TFH Volume: 16 Issue: 3 Archives

New Congress, AT&T Revive the Net Neutrality Issue

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

New Congress, AT&T Revive the Net Neutrality Issue

The merger of AT&T (formerly regional telecom company SBC Communications and AT&T) with BellSouth (another regional former Bell company) at the end of December revived the debate over “net neutrality,” which seeks to keep service levels on the Internet the same for all users and to prevent telcos and other service providers from creating a multi-tier network with different levels of service and pricing. The new Democratically controlled Congress in the United States has also reached across the aisle in the Senate to one Republican to propose an amendment to telecom law

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Security Experts Say Botnets, Web Extortion Threats on the Rise

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Some days, the Internet doesn’t feel like a very safe place. Two reports issued recently are predicting some pretty ugly weather conditions out there in cyberspace looking ahead into third year.

A report by Trend Micro, which provides security software for servers and PCs, indicated that 2006 saw a “resurgence in malware” and that the “botnet became the hacker’s best friend.” For 2007, Trend Micro is predicting that hackers will continue to ramp up their efforts on these fronts while targeting popular social networking sites.

What did not happen in 2006, by the way, was widespread virus outbreaks, which

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Big Blue Readies Revamped Storage for the System i

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The new year is in full swing, and the scuttlebutt is that IBM is readying some System i5 announcements in the coming months. While an operating system or server announcement–or both–are possible, as far as I can tell from the rumors what IBM is focusing on in the early part of 2007 is revamping the storage on the System i5 line a bit, including a new disk controller, possibly a fatter disk, new disk enclosures, and maybe a new LTO tape library.

The new disk controller and the disk enclosures will probably be the most appealing thing to System i5

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Study Weighs Building Data Centers Against Colocation for SMBs

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It isn’t often that companies talk about the costs of setting up data centers, and small and medium companies generally do not talk very much about their data center costs. It might be simply because no one asks them. So what does a data center cost SMBs, and how does that compare to outsourcing the data center through the use of colocation services–putting your data center in someone else’s facility and paying rent?

In an effort to try to win some customers for data center colocation services it provides, Baltimore Technology Park, which has an outsourcing services data center

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IBM Closes Out 2006 With a Strong Fourth Quarter

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM may have started out 2006 with some bumps and bruises as various hardware, software, and services products were a bit stuck in the mud. But as the year progressed and Big Blue tweaked these businesses–and IT departments rushed to spend down their budgets for the year–the company was able to ramp up its sales, ending the year with a strong fourth quarter. Revenues in the fourth quarter were up 7.5 percent, to $26.3 billion, with earnings up 11.1 percent to $3.5 billion.

As in the third quarter, high-end servers (particularly mainframes and Unix boxes), software (particularly database and middleware),

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Sun Patches Security Holes in Java Runtime Environment

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The past few weeks have been busy ones for patching security holes in the Java Runtime Environment that is at the heart of Sun Microsystems‘ Java programming language. Several vulnerability alerts for the JRE and the Java Development Kit (JDK) were issued the day after Christmas, and one more was issued on January 17.

If you want to find the details about these security vulnerabilities, go to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Vulnerability Database and search for “JRE.” The alert posted on January 17 said that Sun JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 9 and earlier releases

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Zend Describes Multiple Instances on i5/OS, Previews RPG Wrapper

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As I explained in last week’s issue, Zend Technologies, the creator of the open source PHP programming language and the company that provides commercial support for PHP and related products, announced that it had extended support for its Zend Core for i5/OS platform to include not just the current i5/OS V5R4 operating system, but also the prior OS/400 V5R3 release. Which is great. And as part of that rollout, there has been some confusion about the ability of the hybrid Zend-PASE and OS/400-Apache combo to support multiple Apache instances driven by Zend Core.

The Zend Core for i5/OS software

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Big Blue Readies Revamped Storage for the System i

January 22, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The new disk controller and the disk enclosures will probably be the most appealing thing to System i5

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Ask TPM: The Economics of Open Source Software

January 22, 2007 Hey, TPM

You are incredibly insightful about the IT world, at least insofar as I can understand your arguments. That’s a compliment. Sometimes I come away puzzled by your analysis. You have one article on the projected lack of IT talent per PwC. Then there is an article projecting collapse for expensive proprietary packages because the open source community is going to provide free applications software. A free ERP–wow!

[Editor’s note: The reader is referring to PwC Consultants Predict an IT Talent Shortage, from the December 4 issue of this newsletter, and The X Factor: You Can’t Steal What’s Free, But

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