Michael P. O'Hara

Another Day, Another Enterprise Security Breach

2012-01-26T17:29:00.000-05:00

Anti-virus giant Symantec says it did not know back in 2006 that source code for its software was stolen when it experienced a breach at that time.

The company surprised the public last week when it disclosed that hackers had obtained source code for its pcAnywhere software and other products, and that the code had likely been stolen in a six-year-old breach that Symantec had never disclosed.

Symantec said in its announcement that users should disable pcAnywhere until the company had time to update the software to ensure that hackers are unable to exploit holes they might find in the code.

The pcAnywhere software is a popular remote access program that lets administrators get into computers to troubleshoot and also allows mobile users on the road to access content on their office desktop. It’s also installed on point-of-access terminals in stores and restaurants to allow administrators to update software that’s used to process the information on credit and debit cards as they’re scanned at a register check-out.

What was unclear from Symantec’s disclosure, however, was just how long Symantec had known its source code had been breached. The statement left open the question of whether Symantec knew in 2006 that its source code was taken and only disclosed it this month after hackers claimed to have it.

But Symantec spokesman Cris Paden told Threat Level that the company did not know before this month that the pcAnywhere source code had been stolen.

“We knew there was an incident in 2006,” he told Threat Level. “But it was inconclusive at the time as to whether or not actual code was taken or that someone had actual code in their hands.”

Following the public claim of hackers earlier this month that they had source code for pcAnywhere and other Norton Utilities, Paden said the company went back through its logs and records and “put 2 and 2 together that there was a source code theft.”

Asked to clarify that the company indeed maintained six-year-old server logs that it could go back and examine, Paden said, “We keep logs as far back, as long as we have had software to keep logs.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/symantec-source-code-hack

If I'm a pcANYWHERE user (which would be hard to believe in this day and age) my question to Symantec would be this - who has had access to my information and for how long?

So much for an exhaustive investigation after the theft SIX YEARS AGO.

Too Little Too Late For RIM

2012-01-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

Research In Motion's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have bowed to investor pressure and resigned as co-CEOs, handing the top job to an insider with four years at the struggling BlackBerry maker.

Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens AG executive who has risen steadily through RIM's upper management ranks since joining the Canadian company in late 2007, took over as CEO on Saturday, RIM said on Sunday.

The shift ends the two-decade long partnership of Lazaridis and Balsillie atop a once-pioneering technology company that now struggles against Apple and Google.

With RIM's share price plummeting to eight-year lows, a flurry of speculation that RIM was up for sale has enveloped the company in recent months. But investors have pointed to the domineering presence of Lazaridis and Balsillie as one reason a sale would prove difficult.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-rim-idUSTRE80M04920120123

Sorry folks, this is like putting a band-aid on a machete wound.

The need to remove the two bumblers-in-chief from the top of the RIM hill was known by even the most casual of observers for years. And the loss of lifeforce in terms of goodwill and market share has been too great for the patient to recover.

My guess is the new hire has been given marching orders to arrange the orderly winding down of the business and try to maximize the selling off of assets. Color me cynical. But for bleep's sake, don't blame me - take your case to the completely ineffectual board and useless executive staff that allowed the cancers to fester.

The Yin & Yang Of Jerry Yang

2012-01-18T11:52:00.000-05:00

Let the naysaying begin.

Now that Jerry Yang has severed his remaining ties with the company that he co-founded, the news cycle is not going to be especially kind recalling his legacy at Yahoo. Invariably, Yang is going to get called out for having blown a chance to sell Yahoo to Microsoft for more than $47 billion. For all his considerable talents, the critics will say, he was emotionally unable to let go even though every indicator was flashing a "sell" signal at the time, and he thus flubbed one of the biggest business opportunities in recent history.

All true, of course, and with the benefit of hindsight we know how the story subsequently unfolded. But it is also too smug and too unfair. The absence of nuance also makes for a misleading assessment of the man as well as his contributions. Did Yang hang around too long for his own good? It's a subjective question but to be fair, only a handful of entrepreneurs made their marks in the technology business and then got out while their companies were still riding high. It's a very short list with Microsoft's Bill Gates at the top of the roster. The other big name is Michael Dell, who revolutionized how personal computers get sold (though he has since returned for a second run as chief executive.) I'd also include Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus who handed over the reins to Jim Manzi after revolutionizing how the business world did spreadsheet calculations with Lotus 1-2-3.

Give Yang credit for not being a short-timer. In an age where the aspiration is to flip half-baked companies to suckers too dumb to figure out they're getting hosed, Yang was there for the long haul. We're not kind to our fallen heroes but this is a great American success story and we should consider a track record of accomplishment dating back to 1995. If Yang's legacy includes blowing the Microsoft deal, then let's also include his myriad contributions in laboring to build one of the biggest Internet properties in the world. For whatever warts you want to pick at, Yahoo remains a company that weathered the dot com bust, the post-9/11 slump, and the Great Recession. How many other can make the same claim? It wasn't always smooth but Yahoo also managed to survive a drastically different technology landscape where the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter were the new Internet stars.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57360574/cap-the-naysaying-and-give-jerry-yang-his-due/

Yes, Jerry Yang blew a tremendous opportunity by rejecting MSFT's overture. And sure, Yahoo! has sort of lost its way by attempting a one-stop-shop approach to the web. But geez, can we give him a little bit of love? The article made mention of his standing as an "Internet pioneer." How many other folks can you say that about and be right?

When you are talking about companies that helped bring the web to the world's collective consciousness, Yahoo! has to be one of the companies mentioned along with Netscape, Google and MSFT. Around the same time the famous Internet Tidal Wave memo was making the rounds in Redmond, Yahoo! and Sequoia Capital were wrapping up their first-round funding. That was 1995 - almost Precambrian by Internet time.

So before you pile onto the dissing bandwagon, pause for a second and consider Jerry Yang's role in bringing the web up from its infancy.

And remember, he'll probably be ignoring all the catcalls as he sits on a giant pile of money... I'm not a big believer in "he with the most toys wins" - however, I can only hope JY has a wry smile on his face now.

Has MSFT Finally Gotten It Right With Smartphone?

2012-01-08T20:35:00.000-05:00

“GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post.

“Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate.

“Far superior to most if not all theAndroid smartphones,” saysTechCrunch.

Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple. In fact, they’re actually accolades for a new product from Microsoft.

Microsoft?

Exactly. Long ridiculed as the tech industry dullard, Microsoft actually has a hit, at least with the technorati. It’s cellphone software called Windows Phone — and they need it to be a blockbuster here at Microsoft Central.

Yes, Windows and Office products are ubiquitous and highly profitable. But they’re about as inspirational as a stapler. While the likes of Apple have captured our imaginations with nifty products like the iPhone, Microsoft has produced a long list of flops, from smart wristwatches to the Zune music player to the Kin phones. Steve Jobs used to deride Microsoft for a lack of originality. In his opinion, the company didn’t bring “much culture” to its products. With Windows Phone, though, Microsoft is finally getting some buzz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/technology/microsoft-defying-image-has-a-design-gem-in-windows-phone.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1326072308-otItIkyLX+T0KyyzgGpCCg

It took longer than I expected - but it looks like Redmond has finally thrown down the smartphone gauntlet. It will be interesting to see how far it integrates with their enterprise suite (Office365, anyone?).

Will RIM Kill The Two-Headed Monster (Chairmen???)

2012-01-05T18:57:00.000-05:00

Under intense pressure from a group of shareholders, Research in Motion Ltd. is preparing to unveil a corporate shakeup at the beleaguered BlackBerry maker that could see co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie relinquish their titles as co-chairmen of the board, according to sources.

Barbara Stymiest, an independent director who joined RIM’s board in 2007, is believed to be the leading candidate to replace Messrs. Balsillie and Lazaridis as chair, sources familiar with events said.

A committee of seven independent directors of RIM’s board, including Ms. Stymiest, have been examining the company’s board structure, including the merits of having an independent chair rather than a lead director and the “business necessity” for Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie — who are also co-CEOs — to hold significant board titles.

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/01/03/rim-leaning-toward-new-chairman-sources/

Too little and too late.

Attempts to plug the gaping holes in the SS RIM's hull are now playing in the theater of the absurd.

RIM's board has played lapdog to the two overlords for more than a decade - so NOW they realize the error of their ways? Sorry kids, I'm not buying this. It's waaaaaaayyyyyyyy behind schedule and the smartphone train left the station many moons ago.

There are no Lazaruses that can resurrect them.

VW Pulls The Plug On 24x7x365 Access

2011-12-23T12:09:00.000-05:00

Carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) has agreed to deactivate e-mails on German staff Blackberry devices out of office hours to give them a break.

Under an agreement with labour representatives, staff at Europe's biggest automaker will receive e-mails via Blackberry from half an hour before they start work until half an hour after they finish, and will be in blackout-mode the rest of the time, a spokesman for VW said.

The new email regime applies to staff covered by collective bargaining so it would seem board level executives will still be slaves to their Blackberries.

Very few companies have taken such drastic measures to force workers towards a better work-life balance.

Telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) introduced a "Smart-Device-Policy" last year that calls on workers to claim communication-free time when they are off work, in exchange for a promise that management will not expect them to read e-mails or pick up the phone all the time.

"Mobile communication devices offer a great amount of freedom, but also embody the risk of no longer being able to switch off," the company said.

Kasper Rorsted, the chief executive of consumer goods maker Henkel (HNKG_p.DE), told a German newspaper last month that he was imposing a Blackberry-free week for the management board between Christmas and New Year - unless there is an emergency.

"I don't want to have to read mails just because someone is bored somewhere and wants to show he's busy," he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/23/uk-volkswagen-blackberry-idUSLNE7BM01D20111223

Kudos to Volkswagen executive management.

Apologies to the uber-Type-A wonks out there - but really, do you always feel the compulsion to check e-mail at 2AM on a Wednesday?

Burnout can be added to the ever-growing list of challenges facing today's average worker - wages not keeping up with costs-of-living, fewer opportunities, ever-increasing workloads, etc. At some point somebody was going to ask the question - does work have to follow you home? I think the answer needs to be no.

It's still considered a verboten topic amongst many businesses - nobody wants to be seen as the bad guy - and VW's strong stance will only apply some much-needed pressure on other businesses to adopt a similar policy. I believe it's taking the long view on worker productivity in economic terms - the concept of diminishing returns applies when a worker has turned out the last effective widget at hour 45 and starts sputtering after that. We are not machines.

I can only see this doing a bit of good for VW staff... if only their brethren across the pond would take the hint :-)

RIP Jack Goldman

2011-12-22T09:47:00.000-05:00

Jacob E. Goldman, a founder of the Palo Alto Research Center that developed breakthrough computing innovations such as the graphical user interface and ethernet networks, died on Tuesday. He was 90.

Goldman was recruited from Ford Motor Company to Xerox, where he pushed for a research center that he warned might not bear fruit for as long as 10 years, according to The New York Times, which reported that he died of congestive heart failure.

But in the decade following PARC's founding in 1970, the laboratory created a string of innovations that still resonate in modern computing today, from laser printing to object-oriented programming to the world's first WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor.

In 1975, PARC unveiled the graphical user interface with pop-up menus and windows and point-and-click controls. The GUI represented crucial ground work later built upon by companies such as Microsoft and Apple and eventually launched personal computing in the 1980s.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/xerox-parc-founder-jacob-e-goldman-dies-182491

R.I.P. Jack Goldman, the guy who gave Steve Jobs and Bill Gates their raison d'etres.

Anyone who's using a PC, Mac or tablet can thank the founder of PARC for them. Brushing aside their massive egos, I always wondered why Jobs et al didn't send out mad props to the PARC crew.

(Server Room) Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness

2011-12-21T10:44:00.000-05:00

Unorganized server room cabling is the Gordian Knot of IT.

Ask any techie and they'll say one of the top nuisances in the network world would be a poorly-wired patch panel. Like the proverbial snowball rolling down a hill, a lame wire job takes on a life of its own and soon reaches a point-of-no-return down the path to ruin. When the inevitable network "issue" arises and you have to source that one cable causing you agita, it can become impossible to figure it out. I mean, seriously, would you be able to wade through this?

Unlike Alexander The Great, I am not conquering the world - I just want to troubleshoot a problem quickly :-)

Advantages to a cleanly-wired cabinet:

It allows you to physically label the important stuff - like where your routers, firewalls and switches interconnect. Ever try to figure out an outage with no knowledge of what plugs in where? The only knot I'd want to see is a hangman's noose. Labeling end-to-end makes this a painless process.
You can virtually label all your equipement's ports. I now can see if a particular user is downloading The Lord Of The Rings trilogy on my monitoring system (ipMonitor) or on the Cisco devices that run stuff. This also makes bandwidth reports less mysterious.
Sourcing a root cause becomes many times faster. No more wading through a tangle of CAT-6 wiring. And you can SEE the patch panel and switch/router/firewall ports - unlike the cheap seats in center at the new Stadium.
It looks like you care about your server room.
Your management will think you sprinkle magic pixie dust around.

Once you've taken the devil out of the details, it will look like this (below). This took me about five hours and cost me about three minutes of downtime as I figured out where everything was plugged into on the server side. I now have every port documented and labeled on my monitoring/reporting system and on the network devices. When something important goes offline I can quickly diagnose if it's due to a connectivity issue in a minute or so.

Is RIM Open To A Fire Sale???

2011-12-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

As Research in Motion works to recover from a year of hard knocks, media reports indicate that other technology heavyweights have been considering snapping up the struggling BlackBerry maker.

Reuters reported Tuesday that RIM wasn’t interested in merger talks with Amazon. Citing unnamed “people with knowledge of the situation,” the report said that the two companies were in casual talks over the summer, but Amazon never made a formal offer. It is unclear if pricing discussions ever took place, the report said.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft and Nokia also “flirted” with the idea of a joint offer for RIM, but only in informal discussions.

RIM shares fell to an eight-year low Tuesday — the best day for U.S. stocks this month, adding fuel to speculations that the company is ripe for a takeover.

The company has been struggling this quarter. Poor sales of its tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, have hurt its image and those troubles were compounded when its vaunted BlackBerry Messenger network suffered worldwide outages.

In RIM’s most recent earnings call, co-chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis said that they were open to looking at several options to help the company, such as licensing out its operating system. The executives also announced that the next BlackBerry system would be delayed until the second half of 2012. The Journal report indicates that Balslillie, who handles RIM’s corporate strategy, has said that he would like to wait on that launch before considering bids from buyers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/amazon-microsoft-nokia-mulled-rim-bids/2011/12/21/gIQA3PP88O_story.html

At this point I'd be shocked if RIM investors got anything back on their investment.

Balsillie will need to find another career path as his days in "corporate strategy" will not make it onto his résumé. RIM's shortsightedness and absolute absence of vision has already doomed the company while its competitors lick their chops waiting to snatch their customer database.

What, outside of the huge - but rapidly dwindling - install base do prospective suitors find interesting? Is it really worth the enormous expense to migrate those users off the rickety, overcentralized RIM system and onto their platform? Most CFO's would blanch at the sight of capital expenditures associated with any porting over of 60 million accounts - or would it just be cheaper to wean the CrackHeads off BBY's altogether?

I would LOVE to see what's cooking in the labs at MSFT & Nokia. I imagine there's a team hammering away at program(s) to redirect the devices from Waterloo to ActiveSync - I can catch the scent of reverse engineering in the air, what with RIM making a too-late charge in that direction.

The Amazon thing I don't get just yet - outside of having another huge client base to hawk their wares to, I don't see any integration with the Kindle. Besides, the Kindle is already cooler than the PlayBook (another doomed techno-goof courtesy Balsillie et al).

Why Executives Should Be Cool...

2011-12-16T12:18:00.000-05:00

Zynga’s chief executive, Mark Pincus, got an earful from employees last month.

In dozens of e-mails to a companywide list, frustrated workers complained about the long hours and stressful deadline periods. The quarterly staff survey solicited 1,600 responses, with plenty of criticism, including one person who said he planned to cash out and leave after the initial public offering.

Mr. Pincus took note, going through the comments and highlighting select excerpts. At a Zynga meeting several days later, he read some of the most acerbic words. Mr. Pincus said he was aware of the problems, but needed the staff’s guidance to fix them.

Few Internet start-ups have grown as swiftly as Zynga, creator of a sprawling network of virtual farms, cities and poker tables that is preparing to go public in one of the most highly anticipated offerings this year.

Led by the hard-charging Mr. Pincus, the company operates like a federation of city-states, with autonomous teams for each game, like FarmVille and CityVille. At times, it can be a messy and ruthless war. Employees log long hours, managers relentlessly track progress, and the weak links are demoted or let go.

But that culture, which has been at the root of Zynga’s success, could become a serious liability, warn several former senior employees who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals.

As the discord increases, the situation may jeopardize the company’s ability to retain top talent at a time when Silicon Valley start-ups are fiercely jockeying for the best executives and engineers. It could also hamper deal-making, a critical growth engine for Zynga, which has spent about $119 million on acquisitions in the last two years.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/zyngas-tough-culture-risks-a-talent-drain/#h[AtdIca,2]

All 'bout the benjamins, yo'

A culture that is drive by an a****** will only foster the developement of a******s.

I am sorry for the strong language, but NOTHING drives people away from long-term productivity than working for a right bastard.

Everyone at one point or another has worked for/with someone with finely-tuned Type-A characteristics... and as a Type-A-ish guy I can (almost) empathize with the rare outburst or display of frustration. But there's no excuse when an executive - or the guys in the mailroom - let their inner Tasmanian Devil out whenever something displeases them. Evidently Mark Pincus is breeding a generation of management that believes foaming-at-the-mouth is good for driving projects.

What a shame. What an embarrassment.

Here's a list of do's and don'ts for all you budding Masters Of The Universe:

Follow Dalton's advice - be nice. The old adages apply (you'll get more bees with honey than with vinegar, etc).
Management through fear never lasts. My guess is most of the screaming, ridiculing morons have borderline personalities and/or naricisstic disorder.
If you are miserable start looking for an out immediately. I was at a place and knew within 3 months that I wanted out desparately - my "manager" was a vicious, mean-spirited troll and piled 28 projects on me in nine months. Nobody likes a bully.
Find out if your HR department has any teeth. If they don't see #3... if they do reach out to them ASAP. Keep a list of transgressions and present that to them.
It's only money... if you're working for that reason only it's time to find a job that you'll enjoy doing.

I fully expect to see Zynga collapse after the newly-minted millionaires escape the evil clutches of the wack-job CEO. If karma exists Mr. Pincus had better watch his back.

Regression In Motion

2011-12-16T11:42:00.001-05:00

Research In Motion Ltd. fell to the lowest level in almost eight years after saying a new generation of BlackBerrys designed to fuel a comeback won't be out until the “latter part” of 2012.
The smartphone maker, which originally planned to release the new devices in the first quarter of next year, also gave a sales and profit forecast that missed analysts' estimates.

The delay adds to the challenges at RIM, which has lost market share to Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Android phones. The company also flubbed its entry into the tablet market, with a device that bombed with shoppers.

RIM co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie said on a conference call that he's not satisfied with the “particularly weak” performance in the U.S., which accounts for about a quarter of revenue.

“The last few quarters have been some of the most trying in the recent history of the company,” Balsillie said. The two co-CEOs will be cutting their salaries to one dollar effective immediately as they embark on a review of RIM's product portfolio, manufacturing and research strategy, he said.

The BB10 phones were delayed because the company wanted to deliver devices with better performance and battery life, said Mike Lazaridis, the other CEO. The chipsets that will allow those capabilities won't be available until mid-2012. “We ask for your patience and confidence,” Lazaridis said.

Patience? I have all the patience in the world...

The Grim Reaper is honing his scythe at the latest news coming from Waterloo.

Of all the companies that could not afford MORE bad news.... RIM would head the list (apologies to MF Global - just ignore the entire website at this point). I think Corzine would have had the good sense to jettison sans golden parachute out of this disaster.

I think my premonitions associated with RIM are coming true. I said they'd be out of business by 2015 more than a year ago. I may have to amend my prediction.... I honestly don't think they'll survive, even as a going concern, for more than a couple of years at this point. Afflictions they now suffer include:

Intense competition from Apple & Google. Their market share is now below the Mendoza Line at 9%.
Hall-Of-Fame caliber mismanagement at the top level. Calling Balsille & Lazarids bumbling fools would be high praise at this point. Their handling of the global outage earlier this year was a PR nightmare.
Missed deadlines... seriously, when was the last time a product arrived in a timely manner?

I have only two questions for RIM -

Where the fire sale at?

Where the hell is the board?

We both forgot to wear our "I'm With Stupid" t-shirts

Microsoft's "Playbook" On Tablets?

2011-11-01T14:52:00.000-04:00

Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.

That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft's Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product--let alone one from inside Microsoft's walls--that threatened the foundation of Microsoft's flagship operating system. But Sinofsky's tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

For Ballmer, it wasn't an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next-generation brain trust. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary he's trusted more than any other over the decades--Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsoft's chairman and co-founder to meet for a few hours with Allard; his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach; and two other Courier team members...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20128013-75/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/

I don't know about you, but the Courier looked pretty damned cool... yet another reason to dislike that innovation/productivity assassin - corporate politics.

The moral of this sad tale spells out how to NOT allow one's ego get in the way - and that applies to Gates, Ballmer and Allard. I happen to agree with Gates on this one - incorporating Outlook would have been a wise decision and ultimately torpedoed the project.

There was a pretty stiff dose of short-sightedness spread around here... Allard's crew should have capitulated and plugged in Exchange/Outlook features. Gates & Ballmer probably pulled the plug on this too soon. And Microsoft missed out by slaying the golden goose - the multi-billion-dollar tablet market that Apple now lords over.

RIM: Have Shovel, Will Dig...

2011-10-12T11:19:00.000-04:00

Another day, another worldwide outage for you poor BBY users.

It's not yet clear clear whether the issues plaguing customers overseas is what is also affecting service in North America. A RIM representative was not available for comment regarding disruptions in the North America.

BlackBerry users in Canada and parts of Central and South America also suffered service disruption last month, when RIM's e-mail and messenger services were down.

RIM's BlackBerry network architecture is its strength as well as its biggest weakness. Unlike other smartphone platforms, RIM routes all e-mail and messaging traffic through its BlackBerry servers in network operation centers throughout the world. This centralized architecture for the service means that additional encryption and security can be added to the messages that traverse the network. And for many corporate customers, this added security is the main reason they use the service.

But the architecture also means there are single points of failure throughout the network. This means that when there is a major infrastructure disruption, it can affect entire regions of service, potentially knocking out service for tens of millions of customers. By contrast competing smartphones, such as theiPhone and GoogleAndroid devices, do not suffer from the same outages because there is no single point of failure in the network.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20119163-266/blackberry-service-issues-spread-to-u.s-and-canada/

Pretty soon you'll need to look on a milk carton to locate a BlackBerry.

RIM's management seems determined to destroy their company. Like a child holding their breath refusing to relinquish their security blanket, RIM also has a Vulcan Deathgrip on its obsolete architecture.

You'd think after the first 10 major outages they'd learn their lesson and be frantically implementing a geographically-distributed infrastructure to handle traffic. But noooo......

I stand by my contention that RIM will be out of business by 2015 if they don't get it together. This latest embarrassment only steels my resolve. If you own RIM stock jettison it NOW.

2011-09-27T09:18:00.000-04:00

There are yet more signs that the shy and retiring Microsoft head Steve Ballmer is on the slippery slope to CEO oblivion, not just from irritated investors but increasingly from his own employees.

The Seattle PI has cast its magnifying glass over the comments on a Microsoft blog post. It says at a recent company meeting, Ballmer was faced with a crowd suffering from restless bum syndrome, who deseated themselves and promptly exited mid-talk.

One comment the PI points out is particularly damning. "What a sad spectacle," it begins. "Back in the good old days when BillG spoke, EVERYONE listened." It goes on to suggest Ballmer has been peddling the proverbial poisoned Kool Aid to the few faithful, like HR boss Lisa Brummel and COO Kevin Turner. Thanks to the yes-men, the post suggests, Ballmer is oblivious to the fact his employees think he's a joke.

Another calls out Ballmer's claim that Windows "cannot lose" as defensive, while another comment says the company meeting is "the worst one I've ever seen by far". Overall, the disgruntled employees who are commenting seem to agree that Microsoft solely pinning its hopes on Windows 8 and Windows 8 tablets is a quick ready-meal recipe for disaster.

"Is Win 8 tablet all we have left to be excited about?" a commenter ponders. "Has the morale across the company slumped so much that 20,000 of us together can't even generate a decent applause? Please someone tell me I'm wrong."

Wall Street is equally peeved at Microsoft. The relationship between Ballmer and the shareholders has been sketchy at best, with complaints filing in about his alleged mis-management of the coffers. Still, he might have at least bought himself some time by throwing a small bone to the suits earlier this month by raising dividends 25 percent.

A survey last year from Glassdoor.com said over half of 1,000 employees, when asked, said they didn't think Ballmer was up to scratch. Microsoft's still in the Fortune top companies to work for list, with a decent rate of employee satisfaction.

Get me Luca Brasi

Is it finally time for a change in Redmond? And can the board make him an offer he can't refuse?

It has to be difficult to follow in the footsteps of an industry god. The expectations aren't whittled down, they are ratcheted up. And both employees and investors think the good times will continue to roll on unabated.

Picking the right successor is a tricky thing - a lesson that HP and Apple are learning. HP hasn't had a competent leader in over a decade while Tim Cook (who by all measures is a great exec) also has the misfortune of hopping off Steve Jobs' cape.

I never liked Ballmer as a CEO - his management style (i.e. bullying) wasn't going to curry favor with the denizens of Executive Row or with The Street... and it hasn't. Another shortcoming was Ballmer's decided lack of tech chops - he's a marketer by trade - and his failure to appreciate the Big Picture (how to line up MSFT product lines, streamline operations to avoid corporate sprawl, etc) and assuage the fears of the shareholders.

He has done nothing to drive the stock price up - in fact, the stock has stagnated while their mortal enemies (GOOG & AAPL) have minted thousands of millionaires like Gates once did.

Time to exit gracefully, Mr. Ballmer.

Didn't Nixon do this when he left the White House?

Can RIM Stop Its Own Demise???

2011-09-20T11:20:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, September 15th, before Research in Motion (RIMM) announced earnings, I said the following:

“Tonight’s earnings may show us whether or not they are set to disappear as an influence in the smart phone battle.”

I was expecting a big move, either up or down, following the announcement. I knew RIM was set to surprise investors - I just wasn’t sure in which direction. RIM could have surprised to the upside by showing investors that the company was capable of a comeback; but it could also have surprised to the downside, by showing investors that the company was set to disappoint. RIM did, in fact, disappoint, sending the stock down over 20 percent.

Fading to Irrelevance

RIM used to be the dominant player in the industry, as the number-one Blackberry essentially controlled the business-phone space and was well-ahead of the competition. The Droid (GOOG) was nowhere yet, and the iPhone (AAPL) was still far behind. But now, the iPhone and the Droid are top two, and the Blackberry is quickly losing relevance. To make matters worse, the future looks bleak for RIM with earnings and growth shrinking. The stock is at $24, nowhere near its $148.13 peak in June 2008. The stock has lost two-thirds of its value this year alone.

RIM doesn’t appear to be making any progress or showing any signs of recovery. Though I do find the Blackberry phone to have the best “typing interface” for emails and texting, the company’s failure to innovate, the executive management issues that prevent a unified strategy for the future, and the strong downside momentum which has sent the stock plummeting, make RIM’s chances of recovery very small. RIM will likely never recapture its dominance in the smart phone industry.

Notice how weak RIM’s market share has been among recent buyers (and getting worse):

For some reason I see the executives in Waterloo portending their, um, Waterloo:

While their market share burns...

It's a pity that the founding fathers of the PDA Era simply cannot get it together and save their company. But what else can you expect when your leadership stands stockstill when the market gets upended by Droid/iPhone?

RIM insists on learning their lesson the hard way instead of changing their business model to stave off elimination. Their hardheadedness makes them sheep... and like my man Gordon said:

Now We Find Out If Apple Can Survive

2011-08-24T23:16:00.000-04:00

The news that Steve Jobs is stepping down as chief executive officer of Apple is rippling through the media, just as yesterday’s earthquake traveled up the East Coast. There are more good wishes in my Twitter feed this evening than there were immediately following yesterday’s earthquake, and fewer jokes in questionable taste. Both humor and sympathy are natural reactions to shock. In this case, death had been forestalled—Jobs had pancreatic cancer, then received a liver transplant—but it cannot be averted, and the unspoken assumption is that Jobs’s medical condition has deteriorated.

Jobs can resign his position as the C.E.O. of Apple by releasing a statement, but it isn’t so easy to stop embodying the company he founded with Steve Wozniak in 1976, left in 1985, and returned to in 1996, to transform the flailing maker of the also-ran personal computer into a dominant force in how we communicate, listen, watch, read, and buy things, including this magazine. Apple partisans explain their loyalty with rational arguments about elegant design and freedom from viruses, but their devotion runs as deep as sports fandom or religious faith, and they hang on Jobs’s every word.

Can Apple thrive without Jobs? It almost didn’t the first time around, and shares have plunged this evening. On the other hand, Jobs has been on medical leave since the beginning of the year. This kind of question is always hard to answer, but it’s so much more difficult here because of the code of silence enforced by Jobs. As a result, journalists, bloggers, and fans have been parsing his every utterance, from W.W.D.C. keynotes to purported e-mails to members of the public, the way Moscow reporters used to watch the Kremlin. Apple is in much better financial shape than the Soviet Union was at the end, so I’m not counting on a period of glasnost, at least not yet.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/apple-after-steve-jobs.html

I Want You To Join The Apple Army

One of the great tech visionaries of our time has given up the ghost. The question everyone wants an answer to is can Apple keep the mojo Jobs has built up?

I don't think they can. And I will tell you why.

The differences between Jobs and another Master Of The Universe who ceded responsibility - Bill Gates - are stark. Where Gates' management style could be in the neighborhood of hands-on and involvement in top-to-bottom decision-making was peripheral, Jobs is the archetype of the micromanager and involved in even the most trivial manners.

How much Jobs has done to pass the mantle of leadership beyond prepping Tim Cook is only part of the transition. Will everyone else be able to adjust without him? Changing how an organization thinks takes years... ask Tim Gerstner.

Giving IT A Bad Name - And Backups A Good Rep...

2011-08-19T07:33:00.001-04:00

A former IT professional at the United States subsidiary of Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi pleaded guilty on Aug. 16 to charges of computer intrusion. The former employee, Jason Cornish, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in November.
This is just the latest case that illustrates how enterprises fail to guard the security of corporate networks and data stores after key IT professionals leave the company, especially employees who are unhappy about layoffs, corrupt or just plain malicious.

Cornish left the firm in July 2010 after a dispute with a senior manager, but at the suggestion of a colleague, referred to as B.N. in court documents filed June 30 in the U.S. District court for the State of New Jersey, continued working for Shionogi as a contractor because of his familiarity with the company's network. During a round of layoffs, "B.N." refused to hand over network passwords to company executives and was summarily suspended and ultimately fired in September 2010. B.N.'s departure meant Cornish's contract was also terminated, and he was no longer authorized to access Shionogi's network.

The attacks were severe enough to freeze Shionogi's operations for "a number of days, leaving employees unable to ship products, to cut checks or even communicate via email," according to court documents. The breach affected Shionogi's corporate email, BlackBerry servers, order-tracking system and financial management software. The company estimated the damage cost $800,000.

Would you trust your network to this guy?

Yikes... when you're thinking of hiring a sysadmin would it be wise to administer some standard psychological tests -i.e. Rorschach, MMPI, TAT? At least my psych degree was good for something :-)

The question to ask in the aftermath of this techno-meltdown is why were they down for days? The answer is their backup process was weak - at best. It sounds to me like it was nonexistent.

Some rules of the road for a situation like this:

Never trust a single person to maintain the keys to the kingdom (i.e. userid/password file). Make sure that you have this critical, show-stopping file backed up (ironic, isn't it)?

Conduct periodical reviews of your backup policy - make sure you've added new data. Do I hear change management?

Most backup programs have notification - enable it and live with the annoyance (or use rules to drop them in another folder).

Most backup programs also have reporting built in... a weekly status is nice and will CYA.

STORE YOUR MEDIA OFF-SITE. Or use a cloud-based solution to store data outside of the office.

Have a plan ready - do DR testing at least once a year..

I'd only trust these clowns with a Mac...

Is RIM FINALLY Taking The Plunge???

2011-08-08T23:57:00.000-04:00

Research In Motion is getting closer to rolling out its first QNX-powered BlackBerry smartphone. Code-named Colt, news reports reveal RIM is on target for a first quarter 2012 launch. That's nothing especially new, since that RIM has previously offered that timeline.

Rumors have it the QNX-powered BlackBerry won't offer support for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Instead, it will reportedly tap into Microsoft ActiveSync e-mail software. But will QNX help RIM turn around its fortunes in North America? Or will news of an impending new mobile operating system stall sales of the new BlackBerry devices launched last week?

"This is actually problematic. People who have brand affinity and want to stay on with BlackBerry may very well decide to wait longer with this news," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. "Instead of buying one of the new BlackBerry OS 7 phones, they may wait for a QNX phone."

http://www.newsfactor.com/news/RIM-s-QNX-Phone-May-Use-ActiveSync/story.xhtml?story_id=020001YT5EWK

Wow, it only took RIM 11 years.

Seems that someone finally snapped the Research In Motion executive team out of its collective haze and got them to embrace the client-centric model and (at last) move away from their antiquated model.

The question is, will it be enough and/or is it already too late?

I for one am glad to see RIM acknowledging that the need to produce devices to cater to the ever-growing ActiveSync crowd (i.e. iPhones and Androids). The jury's out on whether this can help stanch the gaping wound bleeding red ink all over the RIM B/S. Their challenge will be to do the same for their existing line and convert them into an either-or; it would be super if a device had the ability to offer you the choice of AS or BES... but that may be asking too much.

Happy 20th WWW

2011-08-06T23:55:00.000-04:00

Where it all started.

If only Tim Berners-Lee had slapped a copyright on the concept of the Web!

A big thank-you from every person who's ever logged onto the hypertext version of the Internet.

Gates, His Foundation & How Other Industry Titans Should Follow...

2011-07-30T23:32:00.000-04:00

Bill Gates has sold another 5 million of his Microsoft shares, according to a regulatory filing.

Microsoft's multi-billionaire founder has been selling shares in recent months. He is the company's non-executive chairman, having stepped back from running the software firm in 2008 to concentrate on his charity work.

According to the filing, Gates sold 5m shares in Microsoft at an average $27.59 each on July 27. He has sold more than 90m Microsoft shares in the past 12 months.

Gates still has more than 500m shares in the company, but has decreased his shareholding over the last two years to fund his charitable endeavours and to diversify his portfolio.

This week the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it was making $42m available for eight universities to develop a toilet that does not need a sewer connection, water or electricity to operate. The ain is to improve people's health in parts of the world where there are few if any flushable toilets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/29/bill-gates-sells-5m-microsoft-shares-to-fund-foundation

Bill Gates, philanthropic gangsta

Even if you don't dig Bill Gates (which is not the case for me) you have to respect how he's invested enormous sums of money into his foundation.

The only person in history who compares (and actually exceeds) Gates' generosity is Andrew Carnegie, who gave his entire fortune away... but Gates is giving it the ol' college try to surpass him. If there's any lesson that his fellow Masters Of The Universe should heed, it is this:

You can't take it with you.

I can only hope the rest of the very deep pockets in this country will go great lengths to emulate Gates and use their excess cash for good.

I Return To The Work World

2011-07-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

HedgeOp Compliance, LLC focuses exclusively on helping private fund advisers and other investment managers meet their compliance and regulatory challenges. Our clients range from start-ups to large firms with well-established track records and utilize a broad array of investment strategies and styles such as: long only, long/short equities, global macro, credit, distressed, bank debt, fixed income, private equity, venture capital, real estate-related and fund of fund strategies.

HedgeOp has developed a successful business based on its proactive approach to servicing clients and proven reputation. We provide varying levels of on-going compliance consulting support to over 40 firms (representing 250+ funds) with AUM in excess of $90 billion. Our clients utilize a broad array of investment strategies and styles such as: long only, long/short equities, global macro, credit, distressed, bank debt, fixed income, private equity, venture capital, real estate-related and fund of fund strategies.

I am back in the saddle. I accepted a contract-to-perm position at HedgeOp Compliance as their IT Director. They are a small and rapidly growing business - with the emphasis on regulation and compliance in the financial world I'm hoping the opportunities for the company abound.

Things I look forward to working on include:

Pushing the VM concept on the production side (for all the reasons I've expounded upon in previous posts).
Providing support to the client community - I am learning Spiceworks!
Doing a review of everything and making suggestions for stuff that can be consolidated or improved upon.

Wish me luck :-)

Enough With The "Remote Security" Doomsaying...

2011-07-28T22:09:00.000-04:00

As use of mobile devices by employees increases, businesses are struggling to ensure corporate data accessed via smartphones, laptops and cloud services are secure, new research shows.

A study conducted by the Courion Corp. found that two of every three large enterprises have employees who are connecting their own personal mobile devices to the corporate network – but less than a quarter have a policy governing the devices' use or have made it known whether such a policy exists.

While the survey of nearly 1,000 IT professionals showed them to be fairly confident in their ability inside the company's walls to control access to company resources, just 40 percent of them felt the same about employees accessing through mobile devices, and only 34 percent had confidence in controlling those who used cloud-based services.

The survey also looked at businesses as a whole, determining that not having proper policies on the use of mobile devices and cloud services can be costly. Nearly one in 10 companies admitted to having had a data breach as a result of a lost mobile device.

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/employees-remote-access-security-threat-1583/

A device that should not be allowed remote desktop - the screen's too small anyways...

A classic IT case of damned if you do/don't.. I am all for remote access within reason, given a few caveats are spelled out in disclaimer mode:

No PDA's or smart phones will be used for access... the security offered on those devices isn't close to being ready for prime time.
Any web-based portals *must* have SSL enabled... it doesn't matter if it's something as harmless as webmail.
Network devices on the edge (routers, firewalls, etc) need to be completely current with firmware (see SONY for a lesson is how to fling the doors wide open).
The absolute bare minimum in terms of protocols allowed through should be set. My guess is one in five companies have gaping security holes courtesy of lackluster firewall/router config.
Acceptable use policies for your "road warriors" so they don't introduce a virus/malware-riddled notebook into your environment. Web filters and intrusion detection/prevention systems will go a long way in helping to police the scofflaws.

Maritz - Virtual Servers

2011-07-13T22:55:00.000-04:00

VMware is unquestionably the bellwether of virtualization on the x64 server platform, particularly within corporate data centers that run companies not in the internet business. And among VMware's customer base, the penetration of virtualization is on the rise.

Virtualization use is not just expanding in terms of the percentage of workloads that are resting atop a hypervisor (and blissfully unaware that their operating systems are not in absolute control of physical hardware, as operating systems like to be). Virtualization is also being more widely applied to workloads, large and small.

Speaking at yesterday's launch of the vSphere 5.0 in San Francisco, VMware president and CEO Paul Maritz said that back in 2009, in the wake of the Virtual Infrastructure 3 launch a year earlier, about 30 per cent of the workloads among the VMware customer base running on x86 and x64 machines that could be moved to a hypervisor and virtualized. A lot of these workloads were relatively lightweight, what he called tier 2 and 3 software.

But after the vSphere 4.0 stack came out in 2009, significantly increasing the virtual CPU and memory capacity of a virtual machine as well as its virtual network and disk bandwidth, virtualization penetration at the x64 shops that are VMware customers continued to rise. By 2010, about 40 per cent of the workloads at VMware shops had been virtualized, and Maritz said that the company is expecting to break through the 50 per cent level by the end of this year. "50 per cent means there is still 50 per cent to go," Maritz said.

Interestingly, VMware believes it can add about 10 per cent of additional virtualization penetration per year going forward. The implication is that around five or six years from now, at the current pace, all of the workloads VMware can practically get on its hypervisors will be moved to an ESXi hypervisor. (There will no doubt be a smattering of Hyper-V, KVM, and Xen at VMware shops, of course.)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/13/vmware_server_virtualization_penetration

Add caption

Wow - a pretty bold statement by VMware's CEO. That bodes especially well for virtualization vendors -the market for servers to P2V means long green for all the players.

Somewhere A Guy Named Nero Is Tuning His Lyre...

2011-07-13T14:59:00.001-04:00

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.'s co-CEO told shareholders Tuesday that the company is facing challenges as it moves toward what it calls its biggest product launch yet.

At RIM's annual meeting Tuesday, Jim Balsillie cited delays in releasing the company's new operating system. But he said seven new BlackBerry smartphones will run the advanced system in the coming months, enabling RIM to stay on track to meet its financial guidance for the year.

Lazaridis said the delays were due to company's efforts to get its smartphones to meet market expectations, adding that the technology in the new BlackBerry Bold jumps a generation.

"It may have delayed us, but we are going to come out ahead," Lazaridis said of the company's decision to hold off on the rollout of the new BlackBerry Bold in order to bolster it to face what he called an "arm's race" brewing among its smartphone competitors.

The annual meeting comes after RIM's share price has fallen more than 50 percent this year.

The company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, once dominated the corporate smartphone market but has been struggling to come up with a device to compete with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

RIM also got poor reviews for its tablet, called the PlayBook, launched in April, and about 1,000 of the devices had to be recalled because of defective software.

The company's inability to stay on top of innovation and create a product that consumers find as sexy as the iPhone has disgruntled some shareholders who are anxious to see what's next in its device roster.

http://www.pddnet.com/news-blackberry-maker-sees-challenges-in-phone-launch-071311

The moment for RIM executives to step out of their smartphone cocoon has come.

"It may have delayed us, but we are going to come out ahead,"

Jim, per favore... snap out of it. There's not an analyst or tech prognosticator who smiles upon a delayed product launch (just ask Steve Ballmer!).

You have several challenges in the smartphone market:

Overall market share is drying up. Bone dry. As in four years it will read 0%.
Your phones have not kept up in the application arena at all. Sure, Angry Birds is pretty useless for many, but there are alot of apps that users clamor for - and are getting from your competition.
I haven't heard of any plans to decentralize your model. I think this is one of the biggest reasons for business to flee - many ITers are uncomfortable with putting their livelihoods on the line for something that has proven not to be robust enough.
Your entry in the tablet market is a complete dud. Don't bother to spin it any other way - Engadget's review is spot-on.

So Jim, I beseech ye! Put down the pipe and come up with a roadmap that doesn't maintain the tech status-quo.

Google+ Is Not Too Shabby

2011-07-11T20:26:00.004-04:00

In order to see what the ado was all about, I joined up to Google+ a couple of days ago. I think Facebook is not overly concerned (what with their 700M+ user base and all)... but they cannot turn a blind eye to the newest and most worthy entrant into the social networking domain.

Editor's Note: I am not a huge Facebook fan for personal consumption - though I do see the benefits of extending a corporate presence beyond the garden-variety website :-)

I have to say the interface is pure Google... the look reflects their other products:

It's integrated nicely with their toolbar. When I joined up a little "+Michael" showed (on the far left just to job my memory).
It has a Facebook-like layout - no surprise there. Where it differentiates itself is with the "friending" process. The Circles widget is much less cumbersome than Facebook's adding Friends feature - it has a nice drag-and-drop GUI. Very sleek.
Video is another feature where they are ahead of Facebook (especially since their Skype deal was announced - of which I am a big fan, BTW). More than two users can join a "hangout." I'm sure FB/Skype is already hammering away at this to match.
I didn't bother with the Sparks widget (see Editor's Note).

You can get the lowdown on Google+ at https://plus.google.com; I happen to think it will do very well given they get around a billion unique visitors every month.

And They're Off (In The Virtualization Race)

2011-07-11T12:09:00.000-04:00

According to Gartner, the virutalization competition is no longer a one-horse race:

The market is becoming very competitive — both in terms of product offerings and in terms of overarching visions for the road map to cloud computing. VMware remains the market share and technology leader, but the market is growing rapidly, and competitors like Microsoft and Citrix Systems have a larger share now than they did a year ago. While the majority of Global 1000 enterprises have been virtualizing for several years, many smaller enterprises and those in emerging economies are just starting out, or haven't started yet. These enterprises have several viable alternatives from which to choose. In addition, as the cloud computing paradigm continues to evolve, cloud service providers offering IaaS want to make interoperability with their service offerings easy. A key trend in service providers is a shift to support better interoperability with existing enterprise virtualization infrastructures — in many cases, expanding their support for the same technologies that enterprises are using.

http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol2/article8a/article8a.html

MSFT & Citrix have improved their services since the last Magic Quadrant report; the question is will they both continue to innovate and steal market share from the Big Dog?

In these tough times, it would seem that companies are going to continue to shy away from the big number vendors - if you were the CFO and didn't have technical chops, would you care that ESX was a better management console that SCVMM? Most money guys are going to lean towards the smaller CAPEX unless you've made a compelling case for VMware.

Fact is both Citrix and MSFT have a significant edge in cost and have been catching up in feature/performance.

So MSFT's Acquisition's Not Looking So Bad Now...

2011-07-08T11:45:00.002-04:00

Facebook said Wednesday it will add Skype to its menu of services. The VoIP specialist, of course, falls under Microsoft’s domain once Redmond's $8.5 billion deal to purchase the company closes. But Internet calling is just one area where collaboration between Microsoft and Facebook makes sense--especially if both want to continue their dominance in software and social networking. Apple is mounting a big challenge to Microsoft in the former, and Google is hot on Facebook's heels in the latter. Here's a look at some other opportunities the two tech behemoths could jointly exploit...

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/windows/231001174

So where are all the MSFT boobirds now?

I thought this was a super acquisition for Redmond's biggest company the day it was announced (no, really. Search my blog!) - and the news of a Facebook-Skype partnership only reinforces that belief. Do I see a marriage of Office/Skype + Facebook coming???

The potential for joining forces (and Facebook's 700M user base) is huge, both in personal and business computing. Would it not be cool to publish to Facebook directly from PowerPoint or Lync (or really, Skype)? Again, MSFT's vision in seeking the path(s) of least resistance for push/pull of information has scored on a Derek Jeter-like level (and if I have to explain Jete's success with the ladies, you won't get the joke. And by the by, I have tickets to the game tonite!)

Dropping Facebook into the mix of applications that MSFT was already planning to integrate with Skype has turned the $8.5B they dropped on it looks like a real bargain.

Ballmer admiring MSFT's future profits RE: Facebook/Skype

Say what you will about Ballmer - yes, his uber-Type-A management style hasn't won the affection of his direct reports. And yes, his stage presence is not exactly on par with Gordon Gekko.*** But during his tenure as il duce he has managed a few wins. This could be the big one.

*** Editor's Note: Steve, what in the world were you thinking? That was a cross between an Irish jig and a macaque on speed.

MSFT Throws The Cloud Cards Down On The Table

2011-06-28T13:13:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) made its biggest move into the mobile, Internet-accessible world of "cloud" computing on Tuesday, taking the wraps off a revamped online version of its hugely profitable Office software suite.

The world's largest software company is heaving its two-decade old set of applications -- including Outlook email, Excel spreadsheets and SharePoint collaboration tools -- into an online format so that customers can use them on a variety of devices from wherever they can get an Internet connection.

It wants to push back against Google Inc (GOOG.O), which has stolen a small but worrying percentage of corporate customers with cheaper, web-only alternatives, which remove the need for companies to spend time on installing software or managing servers.

"It puts Microsoft in a better position than they were -- they now have a broad product that they can more easily sell," said Michael Silver, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner.

Microsoft shares rose 0.8 percent on Tuesday, following a 3.7 percent jump the day before, partly buoyed by hopes that the company can ultimately boost profits by extending its software dominance to the growing cloud sector.

Microsoft has offered online versions of some Office programs -- chiefly Outlook email -- for its corporate customers for several years, and last year rolled out free versions for individual home users.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/microsoft-idUSN1E75R0LH20110628

I joined the Office 365 Beta program and can report it's pretty damned cool... and that the pricing is not that difficult to follow after all :-)

Here are the highlights:

E-Mail

The GUI is the same in OWA for Exchange 2010, meaning there are very few differences between it and the Outlook client. The GUI works nicely on a mobile device too.
Each user gets 25GB of storage, which will make most admins happy (techs aren't enamored of users who have giant-sized mailboxes).
Each user can also have Archive set up, and the datastores can be Journaled - both tidy features to address any compliance regs your company is subject to.
If your preference is to use Outlook, then rest easy. Setting up the client is a snap.
The admin GUI is also very cool; it took me no time at all to locate where all the widgets were located.

The web client behaves just like Outlook on your desktop

The Admin Console is sleek and easy to navigate

SharePoint

The collaboration tool that I've used and talked about at length, without the backup/admin hassles.
If you haven't seen/used this please read MSFT"s propaganda.
The beta SP site I set up took about an hour... they will need to address the use of additional widgets to make this really attractive.

Office Professional (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook)

Next to E-Mail this will be a big hit; the collaboration possibilities with SharePoint (serving as the portal to access docs) are endless.
Gives you the option of add/edit from your Office desktop suite or via the Office Web Apps browser-based GUI... very nice.

Lync Online (Unified Communications)

For those of you who have used LiveMeeting, it's a conjoining of it and LiveMessenger, all integrated within your web-based e-mail or desktop Office apps.
I have found the videocon piece to be a big hit. I used LiveMeeting and Skype at Stribling and both worked equally well for throwing up docs to present/share.

I see this as becoming the next big revenue generator for MSFT, given their giant-sized footprint in the productivity market and the benefits both IT (no backup/DR headaches, archiving) and internal clients will realize.

DNSSEC Initiative Gains Steam

2011-06-25T01:22:00.002-04:00

A small group of Internet security specialists gathered in Singapore this week to start up a global system to make e-mail and e-commerce more secure, end the proliferation of passwords and raise the bar significantly for Internet scam artists, spies and troublemakers.

“It won’t matter where you are in the world or who you are in the world, you’re going to be able to authenticate everyone and everything,” said Dan Kaminsky, an independent network security researcher who is one of the engineers involved in the project.

The Singapore event included an elaborate technical ceremony to create and then securely store numerical keys that will be kept in three hardened data centers there, in Zurich and in San Jose, Calif. The keys and data centers are working parts of a technology known as Secure DNS, or DNSSEC. DNS refers to the Domain Name System, which is a directory that connects names to numerical Internet addresses. Preliminary work on the security system had been going on for more than a year, but this was the first time the system went into operation, even though it is not quite complete.

The three centers are fortresses made up of five layers of physical, electronic and cryptographic security, making it virtually impossible to tamper with the system. Four layers are active now. The fifth, a physical barrier, is being built inside the data center

The technology is viewed by many computer security specialists as a ray of hope amid the recent cascade of data thefts, attacks, disruptions and scandals, including break-ins at Citibank, Sony, Lockheed Martin, RSA Security and elsewhere. It allows users to communicate via the Internet with high confidence that the identity of the person or organization they are communicating with is not being spoofed or forged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/science/25trust.html?_r=1&hpw

The jury is still out on the DNNSSEC protocol, but it is promising. I would rather the foundation was more distributed (in the spirit of the existing DNS. Three "hardened" data centers has hardly proven to be that).

While reported breaches of SSL have been reported, I don't think that most websites have too much to worry about on that end. The real threat to breaches is on the "social engineering" and OS exploitation side rather than someone cracking 128-bit encryption.

I'm all for improving the lot of secure websites. Does the price have to be a complete overhaul of the (now universally-accepted) SSL icon? :-) That's a LOT of websites subject to a fairly radical change in security.

And really... is this just another system to invite "penetration testing" on the behalf of legion hackers? If there's one thing that's a truism in technology (to paraphrase): "god is not all-powerful as he cannot build a wall he cannot jump."

Translation - there's no such thing as perfect. It's only a matter of time before a new exploit is found. And then another fix is developed...

A Quick Note About The Winklevii...

2011-06-23T22:48:00.000-04:00

The Winklevoss twins aren't done with Facebook. On Wednesday, they filed a document stating that they will not appeal a decision against them rendered by a California court, which seemed to indicate they're abandoning their Facebook lawsuit.

In one conversation with a friend, Zuckerberg said he was going to "f****" the twins' social networking site. In another, he said the twins made a mistake in hiring him because he was "delaying it so it won't be ready until after the face book thing comes out."

However, on Thursday, they filed a document in Boston to initiate a new lawsuit in Boston federal courts. As such, the Winklevoss twins will presumably argue that their 2008 settlement was invalid and that they should receive more money.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/168799/20110623/winklevoss-twins-facebook-lawsuit-boston.htm

The moral of the Winklevoss Saga is a simple one (Aesop would be proud) - cut your losses whilst ahead. I have been following this with a good bit of interest since the three plaintiffs did make out rather well in their settlement with Facebook - wouldn't you be happy to pocket $23M apiece? And they still have to look forward to that value only increasing as Facebook marches toward their inevitable date with IPO destiny.

So what gives, Winklevii???

Your pursuit of additional riches through the US courts reminds me of another overzealous chase:

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"

Cloud Backup - Myth vs. Reality? Or Enterprise vs. SMB?

2011-06-23T17:16:00.000-04:00

One of cloud computing’s most useful aspects comes in the form of business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR). That’s because the cloud offers redundancy of vital systems, data, applications and communications without a huge price tag, and channel partners and their customers are aware of those benefits.

In a recent survey, the Channel Partners Cloud Convergence Council, an initiative of Channel Partners magazine and The 2112 Group, found that 43 percent of IT providers sell BC/DR services, as do 34 percent of telephony partners. The offerings are driven by end-user demand — one in four clients asks their solutions provider for cloud BC/DR products.

...“Business continuity lies at the core of cloud service delivery," said Jim Safran, president for SaaS providerGreenAppX. “So be it desktop security, corporate message, unified communications or online backup, business continuity becomes a main driver for accelerated adoption of cloud solutions."

In a year when tornadoes, earthquakes and other disasters have dominated world news coverage, enterprises and other businesses are re-evaluating their policies. “People are realizing that keeping their critical data at their own site is not a smart business practice and the cloud affords the ability to put data in multiple places and replicate it across multiple locations," said Andrew Pryfogle, president and CEO of master agency Terrapin Solutions.

http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/articles/2011/06/cloud-bc-dr-the-channel-opportunity.aspx

Like many takes on the "mysterious" cloud, this article doesn't point out there are some stark differences in what solution will work for what business. Here's my take on when cloud backups make sense, when they don't and what needs to change on the 'Net for the negatives to go away.

For illustrative purposes let's say XYZ Company (an MBA school case study fave!) is a financial company.

The Ingredients in your cloud backup strategy are in order of import:

Company size: If XYZ has 20,000 employees and 2 million customers, a cloud backup solution is almost certainly an impossibility. The only "cloud" that could be used is already in place in the form of a mirrored data center - which is sort of a cloud solution before the whole "cloud" thing came about. If XYZ is a mom-and-pop bank then this could certainly be a possibility - under the assumption to service passes muster under banking regs.
Pain threshold for security - or lack thereof: This has always been lurking under the surface and only gotten street cred with the rash of hack attacks (Citibank, Sony PSN, etc). Until the smoke clears from the past three months of "hacktivism" this will be a hard sell for CIO's everywhere. I see the issue as shortcomings in how solutions are deployed (witness Sony's woeful webserver/firewall security updates) rather than the solution itself. If CSO's would lock down their networks according to their vendor's best practices I doubt many hacks would happen at all.
Pain threshold for SLA's: Can your user base deal with a 24-hour turnaround or will they hold their breath waiting to get their last vacation's video recovered? And what if they lost data in between backup windows (if your solution's not lights-on 24x7)? Those are questions to get answers to before selecting a vendor.
Existing 'Net connectivity: This is another wildcard that can drastically alter the cloud landscape. Even large companies can have inadequate 'Net speed to support the upload of (probably) enormous volumes of data... as the cost of ISP services continue to fall and speeds obey Moore's Law this will cease to be a bottleneck.
Ease of use: Can anyone recover their data or is this a geek-specific skill? What sort of learning curve is associated with it?

I happen to think cloud backups is fine for small to medium-sized businesses, with the caveat that it's not yet all things to all people. Most large businesses have - or should have - a sound DR/BCP solution in place, whether it's shipping tapes off to Iron Mountain or spending serious money on massive pipes to a mirrored site. Larger businesses and smaller ones in specific industries (heath care, finance, gov't) are subject to things like HIPAA and SOX that can stop a cloud project dead in its tracks, not to mention having already invested time/money in their backups...

In any event the technology bears watching as the 'Net speeds along... I can see it replacing "traditional" DR/BCP when GB speeds are priced what 10MB's gets now.

Does Azure Makes Sense?

2011-06-22T22:46:00.000-04:00

Microsoft will change the pricing for Windows Azure in July to allow for free inbound data transfers during peak hours as well as off-hours.

The change will take effect on July 1, 2011 for all Azure customers, Microsoft announced on Wednesday. At that time, Microsoft will drop the costs for inbound peak-hour data transfers. (Inbound off-hour data transfers had always been free.) The new pricing should take some of the guesswork out of calculating the costs of uploading data to Microsoft's cloud computing platform.

Azure users will still get charged for outbound data transfers, which are region-specific. Outbound data transfers are priced at $0.15 per GB in North America and Europe, as well as $0.20 per GB in the Asia Pacific region.

The pricing structure for Azure has been rather complex ever since itsintroduction in July 2009. Essentially, organizations using Azure pay for the compute time, data storage and data access, plus the bandwidth of the data transferred in and out of the cloud. The various cloud computing phases get priced at specific rates, usually per GB. There's also a monthly fee rolled into the overall cost if an organization uses SQL Azure.

Microsoft offers different monthly plans and discounts, as well as pay-as-you-go plans. To get an idea of the pricing complexity, see Microsoft's "Windows Azure Platform Offer Comparison Table" here.

Microsoft has attempted to make the process of calculating Azure costs a little easier by introducing a Windows Azure Pricing Calculator, which appears to have been released in May. Users of the calculator will get a warning before using it that the calculator's results don't imply "a commitment on the part of Microsoft."

Microsoft offers a free 90-day "extra small" trial of Azure, which is available until Sept. 30, 2011.

http://rcpmag.com/articles/2011/06/23/microsoft-to-make-inbound-azure-data-transfers-free.aspx

If you can figure out the byzantine pricing model(s) please pass it along :-).

The question is how would you go about measuring the traffic your users/apps are generating both internally and externally (my guess is the internal traffic - files, e-mail, downloads, etc - is going to be significantly more.

The first step if you haven't already put this in place is to get a traffic analyzer like SolarWinds or Spiceworks (to name just a couple). Then you have to establish the cost - you should contact your network equipment vendors for assistance in putting a number together.

Tablet vs PC vs Chromebook

2011-06-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

Could you ditch your computer operating system and live entirely in your browser? That's the question Google is asking with its newChrome OS Chromebooks -- and it isn't an easy one to answer.

Google's Chrome OS revolves around the idea of a cloud-centric existence. Every application you need runs on the Web, whether it's a productivity tool like Google Docs or a game like Angry Birds. Your documents, files and email are all stored online in services like Google Docs, Dropbox and Gmail. The PC itself becomes a mere vessel to your virtual life; you could smash it and replace it with a new one and you wouldn't notice a difference.

Google gave us a glimpse at the Chrome OS concept with its Cr-48 notebook, a test system sent out to a limited group of beta users last year. The hardware on the new commercial Chromebooks has been significantly improved since that system, and Chrome OS itself has evolved considerably, too.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217620/In_depth_Google_s_Chrome_OS_and_Samsung_s_Chromebook?taxonomyId=15

http://news.cnet.com/chromebook-netbook-ipad-which-would-you-rather-spend-$500-on/8301-17938_105-20062229-1.html

Plusses:

It starts up in 8 seconds, satisfying all but the uber Type-A's.
The whole "oops, I left the business plan on my notebook" goes away. No data at all is kept on the device.
Battery life is on par with the iPad at around 8.5 hours.
The testing showed it to be stable, though the Samsung could use more RAM (2GB won't excite anyone).

Minuses:

The Samsung has no Ethernet port (WiFi only). That's no good if you're dealing with larger files or want to hook up to your office LAN.
The price. $500 is not going to work at all versus the existing tablets, especially the iPad (already in possession of most bells and whistles).
No tool for compressed files (probably a nod to the dangers lurking within a .zip file); not a show-stopper but still...
Functionality is very limited without a 'Net connection.

The Chromebook could make sense for a company that has committed to the cloud. If applications like file access, e-mail and collaboration have made the move to either BPOS/Office 365 or GoogleApps then this is a slam-dunk. The worries associated with a mobile workforce (or hardwired one, for that matter) - anti-virus/spyware/malware, control over sensitive information, enforcing standards - practically vanish with this solution, and pretty darned cheap at that.

The challenge facing the C-book is the vast majority of companies aren't anywhere near that level of commitment - it's more at the casually dating phase in the relationship. And the politics of migrating out of users' comfort zone - and the tectonic shifts IT would go through - are not small potatoes. This issue really falls into the laps of your CEO (thank god).

On the IT side of the house, this would be a welcome change (if you're not paranoid about the cloud taking your livelihood away). The worries listed above become much less of a threat to the business, and the cost to move away from more expensive notebooks would be welcomed by your CFO.

The bottleneck to its adoption will be the pace at which third-party applications are gracefully integrated... users are notoriously short on patience and will drop the C-book like a bad habit if it doesn't deliver the experience expected.

If you have started the transition from hosting your own data/apps and the price of the devices drop, then the Chromebook might be an option.

The Incredible Shrinking Market Share...

2011-06-09T22:01:00.000-04:00

Research giant IDC expects Microsoft's phone software to leap ahead by 2015, assuming its hookup with Nokia goes smoothly.

The firm is predicting that Windows Phone will over take Apple's iPhone by then, claiming the second largest market share behind Google's Android.

It's part of the company's quarterly Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report, which is forecasting 55 percent growth overall in the market this year, driven by people upgrading to more advanced phones.

IDC expects 472 million smartphones to ship this year, up from about 305 million last year. It expects nearly a billion phones -- 985 million -- to be sold in 2015.

"The smartphone floodgates are open wide," Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst, said in the release. "Mobile phone users around the world are turning in their 'talk-and-text' devices for smartphones as these devices allow users to perform daily tasks like shopping and banking from anywhere. The growth trend is particularly pronounced in emerging markets where adoption is still in its early days."

The IDC report should be bumming out Executive Row up in Windsor, Ontario right about now.

RIM's expected to continue their death spiral in the smart phone market... to think three years ago they were the market leader.

Don't ask me why IDC didn't follow the same formatting for the graphs

So what's the strategy for the next three years, Research In Motion?

Here's what I think:

You need to start offering a model that compares to the Android/Windows/iPhone transport. The single-site architecture has proven to be a less-than-ideal solution. Take a look at the graphic below - if there's a problem at the RIM NOC then every single BBY is out to lunch.

How not to build a better mousetrap

If RIM's outages have proven anything it's companies don't dig single points-of-failure. Decentralization is in. Start figuring out a way to emulate ActiveSync - at least if there's a problem it's not you holding the bag.

You also need to reverse-engineer the competition's interface. Continuing to push the hard keyboard handset is a drag. Users have already spoken - they want the option to have a touchscreen or a hybrid.

Finally, you need to pull a Facebook/Google - i.e. start poaching talent. It's pretty obvious the existing tech leadership is not feeling the urgency to change gears. If there's one way to keep the competition honest, it's to grab their superstars.

Otherwise you can expect your corporate customers to drop you like a bad habit...

Balsille & Lazaridis sending out copies of their CV's???

Should MSFT Roll Their Own Tablet?

2011-06-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

MSFT Is A Political Creature...

The Redmond Crew should definitely not build their own tablet in order to stay in the good graces of the multitude of OEM's.

This is Business 101 (as the author alludes to); never burn bridges. And torching the bridge that conjoins MSFT and hardware vendors at the hip would be a nightmare when it came time for MSFT to lean on them... who's to say Chrome OS isn't tempting the OEM's?

MSFT has spent decades building relationships with hundreds of vendors - getting greedy for what will amount to a small slice of their balance sheet would come back to haunt them.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/could-and-should-there-be-a-microsoft-branded-windows-8-tablet/9642

(Editor's Note: The above is a comment I made on the ZDNet blog)

Rumors abound that MSFT is going to build their own tablet (or at least have an OEM brand one for them).

Somebody needs to take Steve Ballmer out to the woodshed.

Ballmer's reaction to my last comment

Following up on my comment on the ZDNet blog, it would be a mistake in a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face kinda way. The proverbial barbarian (Google's Chrome OS) is at the gate. Now is not the time to forget the time/effort spent forging vendor relationships. With the sort of market brawn MSFT has, they could possibly convince a few vendors to take a pass at Chrome. Doing anything but bumming out their OEM's is throwing jet fuel onto the bonfire.

Ballmer was not scared by my recommendation

If there was a time for Ballmer to resist the temptation to engage in some MSFT Gunboat Diplomacy, this would be it.

For all the history buffs who get the last reference :-)

IPv6 Day Is Here

2011-06-08T07:44:00.001-04:00

Google, Facebook, and hundreds of other internet companies will today take part in the first worldwide test of IPV6.

As the world runs out of IP addresses, Internet Protocol Version 6 should expand the number from its present 4.3 billion addresses, almost all of which have been used. IPV6 will offer millions of times as many.

"The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – internet serviceproviders, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out," says organizer the InternetSociety.

Today, more than 400 organizations including some of the world's largest websites will enable IPv6 across their servers for a 24-hour 'test run' to identify the scale of any problems. Network equipmentvendors such as Cisco Systems will also take part.

http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/56466-happy-ipv6-day

In what promises to be the new-millennial equivalent of Y2K, several hundred companies will turn on, tune in and drop in IP Version 6 today. In other words, a non-event for the vast majority of consumers... with the exception of the legions of Facebook users who could possibly lose the ability to post what they had for breakfast (disclosure: I'm a techie by trade and nature but really dislike the whole Facebook thing).

Yahoo estimates 0.05% of users will experience problems with their site today - that's probably going to be true for most other sites as the configuration issues will definitely be on the user end.

J'accuse.

The good news for anyone sitting on the IP fence is you can update your OS (if you've been living under a rock; all major operating systems are IPv6-ready). If you feel the compulsion to confirm whether or not your connection to the outside world is 4/6 compatible you can visit this link.

On the corporate/enterprise side, only one-quarter have implemented it. So IT networking brethren, get busy. This is one project you won't want to leave for another day.

Free Antivirus = Big Trouble For Symantec, TrendMicro Et Al...

2011-06-07T13:04:00.001-04:00

Free antivirus programs such as Microsoft's Security Essentials (MSE) have now supplanted more complex paid software as the antimalware defense of choice for millions of consumers, figures from certification company OPSWAT have suggested.

In its quarterly analysis of the security software running on 43,000 computers around the world between March and May 2011, OPSWAT found that well-known brands such as McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro are continuing to be pushed down the popularity tables by mostly European rivals marketing on the basis of either a free-to-use or "freemium" (free with paid upgrades available) model.

Globally, the two most commonly encountered brands were Czech companies Avast Software and AVG, tied with being detected on 12.3 percent of systems each, ahead of Avira of Germany on 12.2 percent, Microsoft on 11.2 percent, and ESET Software, also of Germany, on just under 10 percent. Traditional security brand leaders, Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro were found on only 8.77 percent, 4.5 percent and 2.15 percent of systems respectively.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/229610/free_antivirus_programs_rise_in_popularity_new_survey_shows.html

People vote with their wallets. Evidently they also choose their antivirus protection in that manner. I myself use AVG's free tool and it does a superb job.

As the article mentions, vendors who are going to survive will need to branch out into other markets (i.e. smart phones, tablets, etc) - unless the freebies are also of the same mind. While there will always be a market for enterprise-level AV (and the support received, which is what you're really paying for anyway) the consumer market could become a dodo bird for the Symantecs and TM's.

MSFT's Latest Salvo In The Cloud Wars

2011-06-06T10:44:00.001-04:00

Looking to expand the appeal of its already hugely popular Office software suite yet further—while combating the threat of Google Docs—Microsoft is apparently planning to release the cloud-based version of its productivity platform before the end of this month.

That’s according to pleasingly loose-lipped chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, who last week revealed to an industry group in Delhi, India, that Office 365’s long awaited arrival is indeed imminent.

“We’re pushing hard in the productivity space,” commented Ballmer, who recently whipped the covers off Windows 8 ahead of Microsoft’s official preview during Computex 2011 in Taipei.

“We’ll launch our Office 365 cloud service, which gives you Lync and Exchange and SharePoint and Office [Word, Excel, PowerPoint] and more as a subscribable service that comes from the cloud,” he added. “That launches in the month of June.”

Ballmer’s comments are bolstered somewhat by Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s worldwide partners group, who last week tweeted that Office 365 will indeed shift from beta to full release on June 28.

Office users looking to leap onto the cloud will receive a 25GB mailbox, connectivity support for Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007, and security protection through Forefront. They’ll also receive access to the storage and sharing of conventional Office documents and those crafted via Office Web Apps.

Microsoft will hold a media event at New York’s Skylight Soho on June 28, during which it will likely showcase and launch the Office 365 suite.

Basic subscriber access to Office 365 will come tethered to an annual cost of $72 USD.Microsoft is also expected to offer a premium business-centric package—however, pricing for that particular level of access has not yet been confirmed.

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201123/7242/Microsoft-to-launch-cloud-based-Office-365-on-June-28

Users the world over are hoping that the infrastructure behind Office 365 is sturdier than it's been with BPOS.

If they do have that challenge in the rear-view mirror, I would be surprised if this didn't take off.

I joined the beta program and got to poke around the Enterprise version.

As web-based apps go the functionality of all programs is excellent (though I still haven't figured out how to edit a Header in Word... MSFT will have to fill me in).
The integration between the cloud and your desktop is handled nicely - you can edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint on your desktop or browser and can set up your desktop's Outlook to hook up to the hosted Exchange instance.
Exchange admin is also clean and easy to use; the widget that lets you wipe or block a phone will invariably come in quite handy when a road warrior has their phone swiped (and let's face it, the chances you'll be running BBY in four years are pretty slim).
SharePoint is also very cool. The interface is the same for either hosted or roll-your-own. I'd like to see the ability to add widgets like Help Desk and Change Management become part of the default.
You will have the option to dive right in and start migrating uses over, or run a test bed with the Pilot.

As with their other applications I am looking forward to MSFT continuing to evolve their cloud application suite. Given the massive install base they have, 365 could generate some nice dinero for them.

Windows On A Tablet

2011-06-02T22:36:00.001-04:00

This week Microsoft finally began talking about what it coyly refers to as “the operating system code-named ‘Windows 8.’” (Spoiler alert: “Windows 7” was originally a code name, too.)

Windows boss Steven Sinofsky sat down for an interview with Walt Mossberg. Windows Experience VP Julie Larson-Green gave a demo of the new “touch first” Windows 8 interface, and Microsoft published its own promotional video.

Here’s my reaction: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Seriously (and more grammatically), we really haven’t seen much in these videos. In particular, there are no clues as to how the traditional Windows desktop will evolve. That market will continue to be hugely important, both in businesses and among home users, and I expect to see some similarly eye-catching innovation in the Windows 8 desktop experience.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/yes-the-gigantic-enormous-windows-really-can-run-on-a-tablet/3422

MSFT does learn their lesson from the Vista fiasco while slimming the OS down from W7. Leaving behind the compatibility nightmare of that OS, W8 appears to be leaner and meaner - a welcome bit of news to chip manufacturers... but maybe a bummer for PC makers as Windows Ocho is backward-compatible.

If the OS will run efficiently on a tablet, the competition should take note.

The benefits to corporate are clear:

Zero learning curve. Not that the iPad and other tablets are difficult - quite the opposite - but must users will stick with what they know.
No changes on the network security side - the expectation being that 3rd-party security clients (like Cisco VPN) will run cleanly.
Deployment of tablets en masse becomes the same exercise as pushing out PC's via imaging technology.
VDI. I can't even imagine that MSFT hasn't given this its due attention. For those who need hard-core security/control and can afford it, desktop virtualization becomes a simple process.

The announced release date is November 2012.

Another Reason Virtual Datacenters Are Cool...

2011-06-01T22:15:00.002-04:00

It is by no means the largest or most sophisticated Cisco network there is -- yet the infrastructure implemented by Transplace is nonetheless a great example of the target application for Cisco'sdata center switches.

Transplace is a Dallas-based transportation supply chain and logistics management company employing 550. It has a Cisco Nexus network of a single 7000 in the core, two 40-port-plus 5020s at the top of its racks, and two 48-port 2X48 fabric extenders for port extension in its co-located test and development data center in Lowell, Ariz. The company is currently building a similar configuration at its production data center in Dallas.

IN DEPTH: The incredible shrinking data center

The networks and data centers support Transplace's secret sauce -- its proprietary, on-demand Transportation Management System (TMS) that manages the logistics between shippers and carriers to optimize supply chain operations. TMS automates order management, pinpoints optimal shipment and tracks the process to make it more efficient.

TMS works with Transplace's Scenario Pro Technology system, the processing intelligence behind building sustainable transportation routes, increasing freight load ratio and best utilizing assets.

Hosting these platforms are nine -- soon to be 18, once the production data center project is complete -- VMware ESX servers on Dell blades, each supporting 150 virtual machines. These replace scores of Sun Unix servers.

The VMs are mirrored between the Dallas and Lowell data centers over a private OC-3 link for disaster recovery, with Silver Peak NX-7600s providing WAN optimization over that connection.

"This allows us to replicate a large amount of data between the data centers in near real time," says Scott Engel, director of IT infrastructure for Transplace.

Supporting that many workloads requires bandwidth, which the Nexus network provides via 60 ports of 10G Ethernet in each data center. But the real clincher was the cable management benefits the switches and virtual environment provided.

"The real factor here was to reduce the complexity in our cable plant, which in turn also reduces our footprint," Engel says. "And that's always good when you're in a co-lo facility."

Engel says the Nexus/ESX network has reduced Transplace's data center footprint by 40%. He did not disclose the cost savings, but anytime you can cut your leased square footage by almost half, it is significant.

Big-business data center performance in a medium-sized company... very cool.

Now that 10G ETH is within reach of everyone who needs superfast throughput, the last bottleneck - network/data bandwidth - is being removed. Now that it's caught up to other datacenter variables (processor speed, increases in memory, number of CPU's virtualization supports) the opportunity to ramp up has never been greater.

This is the kind of architecture that cloud companies and MSP's are salivating over. Scaling out becomes a snap and the impetus for companies to farm out their infrastructures becomes a much easier sell.

Um, Skype Isn't MSFT Just Yet...

2011-05-26T22:15:00.000-04:00

Skype’s down? Blame Microsoft!

That seems to be a common sentiment this morning as Skype users are facing log-in difficulties – and are questioning its recent takeover by Microsoft. (In case you live in a cave, Microsoft announced plans two weeks ago to buy Skype for $8.5 billion.)

“Seems like #skype crash is global. Now you know it’s a #Microsoft product,” Twitter user vicciho wrote.

“Microsoft have broken skype after owning it for literally days” timredfern wrote.

“Looks like @Microsoft completed their purchas (sic) of @Skype, and broke it!” aubinhick990 wrote.

The thing is, of course, the Microsoft-Skype deal has yet to go through, and Skype has yet to be running on Microsoft’s infrastructure. The blame is unwarranted.http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2011/05/26/users-blaming-microsoft-for-skype-outage/

Typical.

Leave it to the haters to assume MSFT completed the purchase and moved the entire Skype infrastructure under their oversight.

Nothing breeds contempt like success. For a company that was largely responsible for bringing technology to the corporate and consumer worlds, they sure catch a boatload of flak - even for stuff they didn't do.

The haters may have a collective amnesia, having forgotten the following:

As much as Apple's been all the rage, please don't forget what company was the driving force behind the computer revolution(s). Microsoft continues to churn out good products - ask the hundreds of thousands of folks who have jobs that are Wintel-driven... as the market shows us there's no room for a poor brand...

So please, all you MSFT boobirds... it's OK to slam the company's missteps (Vista, anyone?) but don't manufacture outrage when it's not even the Redmond Crew who was responsible for the outage.

A Note To Sony's CISO

2011-05-24T13:28:00.002-04:00

NOTE - since this article was written there has been a flurry of articles about other attacks.

http://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&ncl=dj08UUQZgekLnvMRlsDValmPI3QZM&lr=en&rfilter=0&q=greece&btnC=Go

Dear Mr. Sakai:

As if your job wasn't stressful enough...

Sony continued work on its PlayStation Network Tuesday, kicking off maintenance that will last from 8am to 5pm Pacific time today.

The work could affect account access, but online gaming should be acessible.

"During this time, registration and Account Management will be inaccessible, including the password reset process," Sony said in a statement. "While some users may experience difficulty signing in to PSN, the majority of consumers will be able to play online as well as sign in to external sites that require PSNauthentication."

What about that PlayStation store? "We're still targeting restoration of all services by the end of this month," Sony said. "Contrary to reports, the Store will not be publishing today."

In the wake of a massive hack of Sony's system, the company has encouraged users to change their passwords. An influx of users trying to do so recently prompted Sony to temporarily halt the process. Last week, a password exploit also required Sony to briefly disable PlayStation Network sign-ins.

As an apology for all the trouble, Sony recently unveiled a welcome-back package that includes free games, movie rentals, and virtual items.

All the attention on Sony's network has also brought to light some other, more minor hacks, including aphishing site hosted on Sony server's and hacks of Sony sites in Greece and Japan.

Sony said Monday that the effects of the Japan earthquake and tax provisions will drag the company into a $3.18 billion loss for its 2011 fiscal year. Costs from the PlayStation Network hack are expected to total $171 million, the company said.

What your users might see next time they login.

A few questions that might help (editor's note: I am not a CISO but have enough experience with security that might shed light):

Are there plans to do an overhaul of the PSN? And by overhaul I mean soup-to-nuts, ripping out the old plumbing.
Does PSN have a staging network where a new architecture can get tested?
Have you considered hiring an outside vendor to do any penetration testing?

The rationale for the questions is simple - from a tech's perspective it looks like Sony is trapped in break-fix mode.

While I empathize and understand the need for damage control at this point (the outage having coughed up $171M already) you will need to rip a page out of Amazon's playbook when it comes to handling the outage (I blogged about this a little while ago).

As part of the post-mortem and plans to bullet-proof PSN, you need to start all over again from a network security perspective. It's obvious from the origins of the outage that the architecture was never updated with a serious lack of change/patch management. My guess is the issues arise from the same group so a top-to-bottom, line-by-line examination of every network device's code is needed - badly. Putting out fires a week from now is only going to alienate the PSN users further and think about alternatives.

You could start by building a stage network and use it as a template for the production side... going from the ground up instead of top-down will seal off any holes that exist. And once that's in place you could run penetration testing on both networks... a side-by-side comparison will at least justify the time/effort/cost of a redux.

Or maybe you've already run through these scenarios... I hope that's not the case. It would mean the choice was to go the easy route (translation - hoping you can put the pin back in the grenade) and that will only result in another monkey wrench getting tossed betwixt the gears.

IT is an (almost) thankless job, isn't it? Well, good luck and hoping your bosses let you take the high road and keep your client base online... and happy.

The Moral Of The (Security) Story Is...

2011-05-23T09:20:00.000-04:00

I read a couple of security-related articles earlier today (thank you Google News). Aesop would be glad to say "and the moral of the story is..."

'Whaling' is a growing security threat that uses personalized phishing techniques to get your most sensitive data and access to your key networks. Last year, a senior executive in charge of customer satisfaction at his company opened an email with the subject "customer complaint" that appeared to be sent from the Better Business Bureau. He followed a link to see details of the complaint. "If he had stopped to examine the URL carefully, he would have seen that it was a trap" -- known as a whaling attack and based on spear-phishing techniques -- intended to gather information about the company, says Jonathan Gossels, president of SystemExperts, a security consulting firm. "But during a busy work day, that hardly happens."

... these whaling attacks are a form of personalized phishing, or spear phishing, aimed at senior executives or others in an organization who have access to lots of valuable or competitive information. While phishers generally go after consumers for bank account data, passwords, credit card numbers, and the like for financial gain, whalers most often target people who have inside information or can provide ongoing access to systems. Thus, the cost of being harpooned can be huge.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/how-stop-your-executives-being-harpooned-946

Some 40pc of IT workers have admitted they could hold their employers hostage – even after they’ve left for other jobs – by withholding or hiding encryption keys.

To prove this, 4pc of management claim to have been denied access to information because they can’t find their encryption keys.

A third of respondents to a survey by Venafi said their knowledge of and access to encryption keys and certificates, used for both system authentication and data protection, means they could bring their companies to a grinding halt with minimal effort and little to stop them. This is due to lack of oversight and poor management of their organisations' encryption keys.

They claim that even after they have left they still could cause havoc with their knowledge of the encryption keys, shared passwords and weak controls. Some 40pc of respondents admitted they would still have access to vital information and could manipulate it to their own ends - both to their company's financial and reputational detriment.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/strategy/item/21901-it-staff-hold-firms-hostage/

Practically every company has had their "oops moment" where a user's clicked on a link they really should not have, or a departing sysadmin was not asked where the keys (to the kingdom) were. The moral of the story is this - did you lock down the process afterwards?

Nothing drives an IT department into the ground like a repeat offender.

In the case of the "whaling" issue, the article goes on to spell out how to safeguard against future attacks. While ultimately you don't have control over what a user clicks on, you do have options when it comes to catching malware and its ilk before it hits the inbox. If you haven't already implemented MessageLabs or Postini you are asking for trouble.

Sending out security bulletins is a great idea - in theory - but in practical terms it's the internal equivalent of spam. The best practice here is to have these sent by the CEO's office - that tends to grab the attention better than a message from the head geek.

The article did make special mention of social networks so be sure to follow security standards as set forth by Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The second article cited is IT treachery defined - an attack from within can be many times more devastating. This is one lesson you really, really don't want to learn even once. If a sysadmin walks out the door with private keys, passwords or anything else security-related, the ramifications can be catastrophic. Think of the nerd Nedry bringing down the computer systems in Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs).

To wit:

Any bit of information your staff has needs to be stored somewhere - the best location is a run book.
Any updates (renewal of SSL certificates, creation of additional security keys, password changes on network devices or servers) has to be captured via change management.
I keep a folder with the configuration history of every firewall/router/switch/etc and the users created. Most devices have a GUI now, so removing a user is a snap.
Airtight processes have to be in place for the add/edit/delete of users with sysadmin rights. Doing a periodical audit of the process is not a bad idea given how often new technologies crop up.
Keep tabs on AD permissions - there is a ton of software out there to to so.

Save yourself the nightmare of explaining a breach like this and lock it all down now.

Keep these clowns off your network

SF Picks MSFT For Cloud E-Mail

2011-05-18T17:43:00.001-04:00

The city of San Francisco plans to consolidate seven separate email systems to Microsoft's hosted cloud-based email service over the next year.

The city is currently migrating 23,000 employees across 60 departments and agencies to Microsoft Exchange Online, SF CIO Jon Walton said in a news conference Wednesdy. Exchange Online is a cloud-based enterprise messaging platform that offers email, calendaring and collaboration features.

The various CIOs in city government considered several cloud-based email and collaboration services when they decided to make the move to the cloud, including ones from Google and IBM, Walton said. However, Microsoft's Hosted Exchange Online and its Business Productivity Online Suite--which offers cloud-based collaboration, worker productivity, and other solutions--fit more into the city's strategic long-term direction, he said.San Francisco will pay $1.2 million a year--or $6.50 per month, per user--for hosted email and archiving on the service, which will be hosted in Microsoft's data centers, Walton said. He said the cost savings of the deal is one of the ways the IT department is achieving a 20% cost reduction required by the city, which is experiencing budget cuts.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/229502469

Chalk up one coup for Microsoft BPOS.

Reasons I see cloud computing making the Redmond Crew lots of coin:

Migration tools already exist to smooth the transition from disparate messaging systems to hosted Exchange. Another article mentions SF uses Exchange and Notes running seven different versions - I hate to say it but this will eliminate redundancies (i.e. jobs) - here's hoping SF has something in mind for the staff.
BPOS handles both messaging AND archiving. This is an additional cost-saver as it addresses the compliance issue - no need for another third-party solution. Staying compliant is no trivial matter; the cost of storage, logistics, etc. adds up quickly. This is a superb selling point.
#1 will allow for a single interface for e-mail, contacts and calendaring for now, which will result in back-office productivity gains and turn into more applications (intranet, voice mail, etc)...
With the e-mail hook set, the other Office applications will become an easy sell as they are already tightly integrated within BPOS.
They took Google's lunch money right out from under them. Ouch.

I'm sure there are scads of cities keenly interested in this - I am curious how many will ramp up this project or consider a hybrid of running their "internal" applications (i.e. payroll) and "clouding" productivity services. Of course, MSFT is putting Dynamics online but expecting that to replace legacy platforms is a stretch... for now.

Honest-IT Is The Best Policy (Just Ask DropBox)

2011-05-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

Dropbox, the wildly popular online storage system, deceived users about the security and encryption of its services, putting it at a competitive advantage, according to an FTC complaint filed Thursday by a prominent security researcher.

The FTC complaint charges Dropbox (.pdf) with telling users that their files were totally encrypted and even Dropbox employees could not see the contents of the file. Ph.D. student Christopher Soghoian published data last month showing that Dropbox could indeed see the contents of files, putting users at risk of government searches, rogue Dropbox employees, and even companies trying to bring mass copyright-infringement suits.

Soghoian, who spent a year working at the FTC, charges that Dropbox “has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” which amounts to a deceptive trade practice that can be investigated by the FTC.

Dropbox dismissed Soghoian’s allegations.

“We believe this complaint is without merit, and raises old issues that were addressed in our blog post on April 21, 2011,” company spokeswoman Julie Supan said in a short e-mail to Wired.com. “Millions of people depend on our service every day and we work hard to keep their data safe, secure, and private.”

Dropbox, which has more than 25 million users, revised its website claims about its data security April 13, from:

All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES256) and are inaccessible without your account password.

to:

All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES 256).

The difference, Soghoian charges, is very important. (If his name sounds familiar, you might remember him as the one who exposed Facebook’s attempt to place anti-Google stories in the press this week.)

DropBox should take the high road and come clean - as if there weren't enough salacious details floating around the Web about other security no-no's!

I hope this is a cyber-cop telling the user to read the fine print again.

This can only end badly for the folks in DB's executive offices. They could have taken the lessons companies like Sony, Facebook, RSA et al should have learned - both pre- and post-breach - and acknowledged their shortcomings. Instead they're ignoring the big picture and circling the cyber-wagons. No que bueno.

Failing to choke down a (large) slice of humble pie will only alienate your client base. Yes, there will be some who will find another vendor... but most will stick it out if the following happens:

The company provides current, accurate information on the breach to all customers. A mea culpa would be the closing paragraph.
Upload as much post-mortem information online as possible. Amazon did an excellent job of detailing their outage last month, providing granular-level dope on the root cause.
Once the breach is resolved, throwing a bone (i.e. credit/refund) would be smart. At least Sony got that right.
Provide details on remediation. What will be done and by whom is a start; providing an FAQ and contact info would be wise.
The CIO needs to huddle with the security team and be assured #4 is not a finger in the dyke but an end-to-end solution.

This is a rough template of how this - and other outages - should be handled. The bunker mentality never works... the meeting where DropBox decided to gloss over the outage should have had a Devil's Advocate present to steer away from the groupthink that went on :-)

Universities "Get" Security

2011-05-11T10:04:00.000-04:00

Universities have no choice but to be on the forefront of IT security, Schou says. They simply have too many user constituencies to serve, too many different types of sensitive data to protect, too many computing and handheld platforms to support, and too many people trying, either for sport or for ill intent, to break down the their digital defenses.

Higher ed, hackers' dream

Typical educational institutions house a treasure trove of material -- from HR records and student files to research data, much of which is proprietary and some of which may even be classified if it's related to work done on behalf of the U.S. government. They also have financial data, such as credit card numbers from students, alumni, parents and visitors. And if they have health clinics, as most colleges and universities do, they have medical records, too.

Moreover, would-be hackers aren't just attracted to all of that valuable data. Some have their eyes on the vast and powerful computer systems that universities maintain -- infrastructure that they can use (and have used) for their own purposes if they're smart and stealthy enough.

"At any given time, I'll have 30 or 40 folks doing things [on our network] that might be moving toward antisocial. They're looking at what I've got, seeing what's open," says Schou, who serves as Idaho State's security adviser and as the associate dean of the college of business.

This all happens in an IT environment that's typically supporting tens of thousands of devices of all makes and models, with a mandate to be as open as possible to facilitate communication, cooperation and collaboration.

It's not surprising, therefore, that breaches happen with some regularity on university campuses. According to data analyzed by Application Security, a database security company, there have been 435 reported breaches that affected 8.5 million records at U.S. institutions of higher education since 2005, the year that the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and other organizations started tracking such events.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/051011-universities-that-get-security.html?page=1

Corporate America could learn a thing or two from higher education.

Universities, in many cases, are subject to strictures that many businesses are not. For every medical school and health clinic there are hard-core requirements to keep their client data under lock-and-key. Every bursar's office has decades of sensitive student/alumni information. And like many businesses there are all manner of devices that need access - desktops and notebooks, tablets, PDA's, etc.

The article points out many universities have used tools and instituted SOP's across the board to tighten security. Many have gone way beyond the standard edge security measures and have penetration testing software and reporting tools that many companies would be envious of.

They are running their academic networks like a business.

For all the IT executives out there - it would be wise to rip a page out of playbooks that Georgia State et al are using. The question is why aren't companies all over the place already doing this?

Some of the roadblocks to overcome probably include:

Educate yourself - unless you understand the risks it's impossible to address them. Start reading up on tools (HW, SW and 3rd-party) available and how they can (hopefully) integrate seamlessly within your network.
Convincing executive management - unfortunately IT is only news when something goes wrong (how many times has someone mentioned the network was up)? It's your job to educate, provide estimates and options for implementing security above and beyond what's in place.
Convincing IT staff - you're the change agent so get the troops to drink the Kool-Aid. Listing the pros (many) vs. cons (a few) will help clarify the need once you've gotten past #2. LinkedIn Groups would be a super resource - I have found discussions to be informative.

Too cool for school? I don't think so - especially when you prevent your sensitive financial/product information from getting hacked.

A Textbook Case In VDI

2011-05-10T09:55:00.003-04:00

Menlo College, a premier Silicon Valley business school, is undertaking one of the most comprehensive hosted virtual desktop rollouts in higher education, simultaneously deploying persistent and non-persistent virtual desktops for all of its users and use cases, including student labs, the library, administration, faculty, and staff. The campus-wide Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) initiative will give students greater access to lab applications, reduce the operational costs of desktop management, minimize the capital expenses needed for PC refresh, and reduce the college's carbon footprint. Menlo College is using technology from Unidesk® and VMware as the foundation for its VDI project, leveraging Unidesk's ability to create virtual desktops using only local storage to bring the annual cost per desktop under $300, about the same as physical PC replacements.

The college's virtual desktop solution is based on VMware vSphere®, VMware View™ and Unidesk, using HP Servers and local storage, with access provided by Pano Logic zero clients and 10zig Thin Clients. Further project details will be shared in a free live webinar on Wed., May 11, 2011, at 2:00 p.m. ET featuring Menlo College CIO Raechelle Clemmons, VMware Senior Product Marketing Manager for End User Computing Courtney Burry, and Unidesk Senior Solution Architect Rob Zylowski. To register, go to: www.unidesk.com/landing/menlo-college-webinar

"With our new virtual desktop solution, we can rapidly deploy applications and Windows updates to personalized faculty and staff desktops and non-persistent lab and library desktops at a moment's notice," said Raechelle Clemmons, Menlo College Chief Information Officer. "From a pure hardware and software perspective, we found that costs are about the same relative to physical PCs, but we're already seeing that the amount of staff time and effort required to manage our VDI environment is much lower."

Previously, Menlo College had a complicated physical desktop infrastructure with over 350 desktops and 16 different types of gold images. Each gold image included a wide range of applications that required significant IT resources to update, troubleshoot and support. Now, with virtual desktops hosted on VMware vSphere, created and managed by Unidesk, and accessed through VMware View, Menlo College can create and update desktops on demand for all of its different use cases. Student labs are no longer bound by the sheer number of physical PCs or by lab space; virtual labs can now be expanded as needed and accessed at any time from students' own PCs in their dorms or from any thin client or PC on campus.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/10/prweb8401263.DTL#ixzz1LxO1l1ra

Deploying a virtual desktop infrastructure makes sense on so many levels - Menlo College just eliminated the complexity and man-hours to update their gold images. Just think of the time being saved by not having to do rebuilds of not only the 16 base images but then deploying them!!! Add in the cost to QA/deploy the (never-ending) patches that come out for O/S and applications. And they can provision the VDI locally - this is a winner.

MSFT Ups The Ante In Telco Game...

2011-05-10T09:39:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA for $8.5 billion in cash—the most aggressive move yet by Microsoft to play in the increasingly converged worlds of communication, information and entertainment.

"Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world," said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer in a statement announcing the deal Tuesday. "Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world."

Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype Chief Executive Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Mr. Ballmer.

Buying Skype—a service that links users via Internet-based telephony and video—gives Microsoft a recognized brand name on the Internet at a time when it is struggling to get more traction in the consumer market.

Microsoft has invested heavily in marketing and improving the technology of its Bing search engine. While it has made some market share gains over the past year, Google Inc. still dominates the search market with more than 65% of U.S. searches going through its site.

The companies said Skype would support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft plans to continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576314854222820260.html

Microsoft's acquisition of Skype can be summed up in a single word - masterstroke.

The possibilities for integration are endless Skype video gets plugged into the Office Suite. Prep a slideshow and click the Skype button to host a video conference with presentation. Click on a sender's e-mail and Skype them... very cool. Or Skype on a Windows Phone, anyone? Never mind the integration with their online offerings (Xbox, Kinect, etc).

The Skype fan base of 145 million won't hurt either - all of them potential customers for the myriad tie-ins that MSFT will intertwine with Skype.

A lot better than spending billions on Yahoo!

Sony's PSN Security No-No's

2011-05-05T14:50:00.001-04:00

Those security experts apparently reported some major failings with Sony’s servers some three months before the April 17 hack occurred. These weren’t small issues, they are blatant oversights and laziness on the part of Sony’s engineering team.

The issue reported was the fact Sony was running PSN on a server that had an outdated version of Apache and no firewall in place. That meant any vulnerabilities known about for that version of Apache, and patched in more up-to-date releases, were easy to take advantage of. With no firewall in place too, the hacker probably had a very easy time of it.

We don’t know what’s worse here, the fact Sony engineers ran such an unsecure system, or that they knowingly ignored beign called out on it be some security experts in a forum. Whatever the case, that $1 billion PSN lawsuit in Canada just got some fresh ammunition to use in court.

As for Sony, they were invited to attend the hearing, but declined and sent a letter instead explaining how their systems will be much more secure in future.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/psn-was-running-on-unpatched-apache-server-with-no-firewall-2011055/

Whether it was laziness, stupidity, arrogance or a complete lack of change/patch management, there are several heads that should roll in Sony's senior IT offices. The clowns responsible for the gaping hole in the PlayStation WAN are also attempting to blame Anonymous!!!

Let this serve as a lesson for every manager charged with edge security. Here are a few simple -and absolute - rules that must be followed:

All remote users must use an encrypted tunnel to connect. That includes business partners, road warriors, satellite offices, etc. VPN's do add bandwidth costs (up to 10%) so plan your connection speed accordingly. No VPN? No access.
Your public-facing servers should be patched regularly. I have been in places where a lack of planning resulted in patches being outdated over two years - unacceptable. If your're panicky about this set up a virtual sandbox and QA the patches... then perform patch updates after-hours (with a backout procedure, of course).
Your firewall should be programmed to allow only those protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, etc) to particular servers. Those servers/services should definitely reside in a demilitarized zone (DMZ) on your network. Yes, smaller companies face a challenge with additional hardware cost with this but virtual servers can help solve that (i.e. running different servers residing in the DMZ or "inside" zone on separate networks would do the trick).
Your router or firewall should have an intrusion detection/prevention system (IDS/IPS); most vendors have modular cards that are practically plug-and-play. There are also software packages to provide this.
You should restrict access to, um, less-than-reputable websites. There are many packages in hardware or software form and provide very granular rules.
You should definitely use an outside vendor to scrub your e-mail for virus/spam/malware - Google's Postini and MessageLabs are excellent choices.
Your webmail has to be HTTPS... no exceptions.
Periodic audits of who's coming from where and how is a good idea. A history of changes to your edge security should be logged and configurations from all devices should be archived.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you think you may be exposed in any way consult with your IT crew or get a third party in to do penetration testing (one caveat - this is not cheap) if you have alot of money riding on this - which will be most companies.

Security is a cost of doing business nowadays. Ignore it and you could wind up strolling onto the carpet before your board to explain how a business line is DOA.