Faced with the recession and dismal fourth-quarter earnings, Dell is planning to cut costs and expand further into areas like netbooks.
TECHNOLOGY POWERING BUSINESS
February 2009
How Do We Stop Fast Flux Networks?
Botnets change quickly to avoid being taken down. Larry Seltzer assesses a move to combat them - and says more could be done
Intel Moves On Energy Savings And Wireless Power
A look at some of the technology Intel currently has in active R&D shows ways to save energy within the data centre or PC and new ways to recharge laptop batteries while on the road. Intel says many of these developing technologies are ...
ERP Software Vendor Makes “Eco” Tools
Management add-on helps measure the whole company's environmental impact - and comply with legislation
Nokia Ponders Making A Laptop
With laptop makers moving into the phone sector, Nokia is considering joining the netbook onslaught at the lower end of the laptop market
Ethernet Switches Hit By Recession
The Ethernet switch market, which had been holding up well during the economic downturn over the past couple of years, saw its numbers drop in the fourth quarter as the recession really hit, according to a report from Infonetics Resear ...
Salesforce.com Makes A Bundle
Salesforce.com has had a record quarter while all around is gloom. Could this be vindication for the cloud model?
CeBIT 2009 Will Tackle Green IT Agenda
Boxed server rooms and low-energy laptops will be on show - if your carbon footprint allows you to travel to Hanover for the show
NetBenefit Sees Demand For Green Hosting
Customers are increasingly demanding energy-efficient hosting, says managed service provider NetBenefit.
Will Netbooks Swallow the Laptop?
With hardware makers rushing to bring out netbooks, have they overlooked a danger that consumers and business people will rush to cheaper machines at the expense of full-fat machines? HP's CEO Mark Hurd doesn't think so.
OpenSUSE 11.1 Vies for Desktop Linux Supremacy
Novell's OpenSUSE 11.1 has desktop features and an enviable community involvement strategy for tapping community involvement, but still a few rough spots. Can it stand up to Red Hat Fedora and Ubuntu from Canonical?
Motorola Ups Its WLAN Management Game
Motorola has updated its wireless LAN management offering, promising the new version can save customers money.
Google Adds Billing to App Engine
Google has added billing to its cloud computing platform, Google App Engine. The good news is users can go over the current free usage quotas - the bad news is that those free quotas are going to be reduced.
Logica Denies Price War, HP Disagrees
IT services company Lgica says that customers will still favour quality over price, even in a recession. But HP's UK director says he has seen competitors making "suicidal" offers
Microsoft Promises To Fix Windows 7 Issues
Microsoft's Windows engineering chief has promised to deal with more than 2000 issues, in response to criticism from Windows 7 beta testers
Marvell Puts A PC In A Plug
Network silicon maker Marvell, packs the guts of a computer into a unit the size of a small power transformer, and coined the term "plug computing"
IBM Puts Electric Car Plan In Drive
Big Blue will help a Danish group with smart grids to power electric vehicles, while Google has also backed green transport.
Rackspace Offers Carbon Calculator for Greener SMBs
Rackspace Hosting has announced a suite of tools to measure the carbon footprint of its small and medium-sized customers, promising the carbon calculator can save money and the environment
IBM, HP Server Sales Hit By Recession
Quarterly server revenue has shrunk at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Sun Microsystems, as the global economy slows down, according to IDC. The one positive area is blade servers
Beware Of Software Bearing Gifts
If your applications aren't behaving the way you expect, the problem may not be where you think. Peter Judge found that familiar, trusted software may not be quite what it appears
Google outage was due to “overload”
A two hour blackout of Google mail was blamed on "data centre overload" and new code bugs, by the company's official blog.
Communication barriers waste cash at SMBs
Communications barriers and latencies are costing cost small and medium businesses (SMBs) up to 40 percent of their productive time, averaging to more than £3000 per employee, according to a report.
Visto Buys Good Technology From Motorola
Mobile email company Visto has finally snapped up its rival Good Technology, two years after Good was bought by Motorola
“Disjointed” IT could delay recovery, says CMA
We need working broadband and 3G to get out of the recession, communications managers have warned
UK Government To Save £600m With Open Source
New support for open source from the UK government could lead to big savings as long as proprietary vendors don't hijack it, say commentators
Cloud services ‘pose legal risks’
Outages are only part of the problem for services on the web, says a City Law firm, warning cloud customers may face lawsuits over performance and data protection
NASA’s Carbon Observatory Crashes
NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory, intended to scan Earth's surface for elusive carbon dioxide "sinks" in its atmosphere crashed today, after a launch failure.
Polycom Pushes High-End Video Conferencing
Video conferencing specialist Polycom says its HD-ready system, will boost take-up of telepresence, and cut business travel, but analysts warn of slow uptake and hidden costs around the technology
Gmail Failure: Reality Bites for Cloud Computing
Update: Gmail is back, after a two-hour outage. The company has not yet said how many people were affected, but twitter traffic from round the world reveals a major outage. That's a pain for millions of ordinary users - but it could be ...
Sustainable Working Is Booming, Says BT
Businesses adopting green working practices have increased ten-fold as companies respond to the recession, according to BT
Citrix Offers Control For Microsoft Virtualization
Citrix is offering a management product for Microsoft's Hyper-V, and a free version of its own Citrix XenServe, in a bid to steal a march on VMware
Sacked Staff Steal Company Data
Sixty percent of people who lose their jobs take company data with them when they go, according to a study sponsored by Symantec.
Birmingham Gets Pay-Per-Month Disaster Recovery
The Midlands now has a cloud computing data centre, which lets local companies grow without huge IT investments, says ADA Technology Services.
Recession Creates New IT Outsourcing Destinations
Global recession is producing new locations for oursourcing, according to research - but companies should appreciate the risks involved
Smart Metering Helps 02 Cut Energy Costs
The mobile provider has been awarded The Carbon Trust Standard for its recent efficiency drive.
Microsoft takes money back from sacked workers
Microsoft is asking recently laid-off employees to return some of their severance pay that the company apparently overpaid, according to reports. As the recession bites, Microsoft and IBM are both facing layoffs and bad publicity.
“iTunes Of IP” Eases Address Management
Managing IP addresses on an enterprise network could be easier thanks to a new module, which network appliance maker Infoblox says is the iTunes of networking.
Microsoft Updates Windows 7 Beta and Vista Service Pack
Tweaking its future and current operating systems, Microsoft has produced dummy updates for Windows 7, and a new Release Candidate for second Service Pack for Windows Vista.
Adobe Flaw Won’t be Fixed For Two Weeks
Adobe has promised to fix a zero-day vulnerability which allows lets hackers seize control of users' computers - but the patch will not be available till 11th March.
Radware to Buy Nortel’s Alteon App Delivery Division
Application delivery specialist Radware is to buy Nortel's Alteon division. Now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Nortel originally bought Alteon for $7.8 billion in 2000.
UK’s VeryPC Launches 12TB Storage Server
UK-based low-energy system maker VeryPC has announced new models, including a storage processor with up to 12TB of storage and dual Intel Xeon processors with up to 48GB or RAM.
UN Says New IT Infrastructure Key To Recovery
Investment in next-generation networks and other IT infrastructure will have benefits for the whole economy, according to a UN report
Mobile World Congress: Summary of the Final Day
Video: The Mobile World Congress closed yesterday in Barcelona with the announcement of a new Flash card from Flash de SanDisk and Kaspersky's vote of confidence in mobile security.
Experts Say Dump The NAC Word
Network access control is a useless marketing buzzword; users and vendors should just get on with security management, experts have said.
Mobile World Congress: Summary of Day 3
The third day of the MWC 2009 was characterised by a rush of deals announced by LG-Parrot, Visa-GSM Association and the principle mobile manufacturers with regards to a universal charger.
MWC 2009: Preview of Windows Mobile 6.5
Video: The other day, Microsoft invited me over for an early look at Window Mobile 6.5, the next iteration of the company's operating system for phones. I didn't get to actually use the OS, although we have subsequently had more inform ...
Mobile World Congress: Summary of Day 2
Video: The agreement between Nokia and Qualcomm, the approach made by Nvidia to Android and the presentation of the new Vodafone device HTC Magic marked the second day of this event.
Virtualization Set to Grow 43% in 2009
The economic slowdown and important developments in this market segment have allowed virtualized systems to grow at a strong rhythm.
Mini-Notebooks Power 2008 PC Growth
Figures just released for PC shipments in Q4 2008 reveal the big inroads made by mini-notebooks into the Western European portable market, which drove sales for various leading manufacturers.
Mobile World Congress: Summary of Day 1
Video: The ecological mobile of Samsung, the presentation of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the new products presented by Nokia mark the inauguration of the MWC.
UK Companies Streamline 2009 IT Expenditure
The first results of an annual IDC survey reveal that UK enterprises are approaching 2009 IT budgets with caution and prioritise cost-cutting and efficiency projects.
Green Ethernet Standard to Unleash Marketing Blitz
A standard for energy-efficient Ethernet, due in 2010, will unleash a barrage of green marketing, promising savings for IT managers
Zmanda Cloud Backup : Open Source Disaster Recovery Solution
SMB data protection in the cloud is now available for small to medium-size businesses thanks to open source backup and recovery firm Zmanda.
What Will It Take To Make IT Go Green?
Whether they act to stave off a global crisis, or a meltdown in their own budgets, IT professionals need to have better information if they are going to clean up their act.
Can Sustainable IT Avoid False Accounting?
Now the word is out: there is money to be made in sustainable IT, we can expect the usual feeding frenzy as vendors try to cash in. This time, we can't afford to fall for phony greenwash.
UK Government to cut IT budget by billions
The UK government will slash its IT spending, in a bid for greater standardisation and simplification, according to Treasury advisor Martin Read.
Ghosts in the machine help E.ON cut server costs
The energy provider has consolidated its data centres across Europe amid rising power prices
AMD’s New Phenom II Cuts Energy in Half
New tri-core and quad-core chips from AMD cut the Phenom II processor energy bill in half - and they will spread from consumers to the enterprise later this year.
UK Bluetooth firm buys US GPS outfit
CSR has agreed to buy the leading GPS vendor SiRF, in a bid to merge another technology into its chips - and cash in on a projected boom in GPS handsets.
IBM pushes for 21st century infrastructure
IBM has a set of new management functions and a "cloud czar", in a bid to provide the management and control that virtualised data centres and outsourced IT will require.
IBM’s Cloud Announcements – Not Just Fluff
System management announcements can be vague; stir in the cloud and you have a recipe for complete incoherence. But IBM's cloud announcements have substance, analysts say.
“No-fuss” Linux net-top updated
French computer maker claims solid-state, low power desktops are the future
PC Power Management Can Save £28,000 a Year, Says Gartner
An organisation with 25,000 PCs can save $43,000 (£28,800) per year by using power management, according to research by analyst Gartner - but other analysts have called the figures a simplification.
Facebook SupportsOpenID
Facebook has joined the board of the OpenID Foundation, joining Google, IBM, Microsoft and Yahoo in a big to to let users port port their data around the Web.
IBM Puts Zend PHP stack on System i
IBM is to preload Zend's PHP-based Web stack with every shipment of System i, the operating system for for IBM Power Systems. Around five million developers and 22 million Internet domains use PHP, including Yahoo and Facebook.
RFID Puts Us All at Risk
I've never really thought of myself as much of a seer, prognosticator or predictor of the future, but based on a column I wrote back in 2005, I may just have a future in the prediction field.
UK Academics Launch Open Source PC Power Saver
The University of Liverpool's PowerDown can shut down idle PCs, saving users thousands of pounds.
NetApp Drops SMB Storage
Storage company NetApp quietly axed its line of midmarket-based storage solutions, StoreVault.
Microsoft Changes Windows 7 UAC
Microsoft has agreed that Windows 7 will generate a prompt if there is an attempt to change the user account control settings - in response to pressure from bloggers who claimed the planned OS was vulnerable.
Wozniak Joins Storage Startup
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has signed up as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a Salt Lake City-basedcompany that makes compact NAND flash storage arrays.
Intel Delays ‘Tukwila’ Chip Again
Intel has delayed the four-core "Tukwila" `version of its Itanium processor, originally billed as the first 2 billion transistor chip and scheduled for 2007.
Green Grid Measures Data Centre Efficiency
The Green Grid consortium has issued a set of guidelines to solve one of the trickiest issues facing sustainable computing - how to measure the efficiency of a data centre.
Where Does Malware Come From?
Anti-virus vendors are getting more than 50,000 submissions of new malware per day now. How can the malware business be so productive? It turns out the numbers aren't really as big as all that.
Lenovo Boss Quits as PC Maker Reports A Loss
ThinkPad maker Lenovo posted its first quarterly loss in three years, and CEO William Amelio has said he will resign.
MySQL Founder Leaves Sun
MySQL founder Monty Widenius has left Sun after a very public flap over bugs in MySQL 5.1 and months of rumours.
W3C Calls for Web 2.0 Data Sharing
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has called for social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter to share profiles and data, to grow further Web 2.0 opportunities.
Google Latitude Let Users Track Colleagues on Maps
A Google application called Latitude lets users track friends, family and colleagues via Google Maps on a PC or mobile device. Google says Latitude is available on BlackBerry, S60 and Windows Mobile devices, and is coming to the Apple ...
EMC and Microsoft Renew Alliance Despite Virtualization Conflict
Microsoft and data storage giant EMC are renewing their product partnership, despite growing competition in the fast-growing area of virtualization.
Intel Plans Eight-Core Nehalem and Smarter SOCs
Intel will give details of a 2.3 billion transistor, eight core processor, and smarter system-on-chip (SOC) modules that include wireless networking and graphics on the die itself, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, ...
New VMware Open-Source Client Heralds New Devices
VMware View Open Client, released 3rd February, will most likely boost the number of thin-client devices from Wyse, HP and Sun.
SAP’s CIO Customers Won’t Do Business on iPhone
The Apple iPhone is not a business tool, according to CIOs speaking at a SAP software launch. Despite burgeoning iPhone sales, executives from IBM, healthcare company Roche and others are backing BlackBerry.
Citrix: the Virtual Route to Sustainable IT
Sustainable IT departments will have to weather some big changes. One of the largest is the move to virtual servers. What, we asked Citrix, is so green about virtualization?
Skype 4.0 for Windows Updates VOIP
The VOIP calling service releases Skype 4.0 for Windows. The latest version of Skype features full-screen video calling, a bandwidth manager, a new audio codec that improves call quality and easier setup, Skype says.
Google Quietly Declares E-Mail War on Yahoo
Many people send e-mail messages while exhausted, angry or inebriated that they later regret. As part of Google's quest to attract users to its Gmail service, the Internet search and messaging and collaboration company has introduced d ...
Box.net Becomes Social Content Management Service
Box.net, which began life as a file management and file-sharing platform in a cloud computing environment, is becoming a more robust content management provider. The startup adds profiles, discussions, bookmarks and other messaging, co ...
New Citrix XenDesktop Release Enhances Desktop Virtualization, User Experience
The new release of Citrix's XenDesktop product aims to make desktop virtualization cheaper and friendlier for office workers, by increasing the number of desktops that one server can support while improving multimedia and voice deliver ...
Microsoft to Blitz Market with Six Editions of Windows 7
It's official: Microsoft will release at least six versions of Windows 7, following the same marketing approach it took with Vista. Joe Wilcox says some things Vista shouldn't have been repeated.
Sun Enhancements to OpenSolaris Take Aim at Linux
Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris 2008.11 includes improvements around software package management and incorporating community packaging efforts. The updates to the free Solaris-based OS shows that Sun will not follow IBM and HP in letting ...
Google Privacy Exec Facing Criminal Charges
Italian officials charge Google Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer with criminal charges of defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data two years after Google posted a video depicting fellow students harassing a s ...
Google Earth Beta 5 Lets Users Explore Ocean Floor
Google's latest update to Google Earth includes several new features to view, including the three-dimensional renderings of the ocean floor, historical satellite imagery and maps of Mars. This is the first update to Google Earth since ...
Mac Enters Enterprise by Back Door
Business Mac deployments hit a 5 percent adoption ceiling last year, but they're bouncing down, according to a new report by Forrester Research. Earlier Forrester research put business Mac adoption as high as 5 percent, in May 2008, up ...
IBM Building Next Generation of BlueGene Supercomputers
IBM and the U. S Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have signed a new contract to build the next generation of IBM's BlueGene supercomputers at the famed DOE facility. The first IBM BlueGene supercomputer, ca ...
Next Windows 7 Milestone: Release Candidate
How ready is Windows 7? Ready enough so there will be no Beta 2. Microsoft plans to go directly from Beta 1 to release candidate.
Google Apps Draws Enterprise Users
Despite summer outages for Google Gmail and Google Apps that left some analysts questioning whether Web-based applications were right for the enterprise, a new report from Google claims that 10 million individuals from over 1 million b ...
New ‘Hacktivism’ Highlights Growing Problem
We all saw what the concentrated efforts of a group of politically minded hackers could accomplish in 2007 when Russian attackers took a wide swath of Estonian Web sites offline in response to perceived affronts against the Russian nat ...
Should Dell Smartphone Tackle BlackBerry or iPhone Fans?
Rumours of a Dell smartphone are running rampant, but what features might the company include, and is it smart to go after Apple's iPhone or tackle the BlackBerry set? One analyst weighs in.
Google Search Engine Sends False Security Warnings
A human error caused Google users to received bogus security warning messages for many of the searches the performed for nearly an hour the morning of the 31st January. During that period users received erroneous warnings that their se ...