Palm opens Pre mobile phone to developers
Palm is taking what it hopes is the next step in to make its Palm Pre a viable iPhone competitor. On Wednesday, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Palm opened up its Mojo Software Development Kit (SDK) program to a "broad group of developers."
The Mojo SDK allows developers to make applications for Palm's newest operating system, WebOS, which replaces its once popular Palm OS. The ultimate goal is likely to create a broad selection of applications available for Palm handsets such as the Pre - similar to the thousands of apps available to iPhone users.
[ Check out this hands-on look at the Palm Pre. | Is Palm back in the game with the Palm Pre? | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
Palm could start distributing the WebOS SDK to developers as early as today, according to reports. Developers can apply to receive the Mojo SDK at the Palm Developer Network website.
Key features included in WebOS include simplified multi-tasking; the Mojo Messaging Service, a push notification system; and user-friendly device alerts that Palm says won't distract you from any task your phone is currently performing. WebOS will also feature Synergy, a database that pulls a variety of information streams into one place including Facebook updates, Google services and Microsoft Exchange data. Synergy's functions sound similar to Instant Messaging clients like Digsby, which in addition to IM also pulls social networking updates and web-based email alerts onto your desktop.
If you're finding it hard to let go of the old OS, Palm has a Pre-based solution for you as well. At launch, a Palm OS emulator from MotionApps called Classic will be available for purchase. Palm says it is working hard to make sure that popular Palm OS apps transition to WebOS. In the meantime, Classic will be available to give you peace of mind as you transition to the new operating system. How well Classic will work remains to be seen, but MotionApps says Classic can run apps twice as fast as the Treo 700p. There's no information yet about which of the more than 30,000 Palm OS applications will work with Classic or how much the application will cost.
This is the second release for the Mojo SDK after a smaller "private release" in January. Some applications have already been developed for the Pre including programs from Fandango, Pandora and a flight tracking application.
Palm is pinning its hopes on the Pre and WebOS as it tries to bounce back from lagging sales. A phased SDK release seems to be a very Apple-like move and a way to build anticipation for the launch of the actual device. Taking another page from Apple, Palm is being very opaque about when exactly the Pre will launch. For now, the date still stands as the first half of 2009.
PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Users to SAP: Enterprise support KPIs need more work
SAP and its customers disagree not just about the value of its Enterprise Support service, but also about how to measure that value -- and now, it seems, about how close they are to agreeing on how to measure that value.
The key performance indicators (KPIs) by which SAP will measure the value of its Enterprise Support service are far from ready, the head of the French SAP user group said Thursday.
[ SAP has said a set of KPIs for its controversial Enterprise Support Service is coming soon. | Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
SAP said Wednesday it is waiting for a response from the SAP User Group Executive Network in order to finalize the KPIs, and will release them soon.
"That doesn't reflect my perception of the matter," said Jean Leroux, president of the Club for French-speaking SAP Users (USF) and one of the members of SUGEN, which brings together the heads of SAP user groups.
Discussions about the KPIs are a truly collaborative process, he said. "It's not about who is waiting for whom; it's more complex than that."
In recent days those negotiations have picked up speed. User group leaders received a letter from SAP co-CEO Léo Apotheker on Wednesday, and later Thursday Leroux will take part in a conference call between around 20 SUGEN members and a representative of SAP, he said, declining to provide further details of the letter or the conference call.
An SAP spokesman said Stefan Kneis, who leads the company's communications with user groups, will participate in the conference call to discuss KPIs for Enterprise Support.
Leroux is more cautious than SAP about the readiness of the KPIs and the state of the negotiations, which are "very delicate," he said.
"It's difficult to implement. We may not have a model that works this year," he said.
SAP will use the KPIs to justify an across-the-board increase in the cost of its support contracts, from 17 percent of license value to 22 percent. The switch to the new Enterprise Support service, introduced last May, represents a price rise of almost 30 percent.
The situation today is unfair, Leroux said, as SAP ultimately allowed around 80 percent of German and Austrian customers to keep the standard support contract at the 17 percent rate, while in other countries SAP is forcing all customers to switch to the more expensive Enterprise Support.
Leroux isn't against the price rise: "It must go up," he said -- but the increase must be the same for all.
"We don't think customers in France or elsewhere should pay on behalf of German customers," he said.
Furthermore, the USF wants to see the price rise introduced gradually, in steps of no more than 8 percent per year.
That's already the case for around half the organization's members, as they have support contracts linking price increases to an indicator of French IT labor costs, the Indice Syntec, Leroux said. In recent years, that index has shown annual increases of between 1.4 percent and 4 percent.
If SAP won't force all its German customers to pay the higher price, then USF wants its members to benefit from the older, lower rate, it told SAP on Monday.
Failing that, there may be legal action -- but the USF itself won't be going to court.
As a user group, USF has no support contract with SAP to dispute, and French law does not allow for class actions. Instead, it has hired legal firm Feral-Schuhl/Sainte-Marie to advise members on how to renegotiate their support contract if SAP insists they switch to Enterprise Support. For long-standing customers that refuse the change, there may even be grounds to sue SAP for providing insufficient notice of termination of contract, the law firm wrote in an article in the user group's newsletter.
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Bill would give feds role in private sector cybersecurity
Two U.S. senators are proposing legislation that would give federal officials significant new authority to create and enforce data security standards both for government agencies and key parts of the private sector.
The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which was introduced by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), would empower the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish "measurable and auditable" security standards for all networks and systems run by federal agencies, government contractors, and businesses that support critical infrastructure services. In addition, NIST would be charged with developing a standard for testing and accrediting software built by or for those groups.
[ Lawmakers have been calling for new cybersecurity regulations. | A congressionally sponsored report offered President Obama some far-reaching recommendations. | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
The bill also calls for the creation of a national cybersecurity adviser's office within the executive office of the president. Under the proposal, the new operation would be modeled after the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and would have the power to compel federal agencies to comply with government security mandates.
According to a statement posted on Snowe's Web site Wednesday, the new legislation is aimed at reinforcing ongoing cybersecurity efforts within the government while also ensuring that proper safeguards are implemented for critical infrastructure targets within the private sector, such as banking and power systems.
Cyberattacks against those systems "could literally shut down our way of life," the statement warned. It went on to describe the cybersecurity threats facing both the government and key private-sector systems as one of the country's most urgent national security problems. "It is abundantly clear we must unite on all fronts to confront this monumental challenge," Snowe said. "If we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina."
"We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs," Rockefeller added. "From our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records - the list goes on."
Snowe noted that the bill "loosely parallels" a set of cybersecurity recommendations contained in a report released late last year by a commission set up by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The proposed legislation comes in the midst of a 60-day review of federal cybersecurity programs that was ordered by President Barack Obama and is being led by Melissa Hathaway, who worked during the Bush administration as a "cyber-coordination executive" in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In addition, there have been increasing calls for for a comprehensive national strategy on cybersecurity as well as stronger government leadership to ensure that security initiatives are implemented effectively.
Hathaway's much-anticipated report is expected to touch upon the need for more effective public-private partnerships in the area of information security, as well as regulations and incentives that are most likely to engender cooperation between the government and the private sector. It remains unclear, though, whether the report will call for the creation of cybersecurity office within the White House or recommend a more decentralized organizational model.
The bill introduced by Snowe and Rockefeller would require federal agencies, contractors and private-sector owners of critical infrastructure networks to prove that they're in compliance with NIST's new security standards. Meanwhile, NIST's director would be responsible for ensuring that software vendors and distributors comply with the envisioned rules on software security.
Other provisions in the bill include the following:
The creation of new state and regional cybersecurity centers to assist small and midsize companies on information security matters.
The designation of a federal agency to serve as a clearinghouse for security threat and vulnerability data across both the public and private sectors.
The development by the Department of Commerce of a cybersecurity licensing and certification program. If the bill is passed as written, security professionals looking to work for the federal government or for companies in critical infrastructure industries would have three years to get licensed.
A separate requirement calling for the Commerce Department to set up a cybersecurity dashboard that can provide real-time information on security threats and vulnerabilities all federal systems.
The establishment of a Secure Products and Services Acquisitions Board that would be responsible for certifying that IT products purchased by the government meet prescribed security standards.
Not everyone is convinced that new regulations aimed at the private sector would help improve data security, though.
"Security is an attitude, and it's hard to legislate attitude," said Brian Chess, founder and chief scientist at Fortify Software Inc., a security vendor in San Mateo, Calif. "It has more to do with understanding the impact of insecure software on the organization."
Grant Gross of the IDG News Service contributed to this story. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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NetSuite talks up integration with Salesforce.com
Hoping to score new business among a rival's customer base, SaaS ERP vendor NetSuite on Thursday pushed its ability to integrate with on-demand CRM vendor Salesforce.com.
Specifically, NetSuite's announcement highlights several partner-developed applications that can be used to connect Salesforce.com to NetSuite, enabling business processes such as lead-to-cash.
[ NetSuite made discount offers in a previous attempt to lure Salesforce customers. | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]
NetSuite or Salesforce.com customers that want to connect the two systems would form agreements directly with the partner companies, which include Boomi, Celigo, Cast Iron Systems, and Pervasive Software, a NetSuite spokesman said.
Given Salesforce.com's large market footprint -- it has more than 50,000 customers and greater than $1 billion in revenue -- it certainly makes sense for NetSuite to align itself with the vendor, in spite of the fact that they compete on the CRM (customer relationship management) front.
For example, Intacct, maker of on-demand financials software, has a partnership with Salesforce.com. Thursday's announcement is a way for NetSuite to emphasize the fact that it can integrate with Salesforce too, "and say, 'Oh, you could go to us [for financials],'" said China Martens, senior analyst with the 451 Group in Boston.
In addition, a lot of Salesforce.com customers aren't using any on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) functionality, so if NetSuite can demonstrate truly tight integration with Salesforce, that could convince users to make further investments in SaaS, she said.
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Intel CEO Otellini joins call for action on climate change
Intel CEO Paul Otellini joined a call on Thursday for Group of Twenty (G-20) finance ministers and central bank governors to implement policies that encourage investment in environmentally friendly technologies and agree on a more effective climate treaty, the only head of a major high-technology to sign the letter drafted by the Copenhagen Climate Council.
Otellini and the other signers of the letter, which include business leaders, academics, and scientists, are members of the Copenhagen Climate Council. The group was created to build awareness for the U.N. Climate Change Conference, scheduled to be held in Copenhagen in December.
[ Keep up on green IT trends with InfoWorld's Sustainable IT blog and Green Tech newsletter. ]
"We believe that this year we are at an historic crossroads. Either we establish a new more effective global climate treaty to tackle the climate problem, or we jeopardize our common future," the group wrote in the letter, which was also published in the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
G-20 members will convene in London Thursday. The issues topping their agenda include stabilizing financial markets and to map out a sustainable economic recovery.
"Either decision-makers lay the foundation for sustainable, economic recovery -- or we will hand huge risks to our children," the Copenhagen Climate Council said.
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Developers stunted by fragmented mobile market
Reducing the number of mobile software platforms, but not by too much, is the key to unleashing pent up creativity in the mobile market, executives said on Wednesday.
But consolidation in the mobile industry is difficult and if it's not managed correctly, everyone will suffer, executives said during a panel discussion at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas.
[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
"It would be relatively simple for us to just get along," said Christy Wyatt, vice president of software platforms and ecosystems for Motorola, who promoted support for a wide range of open standards, including mobile widgets.
The more standards the industry supports, the easier it will be for developers to build applications in the mobile world. But all of the platform developers and phone makers fear losing and so they are largely uncooperative with each other, she said.
"It's going to be painful for developers and we will force a bad outcome if we don't solve this fragmentation issue," she warned.
While convergence of platforms is key, if the industry isn't careful there will be too much consolidation, executives said.
"We've seen what happens when one provider becomes too dominant. There's a lack of innovation," said Ian McKerlich, director of mobile Web and content for T-Mobile. He was referring to the PC industry that is dominated by Microsoft and may have less innovation because of it.
"That's exactly right -- now we have an opportunity to try again with a slightly different plot twist," said Sumit Agarwal, head of mobile product management for Google in North America. Mobile companies can learn from the experience in the PC market and hopefully prevent the same outcome, he said.
Most of the panelists agreed that building applications for mobile phones is entirely too cumbersome, and while they didn't offer solutions, they recognized that the difficulties are smothering a potential boom.
Fragmentation extends beyond the technical issues of different devices with different screen sizes but also includes distribution where there are many channels, each with their own legal issues, payment and settlement rules, said Danny Winokur, a senior director at Adobe. "The result of that is pent up creativity in the developer community, in the content creation community," he said.
The difficult process has frustrated people who aren't able to overcome the "enormous amount of work required to navigate that system," he said.
If developers can bear to deal with the myriad agreements they have to sign and programs they have to navigate, it can pay off.
"In this economy right now that's not very strong, people have to be thoughtful. This is one market where there's still a lot of opportunity for developers. I would absolutely be building an application company now because there are so many new channels with all the new app stores," Wyatt said.
Having too many mobile platforms hurts more than just developers. Companies like Motorola simply can't afford to support the many mobile software platforms that already exist, she said.
This time last year, Motorola was supporting eight to 12 operating systems, and if you multiply that by the different chipset configurations which require different versions, the company was supporting closer to 30, she said. "It's not supportable. Not for me and not for my partners who spend all their money optimizing their game on 500 different hardware optimizations," she said.
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Atom netbook chip propels Intel to top of market
The success of Intel's Atom microprocessor, used mainly in netbooks, helped the chip maker gain market share in every quarter of 2008 and could carry the company this year as well.
Intel's share of the microprocessor market grew every quarter last year, market researcher iSuppli said Wednesday.
[ Intel's Atom is also beginning to show up in systems that some vendors consider full-featured PCs. | Stay ahead of advances in hardware technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]
The chip maker ended the fourth quarter of 2008 with an 81.8 percent share of global microprocessor revenue, up from 78.4 percent the same time a year earlier.
"Intel's low-priced Atom has become increasingly popular as the netbook market has gained steam," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at iSuppli, in a statement. He added that Intel's strength in microprocessors overall and its strong marketing were the main factors behind its strong revenue performance last year.
Intel's biggest rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), lost market share last year.
AMD's share of microprocessor revenue shrank to 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, down from 14.1 percent a year earlier.
Netbooks could continue to boost Intel this year.
Although the company will see more competition from other chip makers entering the netbook microprocessor market, the overall market for netbooks is expected to continue to grow at breakneck speed.
DisplaySearch predicts netbook shipments will grow 66 percent this year to over 27 million units, in part due to the global recession.
"With the economic crisis on everyone's mind, many buyers are adjusting their discretionary spending and purchasing mini-notes (netbooks) as lower-priced alternatives to notebook PCs," the market researcher said in a report on Wednesday.
Aside from the downturn, the popularity of the devices took off because they're thin, light and more affordable than laptops.
"With the lone exception of Apple, all of the top 15 PC brands have entered the [netbook] market, initially as a response to competitive threats posed by Acer and Asus, but also to satisfy demand for low-priced, entry-level PCs," said John Jacobs, director of notebook market research at DisplaySearch, in the report.
Asustek Computer (Asus) pioneered the commercial launch of netbook devices in late 2007 with its Eee PC. The company was soon followed by Hewlett-Packard and Acer, which led the netbook market last year with its Aspire One.
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World's most efficient supercomputer gets to work
Satellite launches are a noisy affair especially for the satellite atop the rocket. Vibration and noise, unless compensated, could render it useless before it reaches orbit so researchers spend a lot of time on complex computer simulations that help them insulate the delicate craft. Now those simulations are about to get much more accurate thanks to a new supercomputer that began work this week in Japan.
The Fujitsu FX1 computer was inaugurated on Wednesday by the Japan Aerospace Explorations Agency. It has 3,008 nodes each of which has a 4-core Sparc64 VII microprocessor. The machine has 94 terabytes of memory and a theoretical peak performance of 120 teraflops (a teraflops is a trillion floating point operations per second).
[ Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]
Running the standard Linpack benchmark it achieved a peak performance of 110.6 teraflops, which not only ranks it the most powerful machine in Japan but the most efficient supercomputer in the world. Its peak performance represents 91.2 percent of its theoretical performance and outranks the previous record holder, a machine at the Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Munich. Ranked below the German computer is another JAXA machine.
Fujitsu attributes the high efficiency to high-performance hardware, the Parallelnavi middleware used in the system and the expertise of the system builders.
"Performance is about 15 times higher than the system we had before," said Kozo Fujii, director of JAXA's Engineering Digital Innovation Center, as he showed reporters around the new supercomputer, which is located at JAXA's Chofu Space Center in western Tokyo.
Two rows of computer racks make up the main system and a third row alongside is a second less powerful FX1 machine. In an adjoining room sits an NEC SX-9 vector computer for running specialized tasks and the storage that augments the entire system.
Altogether a petabyte of disk storage space and 10 petabytes of tape storage are connected to the system (a petabyte is a million gigabytes).
And between the lot there are lots of big, industrial air conditioners to keep the room cool and extract the heat generated by this mass of hardware.
JAXA intends to put it to work on simulations such as the acoustic noise experienced by a satellite at launch, said Fujii.
"There is a wide band of frequencies and usually the peak frequencies are located between 60 and 100 Hertz and we can capture at that level of frequencies. But hopefully [with the new computer] we can capture frequencies of 150 or 200Hz that are difficult for the current computer."
The machine is being leased by JAXA from Fujitsu at a cost of ¥10 billion ($101 million) over five years. In addition to its own work it will be used by some private companies as part of joint-research projects.
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Conficker may be more widespread than previously thought
The Conficker worm may have infected more machines than previously thought, according to Internet infrastructure provider OpenDNS.
The company said Wednesday that 500,000 of its users have been infected with the latest variant of the worm, called Conficker.C. OpenDNS has more than 10 million users worldwide, the company said.
[ Conficker's activation date passed quietly, but threat isn't over. | Beware: Fake security software scammers have been jumping on Conficker. | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
OpenDNS wouldn't say exactly what percentage of its users were infected by the worm, but the Conficker.C infections it counted were much higher than expected, according to David Ulevitch, the founder of OpenDNS.
Conficker.C began using a new algorithm on Wednesday to look for instructions from its creator, prompting speculation that it might be readying for an attack. According to security experts, however, the worm has been quiet so far.
Previous estimates had placed the number of Conficker infections, including all variants, at anywhere between a few million and 10 million PCs, but according to Ulevitch the worm is "probably bigger than people think, based on what we're seeing here."
OpenDNS is used by just a tiny fraction of the Internet's estimated 1.5 billion users, so its numbers provide a tiny picture of a much larger population.
The company tracked Conficker.C infections by analyzing the DNS (Domain Name System) requests made on its network and looking for a special pattern of DNS lookups that is unique to the worm. It did not provide data on the number of computers infected by older versions of the worm, known as Conficker.A and Conficker.B.
According to OpenDNS, Vietnam has been hardest hit by the worm, with 13 percent of the total infections it tracked. The countries with the next-largest number of infections are Brazil, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Algeria.
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MindTouch rides the bus in collaboration platform
MindTouch is releasing on Thursday MindTouch 2009, extending the development platform's collaboration capabilities through a bidirectional message bus, the company said.
With the bus, push-based e-mail notifications can be sent. MindTouch is an open source platform for building enterprise collaborative applications and communities. It offers a development paradigm for composite applications to connect teams, applications, and systems.
[ Three years ago, MindTouch made a splash at the Demofall conference. ]
"This is the most significant [MindTouch] product release in two years," the company stated in a video presentation on the product. "And with this release, we're taking a huge step forward in reinventing enterprise collaboration."
The bus lets users set up and receive change notifications when changes are made within MindTouch 2009 or applications plugged into the platform, such as databases, enterprise systems, and office productivity applications.?
Also featured in the 2009 product is an auto-complete suggest capability that displays existing tags when a user wants to add tags to a page.
Developers can build rich Internet applications taking advantage of integration between DekiScript and JavaScript utilizing JEM (JavaScript with Events and Messages) technology. DekiScript is a scripting language for mashing up data from Deki, which serves as a base platform for MindTouch. With JEM, developers can leverage DekiScript and JavaScript technology to build AJAX-based composite applications, mashups, and interactive portals.
JEM also enables visualization of data sources and supports XML literals and better URI string manipulation for building dynamic page links. Dynamic list and map construction is supported as well. The list and map capability enables, for example, listing of customer orders above a certain amount and sales by region.
A plug-in architecture in MindTouch 2009 enables developers to extend the product's front end without affecting the ability to upgrade. Developers can write applications in PHP to add features or services. Metadata management in MindTouch enables access to local data stores. Metadata can be used to aggregate pages or content in the front end or in any external client application using the MindTouch API.
Other features of MindTouch 2009 include:
* Office document editing and write-back without having to save a local copy to a desktop.
* More efficient administration of MindTouch deployments through control panel enhancements.
* Improved editorial control over pages through advanced permissioning.
* Updated revision comparison between versions of page content.
MindTouch has been a user of the Mono runtime enabling .Net applications to run on Linux.
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Symbian Foundation faces up to challenges
What was billed as a roundtable discussion for members of the new Symbian Foundation turned into an opportunity for them to lay out the challenges and threats to their fledgling group.
Speaking at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, the members expressed their support for the foundation but also revealed concerns about how it will work and how successful it will be at garnering wide support. The Symbian Foundation will soon release its first batch of source code as it transitions to an open-source mobile platform.
[ Related: Symbian sets an aggressive release plan | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
One of the most important issues raised was how to attract and encourage developers, since the foundation will face strong competition from popular platforms including the iPhone, the BlackBerry and Android.
The foundation doesn't intend to create its own applications store, but it will support phone makers and other members who want to set up their own, said Lee Williams, the Symbian Foundation's executive director. And it will have a process for certifying applications, similar to the former Symbian Signed program, ensuring they'll work on Symbian devices, Williams said.
Individual members may also have their own programs for developers. Nokia, for example, is rolling out an application store and a process for developers to build programs and sell them there. Applications created through that process will be designed to work across Nokia devices, but they won't necessarily be Symbian specific, said Oren Levine, head of innovation platform marketing, devices R&D for Nokia.
Asked if he thought there could be a conflict between Symbian's efforts to build developer relations and those of member organizations like Nokia, Levine said he did not know, reflecting the uncertainty companies have around supporting Symbian while at the same time promoting their own platforms.
It's possible the types of developers who will be attracted to the Symbian program and those who will develop for Nokia's Ovi platform will be interested in different types of applications. The Symbian developers may focus primarily on low-level innovation, Levine said. If so, they would work on decidedly less "sexy" applications then those that create buzz in the iPhone App Store, but that are important nonetheless. They could work on ways to significantly increase battery life, for example.
"There's a lot of focus on application development in games and apps that make 'body noises,' but there's a whole world of developers doing enterprise apps, communications, and security apps and extending the capabilities of what a mobile phone can do. When you're talking about that, you need access to the guts," Levine said.
Because Symbian will be fully open source, developers will be able to access all of the code. Nokia's developer process will likely be focused on higher level functionality, like producing multimedia applications, for example.
The foundation acknowledged that it will have to work to compete for developers with the likes of Apple.
The fact that Symbian will be open source is likely to attract a set of developers who appreciate being able to see all of the code in order to better understand it and who appreciate having a process for contributing to a bug database and getting feedback, said Ian Skerrett, director of marketing for the Eclipse Foundation. By contrast, iPhone developers have access to very minimal phone functionality.
The foundation should make it clear to developers how they can benefit from building applications for Symbian, said Steve Glagow, vice president of marketing operations for Orange. The iPhone has been successful in part because it is one device, it's relatively easy to write applications for, and applications get good exposure through the iTunes store.
"You'll really confuse matters when you say you'll emulate that with something as complex as Symbian," he said. "So you have to make it simple and tell (developers) which devices are out there and in what quantity." That way they'll be able to target their applications to devices where they believe they can make the most money.
That presents a problem for Symbian in the U.S., where the platform has a very small market share, mostly because its biggest user, Nokia, has a tiny presence in North America. "It's fair to say we've just scratched the surface in North America with a Symbian presence," Williams said.
The speakers were concerned about some other issues, too. Danny Winokur, senior director for business development of Adobe's Flash platform, wondered if Symbian's open, collaborative model would allow it to innovate as quickly as an individual company might.
Jai Jaisimha, vice president of mobile for AOL, worried about different versions of Symbian emerging for different handset makers, fragmenting the market for applications.
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Rackable buying SGI for $25 million
Rackable Systems said Wednesday it plans to buy the assets of bankrupt SGI (Silicon Graphics) for roughly $25 million in cash, and will also assume certain liabilities.
SGI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday in New York. The asset sale, which is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court, is expected to close within 60 days. SGI, which had posted a net loss of $49.2 million in the second quarter, will continue operating while the deal closes.
[ Keep up with Windows Server and related developments in InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows blog. ]
The acquisition will expand Rackable's product portfolio in the HPC (high-performance computing) market, Mark Barrenechea, Rackable's president and CEO, said during a conference call.
Rackable will gain hardware and software technologies related to HPC, allowing it to build systems that can process complex algorithms for scientific computing and other environments. It will also get access to SGI's customers in the government, scientific and academic sectors.
The deal may create some overlap at the lower end of the HPC market, where Rackable already sells servers based on Intel x86 chips, said George Skaff , Rackable's vice president of marketing. But SGI has access to organizations such as NASA, while Rackable is stronger in the commercial sectors like the automotive industry.
Rackable will also get SGI's services infrastructure, which extends to about 20 countries and will give Rackable an instant global presence, the company said.
Rackable suspended plans Wednesday to repurchase up to $40 million of its stock. It wants to make better use of the cash with other "strategic opportunities" like the SGI acquisition, Barrenechea said.
Skaff said it would be premature to discuss layoffs since the companies have only just reached an agreement. A transition team is being formed to merge the companies operations.
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Verizon joins global mobile software push
Verizon Wireless will join the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) created by China Mobile, Softbank, and Vodafone to help standardize mobile application development and get new software out to mobile users more quickly.
JIL, formed last April, is working on creating a single mobile platform for developers that would allow applications to be run on multiple operating systems. It plans to launch a common mobile widget specification and other developer tools later this year. The widgets will be small applications that provide information such as weather and news. After widgets, JIL will move on to games, Verizon said.
[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
Verizon Communications Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg announced the move in a keynote address Wednesday morning at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas, and at a news conference where he and other executives addressed several issues the carrier is working on.
Verizon is backing the initiative because it believes there are too many mobile operating systems to work with and certifying applications across eight or nine operating systems, plus many different handsets, has slowed the delivery of new software to subscribers. The carrier would like to see that number reduced to three or four major operating systems in the next two years.
Working with the JIL standard and with that smaller set of major OSes, developers will be able to reach most devices worldwide, said Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, at a news conference on Wednesday. Together, the four partners say they represent more than 1 billion mobile users worldwide. Software developed for JIL will be able to reach customers in more than 70 countries, the JIL group has said. For Verizon, the standardization means being able to bring applications to subscribers in weeks rather than months, he said.
Verizon is early in planning for trials with its high-speed LTE (Long-Term Evolution) data system, but it expects to have LTE networks built in two cities this year and deploy networks commercially "very early" in 2010, McAdam said. By the end of next year, the network should reach 100 million potential subscribers nationwide, he said.
The need to build fat pipes to connect LTE base stations to wired networks won't hamper deployment, McAdam said, because the company is working with vendors on a program to deploy 50M bps (bits per second) or 100M bps Ethernet connections to all its base stations. By the time that backhaul is needed with the higher wireless network speeds, 95 percent of the sites should have it, Seidenberg said. The mobile operator can bring to bear Verizon Communications' own FIOS network and the fast wired networks of Verizon Business, he pointed out.
LTE deployment doesn't mean Verizon's CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) network is going away anytime soon. CDMA infrastructure, which delivers all Verizon Wireless voice and data services today, will probably be in place for five to seven more years, McAdam said.
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Intel to turn Moblin over to Linux Foundation
Intel on Thursday plans to turn over the reins of its Moblin Linux-based platform project to the Linux Foundation, putting the work in neutral territory in the hopes of attracting more community support for it.
The San Francisco-based Linux Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group, will host the online community for Moblin on its Web site and take over stewardship of the project and its community, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation said Wednesday.
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"Intel wants to make it clear they are not the kind of organization that believes that not every next big idea necessarily means it needs to come from inside their company," he said. "In many ways getting the broad community to participate in this project, even if it means giving it up to a neutral place like the Linux Foundation, is a way to get more support."
Developed by Intel in 2007, Moblin is an open-source project aimed at building a Linux-based platform for netbooks, mobile Internet devices (MIDs) like tablet PCs and vehicle information and entertainment systems. In the netbook and MID market it competes with Microsoft's Windows OS. Intel designed the project to leverage its Atom processor, originally designed for netbooks and MIDs but which the vendor has expanded to include more features for PCs.
Moblin also is up against two other open-source mobile projects that also use Linux at their core -- Google's Android platform and LiMo.
Stephen O'Grady, an analyst with RedMonk, said he doesn't see Moblin being a "contender" for widespread deployment in the same way Android is, but turning it over to the Linux Foundation is a smart move by Intel.
"I think it helps, in that the Linux Foundation has experience managing longer Linux-related projects, and this might help it seem more broadly applicable than just targeting Intel chips," he said.
Zemlin said there is room for Moblin to flourish alongside Android and LiMo, as they all take different approaches to creating a Linux-based OS for devices with form factors that meet where PCs and smartphones converge. Android and LiMo are focused on the smartphone space, a form-factor step below the netbook and tablet-PC focus of Moblin, he said.
Moblin also has support from car manufacturers and other companies that have come together under the GENIVI alliance to support a standard operating environment for in-car information and entertainment systems called the IVT (In-Vehicle Infotainment) reference platform.
"It's a different part of the market today," he said of Moblin's focus. "But I'm not saying that at some point these things won't converge."
Zemlin likened the variety of Linux-based mobile platform projects to the early days of the PC OS market, when many vendors created OSes to take advantage of the new hardware architecture before Microsoft Windows emerged as the dominant OS.
"Nobody knows what the next big thing will be and what it will winnow down to," he said. "The key here is we think that this project adds a lot of value in that it provides a super-rich way for developers to create what might be that next big, big thing."
Zemlin said Moblin, Android and LiMo have several technologies in common -- not the least of which is the Linux kernel. Proponents of each also boast that they individually offer an open development platform for mobile devices that developers can modify as they wish, although they use different open-source licenses.
Android, for example, uses the Apache license, which allows developers to modify the code of the platform when they implement it on devices but does not require them to give that code back to the open-source community. This could threaten the compatibility of Android across different devices as developers modify the platform but don't let others in on the changes.
LiMo, on the other hand, requires developers to share the platform changes they make with the greater community. Zemlin said the bulk of Moblin is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which also obligates developers to share their code with the community.
However, he acknowledged that there are so many different open-source technologies and projects used as part of Moblin that "I couldn't even tell you what every single license is."
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SAP: KPIs coming soon for Enterprise Support
A long-anticipated set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for SAP's controversial Enterprise Support Service are coming soon, according to a company spokesman.
The KPIs were first announced in November, following months of protest from some users over the vendor's decision to transition customers to Enterprise Support, which is richer-featured but more expensive.
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SAP pledged to work along with SUGEN (SAP User Group Executive Network), an organization consisting of user group heads from around the world, on the KPIs.
In a February interview, SAP executive board member Jim Hagemann Snabe told IDG News Service that SAP would "still need most of Q1" to finish them.
At this point, SAP is awaiting word from SUGEN on the KPIs, after which they will be finalized and released, according to SAP spokesman Saswato Das. "We are very close, we should get something very soon," Das said.
SUGEN representatives could not be reached for comment.
Observers such as Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang are eager to see the KPIs.
"Many of us had felt it would not be an easy task to come up with KPIs that could be agreed upon by users and SAP that would fairly show the value or lack of value with Enterprise Support," Wang said via e-mail. "It would not be surprising if they need more time to get the metrics right. However, many clients took SAP at face value and are awaiting SAP's progress in this area to determine their next move in contract negotiations. A lot is riding on this."
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