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.