Cobweb Solutions Web Hosting Provider, Selected by QuantaSol

Website hosting and Internet access provider, Cobweb Solutions, has been selected by privately-held developer of third generation solar cells, QuantaSol, to manage its messaging and email systems.

Sue Sparkes, Commercial Manager, QuantaSol, noted, ''As a small start up company we do not have our own IT personnel who could take care of our email system for us. Also, we used to be in managed offices, where physically locating a server would have been difficult. Even though we have since moved, and have physical space, it makes more sense to outsource to Cobweb. Their support is great, very responsive and patient.''

Cobweb's fully outsourced IT service, QuantaSol's staff can access email when they are on the road, synchronising these messages with office desktops, laptops and other mobile devices at their Kingston-upon-Thames headquarters and co-ordinate calendars and tasks.

Before implementing the Cobweb solution, QuantaSol relied on a rudimentary email-only service with POP3/IMAP access, supplied by its website host. Staff could only access Microsoft Outlook locally, making it impossible to read email while on the go. And since QuantaSol is a small start-up with no systems administrator, implementing Microsoft Exchange Server in-house was not a feasible option.

QuantaSol's Cobweb solution incorporates Microsoft Hosted Exchange, Email Archival and Fetch PC Backup. And because the solution is delivered through software-as-a-service, very little IT resource is required, with updates and fixes included automatically. Cobweb's Hosted Microsoft Exchange also features highly effective anti-virus and anti-spam filters, which protect employees from malicious and irritating spam emails.

Mark Adams, Managing Director, Cobweb Solutions remarked, ''Outsourcing email and IT makes complete sense for a small business; it's reliable, completely scalable and guarantees a quality service that will never let them down. With Cobweb's Hosted Microsoft Exchange service, QuantaSol can concentrate on running their business in the knowledge that their IT infrastructure won't let them down.''

Cobweb is one of Europe's leading providers of hosted Microsoft Exchange services since 1996. Cobweb is ISO27001,ISO9001 and ISO14001 accredited, and is a Microsoft Gold Partner with five core competencies. The company offers managed services including Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint with mobile and archival solutions, web and SaaS hosting, and white-label hosting for reseller and referral partners.

Cobweb Solutions Limited was formed in 1996 to provide hosted and internet based services to small and medium sized businesses. With data centres in London and Fareham, more than 40,000 customers benefit from managed email services, website hosting and internet access, with quality assured support and guaranteed service levels. Cobweb is Europe's leading provider of Hosted Microsoft Exchange solutions with over 2,000 business customers. Around 50% of Cobweb's business comes via indirect channels. The company is the approved supplier of Internet Services to members of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). In addition, BT, Telewest Business, Eircom and Regus are amongst the partners who resell its Hosted Microsoft Exchange solutions. Cobweb Solutions is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the Microsoft EMEA Hosting Service Provider of the Year 2004 and is both ISO9001 and ISO27001 Certified.

 

For more information, please visit: www.cobweb.com

Sun eyes cloudware position

Sun Microsystems is gunning for the cloud space and eyeing, in particular, the position of being a platform provider.

Speaking at a media session Tuesday, Matt Thompson, senior director, developer cloud tools at Sun, said the company intends to be a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider, that is, to provide the underlying facilities supporting software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

This is distinguished from providing the infrastructure for the cloud such as data centers, which is a further basic layer in the cloud structure.

Thompson, four months into his role in Sun's cloud division, explained that the company had recently reshuffled to focus on the cloud space.

"The key to [succeeding in] the cloud computing business is to be a platform," he said.

He brought up Windows Azure as an example of a competitor eyeing the PaaS position. Azure is Microsoft's cloud-friendly version of its Windows OS, designed to run over the Internet from Microsoft's data centers.

Azure is positioned as an alternative platform for developers, allowing them to write programs outside of their business' servers.

Sun's OpenSolaris OS is also targeted toward the developer community, as a test bed for programs. "It will take more magic than [Azure] for Microsoft to be a platform provider though," Thompson said, adding that OpenSolaris was a better candidate because of added administrative tools, such as its ZFS filesystem.

Sun hopes OpenSolaris will be its entry point into the PaaS scene, by courting developers. Its Sun Tech Days conference is aimed at warming developers to the platform, by educating them on Sun's technology such as Java and Solaris.

"There is a demand for new developers to learn how to deploy apps through the cloud. And there is a huge demand for elastic compute power, even in large enterprises," said Thompson.

Jeff Jackson, senior vice president, Solaris Engineering, Sun, said: "A lot of financial institutions' IT departments will pay for a test bed to run a pilot outside of the network, if it is reliable. Small development firms too want to see if their apps will scale."

Jackson estimates there are some 250,000 registered OpenSolaris users, with "hundreds of thousands" active users.

He is targeting the number of registered users to go up to a million by the end of this year, with that number further multiplied next year, he said.

The technology opportunity

As the downturn bites we're starting to see big differences between the behaviour of established larger enterprises and that of smaller businesses and startups.

Over the Christmas break I've been doing quite a bit of reading, not of all it happy. One report was Goldman Sachs' IT spending survey, which predicts a spending fall of 5% across the developed world.

This report confirms trends that are already noticeable here in Australia and we can expect this to accelerate during the year as the downturn bites.

One conclusion of Goldman's is this will favour the large incumbent IT industry players such as Microsoft and Symantec while working against the newer technologies such as software-as-a-service (SAAS), web 2.0 and open source software.

As the big end of town focus on their core activities they will see experimenting with new methods and technologies as a distraction. It's far safer to stick with what currently works even if it is just "good enough".

For smaller and newer businesses SAAS, web 2.0 and open source offer flexibility and cost savings that are not only essential to survival but also allow them to exploit the niches and market opportunities that will develop over the next few years.

This difference between small and big businesses' reactions to the downturn is going to be true right across the board. Apart from getting debt levels and unnecessary costs down, what works for big business will be very different to SMEs and start ups.

While the big incumbent players need to focus on their core markets, the smaller and newer operators have to be fast to spot opportunities, grab them and become the incumbent player in that niche before larger competitors even know that niche exists.

Some of today's small businesses will the giants of the next economic boom, and many of the success stories will be because they embraced the new tools and technology available to them which allowed them to see and exploit the opportunities in the years ahead.

How to Cut Expenses with Technology

Just in case you didn't get the memo, it's official: you have to cut costs now. Here are seven ways technology can help. They may not apply to every situation, but you should at least consider them for your company.

1. Choose software as a service (SAAS)

Don't spend time and money developing your own new application or purchasing an on-premise system unless you absolutely have to. Salesforce.com is the poster child for SAAS success, but today almost every application area has SAAS options available. The benefits of no capital outlay, immediate implementation and minimal internal support requirements are well known.

What is less appreciated is that SAAS systems are accessible from anywhere, allowing remote and/or home working to an extent not possible with on-premise systems that require a separate, expensive and sometimes unreliable VPN to be used remotely. This can cut down on unnecessary travel.

2. Go virtual

Do you still need to manage some in-house applications? Then look at virtualization. Audit your racks of equipment for utilization and combine under-utilized servers onto a single machine with virtualization. An alternative take on this is to simply launch new services on Virtualized Private Servers (VPS). If they are successful and demand soars, turn up the VPS or bring it in-house. Either way you win, since you control your costs from the get-go.

3. Use Web conferencing

Only five years ago, Web conferencing was a hit-and-miss affair. Loading up the software took forever. Once (and if) loaded, it often failed to cut through the corporate firewall, resulting in a user experience that was not unlike slogging through an unabbreviated version of "War and Peace." Today, that has all changed. Today's Web conferencing works well. With high bandwidth the norm rather than the exception, participating in a Web conference is as interactive as being physically present—and at an infinitesimally small fraction of the cost of air travel.

4. Or don't use Web conferencing

One of my employees used to conduct analyst updates by e-mailing the presentation in advance and then stepping through it over the phone ("Now go to the next slide, you should now be on slide 5", etc.). This works surprisingly well. Realistically, almost everybody in business has PowerPoint and if not, you can convert to PDF. This approach is for those who are truly strapped, because the cost is so low and the productivity benefit so tangible.

5. Use voice over IP (VOIP)

Use VOIP services rather than telephone. This doesn't work in all cases and does require high bandwidth. For most companies though, there is little reason not to use VOIP for internal calls at least. This is especially important for international calls. Another alternative is Skype. If you're not familiar with Skype, ask your kids for a demo. Quality varies from call to call but it's free.

6. Choose the right freeware

It's tempting, and it seems counterintuitive not to take advantage of any free services that are available, but beware. The issues with free services are that you have no practical legal control or redress if something goes wrong, and "free-to-you" usually means "advertising-supported-to-them."

For example, GoogleApps analyze your content to target their advertisements. That means losing all privacy—and that could cost you the company.

7. Ignore obsolescence

Just because a computer is old doesn't mean it's useless. I remember once being struck that Fry's—a famous electronics store here in Silicon Valley—had running for its stock control system an old, character-based DOS application running on an equally-decrepit early 1990s vintage PC. It looked incongruous next to all the shiny new PCs and Macs.

But if all you want is to answer the customer question "Do you have a XXX-3452 in stock?", then this computer works just fine. The collective cold shoulder that business has given to Microsoft's Vista is a good example of this happening today, but you can take it further. Too many technology investments are made on emotional rather than financial grounds. Be especially wary of true but irrelevant statements such as "But it's now more than 15 years old."

Virtualization Expo: Citrix Sets Out To Change Desktop Economics

Citrix claims that CIOs want to stop supplying their companies' employees with computers and make it a "bring-your-own" affair so they can shed the cost of the hardware and the headaches of support.

And Citrix says that its newfangled "Project Independence" will see that BYOC vision realized and radically change desktop economics, a move Microsoft will reportedly support.

 

Project Independence is the end result of Citrix' move to develop what it calls the first enterprise-class Xen-based client-side virtualization, image management and delivery scheme optimized for Intel's vPro virtualization technology, the stuff in Intel's current and future Core 2 desktop and Centrino 2 laptop chips.

Product availability is set for the second half of this year from PC OEMs and Citrix directly, and involves the creation of a bare metal hypervisor that's supposed to overcome the limitations of current so-called "Type-2" hypervisors and server-based streaming solutions.

The coming Citrix widgetry, described as a "small embedded component," is supposed to "dramatically" lower the cost of desktop management by offering users centralized desktop virtualization that doesn't chintz on rich, personalized performance, security, mobility or scalability and supports multiple OS images.

Citrix and Intel are supposed to have a collaboration agreement but their arrangement doesn't require Intel to do much of anything except make accommodations in its chipsets' firmware if and when it should be required. At this point Citrix is just piling on what exists in the marketplace - including machines that already have an operating system installed.

Anyway, getting back to this Project Independence business, Citrix, whose research found 75% of business PCs are used for personal reasons, imagines organizations offering employees a stipend toward their purchase of, say, a laptop - whichever one they want.

It imagines employees not having to buy a home computer because their business machine will support both an open, loosely managed personal image and a locked-down, tightly managed corporate image complements of its "Type-1" hypervisor.

The data center will stream down a policy-based corporate desktop, and all related applications, into a secure, "100%" isolated client-based virtual machine. The data will be on both the data center servers and the widget's local drive so the user can work offline and tap into the device's native performance and graphics.

The data will automatically update once a connection is restored and software upgrades, those corporate bogeymen, will be managed centrally. Since the user's personal settings are isolated from the OS and the apps they won't interfere, as they often do, with upgrades.

The corporate desktop will also be accessible from any device. Citrix calls it "desktop as a service," promising that laptops will "feel brand new everyday" and be instantly on.

Citrix claims that this scheme will have companies spending "more on coffee and office supplies than they do on desktop management" and has the Enterprise Strategy Group observe that it will "disrupt a traditional desktop management industry that is costing enterprises billions of dollars a year."

Citrix VP of product marketing Sumit Dhawan figures the cost of desktop management can be cut by up to 50%.

Intel's vPro technology is providing the large-scale manageability as well as near-native virtualization performance.

Project Independence builds on the XenDesktop virtualization solution Citrix introduced last year.

Citrix is also capitalizing on the Xen Client Initiative established last year by the Xen open source community as well as the image management widgetry it acquired in its Ardence acquisition, the source of its Provisioning Server, according to Dhawan.

Importantly, he says that Microsoft will provide first-line technical support for Project Independence PCs based on XP and Vista.

Citrix' stuff is supposed to be different from VMware's in its dynamic desktop assembly as opposed to its rival's check-in/check-out approach

It should have a technology demo available now on its web site and is planning previews later in the first half ahead of second-half availability.

Open-Source Networking Provider Vyatta Grows 600% in 2008

Vyatta announced that it grew revenues by almost 600 percent during 2008, with their customer count growing more than 150 percent. To date, the company's open networking software has been downloaded more than a quarter million times. The company additionally boasts partnerships with more than 100 value-added resellers.

Vyatta claims to be gaining traction in a number of industries, including the service provider, government and higher education markets. Vyatta's customers include AmeriVault, Boston Colocation, Florida State University, the State of New Mexico, TelEvolve, and Wikia, among others.

Software AG Releases Tamino XML Server for SOA Interface

In document-centric environments, the cost and effort of migrating document-based assets into other formats can be excessive. Even with large data warehouses to manage structured data, many organizations need a way to preserve documents in their native context. XML is the best way to enable the storage, search, and re-use of documents without costly conversions to SQL or other database-centric formats.

Tamino XML Server is Software AG's high-performance XML Server for storing, managing, publishing and exchanging XML documents in their native format, based on open-standard Internet technologies. Storage of XML documents is best handled by a native XML data store. At the heart of Tamino is an XML engine processing, generating and exchanging XML documents. Tamino reportedly enables direct operation on XML documents, sub-trees and elements, and is said to save time on programming, execution and retrieval, especially for complex document types.

The Software AG Tamino XML Server performs the following functions:

• Minimizes total cost of ownership for XML and unstructured data management,
• Provides secure and trusted access to existing back-end data assets,
• Stores, finds, and re-composes multi-channel documents,
• Optimizes deployment of XML-based applications and multi-lingual websites,
• Gains a single consolidated view of corporate information assets, and
• Ensures compliance with regulatory mandates for information security for document-based assets.

The new Tamino XML Server also includes standards-based interfaces for SOA integration and document-based access control to deliver more flexible document security.

Cloud Computing Provider Named Startup of the Day

Linxter announced that it has been selected as Microsoft Startup of the Day. The startups featured in this showcase are recognized by Microsoft for providing extremely innovative software and services.

Less than a month after joining the BizSpark program, which gives select startups access to Microsoft tools, technologies and entrepreneurial resources, Linxter is raising its profile in Microsoft's community of customers and partners by allowing developers to rapidly build connected applications using Microsoft developer tools without needing to invest in new skills and infrastructure.

Linxter brings message-oriented middleware to the cloud, allowing developers to access stateful messaging to connect their applications. All of the communication plumbing, the infrastructure and coding complexities, are removed from the product development timeline and maintenance budget.

The Linxter cloud messaging solution consists of three components: 1. The Linxter Internet Service Bus (ISB), which is the back-end infrastructure that processes messages between Linxter enabled programs, 2. The Linxter Software Development Kit (SDK), which contains the code needed to integrate applications with the Linxter ISB, and 3. The Linxter Web Manager, a user interface for administering programs and accounts.

The Linxter ISB and SDK were built leveraging the latest Microsoft .NET Framework technologies and will help .NET Framework developers rapidly develop distributed applications.

A series of Quick Starts (open source programs that demonstrate some of Linxter's key features) and the final beta for the .NET Framework version of the Linxter SDK are publicly available.

Stellar Launches Deleted E-Mail Recovery Software

Stellar Information Systems has launched Stellar Phoenix Deleted E-Mail Recovery 1.0 to be used with Microsoft Outlook. The software is capable of creating unique profiles for individual PST files. This application is designed to recover e-mails even from password-protected files. It can restore RTF and HTML messages along with their formatting.

The new software does a safe read-only scan of the corrupted PST file and then restores it completely. The recovered file can be saved as .PST, .EML or .MSG on a local or network disk shown in the operating system as per user preference. Stellar Phoenix Deleted E-Mail Recovery supports Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 (XP) and 2000 PST files. It can be installed on Windows Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000.

ParaScale CEO Sees Increasing "Storage Cloudiness"

Cloud computing is grabbing headlines as more and more enterprises are turning to this emerging technology as a way to enable flexible computing power over the Internet. In 2008, many companies were wary of the risks and vulnerabilities of participating in the cloud computing model, and although the buzz was high, adoption was feathered.

Sajai Krishnan, CEO of cloud storage start-up ParaScale says  "The economic downturn and the addition of private cloud solutions to complement public offerings are creating an environment that enables incremental adoption of cloud storage on a very broad scale."

In discussions with end users, ParaScale has found that the overwhelming majority indicate they are considering both public and private cloud storage.

Storage Clouds are Attractive for Many Companies

Krishnan identifies several considerations driving the adoption of storage clouds.  These include:

• Building storage clouds is becoming as simple as installing a new application on your laptop.  This is enabling service providers and the enterprise to embrace this technology with minimal effort.
• Cloud storage can start small and scale-up as needed. Organizations are no longer over-building to address the potential for rapid growth. Instead the drive is to put in place an architecture that is extremely flexible and that can scale on demand using commodity hardware and standard client access.
• Clouds are designed to be self-managing and don't require heavy IT manpower. Storage tiering, provisioning, and data movement are time-consuming tasks that are automated in cloud storage.
• Storage clouds can be tuned for specific uses or applications. For example, clouds can be tuned for archival very cost-effectively, or for streaming media performance.

"We believe the impact of cloud technologies will be transformational and cloud will be a major way by which IT is consumed as we move forward.  Whether a company decides to buy (i.e. the company builds a private or internal cloud) or rent (i.e. the company rents by the GB per month from a public cloud storage service provider) cloud storage, or both, its advantages will soon be as main-stream as the architectures that came before it, including 3-tier web applications, client/server, and mainframe."

China city bans web users from posting about officials

Authorities in a Chinese province where Internet users exposed an allegedly corrupt official's taste for luxury have made posting such information illegal, state media reported Tuesday.

The ruling Communist Party's parliament in eastern Jiangsu province approved a law making it illegal for people in the city of Xuzhou to publish "private information" on the Internet, the China Daily reported.

The law's approval at the annual provincial assembly underscores the increasing attention authorities are paying to blogs and Internet forums.

Zhou Jiugeng, the head of a district housing bureau in Jiangsu's capital, Nanjing, was dismissed last month after web users posted photos of him wearing a 100,000-yuan (14,600-dollar) watch and smoking 150-yuan-a-pack cigarettes.

The items were deemed to be beyond the means of someone living on a civil servant's relatively modest salary, and the Internet pressure was one of the reasons for the government being forced to take action.

But now, anyone in Xuzhou who posts "private information" online will be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for six months, the newspaper reported, citing a government notice.

The notice provided no further details, the report said.

The Jiangsu government's website confirmed the law would take effect on June 1 and said it was necessary to regulate "corporate and individuals' behaviour", without elaborating.

However, under Chinese law, publishing information about people is legal as long as it is accurate, Beijing lawyer Dong Zhengwei was quoted as saying in the China Daily.

"It's fair for members of the public to monitor public officials, but under the new rules if they publish things about them that are not true they will be breaking the law," he told the newspaper.

IBM Acquires Stake in China's Largest TV Maker

IBM's Chinese subsidiary last week acquired a stake worth US$15.8 million in Chinese television set maker Changhong Electric, according to a company filing at the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

IBM Global Services China, the services and consulting arm of IBM China, acquired a 1.56 percent stake in Sichuan Changhong Electric from its parent company and largest shareholder, Sichuan Changhong Group. Changhong Group transferred 29.76 million shares to IBM on Jan. 16, with the transaction valued at 3.64 yuan (US$0.53) per share, the filing said. Based on that valuation, IBM's stake in Changhong Electric is worth $15.8 million.

At the time of writing, Changhong Electric's shares were trading at 3.67 yuan, down slightly from Monday's close of 3.72 yuan.

Changhong is China's biggest TV maker, and also produces air conditioners and other electronics products, like MP3 players, set-top boxes, and DVD players. The company is also an IBM customer, having adopted the Product Innovation Management model developed by IBM Global Services.

The reason for transferring the shares to IBM China was not immediately clear. An IBM spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

Google 'Preferred Sites' Unclutters Search Results

Google may have slashed its budget for technology tinkering on engineers' pet projects, but that doesn't mean the company isn't seeking new ways to make its search-engine results better.

The company is experimenting with a search feature called Preferred Sites. Users can set Google Web search preferences to get search results that better match their needs and tastes.

Users fill in the sites they rely on the most, and results from those "preferred sites" will show up more often when they are relevant to a search query. The new feature affects searchers only when they are signed into a Google account, and the company promises other users won't see the customized search results or what preferred sites have been designated.

Earmarking Trusted Sites

Google suggested several ways users can take advantage of Preferred Sites. For example, they can add sites they trust for certain types of information, such as for sports scores, movie reviews, or health questions.

Searchers can also add local sites for news stories that are more relevant to them, like The Miami Herald if you live in Miami, Fla., or The Wall Street Journal. Google even lets searchers add their favorite blogs for news and information.

"Preferred sites is currently an experimental feature, and we're very interested in user feedback," a Google blog says. "If you have ideas about how to improve the feature, please let us know by posting in the Preferred Sites Discussion Group."

Getting Specific

Google said it relies on a user's Web history and other information from the user's Google account to suggest sites the engine thinks might be relevant. Searchers can select from these Google-developed suggestions or enter the URLs of any other sites.

Searchers can be as specific as they would like when adding preferred sites. For example, a user can add the entire CNN site at http://www.cnn.com as a preferred site, or http://money.cnn.com and http://weather.cnn.com to specifically add CNN's business and weather sites.

Removing preferred sites from the list is a matter of clicking the Remove link next to the site's URL and saving the preferences.

Uncluttering Search Results

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said this is part of Google's overall effort to provide more customization in search results.

"There are a lot of different scenarios where I could imagine that this would be very helpful. There's generally a lot of clutter in search results and you get a lot of duplication," Sterling said. "Google is using its algorithm to give you what they perceive to be the most trusted source on a particular query, but now also allowing you to add this other personal layer to that if you have a strong preference in a particular case."

Sterling used the example of searching for electronics. Guaranteeing that Amazon.com or a preferred electronics vendor would come up at the top of the search results could be valuable for some users.

Low-Cost, Open-Source Web Tablet Comes to Life

The growing category of very inexpensive laptops, spearheaded by netbooks and One Laptop Per Child's vision of the $100 laptop, may soon have another offering.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, who voiced an open call last July for a "dead simple touchscreen Web tablet that boots right into the browser," costs $200, and is open source, has reported that a second -- and better -- prototype for such a device is now up and running. He calls it the CrunchPad, and others have described it as a netbook without the keyboard.

'Open Source the Specs'

In his original posting, Arrington asked for help in creating the new device. "Nothing fancy" like the $2,500 Dell Latitude XT, he wrote. "Just a MacBook Air-thin touchscreen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel." And, once built, he proposed to "open source the specs" so that anyone could build one.

Arrington said he wanted one to sit on his lap so he could easily and comfortably browse Web pages related to TV programs -- or, since the device would play Flash video, he could watch movies or TV shows from Hulu, YouTube or Joost. Music playing, video chatting, and e-mail would round out the capabilities. By focusing on the browser, Arrington said, the device could use very low-end hardware.

In August, Prototype A was built with an aluminum case "twice as thick as it needs to be," and performance that offered more potential than actual. "It barely booted," Arrington admitted, but it was enough of a demonstration that he knew he wanted one that worked well.

Now the project has a team lead, Louis Monier, the founder and chief technical officer of AltaVista and former head of eBay's Advanced Technology Group. And Prototype B is now ready.

'Browser as OS'

Prototype B sports a 12-inch, 1024x768 touchscreen, a 4:3 aspect ratio, and a Via Nano processor. Arrington wrote that the processor performs comparably to Intel's Atom processor, used in its netbooks.

The prototype has a gigabyte of RAM, and a 4GB flash drive for the operating system, browser and Web cache. Other features include Wi-Fi, an accelerometer that lets the device reposition a Web page when the machine is turned, a camera, and a four-cell battery.

The weight is about three pounds and, although his original vision was for a $200 price tag, Arrington said something under $299 is more realistic.

The prototype runs a full install of the Ubuntu Linux open-source operating system, with a custom Webkit browser. The user experience and feature set are being built by Singapore-based FusionGarage, whose blog touts its enthusiasm for "the browser as an operating system."

Arrington said the effort has received "thousands" of e-mails, with many expressing a desire to own a CrunchPad. He also noted "quite a bit of interest" from potential investors, adding that the decision hasn't been made whether a company will be spun off to produce units for sale.

Fake reviews prompt Belkin apology

Fake positive reviews of Belkin products were actively solicited by one of its employees, the company admitted on Sunday.

Belkin, a networking and peripheral manufacturer, apologized for the worker's actions, which sought to artificially boost Belkin's status on Amazon while denigrating existing bad reviews.

On Friday, The Daily Background Web site revealed how someone, apparently Belkin business development representative Mark Bayard, had used the Mechanical Turk service to ask users to write positive reviews of a Belkin product at a rate of 65 cents per review. The requests made it clear that writers need have no experience of, nor even own, the product in question. Mechanical Turk is an online clearing-house for small jobs that cannot be done by machine, such as writing product descriptions. It is, coincidentally, run by Amazon.

In a letter posted on the company's Web site on Sunday, Belkin President Mark Reynoso said the solicitations had been "an isolated incident."

"It was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk Web site inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment," Reynoso wrote.

"Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened."

Reynoso said Belkin had "acted swiftly" to remove all the review requests from the Mechanical Turk system, and was "working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed."

"It's also important to recognize that our retail partners had no knowledge of, or participation in, these postings," Reynoso wrote. "Once again, we apologize for this occurrence, and we will work earnestly to regain the trust we have lost."

According to The Daily Background, the product for which the positive reviews were requested was Belkin's wireless F5U301 USB2.0 hub and dongle, listed on Amazon.com. On Monday, the listing for that product on Amazon.com showed a rating of one and a half stars out of five.

IBM Lotus Introduces LotusLive for Cloud Computing

IBM has announced LotusLive, a cloud-based portfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business. LotusLive will extend customers' current investments and link to everyday business services. LotusLive.com is the place to find all of Lotus' cloud solutions, including email, collaboration and Web conferencing services.

LotusLive is designed to help companies work smarter by making it easy for them to connect and work together with an emphasis on simplicity. LotusLive's online services give businesses of all sizes access to Lotus' rich collaboration tools without requiring an up-front investment in IT support resources or infrastructure.

LotusLive is built using open Web-based standards and an open business model allowing it to integrate with third party applications. "Click to Cloud" is the ability to link on-premise solutions with LotusLive services. "Click to Cloud" aims to bridge solutions inside the firewall to the cloud.

 

IBM also announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Salesforce.com and Skype.

LinkedIn will work with IBM to connect the LinkedIn network with LotusLive. LotusLive users will be able to search LinkedIn's public professional network and then collaborate with them using LotusLive services.

Salesforce.com will be integrating LotusLive services within its CRM solutions. Businesses will be able to extend the customer and opportunity management work done in the Salesforce CRM application with the collaborative capability of LotusLive.

Skype has announced plans to integrate its voice and video with LotusLive to create a communications experience. This integration will allow LotusLive customers to call Skype contacts from within their LotusLive contacts.

Open Solutions Alliance Releases 2009 Member Predictions

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) announced the results of its 2009 Predictions Survey, which polls high-ranking open source business executives on their forecasts for the year ahead.

The OSA survey results point to new opportunities and challenges for the commercial open source software industry. OSA members remain optimistic that the industry will continue its worldwide growth, echoing sentiments from the 2008 survey. This year, the economic crisis will play a role in the adoption of open solutions, and members agree that software delivery methods as well as bringing Web 2.0 functionalities to the enterprise will be paramount as we venture into a New Year.

The annual survey poses questions to the leading executives at OSA member companies in order to surface forecasts for the coming year. OSA represents more than 20 companies working in the commercial open source software market who collectively talk to thousands of CIOs and business managers throughout each year.

Questions included in this year's survey focus on opportunities and challenges for open source; president-elect Obama's impact on the IT marketplace; and the sustainability of open source business models in an unpredictable economic environment.

Highlights from the Survey included:

Opportunities & Challenges
The economic environment will lead to an increase in adoption of open solutions due to their flexibility, scalability and value. However, proprietary alternatives have been successful during other economic "down times," by lowering prices and adopting alternative delivery models. Also, some OSA members warn customers not to be tempted to put projects on hold until the economy rebounds; businesses can emerge ahead of their competitors after the downturn by investing in open source and enabling projects to proceed and outperform the competition.

Other opportunities surfaced from the Annual Prediction Survey include demand in the government and higher education sectors. Some say this will be due, in part, to the public spending that will be used to "fuel the economy."

President-elect Obama's Impact on IT Industry
Members largely agree that the way President-elect Obama conducted his campaign offers hope that the government will start leading in the adoption of new technologies. Some members say that it is up to the commercial open source industry to "connect the dots" for the new administration so that they can successfully deliver on initiatives in healthcare, clean-tech and open government.

 

Software Delivery & Business Models
The subscription and SaaS models will continue to help customers who need to pay for what they use, according to OSA members. Members also agree that the service and support model of many open source software companies will hold up this year, but that revenue streams will have to be complemented by delivering additional value to customers.

Members also say that the lines between the consumer and enterprise computing experiences will continue to blur, and that SaaS and cloud computing will dominate the way we use software.

The predicted winners and losers in 2009
Members believe that Google and Amazon will continue to lead through innovation in the cloud, and that exclusive proprietary vendors will struggle to find their edge in a rapidly changing software market.

Members believe that online communities will drive new products and services and that open source companies will be on the forefront of that trend due to their inherent understanding of collaboration.

Other losers cited by members in the year ahead will be "nice to have" software solutions.

Microsoft is planning to lay off (?)

Microsoft is planning to lay off a significant portion of its workforce as early as next week, CNET reports, citing an article in The Wall Street Journal. The technology giant is exploring layoffs across various business groups, a true rarity for the world's largest software company.

Although analysts have been predicting that Microsoft might cut anywhere from 10 to 17 percent of its 95,000 employees, the final cut is expected to be significantly lower. Moreover, there's still an outside chance that Microsoft could find other ways to rein in costs.

In previous economic lulls, Microsoft has been able to make minimal cuts while avoiding widespread layoffs, but just about everyone agrees that this recession calls for tougher measures. At most, Microsoft has cut jobs in the hundreds, but never on such a scale as the one being considered now.

OmniCast Content Distribution Software Now Available as a SaaS

At NRF, STRATACACHE announced today that its widely-used enterprise content distribution software, OmniCast, will be available as a comprehensive Software as a Service (SaaS) offering beginning February 1, 2009. This expanding area of the STRATACACHE business provides users with an affordable, highly flexible solution for distribution of business-critical information and media such as digital signage content, e-learning and training materials, software upgrades, configuration files and databases to thousands of distributed retail, financial, hospitality or other branch office locations.

Bull To Peddle Cassatt Cloud-Making Software

Bull is going to push Cassatt widgetry - software from BEA co-founder Bill Coleman's start-up - to improve the effectiveness of data center infrastructures of large European organizations.

It's going to hit on select lines of business, sectors like large government and local authorities, telecommunications, finance, retail, utilities and manufacturing.

Bull says the widgetry can cut operations, capital and energy costs by at least 30% through dynamic control, repurposing and power management.

But first the Cassatt software suite has to be optimized for Bull's NovaScale and Escala servers. Bull will also distribute the stuff on non-Bull servers. The deal involves consulting services and support.

Bull said the Cassatt software will be marketed as part of its Bio Data Center initiative, which aims at providing customers with "radical new approaches for operating their data centers," focusing on stuff like quality of operational processes, architectural topology and power consumption.

Cassatt concentrates on policy-based management software, controlling and optimizing multiple, diverse components of an organization's IT infrastructure, and providing cloud computing-style benefits using an organization's existing data center resources.

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

The exercise may be as simple as running less-critical applications or batch-processing jobs when energy costs are low but require modifications to the core processes used to run the data centers.

Virtualization can play a key part in shifting workloads to lower utilization periods, and mean automatically powering down servers and then powering them up again and moving the workload.

To help customers better manage their data centers, Bull and Cassatt say they will provide European organizations a starting point: active power management.

This way, large data center operators can power off their unused servers based on policies they set, minimizing power consumption by a factor of at least 30% for business operations workloads. Other workloads such as application development can reportedly benefit up to 50%. Idle servers can be restarted as business needs require, according to rules based on demand, time, capacity and specific events.

The pair says Cassatt shows a payback in less than one year.

Bull will move all three Cassett editions: Active Response, Standard Edition for increased energy efficiency; Premium Edition for increased energy efficiency and application resiliency; and Data Center Edition for increased energy efficiency, high application availability and server workload management in production environments. This last can also create a cloud-style infrastructure inside a data center using existing IT resources.

Cassatt fancies itself a kind of "data center operating system."

Google hawking "cloud" software to businesses

Google on Wednesday began recruiting a sales force to offer the Internet firm's software to business customers worldwide who 
traditionally use Microsoft programs.

Google will train people to pitch its Google Apps Premier Edition, an array of business software hosted online in what is referred to as "cloud services."

Cloud services such as spread sheets, word processing, and calendars are maintained and supported on Google computers and users access them when they wish by using the Internet.

Cloud services eliminate the need for packaged software to be installed and maintained on computers in homes or offices.

Google has been steadily increasing its host of cloud services, with a basic array offered for free and a Premier Edition available at a cost of 50 dollars annually.

"Google Apps has reached a level of maturity where it is useful and valuable for almost any business" said Google president of enterprise Dave Girouard.

"This program gives IT solution providers an easy way to introduce cloud computing to their service offerings, while helping more businesses make the transition to this new era of technology."

Google said it will teach "resellers" how to integrate Apps into customers' business operations and give them a 20 percent break on the price that they can pass on to customers if they chose to do so.

The program has been tested with more than 50 pilot partners.

"We believe strongly that all companies will adopt SaaS (Software as a Service) to one degree or another, and Google's reseller program empowers us to be experts in the cloud," said Tony Safoian, president of SADA Systems, an IT consulting firm.

"Reselling Google Apps opens up new opportunities via new conversations we could not have had with prospective clients as little as two years ago."

Safoian said Google Apps can be an easy sell, given that letting the California technology firm handle software updates, maintenance and disaster recovery can cost businesses 75 per cent less than doing it themselves.

Google Apps is seen as a direct challenge to a Microsoft empire founded on selling packaged software for installation on people's machines.

Until now, Google had relied on its own team to sell businesses subscriptions to its cloud services. Schools and charity groups are able to use the software services free.

Microsoft has responded with its own move "into the cloud" and says that the Windows 7 operating system it is preparing for release has been crafted with that in mind.

NEC JOINS FORCES WITH ORACLE, OTHERS ON SAAS SOFTWARE

NEC Corp. plans to team up with major U.S. IT firms Oracle Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. and Japanese software firm WingArc Technologies Inc. to create database software that enables client firms to run, without compatibility problems, multiple types of software provided through SaaS (software as a service) services. 
Under SaaS arrangements, companies access software - such as that for managing customer data or employee schedules - on the servers of the service provider.

This helps them slash IT costs, as it removes the need for them to have dedicated servers.

However, with current SaaS services, compatibility problems can arise if companies use different service providers.

The new database software is expected to be installed at NEC's data center this spring.

The company began SaaS operations in earnest about a year ago, aiming to generate sales of Y120 billion ($US1.32 billion) in fiscal 2010.

According to research firm Nork Research Co., the domestic SaaS market is projected to grow 800% to 770 billion yen in 2012 from the estimated level in 2008.

Likewise Accepted into Intel Certified Solutions Program

Likewise Software has successfully completed the process for the Intel Certified Solutions Program. Likewise software helps Microsoft, Mac, Linux and Unix systems work together in mixed networks by administering authentication and access policies for all users from a centralized location.

Likewise becomes part of the Intel Software Partner Program to help grow its business and expand its sales reach. Now, Likewise software is available to small- and medium-size business (SMB) buyers globally through the Intel Business Exchange online storefront.

The company's flagship enterprise software, Likewise Enterprise 5.0, facilitates integration of Linux, Unix and Mac systems with Microsoft Active Directory, adding group policy and reporting capabilities to the core authentication function. Version 5.0 includes a number of compliance features for regulatory requirements and standards such as PCI and Sarbanes Oxley, as well as flexibility for identity mapping, and support for Active Directory-based NIS (Network Information System) maps.

Likewise Enterprise allows organizations to provide users with a single username and password for Windows and non-Windows systems. The latest version is based on Likewise Identity Service (LWIS), the next-generation authentication engine, and provides enhanced capabilities and integration for Mac OS X-based computers, allowing Mac system administrators to manage Microsoft Active Directory from a Mac OS-based machine, and perform policy editing using familiar Mac tools via the Likewise Administrative Console (LAC).

LinkedIn Surpassing Facebook for Enterprise Use-Cases

While early 2008 found enterprises buzzing about Facebook and some firms even adopted it as their Intranet platform, 2009 is seeing LinkedIn moving more rapidly to address enterprise social computing needs, according to new research by independent analyst firm, CMS Watch.

CMS Watch released an update which evaluates twenty-six social computing platforms against eleven potential enterprise use-cases. Vendors reviewed include IBM, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Jive, Telligent, Awareness, Drupal, SocialText, Lithium, and Ning, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn outperformed Facebook in CMS Watch's "Professional Networking" and "Community of Practice" scenarios. The report also found that from a functional standpoint, LinkedIn surpasses Facebook in Information Filtering and Discussion - although neither platform provides the broader Blog, Wiki, and Project Tracking services that support broader enterprise collaboration.

"Both platforms are increasingly important to professionals worldwide, but LinkedIn is beginning to make more progress towards services that can support enterprise-oriented social computing," explained CMS Watch analyst Jarrod Gingras.

Of particular note, CMS Watch found that:

• Enterprises can use LinkedIn groups as internal and external discussion boards and link-sharing areas. LinkedIn participants can be pre-authorized by e-mail domain, they can keep track of discussions through notifications, and they can search group content.
• LinkedIn has chosen to slowly control the release of several "approved" applications for professional use, unlike Facebook, which allows any developer to post applications. Several official LinkedIn applications target enterprise users, such as a SlideShare application, as well as a Huddle application that provides lightweight file sharing and collaboration. There are no native document collaboration services in Facebook.
• LinkedIn is perceived as more professional by members. "Enterprises should not assume that their employees and business partners are comfortable mixing professional and personal personas on Facebook, especially beyond North America," concludes CMS Watch analyst, Adriaan Bloem.

Facebook seems to be the most popular public networking service, with a membership of 150 million that is expected to double in 2009.

"There's good reason for all that growth," notes CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne, "and Facebook certainly has a better 'fun factor,' but I'm not as sanguine about the platform's business potential as I was a year ago, whereas LinkedIn seems to be pursuing a measured plan to provide more value to the enterprise."

Xobni Gets Cisco Investment

Despite VCs currently being gun-shy, particularly of Web 2.0 social networking stuff, the little e-mail software start-up Xobni, whose name is inbox backwards, has managed to close a $7 million B round in which Cisco, a new best friend, participated, besides existing backers Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and Atomico.

The money is earmarked for R&D that uncovers and leverages "all the amazing information and relationships locked up in our overloaded inboxes, particularly in Microsoft Outlook, the most underutilized inbox in the world."

 

Xobni, wouldn't you know it, is an Outlook analytics and organizing plug-in with its own relationships with LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo Mail and Skype, a clutch of favorable reviews, a demo by Bill Gates to its credit and no revenues to speak of.

Its A round was good for $4.4 million. And its widgetry went into public beta last May. It has reportedly seen 1.5 million downloads since.

Cisco of course recently bought Jabber, the instant messaging software, and PostPath, the e-mail and calendaring software so one might reasonably ask what Cisco is thinking.

Google Axes Mashup Editor to Focus on Cloud Computing Infrastructure

"In the spirit of onward and upward," wrote Google's VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, on the official Google Code Blog at the end of last week, "we have decided to shut down the Mashup Editor, currently in limited private beta, in favor of the more powerful App Engine infrastructure." Google is also "discontinuing" Dodgeball.com, Gundotra revealed - a mobile social networking service that lets users share their location with friends via text message.

"Existing Mashup Editor applications will stop receiving traffic in six months," Gundotra noted, "and we hope you will join our team in making the exciting transition to App Engine."

By way of eating in its own kitchen Google is in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine.

By way of explaining this move, Gundotra wrote:

"After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License. While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers."

The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we're excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform."

After the migration is complete, Gundotra added, Google will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License.

"While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers," he noted.

Google Apps Resale “Easy Intro” to Cloud Computing

It was resellers that made Microsoft great and so, following in those well-trod footsteps, Google said that it's recruiting resellers to push its Google Apps to businesses of all sizes everywhere in the world, taking Microsoft on where it lives.

So far Google's collected 50 "pilot partners."

The authorized resellers are supposed to be able to sell, customize and support Google Apps Premier Edition, creating new revenue opportunities for themselves and easier access to Google's cloud services. And they'd get a 20% discount off the $50-a-user-a-year price.

The software includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Talk and Google Video for business.

To push more users into paying for the Premier Edition - and diversify its revenue stream - from here on out Google will limit the use of its freebie version of the software to 50 people per company. Current users, schools and non-profits will be exempt.

Google of course is famous for leaving its software in interminable beta but its enterprise president Dave Girouard claims the widgetry "has reached a level of maturity where it is useful and valuable for almost any business."

It's also recommending the software as an "easy introduction" to cloud computing.

Google says it will give resellers training, support and tools for sales and marketing as well as access to tools for integrating Google Apps into their customers' business operations.

Resellers will bill customers directly and can bundle their own services and support with Google Apps.

With Google's SaaS solution, users are supposed to be able to save 75% of the cost of running productivity software on their premises.

The reseller program includes a portal with business and technical information and online discussion groups; tools for setting up business customers, provisioning end users, management and reporting; and REST-based integration APIs for directory synchronization, migration, reporting and single sign-on.

Google said potential resellers will be evaluated based on relevant experience and credit worthiness.

It's looking to recruit companies with a strong SaaS orientation and a business model built around providing value-added services and solutions. Sales are due to kick off by the end of March.

The company already claims a million businesses and 10 million users use Google Apps, predominantly the freebie stuff.

Click here to learn more about the program.

Hostway Launches Cloud Computing Service FlexCloud

Hostway Corporation has launched its cloud computing infrastructure FlexCloud, adding cloud computing functionality to all its hosting packages. The new service includes automated allocation of CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth for individual websites.

The company states that the first to benefit will be its North American customers' websites, which will be hosted on the new cloud computing infrastructure. All new customers' websites will also be placed on FlexCloud. It further states that FlexCloud includes automated allocation of CPU, memory, storage and bandwidth for individual websites, reliability through infrastructure architecture and deployment, and end-user features.

Ricoh and IBM Form Global Strategic Alliance Supporting SOA

Ricoh announced a Global Strategic Alliance with IBM that will provide customers with document solutions. As part of the alliance, the companies will first launch a new Ricoh offering, Document Security and Management Services (DSMS) in the United States. The DSMS offering includes Assessment & Deployment, End User Services, Managed Services, Security, Green Office, and Enterprise Content Management services, which will be delivered by Ricoh Document Solutions and Services Division and IBM's Global Technology Services. In addition, Ricoh has an agreement to resell IBM's Managed Server offering and collaborate on the sale and delivery of IBM software, hardware and services, such as End User Services, Internet Security Systems (ISS) Services, Business Continuity & Resiliency Services, and Storage & Data Services.

Ricoh and IBM have signed an agreement to demonstrate Multi-Function Product (MFP) -based solutions that fully integrate with a corporation's IT applications and infrastructure and are based on the principles of service oriented architecture (SOA). Because of its support for SOA, Ricoh MFP can be integrated into existing IT infrastructures to drive business processes, create a custom portal on the MFP panel and receive messages at the MFP.

According to a release from the allying companies, a SOA-enabled Ricoh MFP facilitates the integration of new technologies, including autonomic computing. Additionally, by integrating supply chain management systems with diagnostic data generated within the MFP, the ability to automatically order MFP supplies can be performed.

Ingres Using Salesforce CRM to Extend Cloud Computing

Salesforce.com has announced that Ingres Corporation is using Salesforce CRM to support its global business growth. Following a two week deployment, Ingres integrated Salesforce CRM with the Intacct financial management system from the Force.com AppExchange. Salesforce.com partner Demand Solutions Group helped Ingres with its Salesforce CRM deployment and customization. Ingres is deploying Intacct, Xactly and Vtrenz via the Force.com AppExchange to extend cloud computing throughout the enterprise.

In addition to deploying Salesforce CRM, Ingres deployed Intacct via the Force.com AppExchange for integration between Ingres' financials and Salesforce. The SaaS Intacct solution shares data with Salesforce CRM, so finance has visibility into the sales pipeline, contract status and other critical information, and sales can view account status and accounts receivables details.

Ingres also tapped into the Force.com AppExchange for additional functionality, deploying Vtrenz for additional marketing automation capabilities, and Xactly for sales compensation. When the company needed a custom opportunity form for the business development team to feed information into Salesforce CRM, it built one using the Force.com platform.

EMC Expands Virtualization Portfolio with New VMware Services

EMC announced it is a gold-level VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC), expanding its global alliance with VMware to help enterprise customers around the world accelerate their business by virtualizing their information infrastructures and data centers. EMC's Global Services helps customers by extending virtual infrastructure into a consistent enterprise-wide strategy.

The EMC Global Services portfolio for the VMware platform focuses on key customer requirements, such as:

- Business continuity for virtualized environments, including VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
- VMware operations, management, and reporting best practices
- VMware infrastructure acceleration and implementation, and
 -Planning and deploying client virtualization

EMC will leverage more than 1400 services professionals and engineers who have completed the VMware hands-on training and hundreds who have continued to complete the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification test to offer a full lifecycle of strategy, design, implementation and managed services that help customers integrate VMware architectures and operations into their data centers, remote offices and desktop strategies.

For those customers deploying mission-critical applications from companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP on the VMware platform, EMC service professionals will leverage EMC's ongoing investment in EMC Proven Solutions that have been validated and integrated with both EMC and VMware technologies.

Clearwire Introduces Clear 4G Mobile Internet Service to Portland

Clearwire claims it has transformed Portland into the fastest unwired city in the West, making the city home to one of the first 4G WiMAX wireless broadband services in the world, called Clear. With Clear, consumers and businesses can access the Internet wirelessly, at broadband speeds ─ at home, in the office, around the Portland metro area, and on the go.

Clear's mobile, residential and business plans can be purchased by the day or by the month, and do not require long term service contracts. Home Internet service plans start at $20 per month, while mobile Internet plans start at $30 per month. Additional savings are available for customers that purchase both home and mobile Internet services or that sign up for a two-year service agreement.

Clear broadband delivers up to 6 Mbps download speeds with the Clear residential modem, while mobile Internet customers can expect to receive up to 4 Mbps download speeds.

Clear is currently available in Baltimore, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon, and is developing a multi-year network build-out plan to bring the service to metro areas across the U.S. The Baltimore market currently operates under the XOHM brand, but will be re-branded as Clear in the coming months.

Clearwire currently offers pre-WiMAX Internet services in 46 markets throughout the United States. The company will announce roll-out plans for future markets and upgrade plans for existing pre-WiMAX markets early this year.

Soonr Brings Mobile Cloud Computing to iPhone

Soonr has announced the launch of an iPhone application that uses cloud computing to keep users in touch with their documents. A free version is available from the Apple App Store with expanded versions offered through mobile operators and SaaS providers.

Soonr makes the documents on a Mac or PC completely mobile. When the computer is online, Soonr automatically and instantly backs up the user's files in a "personal cloud."  iPhone users get a view of all their documents - whether they are Word, Excel, PowerPoint or virtually any other file type.

Soonr automatically maintains the latest versions of all users' key documents in the cloud. Soonr`s rendering software works across a wide range of document formats, so mobile workers don`t have to download specific programs to view their documents. Document pages can be previewed as thumbnails, and since the document resides in the cloud and not on the iPhone, accessing and viewing is fast.

All of Soonr's capabilities are available even when host computers are sleeping or powered off. Since Soonr continuously and securely backs up documents to the cloud, they can be restored in case of computer failure or loss.

Sharing documents via Soonr can be done in several ways. Users can send a document from their iPhone to anyone by simply entering the person`s mobile phone number or email address. Fellow Soonr users can create workgroups and share, view and comment on documents without using email and can share printers. When sharing files, users have the option of notifying a recipient of a share via SMS or email.

Tod Nielsen Appointed COO of VMware

"In this newly created role," said VMware's President and CEO, Paul Maritz, "Tod brings unique skills and capabilities that will help us improve our operational focus and enhance our execution across all areas of the business." He made the comment as VMware announced that Tod Nielsen had joined the company and been appointed  to the newly created role of Chief Operating Officer. Nielsen will report directly to President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz.

"With Tod on board, I will be able to devote more of my time to the product strategy and development," Maritz said, "while Tod focuses more on business, marketing, and operations. Having worked closely with Tod in the past, I know that we will work effectively together and complement each other."

Nielsen, 43, joins VMware from Borland Software Corporation where he served as President and Chief Executive Officer since November 2005. Prior to Borland, Nielsen held several key executive management positions at leading software companies including Microsoft, BEA and Oracle.

VMware is an impressive company that is in the enviable position of giving customers a significant return on their IT investment which is becoming only more important in these challenging economic times," said Nielsen. "As an admirer of the company's strong track record of software innovation, I'm excited about working with my new colleagues at VMware to help our customers truly transform the way they manage their IT resources."

Nielsen brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in enterprise software and application development to VMware. Prior to Borland, Nielsen served as senior vice president, marketing and global sales support for Oracle Corporation. Prior to Oracle, Nielsen was the chief marketing officer and executive vice president of engineering at BEA Systems, where he had overall responsibility for BEA's worldwide marketing strategy and operations, as well as all research and development operations. Nielsen joined BEA after the acquisition of his private company, Crossgain Inc., where he served as its chief executive officer. Nielsen also spent twelve years with Microsoft Corporation, in various roles, including general manager of database and developer tools, vice president of developer tools, and, vice president of Microsoft's platform group

Red Hat has named Greg Symon as vice president

Red Hat has named Greg Symon as vice president and general manager of North American sales. With more than 25 years of business and sales experience, Symon will play a key leadership role in the development and execution of Red Hat's North American sales strategy and growth.

Prior to Red Hat, Symon held various senior sales management and business development positions during a 22-year tenure with Intel Corporation. He most recently served as senior managing director and founder of Intel's Global Software Relations organization within the company's Software Solutions Group. In this role, Symon led the creation and development of the software influencer organization focused on developing and maintaining global relationships with partners, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Operating System Vendors (OSVs) to ensure success with the ecosystem and end-user account engagements.

Earlier in his Intel career, Symon was one of the primary architects and founder of both the Influencer Evangelist and Worldwide Business Development organizations. He has also held Intel positions including worldwide director of the Customer Solutions Group Influencer Sales Team, Americas director of the Architecture Management organization, manager of the Business Development organization and director of the Strategic Relations Managers Group. Symon received numerous company awards and recognition for his achievements with Intel.

Quickoffice Unveils Editable Office Application for the iPhone

Quickoffice announced the release of MobileFiles Pro, said to be the first application to include editable Office functionality for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The upgrade brings comprehensive editing and saving of Microsoft Office Excel files in the .xls format, Wi-Fi file transfer to and from a desktop (Mac and PC), and the ability to access and synchronize with Apple MobileMe accounts.

MobileFiles Pro has .xls editing features including support for over 125 functions, robust format options ranging from font style and cell color choice to inserting and resizing rows and columns. Users can switch between sheets in a workbook, revise inputs and recalculate and undo / redo changes.

In addition, MobileFiles Pro features desktop file access and transfer functionality combined with MobileMe iDisk account access to transfer and store files to and from the iPhone. Using the new Wi-Fi feature, users can transfer files directly from any desktop to an iPhone or from an iPhone to the desktop.

MobileFiles Pro also provides remote access to MobileMe iDisk files, synchronizes changes and uploads new files to iDisk and provides local passcode protection of the entire application.

Open Range Secures $374 Million to Bring Wireless Broadband to Rural Communities

Open Range Communications, a wireless broadband services provider to rural America, announced an investment of $100 million from One Equity Partners (OEP), the private equity arm of JPMorgan

 

In March 2008, the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Utilities Program (RDUP) approved a $267 million Broadband Access Loan for Open Range, with the prerequisite that private financing also be secured.

The funding enables Open Range to launch high-speed broadband Internet and voice services to more than six million citizens in 546 underserved and rural communities using WiMAX technology within five years.

Vegas gadget show gets smaller

Even amid the flash and sizzle of the world's premier showcase for consumer electronics, the reality of the economic recession will be hard to ignore.

With shoppers in a funk and companies scaling back, the annual Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza in Las Vegas this week is likely to be subdued, with fewer manufacturers, retailers and people expected in attendance.

The focus is likely to be on smaller, more connected and greener devices that can help consumers save on bills. That is a change from years past, when companies trafficked in excess, offering items such as massive 150-inch TVs that were beyond the financial reach of most consumers.

"In tough times, the emphasis maybe shifts from cool and neat to how do you make things work better," said NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

The Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts CES, estimates that 130,000 people will attend, down from 141,00 last year. Hotel rooms in Las Vegas, usually scarce at this time of the year, can still be found.

The show's 2,700 exhibitors will be spread over 1.7 million square feet, a smaller footprint than last year's 3,000 exhibitors.

The tone will be different as well, with many tech companies focused on sealing sales rather than just making showy exhibits on the convention floor.

"A lot of companies are asking us for meeting rooms that haven't done so in the past," said Jason Oxman of the Consumer Electronics Association. "Companies are looking to do business at the show that they would otherwise do with individual customer visits."

Kumu Puri, a senior executive with Accenture Ltd's consumer technology practice, expects the focus to be on areas showing strength, such as mobile devices, video games and personal navigation systems.

"Those are the categories that really continue to appeal to the consumer ... they're at price points that are a little bit more manageable," said Puri.

Some things will stay the same: attendees will be treated to a cast of speakers, including Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, Cisco Systems Inc CEO John Chambers, Sony Corp CEO Howard Stringer, Intel Corp Chairman Craig Barrett and Ford Motor Co CEO Alan Mulally.

SMALLER, CONNECTED AND CONVERGED

CES is likely to be awash in small, $300 to $400 laptops known as netbooks, which are gaining popularity, even as overall PC sales stall. IDC expects netbook unit shipments to surge 85 percent to 21.5 million in 2009.

Nearly every PC maker except Apple Inc has thrown its hat into the netbook space, hoping that volume sales will make up for lower margins. Analysts expect to see even cheaper netbooks emerge for 2009, possibly below $200.

So far, according to DisplaySearch, Taiwan's Acer Inc and Asustek Computer Inc dominate the netbook market, as Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc struggle to catch up. Some expect Sony to unveil a netbook at CES.

As always, TVs will be a major focus and, while there will likely be huge models on display, expect to see more organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens that are thinner, more energy efficient and have superior picture quality than liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma sets.

TVs will get more connected, too. Yahoo Inc is slated to announce deals with equipment makers that executive Patrick Barry said would bring the Internet to the TV "without destroying the TV experience."

There is also plenty of buzz around 3-D, which is gaining popularity at the Cineplex, but has yet to move into the living room. Fox Sports will show college football's championship game in 3-D at a Sony-sponsored event at CES on January 8.

Many companies, including graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp, will be flogging competing technologies as they struggle to get a toehold in the emerging 3-D industry.

In the wireless sector, CES will be littered with competing touch-screen phones. Some hotly anticipated news is a new operating system from Palm Inc, which has been hurt by Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry. A new device will come later in the year.

Cisco also plans to unveil a wireless home audio system linked to an online media library called Media Hub, and a software service called Eos that helps media companies create social networking sites.

And there will be plenty of companies hawking green technology, such as Monster Cable, whose GreenPower products promise to eliminate energy drain when a PC is turned off.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Carew, Franklin Paul, Ritsuko Ando and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Andre Grenon)

Soonr cloud-computing app gets down to business

If you'd like to use your iPhone to sync up more than just contacts, calendars, and e-mails between your mobile device and your computer, Soonr thinks it has the app for you. The company's self-titled iPhone app makes files stored on your computer accessible via your iPhone, allowing you to view, comment, and print documents when you're on the go.

Soonr's iPhone app is now available from the App Store.

According to Soonr, the application backs up files—Soonr supports 30 file types—in a "personal cloud" that you can access from your phone. The developer says that Soonr automatically maintains the latest versions of these documents, saving you the hassle of having to upload files every time you change them.

What can you do with these documents once they're uploaded? Soonr displays presentations, spreadsheets, and text files right on the iPhone, allowing you to zoom and scroll with the customary touchscreen finger gestures. You can also view thumbnail previews of pages within a file or look at documents in landscape view as well as portrait.

A Dashboard screen within the iPhone app shows you what files are available, recently added, or changed since your last secure log-on. Soonr also touts its app as a collaboration tool—you can share documents with the tap of a button. You're also able to comment on documents as well as read the comments of your collaborators.

Finally, there's a print command, allow you to print up documents directly from the iPhone, even to a remote printer you've set up. As an example, Soonr says, you would be able to access a quarterly report from your iPhone while you're at the airport and send it to your boss's printer.

The company has posted a demonstration video for Soonr at YouTube.

The App Store version of Soonr is free. The company also plans to offer it as a richly-featured white label service through mobile operators and software-as-a-service providers. In Denmark, for example, TeliaSonera Denmark offers a version of Soonr called Sky Files; Soonr says it's the fourth-most downloaded business app in the Danish App Store. Look for additional partners to join forces with Soonr in 2009.

China targets big websites in Internet crackdown

China has launched a crackdown against major websites that officials accused of threatening morals by spreading pornography and vulgarity, including the dominant search engines Google and Baidu.

China's Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies announced the campaign at a meeting on Monday, state television reported, showing officials hauling digital equipment away from one unidentified office.

The meeting "decided to launch a nationwide campaign to clean up a vulgar current on the Internet and named and exposed a large number of violating public morality and harming the physical and mental health of youth and young people," the report said.

The 19 Internet operators and websites named had failed to swiftly cut "vulgar" content and had not heeded warnings from censors, it said.

Baidu dominates the Chinese web search and advertising market with an estimated two-thirds of the audience. Google Inc, the global market leader, is a distant number two in China.

China's ruling Communist Party is wary of threats to its grip on information and has launched many such censorship efforts before, targeting pornography, political criticism and web scams. But officials flagged tougher steps this time.

SENSITIVE ANNIVERSARIES

The campaign also coincides with Communist Party efforts to stifle dissent and protest as the economy slows and as China enters a year of sensitive anniversaries, especially the 20th year since the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.

"Some websites have exploited loopholes in laws and regulations," said Cai Mingzhao, a deputy chief of the State Council Information Office, who chaired the meeting, according to a report on an official news website ( http://www.china.com.cn ).

"They have used all kinds of ways to distribute content that is low-class, crude and even vulgar, gravely damaging mores on the Internet."

The Information Office is the government face of the Party's propaganda and censorship machine.

Cai told officials to "fully grasp the gravity and threat of the vulgar current infesting the Internet" and said law-breakers face "stern punishment."

Despite China's rings of censorship, websites and especially blogs have become sometimes racy magnets for the country's nearly 300 million registered Internet users, many in their teens.

The official China Daily reported last month that Shanghai police detained a local woman who became an online sensation after posting a video of herself having sex.

The Financial Times reported on Monday that the Chinese government is arming censors with more advanced filtering software to catch banned content

DataCore SMB SAN Software Solutions for Server Virtualization Environments

DataCore Software has announced an expanded line of SAN software starter packages priced for small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs). The high cost and complexity of traditional SAN storage required to support virtual servers and desktops typically puts it out of reach for many SMBs. DataCore's new business continuity solutions provide true auto failover/failback high-availability and fault tolerance. These new packages provide automated storage protection to ensure business uptime, while also significantly lowering the cost and complexity barriers of SAN storage for Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix, Virtual Iron, Parallels, VMware and other server and desktop virtualization environments.

The new software packages, with entry prices starting at under $2,000 per server, include thin provisioning, data migration technology, storage performance caching software, snapshots for fast disk backups, remote site disaster recovery replication and DataCore's High Availability (HA) data protection. In virtual server and desktop environments, DataCore's HA provides automation (true failover/failback recovery), manufacturer independence (storage and server brands), network connectivity (iSCSI or FC, or both) and fault tolerance (deployed in thousands of systems worldwide).

"DataCore makes cost avoidance a reality," continued Teixeira. "The software leverages existing storage investments, maximizes utilization and runs on virtually any Intel/AMD hardware platform or, for maximum cost avoidance, even on a VM itself. It is a 'renewable resource" within SMBs providing years of return on investment, because unlike throw away hardware-based solutions, it can be expanded and upgraded to meet growth needs and stay on top of the rapid pace of changes in IT.

Wipro Develops Integrated Police Information System Using SOA

Wipro Infotech has developed an integrated Police Information System, an end-to-end online application software which covers activities related to the day-to-day functioning of police departments, including the back-end administrative processes of general administration, finance and stores. The processes have been automated to ease the tasks of administration and record keeping, thereby bringing in operational efficiency throughout the police department.

The application has been developed on a flexible software oriented architecture (SOA) that allows it to be used in both centralized and de-centralized deployment modes. This architecture enables each police station to function independently and at the same time allows for data to flow to the divisional and HQ levels at regular intervals, thereby achieving the benefits of a centralized system. The application also has a citizen interface through which complaints can be raised and the status of an already lodged FIR can be tracked. The user interface can display content both in English and the local language.

The application has several operational modules that will maintain records within the police stations and other police bodies pertaining to various activities of the police in areas of crime, law and order, wireless, traffic, intelligence and counter intelligence. Each module has the search function to retrieve relevant data. A standard-based information exchange gateway will make available the required crime and criminal information for access by other states. The information exchange will also retrieve the required information from other states, enabling a sharing of crime and criminal information across the country.

Scio Hires New VP of Business Development

Scio Consulting, a provider of Nearshore Outsourced Product Development (OPD) for ISVs, SaaS and Web companies, has announced a key addition to their executive management team.

Scio CEO, Luis Aburto, said that the company hired former MassMutual and Kanbay (now CapGemini) executive Jeremy Beck as VP of Business Development to be responsible for growing sales in the North America region. Mr. Beck, 35, will begin working at the Mexico-based nearshore development center immediately.

OnlyWire 2.0 Adds 20,000 Users to Their Bookmarking Aggregation Tool in Its First Month

OnlyWire, a SNiPiTRON, LLC company, is a turbo-charged Bookmark Aggregator and Syndication tool that allows users to auto submit content to the highest ranked bookmarking sites, at the same time, with the click of a button. OnlyWire supports automated feeds to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Linkatopia and over 15 others. OnlyWire provides feeds to only the highest ranked bookmarking services on the Internet in order to maximize web traffic for its users. Spamming on the system is both prohibited and policed.

 

OnlyWire has a revenue model called the "Pay or Promote" system where users can purchase the solution for $2.99 per month ($24.99 if paid annually @ 30% off). Alternatively, users can "promote" OnlyWire 2.0 and therefore use it for free. This requires the user to place the Bookmark & Share button on their website.

Within its first month of launching OnlyWire 2.0, it added 20,000 new users -- giving it over 70,000 active users. OnlyWire's Bookmark & Share Button drove over 10 million page views its first month. The Company is anticipating exponential growth trajectory in 2009. The owners of OnlyWire are seasoned Internet veterans who sold their first Internet based software company to CNET Networks (now CBS Corporation) in 2000.

 

To sign up for OnlyWire 2.0, Click Here.

Self-Repairing Data Center Automation Solution Released

Following 5 years of research and development under the technical direction of its long time author Mark Burgess (a professor of Network and System Administration at Oslo University College), the recently formed support company Cfengine AS today released a major upgrade of the Open Source, self-repairing software cfengine based on its innovative Promise Theory technology.

Unlike would-be alternatives, cfengine is not about producing alarms and reports to notify about errors and misalignments in the Data Center: it is a fully self-repairing maintenance engine capable of fixing them without human intervention. Cfengine users know that systems are compliant and maintained even when humans are unavailable, because they have made all the important decisions in advance.

With probably a million existing cfengine installations already worldwide, this major upgrade will have a big impact in improving data center operations at some of the largest data centers in the world, says CEO Thomas Ryd.

Cfengine has always been at the leading edge of research in its field and one of the important innovations in the new release is integrated knowledge management. As a tool that separates human decisions from machine implementation, cfengine historically freed humans from manual labour to indulge in proactive decision-making and strategic planning - something that relies on clear enterprise knowledge. Cfengine 3 now integrates a knowledge engine based on ISO standard Topic Maps making it easier than ever to follow the strategic intentions behind data centers operations. Cfengine ties IT and business-processes together in a way many companies and compliance-auditors will find powerful and appealing, CEO Thomas Ryd continues.

 

 

Cfengine is not a quaint dashboard for users - it is a powerful engine for datacenter engineers. Version 3 introduces an innovative new language to the trusted technology, with a simpler syntax and sophisticated pattern description features. It brings technology to manage the essential large scale infrastructure and resource clouds of the next decade.

Cfengine 3 will work side-by-side with existing versions of cfengine to provide a minimum-disruption, incremental upgrade path to existing users. Gradual adoption has always been the cornerstone of cfengine's success, setting it apart from alternative disruptive roll-out systems. While other solutions require weeks or months of training with downtime and a major impact on existing infrastructure and applications, Cfengine works unobtrusively behind the scenes, according to Mark Burgess.

Cfengine AS added support and consulting services to the mix this year, with a strong business management team to complement Burgess's well known research credentials. CEO Thomas Ryd summarizes the main reasons for using cfengine 3 in Data Center Automation:

1) It is the only truly scalable self-repairing solution.

2) Its open source code base is broadly tested by a community of expert users.

3) Its state of the art technology for voluntary cooperation delivers scalability and security and users set their own pace for change.

About Cfengine AS

Cfengine was founded June 2008 in Oslo, Norway. Its software solution, Cfengine, is the standalone, open-source datacenter management platform run by leading enterprises since 1993. The company is committed to reducing costs for its customers, improving efficiency and delivering higher return on investment for the lowest cost of adoption in the industry.

Recession Slams Global Semiconductor Sales

Worldwide semiconductor sales fell in November, as the economic downturn continued to hammer chipmakers, industry figures released Friday showed.

Sales of semiconductors declined 9.8% to $20.8 billion from November 2007, when revenue hit $23.1 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported. Sales were 7.2% lower than the $22.4 billion in October.

 

Excluding memory products, which have suffered all year from overproduction and weak demand, the industry did much better, but still saw revenue fall. Sales excluding memory fell 4.8% year to year to $17.3 billion from $18.2 billion.

"The worldwide economic crisis is having an impact on demand for semiconductors, but to a lesser degree than some other major industry sectors," SIA president George Scalise said in a statement.

Overall sales for the first 11 months of 2008 were $232.7 billion, an increase of 0.2% from the same period last year, the SIA said. Excluding memory products, year-to-year sales for the same period rose 5.6%.

The SIA numbers were just the latest bad news for the semiconductor industry, which is reeling from a worldwide drop in consumer electronics and PC sales because of the economic recession.

The industry is expected to see its first revenue decline in seven years in 2008, according to market researcher iSuppli. Global revenue is expected to fall by 2% to $266.6 billion from $272 billion in 2007.

The new figure is a dramatic drop from the research firm's September forecast of 3.5% growth and will be the first year-to-year decline for the industry since the dot-com bust of 2001 that sent revenue plummeting by 28.7%.