IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 20/02/2009

Norway heads drive to boot Microsoft's IE6 browser off the Web

A prominent Norwegian Web site is spearheading a movement to get users to abandon Microsoft's widely-used but aging Internet Explorer 6 browser.

IE6 doesn't follow established standards for presenting Web pages and has security problems, according to online marketplace FINN.no, which is asking users to upgrade to IE7, Mozilla's Firefox, or Opera Software's browser.

[ Check out the InfoWorld Test Center special report and guide to browser security | And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by InfoWorld's 2009 Technology of the Year Awards. ]

FINN.no ("finn" means "find" in Norwegian) has to spend disproportionate effort tweaking its site to make it work with IE6, time that would be better spent introducing more tools for the site, wrote Erlend Schei, a Web developer for FINN.no.

The problem with IE goes back years. Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS, were developed. As IE become dominant, Web developers wrote applications to work with IE rather than to Web standards.

The playing field changed as browsers such as Firefox came on the market in 2004, striving to accommodate World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. But since the majority of Web users were using IE, it meant developers spent lots of time to ensure their pages were compatible with all browsers.

Microsoft said when it released IE7 that it adhered more closely to W3C standards such as CSS, but critics complained the company didn't go far enough, and older Web pages still didn't render right.

Microsoft is claiming that its latest browser, IE8, will be the most standards-compliant one it has ever released. IE8 is in release candidate 1 status, with a final release due in a few months.

IE6 was introduced with Microsoft's XP operating system in 2001 and had hung around for a surprisingly long time. Many new netbooks and other PCs that ship with XP still come with a copy of IE6, even though IE7 was released in October 2006.

FINN.no said around 17 percent of its 4.2 million users are still on IE6. According to figures from NetApplications, which tracks browser market share by version, IE6 holds 19.21 percent of the market, still more than the latest version of Firefox, 3.0, which holds an 18.3 percent share.

FINN.no said it appears companies have lagged behind home users in upgrading the browsers on their systems.

Other Norwegian Web sites are also picking up on the idea, posting notices encouraging people to upgrade. An "IE6 Warning Campaign" has also been launched on Facebook, with links to other Web sites that let Web developers cut and paste code that puts a warning on their own site.

A wiki page is also keeping track of information and Web sites worldwide advocating the upgrade.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for a comment.

Pixel Qi readies battery-saving laptop screens

One Laptop Per Child spin-off Pixel Qi on Thursday said it will soon start shipping low-power screens that could increase laptop battery life by up to 50 percent.

The company's LCD (liquid crystal display) screens include technology to absorb natural light sources to brighten screens, said Mary Lou Jepsen, founder and CEO of Pixel Qi. That helps save battery life as it reduces the need for a backlight, which is used to light up conventional laptop screens.

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"Instead of cranking up the backlight to fight sunlight or the light of the office overhead fluorescent tubes, we realized we could use the brilliant ambient light in the image itself, saving power," said Jepsen.

A casual laptop user may see laptop battery life jump from three hours to four-and-a-half hours by switching to the light-powered screens, Jepsen said. The new screens will provide full color depth and refresh rates that are comparable to conventional laptop screens.

The screens pull as much ambient light from sources as possible, but the technology may not work effectively for users watching DVD movies in dark rooms, Jepsen said.

"The conventional LCD screens in computers are just miniature LCD-TVs. That's perfect, if all you want to do is watch movies all day, sitting in a darkened room, with the device plugged in," Jepsen said, in an e-mail interview.

Low power consumption of the screen, one of the more power-hungry components on a laptop, could lead to cheaper and lighter laptops, Jepsen said.

"Instead of putting six battery cells into this model, I'll try fewer or use less-powerful cells, making the machine lighter and cheaper, and the battery life exactly the same," Jepsen said.

The small bump in battery life isn't close to Jepsen's previous plans of laptop battery life between 20 and 40 hours. However, Jepsen said Pixel Qi is working to blur the line between the screen and motherboard, which could boost battery life more.

"We'll get to larger power savings later so the screen can enable much longer battery life, but for that we need the manufacturers to make changes in the motherboard, which will come in 2010-11," Jepsen said.

The screens will ship for sampling in a few months and be in laptops by the middle of the year, Jepsen said. Initially, the company will ship 10-inch screens. She didn't name PC makers that would eventually use those screens in laptops.

A variant of Pixel Qi's low-power screen technology was first implemented in OLPC's XO laptops. That effort was led by Jepsen, who formerly was OLPC's chief technology officer and contributed to a patent in low-power screen design.

She stirred up a controversy when she left nonprofit OLPC in 2007 to start the for-profit Pixel Qi, with the goal to create a $75 laptop using technologies she invented at OLPC. The company is now focusing on development of low-power screens.

Adobe flaw heightens risk of encountering malicious PDFs

Security companies are warning of a new flaw in two Adobe Systems programs that could compromise a PC merely by opening a malicious PDF (Portable Document Format) file.

Hackers are exploiting the flaw in the wild, although attacks are not widespread yet, according to Symantec and the Shadowserver Foundation.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

The flaw affects version 9 of Reader and Acrobat as well as earlier versions, according to Adobe's advisory. A buffer overflow condition can be triggered by opening a specially-crafted PDF, which gives the attackers control of the computer. Shadowserver wrote that the flaw could be exploited on systems running Microsoft's Windows XP SP3.

Adobe called the flaw "critical," it's most severe rating, and said it will release a patch for Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 by March 11. The company said patches for version 8 of Reader and Acrobat will follow, then finally for version 7 of Reader and Acrobat.

In the meantime, hackers will quickly try to use the flaw. PDF vulnerabilities are especially dangerous since the file format is widely used.

"Right now we believe these files are only being used in a smaller set of targeted attacks," Shadowserver wrote in its advisory. "However, these types of attacks are frequently the most damaging, and it is only a matter of time before this exploit ends up in every exploit pack on the Internet."

There are a couple of defenses PC users can employ until the patch arrives. Users should not open PDFs from untrusted sources, Symantec said. Also, since the attack relies on JavaScript, users can disable that function in Acrobat and Reader, Shadowserver advised.

"You have the choice of small loss in functionality and a crash versus your systems being compromised and all your data being stolen," the organization wrote. "It should be an easy choice."

Lawyers may appeal latest 'Vista Capable' ruling

Lawyers for the consumers suing Microsoft over its "Vista Capable" marketing campaign said they may appeal a judge's ruling that stripped the lawsuit of its class-action status Wednesday.

"We anticipate further motion practice in the trial court, followed by -- if unsuccessful -- an appeal to the Ninth Circuit," said Jeffrey Tilden, a partner in the Seattle law firm Gordon Tilden Thomas & Cordell LLP, when asked whether his team would proceed with the case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit serves California, Oregon, Washington, and six other states, and it would hear any appeal from the Seattle-based federal court where the lawsuit was filed.

Tilden, as well as Jeffrey Thomas, another partner, declined to get more specific about their plans for the lawsuit. Their firm brought the original lawsuit against Microsoft on behalf of Dianne Kelley, a Washington state resident who bought a PC marked "Vista Capable" in November 2006, two months before the operating system was released to retail.

Microsoft rolled out the Vista Capable marketing program in April 2006 to ensure that PCs equipped with the older Windows XP continued to sell as Vista's release date neared. Computers that bore a Vista Capable sticker could later be upgraded to the new operating system, Microsoft promised.

Kelley claimed that Microsoft pulled a fast one with Vista Capable, however, because the company let computer makers slap the sticker on PCs that later could run only Vista Home Basic, the least-expensive edition. Her lawyers argued that because Home Basic lacked many of the features Microsoft had trumpeted for Vista, including the Aero graphical user interface, it was not a "real" version of the operating system.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman yanked the lawsuit's class-action status, saying that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the Vista Capable campaign had made them pay more for their computers than they would have otherwise.

Although Pechman's decision doesn't end the case, it requires that each plaintiff sue Microsoft separately, and makes it impossible for others to join the lawsuit without hiring their own attorneys. There are currently six plaintiffs, including Kelley.

Microsoft, understandably, applauded Pechman's ruling. "We're pleased that the court granted our motion to decertify the class, leaving only the claims of six individuals," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster late yesterday.

Tilden and Thomas, however, were less enthusiastic. "Judge Pechman is an incredibly strong trial judge," said Tilden. "[But] we respectfully disagree with her here."

If Tilden, Thomas, and the other lawyers involved with the case do appeal Pechman's ruling, it wouldn't be the first time an issue in the case has gone to the Ninth Circuit. Last March, Microsoft appealed Pechman's decision to designate the case as a class-action. In late April, the appellate court rejected the company's request to overturn Pechman's ruling.

The lawsuit is best known as the source for hundreds of insider e-mails that have been made public by the court. Among the disclosures were ones that showed Microsoft relaxed the requirements of Vista Capable to accommodate Intel, a decision that then enraged Hewlett-Packard, another major partner.

Those e-mails also revealed the sometimes-fierce arguments within Microsoft over the program, including a recommendation by an internal marketing group that Home Basic be stripped of the name "Vista" because of concerns over what it called "user product expectations."

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Could the recession be good for enterprise software?

The recession has companies worldwide scrambling to rein in technology costs with desperate vendors responding in turn, offering deep license discounts, providing low-cost financing and proclaiming ever more shrilly that their products in fact save customers money.

But there is more than trench warfare going on, according to a range of observers. When the economy turns around, a number of changes, many that benefit users, will have come to the IT industry.

[ Special report: IT and the financial crisis. ]

For example, vendors that sell software that is critical to business but don't provide customers with a competitive advantage -- such as collaboration tools -- need to adopt simpler, cheaper pricing models or face the consequences, according to Redmonk analyst Michael Coté.

"It's not like Johnson & Johnson is going to crush Colgate because they've got better e-mail," he said.

The definition of a premium product has changed as well, he added. Value-added features, especially ones that provide customers with detailed insight into costs, such as a server's power consumption, will be a must: "If it just breaks less or runs faster, people are just going to take their chances with [what they have]."

Meanwhile, companies that do have money to spend on software may parcel it out in much smaller chunks than before.

The era of the big software deal "is on life support right now and whether it pulls through remains to be seen," said Frank Scavo, managing partner of the Irvine, California, IT consulting firm Strativa. "It may be the exception rather than the rule."

Even SAP, king of the major ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation, is conceding that customers want a more flexible way to buy software. In launching Business Suite 7 recently, SAP emphasized that the product could be bought and installed by the module.

Of course, you could always buy SAP piecemeal, but the vendor never marketed it that way, Scavo said.

Companies like SAP, Oracle and Infor will have more success coaxing customers to make smaller investments in complementary products, he said.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang voiced a similar refrain.

Large corporations "have all the ERP they can consume or even digest. The era of the big suite really is all over for those companies," he said.

Customers are instead trying to invest more in SaaS and BPO (business process outsourcing), "looking for a constant stream of innovation" versus a periodic, big-bang upgrade, he said.

Overall, the recession has prompted many more companies to buy into SaaS products, and once the economy turns around, SaaS will be a significant part of the IT landscape, Wang said.

Software maintenance changes on the way?
Vendors derive a large and strategic piece of their revenue from annual maintenance fees, but the recession has more companies investigating lower-cost third-party maintenance options.

Rimini Street, which supports some SAP and Oracle product lines, recently announced that business quadrupled last year, with some $86 million in sales bookings.

Those numbers may have been helped in part by SAP's high-profile decision last year to shift customers onto a richer-featured but more expensive maintenance service.

Observers like Scavo say third-party maintenance options ought to be a given.

"If I have a Lexus I don't need to go through the dealer [for service]," Scavo said. "Vendors shouldn't be allowed to have that power."

It is unclear whether a large crop of additional third-party companies like Rimini Street will surface, said Wang. For one thing, some vendors attempt to restrict access to training on their products, he said.

But Wang did predict that customers will be much more selective in the future about which software lines they choose to keep on a maintenance plan at all.

And the rise of SaaS, with its subscription-based model, will also alter how much companies are paying in traditional maintenance fees.

Meanwhile, as corporate budgets tightened in recent months so did CIOs' influence on IT strategy, according to Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research, at Nucleus Research.

CFOs are going to be pressing CIOs harder for answers to questions like "what am I getting for it" and "why am I paying for it," as well as taking a more active role in choosing technology, she said.

Wang agreed. "SaaS is one of those end-games, those end-runs around IT," he said. "It's the first sign of the business guys calling the shots. You can swipe it on a credit card."

IT department budgets will drop in coming years, but overall, technology spending will be the same or even increase because business units will "have more skin in the game," Wang added.

As for now, IT executives like John Glowacki are trying to maintain a pragmatic and positive attitude.

"You have to operate from the premise of, 'We will come out of this recession.' You can't just cut everything," said Glowacki, CTO of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), the giant systems integrator. "Given that premise, what's the future? What do we need to be planning?"

The recently passed U.S. economic stimulus bill, which includes money for expanding broadband infrastructure, is helping lay the groundwork for the future expansion of cloud computing and SaaS, he noted: "If you don't have the pipes it's just not going to work as well."

The recession is also helping companies like the large software vendor SAS Institute tighten up its IT operations.

SAS has historically had a number of regional systems and in recent years has been trying to work in a more centralized manner, according to CIO Suzanne Gordon.

"In this kind of economy, everybody's willing to do that," she said. "It's a great time to get people to cooperate and collaborate. ... When the money's flowing, everybody wants to do it their way."

Past recessions saw a similar dynamic play out at SAS, with IT operations "getting better with each iteration," she said.

The wave of IT-related layoffs in recent months could also spark a broader wave of innovation, said Redmonk's Coté.

Interesting technologies have been dreamed up by people who lost their tech jobs, with one example being the popular blogging platform Movable Type, he said. "That might be one of the bright sides of this."

Update: Microsoft's Razorfish taps Rackspace for cloud hosting

sMicrosoft's Razorfish has chosen Rackspace to host the development of new Web sites and applications rather than wait for its parent company to release its own cloud-hosting platform Windows Azure.

Razorfish is working with Rackspace's Mosso hosting division to build Web sites and applications on Rackspace's Cloud Sites and Cloud Files services, according to Rackspace.

[ Analyst firm IDC says cloud security fears are overblown, while Gartner cautions against assuming SaaS is cheaper. And follow the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing blog ]

Razorfish, which operates independently, is an online advertising agency acquired by Microsoft as part of its purchase of aQuantive, a digital marketing services company, in 2007.

Specifically, Razorfish is designing microsites, community platforms, blogs, and Web video for its clients using Mosso, Rackspace said in a press statement. The sites are being designed specifically to handle large traffic spikes during major promotions and product launches.

Using a hosted services platform saves companies from having to build their own infrastructure to support new applications and services. They also can plan for traffic spikes by purchasing more bandwidth than usual when they expect sites to get more traffic, allowing them to manage IT expenses more effectively.

Rackspace, formed in 1998, was a private company until it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange last August. The company offers a range of managed-hosting and cloud-hosting services.

Cloud computing and hosted services are becoming an increasingly attractive options for companies that don't want the hassle or expense of building out their own IT infrastructure, particularly now as the global economy is in a recession. Research firm IDC has predicted that the U.S. market for Web hosting services will increase about 10 percent in the next several years, from $9 billion in 2007 to $14.6 billion in 2012.

Microsoft unveiled Windows Azure in October as its application-development and hosting platform in the cloud; it is expected to be generally available later this year. An early version of and a software development kit for Azure are available now for testing.

Razorfish spokeswoman Sally O'Dowd said Thursday that Razorfish has been evaluating Azure for "both internal and external client needs" and will consider using it for clients once it is commercially available.

She added that Razorfish has always been "technology agnostic," and makes technology choices "based on what is best for the client."

Earlier this week, Doug Hauger, general manager of marketing and business strategy for Microsoft's cloud infrastructure services group, told a group of investors at the Thomas Weisel Partners 2009 Technology & Telecom conference that Microsoft plans to announce pricing for Azure soon. He also said the service will cost less than the price companies pay to run a server on premise.

Customers also will have a pay-as-you-go option for the service, but can get discounts if they want to prepay, he said. A transcript of Hauger's talk is available online by downloading it from the Windows Azure blog.

This story was updated on February 19, 2009

Becoming an IT consultant: Do's, don'ts, disasters to avoid

As companies continue to cut costs, consolidate staffs and eviscerate executive salaries, more and more senior-level IT professionals are eyeing corporate exits -- or being shown them against their will.

For many such tech execs, the next step on the increasingly rocky, do-it-yourself 21st-century career path is independent consulting.

[ Looking for work in tough times? Then get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line blog, such as his take on whether or not embellished resumes are disqualifiers. ]

But do you have what it takes, or even know what it takes, to strike out on your own? Where do you find clients? Should you specialize? What about marketing and finances? Where can you get decent, affordable health insurance once you're cut loose from corporate benefits?

How do you navigate the enormous cultural changes of minding your own calendar, developing and building your own marketing presentations and, horror of horrors, scheduling your own economy class air travel? How do you make your mark and find paying clients fast, when it seems like every other laid-off IT exec is setting out his own shingle?

To answer those and other questions, Computerworld rounded up a boardroom's worth of former CIOs and other high-level IT professionals who successfully made the transition to IT consultant. Here are their hard-won answers and practical advice.

Find your niche

Whatever your depth and breadth of experience, simply switching your title and business card to "IT consultant" isn't likely to land you a single client. Specialization is absolutely critical, according to successful CIOs-turned-consultants.

Eileen Strider, a former CIO at Universal Underwriters Insurance Group (since renamed Zurich Direct), is now a partner with her husband in their own consulting firm, Strider & Cline Inc. in Kansas City, Mo. Strider's niche is reviewing large, often troubled ERP projects in the higher-education segment.

Jack Tugman, former CIO at the U.S. Army's Fort Monmouth, N.J., base, has leveraged his military and Department of Defense experience into a specialty: He now helps companies develop their IT infrastructures in such a way that they can become suppliers to the DoD or other government agencies.

And Hernan Tocuyo, former CIO at FedEx Services (now called FedEx Office) who is now an independent consultant in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, specializes in nonprofits and small companies with no in-house IT staff. "They don't have the expertise or the money for a full-time CIO. They may have a systems administrator or IT manager, but that person doesn't know anything about accounts receivables systems," he notes. So Tocuyo markets himself as a specialist who can come in and implement a system, then train those who remain on the job to run it.

"It's important to specialize, and you should lead with those two or three things that you are best at. If you specialize in everything, people won't know who you are," says Laraine Rodgers, founder of Navigating Transitions, a Tucson-area consultancy, and former CIO for the city of Phoenix and Xerox Corp.

In addition to specializing, would-be consultants need to frame their services in the context of real-world needs, Rodgers says. "I created a business plan and tried to figure out my core value proposition. I first listed the 50 things I do really well, and then made a list of the things I really love to do, and then another list of what's needed in the market," Rodgers recounts. Because "if what you're passionate about isn't what is needed, you ain't gonna make a penny."

Although it may be tempting to take on whatever work comes your way, it's a real mistake to do so, according to the experts. Stick to your specialty. Otherwise, you run the risk of doing long-term damage to your credibility.

Companies also hire consultants for very specific reasons, notes Thomas Pettibone, a former CIO at Phillip Morris USA Inc. and founder and managing director of Transition Partners Co., a national management consulting company in Reston, Va. "Consulting is quite a bit different than being a corporate CIO," he says. "The corporate job is all-encompassing and focused on improving all aspects of the company. The consulting role is very focused to an engagement, which is written in a particular way to solve particular problems in an organization."

"Every single consulting job you do is like sending up a billboard on Main Street or in Times Square," says Barry Mathis, a former CIO at Bradley Memorial Hospital in Cleveland, Tenn. (renamed Skyridge Medical Center) who's now an IT consultant specializing in health care for H.I.S. Professionals LLC.

If you perform a job poorly because you're not a specialist in that particular area, word gets out and the references fall off. "And references are a consultant's life," he notes.

Another option is to team up with consultants who specialize in areas other than you do and refer work to one another. "We consciously created a network of consultants both nationally and internationally," says Strider. "We bring them in on projects and they refer projects to us. Always be on the lookout for connections," she advises. "It's more about connections than selling per se."

Work that contacts file

Whether you left corporate IT on your own or have recently been downsized, don't waste any time in getting yourself started. Chances are you left the corporate suite with a bulging electronic rolodex of vendor and CIO contacts. Resist the temptation to lay low a while and instead call or e-mail your network to let them know of your change in status and your new consulting endeavor.

"Once you're no longer a CIO, it's hard to get into the venues where [CIOs] are unless you have a lot of money," says Strider. "One of the biggest differences is that when you have a corporate job, the work comes to you. When you're a consultant, you have to go and find it. You need to use those CIO contacts as much as you can and build more right away because once you're not one of them, it's sure not easy."

Also, you should now count among your best friends all of those vendors whose calls you tried your best to avoid as a CIO. Vendors know which companies just bought new software, where projects are being initiated and various tidbits of inside gossip from IT staffers.

"Vendors are calling me and linking me up with people to get jobs," says Tocuyo. Among the valuable information he says he learned from vendors is that "J.C. Penney, Frito-Lay and other big companies in the area have openings but they can't hire anyone. They'd rather have someone come in and do a [software implementation] job as a temporary," he says.

Get involved with professional associations for independent business owners and city or regional businesses, advises Bill Farrow, who voluntarily left his CIO post at the Chicago Board of Trade in July and joined with several former colleagues from the finance and banking industry to start Chicago-based FC Partners Group LLC, a small, independent consulting firm.

"It's very important to keep your technology network up, but it's also important to extend that network beyond technology people because technology people aren't the only decision-makers out there," Farrow notes. "Get involved with the executive club in your city and with nonprofits in your community [because] you now have more in common with entrepreneurs than with technologists," he notes.

To introduce yourself as a consultant and to find work, "you've got to shake a lot of hands," agrees Moez Chaabouni, a former CIO and now an independent consultant and founder of My CIO LLC, which provides CIO services to small and midsize companies on an as-needed basis.

"I go to Chamber of Commerce events where they're recognizing growing companies," he says. Chaabouni also studies lists of best restaurants, best small entrepreneurs, fastest-growing enterprises and the like because companies on those lists "have been flagged by leaders in their industry segments." They're prime potential clients, he adds.

Setting up shop

Forget fancy office space at a high-priced address. It's a big mistake, the experts say. "The appearance of your office is not important. Your clients don't come to your office. You go to them. As a consultant, what you're selling is you," says Strider. "You're selling your experience and services, methodology and skills. It's the skills that you have in your head, and they don't need an office."

You do need a place from which to work, however, and that usually is a home office. But it can be difficult, at least initially, to stay focused working from home, says Tugman, who went off to work for more than 20 years at the Fort Monmouth base before it closed in 2006.

"It would be really easy to go and start doing the 'honey do' list, so what I had to do is set my hours and budget my time," Tugman says.

You cannot assume that family and friends will automatically respect your work space and honor the working hours or the structure you've set up for yourself.

"You have to talk about your schedule. Lay out your ground rules. It's got to be clear that the computer in dad's office, for instance, is for business and not for watching YouTube," says Mathis.

For help with printing, presentations and administrative support, get to know your local copy shop. "They'll let you send them stuff online," says Rodgers.

To elaborate: many local and national office supply chains offer services whereby customers can send electronic documents via e-mail in the morning and pick up completed PowerPoint or paper-based presentations hours later.

Mind your finances

Over and over, consultants say what scared them most about striking out on their own was the absence of a regular paycheck and company-provided health benefits.

"I was scared to death," says Mathis. "I liked direct deposit."

The best thing that newly minted consultants can do is educate themselves about the sales cycle of consulting services. It may take 12 to 18 months between an initial meeting and the time a contract for services is actually signed. For this reason, most consultants recommend having the equivalent of two years' worth of expenses socked away in the bank.

"Chances are you won't see a return for a good 12 to 18 months," says My CIO's Chaabouni. "You need willpower and reserves to sustain the lack of income for 12 to 18 months. You need to stick it out at least 18 months and maybe even longer given this economy."

As for setting fees, Rodgers' strategy is to charge what the market will bear, which means different rates depending on the location of an assignment. Even within Arizona, for example, she charges less in Tucson than in Phoenix.

Another pricing strategy is to make sure your fees are less than those of Accenture and the other big, national consulting firms, Rodgers says. "If I can price myself equal to or less than them, it's still excellent money" and makes her services attractive to clients, she says. To find out what the big firms are charging, Rodgers says she asks consultants with whom she networks. She also often partners on projects with other consultants or firms and can see what others are charging that way.

Money coming in needs to be managed. Chaabouni's advice: "Get yourself a good accountant, and pay your taxes before you pay yourself." Because consultants get paid in large chunks on an irregular basis, "it's so easy to get intoxicated by a big check that you may go on a spending spree," he says. "If I get a check and I don't make an immediate payment to the IRS, I may be hurting downstream. A good accountant will educate you and help you and keep you true."

In addition to your own books, mind your potential clients' finances as well. "If the client is a start-up and hasn't been in business all that long or if their business model is shaky or there is some other red flag, demand prepayment or demand a retainer," Chaabouni advises. "Make sure they have some skin in the game."

Finally, as an independent consultant, health care insurance is bound to be one of your bigger expenses. There are several options. If you're married, check to see if you can participate in your spouse's health care plan. Otherwise, various professional associations, such as the Independent Computer Consultants Association, a national nonprofit based in St. Louis, offer group health insurance plans for independents. A third option is teaching part-time at a local university as a way to become eligible for employer-based health care benefits at a reduced cost.

Navigating the cultural changes

As much as he hates to admit it, one of the biggest culture shocks for Mathis was learning to function without a support staff. "As embarrassing as it is, one of the most difficult parts for me of going from executive to consultant was I had to take care of myself," Mathis says. "I was so used to someone taking care of my schedule and reminding me of appointments, and when all of a sudden they're not there, it's a culture shock. You're your own salesperson and secretary."

Changing your professional lifestyle can also be tough on your family, Mathis says. He spends a lot of time on the road, staying in hotel rooms. He books his own travel through an agency that charges him a flat fee of $20 per trip.

"When you've been traveling first class and the limo picks you up and someone is there to make sure all the arrangements are flawless and then you don't have that level of support, it's a shock," agrees Computerworld columnist Bart Perkins, a former CIO and now managing partner at Louisville, Ky.-based Leverage Partners Inc.

Have your say

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"It's a little bit intoxicating that people will pay me for what I know, but I travel a lot," says Mathis. "People don't buy services over the Internet. They'll read your proposal, but they want you to come to them and present it. My wife will tell you there are times she wishes I was still a CIO," he says.

On the upside, however, Mathis is able to schedule three- and four-week family vacations and get to more of his children's ballgames. "I have seen 100% more of my kids' games than when I was a CIO," Mathis says.

"But in the middle of dinner if the phone rings and it's a prospective client, I take the call," he says. "When you're only eating what you kill, and something comes across your path, you chase it."

Gartner: Don't assume SaaS is cheaper

IT managers should not assume that software-as-a-service is cheaper than on-premise software, Gartner has said.

The analyst house said there had been a "great deal of hype" around SaaS, and that businesses had misconceptions about its cost.

[ Analyst house IDC and others this week are saying that cloud security concerns are overblown. Read Ephraim Schwartz's 2007 public service Calculating the cost of SaaS. And follow the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing blog. ]

SaaS is cheaper during its first two years of use, Gartner said, but five year total cost of ownership would be lower for on-premise software. Part of this was from an accounting perspective, as the capital assets for on-premise software would depreciate.

Calling for businesses to have a "reality check" on SaaS, Gartner VP Robert DeSisto said: "The concern is that some companies are actually deploying SaaS solutions, based on these false assumptions."

In its report 'Fact-Checking: The Five Most-Common SaaS Assumptions', Gartner also warned that SaaS was not necessarily faster to implement. While vendors quote 30 days as the normal implementation time, some software still takes up to seven months, it said.

Businesses are equally wrong to assume they will be billed according to usage, Gartner said. In "the vast majority of cases", it explained, firms were pushed to sign pre-determined contracts with a fixed fee.

But companies also underestimated SaaS, the report stated. Many felt they could not integrate the software with on-premise applications or data sources, but data could be initially loaded to the SaaS application then updated regularly, or updated in real time using web services. Additionally, Gartner said, firms needed to remember that SaaS applications can be customised, and are no longer only for basic functions.

Web application platform Coghead shuts down

Coghead, maker of a cloud-based enterprise application development platform, is shutting down, according to its Web site.

In a letter to customers posted on TechCrunch, the startup cited "economic challenges" as the reason for its decision.

[ Thanks largely to free tools for creating apps deploying them in the cloud, developers are bullish on PaaS. What's more, analyst firm IDC and others say that concerns about cloud security are mostly overblown. ]

Existing customers will be allowed to use the service until April 30 on an unsupported basis and should retrieve their data by that date.

One competitor, Caspio, quickly seized on the news, announcing a "transition program" on Thursday that would provide Coghead customers with two months free use of its platform, training and other services.

Coghead officials could not immediately be reached for additional comment Thursday.

The Redwood City, California, company, which highlights its platform's ease of use and lower cost compared to traditional in-house development, was formed in 2003 and is just one of a wide range of so-called PaaS (platform as a service) vendors. Others include Salesforce.com's Force.com, Google App Engine and Microsoft's Azure Services Platform.

In a recent report, Forrester Research analyst John Rymer said companies should consider using PaaS offerings but also noted the inherent risks.

"Most of the PaaS vendors -- even big ones like Google and Microsoft and experienced ones like salesforce.com -- have short track records with their products," he wrote. "Treat these companies and their products as you would any startup vendor or version-one product from an established supplier. Does the vendor have a healthy and growing roster of customers? Is the product line making money?"

PaaS products also provide users with less flexibility than typical on-premise platforms, since the PaaS vendor tends to dictate the database, storage and application framework used, and may even employ a custom programming language, Rymer said.

Dell calls for Psion 'netbook' trademark to be removed

Dell has enlisted the help of the US courts in a bid to remove Psion's trademark of the term 'Netbook'.

Netbook is the term used to describe low cost and low spec small laptops that are ideal for surfing the web on-the-go. Psion registered the term towards the end of the 1990s and even issued warning letters to PC manufacturers last year in a bid to stop the term being used.

[ Dell on Thursday also launched a new netbook, the Inspiron Mini 10. To determine whether the form factor is right for your users, read InfoWorld's Do netbooks make sense for business users? ]

However, Dell claims the brand is not offering any products in the 'Netbook' range and has no plans to do so in the future. According to Savethenetbooks.com, Dell has filled a Petition for Trademark Cancellation with a US court.

"Upon information and belief, Psion intends not to resume bona fide use of the Netbook name in the ordinary course of trade," Dell said in the petition.

Dell also claims Psion falsified the terms of use of the phrase. The company claims Psion's senior product manager, Herb Turzer, lied about selling products under the netbook brand in November 2006.

"Upon information and belief, such statements were false at the time they were made," says Dell.

Psion was unavailable for comment.

Veeam expands VMware back-up

Veeam has upgraded its VMware disaster recovery software to allow customers to use it in conjunction with ESX, ESXi and ESXi free. In addition, the software also offers fast-file recovery for Linux.

Ratmir Timashev, President and CEO of Veeam, said that Veeam was setting the pace compared with the competition. "We're the first company to offer support for all versions of ESX," said Timashev "and we're the first company to introduce fast-file Linux recovery; something that 90 percent of our customers were asking for."

[ Microsoft and Red Hat struck a deal that highlights the need for virtualization support. Read InfoWorld's Virtualization Report blog. ]

Among the other features, Veeam now offers support for Windows 2008 Volume Shadow Support (VSS). "Previously we had support for other versions of Windows, we now support the 2008 version." The company claims to be the only back-up vendor that fully implements the correct applications restore procedure as required by Microsoft.

Additional new features being offered include: Automatic and manual retry of failed jobs; Disk exclusion (for example, excluding certain VM disks from being processed with the backup); a built-in scheduling engine and the ability to restore VM files to custom locations has been added.

In addition, the company now also offers remote SQL support, where Veeam Backup configuration can now be stored on a remote Microsoft SQL Server database for better protection.

Timashev said that SQL support was an important feature to include. "According to IDC, SQL Server applications are the most popular applications to have been virtualised."

The company continues to see its strength in supporting VMware. "It has more than 90 percent of the market," said Timashev, "we're keeping an eye on Hyper-V but it has less than 5 percent right now. VMware is light years ahead of anything that Microsoft has - or will add in Release 2."

Dell Launches Inspiron Mini 10

Dell strives to improve on its earlier netbook offering, the Inspiron Mini 9, with the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10. In an interesting gambit by Dell, the Inspiron Mini 10 will debut on the QVC shopping network; the unit will be available for sale at Dell.com starting on February 26.

The Mini 10 packs a slew of features. Most notably, the 2.9-pound unit packs a keyboard that is 92 percent of full size; its roomy design and comfortable keys rectify one of the biggest drawbacks of the Inspiron Mini 9 (which still managed to capture fifth place in last month's Top 5 Netbooks chart). The Mini 10 also has a 10.1-inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a touchpad that supports multitouch gestures.

[ To determine whether a netbook is right for your users, read InfoWorld's Do netbooks make sense for the business? And check out our Notes from the netbook revolution. ]

Most intriguingly, the unit has an HDMI port onboard--a curious inclusion whose benefits are limited unless you plan on getting high-definition video onto the Mini 10's 160GB hard disk drive. Dell says that optional features due later this year will include an internal ATSC digital TV tuner and what it vaguely calls "high-def resolution"--both of which could make the availability of HDMI much more interesting.

Another interesting note: Dell has chosen to offer the Mini 10 in an array of six colors: black, white, red, pink, blue, and green.

Dell's initial press release doesn't list all of the core specs and pricing; I imagine that more information about them will become available after the unit's QVC unveiling tonight. The press release does note some basics: The Mini 10 comes with 1GB of RAM standard (Dell says that 2GB will be an option later this year), Windows XP, Wi-Fi, and a Webcam. Other expected options are Ubuntu Linux and Windows Vista operating systems, 120GB and 250GB hard-disk drives, solid-state drives, Bluetooth, wireless WAN, and an internal GPS.

Gateway goes low-cost with new TC laptops

At the start of 2009, during CES, we called it: This is going to be the year of affordable mobile computing. Yes, netbooks aplenty will flood the market, but Gateway has been doing a bang-up job lately of delivering solid-looking larger machines. And the crazy part is that these laptops cost a lot less than you'd expect.

Take Gateway's MC series. The MC7803u, which we reviewed last November, scored serious style points as an all-purpose notebook that looked nothing like a typical US$1000 machine (in a good way). It may have trimmed a few corners to achieve its appealing price, but overall it was a pretty good deal. More recently, Gatewazy has announced the small-and-stylish UC series of laptops. We're currently testing the 13-inch UC7807u--and to our surprise, we're really digging that $800 unit.

[ To learn about how Gateway's new laptops compare to the current crop of netbooks, read InfoWorld's article Do netbooks make sense for business users? And check out Notes from the netbook revolution. ]

Now, two more Gateway laptops--the TC7306u and the TC7307u--are clamoring for your money, but not quite as much of it. The TC line enters the marketplace boasting a 14-inch screen (with 1366 by 768 resolution, an 8ms response time, and a 16:9 aspect ratio) and carrying a starting price tag of $650.

Under the hood of this entry-level model lurks a decent amount of juice, courtesy of a 2.00GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core Mobile T4200 processor (with 1MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz frontside bus), 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 667MHz memory, an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M (boo on the integrated graphics choice!), an 8X multiformat dual-layer DVD-RW with DVD-RAM drive, a 320GB hard-disk drive, and a six-cell lithium-ion battery. That said, be prepared to double-dip into your wallet for additional goodies. According to spokespeople, buyers will be able to doll up future configurations with a Core 2 Duo CPU, HDMI-out, a Blu-ray drive, and a dedicated nVidia GeForce 9300M GPU. For my money, plopping a 9400M GPU directly on the motherboard would've been smarter design decision from the get-go--but hey, I haven't actually played with these notebooks yet.

Otherwise, the primary goal of these style-minded machines--available both in burgundy and in black--is to hit the value sweet spot. You'll find a 1.3-megapixel Webcam on board, plus 802.11b/g/n support, a five-in-one media card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, and xD) and three USB 2.0 ports. You also get illuminated multimedia touch controls; if they're anything like what the UC series uses, the controls are pretty basic, but they get the job done. A final strong point: This TC notebook weighs just 5.3 pounds--almost exactly as much the smaller UC7807u weighs.

As soon as these TC-series units show up in-house, our PC World Test Center will run them through our benchmark test suite, and we'll combine that hard data with our hands-on impressions of these budget-friendly laptops.

Friday, February 20, 2009

IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 20/02/2009

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