Microsoft lashes out at Adobe over Silverlight comments

Microsoft lashes out at Adobe over Silverlight comments
February 12, 2009 at 6:20 pm
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Microsoft is crying foul over recent comments made by an Adobe executive that Silverlight has "fizzled" as a competitor to Adobe's Flash.

In his blog, Tim Sneath, director of the Windows and Silverlight technical evangelism team, accused Adobe Executive Vice President and CFO Mark Garrett of "living in a fantasy world" if he thinks that Silverlight adoption is waning.

[ Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled Moonlight 1.0, which brings Silverlight to Linux and Unix | Test Center: Silverlight 2. ]

"The idea that Silverlight is in anything other than rude health is more to do with what Adobe would like to be the case, rather than what actually is the case," he wrote in the blog posting. "The suggestion that 'Silverlight adoption has fizzled out in the last 6-9 months' is pretty risible, in fact. For starters, Silverlight 2 shipped four months ago, and in just the first month of its availability, we saw over 100 million successful installations just on consumer machines. That doesn't sound like 'fizzling out' to me."

Sneath was responding to comments Garrett made when answering a question about Silverlight and the competitive landscape at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology & Telecom Conference 2009 in San Francisco on Tuesday. In his comments, confirmed Thursday by an Adobe representative, Garrett said Silverlight adoption was strong when the technology was right out of the gate but has tapered off in the past six to nine months.

Sneath's reference to Silverlight 2, the second version of the technology, is key to his defense of the technology. Silverlight, which comprises a tool for developing and designing Internet applications and a media player for delivering content, was first introduced in 1.0 version in April 2007. However, it wasn't until the release of Silverlight 2 that the technology was fully baked and became truly viable as an alternative to Adobe Flash.

But Microsoft has lost customers when Silverlight didn't live up to its expectations, even after Silverlight 2 was released. MLB.com, which switched from Flash to Silverlight to stream live baseball games beginning in August 2007 with Silverlight 1.0, said in November -- a month after 2's release -- that it was dumping Silverlight and had signed a two-year deal with Adobe to use Flash again for live streaming.

That said, some high-profile Web sites have used Silverlight 2 to live-stream some notable events recently -- the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama last month and the 2008 Summer Olympics in August among them.

In his post, Sneath pointed out some other recent high-profile Silverlight customers, not just in the U.S. but also overseas. In the U.S., both Netflix and the Home Shopping Network launched on-demand services that use Silverlight, he said. In Europe, satellite broadcast network Sky launched a video-on-demand service using Silverlight in December, and the technology also is being adopted for television broadcasting portals in Japan and Korea, Sneath added.

But Flash has had a significant head start and adoption of the technology remains strong, according to Adobe, which has been doing some touting of its own, lately not just about Flash but also about a new technology, AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). AIR allows developers to use the same tools with which they build Web-based applications to create desktop apps.

Two weeks ago, Adobe said the newest version of Flash, Flash 10, was installed on more than 55 percent of computers worldwide in the first two months of its release and is expected to surpass 80 percent adoption by the second quarter, the fastest installation rate of any versions of the technology. Moreover, AIR has reached nearly 100 million installations in less than a year after release.

Flash is actually gaining momentum since Microsoft released Silverlight, according to comScore research for 2008 that shows Flash increasing its worldwide share of video on the Web from 66 percent to more than 80 percent.

Also, although Silverlight has scored some high-profile Web sites as customers, enterprise developers have said its adoption among businesses -- a scenario in which it actually has an advantage over Flash because of Microsoft's historical strength in that market and the ability of developers to use .NET tools to build Silverlight applications -- has been lackluster.

Developers cited Silverlight 2's launch during an economic recession -- when businesses, particularly enterprises, are hesitant to adopt new technologies -- as a factor hampering its adoption.

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Microsoft puts $250,000 bounty on Conficker worm

February 12, 2009 at 3:31 pm
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Microsoft is trying to put some pressure on the criminals responsible for the worst Internet worm outbreak in years, offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Conficker's creators.

The software vendor said it was also working with security researchers, domain name registrars, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to try to take down the servers that have been launching the Conficker attacks. ICANN is the nonprofit corporation that oversees Internet addresses.

[ In his Security Adviser blog, Roger A. Grimes discussed how the Conficker worm upped the ante for security. ]

"The best way to defeat potential botnets like Conficker/Downadup is by the security and domain name system communities working together," said Greg Rattray, ICANN chief Internet security adviser, in a statement released Thursday. "ICANN represents a community that's all about coordinating those kinds of efforts to keep the Internet globally secure and stable."

Conficker, also known as the Downadup worm, takes advantage of a critical bug in Microsoft's Windows operating system, which was patched last October. Since late December, the worm has emerged as one of the worst computer threats in years, infecting more than 10 million computer systems worldwide, including PCs within the British and French militaries.

If Conficker's author lives in a part of the world that's known to be soft on cybercrime -- Russia, the Ukraine, or Romania, for example -- it may be hard to get a conviction, said the editor of the Hostexploit.com cybercrime research site, who goes by the pseudonym Jart Armin.

On the other hand, the $250,000 reward may be an incentive to hackers who may know who's responsible. Typically, hackers get paid about $10,000 by organized crime groups for writing an attack that reliably works on a significant number of computers, Armin said.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has offered such a bounty. In 2005, it paid $250,000 to two people for identifying Sven Jaschan, the teenager who wrote the Sasser worm.

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Ballmer asks Congress to pass stimulus
February 12, 2009 at 2:40 pm
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer urged Congress in a letter to quickly pass the stimulus bill "to begin to put our country back on the path toward long-term economic growth."

Ballmer sent the letter to all members of Congress, expressing his hope that the bill will help create and save jobs, improve education, encourage research and development, and extend broadband coverage.

[ Special report: IT and the economic crisis. ]

"We are experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis," he wrote. But the crisis offers an opportunity to get the economy going and rebuild investor and consumer confidence, he said.

Education and training will be key to making sure people have the right skills as technology advances, Ballmer said. "This final package includes significant investments in human capital -- in the citizens of our country. America is second-to-none in turning ideas into innovations," he wrote.

That confidence in the American workforce comes even as Microsoft is under fire for continuing to push the government to loosen restrictions on foreign workers. Microsoft filed a proposal (PDF) for reform of the foreign skilled-worker visa program with Barack Obama's transition team days before the company announced layoffs of 5,000 people. Some critics wonder why Microsoft needs more foreign workers as it is laying off thousands.

In addition to support for education, the government needs to make a long-term commitment to research and development and encourage the private sector to do the same, Ballmer wrote.

He also expressed support for items in the bill that will help extend the reach of broadband and use technology to transform health care. "We believe information technology can help create a connected health system that delivers predictive, preventive, and personalized care -- a system that will improve the health of Americans and help control health care spending," he wrote.

Ballmer sent the letter on Wednesday.

The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have each passed slightly different versions of the stimulus bill. They are now working on hammering out the differences, which include different-size investments in health IT, a smart electricity grid, and broadband projects in rural areas.

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HP unveils blade PCs and Citrix virtualization bundle
February 12, 2009 at 2:26 pm
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HP is unveiling the fourth generation of its blade PC line and bundling the devices with Citrix XenDesktop 3 virtualization software.

The HP BladeSystem bc2800 and bc2200, due out in March, sit inside the datacenter, letting users connect to them from any location and device, whether it be a thin client, laptop, or regular desktop. Unlike a VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) model in which multiple virtual machines are contained on a single server, each blade PC can only serve one user at a time. But 280 of them can fit into a single rack, and client virtualization software helps deliver benefits related to security, availability, management, and flexibility, according to HP.

[ Keep up with the latest in virtualization news with David Marshall's virtualization report. ]

"Blade PCs are offering knowledge workers a dedicated and predictable resource," says Dan Nordhues, director of marketing for blade clients at HP. "Because it's in the datacenter, you get all the advantages of the user endpoint being able to be anywhere."

While the HP blade PCs themselves will be released in March, availability for the bundle including both the PCs and Citrix XenDesktop software has not been announced. Pricing has also not been detailed.

The user experience is pretty much the same whether a customer chooses Citrix virtualization software or HP's client virtualization tools, which include the HP Session Allocation Manager and Remote Graphics Software. But HP is trying to reach out to Citrix customers by giving them the option of using XenDesktop, Nordhues says.

Customers can also choose virtualization software from VMware, Nordhues says, although an announcement issued by HP Wednesday highlights only the relationship with Citrix.

The HP bc2200 uses a single-core AMD Athlon 64 processor, while the bc2800 is based on a dual-core AMD Turion processor. Both blades are preinstalled with Windows Vista Business edition and support additional Windows operating systems and Linux.  

The blade PC model typically costs more up-front than the purchase of individual desktops, but can deliver ROI in the long run in part by lowering energy costs, HP officials say. HP says its blade PCs use 25 watts each.

Other benefits promised by HP include simplifying software and hardware management; maximizing resource utilization; securing sensitive data in the datacenter; and higher availability. If a user is connected to a blade PC that fails, the user can simply log in again and get a new one, Nordhues says. Even though there is a one-to-one relationship between user and blade at any given time, the users don't have to use the same machine every day.

Customers sometimes opt for blade PCs when they are dissatisfied with the VDI model, either because management software is difficult to use or the cost-per-seat was not what they hoped, Nordhues says. But the client virtualization market overall has not yet taken off as much as vendors hoped. "It's a new paradigm," he says. "Some people don't want to be early adopters."

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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Samsung delays Google Android phone
February 12, 2009 at 12:18 pm
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Contrary to recent speculation, Samsung will not announce a mobile phone based on Google's Android mobile operating next week, the company says. The release of the Android-based phone has been delayed until the second half of this year, Samsung says.

Samsung was expected to introduce the Android phone next week at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, but the company's head of marketing, Younghee Lee, dismissed the rumors in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian .

[ Related: It has been speculated that  Asustek's new Eee Phone will offer Google's Android software | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter . ]

Lee confirms that the company's Android handset won't be ready in time for MWC next week, and tells the British newspaper the company is "planning internally" a release for the second half of the year.

Many other manufacturers are lined up to release Google Android mobile devices this year. The T-Mobile G2, produced by Taiwan-based HTC, is rumored to come out in May, andSony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Asus, and Toshiba are expected to launch Android devices sometime this year as well.

Some say Samsung's Android phone will be thin and glossy, similar to the company's Omnia and Instinct models. But what it--or any of the new Android phones -- will look like is unknown, as no one has released any specifications or pictures of their upcoming devices.

PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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New post-beta Windows 7 build leaks to Web
February 12, 2009 at 12:04 pm
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A post-beta version of Windows 7 that has leaked to Internet file-sharing sites includes an updated version of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers.

With Microsoft halting new Windows 7 beta downloads on Tuesday, and blocking all downloads as of noon (EST) Thursday, users are again turning to illegal sources to get the new operating system.

[ From InfoWorld'sTest Center: Windows 7 benchmarks unmasked | Special report: Early looks at Windows 7. ]

A search on the Pirate Bay tracking site, for example, found multiple versions of Windows 7 Build 7022, an .iso disk image date-stamped Jan. 15, making it the first leaked build that was completed after Microsoft launched the public beta.

People who downloaded and installed Build 7022 confirmed in comments on Pirate Bay that it is, in fact, a working version of Windows 7. Several also noted that among the changes from the beta was the inclusion of IE8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1), which they demonstrated was part of the build by posting screenshots.

Because of the timing of its release, Windows 7 beta included an interim edition of IE8, somewhere between the Beta 2 of August 2008 and the RC1 distributed in late January 2009 to users of Windows XP and Vista. At the time, James Pratt , a senior product manager on the IE development team, declined to talk about a schedule for bringing IE8 RC1 to Windows 7.

Download traffic for Build 7022 has been brisk. As of early Thursday, one torrent showed more than 1,300 "seeders" -- the term for a computer that has a complete copy of the torrent file -- and over 3,800 "leechers," or computers that have downloaded only part of the complete torrent. On Mininova.org, another tracking site, one of the Windows 7 Build 7022 torrents has been downloaded more than 26,000 times.

Leaks have become the norm for Windows 7. A pirated copy of Build 7000, which was officially released Jan. 10 as the public beta, leaked to file-sharing sites before the end of 2008. In October, the alpha of Windows 7 hit BitTorrent just hours after it was handed to attendees at the Professional Developers Conference.

However, not all leaked previews are what they seem. In comments on file-sharing sites, several users warned others that a disk image posing as an even-later version, Windows 7 Build 7025, was in fact simply the beta masquerading as something more up-to-date.

Although Microsoft released both 32- and 64-bit betas to the public, only the former of Build 7022 appears on BitTorrent tracking sites.

Microsoft has said that the next milestone for Windows 7 will be a release candidate, which will likely be offered to the general public. Company executives, including Steven Sinofsky , the senior vice president in charge of the Windows engineering group, however, have declined to set a schedule for delivering the release candidate.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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BlackBerry's Storm in the enterprise
February 12, 2009 at 11:43 am
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Since the BlackBerry Storm's release in November, Scott Slater, technology architect at The Bank of New York Mellon, has been putting it through its paces. He's got some advice for you: Test, rinse, repeat.

The Storm, which is currently carried only by Verizon Wireless in the United States, allows IT managers to offer their users an ultracool touchscreen alternative to the Apple iPhone and Google Android that can be centrally managed and locked down or erased if lost or stolen, Slater says. KACE has recently begun selling an appliance that centrally manages iPhones, but the Storm is the only one that is managed via already existing software -- the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), in this case. However, that doesn't mean the Storm is an automatic win for the corporate world. The Storm's focus on consumer-like features such as Web browsing and social networking raises a red flag.

[ Competition among business smartphones is heating up. See InfoWorld's guide to next-gen mobile and Test Center reviews of the BlackBerry Storm, iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, Palm Treo Pro, and HP iPaq 910c. ]

"In the past, messaging has been the primary use for the BlackBerry, so we've primarily focused on securing e-mail. The Storm's touchscreen makes the browser, multimedia playback, and enterprise social networking applications just as attractive because they are easy to use with tactile response," Slater says, and that means IT managers need to pay attention to mobile security in those areas as well.

Steven Ferguson, senior network engineer at the Technical College System of Georgia in Atlanta, is also evaluating the Storm for his users and agrees. "The traditional BlackBerry has always had somewhat limited browser function, but now media content of all types is readily available on the device. In fact, it features support for a removable card that will be able to store up to 32GB of data. While that makes it a great competitor to the iPhone, it also makes it a challenge for IT because we have to know what is being accessed and stored on the device," he says.

Although the BlackBerry devices have not been specifically targeted, Ferguson worries that the Storm's Web 2.0 capabilities and removable memory could be seen as entryways for hackers. "Recent worms have been spread through removable media, and other malware has been spread through media download locations. Therefore, we have to make sure the devices are secure and business applications remain stable," he says.

But neither Slater nor Ferguson says the Storm's consumer-ish enhancements are a deterrent. In fact, Slater has already begun to roll the devices out to some of the company's global users and sees great potential for it, such as enabling employees to receive corporate video communications on their mobile device. And Ferguson says he'll adopt the Storm when it is offered by his primary carrier, AT&T.

Rather than fighting the CrackBerry contingent, IT managers should thoroughly test-drive the Storm, map its capabilities to their acceptable use policies and compliance mandates, and then apply sophisticated network- and device-level controls.

Policy police
Before IT teams can begin to manage the Storm on a technical basis, however, they must first dust off their acceptable use policies and make sure they've addressed the organization's tolerance level for mobile access to social networking, Web sites, multimedia, and corporate assets, according to Phil Hochmuth, an analyst at Yankee Group Research.

"You might already have regulations that ban you from allowing users to access those types of applications on the desktop, but you have to make sure those policies are being extended to mobile devices," he says.

For instance, although Slater's first propensity as a technology pro in the highly regulated financial services field was to ban enterprise social networking tools, he admits that's not practical because they improve his users' productivity and collaboration. Instead, he's spent time updating the acceptable use policy and making sure all applications accessed on the Storm are as secure as BlackBerry e-mail, he says.

For his part, Ferguson reminds employees about the Technical College System's acceptable use policy and its relation to BlackBerry applications. For example, college employees can use IT-installed applications, but they are not allowed to download their own. "We caution them about their usage and explain that anything they do is logged, no different than their desktop," he says.

Purchase central
While the Storm might seem to be a consumer-driven device, Ferguson says he appreciates its ability to be centrally managed. Using the BES, he can wirelessly configure and deploy the Storm as well as synchronize it to multiple enterprise applications. He can also apply security policies to the device via the BES integration with Microsoft's Active Directory. However, to take full advantage of this benefit, organizations should purchase and provision the devices via the IT group, rather than allowing individuals to bring them in-house.

"Because the Technical College System is a government agency, we have to account for what's done on the device and make sure we're following the state's IT policies. Therefore, we need to manage it from the start," he says. With that level of control, he can ensure that device configuration, deployment, licensing, updating, patching, and security are all managed through the BES.

Companies can also develop standard configurations for the Storm to block users from ad hoc downloads through the Storm's "Application Center" feature as well as prevent other unsanctioned configuration changes.

Craig Mathias, principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless and mobile advisory firm in Ashland, Mass., says allowing users to buy and configure their own devices "quickly gets intolerable" because it's impossible to make sure that the device firmware, operating system, applications and security are compliant and up to date. Also, he says, most users won't feel comfortable allowing employers to monitor content on it and wipe it clean if it is lost or stolen.

Memory mayhem
Another game-changer on the Storm is its support for a large, removable data store. Slater says he'll only allow his employees to use the device's expandable memory if it's encrypted.

"This is something we addressed with previous BlackBerry models, but the size of the Storm's media card support makes it even more critical. We have to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of corporate data that's stored there," he says.

David Heit, director of enterprise software product management at Research in Motion Ltd., says the Storm features multiple ways to ensure the security of data on the microSD card, including encryption. "You can also map the card to the device and/or the user so that if it is removed, it can't be read," he says.

Companies that want to use the expandable memory to allow users to carry sensitive corporate assets, such as pricing books, on the device can not only encrypt the card, but also make it read-only. "If someone tried to write to the card, they would need the correct password," Heit says.

Heit recommends that users in legal, health care, financial, and other heavily regulated industries take a careful look at their data protection requirements and apply the appropriate policies to the Storm.

An extra layer
In addition to the policy-enforcement tools already provided in the BES, some companies are choosing to add another layer of security, such as device-level anti-virus or mobile Web gateway servers, to ensure that users aren't visiting sites loaded with malware or leaking data off their devices.

To keep his network from being exposed to threats, Ferguson has deployed Purewire's Web Security Service, a gateway that connects to the BES so that he can monitor, filter, and log his users' mobile browsing.

"We have a very succinct requirement from the state to block all pornography and gambling on the Internet. This means on handhelds, too," he says.

Therefore, he routes all Web traffic from the BlackBerrys through the Purewire proxy server to ensure they aren't looking at inappropriate content or accessing malware-laden sites. "We can show government agency leaders we're logging what's happening on these devices. We also use the Purewire SaaS to prove we're enforcing our acceptable use policies even through social networking and other Web 2.0 tools," he says.

In addition, he can use the logs to see what sites users are attempting to download applications from and add those to his URL blacklist. He adds that using a service is simpler than having to deploy and manage anti-virus software on each device.

If companies address these key areas, Hochmuth says the Storm holds tremendous potential for the enterprise. "For IT organizations that have users who want the coolness factor of the iPhone but had trouble with enterprise integration, the Storm is a good alternative," he says.

Sandra Gittlen is a freelance technology writer in the greater Boston area and can be reached at sgittlen@verizon.net. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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HP, IBM push new KMIP encryption key standard
February 12, 2009 at 9:43 am
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A group of industry vendors, led by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and EMC, is proposing a new standard to make their encryption management software work together.

Called the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP), the standard is being proposed through OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the consortium best known for its development of Web-services standards.

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

On Thursday, OASIS is expected to announce that it has created a KMIP Technology Committee to produce the final specification for the standard. The committee will meet for the first time on April 24, but KMIP has been quietly under development for more than a year. It is also supported by Brocade, LSI, Seagate, and Thales.

Backers see it as one way to replace the hodgepodge of different encryption-key management products out there. Today, IT staff must use different key management systems to control who gets access to different parts of the network. One system might be used for e-mail encryption, a second for storage, and a third for the database. "The scope of the standard is very broad," said Mark Schiller, a director with HP's Security Office. "It will work for just about any type of device you can imagine."

KMIP's backers say their standard will be "complementary" to existing key management standards such as the storage-focused IEEE 1619.3 and the OASIS EKMI XML standard.

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Asus plans to reduce variety of Eee PC netbooks
February 12, 2009 at 8:54 am
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Asustek Computer (Asus) plans to offer fewer versions of its Eee PC netbooks this year to avoid confusion and to lower production costs, executives said Thursday.

The company, which pioneered the netbook phenomenon with the Eee PC, put out more than 20 versions of the device last year, with different names such as the Eee PC S101, Eee PC 1000H, Eee PC Surf, and more.

[ The InfoWorld Test Center rates netbooks for business. See which came out on top. ]

This year will be different for Asustek. The company will simplify the production and marketing of the Eee PC by reducing the number of models, said CEO Jerry Shen at an investors conference in Taipei on Thursday.

Although last year's Eee PC strategy gave users a much wider range of choices, it did not help Asustek fight off competition from newcomers.

Acer, which launched a single netbook with one name, the Aspire One, will likely soon announce that it shipped more netbooks than Asustek did last year, even though Acer entered the netbook market much later in the year than Asustek.

Acer launched the Aspire One in the second half of last year, well behind Asustek, which had Eee PCs on sale from the start of 2008.

Yet on Thursday, Asustek announced it shipped 4.9 million Eee PCs last year, well behind Acer's projected 6 million units. Acer hasn't announced a final shipment figure yet.

Acer's sales of the Aspire One soared due to its simplicity, low cost, and the company's ability to launch globally, analysts say. The company reduced market confusion through its single-netbook strategy, and offered variety by letting users choose from different configurations and software.

The strategy also allowed Acer to keep design and assembly costs to a minimum, and Acer passed the savings on to users in the form of low prices.

Asustek, by contrast, suffered due to its strategy of offering multiple Eee PCs. Each run of a line of Eee PCs was more expensive, on average, than Acer's runs of Aspire Ones because the Eee PC models were significantly different, costing Asus in design expenses as well as component procurement and assembly costs, analysts said.

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Eyeing Intel, Nvidia's Ion wins three votes of confidence
February 12, 2009 at 8:40 am
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Nvidia's Ion CPU-and-graphics platform, which the graphics chipmaker hopes can help loosen Intel's grip on the fast-growing netbook business, has garnered three key endorsements.

Most important is Microsoft's announcement Wednesday that it had certified Ion-based PCs to run Windows Vista Home Premium.

[ The InfoWorld Test Center rates netbooks for business. See which came out on top. ]

Nvidia also announced Wednesday that one unnamed PC maker planned to build a mini-PC using the Ion platform. And No. 3 PC maker Acer said earlier this week that it was interested in building Ion-based PCs this year.

Ion is an Nvidia design that combines its GeForce 9400M GPU, the mobile version of one of its most powerful graphics processors, with an Intel Atom CPU.

The motherboard, amount of RAM, and other specifications are not dictated by Nvidia, said a company spokesman, Ken Brown, but most expect Ion systems to use mini-motherboards suited for netbooks and mini-PCs.

Microsoft said its testing showed that Ion-based PCs will be able to deliver 1080p HD, video, including Blu-ray movies; "exciting" video game play using DirectX 10 video technology; support for premium Vista features such Aero Glass and Flip3D; and faster video transcoding and photo editing because of the Nvidia graphics chip.

Jon Peddie, an analyst with Jon Peddie Research, said the Vista certification was a "critically important" affirmation for Ion.

"Netbook builders haven't been able to get satisfactory operation with Vista. Part of the issue, maybe all of it, is the graphics," Peddie said in an e-mail. "Nvidia's theme is 'build a better notebook' with Atom by using Ion. And the proof of that is the certification."

With rare exceptions such as Hewlett-Packard's Mini 2140 business netbook, virtually all netbooks today run Windows XP rather than Vista.

That's partly because of XP's lower cost, but mostly because they lack the horsepower to support Vista, said Ian Lao, an analyst with In-Stat. The under-the-hood limitations prevent most netbooks from showing HD video, supporting more than one external display, or playing the latest video games, he said.

Lao said that Ion delivers better performance than competing designs using Intel's integrated graphics chips, and at a similar price.

Nvidia promises that PC makers will start to deliver small and slim Vista PCs based on Ion this summer, for as little as $299, said Brown.

Nvidia has already released Windows 7 drivers for Ion, said Brown. He declined to comment on when Ion would be certified for Windows 7. Microsoft's upcoming OS is based on Vista but is widely reported to require fewer system resources than its predecessor.

While most focus has been on Ion's potential to boost netbooks, Nvidia said Wednesday at a press conference in Taiwan that its first confirmed Ion customer is an unnamed PC maker that plans to build a mini-PC.

Lao said Ion will enable mini-PCs using dual-core Atom CPUs to close much of the performance gap with larger desktop models. And because the Atom and GeForce chips are so efficient and generate so little heat, PC makers can avoid the use of cooling fans, which will allow for smaller, sleeker designs than Apple Inc.'s Mac Mini -- at a lower price, he said.

Acer, the largest maker of netbooks, also said this week that it was considering using Ion in its PCs this year.

"You will see us [Acer] looking at this technology much closer in our second half products," Sumit Agnihotry, vice-president of product marketing for Acer, told Laptop Magazine.

Lao expects other Taiwanese PC makers to throw their support behind Ion soon.

Intel GPUs pushed aside
Ion uses only Intel's Atom CPUs, including its faster, new dual-core versions. But it substitutes Intel's GPU for Nvidia's own.

That could cut into sales of Intel's GPUs, where it is the market leader by shipments with nearly half of the market, according to Jon Peddie Research, but generally has an inferior performance reputation versus GPUs from Nvidia and AMD's ATI subsidiary.

Longer term, Ion will challenge Intel's attempts to define the segments of the PC market to maximize its own CPU profits, said Lao. For instance, PC makers will be able to build full-sized "value" laptops with 15-inch LCDs that run Vista for less than $400, the current price barrier, using Ion and dual-core Atom CPUs.

This lets them avoid pricier Centrino CPUs, said Lao. And it allows PC makers to sell more systems while reaping the same profit-per-PC in these tough economic times.

Intel did not respond to a request for comment. Lao expects Intel to respond to Ion by aggressively pricing bundles of its Atom CPU and integrated GPU.

"They just can't sell at or below cost and get in trouble like Samsung and Hynix," Lao said, referring to the two firms that were found guilty of dumping memory onto the market.

Nvidia's Brown noted that Intel has made public statements that it will not obstruct the sale of Atom CPUs to PC makers interested in using Ion.

"I hope they live up to their word," Brown said.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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Garmin-Asus to release low-cost Eee Phone this year
February 12, 2009 at 8:14 am
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The Eee Phone, a smartphone that takes its name from popular computer products by Asustek Computer (Asus), including the Eee PC netbook line, will be among the early handsets released by the new Garmin-Asus mobile phone business the two companies announced last week.

GPS device maker Garmin and Asus said the first Garmin-Asus handset will be revealed in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress next week. But it will not be the Eee Phone.

[ Related: "New Garmin-Asus smartphones to take many OSes" | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The Eee Phone will be a low-cost smartphone and will be announced later this year, an Asustek representative said Thursday.

Several news reports have speculated that the Eee Phone will be the first Asustek offering to use Google's Android software, but Asus has not confirmed anything yet.

When the new Garmin-Asus name was announced last week, the heads of the two companies said their handsets will use a variety of operating systems, including Microsoft Windows Mobile, Linux, and Android.

The first handset they plan to deliver under the Garmin-Asus name is the Garmin-Asus Nuvifone G60, which will be a refresh of the original Nuvifone G60 that Garmin commissioned Asustek to build last year.

Another Garmin-Asus mobile handset will be announced at the Mobile World Congress as well, but will likely launch in 2010, Asustek executives have said.

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Report: Free Windows 7 upgrades to run until January 2010
February 12, 2009 at 7:51 am
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To encourage consumers to keep buying Windows Vista PCs this year despite Windows 7's looming release, Microsoft will give away free Windows 7 upgrades to people buying PCs with Windows Vista until as late as Jan. 31 of next year, according to a report.

The report, from the Malaysian blog TechARP.com, which has called similar details correctly in the past, is another clue that Microsoft plans to release Windows 7 before year's end, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with the independent research firm Directions on Microsoft.

[ Randall Kennedy recently called Microsoft's Windows 7 upgrade strategy disrespectful to IT | Peter Bruzzese, meanwhile, says Microsoft's strategy is the correct one | Test Center: Windows 7 benchmarks unmasked | Special report: >Early looks at Windows 7. ]

Citing purported confidential memos from Microsoft, TechARP.com had earlier reported that the Windows 7 Upgrade Program will begin July 1 of this year.

That would mean that any Vista PCs purchased between then and Jan. 31, 2010, are eligible for free upgrades to Windows 7.

TechARP reported today that those Windows 7 upgrade DVDs should be delivered by PC makers to customers by April 30, 2010. These dates are "open to change," TechARP reported.

The veracity of the report "seems reasonable to me," said Rosoff. "If they're soliciting OEM feedback now, that points to a possible release in time for holiday 2009."

Microsoft declined to comment on the TechARP report.

"Microsoft often explores options with our partners to determine product offerings," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "We are not announcing anything new at this time."

TechARP correctly named the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) dates for several Windows editions last year.

In Microsoft's prior Vista Express upgrade program, Windows XP PCs bought between Oct. 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007, were eligible for free Vista upgrades.

Microsoft launched Vista to consumers officially on Jan. 30, or 45 days before the program's eligibility ended.

The program was plagued with delays, with consumers waiting weeks or months to get their Vista upgrade DVDs mailed to them.

TechARP has other purported details from the upgrade program, including screenshots and upgrade paths.

"The program sounds very similar to what they did before Vista," Rosoff said. "I think the terms are slightly different, but that's because there were fewer [versions] in XP, so the edition upgrade paths were similar."

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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Joy ponders software, decline of print media
February 12, 2009 at 7:30 am
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Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and author of Berkeley Unix, predicted the decline of the print newspaper, lamented the state of software development, and pondered the futures for green energy and the environment during an appearance Wednesday night in Silicon Valley.

Joy, speaking at a Churchill Club business and technology event in Santa Clara, Calif., offered a variety of observations on a host of topics ranging from how the Internet is changing the landscape in publishing to expressing a need for better agricultural practices to conserve water.

[ Joy and the other Sun co-founders reunited for a Computer History Museum forum in 2006. ]

Acknowledging the impact of Internet-based information sources on print media, Joy said it seems inevitable that newspapers will no longer be printed on paper.

"I don't think there's any chance that papers will for any length of time be printed on paper the way they are," said Joy, who is now a partner in the Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers venture capital firm. Even his hometown newspaper in Detroit is essentially Web-only, Joy said. He suggested a business model where readers volunteer to pay a penny per page for publications. Or, newspaper companies could become nonprofits to get basic news out.

"If people [reading news] online aren?t willing to pay for quality, how do you get it back? I don't know," Joy said.

The Web, meanwhile, did create a disruptive situation at a time when software innovation had declined, a circumstance attributed to Microsoft's dominance.

"What the Web did was disrupt [the situation] and it allowed almost anybody to create an experience and a Web site," said Joy.

He also cited Apple's iPhone as a disruptive technology that has garnered thousands of applications in less than a year. "There's an unleashing of creativity there," Joy said. But the iPhone is limited by battery life and the number of people who have one, he said.

As for Sun, Joy said he has not really followed the company since leaving early in the decade. But the company at the time he was there was working on energy-efficient microprocessors, an effort Joy still encourages. The percentage of power going to datacenters is staggering and Sun seems to have a lead in energy-efficient technology research, he said.

"I hope they take advantage of some of that technology to reduce the amount of electricity that these cloud computing farms use, because the amount of CO2 we're belching out while we're doing our Google searches and everything is quite substantial," Joy said.

Joy expressed disappointment that software still has bugs. Code is written that is unreliable, he said. There been have been ventures to build robust, secure, reliable software "but nobody seems to buy it," Joy said.

Emphasizing the need for so-called clean, renewable energy sources, Joy noted that the crashing price of oil can stifle development of these sources. "It can wipe out a whole generation of startups trying to bring us renewable fuels," he said. The government, Joy said, could set a standard in which a percentage of the nation's fuels must come from renewable energy, Joy said.

Joy also suggested that farmers change practices to stretch the water supply, and he encouraged innovation in the water resource realm.

"Water is an incredibly important problem," Joy said. "[It is] difficult to find the Googles, Netscapes, and Amazons of water. I have trouble finding them," Joy said.

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Amazon, IBM, Savvis bridge datacenters to cloud
February 12, 2009 at 6:55 am
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IBM has had a busy week, cloud computing-wise, but it's not the only company making such waves. Savvis is embarking on Thursday on an ambitious plan to offer enterprise customers a complete virtualized datacenter. Amazon.com, meanwhile, joined up with Big Blue and DataSynapse in separate partnerships.

The common thread among all the announcements is the aim of providing customers with more flexibility in managing infrastructure resources that reside in the cloud.

[ These announcements are in line with the prediction that cloud computing will be a big IT trend in 2009 | Keep up with cloud trends with whurley's cloud computing blog | Find out what cloud computing really means ]

Savvis CTO Bryan Doerr explains his company's ultimate goal. "The grand vision is that we'll have a cloud that gives our clients the ability to do entire datacenter outsourcing that applies all the best practices of security, storage, and networking."

Toward that end, the company on Thursday took a first step by unveiling the Savvis Compute Cloud which, Doerr explains, brings two primary benefits to customers: The ability to perform more self-directed tasks for managing hosted pieces of a datacenter, and a multi-tenant option.

The latter enables companies to sign up for a "slice of the hardware" rather than a dedicated system, thereby offering a finer granularity of capacity while cutting costs. Perhaps most important, though, are the new self-service capabilities that enable customers to log in to SavvisStation portal to provision virtual compute and storage capacity within either private or shared infrastructure resources, the company says.

Presently, managed hosting is "kind of a black box" in which customers don't have much visibility into their applications or infrastructure and often need to submit work orders to hosts like Savvis, says Melanie Posey, research director of hosting and telecom services at IDC.

"The first thing that has to happen before this grand vision of cloud computing can be realized is service provider offerings that give customers' continued visibility into and control of the IT infrastructure that their applications are running on," Posey explains. Such control, in turn, "makes it easier for some customers to feel comfortable with outsourcing. They still have a level of control even though the actual infrastructure lives outside the enterprise datacenter," she adds.

Indeed, Doerr says that Savvis will follow Thursday's news with an ongoing series of announcements throughout 2009 and beyond. The next set of steps involves another dimension of the cloud paradigm. "Our goal is to give users enough control to amplify the rewards of hosting while dialing the risk down," Doerr adds.

Also heading down the long cloud-laden horizon, IBM announced this week at its Pulse conference in Las Vegas a new cloud unit replete with its own czar, and on Monday IBM joined forces with Juniper Networks to give a glimpse into a forthcoming interface the companies claim will arm enterprise IT shops for more easily reallocating resources among private and public clouds. Big Blue also on Monday detailed what it considers to be building blocks for the 21st century IT infrastructure, which one official said extend service management beyond IT and provide the foundation for cloud-based resources.

Then Big Blue and Amazon revealed on Wednesday that some IBM software is available via Amazon's EC2 on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning that developers can access IBM's DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, Lotus Web Content Management Standard Edition, WebSphere sMash, and WebSphere Portal Server under what the companies claim is a "new and flexible licensing model."

Amazon also teamed up with DataSynapse to foreshadow on Wednesday a beta version of Federator 1.5, software that will help "DataSynapse customers bridge traditional datacenter resources and the Amazon EC2 cloud" to better control capacity, according to DataSynapse's Web site. The beta program is slated to begin in April.

That sweet spot where users feel comfortable with someone else hosting their datacenter won't come quickly.? "It's not pie-in-the-sky," says Gary Barnett, analyst with the Bathwick Group, "but the truth is customers are going to take a long time getting from 'my infrastructure is a mess' to 'I'm starting to get control and outsourcing some pieces' to, ultimately, 'I'm okay with outsourcing a substantial amount of it.'"

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iPhone management tools: Are they enough?
February 12, 2009 at 6:00 am
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The simple facts are these: Unlike its main smartphone competitors, Apple does not offer large organizations a set of centralized application software controls to push applications and policies to the iPhone or to control the device's applications. Although Apple offers the free iPhone Configuration Utility for setup, security, and policy management, it's nothing like the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager, Nokia Intellisync Device Management, or Motorola Good Mobile Suite that enterprises are used to having.

Bob Egan, chief analyst at the Tower Group, says there is virtually no security and management inherent in the iPhone that he would consider enterprise-class.

[ What's the iPhone missing for the enterprise? InfoWorld finds a baker's dozen in omissions. ]

Apple hasn't completely ignored the enterprise
However, that's not to say Apple has taken no steps at all to satisfy consumer cravings to use the device at work. For example, in the first version of the iPhone, a user could not synchronize e-mail, so road warriors who read and deleted messages on their iPhones had to delete the same missives when they got back to the office. This was also true of calendar entries. But iPhone OS 2.x supports Microsoft ActiveSync, allowing e-mail synchronization with Exchange, and IBM has added a similar capability to the iPhone for Lotus Notes users.

The ability to wipe out all data remotely -- and thus remove a major security fear -- was also added to iPhone OS 2.x.

However, one of the primary benefits of BES is the ability to install applications remotely. Although Apple has promised business users this capability, so far it is still all about using iTunes as the way station. IT can install custom programs into employees' iPhones without having to publish the software through Apple's App Store, but doing so requires each iPhone user to be cabled to the desktop for the transfer.

"The iPhone has a consumer distribution model for applications that Apple has been successful at, but it is not aligned with how enterprises buy, qualify, and maintain applications. The distribution model is broken," says Egan.

Third-party management solutions are available
With no enterprise-class management system from Apple, independent software developers have begun to target specific management and security areas.

For example, Astaro announced an alternative to the Cisco VPN solution built into iPhone OS 2.x. In a typical heterogeneous network environment, the Cisco tie-in meant that iPhones could only talk to servers enabled with Cisco VPN software, which not all companies use.

Purewire offers some security control as well. It configures a proxy for the iPhone so that e-mail and Web connections initiated by a user are first sent to its datacenter, where Purewire enforces policies created by IT. It also offers its own anti-virus tools to block malicious scripts hiding within Web sites.

And Zenprise provides a troubleshooting tool for the iPhone that monitors and fixes user issues, such as not getting e-mail or calendar entries on the iPhone.

Security issues will only get trickier
Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT-Harvest, agrees that the current iPhone security and management tools aren't up to snuff. The problem will only get worse due to the iPhone's use of open APIs, which help them interact better with other tools and services, but also open paths for malware. "The open, or even partially open, APIs cannot be easily secured," he says.

Steinnon expects security vendors to offer more, and more capable, tools as user demand for the iPhone forces businesses to bring them in. That's true not just for the iPhone but for all mobile devices designed primarily for consumers, such as the Google Android platform, he notes. That's pretty much everything but the BlackBerry and perhaps Windows Mobile.

Skeptics maintain that the iPhone is no more than a toy
Tower Group's Egan sees such point tools for business iPhone management as Trojan horses that IT should be wary of. The availability of such tools mislead enterprise users into thinking the iPhone is compatible with enterprise-class security and compliance needs, when it is not. "The minute you try and interact and deploy management and security and qualify applications on a large scale, there's nothing there," he says.

Egan says enterprises make platform decisions that are not typically driven by the usability of a single device. Until Apple is willing to talk about its long-term enterprise strategy or compliance, management, and security, he calls the iPhone a one-trick pony.

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Sun premiering JavaFX Mobile component
February 12, 2009 at 12:01 am
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Proceeding to a critical phase in the rollout of its JavaFX platform for rich media client applications, Sun will ship on Thursday a mobile runtime component enabling JavaFX applications to run on handheld devices such as phones.

Sun with JavaFX and the new JavaFX Mobile runtime will compete with technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application platform. But Sun believes it has a leg up on the competition because mobile service providers and handset builders can leverage existing Java ME (Micro Edition) investments, something that is critical in tough economic times. There already are 2.6 billion devices running Java ME, said Param Singh, senior director of Java marketing at Sun.

[ Related: Can JavaFX make a play for rich Internet apps? ]

"This is a sounder decision for them to make in this economy," Singh said.

Sun is premiering JavaFX Mobile at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

The runtime will be delivered to partners, including original equipment manufacturers and service providers. Also shipping will be a JavaFX Mobile SDK. Companies set to endorse JavaFX include handset manufacturers Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics as well as service providers Orange and Sprint. Sun also will announce ISVs building mobile applications using JavaFX Mobile, including Cynergy Systems and MobiTV.

JavaFX is focused on such capabilities as animation, audio, and video. Developers can use the JavaFX Script language and the JavaFX platform to quickly build these applications.

"The OEM partners will be embedding the JavaFX Mobile runtime onto devices so that people can build rich mobile applications," said Singh.

Service providers will bundle a JavaFX application with the JavaFX runtime and deliver it to existing handsets.

JavaFX Mobile will rely on Java ME (Micro Edition) for capabilities such as Bluetooth support and camera, location and networking capabilities, Singh said. OEMs will be able to put out JavaFX Mobile-capable phones out as soon as this year, he said. These companies will at some point offer a JavaFX support roadmap, Singh said.

Sun also is in discussions with a range of partners pertaining to JavaFX Mobile, he said. Additional support announcements are anticipated at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco in early-June.

A Sun ISV planning to roll out a JavaFX Mobile application this week emphasized Java capabilities as an advantage. The application 6thSpace, from Malden Labs, serves as a portable portal interface that can funnel various types of data, such as audio, video, and stock information, to the device, said Thom Theriault, CTO and chief marketing officer at Malden.

Originally, the Malden application was developed with Adobe's Flex tool for the Flash platform. "What we determined was it was going to be easy to [do] the easy things and harder to do the harder things," Theriault said. With Adobe's technologies, it was easy to do GUI development but difficult to access capabilities like security and networking, he said.

"This is where the beaut