IBM to offer enterprise services around cloud computing

Molly Bernhart — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:03:01 -0500

In recent years, many tech companies have been buzzing about cloud computing and preparing their initial foray into the clouds. IBM has decided to approach the movement from a different angle, by focusing on certification and consulting services. IBM's approach could lead more companies to accept cloud computing and ease some fears around security and reliability. The company plans to help clients assess the total cost of ownership for cloud computing, as well as design and implement cloud operations.

The certification aspect of IBM's new services will allow certain vendors to get the IBM seal of approval--and get the right to use that on their marketing materials, of course. But James Governor, an analyst at Redmonk, told Computerworld.com that IBM may be jumping the gun with it's new business model.

"It's far too early in the curve to really identify what the industry-specific best practices are for cloud computing," he said. "While I understand IBM's desire to drive an industry-vertical go-to-market strategy across its portfolio, cloud computing is still something that's very experimental. It's very hard to nail down the total cost of ownership, the whats and the whys."

Even if the true value of this new service is debatable, one thing is certain: IBM's announcement could have real influence over cloud computing's adoption in the marketplace.

For more:
- read the article

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Cloud computing news from FierceCIO

Some tips for IT to survive the current economic crunch

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:11:04 -0500

As we wait for the worst of the fallout from the on-going credit crunch to pass, it has become inevitable that even the resilient IT industry will be affected by the economic climate.

I think it's safe to say that if the current situation had happened a short eight or 10 years ago, the inevitable outcome would be drastic cuts in IT department personnel (with IT-related spending put on an indefinite freeze). However, the inexorable advancement of technology is such that IT is now an inseparable part and parcel of normal operations. While IT can no longer be subjected to an outright amputation, it does make sense to attempt to reduce costs as well as increase its efficiency.

Here are some tips and resources to help you do just that:

A guide to cutting IT costs lists some tips where an organization can reduce running up IT costs.
Use this crisis to make things things ‘best-ever' highlights some ways which organization can leverage this downturn to make things better than they were.
Six ways to keep training staff talks about keeping up with IT training despite reduced budgets.
Consider switching to open source. Check out our short report on how 85 percent of companies are already using open source.
Consider switching over to a hosted e-mail service in order to reduce expenses.
If your company relies on high-performance desktops--animation comes to mind--you might want to check out top desktops for any budget for a good deal.

Report claims that Google is snipping 10,000 jobs

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:57:04 -0500

Citing anonymous sources, WebGuild says Google may be preparing to lay off thousands of workers. These sources have also claimed that "hundreds" of staff have already been released over the last few months. Indeed, the only reason why this has gone unnoticed is the fact that Google has classified these workers as "temporary operational expenses," allowing the company to eliminate their positions without public notification.

A report at CNET appears to confirm it, although it pins the reduction in head count on a plan to reduce the number of contractors and not in reaction to the recent economic troubles. The reduction is achieved through vendor management, as well as converting contractors to regular employees, according to co-founder Sergey Brin.

Google spokeswoman Jane Penner, while short on actual details, told CNET that, "We have 10,000, and we have had a plan in place for awhile to significantly reduce that number. This is something we've been thinking about for awhile--six or seven months. It predates the most acute phase of the (present economic) crisis."

Layoffs are only to be expected in a slowing economic climate, though Google--the poster child of the "do no evil" camp--certainly gets more attention than most.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article from the Network World

U.S. military bans USB flash drives and removable media

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:56:21 -0500

The United States military has banned the use of removable rewritable media as part of its strategy to "defend against attack and establish a baseline for information system protection." Examples of removable rewritable media would be USB-based flash drives, CDs and various types of memory cards. The ban underscores the growing prevalence of USB-based malware, which researchers at Symantec say have seen an upswing over the last year.

An e-mail from the head of U.S. Strategic Command shed more light on the rationale behind this ban. "It is apparent that over time, our posture to protect networks and associated information infrastructure has not kept pace with adversary efforts to penetrate, disrupt, interrupt, exploit or destroy critical elements of the GIG [Global Information Grid]."

Wes Miller senior technical product manager at privately-held security solutions company CoreTrace disagrees that such a ban will solve the problem in the long run. In a prepared statement, Miller noted that, "Banning flash drives and other types of media or memory devices is simply a case of 'stopping the symptom,' but does not actually cure the disease. What's more concerning is that the US military machine is now at the mercy of a piece of executable code, and that traditional anti-malware products (which the DOD has plenty of) are doing nothing to actually stop the problem."

Whatever the case, this problem is not one that will go away soon. Certainly, USB-based malware will be with us for some time yet. One possible action would be to disable the AutoRun functionality for removable media. Moving ahead, companies can also set policies to stop USB storage devices from being accessed.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article at Wired Blog
- check out this article at eWeek

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U.S. Federal Government news from FierceCIO

Intel's new X25-E Extreme SSD blows the competition away

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:55:19 -0500

Intel has unveiled a new solid state drive (SSD) in the form of the X25-E Extreme, which is even faster than the X25-M which was released in September. The folks over at the Tech Report got their hands on an engineering sample, where they wrote, "This is without a doubt the fastest solid-state drive we've ever tested." Due to the performance of its single-level cell (SLC) memory chips, the 32GB X25-E Extreme SSD is perfectly suited for the enterprise environment at which it's targeted at. However, the drive doesn't come cheap at $719, which works out to $22 per gigabyte. Still, nothing else beats this device if you are looking for the absolutely fastest drive. Other than Intel, companies such as Seagate, Samsung and SanDisk are scrambling to manufacture and flood the market with high-performance SSDs.

For more on this story:
- check out this article from the Tech Report

Vulnerability found in Vista kernel

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:53:36 -0500

Austrian researcher Thomas Unterleitner has discovered a glitch in Windows Vista--a buffer overflow flaw within Vista's networking I/O subsystem. This kernel vulnerability could result in an irrecoverable blue screen of death crash, as well as allow attacks ranging from denial of service, injection of rootkits, or malware, such as viruses or keyloggers. Unterleitner claims that Microsoft has been notified of this vulnerability since October, though the company says it won't fix the glitch before the next service pack, which has not yet been announced. Administrator privileges are required at this point to exploit the issue, which affects both the 32-bit and 64-bit of the Vista operating system--though not Windows XP. Windows Vista has been touted as more secure than both Linux and the Mac OS, hence any vulnerabilities--especially in its kernel--is sure to get peoples' attention.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at the Inquirer

Ballmer ordered to testify in 'Vista capable' case

Paul Mah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:52:19 -0500

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been ordered by a federal judge to testify in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft. Ballmer was cited for his unique personal knowledge of facts surrounding the case, which we covered earlier this year. Article

Study concludes that time spent online is not wasted on kids

Paul Mah — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:38:28 -0500

The MacArthur Foundation has released a report concluding that the Internet enables pretty much the same social interaction, albeit in a new medium. Indeed, the report notes that at its best, the Internet allows youths to participate in something akin to a meritocracy where age isn't a concern. The results of the report were based on studies performed over the course of several years, and include more than 5,000 observation hours and nearly 700 interviews, among other data sources. Ars Technica, which read the report, noted that online media seemed to provide the chance for youths to hone their communications skills. Indeed, kids described how they were able to craft (and hone) ambiguous messages.

For more on this story:
- check out this article from Ars Technica

SGI shows off concept machine made of Intel Atoms

Paul Mah — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:29:37 -0500

SGI has put together a "Molecule" concept machine built, not from the latest, most powerful processors around, but from lots of Intel dual-core Atom x64 chips. This latest low-powered processor from Intel's Atom line is designed for netbooks as well as other portable computing devices to maximize battery life. A credit-card sized system board holds a dual-core Atom N330 and four memory DIMMs. The concept machine saw a 3U rack packed with 180 of the Atom boards, offering 720 GB of main memory and a staggering 720 GBps per second of memory bandwidth. According to SGI, such a setup could see use in situations where massive amounts of threads help.

To read more about this story:
- check out this The Register article

IETF mulls the option of ignoring Kaminsky DNS bug

Paul Mah — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:22:30 -0500

While many DNS registries, ISPs, and companies have yet to patch the Kaminsky bug, the Internet engineering community will be getting together at the IETF to debate on whether to do anything about it. Well to be fair, the issue they are working on has to do with whether or not to encourage an upgrade to DNSSEC, known as the ultimate DNS security solution, or if it should just advocate a temporary patch to address the bug. Opting for DNSSEC appears to be logical, until one realizes that DNSSEC hasn't been widely deployed as yet, despite being in development for the better part of a decade. Without it being fully deployed across the Internet though, websites remain vulnerable to Kaminsky-type attacks. And in case you're thinking a quick resolution will be found, know that the working group is currently split on which direction to take.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article from the Network World

System builders takes to AMD's Shanghai

Paul Mah — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:10:49 -0500

It appears that AMD got something right with its latest Shanghai processor after all. This comes in the wake of its earlier disaster with the ill-fated Barcelona processor. According to The Register, system builders have taken to Shanghai, and have gone as far as to say that it is far better than the chip maker's previous efforts. As pointed out by senior analyst George Ou recently, the AMD Shanghai is a winner for the mainstream two-socket server market--for now. Regardless, several global OEMs are expected to immediately offer more than 25 systems based on this new 45nm quad-core processor before the end of the year.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article at eWeek

Regulators: Bell Canada can throttle bandwidth of its ISP customers

Paul Mah — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:27 -0500

Bell Canada was given the go-ahead by regulators to throttle peer-to-peer Internet traffic on Internet pipes that it leases to third-party ISPs, provided 30 days notice is given in advance. The Canadian Association of Internet Providers complained in April that Bell was throttling bandwidth to small and independent ISPs without informing them. Article

Obama's cellphone account breached

Judi Hasson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:07:37 -0500

Several Verizon Wireless employees accessed and viewed President-elect Obama's personal cellphone account, according to Verizon Wireless. "We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day," the company's chief executive, Lowell McAdam, said in a statement reported Friday by the Wall Street Journal.

Verizon said it discovered the unauthorized account access this week by several employees. The employees will be disciplined, the company said. Verizon added that the account had been inactive for several months. The device on the account was a standard feature phone rather than a smartphone with advanced email and data capabilities.

The breach is just one more example of how the next president will have to enter a secure cocoon that probably will not allow him access to a BlackBerry, email, a cell phone and the Internet to protect him against unauthorized intrusions.

For more on the Obama cellphone:
- check out this Wall Street Journal article

The IT labor shortage is real

Paul Mah — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:29:42 -0500

Jason Hiner over at TechRepublic wrote a piece yesterday where he presented the results of the 2008 "IT Trends Survey" by the Society of Information Management. Despite perceptions fueled by the media, it appears that the budget allocated to offshore outsourcing accounts for between just 3 and 4 percent of IT budgets. This is dwarfed by the projected 2009 IT budget of 33.7 percent that is dedicated to internal staffers, or the 6.2 percent of the budget for domestic outsourced staffers.

Jerry Luftman, an IT professor and SIM director, points to the media for exaggerating the impact of IT outsourcing. Indeed, CIOs are saying that they have trouble finding enough candidates to fill open IT positions. Hiner notes that the bigger threat in the current economic climate is not outsourcing, but the lack of qualified candidates in the labor market. On the other hand, there is no question that abuse of the H-1B visa program appears to be rampant. What do you think? What is your opinion on this matter?

To read more about this story:
- check out this TechRepublic article

Microsoft unilateral downgrade of 'Vista Capable' specs upsets HP

Paul Mah — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:24:56 -0500

Like an extended soap opera, additional information related to the ongoing "Vista Capable" class action lawsuit against Microsoft has surfaced. It appears that Microsoft made a commitment to HP back in 2005 that it will not loosen the requirements for its "Vista Capable" logo program. Even as HP put in significant investments to upgrade to newer PC graphics technology (in order to meet the specifications), internal miscommunication resulted in Microsoft agreeing to Intel's request to lower it. This is precisely what HP feared would happen. It was confirmed by an email from Jim Allchin, Microsoft's co-president of platform products and services, who angrily emailed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the mismanagement. Ballmer rejects all responsibility however, pointing to another Microsoft executive instead. Expect this lawsuit to dog Microsoft for years, even as it prepares to release Windows 7--the upgrade to Windows Vista.

To read more about this story:
- check out this article from the Inquirer