Report: Microsoft to do free Windows 7 upgrades
Microsoft Corp. will offer free or discounted Windows 7 upgrades to users who buy Vista PCs after July 1, according to a Web site that has accurately predicted the company's moves in the past.
TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that correctly named the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) dates for several Windows editions last year, said that Microsoft will unveil a program for Windows 7 that's similar to Vista Express Upgrade, a 2006 marketing effort that provided free or discounted Vista license to buyers of Windows XP in the months leading up to Vista's early-2007 release.
[ InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy thinks that Windows 7 marks the beginning of the end of the Wintel duopoly. Meanwhile, several Vista flaws surface again on the eve of Windows 7 beta. ]
According to TechARP, Microsoft will allow original equipment manufacturers to purchase Windows 7 upgrade media, which they can then offer to customers who buy a Vista-power system between July 1, 2009 and a date to be determined.
The upgrades, however, would not be shipped to those PC buyers until the general availability date for Windows 7. Microsoft has not set a delivery for the new operating system, and instead has stuck a broad range of dates, from late 2009 to early 2010.
The Windows 7 upgrade program as spelled out by TechARP resembled the earlier Vista Express Upgrade. In that program, people who purchased Windows XP PCs between Oct. 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 were eligible to receive free or inexpensive Vista upgrades.
TechARP did not have a closing date for the program, noting only that it was "TBA," or "to be announced." The site did say, however, that OEMs would be free to specify a shorter eligibility period than Microsoft's.
Upgrades will be available from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium, and from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate, said TechARP. Buyers of PCs equipped with Vista Business will be able to upgrade to a Windows 7 Professional.
Vista Express Upgrade also used clearly-defined upgrade paths. People who had bought a computer with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, for example, were offered only Vista Home Premium, while those who purchased an XP Home PC were given Vista Home Basic.
Microsoft and its hardware partners will be hoping for a smoother road to the upgrades this time around. Vista Express Upgrade was plagued with problems, including delays before users received their upgrade discs. In February 2007, nearly a month after Vista hit retail shelves, for instance, users flooded Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. support forums with angry messages about the wait.
In 2006 and 2007, PC makers charged a variety of prices for the XP-to-Vista upgrades. HP offered free upgrades, while others, including Dell, charged users $49. TechARP did not have any information on pricing, which would, if the Windows 7 program is handled the same way, be up to the individual makers.
Microsoft declined to comment on the TechARP posting. "We often explore options with our partners for how we offer products, but we have nothing to announce at this time," a company spokeswoman said Tuesday.
A public beta of Windows 7 is thought to be imminent -- perhaps as early as tomorrow, after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivers a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- but clues on Microsoft's own Web site seem to point to a release no later than next week.
Leaked copiesof the Windows 7 build thought to be the one pegged for beta distribution have been available on file sharing sites for more than a week.
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Cisco brings WebEx to iPhone
Being out of the office without a PC will no longer be an excuse for missing meetings on Cisco Systems' WebEx Meeting Center and Unified MeetingPlace conferencing systems.
On Tuesday, Cisco introduced a free application, available from Apple's App Store, that lets iPhone users participate in WebEx virtual meetings. They can participate in the audio portion of the meetings, use text chat and see presentations, applications and PC desktops that are shown as part of a meeting, according to the company.
[To learn more about which software programs now run on Apple's mobile device, read iPhone apps get down to business. And for InfoWorld's complete coverage of the show, see our Special Report: Macworld Expo 2009.]
The application, which Cisco had hinted at last year, is the company's latest move to make multimedia content and collaboration accessible anywhere. Cisco has gone in a few years from simply making the networks that connect PCs and servers to supplying platforms that individuals actually use on those networks. The high-definition Telepresence Meeting system is the flagship of Cisco's collaboration lineup, while its WebEx and MeetingPlace acquisitions have brought an on-line conferencing service and LAN-based meeting capability, respectively.
Now Cisco is bringing the hottest smartphone on the market into the picture, embracing a product that has taken off as a consumer rather than an enterprise device. Consumer devices and services have a powerful influence on enterprises' technology directions, according to Cisco CEO John Chambers. In fact, the company is expected to use this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to unveil a set of home electronics products.
Users of the iPhone don't need to have a WebEx subscription to participate in meetings with the new application. With the software installed, they can join a meeting by clicking on a link in an e-mailed invitation or by choosing a meeting listed within the application. The WebEx system will then call the iPhone, and the user can join in by picking up the call.
Simultaneous voice and data meetings will work on Wi-Fi or 3G (third-generation) mobile data networks, according to Cisco. On the slower GSM/EDGE (Global System for Mobile Communications/Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) networks used by first-generation iPhones, it can handle voice or data, but not both at once. The software can deliver the audio portion of a meeting using regular voice service from a carrier or the VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) capabilities of WebEx or MeetingPlace.
A future version of the application, coming in the second quarter, will provide the same capabilities for meetings on MeetingPlace. When users come into the office, the new version will let them shift from the iPhone to a PC and a desktop Cisco Unified IP Phone and keep participating in the meeting. When they leave, they can shift back to the iPhone.
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Avoiding the high cost of bad code
While software development technologies continue to advance on multiple fronts, the complexity of software and its management remains a complicated, expensive problem. For instance, too many developers can become involved in a project, and those developers may not be around later to maintain the code they wrote. Plus, software requirements can change, and it can be difficult to track what, exactly, the software was supposed to do.
"The further along a project gets, the harder it is to understand what the original intent was," says Norman Guadagno, director of Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System product line for application lifecycle management.
[ An emerging key challenge facing developers is developing apps for multicore processors. Learn about the key issues in InfoWorld's "Multicore: New chips mean new challenges for developers." ]
"Developers often don't know how the entire system is supposed to [be] organized or how parts of the system should depend on other parts of the system," said Ben Chelf, CTO at Coverity, a software development management vendor.
"Absolutely, [software code maintenance is] costly," says analyst Theresa Lanowitz, founder of research firm Voke. Probably 80 percent of an IT budget is spent on maintenance rather than on new development, she says. Issues arise in areas such as code reuse, where a piece of faulty software can get used in three different projects, for example, and perpetuate an error in three different software products, she adds. Security vulnerabilities present another problem.
"In general, less than 40 percent of software projects meet the desired goals that were set out," says Scott Hebner, vice president of marketing and strategy at IBM Rational. Worse, "the cost of maintaining and operating the applications is growing [in] double digits at a time when the budgets for new application development are shrinking," he adds.
Tools help develop and maintain code
The only way to get around all these issues is to be more effective at application development and maintenance, says Hebner. Analyst Lanowitz agrees, advising IT to use tools to automate the process of finding defects, as well as to use source code maintenance tools. The need to better manage software development and maintenance is critical, she says, because today "software runs the business."
There's no one way to develop and maintain software better, and various vendors propose their own approaches to address various aspects of the problem. For example, IBM Rational offers Rational Requirements Manager to impose discipline in requirements definition in collaborative environments.
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Team System Architecture Edition to help developers understand what is going on with the code, which is often written quickly and thus suffers from poor requirements planning and documentation, Microsoft's Guadagno says. As the code is reused and revised, and as developers move on, the problem gets worse, he adds.
And Coverity offers Architecture Analyzer and Prevent to specify how components in software should interact to reduce code dependencies that can cause execution flaws, then analyze possible code execution paths to see where developers have made mistakes in code interaction.
Building code quality in from the start
But solving the issues of badly designed and maintained code isn't simply a matter of using the right tools. It comes down to following solid management practices. For example, a common issue with enterprise applications is that not enough attention is paid to quality, says Microsoft's Guadagno. Instead, projects are driven by financial and time constraints, resulting in a poor product. Engineers then have to make a lot of fixes, which can be expensive. "It is less expensive to build quality in than it is to add quality after the fact," he says.
The way to get quality built in is by having great application lifecycle management processes, in which participants are responsible for their code, architectural diagrams, and architecture, and where there is good user acceptance testing, Guadagno says. Coverity's Chelf also advocates having clear architectural ownership, as well as designating someone responsible for designing how components should interact and communicating that design.
Agile programming methodologies also help assure quality: "They do lead to better software," says Guadagno.
Developers should implement centralized version control, which enables maintenance of a working version of software if errors are made, and IT managers should hold individuals accountable for their mistakes, advises Jack Repenning, CTO at CollabNet, a vendor of application development management tools. Good source code control and mapping against requirements are both vital, Guadagno adds.
Repenning further suggests that such software-supported discipline be enforced in Web development, where developers tend to be more junior. "Without a good software management framework underneath, you find that changes you make, in particular to your Web site, may not be compatible with another part of the program, which could lead to errors or broken links," he notes.
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Microsoft touts Mac-Windows collaboration
Microsoft on Tuesday said it would launch new Mac software later this year that will let Office 2008 for Mac users collaborate with people running the Windows version of the application suite.
The company made the announcement at the Macworld Conference and Expo, where Apple held its last keynote without CEO Steve Jobs, a longtime fixture at the event.
[ Special report: Macworld 2009 ]
Document Collaboration Companion will be released to a small number of beta testers next month, said a Microsoft spokeswoman in an e-mail today. However, Microsoft would not commit to a definitive final release timetable, saying only that it would deliver the software "later this year."
The program will make it easier, said the spokeswoman, for users to download and upload documents to enterprise servers running SharePoint, Microsoft's browser-based collaboration platform, or to Office Live Workspaces, the free online service that offers similar functionality. Document Collaboration Companion also will provide Mac-based tools to let Office users check in and check out shared documents.
Microsoft touted the upcoming software, and a planned makeover of Entourage, the Office 2008 for Mac e-mail client, as its first moves toward providing some of the same kind of services to its Mac customers that those running Windows already enjoy.
"Entourage Exchange Web Services and the Document Collaboration Companion lets Mac Office users connect with counterparts on a PC," said Eric Wilfrid, the general manager of Microsoft's Mac business group, in a separate statement. "These releases are the first step in harnessing the power of software plus services on the Mac."
Entourage will also be beefed up this year, promised Microsoft, so that it's more equivalent to Outlook, the Windows e-mail client, in enterprises. As part of that upgrade, which Microsoft will offer free-of-charge later this year to Office 2008 users, it is transitioning Entourage to Exchange Web Services (EWS) for connecting to Exchange mail servers, and dropping the currently supported WebDAV.
The changes will also include new support for synchronizing tasks, notes and categories in Entourage via an Exchange server.
A public beta for Entourage EWS will be released later this month, Microsoft said.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Startup Ctera will offer cloud storage through carriers
Startup storage vendor Ctera is looking to service-provider networks as the best place for home and small-business backup and will go through them to sell an appliance that combines local and cloud storage.
The company, based in Israel and Silicon Valley, this week will privately show off its first product at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Called the CloudPlug, it's a small embedded Linux appliance that sits between an external hard drive and a router to turn the drive into network-attached storage. The CloudPlug plugs directly into a wall socket and has a USB port for attachment to an external hard drive and a Gigabit Ethernet port for connection to the router. Ctera also plans to sell appliances with hard drives built in. None will require users to load or maintain software on their PCs, said Ctera Founder and CEO Liran Eshel.
[ See also: "Amazon launches persistent EC2 cloud storage" and "EMC's forecast: cloud storage and flash drives" | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]
Ctera expects all of its products to be delivered by ISPs or managed service providers as part of monthly services rather than being sold. The services would include ongoing backup over the network, but all the data would still reside on a local drive and be available at LAN speeds, Eshel said. The appliance and backup service could take the place of a file server and tape backup system that would require some IT expertise to operate and maintain, Eshel said. These services should be available later this year, he said.
The company aims to take some complexity out of the "cloud storage" concept for the consumers or small businesses that would use it. All users will need to do is plug in the appliance, or attach it to an existing drive and set up the service via a Web interface. The on-site storage can be used both for regular local backups and for sharing files. The Ctera appliances will be managed over the network by the service provider, using a back-end product also provided by Ctera. The service provider could host the backup storage capacity itself or buy it from an online services company such as Amazon.com.
Eshel estimated the services would be sold for tens to hundreds of dollars per month, depending on capacity and WAN speed. The company is approaching service providers around the world and believes its products will be most popular with carriers that offer very high-speed broadband services such as fiber to the home or DOCSIS 3.0, a fast cable technology. Eventually, Ctera may sell its technology for inclusion in other devices a carrier might offer, such as home gateways, Eshel said.
Ctera's approach differs from that of Mozy, the online backup company acquired in 2007 by EMC, in that it requires no PC software and includes both local and remote storage, Eshel said.
Some other cloud-storage vendors, including Seagate's i365, offer options that include on-site storage, said Henry Baltazar, an analyst at The 451 Group. But none has tailored this to the home and small-business market the way Ctera has, he added. Including on-site storage as well as a cloud backup allows users to back up and restore their data even when their network connection is down, which is an important safeguard, he said. Although cloud storage is emerging as the best approach for backup, providing greater flexibility than tape, it is not yet ideal for primary storage because of performance and availability concerns, Baltazar said.
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Apple says goodbye to Macworld, without Jobs
There was a standing ovation at the Macworld Conference and Expo this year, but it wasn't for Steve Jobs or a hot new Apple product.
It was for singer Tony Bennett, who closed an otherwise lackluster keynote address -- Apple's last at the conference -- by Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller. To be fair, Schiller had been given a tough assignment, filling in for Apple CEO Jobs, who dropped out as a keynoter just weeks before the show.
[ Special report: Macworld Expo 2009 ]
During the Tuesday keynote, Apple didn't deliver anything as breathtaking as the next iPhone, but it did come up with a few new offerings for the faithful, such as versions of its iLife and iWork software and a slim 17-inch MacBook Pro that will ship with new long-lasting batteries that will keep the laptop running for as long as eight hours. The company also introduced a competitor to Google Docs called iWork.com and announced plans to start making all music on its iTunes store available under its iTunes Plus program, so free of digital rights management.
For years, Apple has used Macworld as a stage for launching some of its most exciting products. But with Jobs missing this year and Apple saying that it would not participate in future Macworld conferences, pundits had figured that Apple might hold off on any ground-breaking product news at this year's show. They were right.
Apple's most interesting news related to iTunes.
Apple began introducing freely copyable iTunes music last year when it began selling songs from EMI's catalog for an extra $0.30 per song under a program called iTunes Plus. On Tuesday, Schiller said that Apple has now expanded iTunes plus to cover 8 million of the 10 million iTunes songs. By the end of March, the entire song catalog will be available under the program, he said.
In another big change for music lovers, Apple will also begin selling its regular iTunes songs at two new prices, starting in April: $0.69 per song and $1.29 per song. To date, regular iTunes songs have gone for a flat rate of $0.99.
For Mac OS fans, the big news was the new 17-inch MacBook Pro. Based on the same aluminum unibody design as the 13-inch and 15-inch versions of the laptop, the model will be less than an inch (2.5 cm) thick and will weigh 6.6 pounds (3 kilograms). But Schiller called the laptop's redesigned battery, which will last three hours longer than its predecessor, its "most innovative feature." Apple says that the new battery, which will use a microchip to control current flow, can be fully recharged 1,000 times, about three times the industry standard.
Schiller kicked off his keynote by introducing a new version of Apple's iLife suite of multimedia software. Expected by the end of the month, iLife 09 will include jazzed up editing software that integrates with Google Maps to let users create maps of where their videos and photos were taken. The suite's iPhoto software will have new face-recognition features and will also be integrated with Facebook and Flickr.
The new Garageband 09 software will come with new multimedia piano and guitar lessons for beginners. For $4.99, users will be able to buy a lesson from music stars like Sting, John Fogerty,and Norah Jones. Budding musicians will be able to follow the lessons on their Macs, looking at videos of the instructors, finger positioning, and musical scores all at the same time. "It's so simple and such a breakthrough way to learn music," Schiller said.
Available immediately, the iWork office suite will let users access an online service called iWork.com, where they can share iWork documents, Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF documents with others, much in the same fashion as Google Docs. Apple plans to eventually start charging for iWork.com, but for now the service is available as a free beta for Apple users, Schiller said.
Macworld is run by International Data Group, which also owns the IDG News Service.
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Vista's flaws surface again on eve of Windows 7 beta
Attendees of the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York Tuesday were reminded of the shortcomings of Windows Vista a day before Microsoft is expected to reveal the first beta for its follow-up, Windows 7.
Microsoft Investigative Consultant Michael Dunner asked attendees how many of them have used Vista as he gave a presentation on the security differences between that OS and Windows 7.
[ Related: InfoWorld's Randall C. Kennedy and OSNews' Thom Holwerda went head-to-head on how to assess Windows 7's changes | Kennedy: Vista SP2 is the new standard ]
When people in the audience raised their hands, Dunner then asked, "How many of you like it?" Only about half of those who acknowledged using Vista raised their hands.
Dunner also called Vista's UAC (User Account Control) feature "annoying" and one of its "biggest problems," to which one audience member responded, "Yes, it is annoying."
Problems with UAC have been widely publicized and even spoofed by television commercials from competitor Apple. The feature was meant to improve the security of Vista by preventing users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a PC. But because of how it was set up, it can prevent even authorized users from being able to access applications and features through a series of screen prompts that interrupt normal user workflow to ask for account privileges.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to unveil the Windows 7 beta during his keynote Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Microsoft has publicly acknowledged the limitations of UAC. The company has called it one of Vista's most "controversial" features and has said it will improve the feature in Windows 7 to make it more efficient and to reduce the number of prompts users receive.
Dunner's comments and the lackluster audience response to Vista Tuesday was evidence of users' overall disappointment with the OS, which many view as a failure for Microsoft. In addition to problems consumers have reported, many business customers have opted to skip Vista and run Windows XP until Windows 7 is available.
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Curl bolsters RIA data access
Curl, maker of the Curl Rich Internet Application Platform for Internet development, on Tuesday is releasing Curl Data Kit Data Services, providing an alternative to cumbersome XML-based data access for Curl applications.
Instead of XML, Curl's data services library leverages Adobe AMF (Action Message Format), a binary protocol for exchanging data between an RIA client and server platforms, Curl said.
[ Related: Adobe opened up access to AMF last year. ]
"Today, most access to databases is through XML," which is verbose and slow, said Richard Treadway, vice president of marketing and product strategy at Curl. Using AMF provides higher performance, he said.
The initial release of the of the library implements remoting and Web messaging services supported by the open-source BlazeDS server, including publish/subscribe, RPC, and security and authorization capabilities. Communication with the server is asynchronous, which is an important option for usability and keeps the user interface active while waiting for a response from the server, Curl said.
Curl features a language and runtime environment that installs on the client. By running native on the client as opposed to being in an interpretive fashion, Curl applications offer performance advantages, Treadway said.
The free library can be accessed at this Web page.
Curl said the data services library continues Curl's initiative to provide libraries for data-centric applications. The CDK library released in July 2008 offered support for local SQL databases, for storage and retrieval of data using the SQLite engine.
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iTunes Store goes DRM-free
Apple has announced three significant changes to its iTunes Store at Macworld Expo, but the first is undoubtedly the biggest news: The music and video download service, which features more than 10 million songs, is finally going DRM-free.
Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller told the assembled throngs at Macworld Expo this morning that the service has sold six billion songs since going online in 2003. More than 75 million accounts with credit cards have been created thus far.
[ Special report: Macworld Expo 2009 ]
No more DRM by the end of March
iTunes Plus is Apple's DRM-free encoding for the iTunes Store; music is encoded using the AAC format at 256Kbps. Beginning today, 8 million of the iTunes Store's 10 million songs will be offered without DRM; the entire catalog is expected to go DRM-free by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2009.
New pricing structure
Since going online, the iTunes Store has retained one pricing model: 99 cents per track, with many albums priced at $9.99. That's changing in April, said Schiller; there will then be three pricing tiers: 99 cents, 69 cents, and $1.29. Schiller assured the crowd that more songs are going to be offered at 69 cents than at $1.29, however.
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store goes 3G
The iTunes Music Store previously was limited to allowing purchases on the iPhone only over Wi-Fi; that restriction has been lifted, at least for iPhone 3G users, who can now purchase and download content to their iPhones over a 3G connection. That feature is being implemented today, and provides iPhone users with the same price and selection on the iPhone as they would find on iTunes on the Mac or PC.
Macworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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'Leap second' snafu affects Oracle clusterware
The additional second that time-tracking scientists added to 2008 to adjust for the slowing of the earth's rotation is causing problems with Oracle's CRS (Cluster Ready Services) clusterware, but a pair of fixes are available, said an Oracle document dated Monday.
CRS is used in conjunction with Oracle's Real Application Clusters software, which allows one Oracle database to be deployed on a group of servers or "nodes," providing fault tolerance and scalability.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
The "leap second event" is causing CRS nodes to reboot, according to an Oracle document detailing the problem. Among the affected platforms are Oracle Server Enterprise Edition Version 10.1.0.2 to 11.1.0.7; Sun Solaris SPARC (64-bit); and Oracle CRS and patchsets 10.2.0.1 to 11.1.0.7.
Coordinated UTC (Universal Time) is the world's standard for time. UTC is "regularly adjusted by introducing a leap second based on the accumulated difference between the atomic clock time and UT1, the time reflecting the Earth's rotational speed," Oracle said.
Leap seconds are handled by the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service (IERS), which added one second to Dec. 31.
Due to this, "NTP daemons had to adjust time accordingly and CRS product stack has encountered problems resulting in node reboots," the Oracle document states.
NTP, which stands for Network Time Protocol, is the standard used for synchronizing the clocks of computers. NTP employs UTC for a reference time.
The reboots will occur on affected nodes only when two specific conditions are present, which are detailed in Oracle's announcement. The document also includes two methods for fixing the issue, including available patches.
A spokesman for Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
The rebooting issue prompted some discussion on user forums and lists in recent days.
"This begs the question -- how the heck do timekeepers and politicians get away with last minute time changes?" one user posted. "Surely there's some pushback from technology-related interest groups to try and get more than four weeks warning?"
Other posters, however, pointed out that the IERS announcement regarding the most recent leap second was made in July 2008.
Oracle's announcement is one of the latest leap-year related bugs to surface. Last week, one involved Microsoft's Zune media player.
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Apple adds productivity features to iWork
Apple announced a new version of iWork, its collection of business productivity tools, during Tuesday's Macworld Expo keynote. iWork '09 features new versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers.
The updated version of Keynote, iWork's presentation component, adds a Magic Move feature in which users set a start and endpoint for slides and the program figures out the options for moving objects between them. The update also adds new transitions and themes.
[ Special report: Macworld Expo 2009 ]
Another new feature -- Keynote Remote -- is an application for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets you control your presentation from your mobile device. The application will cost $1.
Pages '09 is highlighted by the addition of full-screen view that lets users focus completely on their writing project. Moving the mouse up to the top of the screen gives users access to Pages' menus.
The new version of Pages also adds a dynamic outline feature for organizing writing projects. The page view reflects any changes you make to the outline.
Other additions to Pages include support for MathType and EndNote formulas for scientists and academics and new templates.
Finally, Numbers '09 adds table categories to the spreadsheet application. Select a "categorize by this column" choice, and Numbers automatically creates a table based on that category.
A new formula window in Numbers lets you choose from many different functions -- more than 250 -- with variables.
Numbers also features new chart options, including mixed chart types, multi-axis charts, charts with trendlines, and error bars. Users can link charts into Pages as well, with changes reflected in both iWork apps.
iWork '09 is shipping now. It costs $79, with a family pack available for $99. Apple is also bundling iWork '09 with iLife '09 in a $169 Mac Box Set that also includes Leopard. The box set ships later this month.
More information about iWork '09 will be posted shortly.
Macworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Apple lacks broad corporate strategy but sees gains
You won't hear much talk about corporate IT at Apple's Macworld Conference this week, but the maker of the iPhone and the Mac is nonetheless making steady progress in the enterprise technology world.
More companies are bringing Macs within their networks and increasing support for the iPhone, recent surveys show. Macs are generally pricier than Windows PCs but an increasing number of companies are letting employees choose their own desktops and many of them are choosing Macs, says Pund-IT analyst Charles King.
[ InfoWorld explains why businesses are embracing Macs, and offers these real-life stories about companies that have added Macs to the mix, including the good and bad lessons learned along the way. ]
"We're seeing an increasing number of companies that are allowing their employees much broader latitude in the computers they use for business," King says. "Personally, I'm seeing more and more Macs on the road when I travel."
Several surveys back up King's statement. In one report, Forrester Research chided Apple for not having an enterprise strategy, but said Mac usage among Forrester clients has still quadrupled since October 2006, moving from 1.1 to 4.5 percent of desktops.
"Apple's singular focus on user experience has resulted in some success in the enterprise -- without even trying to break into the market," Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray writes. Gray says the success of the iPhone is driving desktop operations professionals to seek better end-to-end experiences with the Mac, and younger, tech-savvy workers are choosing Macs because they feel the Apple computers enhance productivity.
While Macs represent fewer than one in 20 corporate desktops, more than two-thirds of companies responding to a survey by ITIC analyst Laura DiDio say they are likely to let users deploy Macs within the next year. Nearly one-quarter of the 700 survey participants had at least 50 Macintoshes in their organizations, DiDio writes.
Moreover, 50 percent of ITIC survey respondents plan to increase integration with Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to give users access to corporate e-mail and other applications, DiDio writes.
When the iPhone first appeared, analysts at Gartner warned enterprises that the device lacked crucial security features and support for widely used e-mail systems such as Microsoft Exchange.
King says he's not convinced the iPhone offers productivity benefits over the BlackBerry, but says concerns about merging the iPhone with existing e-mail systems seem to have disappeared.
Forrester predicts that 10 percent of small and midsize businesses (SMB) will deploy iPhones in 2009, but adoption won't be as strong among large enterprises, which have stricter IT requirements.
"Now that the iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, push e-mail, contacts and calendar, and can be remotely wiped if lost or stolen, it does indeed address key business mobility requirements," Forrester analyst Michele Pelino writes. "As a result, we believe that the iPhone will make a more significant dent in the enterprise mobility market, primarily among SMBs, which typically don't have as strict IT requirements as large enterprises or widespread line-of-business application deployments."
Apple has not had as much success with its line of business servers, including the Mac OS X Server, the Mac Pro and Xserve.
Apple's server revenue market share was just one-tenth of one percent in the third quarter of 2008, with revenue of $13 million on 7,403 server shipments, according to Gartner data. Apple's number of shipments was higher than in 2007 but revenue still dropped slightly.
Apple recently lured server expert Mark Papermaster away from IBM, where he had worked for 26 years and was the company's top official working on Power microprocessors and the vice president of IBM's blade server development unit.
IBM sued Apple to block it from hiring Papermaster, saying he had signed a noncompetition agreement and that Apple competes against IBM in developing servers, PCs and microprocessors. (Compare server products.)
The case is still working its way through court, but Apple says it hired Papermaster not to help it develop better servers but to lead engineering for iPods and iPhones. Apple may want to tap Papermaster's market and partnering expertise to broaden the reach of the iPhone further into the enterprise, says Gartner analyst Jeffrey Hewitt.
In terms of servers, Apple has made multiple attempts over the years to penetrate that market with limited success, says Forrester analyst James Staten. The servers are attractive for needs such as video and photo editing and publishing, and video game development, he says. IT folks who already use Mac desktops sometimes want a "Mac-like server" that's easy to use and install, Hewitt adds.
But while Apple servers are competitive in terms of horsepower they don't meet typical enterprise standards, according to Staten, who notes a lack of integration with remote management tools that make it easier to identify failures and potential fixes.
"It's a big leap to assume an Apple would be able to become a Tier 1 server provider," he says.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Microsoft bangs 'Apple tax' drum once again
Microsoft on Monday again pushed its claim that consumers pay an "Apple tax" when they buy Mac hardware rather than PCs running the Windows operating system.
In an e-mail to reporters Monday, Microsoft repeated the argument it first made last October, a day before rival Apple Inc. was slated to make a major product announcement. The next day, Apple unveiled new MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
Microsoft again pitted Mac prices against similarly configured Windows PCs from the likes of Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. Not surprisingly, Microsoft's comparisons put Apple's hardware at a disadvantage, with the "tax" ranging from 16 percent, or $100, for the entry-level Mac Mini to 25 percent, or $300, for the lowest-priced iMac desktop.
Microsoft also played the recession card as it knocked Apple's prices. "We're in the midst of difficult economic times -- declining retail sales and lower consumer confidence," a Microsoft spokeswoman said. "People are...demanding more substance with their style in a computer. They simply do not have the luxury of spending more for less.
"Windows PCs are offering the best value on the market," she argued, "while Apple continues to impose high price premiums on their Mac designs, offering only modest discounts of 5 to 10 percent."
Prior to the holidays, some retailers did cut Mac prices, including the newest MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, by up to 10 percent.
Microsoft's tax-talk timing was not coincidental: Apple will likely make several product announcements later Tuesday when Philip Schiller, the company's head marketing executive, gives the keynote to open this year's Macworld Conference & Expo.
CEO Steve Jobs, who has traditionally handled the duty, bowed out last month. Yesterday, Jobs announced that he is undergoing treatment for what he described as a hormone imbalance that has caused him to lose weight.
Ironically, Microsoft, whose Office 2008 suite is one of the best selling Mac programs, also hung the "Apple tax" label on software. "It's more expensive to replace your applications on a Mac and more difficult to find applications that work with a Mac," said the Microsoft spokeswoman.
According to the NPD Group, Apple's prices may be impacting sales. Retail Mac sales fell 1 percent in November compared to the year before, the research company said last month. "Apple's not immune to the economy," said NPD analyst Stephen Baker at the time.
Sales of Windows PCs during November, however, were up 7 percent over the same time the year before. "If December looks similar, if [Apple doesn't] crush the rest of the market [in growth], then that might convince me to say that they need to lower prices," Baker said two weeks ago.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The CAN-SPAM Act as a warning
It is widely expected that the new Congress and administration will be passing a lot of regulations to deal with all sorts of perceived problems. It may be that the now 5-year-old CAN-SPAM Act is one of the better examples of what not to do as far as regulations go.
When it was passed, the act (official name: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) was touted -- by the politicians at least -- as a tool to help control the growth of spam. Few of us in the tech world thought it would do any good, and in fact, the general feeling was that it was actually designed to legitimize unsolicited e-mail (see "Can: to be enabled by law").
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Back in October, Network World's Carolyn Duffy Marsan reviewed the legislation and asked, "What went wrong?" Her article did a good job of covering the act and its status as a failure. It may be, however, that some important lessons were more hinted at than articulated.
The most important lesson is to not let the industry you are claiming to regulate write the regulations. The CAN-SPAM Act was written to legitimize the business of spam, and it was written to satisfy the spammers themselves. A spam-related regulation that really was aimed at providing relief for Internet users would have started with an opt-in requirement -- an opt-in requirement that did not have an exemption for a theoretical previous business relationship.
The next most important lesson is to give enforcement to somebody who cares. The Network World article reported that as of a year ago, the Federal Trade Commission had brought about 30 law-enforcement actions. In the face of more than 100 billion spam messages per year, 30 actions barely qualify as a pin prick. It is clear that the FTC either just does not care about the law or has actively decided it should ignore spam. (Along the same line, it might not be a good thing for federal regulations to override stronger state regulations.)
Yet another important lesson is that legislation should address the people who benefit from bad behavior. A far more effective antispam act would have gone after the companies using spam to advertise their wares and services, as well as after the ISPs supporting the spammers.
Having an antispam act that really was designed to fight spam would not have stopped it, but in looking at what happened when McColo was taken down last November (see "The spam problem was mostly solved last Tuesday"), one can see what could have happened if there had been a concerned enforcement agency and a law that went after spam supporters.
Government regulations all too frequently do far more damage than god -- as the CAN-SPAN Act did. Thus it's often better not to regulate -- but in view of the lessons from the banking and too many other crises, not regulating essentially is a non-option.
So, I expect the Obama crowd will have plenty of chances over the next few years to do better than CAN-SPAM. How well they do will be a good indicator of the relative strengths of the impulse to do something good for Internet users and the impulse to do something good for well-heeled lobbyists promising campaign donations.
Disclaimer: I know of no university position on the CAN-SPAM Act or on the altruism of the lobbyists who helped shape it, so the above is my own set of lessons to be learned.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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3 Videoconferencing services pick up where travel budgets leave off
The first round of layoffs has taken hold, your annual bonus seems like a cruel joke, and travel is off-limits. So how are you going to give your presentation next week in Omaha to show off your company's upcoming products to your biggest customer?
I have one word for you: videoconferencing. By combining video and audio over the Internet, businesspeople can present ideas and work together digitally. In other words, it's time to collaborate and interact with people across the planet without leaving the office.
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"As travel gets squeezed out of budgets, videoconferences are increasingly becoming the way business is being done," explains Roopam Jain, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "It can provide face time without getting in the way of working."
In fact, videoconferencing is already having an effect on business. Rip Curl, a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based maker of surfing equipment, conducts video calls so that its designers, marketers and manufacturers can collaborate on new products. 1-800-Flowers.com conducts video meetings to make sure that seasonal employees can consistently create its most elaborate holiday decorations. Executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International conducts video interviews to screen potential candidates before presenting them to clients.
Getting better
In the past, videoconferencing wasn't much of an alternative. Desktop videoconferencing systems rightfully got a black eye for choppy video, out-of-sync audio and a lack of reliability. The only way to conduct a high-quality videoconference was to use a dedicated video room that required an investment upwards of $100,000, or rental fees between $500 and $1,000 an hour.
Today's videoconferencing services have improved to the point where they can give the dedicated rooms a run for their money. These services provide the ability to talk face-to-face with someone across town or across the globe, share documents and make annotations, at a fraction the cost of a dedicated video room.
It helps that most current desktop and notebook computers have sufficient power for decent videoconferencing. Obviously, the machine needs to have video camera, audio and reasonably up-to-date graphics, but these are becoming standard on even the cheapest notebooks these days.
A 50Kbit/sec. or 100Kbit/sec. Internet connection is adequate. This allows the peripatetic among us to use a Wi-Fi connection at a hotel or cafe and even a cell-network data card to connect.
To get a handle on the state of the art of videoconferencing services, I signed up for three business services that let people talk, see one another, interact and exchange ideas online: SightSpeed Business, InterCall Genesys Meeting Center and WebEx Meeting Center. They all put businesspeople face to face and offer the ability to collaborate with each other. They differ, however, on price, how easy they are to use and the quality of the video they display.
InterCall Genesys Meeting Center
By integrating the ability to view each participant while sharing any application with the group, InterCall's Genesys Meeting Center points the way to a future where we won't have to travel as much. Unfortunately, Meeting Center sells for three times what the other products go for.
To get started, Genesys requires that you download and install a 14MB application. It takes about 10 minutes to load, set up and be ready to make your first video call, but the software is only for PCs, not Macs or Linux computers like the others are. Non-PC conference participants can view the action via any up-to-date browser, but they can't be seen by the conference's other participants.
Once the software is installed, Genesys adds buttons to Microsoft Outlook and Messenger as well as Lotus Notes for setting up a conference, making it the quickest and easiest in this roundup for getting a videoconference started.
However, it doesn't set up the system's hardware as completely as SightSpeed does -- you'll need to tell the application where your camera is, as well as adjust parameters such as frame rate and resolution to suit your circumstances.
A Genesys videoconference starts with a traditional phone call, with either the host calling in or the server automatically calling the host. Other participants can use VoIP for audio. There's no limit to the number of conference participants, but you can see only nine at a time.
As host, you can choose to open with a rather bland welcome screen or a presentation. After that, you can advance slides and annotate them with excellent tools, including lines and symbols. In testing, there was a slight delay between the actual annotation and the broadcast, and the movement of the pen or cursor was not as smooth as it was with WebEx.
Unfortunately, while Genesys excels in application sharing, its video is from the Dark Ages. The best it can do is about 10 frames per second; at times during testing, it displayed no better than 3 or 4 frames per second. The video is restricted to a small window, and you can't see both sending and receiving videos at once, a feature that's available on SightSpeed and WebEx.
Genesys has a polling feature and a mute button; however, you can't freeze the video or put up a gray screen to protect your privacy. Unlike SightSpeed, you can't have a video chat with a support technician, although the company's support hot line is open 24 hours a day.
Genesys was not only able to work on wired and Wi-Fi connections but did well with a cell-network data connection. The most expensive of the three, it costs $75 a month to use, although that comes down to $50 a month if a company buys 50 subscriptions. You can also set up conferences on the fly for 35 cents per minute. A 15-day free trial is available.
All told, Genesys Meeting Center lives up to its name by providing a place to support interaction and collaboration, but it falls short on video quality.
SightSpeed Business
The newest of the three services, SightSpeed Business has been designed from the ground up to deliver top-quality video -- and makes the most of it with an incredibly easy interface that puts everything needed at your fingertips. While it provides the user with a variety of video features, SightSpeed doesn't allow participants to share what's on their desktops, but they can send files in the background that can be run locally.
Compatible with Windows and Mac systems, the SightSpeed application takes about five minutes to download and install. (Linux users can attend conferences via a Web browser.) After setup, the program searches your system, locates the webcam and optimizes its own settings for the hardware at hand.
If you don't like the result, you can manually tweak all the settings. At any time, you can type Control-S to see statistics like frames per second, resolution and bandwidth, which are excellent for optimizing the video or troubleshooting a problem.
While WebEx and Genesys hide some major functions in a traditional Windows menu structure (it can take three or more mouse clicks to get to them), SightSpeed places them on buttons right out in front where you can't miss them. For example, it takes only one click to record a videoconference, while the others require you to wade through a traditional menu structure.
My favorite feature is SightSpeed's address book, which has photos of all your contacts. Just click on the camera icon, and you're making a call; alternatively, you can set up an audioconference or text chat, or send the person a video e-mail. At the bottom of the screen are controls for the current call, audio and video; at any time, you can mute the audio or freeze the video.
You can see up to nine participants at all times, along with an inset of the video your system is sending -- something that Genesys' Meeting Center doesn't have. There is also a feature that lets the moderator take a poll of those connected.
The service can handle video at up to 640-by-480 resolution; it automatically scales back if your available bandwidth declines. During test conferences, the video was limited to roughly 320-by-240 resolution but still looked good, without any choppiness or out-of-sync audio. SightSpeed's video showed good color balance, although the image could get washed out by bright lights in the background.
There's a slight delay in switching from one participant to another, but the whole system worked surprisingly well, regardless of whether it was connected via a LAN cable, Wi-Fi or a cell-network data card.
If something goes wrong, SightSpeed has tech support people available from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Pacific) weekdays for a video chat. The other two videoconferencing services reviewed here have support personnel available 24/7 but rely on e-mail and phone calls to troubleshoot problems.
Logitech, the computer peripheral maker, recently bought SightSpeed, but the company says it has no plans to change the basic offering or pricing. At $20 for a monthly subscription, this service is cheap but limited in what it can do. You can cut that to $14 per seat if you buy 50 subscriptions. On top of video, SightSpeed offers inexpensive VoIP phone calls, and the monthly plan includes 500 minutes of talk time within the U.S. and Canada; after that, it costs 2 cents per minute.
Overall, SightSpeed is a great offering for those who want to see who they're talking to, but it won't work for users who need the ability to work together on a document or presentation.
WebEx Meeting Center
A division of networking giant Cisco, WebEx is the industry leader in desktop videoconferencing -- the company hosts 125,000 videoconferences a month. While the WebEx Meeting Center service does a great job of providing a place to collaborate, it lags on video.
It took me less than five minutes to download and install the WebEx client, which is available for a full range of systems, including Windows, Mac OS, Linux and even Sun's Solaris flavor of Unix. This is the only product in its class with such a wide variety of client software.
As with Genesys, WebEx allows conference participants to attend via a Web browser instead of downloading the client, although only as passive viewers and listeners.
On the downside, there's a known vulnerability with WebEx's ActiveX component that might allow outsiders to take control of your computer. I hope that it will be plugged sometime soon.
Also, like Genesys', WebEx's software requires that you do some manual configuration of the video stream after installation. You'll need to pick the frame rate (up to 15 frames per second) and video resolution (128-by-96, 176-by-144 or 352-by-288). These choices are quite a bit lower resolution than the others'.
The video stream is relegated to a small window but, unlike with Genesys, you can see yourself as well as the other participants at the same time. While the program's interface has a mute button, you'll need to use the computer's controls to adjust the volume, and there's no blank screen or video-freeze option.
As with the other applications in this round, in addition to scheduling a conference, you can start one right away or attend an existing one. Scheduling isn't as easy as the one-click Outlook, Messenger and Notes integration that Genesys has. The hardest part for WebEx is entering the nine-digit code number and password to attend a conference.
Any participant can see up to six other people (the other two let you see nine). A conference starts with a plain old telephone call, but participants can use VoIP to hear what's going on.
As host, you can start the show with a presentation slide or a video stream. At any time, you can share your desktop or any document or file. With a nice set of annotation tools, participants can mark up whatever is on-screen and point to interesting areas. In testing, the action was smoother than with Genesys, but there was a slight delay.
At $69 a month, WebEx's service is between SightSpeed and Genesys on price; an annual subscription costs $59, and a volume discount for 50 seats cuts the cost to $50 per user.
Overall, if your company values collaborating on presentations and other documents more than seeing a sharp and vivid view of the participants, Meeting Manager can help get you all on the same virtual page.
How we tested
To see how well these videoconferencing services worked, I set up two video workstations: a Dell Vostro 1510 with Windows Vista, and a Lenovo IdeaBook S-10 with Windows XP. Each had a built-in webcam. One system was set up with a wired Ethernet connection to a cable data connection, and the other to either a Wi-Fi connection at a Starbucks or AT&T's 3G mobile data connection.
After loading in each videoconferencing application and familiarizing myself with the service and interface, I initiated a call between the two stations and evaluated each, taking into consideration video delay, audio echo, and the quality of synchronization and video.
Then I tried to freeze the video, mute the audio and record the call (assuming these features were available). Finally, I sent files and transferred or shared an application between the systems while continuing the conference.
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Landing interviews in a tough market
Even when the economy is thriving, landing interviews for IT positions can be daunting. Under today's challenging conditions, it may feel like a distant possibility. While market realities have indeed made it more difficult to secure job interviews, they don't affect every job seeker equally. The fact is that some companies are conducting interviews. The candidates who approach their search in a persistent, strategic and positive way are the ones most likely to be taking advantage of those opportunities.
Challenge your assumptions
[ Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line blog and newsletter. ]
The first mistake many job seekers make is to assume that companies aren't hiring. There's always a need for skilled IT professionals, even when cutbacks affect other business areas. Keep your eyes and ears open, and don't discount any possibilities. Think of past positions you've held -- did they come about in an orderly, predictable way, or through an unexpected connection or chain of events?
Likewise, you never know which contact will lead to another contact who ultimately leads you to a promising opportunity. Word of mouth is at its most valuable during turbulent times. Make a list of people in -- or near -- your network who might be able to provide job leads or move your resume to the top of the pile. Use online tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn to augment your in-person efforts, and bring people on the outskirts of your network inside it.
Also consider expanding your search. If your area of the country has been hit especially hard, are you willing to search for employment elsewhere? If so, take some time to identify regions where the economy has remained relatively strong. Sources such as the Robert Half Technology Salary Guide can help you identify areas where demand might be higher for your skills and experience.
Do your homework
Especially during difficult economic conditions, hiring managers are likely to favor candidates who have made an effort to learn about the firm's challenges rather than merely sending out generic pleas for employment. Before applying for a position, learn about the employer and its needs. Your cover letter and resume should clearly convey how your skills and experience can help meet those needs.
Start by doing some research online about the company's history, industry, market, chief competitors and business objectives. Because most of your competition for a position will also have done at least a little homework about the company, try to find information that isn't widely available. Use your network to gain a more intimate sense of the business from people who have worked there.
Get face time
IT job candidates who are focused exclusively on quickly landing an offer often neglect informational interviews, which can be set up with a simple call or e-mail.
While you shouldn't approach such interviews with the express purpose of landing a job, meeting with a hiring manager at a company you're interested in can provide you with a valuable connection and help you identify skills that you need to improve. It's also a relatively nonstressful way to build your confidence and hone your interviewing skills. And even if it does neither of those things, simply making personal contact with employers can prevent feelings of frustration and isolation when you're unemployed.
An informational interview is one chance to differentiate yourself from the competition -- not only with your skills and experience, but also with your attitude. During tight markets, hiring managers meet a lot of candidates who unconsciously exude desperation or resignation -- hardly the attributes that help a company weather difficult times.
Why to expect success
A positive outlook doesn't mean hiding your frustration with a smile and a hearty handshake. Instead, it should inform all your actions. For example, if you submit a resume and don't hear back promptly, don't assume that the opportunity is dead. Follow up to emphasize your continued interest in the position, and reassert how you think you can help the company. This simple step can dramatically increase your chances of being called in for an interview.
Of course, acting as if you expect instant results won't guarantee you a raft of interview invitations or job offers. But if you persist, it will ultimately give you an edge on the competition. It will also help you maintain your focus on your long-term career growth, rather than on your immediate desires or fears. That way, when a promising opportunity does arise, you'll be in the best possible position to seize it.
Katherine Spencer Lee is executive director of Robert Half Technology , a leading provider of IT professionals on a project and full-time basis. Robert Half Technology has more than 100 locations worldwide and offers online job search services at www.rht.com.
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CES: HTC S743 Smart Phone Is Sleek but Pricey
One of the many smart-phone rumors that have been floating around prior to this year's CES is that T-Mobile will unveil the G2, the successor to the Google Android-based G1. People have speculated that the HTC Touch HD, already available overseas, will be rebranded for the United States as the next Android phone. But so far the only new HTC phone announced at CES is a Windows Mobile phone, the HTC S743.
Already available in other regions, the HTC S743 handset takes some design cues from last year's HTC Touch Diamond. Though the S743 is not a touch-screen device, it does have a distinctive and sophisticated design.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
This ultraslim smart phone (4.6 by 1.7 by 0.6 inches, 4.9 ounces) features a 12-key number pad and a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. Instant messaging and SMS are easily accessible from both the 12-key interface and the keyboard. The handset also has a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera with a second VGA camera for video calling, and Bluetooth compatibility.
The biggest drawback of the HTC S743 is its hefty price. The handset will be sold unlocked, which presents both pros and cons. On the upside, it will work on any U.S. GSM network, so it isn't tied to a carrier. On the downside, it won't have a subsidized carrier price, so retailers will determine its cost. HTC is estimating that the phone will cost somewhere between $600 and $700. The company confirms that the S743 will be available later this quarter.
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IP call centers will do well despite VoIP slowdown
Sales of IP contact centers will grow in 2009, but probably not as dramatically as they did in 2008 due to an expected slowdown in sales of IP telephony gear, according to a new Infonetics report.
Worldwide, businesses bought $851 million in IP contact center equipment, up 37% from $622 million in 2007, based on the report, Unified Communications and IP Contact Center Market Share and Forecasts. The 2008 numbers are based on actual sales numbers for the first half of the year and projections for the second half, says Matthias Machowinski, the author of the report.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
That blistering pace will likely not be matched this year because sales of IP phone equipment will drop off due to the overall economic climate. "We expect companies to scrutinize expenditures a lot in 2009," Machowinski says, with some areas such as networking gear to face less dramatic reductions than IP phone systems.
Within IP telephony, contact centers will do relatively well however for two reasons. First, the transition between TDM phone systems and IP phone systems is still in progress, and will continue. IP contact centers ride that trend, he says.
And second, improved efficiency and capability that IP contact centers can deliver promise a better bottom line for businesses that rely on the centers for sales and customer service, he says. "IP contact centers can drive costs out of customer interactions," by making them quicker and tying up agents for less time per call so they can handle more calls, he says.
"We still expect IP contact center sales to grow," Machowinski says, "But if you go from 37% to 5%, let's say, it could be considered a disappointment."
Avaya leads competitors in both the number of seats sold and in revenues, controlling 40% of the seats and 35% of the revenues, with Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent lagging behind. Cisco, however, is gaining, perhaps as a consequence of its success selling IP PBXs. "[An IP contact center] is a logical follow-up sale to an IP PBX," Machowinski says.
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FileMaker rejuvenates look with new version
FileMaker has tweaked the user interface in a "significant" new version of its flagship relational database, FileMaker Pro.
The Apple subsidiary launched FileMaker Pro 10 on Monday, promising "the most dramatic design changes in over a decade." Indeed, the new release features a redesigned and customisable Status Toolbar, similar to browser toolbars. This, says the company, allows commonly used FileMaker Pro features that were previously only accessible from the main menu, to be closer to hand.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
"This is a very significant release, giving the user interface the most change in over ten years, so it is not just a little refresh," explained Tony Speakman, regional manager for Northern Europe. Indeed, FileMaker has long been associated with the integration of a database engine with the GUI-based interface. Back in the 1980s, FileMaker was one of a handful of database applications released for the Apple Macintosh, but it is not just a Mac-oriented database.
"The Mac emphasis is a perception but if you look at market penetration, 90 percent of machines used in businesses are PCs, and it is fair to say that the majority of our customers are PC-based," said Speakman.
FileMaker Pro can run on both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and one of its key advantages is that it looks and feels exactly the same in Windows as on a Mac.
Speakman told Techworld of the other new features in FileMaker Pro 10, which now has the ability to automatically save searches. This is a useful feature that allows users to save specific searches. For example, a search to locate customers in London who have spent more than £1,000 ($1,459) in the past year, but have not ordered in the last three months, can now be saved and used repeatedly again in the future.
Script Triggers have also been introduced in the new version. A FileMaker Script is essentially similar to a spreadsheet macro, and these can now be run based on timing or whenever users take a specified action in Browse Mode or Find Mode, such as clicking in a field or exiting a viewing mode. FileMaker Pro comes with 12 ready-to-use Script Triggers (five object-based and seven layout-based).
The database also has the ability to pull data in from an Excel 2007 spreadsheet, or a .CSV, Tab or Bento 2 file.
It also features dynamic reports, allowing users to make changes on the fly to their underlying data, and then allowing them to see this updated information in a report, without them having to rerun the report.
SQL support has been enhanced, and it can now display, access and use data from a greater number of SQL sources, including SQL tables in Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Oracle 11g and MySQL 5.1 community edition.
Users can also send email directly from FileMaker Pro instead of having to open their email client, thanks to the ability to send mail via SMTP.
FileMaker is shipping the entire FileMaker Pro 10 product line, which includes FileMaker Pro 10 Advanced (the developer version), as well as FileMaker Server 10 and FileMaker Server 10 Advanced (which includes web publishing capabilities). FileMaker Server 10 features simplified server management and an enhanced PHP Site Assistant.
FileMaker 10 also comes with an updated Quick Start screen and Resource Centre. The updated help centres now include videos to help users get going faster. All FileMaker 10 products are immediately available.
New users may order FileMaker Pro 10 for £219/£131 upgrade (US$319/$191) and FileMaker pro 10 Advanced for £329/£197 upgrade ($480/$287).
FileMaker Server 10 is £699/£419 upgrade and FileMaker Server 10 Advanced is £2,199/£1,319 upgrade.
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Google comes in fourth on top 10 list of spam enablers
Google has yet to stop a rising number of spammers from abusing Google Docs, its Web-based collaboration and spreadsheet application, according to junk mail watchdog Spamhaus.
On Tuesday, Google ranked fourth on a list of spammy ISPs (Internet service providers) and other Web services providers updated daily by Spamhaus. Google has been in the top 10 list over the last several weeks, said Richard Cox, Spamhaus' CIO.
[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
Google could not be immediately reached for comment.
Like peers Microsoft and Yahoo, Google's free e-mail accounts are frequently used to send spam. Antispam filtering software is unlikely to block messages coming from the domains of those companies due to their wide use, although spam can be stopped through more sophisticated analysis of an e-mail.
But a greater problem is how spammers are manipulating Google Docs, Cox said. The application has a feature where users can share a document that is assigned a URL (uniform resource locator). If opened, those documents contain a "redirect" command that pushes them to spammer Web sites, which often sell pharmaceuticals, Cox said.
Spamhaus has had trouble getting top-level attention from Google about the problem, Cox said. That's in contrast to Microsoft, which took steps recently to stop spammers from putting redirects on free Web pages and sending out the links as spam.
A top Microsoft executive finally took note of the problem after being alerted by Spamhaus, Cox said. Microsoft hasn't detailed how it is stopping the nuisance, but their method appears to be working, Cox said. Spamhaus has had less luck so far with Google, he said.
There are a couple of fixes. One would be to simply halt the use of redirects, Cox said.
"We don't see why when Google and Microsoft hand out free Web pages to people they should then allow those people to put a redirect to another site," Cox said. "The only people using redirects are the spammers."
Another method would be to check the URL to which a redirector points. If it is listed on Spamhaus' Block List (SBL) of verified spam operations, the message could be blocked, Cox said.
Services such as Tiny URL, which make long URLs shorter, block those URLs that redirect to sites on the SBL and thus don't have the problem, Cox said.
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The 4 security rules employees love to break
Most CSOs and security managers know employees are taking risks everyday that could set their company up for a breach. What some of the biggest offenses? And what can be done to nip that risky behavior in the bud? John Stewart, CSO of Cisco, offers his take on 4 rules people love to break and offers advice on getting them to stop.
Allowing "tailgating" and unsupervised roaming
According to a recent Cisco survey, more than one in five German employees allow non-employees to roam around offices unsupervised. The study average was 13 percent. And 18 percent have allowed unknown individuals to tailgate behind employees into corporate facilities. The reason, according to Stewart, is that confronting people who may be gaining access illegally is difficult for people.
[ Learn User can spark all kinds of trouble, such as these 10 IT horror stories. Sometimes, though, it's the admin follies that prove to be the real stupid user tricks. ]
"Globally, tailgating creates an interesting human problem," said Stewart. "You are walking into building and you may have to challenge someone to prove that they have the right to be there. This is uncomfortable for a great number of people. In certain cultures it's insulting and unacceptable."
Stewart recommends creating an environment that makes it hard for people to tailgate. Consider signage that even states tailgating is not allowed.
"When there are signs posted it makes it easier for a person to ask for identification. They can say: 'The company makes me do this.' It diffuses some of the tension."
Help your user community say in a very obvious way: I don't want to have to do this but I have to do it, said Stewart.
Adding unauthorized wireless access points At Cisco, the process of dealing with unauthorized wireless access points is known as 'whack-a-mole', according to Stewart. That's because they pop up so frequently
Wireless access points can be needed either by employees looking to test things, or when people who don't normally need access suddenly do.
"You could end up in a meeting with people from all over and they all need Ethernet. However, one or two computers might not have authentication credentials to get on corporate wireless and then someone has the great idea to create a wireless environment with USB stick. Wireless is just that easy."
While most employees are just looking to fill a need, said Stewart, the unauthorized access point is an exposure.
"You've got the corporation at risk," he said. "Tailgating and wireless access points are, in many ways, the exact same problem. You are potentially allowing unauthorized or unexpected users on your network."
Stewart advises having a clear and consistent policy with consequences. Consistency is key.
"If the consequences aren't severe, most people won't take you seriously. Get serious about real rules. I know some companies who will charge the department with the person who put the wireless access point on the network. The bill goes to the manager of the person that did it. You can imagine how that plays out."
Sharing corporate or sensitive information with unauthorized people According to Cisco research, one of four employees (24 percent) admitted verbally sharing sensitive information to non-employees, such as friends, family, or even strangers. When asked why, some of the most common answers included, "I needed to bounce an idea off someone", "I needed to vent", and "I did not see anything wrong with it."
Stewart thinks companies need to educate workers to treat corporate information like it's a personal secret.
"You don't want people know certain things about yourself. If there is something really personal you would rather not have the world know about, that is how company feels, too. You can also equate corporate information with money. Keeping sensitive information secret says 'I'm not going to share my money with you.'"
Putting sensitive data in the wrong place This could mean copying or extracting corporate sensitive information from protected place and putting it on handheld device. It could also mean e-mailing information to an outside, non-corporate e-mail account. Whatever the scenario, it means sensitive information could get in the wrong hands, especially if it's on a portable device that gets lost. Cisco research found 22 percent of employees carry corporate data on portable storage devices outside of the office.
"If you instinctually know that the work environment you have is causing this, figure out a solution," advised Stewart. "If an employee is engaging in this behavior say to them 'Tell me what you've got to do that's forcing you to do this and let us figure out a way to solve it."
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IBM finalizing free Symphony office suite for Macs
Taking aim at the Microsoft Office franchise on the Macintosh, IBM announced Tuesday that its free Lotus Symphony suite of personal productivity applications will come out of beta for the Apple Inc. hardware platform later this month.
Symphony, which was introduced by IBM in September 2007, is already available for Windows and Linux PCs. Now it will compete for Macintosh business with Microsoft Corp.'s market-leading Office for Mac software as well as fellow upstarts such as Apple's own iWork suite and OpenOffice.org, with which Symphony shares a common technical heritage.
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Released in October, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first version of the open-source software that can run natively on Mac OS X; prior releases required the use of the X11 Unix windowing environment. Symphony is based on an older version of OpenOffice.org, although the code has been heavily modified by IBM.
The Symphony applications can be downloaded free of charge. Users can buy relatively inexpensive support contracts under a program launched last June by IBM, which is making the Mac announcement in conjunction with the annual Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
In addition to the various desktop application offerings, Mac users also can turn to Web-based office suites, such as Google Docs and, if Macworld-related rumors are correct, an upcoming cloud version of iWork.
IBM also released Version 8.5 of its Lotus Notes collaboration software for the Mac. Similar to Notes 8 for Windows and Linux, Notes 8.5 for the Mac sports a revamped user interface that offers simplified access to multiple features at the same time. For instance, from within the Notes interface, end users can see who is online among their contacts in the companion Lotus Sametime instant messaging and voice-over-IP software and then quickly begin SameTime conversations, IBM said.
Notes 8.5 also offers integration to public Web calendars hosted by Google Inc. or Yahoo Inc., according to IBM. And it stores e-mail attachments on Lotus Domino servers, thereby using up to 40% less space than previously. The upgrade works only on Macs that are running Mac OS X 10.5, the latest version of Apple's operating system -- more popularly known as Leopard.
In addition, IBM released a Version 8.5 update for its Web-based iNotes application, which lets Notes users access their e-mail via the iPhone's Safari browser. The vendor launched iNotes in September.
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Demand for flash memory drops along with product shipments
A decreased demand for NAND flash-related applications has led DRAMeXchange Technology Inc. and others to lower their outlook for 2009 NAND flash chip sales.
DRAMeXchange trimmed its forecast for higher chip sales from 108.2% to 81%. DRAMeXchange expects the market to reach 1.16 billion units sold in 2009, a decrease of 5.4% over 2008.
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While the lowered sales expectations may not appear dramatic, over the past three years NAND flash sales grew 175%, 151% and 121% in 2006, 2007 and 2008, respectively. So 2009 will be the first year in several years that the market sees only double-digit growth.
Gregory Wong, an analyst with Forward Insights, said NAND flash chip sales were down 20.1% between 2007 and 2008, with 12.4 billion flash chips sold last year compared to 15.8 billion in 2007. He doesn't expect those figures to improve for 2009.
While Jan. 26 marks the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Ox, Wong said Asian workers will have little to be bullish about when it comes to the technology marketplace. "The layoffs in Asia will occur just before Chinese New Year. This way the companies will avoid paying year-end bonuses," Wong said. "If those rumors are true, there will be a lot of people let go."
Wong said widespread layoffs will hit NAND flash chip production and sales negatively.
Both Toshiba and SanDisk -- two top producers of NAND flash chips -- shut down their facilities for 13 days after Dec. 31 and said they would run manufacturing facilities at 70% capacity until demand flash memory demand increases.
"I think Samsung will take some days off, too," said Wong, who blamed poor sales on an overstock of flash memory cards. "There's eight to nine weeks of flash memory card inventory out there."
DRAMeXchange expects flash chip suppliers to reduce production by 10% between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. It blamed the drop in flash memory sales on lackluster performance of products such as mobile phones and MP3 players. The 2009 forecast for mobile phone shipments is about 1.16 billion units, 5.4% lower than in 2008. For example, Nokia said its shipment of mobile phones declined 5% in 2008. Samsung and LG have also revised their 2008 mobile phone shipment forecast down by 8% and 12%, respectively.
Solid state disk (SSD) drives are also expected to see little growth in 2009 because of their high price and "reliability issues," DRAMeXchange reported. "Most [laptops] still mainly adopt hard disk drives as its major storage device. The penetration rate of SSD in the low cost PC market will be lower than 10% in 2009," the company said.
Digital still camera shipments are forecast to hit 144 million units in 2009, an annual growth rate of about 10%, compared to 21.3% in 2007 and 18.6% in 2008.
Slowing demand for MP3 portable multimedia players is also slowing, leading DRAMeXchange to forecast a drop in shipments ranging from 2.4% to 9.8% compared to 2008. DRAMeXchange said the drop is related to new mobile phone models that feature a music player function.
Oversupply in the DRAM chip market also pushed prices down 75% in 2008, from a high of $2.29 to 58 cents, and the industry lost more than $8 billion between the first quarter of 2008 and the third quarter, according to DRAMeXchange.
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AMD wants to make small laptops cheaper with Yukon
Advanced Micro Devices hopes to undercut prices of expensive ultraportable laptops with mobile chips it is expected to introduce on Tuesday.
AMD's new mobile platform, called Yukon, will include chips designed for small and affordable laptops that provide a full PC experience without compromising on features, the company said. The laptops will be similar in size to ultraportable laptops, but less expensive, according to AMD.
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The announcement comes ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show, where the company may reveal further details about the chips. CES is being held in Las Vegas Thursday to Saturday.
AMD envisions Yukon laptops delivering performance comparable to more expensive ultraportables, allowing users to run high-definition multimedia, gaming and productivity applications. Yukon-based laptops will be thin and light, with screens between 10 inches and 14 inches and prices ranging from US$499 to $1,499, according to AMD.
"While we do see a sweet spot ... in the 11-inch to 13-inch range, our OEM partners may choose to use the Yukon platform to deliver products in different form factors targeting different spaces in the market," said Bahr Mahony, director of product marketing at AMD.
An AMD executive late last year said the premium pricing of ultraportable laptops such as the MacBook Air was a key impediment to their adoption by mainstream users. Those users don't have an appetite for expensive ultraportables, AMD has said.
AMD fits the Yukon chips in a new category it calls "ultrathin" laptops, which falls between the ultraportable and netbook laptop segments. Ultraportables are too expensive, while netbooks, though cheap, provide a limited PC experience, AMD contends.
The company has said it doesn't want to get into the low-end netbook space dominated by Intel's Atom processor, nor in the mobile space, which Intel is targeting with its Menlow platform. The low-end netbook space delivers low margins per chip, according to industry analysts, and AMD may not be able to compete there with Intel, which is the world's largest chip maker.
Hewlett-Packard will offer Yukon chips in the Pavilion dv2 laptop, for which pricing was not immediately available. AMD didn't comment on whether other PC makers were planning to offer Yukon-based laptops.
The platform includes the Neo processor, which runs at 1.6GHz, the M690T chipset and ATI Radeon graphics controllers. It supports as much as 1GB of RAM. Yukon-based laptops can run Microsoft's Windows Vista OS.
AMD declined to comment on pricing or availability of the Yukon platform or Neo chip.
The chips should better position AMD against Intel, which offers specially designed low-power chips being used in ultraportable laptops including the MacBook Air, Lenovo's X300, Fujitsu's LifeBook P8020 and Hewlett-Packard's EliteBook 2530p. Intel also develops the Atom processor for netbooks.
Yukon was first announced in November as part of an updated product roadmap. The update was part of an effort to reverse financial losses and better compete with industry leader Intel, analysts said.
Also at CES, AMD is expected to launch Phenom II desktop chips, aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. According to retail Web sites, the quad-core chips include 8MB of cache and run at speeds of 2.8GHz to 3Ghz. AMD last year overclocked the Phenom II processor to run as fast as 4GHz on air-cooled systems, and up to 5GHz with liquid-nitrogen cooling.
Faster Phenom II chips could reach consumers by midyear, when DDR3 memory support is added to sockets on the motherboard. DDR3 provides more bandwidth for quicker data transfers between the CPU and memory in PCs.
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HP adds aluminum-clad Mini 2140 to netbook lineup
Hewlett-Packard completed its shift away from Via Technologies' C7 processor with the release of an updated version of its popular Mini 2130 netbook that offers a larger screen and uses an Atom processor.
The HP Mini 2140, which will be on display this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, offers a larger 10.1-inch screen. Unlike HP's Atom-based Mini 1000, which has a plastic case, the Mini 2140 retains the aluminum case used with the Mini 2130.
[What is the ideal mobile computing form factor? Take a look inside InfoWorld's perfect laptop.]
Priced starting from US$499 in the U.S., the new netbook model offers a nearly full-size keyboard, a range of storage options that includes an 80GB solid-state drive, and a choice of a three-cell or six-cell battery. Users can also choose to install Microsoft's Windows Vista or Windows XP operating systems.
Inside, the Mini 2140 ditches the Via C7-M processor found in the 2140 for an Intel Atom processor. HP didn't say which Atom is used, but it's almost certainly the 1.6GHz Atom N270 that is the workhorse chip behind Intel's netbook platform.
The Mini 2140 will go on sale later this month, HP said.
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Microsoft promotes Muglia to president
Microsoft has promoted Bob Muglia, the head of the company's server and tools division, to president, making him one of a handful of senior executives who carry this title.
Muglia's promotion to president of the Server and Tools Business (STB) group was confirmed by Microsoft on Monday. Previously, Muglia was a senior vice president.
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The promotion makes Muglia, who joined Microsoft in 1988, the fourth president at the company. The other presidents are Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division; Jean-Phillipe Courtois, president of Microsoft International; and Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division.
"As senior vice president of STB, Bob has established Microsoft as the industry leader in providing great server products to companies of all sizes and in delivering the tools that enable developers and IT pros to build optimized solutions for their customers and companies. In the process, he has helped build a remarkably successful business that has grown from virtually nothing a decade ago to more than US$13 billion in FY08," wrote Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, in an e-mail to company employees, referring to the company's 2008 fiscal year.
Muglia's functional role remains unchanged, Microsoft said.
Microsoft's Server and Tools Business group, which competes against Oracle and IBM, among many others, is an increasingly important part of the company's overall business. The division's products include Windows Server 2008 and the SQL Server 2008 database.
During the company's first fiscal quarter, which ended on Sept. 30, 2008, the server and tools division accounted for 22 percent of the company's US$15 billion in revenue, making it the third-largest source of revenue behind client software and business software.
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Researchers hack into Intel's vPro
Security researchers said they've found a way to circumvent an Intel vPro security feature used to protect PCs and the programs that they run from tampering.
Invisible Things Labs researchers Rafal Wojtczuk and Joanna Rutkowska said they've created software that can "compromise the integrity" of software loaded using the Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) that is part of Intel's vPro processor platform. That's bad news, because TXT is supposed to help protect software -- a program running within a virtual machine, for example -- from being seen or tampered with by other programs on the machine. Formerly code-named LaGrande, TXT first started shipping in some Intel-based PCs last year.
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Although almost no software uses the TXT technology today, the research could matter a lot to computer companies and government agencies that are thinking of using it to secure their future products.
Wojtczuk and Rutkowska said they've created a two-stage attack, with the first stage exploiting a bug in Intel's system software. The second stage relies on a design flaw in the TXT technology itself, they said in an announcement of their work, released Monday.
The Invisible Things researchers wouldn't say exactly what system software contains one of these "first stage" bugs before they have been patched, because that information could be misused by cyber-criminals.
The "second stage" problem may be tricky to fix, however. "It is still not clear how Intel should address the problem that is exploited by the second stage of our attack," Invisible Things researcher Joanna Rutkowska said in an e-mail interview. "Intel claims it can resolve the issue by updating the TXT specification."
The researchers conducted their attack against a program called tboot, used to load trusted versions of Linux or virtual machine modules onto the computer. They chose tboot because it is one of the few programs available that takes advantage of the TXT technology, but they did not find bugs in tboot itself, Rutkowska said.
Intel spokesman George Alfs said his company is working with the Invisible Things team, but he declined to comment further on their work, saying he didn't want to pre-empt the Black Hat presentation.
The researchers plan to give more details on their work at the upcoming Black Hat Washington security conference next month.
Because TXT isn't widely used, the work may not have much of an effect on Intel's customers, according to Stefano Zanero, CTO of Italian security consultancy Secure Network. "As of now, only a very limited subset of developers who are playing with the technology will find it interesting," he said in an instant message interview.
However, the work could end up being important if it outlines new ways attackers could compromise the vPro architecture, he added. "If it just outlines a specific vulnerability in Intel's implementation, then it's less interesting," he said.
Why businesses are embracing Macs
It's not your imagination. Apple Macintoshes are turning up in businesses beyond the creative departments, increasingly becoming a normal part of the IT fabric. One recent IT survey by researcher Information Technology Intelligence shows that 23 percent of respondents had at least 30 Macs in their businesses, 12 percent had at least 4,000 Macs -- and 68 percent said they would let users choose Macs as their work PCs in the next year. A Forrester Research survey of larger enterprises showed that Macs now account for 4.5 percent of deployed systems. (Both IDC and Gartner report that Macs now make up 9.1 percent of all PCs sold to individuals.)
IT's acceptance of the Mac appears to be genuine, not a grudging response to unwanted user demand: "Desktop managers are painting a rosy future for Apple on the corporate desktop," the recent Forrester report states. One reason is the quality of the Mac hardware and operating system; Information Technology Intelligence's survey shows that 82 percent of IT respondents rated the Mac platform as very good or excellent, compared with 60 percent for Windows Vista.
[ Find out how to make Macs work as part of your business's IT infrastructure. | Discover why the forthcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard may be Apple's secret business weapon. ]
"About a year ago, I started noticing that every time I brought my MacBook Pro to a conference, just about everyone else had one too," says Carl Howe, a research director at the Yankee Group. Howe is not alone: "We're definitely hearing more stories of Mac consumers pushing IT to let them use Macs at Windows-based work environments," says Tim Bajarin, president of the consultancy Creative Strategies.
The growth in Mac adoption has been driven by several factors, everything from Apple's conversion to an Intel-based platform with several virtualization options to run Windows to the Webification of corporate applications, the rise of software as a service, and Apple's dramatic ascendance in consumer mindshare.
"IT shouldn't be afraid of Macs," says Kunal Malik, IT director at Citrix Systems, a virtualization provider. "They're very manageable. You just have to prepare the environment, understand how to manage the Mac's limitations, and then help your users adopt the platform they want."
Acceptance of user-managed PC gives Macs a boost
A key reason for growing Mac acceptance in business is a significant change in corporate IT: an increased willingness to let down the fortress gates and let employees use the systems they feel most productive with.
"The Baby Boomers were happy if technology worked," says Benjamin Gray, an analyst at Forrester Research. "They're rapidly being replaced by much a younger, more technology-savvy generation that grew up with access to smartphones, handheld devices, and the full Internet in their pocket. These guys have a much greater passion for whatever devices and applications they feel they need in order to be productive."
Yankee Group's Howe points out that, unlike 10 years ago, today many tech-savvy users believe they have technology at home that is far superior to what they use at work. Companies looking to attract these users are beginning to get the message that they should loosen up their sourcing practices to give them the platforms they want -- and Macs make up a big percentage of them.
The related trend that favors the adoption of Macs in business is the blurred line between life and work computing. "It's getting less and less feasible for IT to separate home and work computing like it used to. Our business and consumer lifestyles, in which people work at the office six to eight hours a day, go home early to pick up sick kids at school or eat dinner, then work two or three hours more at night, have blended far too much," says Bajarin.
Road warriors have grown less tolerant of IT's efforts to prevent them from bringing their personal applications and files with them. "People just don't want to have to switch devices to go on the road," says Gray. "They want to be able to take along their personal life." IT departments have started to acknowledge these changes and look at ways to satisfy their users' needs.
[ Learn how to make your Macs secure. | Read how companies manage mixed Windows/Mac environments in their businesses. | Discover the best iPhone apps for business. ]
What can a Mac do in business beyond graphics?
At the end of the day, a computer at the office has to support the business's work needs. Can a Mac really run the applications and connect to the systems that businesses need users to access?
It turns out that the Mac can run a large swatch of business applications, not just the graphics and publishing applications for which it's best known. Even if IT doesn't yet know that, many tech-savvy users do.
For example, Macs fit very well in software development and marketing, where a Mac with Windows and Linux VMs can test and demonstrate software in just about any OS. That's why many developers prefer Macs.
In sales and marketing, many users much prefer Apple's Keynote instead of Microsoft's PowerPoint as a presentation tool, as well as Pages instead of Word as a document-creation tool. "I've always found that working with graphics and different layouts is far easier and quicker in Pages than in Word," says John Welsh, a senior systems engineer for the Zimmerman and Partners ad agency.?
Standard communication apps such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook (called Entourage on the Mac), Lotus Notes, and Novell GroupWise all have native Mac versions. And Macs can run pretty much any application delivered via a browser, whether or not it has a native Mac version. "Let's face it, for an awful lot of users, the PC is basically an e-mail and Web-browsing machine, with maybe a spreadsheet and/or word processor," says Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research.
And the Mac's ability to run Windows in a virtual machine ensures that Windows-only apps, including Web-delivered software dependent on Microsoft's ActiveX technology, means Mac users can be full participants. Social networking developer Facebook is one company that relies on running Windows on Macs via virtualization as a key pillar of its Mac adoption method.
"We're hearing lots of companies say they'll spend $89 for Fusion or Parallels and support Windows applications on the Mac," says consultant Bajarin. "However, if the user has a problem with the Mac OS side, they tell him to go to one of the Genius Bars at a local Apple Store."
IT uses the tools it already has to manage the Windows VM, which protects the company from any security issues on the Mac side. "They also like that the VM is a file they can back up," says Yankee Group's Howe. "If the Windows desktop gets infected, they can simply go back to a previous copy."
Another option is to boot the Mac directly into a Windows partition using Apple's included Boot Camp software, though this option does not allow simultaneous use of Mac and Windows applications as virtualization-based Fusion and Parallels do. And because it is a partition, there's no single VM file to back up and restore from; instead, IT has to handle the Boot Camp partition as it would an actual PC's drive.
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Bringing Macs into business: Real-life IT stories
As more businesses bring Apple Macintoshes into their regular operations, IT has to figure out how to ensure the Macs play well in the typical Windows-dominated environments. Several companies share the lessons -- good and bad -- that they have learned.
Among the main consideration: desktop management, security, and Apple's non-enterprise focus. But with some creativity and an increasing reliance on users to be more responsible for the systems they choose, the majority experience is positive.
[ Read why more businesses are adopting Macs. | Discover why the forthcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard may be Apple's secret business weapon. ]
Citrix succeeds by putting users in charge
A perfect example is virtualization provider Citrix Systems, which has instituted Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC), a program that lets employees choose their own laptop computer, which they can use for both work and play. "We wanted to give employees the opportunity to use the device they're most comfortable with," says CIO Paul Martine. More than a third have chosen Macs. (IBM has a similar initiative.)
Martine estimates that the traditional IT procurement, imaging, and tracking process costs Citrix about $2,500 to $2,600 every three years, so under the BYOC program, Citrix IT gives each participant a $2,100 stipend to get whatever system he or she wants. And IT has no problem if users spend more than the stipend -- from the users' budget, of course -- to get their preferred systems.
But participating in BYOC does come with two requirements: The user must purchase a three-year warranty and maintenance program and must have client security software installed. Citrix's IT group provides the security software at no charge. Users so far have been responsible in managing their security: All four virus incidents that occurred this past year all started on IT-managed systems, not those under BYOC.
Given Citrix's business, it's not surprising that it handles application incompatibilities and security issues thin-client-style using Citrix's own XenApp application (provided free to employees), which serves up corporate and most client applications, including Microsoft Office, from servers in the datacenter. However, if employees want to run Mac versions of Office or other applications, such as Apple's Keynote presentation tool, they are free to do so.
Users are responsible for their own hardware maintenance and repairs. "That's what the three-year warranty is for," says Martine. "Even my kid knows how to keep his system up to date," he adds, "and we've found that the users take care of their own equipment much better than they take care of IT's."
For other issues, the help desk -- which has both Mac and PC expertise -- is available. User files are kept on the servers and backed up internally, but users are allowed to copy files to local drives, as long as they understand securing such files are their responsibility.
A survey taken both before and after the pilot of the program found that 56 percent of participants felt that using their preferred device made them more productive. Their managers weren't so sure, but they did notice a definite increase in staff job satisfaction. Meanwhile, IT is saving on acquisition costs and has fewer client PCs to manage.
Facebookfaces few limitations to Mac integration
Facebook is even more of a mixed Mac and Windows corporate environment than Citrix. IT director Kunal Malik estimates the company is 60 percent Mac and 40 percent Windows. "We found early on that Macs were better at multitasking and a much better environment for coding than Windows," he says.
As the company grew, Macs spread to sales, marketing, and business development, whose users much prefer Apple's Keynote to Microsoft PowerPoint. "Our CRM, ERP, and financial applications are all Web-based and Firefox-compliant, so we have no issues running them on a Mac." But most of their financial users are primarily Windows-based because the latest Mac version of Excel doesn't allow the use of Visual Basic macros.
[ Find out how to make Macs work as part of your business's IT infrastructure. | Learn how to make your Macs secure. ]
Like its more Windows-based brethren, the company runs Active Directory, which integrates well with Apple's Open Directory. But integration with Microsoft Exchange is not so smooth. The Mac Exchange client, called Entourage, doesn't support all Exchange functions, but Mac users have managed to get around most of them by relying more heavily on their BlackBerrys and iPhones and using discussion forums to substitute for long e-mail threads.
Despite the Mac's dearth of malware, Facebook requires Mac users to run client security software, since the Mac has recently become a network entry point for Windows malware.
OrangeCountysheriff misses Dell's level of service
Although many companies have successfully brought Macs into their Windows-oriented infrastructure, not all mixed Mac/PC shops' experiences are rosy.
After using Macs to create training podcasts, the Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff's Department expanded Mac use to its investigative staff and environments with little desk space, such as in a helicopter. "Dell didn't have the form factor we were looking for," says Chris Cao, a technical system specialist. So the agency deployed Mac notebooks running Windows via Apple's Boot Camp technology, which creates a separate partition to boot into Windows.
What IT hadn't planned for, however, was the hard time it would have getting Dell's enterprise level of support from Apple. "Apple won't let us crack open the cases unless we're Apple certified, and replacement parts take a while to get here," says Cao. For confidentiality reasons, investigator laptops simply cannot leave the grounds, but it took a full nine months to convince Apple that on-site service was needed. "Dell would just come out the next day, part in hand," says Cao. (Facebook's Malik points out that it's easy to protect confidential data with encryption and that, unlike Orange County, he hasn't had any problems getting next-day on-site service.)
Cao also complains that Apple won't support Windows on a Mac and that Boot Camp doesn't yet play well with Windows XP Service Pack 3, though Apple did release a Boot Camp patch to support SP3. Updates and reimaging are also more involved, since there are two OSes to deal with. "With Dell, you just yank out the drive, put it in the drive image machine, and you're done in 10 minutes." However, as with Citrix, many organizations address Apple's enterprise support shortcomings by shifting more of the management and repair burden to their Mac users.
There are also the usual complaints from IT departments about Apple's lack of product road maps, which makes planning just about impossible. To address that issue, Facebook simply keeps extra inventory around. "We accumulate lots of inventory right before Apple events because we know that's when they'll probably announce changes. This allows us to react and manage those changes until we're ready to move to a new platform." And the road map issue may not be that critical in reality: "Beyond three months, most technology road maps are lies anyway," says John Welch, senior systems engineer for the Zimmerman and Partners ad agency.
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