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Maxell: 300 GB Holographic Drives Within a Year

The first holographic storage devices, which will hold up to 300 GB of data on removable media about the size of a DVD, will hit the market in late 2006, Hitachi subsidiary Maxell and Colorado-based InPhase Technologies announced earlier this month. The two companies are working to create a commercial application for holographic storage, which spreads data in three dimensions on the media, as opposed to just the surface of the disk, as is the case with traditional magnetic and optical technologies. Holographic storage has been around for years, but until recently it has not been seen as a viable alterative to more traditional techniques. Maxell and InPhase Technologies are working with Turner Broadcasting System to use holographic disks to store television content. With holographic disk readers expected to cost more than $15,000, and with media costs well over $100 each, the technology is expected to be relegated to the high-end. However, there is the possibility holographic storage could provide an alternative to HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks, which will hold about 30 GB to 50 GB when they become available next year.

Microsoft to Make Accessibility Controls Cross-Platform

With the next version of Windows, Microsoft will be looking to export to other platforms the accessibility work it has done for making user interfaces easier to use for people with disabilities. Windows Vista will include a new accessibility model, called Windows User Interface Automation, that developers on other platforms will also be able to use. It will likely increase the number of applications that have accessibility features (such as screen readers, type enlargers, or alternative input mechanisms) built into them. "Microsoft is excited to offer UI Automation to the industry because it allows application developers to easily expose the rich semantic information needed by assistive technology products to create effective, interactive experiences for computer users," Rob Sinclair, director of Microsoft's accessible technology group, said on the company's Web site. UI Automation, which will debut with Windows Vista in late 2006 and will also be back-cast to support Windows XP, will replace Microsoft's current accessibility model, called Microsoft Active Accessibility. All development done with the older model will be supported on UI Automation, the company says.

Microsoft and Infosys Team Up for 'Catalytic IT' in Bangalore

Microsoft and outsourcing giant Infosys Technologies yesterday unveiled a new data center in Bangalore, India, where they plan to demonstrate new technologies for attracting buyers of software and services, including Windows Server, Visual Studio, and Infosys developers. Dubbed "Catalytic IT," the goal of the new program is to address four areas of IT that some large customers are focusing on, including legacy modernization, connected business, infrastructure optimization, and ERP consolidation. One of the case studies the companies are using to drum up business is the IT transformation of SCI, which Microsoft describes as a "$1.86 billion death care services industry leader." Infosys helped SCI transform its IT infrastructure over a period of two years, including the creation of an ASP.NET Web application that's used by 1,600 locations in North America, and which saves the company more than $4 million per year. All together, there are more than 30 intellectual property assets, service offerings, blueprints, and solutions available at the Catalytic IT concept center.

IDC Says Tectonic Shifts Coming for Outsourcing

The outsourcing market was undergoing some pretty fundamental shifts in 2004, according to the market researchers at IDC. In a nutshell, deals are getting smaller, outsourcing is not just covering IT operations but also business process outsourcing (BPO), and there are more players in the market. IDC based its assessments on the top 100 deals in 2004, which may seem a bit dated as we come to the close of 2005, but that's why its called research--it takes time to compile and sift through the information. IDC said the top 100 deals accounted fro $69.1 billion in sales in 2004, down 1.2 percent from the $68.3 billion for the top 100 deals in 2003. The minimum ante to be in the top 100 was $184 million, which was 5.1 percent higher than the entry 100th deal on the 2003 list. The BPO component of the top 100 deals grew from $10.4 billion in 2003 to $17.3 billion in 2004, which means that without BPO--which is all the rage at IBM these days and the main reason Big Blue bought the IT consulting PricewaterhouseCoopers--the IT business actually declined by 11 percent in 2004 to $51.8 billion.

Ipedo Seeks to Bridge Web Services with Business Intelligence

As companies begin to adopt Web services and allow Web services to update their production databases, they're finding a gap in the lineup when it comes to reporting tools that can access the data carried by Web services, according to Ipedo. The Silicon Valley startup says it has a solution to this problem with the latest release of its data integration software, XIP 4.1, which brings a new SQL-to-XML buffer called Web Services Tables. XIP leverages the tried and true (SQL-based access) with the new (XQuery-based access) to integrate and manage information from disparate and complex data sources, such as relational databases, Web Services, CSV files, legacy applications, message queues, file systems, and heaps and heaps of documents. The product overcomes the hurdles presented by these disparate systems by using "federated queries across virtual views," Ipedo says. Basically, data isn't physically moved in Ipedo's scheme, but paths to the data are mapped and stored, and the right keys--whether they're based in traditional SQL, or use newfangled XQuery--are kept on hand to unlock the data when the need arises.

With XIP 4.1, Ipedo is tackling the data integration dilemma as it applies to business intelligence (BI) and reporting. Web Services Tables address this problem by creating a virtual relational table based on the schema described in a Web services description language (WSDL) file. When a client application accesses the virtual relational table using standard SQL, Ipedo XIP manages the invocation of the underlying Web Service dynamically, the company says, which allows BI and reporting tools--or any other SQL-based client application--to consume Web Services data as if it were relational data. Other changes made with XIP 4.1 include a new Web-based management console designed to provide easier access to more detailed information in enterprise deployments and performance enhancements to XIP's query technology. The product can now seamlessly join large partitioned data sets across multiple instances, while conserving system memory for handling large result sets, the company says. XIP was written in Java and, therefore, runs on all major platforms. The majority of Ipedo's 50 or so customers run on Solaris, Windows, and Linux. The software becomes available next month.

META Looks Ahead to Future Operations Strategies

If you consider yourself a trendy person and your interest lies within the realm of IT operations, you will likely enjoy the forecasting of operations strategies put forth by META Group Research. The brain trust at META, which now collects paychecks with the Gartner name across the top, says factors such as regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and cost justification initiatives will affect more than 85 percent of IT operations organizations in 2006 and 2007. It's all good, the analysts say, because it will not only "yield a more complete view of IT's operational/support processes, but also enable better role/responsibility alignment and a means of associating governance with those processes."

Configuration management, the process of defining which items and areas to track, is another area seen as having significant benefits. More than 20 percent of IT operations groups will get started down this road in 2006, and by 2009 those projects are expected to produce benefits in area such as inventory tracking/utilization, asset distribution/reuse, risk assessment, and security management.

And don't get too comfortable with your ticket/workflow/authorization change management systems, because it is time to integrate service management into the IT picture. As service desk management combines with configuration management, we will see standardized request/demand management, better-integrated change toolsets, and enterprise master change schedules coming into the mix. Additional trend-spotting topics include service-level management, operational outsourcing, and model-based management analysis; IT asset management tools are also included in the best-guess look into the future by META Group, too.