same space) would be averse to owning.

HiT Software Debuts New SQL Middleware for Windows-iSeries Data Sharing

New SQL middleware that allows Windows servers and clients to access data on IBM iSeries servers started shipping last week. The latest release of HiT Software's line of ODBC/400 and OLE DB/400 products provide fast, native access to the latest release of DB2/400, a version of IBM's DB2 UDB relational database (the original version of DB2, actually) that runs exclusively on the new i5 machines. HiT's SQL middleware for iSeries is designed for accessing, retrieving, and updating the DB2/400 database from Windows clients and servers and can be used by third-party vendors or in-house developers writing their own applications. The software has been tailored specifically for iSeries users' needs and offers support for stored procedures, control language programs, and IBM's Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) and Optimized Database Server protocols. The ODBC/400 and OLE DB/400 products run on Windows 98/2000/XP workstations, while the ODBC/400 Server and OLE DB/400 Server products run on Windows NT/2000/2003 servers. HiT also offers a developer's edition of each of these products, as well as an SSL Server product for encrypting the SQL sessions. Pricing for the client versions of the OLE DB and ODBC products starts at $249, while the server version starts at $1,295.

CentricStor Virtual Tape Library Gains Support for Cheaper ATA Disk

Fujitsu Siemens has announced a new release of CentricStor, a virtual tape library system that speeds backups by first writing data to disk instead of tape. With the new CentricStor 3.0, the devices gain support for ATA disks, which are considerably less expensive than the Fibre Channel disks that CentricStor previously required. The new release also offers double the throughput of previous versions, the company says, and offers support for the mainframe FICON storage protocol and the backup and recovery software from Computer Associates and EMC's Legato division. CentricStor is distributed in the United States by Colorado-based PeakData.

Former Microsoft Hotshot Backs SourceLabs Support Biz

SourceLabs, a startup that is based in Seattle, Microsoft's stomping grounds, and aims to provide a single source to technical support and indemnification for a whole stack of open source software, announced last week that it has secured $3.5 million in venture capital funding from two investors, Ignition Partners and Index Ventures. Ignition Partners was founded by none other than Brad Silverberg, the senior vice president at Microsoft who ran the Windows platform from 1995 through 1999 and is credited with growing the Windows platform from a $50 million to a $3 billion business; Silverberg also led Microsoft's Internet efforts during this time. SourceLabs was founded this year by Byron Sebastian, former vice president and general manager for the WebLogic middleware business at BEA Systems, and he says that, while selling WebLogic, he discovered one of the main grouses he heard from big IT shops was that the lack of enterprise-class support was the main reason they did not deploy open source solutions. SourceLabs plans to roll out maintenance and support products for popular open source programs, such as Linux, MySQL, and Mozilla, starting in early 2005.

Offshore Outsourcing Growing At 20% Per Year, META Says

The offshore outsourcing market is currently a $10 billion business and will grow at a rate of 20 percent per year through 2008, according to META Group, which held an outsourcing conference last week in San Francisco. The growth figure, which means it will reach about $21 billion by 2008, backs up another recent accounting of the growth of offshore outsourcing done by the Government Accountability Office, which found that, from 1997 to 2002, the offshoring of business, professional, and technical services (of which IT is only a part) grew from a $21.2 billion business to $37.5 billion, a 77 percent increase. Eventually, META says, the average enterprise will use offshore resources for 60 percent of its work related to developing and maintaining applications. Application development and maintenance currently accounts for about 30 percent of the outsourcing work sent offshore, which saves organizations about 30 percent, the group says. But the potential savings are much greater. For other types of IT work, which META did not specify, offshore labor can be anywhere from three to five times cheaper, the group says. The current political and public backlash against offshore outsourcing is just one more "item to be managed in the process of moving offshore," META says.