Volume 15, Number 22 - May 30, 2006 Archives

Symantec Enterprise Software Has a Big Security Hole

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We don’t normally worry too much about what is going on with the security of Windows desktops–well, at least not editorially in this newsletter. But as users of Windows desktops and laptops, as most of you are, we get a little concerned about security holes and the potential havoc they can wreak in the data center and on the desktops.

With that in mind, we just wanted you to be aware that Symantec has issued a statement that there is a stack overflow vulnerability in its Symantec Client Security 3.1 and Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.1 software. The vulnerability is

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IBM Buys Rembo for Bare-Metal Server and Desktop Provisioning

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

To fill a gap in its virtualization software lineup for servers and desktops, IBM has acquired Rembo Technology, a small company based in Geneva, Switzerland. Rembo, which was founded in 1999, is shorthand for remote boot, which was the first capability that Rembo’s products had when they were created seven years ago. Today, Rembo has three products.

Auto-Deploy takes stacks of operating system and application software and deploys it to physical or virtual machines, whether they are servers or desktops. Like other system management tools, Auto-Deploy is based on storing images of software stacks on a central server, which

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Server Sales Decline for the Second Straight Quarter

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In the server market, it is not called a semester but rather a quarter, and it isn’t a report card but rather a slice of the revenue and shipment pie. But, nonetheless, every quarter when the analysts at Gartner and IDC hand down their market share statistics for server sales, it feels a bit like report card day, complete with its joy and loathing. Last week was report card week for the first quarter of 2006, and the grades are mixed. Depending on who you ask, server sales are either flat or down.

The immediate effect of the statistics put

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Database Sales Grew in 2005, Say IDC and Gartner

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As one of the key components of enterprise computing, the database market has been a key indicator of what kinds of applications customers are building and how well or poorly vendors of different alternatives are doing. While the advent of open source databases has impacted the database market, it doesn’t look like companies have cut down on their spending on closed source databases–at least not yet.

According to market research performed by IDC and Gartner, database sales are still growing at a healthy clip.

IDC only counts relational database management systems, not flat-file systems that are still in use

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IBM to Buy SAP? Why Not?

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If IBM were to acquire companies founded by disgruntled employees who went on to create IT players large and small of their own, it would be a massive company of great wealth and power that had all of the other players except those who left Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Intel, Microsoft, and a few other industry giants. That company would be the dominant supplier in the data center, spanning from servers up through operating systems, middleware, and applications software, as well as services.

And that IBM–call it Even Bigger and Even Bluer–would have dominant and

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Outsourcing, Offshoring on the Rise in North America, Evans Data Survey Says

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

While the CEOs and CIOs of the world don’t like to talk about their outsourcing and offshoring practices, the people in the trenches–the developers–who are effected by the outsourcing and offshoring decisions that get made in the boardroom are happy to talk about it. And, if a survey of North American programmers done by Evans Data is any indicator, the practice of using outside programmers is on the rise.

According to the Spring 2006 North American Development survey, which is based on polls of 450 developers, among those companies polled, companies have increased their use of contract programmers by 18

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Business Continuity Planning Part 2: Disaster Without Warning

May 30, 2006 Mary Lou Roberts

April 18th marked the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, which was by far the most devastating earthquake ever to occur in North America and which resulted in approximately 3,000 deaths. Compared with that event, the 1994 Northridge, California, quake that claimed 60 lives looked like child’s play. And you might be thinking that earthquakes are not your problem, that they are something that happens in mostly in California or in the Pacific Ocean. You would be wrong about that.

Scientists have been working for decades in an attempt to uncover some means of predicting when earthquakes will

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DataMirror’s Sales Decline in Its Fiscal First Quarter

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

High availability and clustering software maker DataMirror said last week that its first quarter of fiscal 2007, ended April 30, was weaker than the year-ago quarter, with sales down 8.4 percent to $10.3 million (Canadian), with net earnings of $700,000, down 36 percent.

The first quarter dip follows a fiscal 2006 where the company was able to increase sales by 2.6 percent to $44.7 million and statements by the company that it would be able to increase sales in 2007 by 10 to 15 percent, with sales expected in the range of $49 million to $52 million.

DataMirror, like Lakeview

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As I See It: Net Reality

May 30, 2006 Victor Rozek

There is a tug-of-war going on between giants. On one end of the rope, telephone and cable companies like AT&T and Comcast; on the other, software and search engine providers like Microsoft and Google. Both ends of the rope are manned by armies of lobbyists with pockets laden with cash. The venue is Congress; the issue is whether to maintain or dismantle what is popularly known as “net neutrality.” The prize is control of the Internet.

If the combatants are mammoth, so are the stakes. Three hugely important issues surround the fight over net neutrality: Who makes the

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IBM Names Eight New IBM Fellows, But Forgets One

May 30, 2006 Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you are a researcher or engineer who works for a big company like IBM, there’s nothing quite so good as being bestowed with the title of an IBM Fellow. In 43 years, IBM has only named 162 IBM Fellows, and it is these top thinkers, who have demonstrated their ability to push big and innovative technologies from the whiteboard to the data center, that are given a tremendous amount of freedom to pursue future interests.

Last week, Big Blue named eight new IBM Fellows, who join the 62 active fellows who are still working at the company. A

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