A year in the clouds
If there was one big trend in 2008 -- and by that we mean the buzz phrase on the lips of every analyst and vendor -- it was cloud computing. As with all new IT trends, levels of adoption were low. But adoption of what, exactly? The most interesting thing about cloud computing is that arguments over its definition continue to rage even as customers pay actual money for it.
In April, InfoWorld offered its definition of cloud computing, which turned out to be one of the most popular stories we've ever run. (That a 950-word definition could get so much traffic speaks volumes about the level of confusion over the cloud.) We tried to keep it simple: "Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities."
[ Confused about the cloud? Check out InfoWorld's quick and easy definition in "What cloud computing really means." ]
We broke cloud services into seven categories. You could easily reduce that to three: infrastructure services such as Amazon EC2; software as a service ? la Salesforce; and development platforms as a service (Microsoft Azure now offers the prime example). Those are the most important service groupings, although it's worth checking out the original article to get the complete picture.
So where's the controversy? Well, on the one hand, some folks insist that cloud computing refers to infrastructure services alone, which is basically the utility computing model. Instead of buying new servers, you move virtual machines to a service provider over the Internet -- period. We see that as an unnecessarily narrow view and prefer to include SaaS and its ilk. To us, it's all about computing services, apps included, that you procure outside rather than inside enterprise.
On the other hand, some big vendors such as IBM go even broader and talk about the "internal cloud." Yes, they say, cloud services on the Internet are cloud computing, but with the right infrastructure, IT departments can deliver their capabilities to internal customers as cloud services, too. To enable that scenario, this view aggregates other IT trends, such as SOA (service-oriented architecture), virtualization, datacenter automation, and EDA (event-driven architecture) into one harmonious internal cloud.
That's a lot of technology to swallow in one gulp -- and the notion of some sort of self-running IT nirvana is easy to ridicule. But the vendors have a point: Why shouldn't internal IT resources packaged and delivered as services qualify as cloud computing? If IT can pull it off, then the internal cloud has the same contours as the external cloud.
[ Amazon actually offers three overlapping services: EC2, S3, and Simple DB. Contributor Rich Grehan breaks it all down in "Diving deep into Amazon Web Services." ]
We haven't seen major examples of internal cloud computing initiatives yet, but we've certainly examined the way customers avail themselves of cloud services delivered by external providers. "Early experiments in cloud computing" looked at the way Nasdaq and the New York Times are using Amazon's EC2 and recounted how deeply SaaS has penetrated several other organizations. More recently, contributor Dave Rosenberg offered a fascinating account of how his company decided to move as much of its operation as possible to the cloud in "Cloud computing to the max."
The InfoWorld Test Center has been busy testing cloud services, too. The majority are platform-as-a-service plays, mainly because the idea of having a new environment to play in (one instantly available without provisioning) and create new Web apps is so compelling to so many developers.
Back in May, contributor Peter Wayner evaluated Google App Engine in "Google's high-flying cloud for Python code." His conclusion was that App Engine was "best for dynamic Web sites that act as a relatively thin layer of business logic sitting on top of a data store." In September, Wayner surveyed some lesser-known, lighter-weight platforms -- JotForm, FormAssembly, Wufoo, Zoho Creator, AppJet -- that let developers build form-based Web apps without coding in "Application builders in the sky." This accompanied a detailed, stand-alone review of Coghead, a flexible XML-based platform with a slick Adobe Flex GUI for creating database-driven Web apps. Wayner followed with a review of Coghead's chief competitor, Caspio Bridge, which takes a Microsoft Access-like approach and even offers tight integration with Microsoft Office.?
The mother of all cloud-based development platforms was introduced at the end of October: Microsoft Windows Azure. Strategic Developer blogger Martin Heller offered an in-depth preview of the platform just a couple of weeks ago in "Windows Azure Services Platform gives wings to .Net." Despite the completely new paradigm, Azure carries forward all the familiar tools and technologies that .Net developers are using today.
The Test Center may have gone wild with platforms in the sky, but not at the expense of reviewing infrastructure services. In July, Wayner compared four cloud-based infrastructure providers: Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid. A month later, contributor Rick Grehan took a detailed look at Amazon's offering with "Diving deep into Amazon Web Services," which delivers the most incisive evaluation you'll find anywhere.
Admittedly, we didn't spend a heck of a lot of time reviewing SaaS applications (does anyone really want to know the gory details of every seasonal Salesforce release?), but contributor James Borck found occasion in May to evaluate Zoho CRM Enterprise Edition. And Curt Franklin put Google Docs and Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show through their paces in a comparison of Microsoft Office alternatives. These cloud-based productivity apps have gotten a surprising amount of traction, mainly because of the way they lend themselves to collaborative document creation and management.
We don't expect the controversy over what cloud computing really means to end anytime soon. When you're the only exciting game in town, everyone is going to want a seat at the table, even though some players may have a slightly different game in mind. In 2009, you'll see lots more cloud computing coverage from InfoWorld, as well as a lot more adoption from companies that would rather pay a little more in operating costs than invest in infrastructure to get the new capabilities they really need.
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The craziest tech stories ever told
Amid the everyday IT work of keeping businesses humming arise the ingredients that so captivate the techie's work life: the blundering coworker, be they manager, colleague, or contractor, or the problem-solving skills gleaned from one day, three years, 20 years in IT. InfoWorld's readers share the more flavorful ingredients -- some surprisingly delectable, others decidedly less so -- in InfoWorld's Off the Record blog. As 2008 comes to an end, we wanted to share some of the year's more memorable reader tales. Because this blog is written by you, the many people who claim the weekly "Anonymous" byline, no two experiences, situations, or takeaways are exactly alike.
Appearing in this year's collection are tales of tug-of-war between management ideals and practicality, the IT-worker-turned-sleuth, and simply the bizarre situation. And similar tales almost certainly will show up again in next year's collection, with their own twist.
[ Submit your own IT tale to InfoWorld's Off the Record blog. If we publish your story, we'll hide the identity of you, your company, and your colleagues and send you a $50 gift card. ]
Persistence and problem-solving
Readers applaud tales where the IT worker determinedly follows through on a problem, as in the case of the cable installation gone wild: "I look back at Brutus, and the sagging, spaghetti-like bundle of more than 100 blue Cat-5 cables. Drooping heavily among them is one solitary cable. It's also blue. The very same blue as the obsolete cables being removed. Oh no. Oh yes, it's a 50-pair cable, about an inch in diameter. The fax machines are dead silent. I am not."
More persistence and problem-solving:
* A tight deadline prompts an IT crew to put themselves to a challenge in "How fast can you move a datacenter?"
* A Difficult User's persistence pays off in the case of the problematic download.
Bizarre situations
A junior IT staff member, in the server room, with the power button -- a compromising situation in "Don't lift a finger": "Finally as my panic worsened, I realized I had now only one chance: my trousers. I dare any of you to remove your trousers with one hand while stretching the other arm to a fixed point from which it cannot move. Not easy."
More bizarre situations:
* How to stay out of a South American jail? One reader found that smuggling IBM did the trick.
* The importance of double-checking your work hits home in "Get a lift from your next training video." Maybe users actually remembered this training ...
Oh, those people we work with!
We can trust that the software's been tested: "Personally, I think it should have been a red flag when the guy went out and purchased a matching pair of 'how to code' instruction books for version 2 of the product and set them side by side on his shelf. I guess he thought that, put together, they'd teach him all he wanted to know about version 4!"
More people we work with:
* A CFO dictates specs of a new server room. "Good old standard sprinklers" will suffice. Right?
* Management asks, "What is it you do again?" while the IT worker is out saving the day.
* An unethical employee shows the boss why the IT manager was right in how important IT security policies are.
* A network integration gets tossed at sea when led by "Captain Obvious and his ship of fools."
We look forward to 2009's tales of IT work life. Keep them coming!
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Visual Studio, Ruby improvements slated
In separate developments, Microsoft Windows platform developers and Ruby application builders both should gain functionality improvements with efforts afoot at Microsoft and the OMG (Object Management Group).
With the planned Visual Studio 2010 software development platform, Microsoft is emphasizing "code-focused development" investments and features, said S. "Soma" Somaseger, senior vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog post on Friday evening.
Somasegar cited Highlight References as a code-focused development feature. "Highlight References is a simple but easy way to quickly understand a scoped piece of code and navigate to references," Somasegar said.
[ Microsoft also has mapped out application lifecycle management plans for the Visual Studio platform. ]
Another enhancement, Quick Search, offers a lightweight way to do increment searches, filter searches, and get search heuristics like substring, he said.
Visual Studio 2010 improves the call browser experience in C++ and features a call hierarchy tool for C# and Visual Basic. "These features let you easily navigate all callers and 'callees' of a method," said Somagar
Also, Visual Studio 2010 makes it easier to do "consume-first development," Somasegar said.
"Many features in Visual Studio, such as IntelliSense and Quick Info, work best when an API that a user is consuming is already defined," Somasegar said. "We recognize, though, there are times you need to code against an API that has yet to be defined completely.? For example, in test-driven development, we see the test-first pattern. So, in VS 2010, we?re making it easier to do consume-first development."
The consume-first mode for IntelliSense allows for toggling the commit behavior. Developers can hit Ctrl+Alt+Space to toggle on this mode. "In Visual Studio today, you may have had the experience of having the IDE auto-complete an identifier you didn't want because it didn't yet exist (think generic method return types.)," Somasegar said.
The Visual Studio 2010 platform is set to feature such capabilities as an editor based on the company's Windows Presentation Foundation technology and enablement for the Silverlight rich Internet application platform and the Windows 7 client OS. Based on previous two-year product cycles for Visual Studio, the 2010 release could arrive late next year.
In the Ruby realm, the Ruby CORBA Language Mapping proposal would provide a standard way for Ruby developers to use CORBA; they gain a standardized mapping to Ruby for CORBA to make Ruby programs that use CORBA portable amongst different Ruby implementations, OMG said. The proposal proves that CORBA is "alive and well," according to OMG. Developers need standardized mappings to CORBA for new languages such as Ruby, OMG said.
The proposal is being promoted by Remedy IT. "With the language mapping Ruby programmers can implement CORBA clients and servers with Ruby," said Johnny Willemsen, technical manager for Remedy IT and an OMG Platform member.
Remedy IT's R2CORBA enables these implementations. "When it was ready, we decided to standardize the language mapping through the OMG," Willemsen said. The OMG proposal is being recommended for adoption, with the final version slated to be available in June, he said.
"A formal adoption would make it possible for other CORBA vendors to also implement and deliver a Ruby language binding for their products. Developers will then be able to implement CORBA clients and servers with Ruby," Willemsen said.
OMG is seeking comments on the proposal.
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Android G2 rumors abound
The T-Mobile G1 phone has been fairly successful so far, although it hasn't yet approached usurping the iPhone from its lofty consumer throne. And so the rumors have already started about the possibility of an Android G2 phone. The latest round of rumors started at Mobile Top Soft, which reported that the HTC Touch HD phone would arrive in the U.S. instead as the T-Mobile G2 phone running Google's Android OS. Cell Phone Signal then picked up the rumor, adding some preliminary specs for the G2 as well as the shockingly early release date of January 26. The rumor built up momentum from there until The Boy Genius Report cited an anonymous source that Cell Phone Signal's report was fairly accurate with the exception of the date, which is now rumored to be between late February and April.
The specs for the G2 are reportedly almost the same as the G1 with some notable exceptions. The G2 will not have a physical keyboard of any kind, instead favoring a full touch keyboard more akin the iPhone. And though the G2 will be more centered on the touch screen, the track ball will remain on the phone for those who prefer it for navigation. The other notable possible addition is a VGA camera in addition to the existing 5-megapixel camera. The new camera should support better video calling, which would help differentiate the G2 from competitors like the iPhone.
[ Special report: All about Google's Android. ]
Supposedly the G2 will also be available through other carriers than just T-Mobile. T-Mobile still owns the G1, G2, and G3 names, so it is unknown what other carriers will be calling it. I feel it's fairly safe to say, though, that AT&T will not be one of those carriers, but I'd be looking at Sprint and Verizon to make announcements as early as next month if the February date is true.
You might have also noticed that I mentioned that T-Mobile owns the G3 name. Well, that is because The Boy Genius Report's anonymous tipster also mentioned that sometime late next year we can expect A G3 phone to debut. It is still way too early to be talking about G3 rumors, especially since the G2 rumors aren't confirmed, but I will say this much: G3 rumors could have a huge negative impact on G2 sales. If people know before the G2 even comes out that a new model is expected not too far in the future, there isn't going to be any motivation to upgrade to a G2. I know Google is anxious to get the Android OS onto as many phones as possible, but with rumors like these it's just shooting itself in the foot.
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Microsoft explains how it missed critical IE bug
Microsoft Corp.'s developers missed a critical bug in Internet Explorer because they weren't properly trained and didn't have the right testing tools, a noted proponent of the company's secure code development process acknowledged last week.
The bug, which Microsoft patched last week with an emergency update, had gone undetected for at least nine years.
[ Read the earlier developments in the story: "Microsoft fixes IE bug" | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
In an insider's description on Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle blog, Michael Howard, a principal security program manager with the company, offered a postmortem analysis of the IE vulnerability and Microsoft's code-writing and reviewing process.
Howard, who is perhaps best known for co-authoring the book "Writing Secure Code," said the flaw was a "time-of-check-time-of-use" bug in how IE releases data binding objects.
The vulnerability was not found by programmers because they had not been told or taught to look for them in such cases, Howard said. "Memory-related [time-of-check-time-of-use, or TOCTOU] bugs are hard to find through code review," he said. "We teach TOCTOU issues, and we teach memory corruption issues, and issues with using freed memory blocks; but we do not teach memory-related TOCTOU issues."
Microsoft's testing tools -- including "fuzzers," automated tools that drop data into applications, file formats or operating system components to see if, and where, they fail -- also missed the bug, Howard admitted.
"In theory, fuzz testing could find this bug, but today there is no fuzz test case for this code," he said. "Triggering the bug would require a fuzzing tool that builds data streams with multiple data binding constructs with the same identifier. Random (or dumb) fuzzing payloads of this data type would probably not trigger the bug, however."
Howard said that Microsoft would update its developer training to account for memory-related TOCTOU bugs like this one.
Several parts of Windows' security toolkit didn't help protect users from exploits of this bug, Howard added, including ALSR and NX, technologies available only in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. "Even though Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 have both ASLR and NX enabled by default, Internet Explorer 7 does not opt-in to these defenses owing to compatibility issues with many common applications," Howard noted.
Before Microsoft released last week's patch and after it had confirmed that attacks were in progress, it urged users to take countermeasures, including enabling DEP (data execution prevention), another term for NX, in IE7.
Another Microsoft defense, however, did protect users running Vista or Server 2008, said Howard, who argued that "Protected Mode" did its job. Protect Mode essentially "sandboxes" IE and its add-ons so that actions taken within the browser are prevented from accessing the operating system generally.
"When the exploit code runs, it's running at low integrity because IE runs at low integrity," Howard said, "and this means the exploit code cannot write to higher integrity portions of the operating system, which is just about everywhere."
Those defensive technologies could not protect users of Window XP, which remains the most widely used version of Windows by a margin of more than 3:1 over Vista.
Howard also speculated that the bug may have been found by hackers armed with custom fuzzers, which Microsoft itself has not crafted for its own testing.
"I think this bug is a great example of 'you will never get the code 100 percent right, so multiple defenses are critical'," Howard said. "[And] if there is one other lesson from this, it's that we, the software industry, need to work harder to make sure applications take advantage of the defenses offered in Windows today."
The data binding bug was present in all still-supported versions of IE, including IE5.01, which was released in November 1999. The patch can be downloaded and installed via the Microsoft Update and Windows Update services, as well as through Windows Server Update Services.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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3G iPhone unlock expected on New Year's Eve
The iPhone Dev Team (not the Cupertino version) plans to release the first ever software-based unlock application for the iPhone 3G on New Year's Eve.
Code-named YellowSn0w, the program is a one-touch iPhone app that allows you to use a SIM card from another carrier and have your phone up and running in a matter of minutes. YellowSn0w is a first because it allows you to unlock the iPhone without any tech-heavy tinkering on the physical device or with the software itself.
[ InfoWorld special report: IT's guide to the iPhone | Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
Dev team member MuscleNerd announced via Twitter yesterday that he would demo the new app on the live video streaming service Qik. In the video, MuscleNerd switches his iPhone 3G from the AT&T network to T-Mobile in a matter of minutes. As you can see, YellowSn0w is very raw at the moment, but according to MuscleNerd the team is packaging the app into a user-friendly interface.
YelloSn0w capitalizes on a software weakness in the iPhone's baseband radio -- the radio is how a cellular phone communicates with the network -- to unlock the iPhone from AT&T's network. In the video, Musclenerd notes that his SIM card has a notch in it, but says that YellowSn0w users will not have to do this. The notch simply allowed the Dev Team to easily experiment and find weaknesses with the iPhone 3G's SIM lock. The SIM lock is how AT&T is able to stop users from switching to another carrier with the iPhone 3G by making the phone unable to recognize another carrier's SIM card.
To use YellowSn0w you need a jailbroken iPhone with baseband firmware 2.11.07 or earlier. If you used the Dev Team's previous jailbreaking program QuickPwn, you may be out of luck with YellowSn0w. According to the Dev Team, that program altered your baseband firmware making it impossible to use the software unlock next week.
Responding to a question via Twitter, MuscleNerd says that the name YellowSn0w is a bear-themed play on official names for Apple's firmware such as Vail, BigBear, LittleBear, SugarBowl, and Timberline.
PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Job seekers flood IT staffing site
About 20,000 people looking for jobs signed on to oDesk Corp.'s online staffing marketplace in November, the largest monthly increase -- by at least 40 percent -- that CEO Gary Swart has seen since joining the firm in 2005. Swart said he expects another 15,000 people to sign up this month.
About 4,600 contract jobs are listed on the oDesk site, about twice the number available a year ago. The growth in available jobs is a sign that contract work, like outsourcing, is countercyclical -- it tends to expand when the economy is troubled.
[ Need a job? Read InfoWorld's five résumé tips for techies. Or if you want out of IT, there is life after tech. ]
"Companies are trying to do more with less," Swart said.
In all, some 157,000 people are currently seeking work on the site.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses reported earlier this month that overall IT employment in the United States declined by almost 34,000 jobs between October and November. U.S. IT employment for the month stood at about 3.87 million.
Robert Scheier, a managing director for sourcing advisory services at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., said that the use of contractors is growing as companies look to cut IT costs.
Workers listed on the oDesk site are located around the world, and the hourly rates offered reflect the economic differences among countries -- averaging $12.52 in India, $6.33 in the Philippines, $16.86 in Russia, and $18.32 in the United States.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Top 10 qualities of a great IT shop
No two IT shops conduct business in the same way: CIOs report to various executives, project approval processes are all over the board, and personnel policies are vastly different. Unlike other professions, IT doesn't seem to have a common set of basic principles across companies.
But some best practices have bubbled to the top. If I were anticipating a move to a new company or evaluating an IT shop as a consultant, here are the most important practices I'd be looking for:
[ Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line blog and newsletter. ]
1. The CIO reports to the CEO or, at least, the chief operating officer. This is vital to the success of the IT department. It gives the CIO clout and ensures IT's independence.
2. There is an IT steering committee composed of C-level executives from the business units. The executives make their decisions based on some set of priorities and criteria such as ROI. The committee is necessary to ensure that allocation decisions are made in the interests of the entire company, not of an individual department.
3. The IT shop uses up-to-date software and hardware. It should also have reasonable policies for PC software upgrades and other regular system updates. In addition, the company should be spending an appropriate percentage of corporate revenue on IT. This indicates the company's level of commitment to IT.
4. There is a high-visibility system security team. Since security is one of the most vulnerable areas of IT, it must be well managed.
5. There is an ongoing disaster recovery process involving users, and a documented recovery plan that is tested regularly. Commitment to security and disaster recovery indicates the importance of IT to senior management.
6. There is an ongoing commitment to training to keep IT staffers up to date. This should include attendance at technology conventions as well as training seminars and industry events. If there is a lack of training and a parallel use of consultants, you know that the focus is not on in-house staff.
7. There is rigid adherence to some system development lifecycle (SDLC) that is understood by IT and the user community alike. (Knowing how IT works helps users interact with IT more effectively.) Any of several SDLC plans may be used, depending on the type of project, but the process of selecting the approach should be documented. This gives you some insight into the professionalism of the IT organization.
8. There are established technical and managerial career paths that enable workers to remain technical and achieve higher pay and status within the organization. This is the only way to retain top technical people who have no interest in managing others.
9. IT produces, at minimum, a monthly status report that shows progress on all major IT projects. This document should be widely distributed throughout the company. Its existence shows the level of interest of IT within the organization.
10. IT sits at the long-range planning table and participates. If this is lacking, it is a sure sign that IT is looked at as an implementer and not an enabler.
These are the things I would look for in a top IT shop. I have seen many shops that follow some of these practices, but few that follow all of them.
If you agree or disagree or would like to suggest other practices, please let me know. Perhaps with such a dialogue, our industry could at last agree on some basic principles that would be common across the majority of IT shops. Such consistency would be a big step forward in the growth of IT professionalism.
This is the third in a series of columns on some of the things I've learned about managing people during my 40 years in IT. Previously, I discussed how to determine when you are not delegating enough, and how much to tell your boss when you're about to make a decision. You can find those columns online at www.computerworld.com/opinions.
Paul M. Ingevaldson retired as CIO at Ace Hardware Corp. in 2004 after 40 years in the IT business. Contact him at ingepi@aol.com. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The Internet's 100 oldest dot-com domains
The Internet's been around in some form for decades. It wasn't until the mid-'80s, though, that the Web as we know it started coming together -- and those precious dot-com domains started getting snatched up.
As we finish out the tech-centric year of 2008, we thought we'd take a look back at the Internet's oldest commercial Web sites -- the ones registered back when chatting about "the Net" was as socially acceptable as wearing Jedi garb into a crowded nightclub. So grab your light sabers, dear friends -- we're boarding the Millennium Falcon and heading back to a virtual galaxy far, far away.
[ Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]
The Internet's first dot-com
Let me set the scene for you: The year was 1985. MS-DOS 3.0 was the PC operating system of choice, most commonly run on the top-selling Tandy 1000 personal computer.
A newly formed company called Dell was getting ready to release its first machine, the "Turbo PC." The Commodore Amiga 1000 was also about to hit the market.
That same spring, the first dot-com domain was registered with the sale of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. The site belonged to a computer manufacturer known for its Open Genera Lisp and Macsyma computer algebra systems.
Symbolics declared bankruptcy in the early '90s but is still under operation with new owners. That means symbolics.com is the Internet's oldest still-functioning dot-com domain -- and, I must say, it still looks like it was designed in 1985.
Other highlights
Some of the other early dot-coms are domains we know well. The ninth recorded registration went to hp.com on March 3, 1986. IBM bought its domain a couple of weeks later. AT&T followed in April, and Apple joined the club after another year. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine only goes back to the mid-'90s, but even in 1997, you can see how relatively low-tech apple.com looked compared to the snazzy standards we enjoy today.
Some other noteworthy notches on the dot-com timeline that didn't make the first 100: Microsoft bought microsoft.com in May of 1991; PC World entered the online world in April '92; Yahoo reserved its dot-com home in January 1995; and Google grabbed google.com in September 1997.
As a heads-up, one conspicuous omission that may catch your eye: anything remotely pornographic. (Those 2400 BPS modems didn't make for great image transmission.) Allow me to satisfy your curiosity, though: Sex.com first surfaced in 1994. Porn.com came into existence about a year later.
The full list
All right, prurient interests addressed, ready to check out the full list of dot-com pioneers? Brace yourself, and dig in.
1. symbolics.com: March 15, 1985
2. bbn.com: April 24, 1985
3. think.com: May 24, 1985
4. mcc.com: July 11, 1985
5. dec.com: September 30, 1985
6. northrop.com: November 7, 1985
7. xerox.com: January 9, 1986
8. sri.com: January 17, 1986
9. hp.com: March 3, 1986
10. bellcore.com: March 5, 1986
11. ibm.com: March 19, 1986
12. sun.com: March 19, 1986
13. intel.com: March 25, 1986
14. ti.com: March 25, 1986
15. att.com: April 25, 1986
16. gmr.com: May 8, 1986
17. tek.com: May 8, 1986
18. fmc.com: July 10, 1986
19. ub.com: July 10, 1986
20. bell-atl.com: August 5, 1986
21. ge.com: August 5, 1986
22. grebyn.com: August 5, 1986
23. isc.com: August 5, 1986
24. nsc.com: August 5, 1986
25. stargate.com: August 5, 1986
26. boeing.com: September 2, 1986
27. itcorp.com: September 18, 1986
28. siemens.com: September 29, 1986
29. pyramid.com: October 18, 1986
30. alphacdc.com: October 27, 1986
31. bdm.com: October 27, 1986
32. fluke.com: October 27, 1986
33. inmet.com: October 27, 1986
34. kesmai.com: October 27, 1986
35. mentor.com: October 27, 1986
36. nec.com: October 27, 1986
37. ray.com: October 27, 1986
38. rosemount.com: October 27, 1986
39. vortex.com: October 27, 1986
40. alcoa.com: November 5, 1986
41. gte.com: November 5, 1986
42. adobe.com: November 17, 1986
43. amd.com: November 17, 1986
44. das.com: November 17, 1986
45. data-io.com: November 17, 1986
46. octopus.com: November 17, 1986
47. portal.com: November 17, 1986
48. teltone.com: November 17, 1986
49. 3com.com: December 11, 1986
50. amdahl.com: December 11, 1986
51. ccur.com: December 11, 1986
52. ci.com: December 11, 1986
53. convergent.com: December 11, 1986
54. dg.com: December 11, 1986
55. peregrine.com: December 11, 1986
56. quad.com: December 11, 1986
57. sq.com: December 11, 1986
58. tandy.com: December 11, 1986
59. tti.com: December 11, 1986
60. unisys.com: December 11, 1986
61. cgi.com: January 19, 1987
62. cts.com: January 19, 1987
63. spdcc.com: January 19, 1987
64. apple.com: February 19, 1987
65. nma.com: March 4, 1987
66. prime.com: March 4, 1987
67. philips.com: April 4, 1987
68. datacube.com: April 23, 1987
69. kai.com: April 23, 1987
70. tic.com: April 23, 1987
71. vine.com: April 23, 1987
72. ncr.com: April 30, 1987
73. cisco.com: May 14, 1987
74. rdl.com: May 14, 1987
75. slb.com: May 20, 1987
76. parcplace.com: May 27, 1987
77. utc.com: May 27, 1987
78. ide.com: June 26, 1987
79. trw.com: July 9, 1987
80. unipress.com: July 13, 1987
81. dupont.com: July 27, 1987
82. lockheed.com: July 27, 1987
83. rosetta.com: July 28, 1987
84. toad.com: August 18, 1987
85. quick.com: August 31, 1987
86. allied.com: September 3, 1987
87. dsc.com: September 3, 1987
88. sco.com: September 3, 1987
89. gene.com: September 22, 1987
90. kccs.com: September 22, 1987
91. spectra.com: September 22, 1987
92. wlk.com: September 22, 1987
93. mentat.com: September 30, 1987
94. wyse.com: October 14, 1987
95. cfg.com: November 2, 1987
96. marble.com: November 9, 1987
97. cayman.com: November 16, 1987
98. entity.com: November 16, 1987
99. ksr.com: November 24, 1987
100. nynexst.com: November 30, 1987
(Domain record data provided by iWhoIs.com )
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Windows 7: The Linux killer
Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market. When it came to ordinary PCs and laptops, however, it knew it had little to fear.
But that was then. Now Microsoft may fear Linux on the desktop as much as it does the Mac. It's finally taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and it has designed Windows 7 to kill it.
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Let me explain.
The threat to Windows comes entirely from "netbooks" -- lightweight, inexpensive laptops that typically use Intel's low-powered Atom processor and don't come with substantial amounts of RAM or powerful graphics processors. They're designed mainly for browsing the Web, handling e-mail, writing memos, and taking care of simple word-processing or spreadsheet chores.
Netbooks will account for about a third of all PC growth this year, according to Citigroup. Shipments will rise at an annual average rate of 60 percent to reach 29 million netbooks in 2010, compared with 18 percent growth for standard notebooks, says a September BNP Paribas report.
Clearly, the future is in netbooks. And that has Microsoft worried. Netbooks can't handle Vista's hardware demands, so XP is the only Microsoft operating system that runs on them. But Linux is ideally suited for lower-powered netbooks.
The result? Acer and Asustek, which account for 90 percent of the netbook market, are using Linux on about 30 percent of their low-cost notebooks, according to Bloomberg. Making matters worse, if Linux is used on those netbooks, it means that Microsoft Office isn't. So Microsoft takes a double hit every time someone buys a Linux netbook.
Microsoft isn't just worried about ceding 30 percent of the netbook market to Linux. It's also worried that if people get used to running Linux on netbooks, they'll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs as well. Here's what Dickie Chang, an analyst at IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg: "It's a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative."
Microsoft, though, has a not-so-secret weapon against Linux: Windows 7. Its new operating system, slated to be introduced sometime next year, is designed to work fine on netbooks. In fact, at Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference, where the pre-beta of Windows 7 was unveiled, Windows senior vice president Steve Sinofsky showed off Windows 7 on his Lenovo S10 and said it used less than half of the netbook's 1GB of RAM.
When Windows 7 ships, expect a massive marketing blitz pushing it on netbooks with special deals, and netbook hardware taking advantage of Windows 7 capabilities, including touch screens.
In fact, the blitz has already begun. Asus CEO Jerry Shen announced that he plans to release versions of the Eee PC powered by Windows 7 in mid-2009, including a touch-screen version.
This is anything but a level playing field. Because no company owns Linux, there won't be a competing marketing push for Linux netbooks. Microsoft has shown before how tough it can be on competitors -- remember Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Harvard Graphics? So expect Linux netbook sales to fall when Windows 7 ships.
Despite Microsoft's killer instincts, I don't think Linux netbook sales will stop dead. There will always be a niche for them. But within a year of the Windows 7 launch, Linux market share will drop. The high point for Linux netbook sales will be from now until the launch of Windows 7. After that will come the inevitable decline.
Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld.com and the author of more than 35 books, including "How the Internet Works" (Que, 2006). Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiiliate.
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Mozilla CEO: Ties with Google 'complicated' since Chrome
Mozilla has a "reasonable" relationship with longtime partner Google Inc., but it's gotten complicated since Google launched its own browser, according to Mozilla's chief executive.
"We have a fine and reasonable relationship," John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said in an interview last week. "But I'd be lying if I said that things weren't more complicated than they used to be."
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Responding to questions about Mozilla's take on the upswing in browser competition, Lilly also knocked another rival, Microsoft Corp., for dismissing attempts to boost browser performance as merely a "drag race."
"It's a pretty good time to be a browser user," said Lilly. "There are more smart people hacking on browsers than in a long time. But when I hear Dean [Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE)] say JavaScript performance is for crazy guys to worry about, then that worries me."
Last week, Hachamovitch said Microsoft wasn't interested in joining what he called a "drag race" between browser makers that include Mozilla and Google in boosting JavaScript rendering performance. Both Mozilla and Google have debuted new JavaScript engines that they've bragged dramatically boost speed. Hachamovitch declined to say how the final version of Microsoft's upcoming IE8 will stack up against rivals in JavaScript benchmark scores, saying only, "It's definitely faster than IE8 Beta 2," the current test version.
"HTML and JavaScript are the languages of the Web," Lilly argued. "And what might happen, if modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome just run away from IE [in performance], wouldn't be very healthy. Sixty-nine percent of users still use IE, and if JavaScript on IE is three or four times slower [than other browsers], developers might think twice about whether they can push the limits with JavaScript."
But Lilly remained confident that his company can maintain its momentum, which has translated into a 24 percent increase in Firefox market share since the beginning of the year.
"At this point, one in five users of the Internet uses Firefox," Lilly said, citing statistics from Net Applications, Inc. "That's good, and we're proud of that. When we launched Firefox 1.0 [four years ago], the odds of getting to 20 percent, most would have said that was impossible."
Mozilla, however, is in a unique situation among browser builders in that the bulk of its revenue -- 88 percent, or about $60 million in 2007, the last year for which the company has released financial information -- comes from Google. Under a series of deals, the most recent inked last August, Google pays Mozilla for assigning its search engine the default in Firefox, and for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages.
Although Mozilla's reliance on a single revenue source has raised concerns before, the landscape changed in September when Google debuted its own browser, Chrome. That put it in direct competition with Mozilla, as well as the other browser developers, including Microsoft, Apple Inc., and Opera Software ASA.
Last week, Google brought Chrome out of beta, and a day later, swapped it for Firefox as the default browser in its Google Pack application bundle.
Lilly acknowledged that the situation may look awkward to outsiders, but defended the deal with Google.
"The Web matters to all of us, and I think Google is as good as it can be," said Lilly carefully when asked what outsiders, users included, should make of the relationship between the two companies. "But Google is in it to build the best business for Google that it can, and one way to take risk out of the situation is to own the software," he added, referring to Chrome.
"Companies cooperate in certain areas and compete in other areas all the time," Lilly said. "We're cooperating with Google because we believe that search is a fundamental entry point to the Web, and right now Google gives the best search experience."
But the relationship won't be forever, he hinted. "Our goal is to be an advocate for the Web for 50 or even 100 years, and you can't depend on any one organization. Our [current] three-year agreement is the longest we've ever had. This is a long-time horizon, so we don't have to do anything super soon, but in the next three years we can continue to build [new] products and develop [new] revenue streams."
Search may remain the primary, or at least a key, revenue generator, said Lilly, but there are other opportunities. Mozilla plans to explore diversifying search revenue, and perhaps partner with country-specific search firms that, in their own markets at least, are strong alternatives to Google. Lilly also pointed to the mobile market, an area that has been dominated by Opera, as a possible source of revenue.
Firefox is currently working on a mobile browser, code-named "Fennec," which it released in a public alpha two months ago.
Lilly said that Mozilla would release the finished product shortly after it wraps up Firefox 3.1, the browser upgrade slated for an early 2009 launch. Mozilla plans to produce both Linux and Windows Mobile versions of its mobile browser.
"[2009] will be an important year for mobile," said Lilly. "We'd like to make the mobile Web more like the Web and less like the mobile world."
But as far as Google's concerned, Lilly said Mozilla will compete with any and all comers. "We collaborate with Google, we talk to them and we have a fine and reasonable relationship," he said. "But we'll compete. This is, after all, user driven."
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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What can you afford NOT to do on IT security?
With the ailing economy putting a crimp in IT budgets, information security managers -- like just about everyone else in the tech world -- are feeling pressure to keep their costs in line.
Few expect to be hit with outright budget reductions, at least in the short term; regulatory requirements and the ever-expanding list of external and internal threats make it hard to devote less money to security efforts. But there is a growing push to curb or defer spending increases, according to IT managers and security analysts.
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"It's imperative to squeeze every penny of value out of everything you do," said Jim Kirby, senior network engineer at DataWare Services, an IT services firm in Sioux Falls, S.D. This is a good time to stop working on "marginal" projects and redirect resources to security capabilities that are absolutely necessary, Kirby said.
Matt Kesner, chief technology officer at Fenwick & West LLP in San Francisco, said the law firm's security strategy for next year is to "focus on basics." Its 2009 IT budget doesn't call for reduced spending on security -- but neither does it include a funding increase.
And Fenwick & West is taking some steps to cut costs. The firm is deferring an earlier plan to hire a full-time networking and security expert because of the recession, Kesner said. It is also looking for opportunities to use open source alternatives to some of its security tools.
One of the few new IT projects approved for next year is a replacement of the anti-virus software installed on all of the law firm's PCs -- an upgrade that Kesner said is being driven by the increased threats to corporate data from malware and phishing attacks. Fenwick & West also plans to train end-users more intensively on how to secure their PCs and mobile devices, and on the importance of creating strong passwords.
Even in an economy gone sour, a growing number of government and industry regulations impose security compliance costs that there is simply no getting away from. For instance, new data-protection laws in states such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nevada require companies to use data encryption tools and implement other security controls to safeguard the personal information of state residents.
Similarly, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, created by the major credit card companies, requires all businesses that accept credit and debit transactions to adopt a broad set of data protection controls. And the federal HIPAA law includes data security and privacy rules for health care providers in order to protect patient information.
Meanwhile, cybercrooks are targeting companies with increasingly sophisticated -- and successful -- attacks. For example, Symantec Corp. said in a report last month that at least $1.7 billion worth of bank accounts were compromised in the United States during the 12-month period that started in July 2007.
In light of all that, not making cutbacks in anti-virus subscriptions and purchases of frontline security tools such as firewalls and network intrusion-detection systems is a no-brainer, security managers said.
Kirby said investments in outbound-traffic inspection tools and controls for locking down portable media devices also are worthwhile because of the heightened risk of insider attacks at a time of increased layoffs. In addition, he thinks that cutting back on disaster recovery and business continuity projects wouldn't be wise.
Whittling away at risk management and compliance oversight functions is another bad idea, said the chief privacy officer (CPO) at a large financial services firm. That could leave companies facing potentially serious consequences for not complying with security requirements, he said.
What to cut
But there are other areas in which IT and security managers may be able ease up on spending. Kirby said that although intrusion-detection systems are a must-have item, many companies can live without intrusion-prevention tools, which are more sophisticated but also more expensive and harder to manage. He added that biometric security projects can often be postponed.
Paring back on third-party security education and training programs can also yield some extra dollars that can be used for other purposes, said the CPO, who asked not to be identified. "Companies have a lot of vendor-hosted or vendor-provided education programs -- kind of, 'Here's how you do data security if you're covered by HIPAA or by PCI,' " he said. According to the CPO, the cost of individual programs can sometimes top $200,000 annually, depending on the number of employees being trained.
Marcin Czabanski, director of IT at LifeSecure Insurance Co. in Brighton, Mich., said companies should also look for ways to move applications -- and their security functions -- into the computing clouds offered by vendors such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.com.
By doing so, Czabanski said, "you can outsource a lot of the headache" of managing and securing desktop applications -- and do so for less money than keeping the work in-house.
E-mail is another application that can move to the cloud. The Henssler Financial Group in Kennesaw, Ga., is a user of Google's Postini e-mail security and archiving services. Tim O'Pry, Henssler's chief technology officer, said the arrangement has enabled the financial services firm to offload to Google the hassle and expense of securing its e-mail system.
In addition, using the hosted services has "dramatically" reduced Henssler's e-mail archiving costs while making it easier for employees to search for and retrieve old messages, O'Pry said.
Moving e-mail to a cloud infrastructure such as Google's can also help organizations lower the costs of complying with e-discovery rules in legal cases, said David Jordan, chief information security officer for Virginia's Arlington County.
For instance, Google earlier this year launched a Postini service called Message Discovery that is designed to help businesses comply with e-mail retention regulations and speed up the process of retrieving messages in response to lawsuits or other legal matters. Such setups can also help customers trim their e-mail hardware, software, management, and security costs, Jordan said.
Another possible cost-saving option, he noted, is deploying virtualization and thin-client technologies that let employees access a set of centralized applications. Jordan said he thinks that thin-client architectures are inherently more secure -- and thus less costly to manage and control -- than traditional client/server computing models.
Any cutbacks should be carefully weighed, though.
Phil Hochmuth, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc., said it's understandable that companies might want to rein in their security spending (see related story, at left). But on a longer-term basis, "it would probably be a mistake if they backed off strategic initiatives" just to cut costs now, Hochmuth said.
O'Pry agreed. "Trying to scrimp and save on security in this economy would be a penny-wise, pound-foolish thing to do," he said. O'Pry noted that as a financial services firm, Henssler is "affected more than anyone else" by the downturn. Even so, there's little talk within the company about cutting security spending. "Your most valuable nontangible asset is your reputation," O'Pry said. "You can't risk taking any hits to that."
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Obama will inherit a real mess on Real ID
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, it's unclear how his administration will proceed on the technology-heavy Real ID program. But what is all too clear is that the three-year-old effort to impose identification-card standards on state governments remains mired in controversy.
Obama has made virtually no public comments about the initiative, which calls for driver's licenses and other state-issued IDs to include digital photos and be readable by scanning devices. In addition, the one time that the Senate considered a Real ID funding issue during Obama's tenure there, he didn't cast a vote.
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Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Obama's choice to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, signed a bill in June barring her state from participating in the program. And during a Senate committee hearing last year, she said that complying with the rules would cost state governments a total of $11 billion. The DHS is responsible for implementing the Real ID rules.
"I don't think anybody in the next administration, including Napolitano, wants to deal with Real ID," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. "It's a real stinking mess. Most likely, they'll find the quietest way they can to get it off their plates."
The Real ID Act was signed into law by President Bush in 2005 as part of the government's effort to combat terrorism. Other IT-related provisions require participating states to store digital images of IDs for up to 10 years and link their driver's license databases to one another.
But the law has been widely criticized by privacy advocates and civil rights groups. Even a DHS advisory committee voiced reservations about Real ID last year, citing privacy, security and logistical concerns.
Real ID has also become a bone of contention between the DHS and state governments that see it as an attempt to force unwanted standards down their throats while making them pay for the program. In addition to Arizona, states that have said they won't participate include Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Washington.
There's no mandate that states issue Real ID cards. But eventually, all citizens will need IDs that comply with the requirements in order to board planes, enter federal buildings and receive federal benefits.
The outpouring of protests has prompted the DHS to ease up on its implementation deadlines. For instance, under the final rules set by the agency last January, existing driver's licenses will continue to be accepted as federal identification until December 2014. And people who are age 50 or above at that time won't have to show Real ID cards for another three years.
Also, after initially setting a deadline of last March for states to request extensions on meeting an initial set of Real ID requirements, the DHS backed off of threats to begin enforcing the rules.
Harper said the agency decided to slow down and pass the baton to the next administration. DHS officials "realized there's just no way they're going to win this" by taking a confrontational approach, he said.
At this point, the only reasonable way forward is for the DHS to work more cooperatively with states on Real ID implementations instead of continuing to "dangle sabers over their heads," said Chris Dixon, an analyst at Input, a government IT consulting firm in Reston, Va.
"This should have been put to bed long ago," Dixon said, noting that many states are already implementing new ID features similar to what Real ID requires, as part of their own efforts to improve security.
If Napolitano is confirmed as head of the DHS, said Dixon, her experience as the governor of a state that is fighting Real ID might help point the way to a resolution. "Napolitano," he said, "could sit down with the governors and try to find a way out of this impasse."
This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition.
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Lenovo to release ThinkPad laptop with two LCD screens
Lenovo Group Ltd. Friday announced the release of a ThinkPad laptop that takes the "desktop replacement" category of notebook PCs to a new level.
The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two LCD screens: a 17-inch primary and a 10.6-inch secondary screen.
[ Check out potential competitors to the ThinkPad in InfoWorld's reviews "Mobile workstations worthy of the workstation name" | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage.
It's all in an 11-pound brick -- five times the weight of netbooks, such as the Asus Eee 701, and at least double the weight of typical laptops -- that is encased in the ThinkPad's trademark ebony exterior.
"This is the nitro-burning drag racer of ThinkPads," said Craig Merrigan, vice president of global consumer marketing for Lenovo, in a briefing this week.
The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.
News about the W700ds was originally timed for release the week of the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. But details leaked out on blogs earlier this month after a Web page went live early on IBM's Web site.
"Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.
The primary WUXGA 17-inch screen is brighter and more colorful than other notebook PC screens, Williams said. The main screen is rated at 400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than any other notebook in the market, Williams said. It also has a color gamut equivalent to 72 percent of AdobeRGB that is better than other notebooks and a plus for photographers and graphic designers, he said.
The W700ds' secondary 10.6-inch vertical screen is about the size of a typical netbook display, Lenovo says, or about 40 percent the size of the W700ds' primary 17-inch display. It can also be tilted up to 30 degrees like a car's rearview mirror.
The W700ds also includes a built-in WACOM digitizer, also called an electronic drawing pad, and color calibration software. Despite its power and weight, Williams claimed that the W700ds runs "incredibly cool" due to the use of dual fans and dual heat-reduction systems.
The trade-offs? Besides price and weight, the W700ds is bulkier than typical laptops, measuring 16 inches by 12 inches, and is 2.1 inches thick. The ultra-thin MacBook Air, by comparison, is 13 by 9 inches and only 0.75 inch thick.
Richard Shim, an analyst with research firm IDC, said the W700ds is a "very niche-y, technical showcase type of product" that will nevertheless likely be a "big hit" with photographers, designers and developers who will value the included productivity-enhancing tools over its shoulder-aching weight.
Lenovo unveiled the single-screen version of the ThinkPad W700 in August. That machines starts with a price tag of about $2,500.
To connect to external monitors, the W700 includes both DisplayPort video adapters as well as dual-link DVI.
The W700ds is so wide that it boasts a separate numeric keypad, a rarity on laptop keyboards.
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Forrester: CIOs wrestle with too many enterprise BI tools
More than 40 percent of enterprise IT decision makers said their companies are using three to five different business intelligence analysis and reporting tools, according to a survey released today by Forrester Research Inc.
More than one out of five of the 82 CIOs and IT managers polled by Forrester in August said they are running six or more BI tools.
[ Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line blog and newsletter. ]
That's despite BI consolidation efforts that many IT managers have been engaging in for the past several years.
The survey results probably wouldn't surprise Steve Hirsch, chief data officer at NYSE Euronext Inc.
"From SAS to Business Objects to Brio, we've got pretty much everything that's been released in the last 5 to 10 years," he said.
One reason is the stock market operator's recent merger and acquisition history. NYSE Euronext was created out of the 216-year-old New York Stock Exchange's merger with electronic-trading pioneer, Archipelago Holdings, in 2005 and Amsterdam-based Euronext in 2006.
"We are still in a long process of consolidating," he said.
NYSE Euronext recently adopted analytics-capable data warehousing appliances from Greenplum Inc. and Netezza Inc. for internal analysis of trade execution performance.
Hirsch hopes to choose a BI tool to standardize on in 2009.
The survey also found BI becoming ubiquitous, with almost 60 percent of respondents saying they were deploying BI, data warehousing, or data integration tools across their enterprises.
BI is also evolving beyond reporting only, according to Forrester, though only 27 percent of respondents said they were using it to try to gain a major competitive advantage.
Despite the trend toward self-service BI, three-quarters of respondents said most reports and dashboards are still created by the IT department. And two-thirds said their end-users felt the BI tools were somewhat or very difficult to learn.
More than half of IT managers said their end-users often reverted back to individual tools, such as desktop spreadsheets, to get data or reports they couldn't get through the BI applications.
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