Eweek20070827 Dev DL

www. eweek.
com
Best-of-breed planning approach leads
LeapFrog Enterprises to open source 31
Jason Brooks: Windows
goes Xenby proxy. 57
Eugene Ciurana, LeapFrog
director of systems
infrastructure
BY JASON BROOKS
AUGUST 27, 2007 VOL. 24, NO. 27 $6
Leaping

into
Open

Source
27p1.indd 1 8/24/07 12:11:16 PM
job name: Forefront: Spiders
media type: Magasine
media unit: Spread
b/w or color: 4/C
client: Microsoft
job #: MPLT-FOR-50700874-A
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file name: 50700874_A_prf.indd
studio artist: Studio G5 [Jeff Boice]
date: 7/18/07 11:23 AM
rounds: 8 collects: 2 a
p
p
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PF CD TM
AD PR AB
CW AE QC
link names: orange_cmyk_V2.tif (CMYK; 379 ppi, 334 ppi; 79.01%, 89.58%), Red_Grad_7x7_4c_f_HI.tif (CMYK; 840 ppi; 35.71%), YPOP_Corp_
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fonts: Segoe (Bold, Semibold, Light, Regular), Times (Roman)
notes: Pubs: eWeek, Network Computing. Release to PDI.
ppi; 19.99%)
189199mea02_A TL
6. Turn their strength into a weakness.
Eight legs are essential for scurrying over sticky webs. In an ofce
setting, though, they can be a liability. Trip the Spider up with cables,
masking tape, or even toilet paperwhatever you have at hand.
Once theyre tangled, push them over and run like heck.
5. Bug spray (a better way).
The worlds going green and were all for saving the environment, so even
when faced with rampaging, six-foot tarantulas, try some earth-friendly pest
control instead. Mix one drop of peppermint or citronella oil to one quart
water, borrow the neighbors sprayer, and start pumping away.
1. Whats making the Spiders so big?
Giant, man-eating Spiders arent born that way. Find the source of
their transformation and youll know how best to beat them. Is an
abandoned chemical plant nearby? Has a strange meteorite recently
landed? Exactly how old is the milk in the fridge?
3. Use your superior human intellect.
Spiders are crafty hunters and one of natures most efcient predators. A giant
Spider can be even more intimidating. Remember though, you are a human,
and while you may lack razor-sharp pincer jaws, you have the superior intellect.
Use a rm hand and some cunning, and the Spider has no chance.
4. Put them to work.
So youve used your superior intellect to vanquish the Spider; why
not take it one step further? Use positive reinforcement to train the
Spider. Soon youll have it helping out around the ofce, running
errands, making coffee and copies, etc.
2. Use proven methods.
Spiders are best handled the old-fashioned way: by crushing, smooshing,
swatting, etc. Freakishly huge Spiders are no different. Grab a rolled-up
newspaper, or simply wad up a handful of toilet paper, and have at it.
Unlike normal spiders, though, the big ones will clog
your sink, so show caution.
1. Implement Microsoft Forefront.
Forefront
TM
makes defending your systems easier. Its a simple-to-use, integrated
family of client, server, and edge security products (such as Forefront Client
Security) that helps you stay ahead of your security threats more easily than ever.
For case studies, free trials, demos, and all the latest moves, visit easyeasier.com
repelling spyware. easier. repelling giant spiders. easy.
S:14.75 in
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T:15.5 in
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PACIFIC DIGITAL IMAGE 333 Broadway, San Francisco CA 94133 415.274.7234 www.pacdigital.com
Filename:
Colors:
Operator: Time:
Date:
189199mea02_A.ps_MEA
Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black
SpoolServer 09:18:20
07-07-19
NOTE TO RECIPIENT: This le is processed using a Prinergy Workow System with an Adobe Postscript Level 3 RIP. The resultant PDF
contains traps and overprints. Please ensure that any post-processing used to produce these les supports this functionality. To correctly
view these les in Acrobat, please ensure that Output Preview (Separation Preview in earlier versions than 7.x) and Overprint Preview
are enabled. If the les are re-processed and these aspects are ignored, the traps and/or overprints may not be interpreted correctly and
incorrect reproduction may result. Please contact Pacic Digital Image with any questions or concerns.
job name: Forefront: Spiders
media type: Magasine
media unit: Spread
b/w or color: 4/C
client: Microsoft
job #: MPLT-FOR-50700874-A
size: A
live: 14.75 in x 9.75 in
trim: 15.5 in x 10.5 in
gutter: 0.5 in
date: 7/18/07 11:23 AM
p
p
r
o
v
a
l

s
i
g
n
o
f
f
PF CD TM
AD PR AB
CW AE QC
link names: orange_cmyk_V2.tif (CMYK; 379 ppi, 334 ppi; 79.01%, 89.58%), Red_Grad_7x7_4c_f_HI.tif (CMYK; 840 ppi; 35.71%), YPOP_Corp_
w.ai (86.27%), Forefront.ai (44.8%), Spiders_049_SWOP.psd (CMYK; 1650 ppi; 18.17%), Spiders_019_SWOP.psd (CMYK; 1480 ppi; 20.26%),
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inks: CMYK
fonts: Segoe (Bold, Semibold, Light, Regular), Times (Roman)
notes: Pubs: eWeek, Network Computing. Release to PDI.
ppi; 19.99%)
189199mea02_A TL
6. Turn their strength into a weakness.
Eight legs are essential for scurrying over sticky webs. In an ofce
setting, though, they can be a liability. Trip the Spider up with cables,
masking tape, or even toilet paperwhatever you have at hand.
Once theyre tangled, push them over and run like heck.
5. Bug spray (a better way).
The worlds going green and were all for saving the environment, so even
when faced with rampaging, six-foot tarantulas, try some earth-friendly pest
control instead. Mix one drop of peppermint or citronella oil to one quart
water, borrow the neighbors sprayer, and start pumping away.
1. Whats making the Spiders so big?
Giant, man-eating Spiders arent born that way. Find the source of
their transformation and youll know how best to beat them. Is an
abandoned chemical plant nearby? Has a strange meteorite recently
landed? Exactly how old is the milk in the fridge?
3. Use your superior human intellect.
Spiders are crafty hunters and one of natures most efcient predators. A giant
Spider can be even more intimidating. Remember though, you are a human,
and while you may lack razor-sharp pincer jaws, you have the superior intellect.
Use a rm hand and some cunning, and the Spider has no chance.
4. Put them to work.
So youve used your superior intellect to vanquish the Spider; why
not take it one step further? Use positive reinforcement to train the
Spider. Soon youll have it helping out around the ofce, running
errands, making coffee and copies, etc.
2. Use proven methods.
Spiders are best handled the old-fashioned way: by crushing, smooshing,
swatting, etc. Freakishly huge Spiders are no different. Grab a rolled-up
newspaper, or simply wad up a handful of toilet paper, and have at it.
Unlike normal spiders, though, the big ones will clog
your sink, so show caution.
1. Implement Microsoft Forefront.
Forefront
TM
makes defending your systems easier. Its a simple-to-use, integrated
family of client, server, and edge security products (such as Forefront Client
Security) that helps you stay ahead of your security threats more easily than ever.
For case studies, free trials, demos, and all the latest moves, visit easyeasier.com
repelling spyware. easier. repelling giant spiders. easy.
S:14.75 in
S
:
9
.
7
5

i
n
T:15.5 in
T
:
1
0
.
5

i
n
B:16 in
B
:
1
0
.
7
5

i
n
Filename:
Colors:
Operator: Time:
Date:
189199mea02_A.ps_MEA
07-07-19
1
Adobe Open Options (AOO) volume licensing; call your CDW account manager for details. Centrino, Centrino Logo, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Core, Intel Inside and Intel Inside Logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and
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Not getting the most out of your old notebook?
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With the benefits of todays improved technology, theres never been a better time to
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Atheros
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CONTENTS SOLD SEPARATELY
AD# CDW-BRA-877C28 FILE NAME: P71877_cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20.indd
Pub: eWeek
Insertion: August 20, 2007
Size: Trim 15.75" x 10.5"
Bleed 16" x 10.75"
Live 15.25" x 10"
Materials: PDF/X1A + 2 Proofs
JWT Communications, Entertainment and Technology
ONE RAVINIA DRIVE, 9
TH
FLOOR
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Job Name: 4287 cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20
PDF Page: 4287_cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20.p1.pdf Process Plan: PDF Output X1a[Vector]
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1
Adobe Open Options (AOO) volume licensing; call your CDW account manager for details. Centrino, Centrino Logo, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Core, Intel Inside and Intel Inside Logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and
other countries. Offer subject to CDW's standard terms and conditions of sale, available at CDW.com. 2007 CDW Corporation
Not getting the most out of your old notebook?
CDW has new technology that can help.
With the benefits of todays improved technology, theres never been a better time to
upgrade your systems. At CDW, were there with a dedicated personal account manager
who has all the desktop, notebook and server knowledge you need to help you become
more efficient in the office. And with best-of-breed products from the top names in the
industry, you not only get what you need, you get it whenever you need it. So call CDW
today and get the technology you need to make the most of your day.
1-8 Forbes
Were there with the technology solutions you need.
Targus
ExpressCard
Docking Station
High-speed ExpressCard
interface capable of up to
5Gbps data transfer
Four USB 2.0 ports: two power ports and two standard
USB 2.0 ports
15-pin video, Ethernet, serial and audio ports
$166.99 CDW 1107248
Intel
Centrino

- Intel
Core
2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66GHz)

- Intel

Memory: 1GB
DVDRW drive
14.1" XGA Crystal View display
Windows Vista
Business Edition
Fujitsu LifeBook
S7110
$
1459
99
CDW 1183168
Notebook and cable
sold separately
CDW.com 800.399.4CDW
Targus
Notebook Wireless
Rechargeable Optical Mouse
Radio frequency technology allows you to roam
800 dpi resolution for precise control
Power management recharges even during use
$33.99 CDW 835102
Intel
Centrino

- Intel
Core
2 Duo Processor T7300 (2GHz)

- Intel
Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN

Memory: 1GB
DVDRW drive
12.1" XGA display
Windows
XP Tablet PC Edition
Fujitsu LifeBook
T4220 Tablet PC
$
1959
99
CDW 1223464
Adobe
Acrobat
8 Professional
Auto-recognize form fields
Enable advanced features in Adobe
Reader
For Windows
Standard $152.99 CDW 1029708

7 Professional $152.99 CDW 1029707

Full version $425.99 CDW 1029706
Intel
Core

- Intel
Core
Duo Processor ULV U2500 (1.20GHz)

- Intel

Integrated fingerprint reader
Memory: 1GB
12.1" XGA indoor/outdoor display
Windows Vista
Business Edition
Fujitsu Stylistic ST5112 Tablet PC
$
2579
99
CDW 1155181
Licensing available
1
Targus
Leather Notebook Case

Fits notebooks with screens up to 15.4"
Front zip-down section includes accessory pockets and file section
Luggage strap for easy attachment to rolling travel cases
$49.99 CDW 585679
Intel
Core
Solo Processor U1400 (1.20GHz)

Atheros
Super AG
wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g)

Memory: 512MB
30GB hard drive
8.9" WXGA touchscreen display
Weighs only 2.2 lbs.
Fujitsu LifeBook
P1610 Tablet PC
$
1599
99
CDW 1272866
CONTENTS SOLD SEPARATELY
AD# CDW-BRA-877C28 FILE NAME: P71877_cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20.indd
Pub: eWeek
Insertion: August 20, 2007
Size: Trim 15.75" x 10.5"
Bleed 16" x 10.75"
Live 15.25" x 10"
Materials: PDF/X1A + 2 Proofs
JWT Communications, Entertainment and Technology
ONE RAVINIA DRIVE, 9
TH
FLOOR
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, 30346
Materials Contact Person:
Theresa Buchanan 770 668-5700 x229
email theresa.buchanan@jwt.com
4287_cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20.indd 1 8/13/07 3:35:39 PM
Job Name: 4287 cdw_eWeek_sel_sp_8-20
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Editorial Director Eric Lundquist
Editor Debra Donston
Executive Editor, News Michael Hickins
Executive Editor, eWEEK Labs Jason Brooks
Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza

NEWS
Senior News Editor Jeffrey Burt
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Senior Editors Jessica Davis, Peter Galli,
Paula Musich, Darryl K. Taft, Lisa Vaas
Senior Writers Clint Boulton, Renee Boucher
Ferguson, Chris Preimesberger
Staff Writers Scott Ferguson, Patrick Hoffman,
Deborah Perelman, Brian Prince
Microsoft Watch Editor Joe Wilcox
eWEEK LABS
Technical Director Cameron Sturdevant
Senior Analysts Andrew Garcia, Wayne Rash
Technical Analyst Tiffany Maleshefski

EDI TORI AL PRODUCTI ON
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Deputy Managing Editor Debra Perry
Copy Chief Jim Williams
Senior Copy Editors Kelsey Adams, Patrick Burke
Copy Editors Vikki Lipset, Heather ONeill,
Shane ONeill, Robby Trail
Newsletter Editors Sharon Linsenbach, Alethea Yip
ART/MULTI MEDI A
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eWEEK
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ZI FF DAVI S MEDI A
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SENI OR VI CE PRESI DENTS
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6 eWEEK n AUGUST 27, 2007
www. eweek. com
THE NEXT PHASE Want
to know whats going
onand whats on the
horizonfor collaborat-
ing and working online?
Then the Office 2.0 con-
ference slated for Sept.
5-7 in San Francisco is
the place for you. How-
ever, even if you cant
make it out to the West
Coast, you can check
out Senior Writer Clint
Boultons reports on
eweek.com.
EMERGING TECHNOL-
OGY Chief Technology
Analyst Jim Rapoza lists
the worst mistakes that
Web developers make at
etech.eweek.com.
eweek.com
Upfront
8 AMD plans to make its offices more green.
ANALYSIS
11 Virtualization gains even more steam.
16 IBM focuses on Web collaboration.
20 Management is VOIPs missing link.
22 Colleges prepare for emergencies.
24 No. 1 in IT jobs? Its still Silicon Valley.
27 Skype outage raises responsibility issues.
29 Blogwatch: eWEEK in the blogosphere.
INSIGHT
31 LeapFrogs planning approach is leading
the company toward open source.
41 IT Planner: Five steps to next-generation
Web applications.
INTERVIEW
48 Microsofts COO discusses the chal-
lenges of the companys new initiatives.
COMMENTARY
52 Eric Lundquist: Side with the customer
by rejecting frictionless-economy ideas.
55 Jim Rapoza: Standards groups are wasting
their time by talking with state governments.
57 Jason Brooks: The Citrix-XenSource
deal helps Microsoft and open source.
59 Andrew Garcia: The Skype outage
shows services lack of business safeguards.
66 Spencer F. Katt jokes about the ebb and
flow of war and peace over open source.
CONTENTS
31
Eugene
Ciurana
27p6.indd 6 8/24/07 1:58:44 PM
1. Based on internal HP testing of power and cooling costs; compared to similarly congured HP1U, 2P server. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. The
information contained herein is subject to change without notice. 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
BREAK THE CYCLE. The HP BladeSystem c-Class, featuring efficient
Dual-Core AMD Opteron

processors, helps
free I.T. from the cycle of server management.
Its equipped with HPs exclusive Thermal
Logic Technology, which can save companies
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1
on power costs by managing the
balance of power and cooling without sacrificing performance.
And HP Thermal Assessment Services can customize a plan
to help you determine optimal cooling and thermal levels and
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Visit www.hp.com/go/breakthecycle40
Upfront
four technology areas:
video conferencing, digital
signage, interconnected
emergency radio and
physical security.
Its a curious collection
of projects currently incu-
bating at Cisco, so I sat
down with Guido Jouret,
the groups CTO, to find
out what is so risky about
these well-established
technologies.
To start, Jouret defined
what emerging technol-
ogy means to Cisco. For
Cisco, emerging technol-
ogy isnt so much a matter
of what is new, but what
can be reinvented, he
said.
It almost goes without
saying that the common
thread among all these
emerging technology areas
is Ciscos desire to move
the services from propri-
etary technology platforms
onto an IP network. In the
case of video surveillance
(TelePresence), what Cisco
calls physical security, this
means equipping analog
cameras with physical
modules that convert the
signal to IP packets. The
vision for the product is
to then create analytical
applications that can use
this digitized data to per-
form facial recognition,
zone monitoring and
crowd control.
In the case of Ciscos
video surveillance tools,
there is also a clear case
for more organized insis-
tence from privacy groups
to ensure that freedoms
guaranteed in the Con-
stitution arent abridged.
Since a successful emerg-
ing technology is expected
to generate $1 billion of
business, privacy advo-
cates have their work cut
out for them.
Digital signs are
expected to take the place
of printed posters, such as
supermarket circulars, and
IPICS (IP Interoperability
and Communications
System) is designed to
help emergency agencies
on different radio systems
talk with one another.
In all, Cisco has ambi-
tious plans to disrupt
current technologies so
that all data flows on IP
networkspresumably,
networks that are switched
and routed using Cisco
gear.
Cameron Sturdevant
[CONTINUED ON PAGE 10]
S
t
e
v
e

A
n
d
e
r
s
o
n
www. eweek. com
AMD on the move
A
dvanced Micro
Devices, a company
that prides itself on its tech-
nological achievements
(especially compared with
those other guys), houses
several of i t s
top executives,
including CEO
Hector Ruiz, in
a rather drab
g l a s s - a n d -
brick struc-
ture in a non-
descript office
park in Austin,
Texas. Although
the companys
official address is
Sunnyvale, Calif.,
AMD d o e s
much of its
work from
t he L o ne
Star State.
On a recent
visit to the AMD campus,
as Tropical Depression Erin
was rumbling through the
state and turning an already
hot day into a soupy, muggy
mess, I and several other
people were gathered in
a lobby, awaiting Ruizs
arrival as the glass walls
turned steamy and opaque.
The CEO was running a
bit late, but he arrived in
a casual, no-tie manner,
befitting the no-frills style
of the companys present
surroundings.
Next year, AMD will pick
up its chips and move to
the southwestern part of
Austin, a bit closer to the
downtown music scene
the city is famous for and
more removed from the
industrial-park hinterlands.
The company, which
prides itself on the
mantra of its
chips per-
formance
per watt,
also plans
on revamp-
ing the new
bui l di ng
in a much
m o r e
g r e e n
fashion.
Whether the
dcor (mostly
framed com-
pany post-
e r s ) , t he
high cubicle
wal l s and t he
ping-pong table in the
cafeteria will move to the
new green HQ is yet to be
seen.
Scott Ferguson
Ciscos risky moves
S
ince Cisco CEO John
Chambers announced
in 2005 that his company
would use risk-taking
ventures to spur technol-
ogy and revenue growth,
the Cisco Emerging Mar-
kets Technology Group
has pushed forward
27p8.indd 8 8/24/07 4:03:00 PM
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Why the iSCSI hype?
I
t lurks like an alien
spaceship. Theres the
requisite row of lights,
t he hummi ng sound,
the inscrutability. But, of
course, its not really alien
aircraft at all. Instead, its
it is. While each indi-
vidual network connec-
tion is slower than Fibre
Channel, you can add lots
of Ethernet connections
and still get fast perfor-
mance. In addition, you
dont need to spend money
on specialized switches as
long as you have an Eth-
ernet infrastructure that
meets the demands of an
iSCSI SAN. This means
that you probably dont
need to provide special
training for your network
staff.
So why al l the
hype over this and
other recent iSCSI
products? Thats
a good question. Its
not particularly new; the
companies making the
products have been doing
this or something like it
for a while, and there is
little in the way of new
technology. However,
there are evolutionary
changes in this form of
storage that make it more
useful to a wide range of
smaller enterprises that
cant afford storage spe-
cialists, and there are new
capabilities that add to the
ease of management and
the ability to protect data
better.
So its probably not
really the hype that s
being generated by iSCSI
right now that matters.
But maybe an iSCSI SAN
really is worth consider-
ing if you have a smaller
enterprise that needs to
do something about its
storage needs.
Wayne Rash
Schoogle days
G
oogl e r e c e nt l y
hosted an event on
its campus to announce
that a handful of univer-
sities will launch Google
Apps Education Edition
on their campuses.
The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro,
Clemson University, the
University of Texas at San
Antonio, Kennesaw State
University and Arkan-
sas State University will
now be using Googles
Web-based applications,
including Gmail accounts
for students, on their uni-
versity domains.
Sur e, i t s onl y f i ve
schools in the early going,
but thats still thousands of
students and faculty mem-
bers having the opportu-
nity to use Google Apps.
Im hard-pressed to find
calendaring and so on. They
are blogging and using
wikis. Those students will be
comfortable with Googles
Web-based flavors.
With this latest play,
Google is cutting in on a
resource that Microsoft
and even Apple used to rise
to power. When I was in
college, universities inked
contracts with Apple for
Macs or with IBM, Dell,
HP and Compaq, among
others, for Windows-based
machines and Microsoft
Office software.
Thats still largely the
case, but now students
at these five schools may
c ho o s e t o us e We b -
based applications from
Googl e. St udent s can
compose their papers on
Google Docs instead of
Microsoft Word and use
Gmail instead of Micro-
soft Hotmail or Yahoo
Mail. That doesnt mean
they will, but they have the
choice. Thats good for
Google.
Googles move into
colleges may have
s o me r e s i d u a l
effects, too. Some
students who grad-
uat e and go on
to find employment may
event ual l y det ermi ne
what productivity soft-
ware their staffs use.
Googles software dis-
tribution pact with Sun
may fortify its move into
the enterprise now, but
its infiltration into the
student and faculty ranks
may pay fine dividends in
the future.
Clint Boulton
UPFRONT FROM PAGE 8
www. eweek. com
Upfront
a better grass-roots-ish way
for Google to get more trac-
tion for its collaboration
software. Most students in
todays universities grew
up with this new Web 2.0
way of doing word process-
ing, spreadsheets, e-mail,
the latest offering from a
major computer maker,
which is so wrapped up
in the fact that it is doing
an iSCSI storage device
that were not allowed to
say who it is until mid-
September.
Until then, I have to
keep asking myself, Why
is this such a big deal?
Lets face itiSCSI is
hardly new. Just about
any manufacturer that
can cram a bunch of disks
into a box has delivered an
iSCSI SAN (storage area
network) at one time or
another. The biggest dif-
ference that Ive noticed is
that the Gigabit Ethernet
connections now are using
copper rather than fiber.
Thats not to say that
iSCSI isnt useful, because
27p8.indd 10 8/24/07 4:03:16 PM
Fast-forward to 2007, and
VMware is the leader in
one of the fastest-growing
segments of the technology
industry, with rivals large and
small looking to knock off the
king. Recently, the Palo Alto,
Calif., company was in the
middle of a wild week that
saw the virtualization space
rapidly reshape itself.
On Aug. 14, VMware,
owned by storage giant
EMC since 2004, launched
its much-anticipated IPO
(initial public offering)
and saw shares on the
first day almost double in
price, with officials hoping
to raise more than $900
million in capital.
A day later, Citrix Sys-
tems announced plans to
buy open-source virtualiza-
tion vendor XenSource for
$500 million, a move that
could have further ramifi-
cations given both compa-
nies close ties to Microsoft,
which is developing its own
virtualization hypervisor,
dubbed Viridian.
In addition, some ana-
l ysts, such as Brenon
VMwares IPO, Citrix-XenSource deal represent change in an expanding space
Daly at The 451 Group,
said the Citrix-XenSource
deal could be a prelude to
Microsofts buying Citrix.
Citrix built a $1 billion-
plus business on the back
of its access to Microsoft
source code, Daly said.
XenSources exclusive
access to Microsofts forth-
coming Viridian hypervi-
sor code is a key driver
for this deal. For Citrix,
Viridian becomes the base
operating system compo-
nent for its next business,
just as Windows Terminal
Server has been for Pre-
sentation Server.
Either way, the moves
were an indication that
the virtualization mar-
ket will continue to see
competitive forces come
into play and raise the
level of awareness of the
technology among enter-
prises, particularly given
the potential for growth
during the next few years.
Research company IDC
expects that by 2009, busi-
nesses will be spending
upward of $15 billion on
virtualization technology.
Todays acquisition of
XenSource by Citrix and
VMwares recent IPO are
strong indicators of the
dynamic nature of the virtu-
alization market, said Larry
Orecklin, general manager
of System Center and Vir-
tualization for Microsoft, in
Redmond, Wash. With less
than 5 percent of servers
across the globe currently
virtualized, the market is
still emerging and full of
innovation and opportunity
for customers.
Virtualization is the abil-
ity to run multiple instances
of operating systems and
applications on a single
physical server. Initially
pitched as a way to address
historically low utilization
rates among x86 servers
and to consolidate systems
within data centers, its
now being eyed as a tool
to help in backup and disas-
ter and recovery projects.
And where virtualization
once was primarily a soft-
ware product, chip makers
Advanced Micro Devices
and Intel are both offering
virtualization capabilities
within their processors.
In recent years, a crop
of new companies, such as
Virtual Iron and SWsoft,
have challenged VMwares
dominance. Microsoft also
looms as a major player, and
now the Citrix-XenSource
combination promises even
more competition.
Citrix customers ap -
plauded their vendors
move, though not all were
www. eweek. com
AUGUST 27, 2007 n eWEEK 11
ANALYSIS
Virtualization market reshapes
By Scott Ferguson and Peter Galli
I
t was only nine years ago that diane greene and
her husband helped found VMware, a startup with
the idea of taking the concept of hardware virtual-
ization that was commonplace in high-end servers and
mainframes and bringing it to the rapidly expanding
x86 marketplace.
Virtual Iron is just one vendor challenging VMwares dominance.
27p11.indd 11 8/24/07 2:28:26 PM
ready to move to a virtual-
ization environment based
on XenSource.
We prefer more free-
ware and open source,
said Christopher Boone,
CEO of AppCentral Tech-
nologies, in San Francisco.
We had considered Xen-
Source in the past, but we
have a partnership with
Microsoft and use their
[ free virtualization tech-
nology]. I think we will
see a lot of consolidation in
this space. EMCs acquisi-
tion of VMware and now
the IPO and its perfor-
mance [are] indicative of
the markets appetite for
this kind of technology.
However, Citrix Pre-
sentation Server custom-
ers such as BlueCross
BlueShield of Tennessee
may make a move.
We havent been very suc-
cessful with deployments
of Presentation Server and
VMware, said Mike Prewitt,
team leader on the server
team in the Windows & Net-
work Infrastructure Group
at BlueCross BlueShield, in
Chattanooga. They havent
given us the numbers we
can get for what it costs
[to buy] blade servers with
multicore [processors]. As
they tune a product [with
which] we could start see-
ing better return, it would
be interesting.
Users such as Prewitt are
going to have a wider array
of choices in virtualization
as more companies enter
the fray. But VMware isnt
ready to concede anything to
its rivals. Greene, VMware
president, said her comp-
anys IPO will help it keep
its name front and center.
We think its a wonder-
ful awareness-raising event
for us, Greene told eWeek
a few hours after the com-
panys stock went public.
We pride ourselves on our
software. Our customers
love it so much, but letting
customers know about it
is one of our biggest chal-
lenges, so Im very excited
about what today might
have facilitated here.
Gartner analyst Tom Bitt-
man said VMware would
be wise to invest some of
the money gained through
the IPO in a new consulting
force in addition to looking
for some key acquisitions
to help bolster its busi-
ness. While the IPO has
been a boon for VMware,
the company is facing
increasingly stiff competi-
tion from other vendors
that have been using the
Xen hypervisor to position
themselves as low-cost
alternatives to VMware.
That sai d, t he bi g-
gest challenge will come
f rom Mi crosof t Wi n-
dows Server 2008 and
the Viridian hypervisor,
which could debut as a
beta by years end.
Basically, for the last
five to six years, VMware
has had no competition,
Bittman said. The first real
competition came when
you had vendors developing
Xen open-source products,
and then you are going to
have Microsofts Viridian in
beta later this year. I think
Microsofts product is going
to be a serious competitor
to VMware, and Microsoft
has also really improved its
management technology.
Wes Wasson, chief strat-
egy officer with Citrix, said
the XenSource acquisition
puts his company on that
list of VMware competitors.
Citrix, of Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., had been looking at a
number of ways to expand its
virtualization reach, both at
the desktop level and within
the data center, for almost a
year, Wasson said.
With the XenSource
acquisition, Wasson said,
Citrix not only strengthens
its hand when it comes to
desktop virtualization and
delivering applications to
the client but also is able to
move deeper into the data
center to deliver those types
of services to customers.
We want to be able to
deliver any application to
any users over any net-
work, Wasson said, add-
ing that the relationship
both Citrix and XenSource
have with Microsoft, as
well as IBM and Hewlett-
Packard, gives the part-
nership an advantage in
a marketplace dominated
by x86 servers running
Windows.
Senior Editor Paula Musich
contributed to this report.
www. eweek. com
ANALYSIS
VMWARE FROM PAGE 11
F
OR WHAT I THINK WILL PROVE TO BE A CHEAP
$500 million, XenSource has been
picked up by Citrix Systems.
Citrix, for those of you who dont
know, has made a living for ages by
providing Windows desktops and appli-
cations to remote usersfirst with
MetaFrame and now with Presentation
Server.
So what, you ask? One of the truisms
of the business is that nobodyand I
mean nobodypartners with Microsoft
and wins in the long run. There is, how-
ever, an exception to that rule: Citrix.
Any company that has managed for
more than a decade not only to survive
within Microsofts shadow but also to
profit from it clearly knows how to run
a business. Citrix also knows virtualization.
Its new Application Virtualization Suite 3.0 is
all about running virtualized applications in
a way that makes it easy for both users and
administrators.
So, here we are. On one side, you have
Xen. You can argue that its not only the
most well-known open-source virtual-
ization program around, but technically
the best. On the other side, you have a
company that knows how to thrive while
competing with that great white shark of
software, Microsoft. Put them together,
and you have both a great future for open-
source virtualization and a company that
can give VMware all the competition it can
handle and more.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Citrix makes XenSource a contender
27p11.indd Sec1:14 8/24/07 2:28:35 PM
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By Clint Boulton
I
bms purchase of web
conferencing vendor
WebDialogs on Aug.
22 highlights a growing
trend in which high-tech
stalwarts and startups
alike are vying for pieces
of an online collaboration
software pie that could be
worth billions of dollars.
WebDialogs makes on-
demand Web conferencing
services, and IBM plans
to bundle those assets
with its Lotus Sametime
instant messaging assets.
To celebrate the union, the
Sametime team will cre-
ate a joint offering called
Lotus Sametime Unite.
Such an offering could
be a centerpiece of IBMs
push into unified commu-
nications, an area where
the company is competing
with Microsoft and Cisco
Systems.
Though lucrative, Web
conferencing and the uni-
fied communications cat-
egory as a whole are part
of a broader move toward
online collaboration soft-
ware tools. This market is
complex and further com-
plicated by the emergence
of so-called Web 2.0 tools,
said Erica Driver, a For-
rester Research analyst.
Weve been seeing for
the last few years the con-
vergence of collaboration
point products into plat-
forms. At the same time,
Vendors vie for Web collaboration pie
IBMs purchase of WebDialogs underscores growing focus on online tools
theres this emergence of
all of these Web 2.0 tools
for collaboration, such as
blogs and wikis, which
are further fragmenting
the market, Driver said.
Youve got Microsoft and
IBM, which are folding
more collaboration ser-
vices into their platforms,
but youve got loads of
startups and other vendors
that are providing point
collaboration tools.
For example, packaged
suites such as IBMs Lotus
Notes and Domino and
Microsofts SharePoint and
Office arent going away,
but they are facing increas-
i ng competi ti on from
products by Google, Jive
Software and even IBMs
own Lotus Connections
suite.
T h e s e
suites allow
users to work
separ at el y
or together
online and
to comment
a nd c o m-
municate on
thei r work
t h r o u g h
di scussi on
t h r e a d s ,
wi ki s and
bl ogs. The
idea is to fos-
ter greater
communica-
tion and col-
laboration in
pursuit of more polished
work results.
For exampl e, GAPE
(Google Apps Premier
Edition) includes Google
Page Creator, an online
tool for creati ng Web
pages; Gmai l ; IM vi a
Google Talk; Google Cal-
endar; and Google Docs
& Spreadsheets.
Businesses can pay $50
per user to work with these
tools, which are hosted on
Googles servers as part of
the ambitious SAAS (soft-
ware as a service) model
popularized by Salesforce.
com.
Guy Creese, a Burton
Group analyst, said the
release of GAPE marked
the first SAAS-based con-
tent management tool for
offline documents, as dis-
tinct from the Web-based
SAAS content manage-
ment offerings on the
market.
In the future, Creese
said the public will see an
increased blurring of the
lines between content and
collaboration.
We have, for a long
time, been saying there
are content management
and knowledge manage-
ment systems, and its now
becoming clear that it all
mixes together, Creese
said.
You l i ve i n a work
space where you do store
documents, but its also
a work space where you
can collaborate. In the
long run, we will get to a
ANALYSIS
With WebDialogs Web conferencing and application sharing capabilities, IBM
steps closer to a unified communications platform.
www. eweek. com
27p16.indd 16 8/24/07 3:12:06 PM
www. eweek. com
tuning-dial way of migrat-
ing between software in-
house and SAAS. Right
now, were asking people
t o choose one or t he
other, he said.
Startups want thei r
piece of the action, too.
Jive Software just banked
$15 million in funding
from Sequoia Capital to
help bolster its Clearspace
collaboration suite, which
lets knowledge workers
employ content creation
tools, including blogs and
wikis. Users can then
discuss their work in a
forum.
Open-source collabora-
tion tools are also avail-
able. Zimbra and Open-
Xchange, two startups
that merit watching, offer
open-source collaboration
and messaging software,
including e-mail, con-
tacts and group calendar
functions.
So, where does an IBM
purchase of WebDialogs
fit into the collaboration
landscape?
With the acquisition,
IBM encroaches on the ter-
ritories of Citrix Systems,
Microsoft and Cisco, all
of which offer Web con-
ferencing. Cisco made the
biggest splash in the mar-
ket earlier in 2007 when it
bought Web conferencing
market leader WebEx for
$2.9 billion.
One could even argue
that IBM, Microsoft and
Cisco, despite Cisco s
newness to the game,
f orm a powerf ul col -
laboration pyramid, with
the smaller vendors and
startups looking to find
a niche. The road to col-
laboration is paved by
spirited competition, and
the lines between friend
and foe are constantly
blurring.
For example, Cisco, the
networking-gear market
leader, is looking to creep
in on Microsofts collabo-
ration software territory.
Cisco has made no secret
of this: Buying WebEx
appeared to be a clear
shot across Microsofts
bow.
Though they are staunch
allies in several areas, the
companies evolving rela-
tionship was underscored
in an event in New York
on Aug. 20. Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer and Cisco
CEO John Chambers dis-
cussed how both compa-
nies would continue to
work together in some
areas for mutual benefit,
while competing fiercely
in other areas.
They said, Were going
to work together where we
need to integrate our solu-
tions, but they also said,
Were going to compete,
Forresters Driver said.
My take-away from that
is customers are push-
ing the two vendors to do
what they have to do to
get the unified communi-
cations working, but that
Cisco and Microsoft will
continue to overlap more
and more heavily.
As in any business,
acquisitions are the quick-
est way to fill product gaps.
Driver said she wouldnt be
surprised if Cisco moved
to buy e-mail and calendar-
ing tools from somewhere
to further flesh out its col-
laboration portfolio.
Microsoft and IBM
have the core e-mail, cal-
endaring and teamwork
spaces, so they wouldnt
make acquisitions there,
but I could see Micro-
soft making acquisitions
in some of the Web 2.0
areas because they only
have basic stuff or tool
kits, Driver said.
ANALYSIS
W
ITH ALL THE RECENT POSTURING BY LARGER
players looking to capitalize on the
Web conferencing and collabora-
tion market, the question becomes: Whos
next on the auction block?
There are probably 50 other [small]
vendors out there, almost all of whom
offer [Web conferencing] as a hosted
service, said Melanie Turek, an analyst
at Frost & Sullivan. But there arent that
many more Web conferencing com panies
that are ripe for acquisition that would
make good purchases.
And among potential buyers, its unclear
which vendors are likely to step up. The
logical remaining players in the unified
communications space are Avaya, Nortel
and Siemens, but they are not in a position
to want to do that right now, said Turek.
From outside the unified communica-
tions fray, other large vendors that could
be interested include Oracle and Google,
but both have already taken steps to
address the market.
Oracle has Oracle Web Conferencing,
which is both an on-premises offering
and a service. But Oracle has done little
to promote the offering, according to Andy
Nilssen, an analyst at Wainhouse Research.
We have a panel of hundreds of users, [and
we ask them] every quarter what they are
using or thinking of using, but Oracle never
comes up on the radar, Nilssen said.
And its not yet clear what Google plans to do
with the Web conferencing technology it acquired
from Marratech, Nilssen said. In the meantime,
other interesting pure-play Web conferencing
companies include Interwise, Elluminate, Net-
viewer and Wired Red Software, he said.
As larger players pick up such confer-
encing technologies, they are looking to
incorporate them into broader unified com-
munications strategies that could shape the
direction of the market. Web conferencing
is part of a bigger process of getting work
done, Nilssen said. Going forward it may
become more of a feature than an application
and [become part of] something bigger.
He said he believes that is IBMs inten-
tion with its WebDialogs acquisition. IBM,
Microsoft and Cisco [Systems] are saying this
has to be a part of a base platform people
can build applications on top of, Nilssensaid.
Paula Musich
Ripe for acquisition
27p16.indd 17 8/24/07 3:12:15 PM
While market forces
push up adoption rates
and enterprises scale their
voi ce- over- IP depl oy-
ments, more and more
IT managers will be faced
with that question. The
answer may very likely be,
I have no idea.
As with any new tech-
nology, management of
VOIP appears to be an
afterthought.
In a survey of 273 net-
work engineers conducted
by Network Instruments
this spring, almost half
of respondents said they
had deployed VOIP, and
another 30 percent planned
to implement VOIP in the
next year.
However, the respon-
NetQoS is one company trying to bring order to VOIP deployments.
VOIPs missing link
Microsoft, EMC and others are rushing in to close hole in voice traffic management
dents confidence in their
ability to manage the VOIP
deployments didnt appear
to be very strong: Almost
half were concerned with
their ability to monitor
the quality of the VOIP
service; 41 percent didnt
know whether their net-
work could handle the
extra bandwidth consump-
tion from VOIP calls; 36
percent worried about the
reliability of their VOIP
application during heavy
usage; and almost half said
the main challenge was in
guaranteeing the quality
of the VOIP calls on their
networks.
At the same time, 36
percent of the engineers
surveyed said existing
monitoring systems were
not adequate for monitor-
ing VOIP performance.
Karen Dean, director
of telecommunications at
Black & Decker, in Tow-
son, Md. , agreed that
VOIP management is an
area where more attention
needs to be paid. One of
the most underestimated
elements of [VOIP deploy-
ments] is how you man-
age it, Dean said. With
IP telephony, theres a
whole other list of tasks
you have to do to man-
age it, including server
management, anti-virus,
patching. Phone people
never had t o do t hat
[before.]
Despite vendors claims
that voice is becoming just
another application on the
network, it is anything but
that. It is the first real-time,
person-to-person applica-
tion to hit the network. As
such, it does not tolerate
network problems such
as jitter, latency, delay or
out-of-packet sequencing
the same way that other
types of application traffic
does.
IT is in the mind-set
of slow-moving, careful
changes to support basic
document-based applica-
tions. To have real-time
communications collide
with that puts everyone on
the back foot, said Kerry
Shih, chief strategist and
founder of Communicado,
a Costa Mesa, Calif., maker
of management tools for
VOIP.
But both small and large
vendors alike are begin-
ning to address the chal-
lenge of managing VOIP
traffic in the network.
For example, at the late
August VoiceCon confer-
ence in San Francisco,
Microsoft acknowledged the
need to provide more fine-
tuned monitoring of VOIP
call quality when it launched
its Microsoft Office Com-
munications Server 2007
Quality of Experience Moni-
toring Server.
And smaller manage-
ment tool providers are
stepping up to the plate to
deliver greater visibility into
the performance of VOIP
traffic on the network, as
well as its impact on exist-
ing applications traffic.
At VoiceCon, a handful
of companiesincluding
Communicado, NetQoS,
Keynote Systems and Net-
cordialaunched new or
enhanced management
tool s and services for
VOIP.
EMC al so added i ts
voice to the chorus with
the announcement of new
VOIP performance moni-
toring and reporting tools
that it will resell from
Integrated Research. The
ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
By Paula Musich
S
o youve done your planning and predeployment
testing, and nowyouve rolled out your new VOIP
system into production. Now, how are you going
to manage it?
27p20.indd 20 8/24/07 10:42:42 AM
EMC Smarts VOIP Per-
formance Manager and
EMC Smarts VOIP Per-
formance Reporter moni-
tor quality of experience,
mean opinion scores, jit-
ter, packet delay, and real-
time utilization and call
volumes.
With the exception of
Microsofts early foray
a nd EMC s e x pa nd-
ing effort, it is primar-
ily smaller vendors that
are leading the charge
to arm enterprises with
more sophisticated VOIP
management tools.
Although the big four
enterprise management
vendorsHewlett-Packard,
IBM Tivoli, BMC Software
and CAhave some VOIP
management capabilities,
they are decidedly under-
whelming, according to
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst
with Yankee Group.
The investments HP,
CA and the others have
made in VOIP manage-
ment are pretty small,
Kerravala said. I think
it frustrates users to not
have a viable company to
go to.
Those vendors have
yet to step up because
they dont see sufficient
demand, which creates a
chicken-and-egg problem,
Kerravala said.
Management vendors
wont really develop robust
management solutions
until the implementation
rates of VOIP increase,
he sai d. But wi thout
the management tools, I
dont believe well see it
being deployed [on a larger
scale].
For enterprises that are
beginning to scale up the
size of their deployments,
the lack of credible tools
from the bigger manage-
ment vendors has not
gone unnoticed, said Fred
Knight, general manager
of VoiceCon.
Still, not all network
engineers think theres a
lack of good tools to man-
age VOIP. There are a lot
of great tools out there,
but nobody uses 20 tools
a day, said a NetQoS cus-
tomer who asked not to
be identified. You want
one or two tools you can
rely on 80 percent of the
time. When you have a
specific problem, then go
to a tool kit to get what
you need.
But theres always room
for improvement, and a
little extra diagnostic help
would go a long way for
the NetQoS user.
What Im looking for
is to include some kind
of correlation or logic in
the product to point the
finger at the problem and
give you the reason for
it, the customer said. A
good network engineer
can pinpoint a problem
quickly, but if you have a
tool that tells you exactly
what the problem is, thats
greatespecially when
you have something major
happening.
In the meantime, whats
key for ensuring good voice
quality and performance is
to understand whats hap-
pening on the network.
You want to see whats
happening real time in
your network; you want
to get a good feel about
capacity [at both the gate-
way and LAN level], said
the NetQoS customer.
But what company is in
the best position to provide
that kind of visibility?
I think the best-positioned
in terms of being most effec-
tive are the Net QoSes, Net-
work Generalsthe guys
who are very good at analyz-
ing and understanding net-
work trafficbecause [voice]
is so latency-sensitive, said
Tracy Corbo, an analyst at
IDC.
Beyond the challenges
of spotty tool coverage and
gaining visibility into traf-
fic flows and performance,
IT faces other issues in
managing VOIP.
Among those is the
issue of software patches,
which contributed to the
widespread Skype outage
in mid-August.
The industry needs to
be responsive in deploy-
ing and testing patches
that truly function and
guarantee operati on,
said Jim Boulter, national
voice technology manager
for the USDA Forest Ser-
vice in southern Oregon.
I dont think the VOIP
industry has been quite
as quick to latch onto that
need.
Security is another issue.
VOIP call controllers are
running on commodity
operating systems, said
Grant Dekker, chief tech-
nology officer for the For-
est Service, in Washington,
D.C., which has a sizable
VOIP deployment. They
are under attack more
often, so they need to be
locked down tightly.
And outside of technol-
ogy issues, skills specific
to telephony and organi-
zational issues will chal-
lenge IT to think outside
the data-networking box.
We recognize we need
to develop that skill set in-
house, said Black & Deck-
ers Dean. Finding people
with [the right skills] is dif-
ficult.
The technical skill set
to support this is different
from the PBX environ-
ment, said the Forest Ser-
vices Boulter. You need to
be well-rounded and -versed
in the applications and tele-
com to sustain it in a reli-
able fashion.
ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
Primary VOIP concerns
Source: Network Instruments survey of 273 network engineers
50
40
30
20
10
0
Quality
of calls
Bandwidth
issues
Application
reliability
Other
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e
27p20.indd 21 8/24/07 10:43:03 AM
By Chris Preimesberger
W
hen any kind of
weather system
enters the Gulf
of Mexico, Casey Paquet
and the emergency man-
agement team at Eckerd
College, in St. Petersburg,
Fla., make it their business
to watch very closely.
In the event of a hurri-
cane or other emergency,
Paquet, Web manager at
the 1,800-student private
liberal arts college located
on 200 acres of western
Florida waterfront, holds a
unique power: With a sin-
gle text or voice message, he
can warn the entire student
body, staff and faculty of his
institution about impend-
ing danger. And he can
have the message broadcast
within minutes.
Emergency communi-
cations has long been a key
issue facing college and
university leaders. Operat-
ing numerous buildings
populated by hundreds of
faculty, staff and students
makes running a college
not unlike overseeing a
small town.
Being right in the mid-
dle, vertically, of the state
of Florida and on the Gulf
side, we have to be con-
cerned all the time [about
hurricanes], Paquet told
eWeek. Even though we
havent been hit here in St.
Pete since 1921, every year
its a little sketchy.
When Hurricane Dean,
Colleges push disaster planning
Two institutions are now well-prepared to communicate via text messaging
a rare Category 5 storm
and the first big one of the
season, recently cut a wide
swath through the southern
Gulf region, the situation
was certainly sketchy.
In 2004, Eckerd was
closed for full evacuation
three times due to hurri-
cane activity in the Gulf,
Paquet said. He said it
would have been nice if
the college had had the sys-
tem then that it now uses:
MessageOnes AlertFind.
Using the AlertFind ser-
vice, all it takes is one autho-
rized administrator to make
all users or a select group of
users immediately aware
of public safety warnings,
provide up-to-date inclem-
ent-weather advisories or
disseminate information
on issues in foreign coun-
tries potentially affecting
students or faculty abroad.
AlertFind, which cur-
rently has more than 1 mil-
lion users, has kept com-
panies, communities and
universities operating and
enabled them to ensure
the safety of their employ-
ees during and after hurri-
canes Katrina and Rita,
the July 2005 bombings
of Londons public transit
system, the 2004 Southeast
Asia tsunami, and the 2003
Northeast power outage.
When Eckerd looked
at its communication op -
tions a couple of years ago,
Paquet said, text messag-
ing was big, but not like
it is now.
Now its crazy. It made
a lot of sense for us to go
in that direction, Paquet
said. Initially what we
had looked for was literally
just a text messaging ser-
vice. We ended up getting
Message One, and one of
the things thats so appeal-
ing was that it is so much
more robust than that.
You can do all kinds
of voice messaging in and
out of the system; people
can respond, he said.
Youve got a whole bunch
of options. If I have to leave
the state, for example, and
all Ive got is my cell phone,
I can actually call and ini-
tiate a message from my
phone to everyone on cam-
pus, which is fantastic.
Even though Eckerd
has had AlertFind for
more than a year, Paquet
hasnt been forced to use
it yet. The college is billed
by the message (the pric-
ing ranges greatly and is
customized per client,
depending on the num-
ber of users and service
options), so Paquet is
being very careful. The
cost can be as low as $1
per student, per year.
I safeguard my mes-
sages religiously, Paquet
said. Weve been segment-
ing our lists on campus, so
that were down to classes,
dorm roomsthings like
that so we can really target
messages in the event that
everybody really is on cam-
pus during an emergency.
That way we can notify a
finite group of people if
the threat doesnt affect the
entire campus.
Maintaining good data is
the key to making this sys-
tem work, Paquet said.
Somewhere around 75
percent of our students
come from out of state,
and so a lot of them have
ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
With AlertFind, emergency messages can be easily disseminated.
27p22.indd 22 8/23/07 5:32:51 PM
cell phones of their own or
end up getting one here,
he said. We did a push
last semester to get every-
bodys latest contact info,
and, although the students
are busy and not quick to
respond we ended up
getting 1,490 cell phone
numbers [out of about
1,800 students], so thats
actually pretty good.
Middlebury College,
established 150 years ago,
is in the process of install-
ing AlertFind now.
Located in Middlebury,
Vt., the school also operates
the C.V. Starr-Middlebury
Schools Abroad at 28 sites in
12 countries. With students,
faculty and staff in Middle-
bury and spread around
the world, it would be dif-
ficult to deliver emergency
instructions or account for
college community mem-
bers in the event of a crisis
or disaster.
Once the new system
is implemented, Middle-
bury will be able to rapidly
and automatically commu-
nicate with faculty, staff
and students in the event
of any crisis or disaster.
Administrators will no
longer have to distribute
critical messages manually
through a broadcast e-mail
or voice mail.
When an incident occurs,
Middlebury crisis managers
will be able to quickly and
automatically send impor-
tant notifications to affected
community members. As
long as the recipient has
access to a land line, text
messaging device, cell
phone or e-mail, he or she
can receive an emergency
notification anywhere
around the world.
The system, which can
differentiate between a
real person and voice mail,
is able to deliver a spoken,
electronic or recorded
message and even ask
questions such as, Are
you OK? in the event of
a crisis. These responses
will be available to crisis
managers in real time.
We want to be proac-
tive in ensuring the safety
of the college community,
and this system provides
one step we can take toward
that goal, said Middlebury
College Dean of Planning
John Emerson, who is a co-
chair of the colleges emer-
gency planning steering
committee.
Due to its multiple cam-
puses abroad, Middlebury
needed a unique solution
for emergency notifica-
tion, said Bryan Rollins,
vice president of product
marketing at MessageOne,
based in Austin, Texas.
By analyzing the insti-
tutions needs, we were
able to provide a solution
with the flexibility and reli-
ability to make safety and
security the schools high-
est priority, Rollins said.
Unlike free text message
systems backed by advertis-
ing dollars, AlertFind is a
dedicated tool for text and
voice-based emergency com-
munication. Since the sys-
tem is used only in emergen-
cies, AlertFind prevents the
message fatigue associated
with ad-based systems where
users may ignore important
notifications, assuming they
are spam.
ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
27p22.indd Sec1:23 8/23/07 5:33:21 PM
What it comes down to,
Kay said, is the economics
of a central marketplace.
If you want the best price
and the best quality, you
have to go where everyone
is doing the same thing.
This, in short, is why
Kay believes that even
in an age when work is
increasingly decentral-
ized using wireless and
remote communication
technology, the Silicon Val-
ley region of California is
still where the technology
magic happens.
It is also why, despite
some ebb and flow in
its IT job market share
over the last 16 years, the
Bay area has remained
the national leader in IT
employment. This was
Area has capitalized on manufacturing, services shift to remain No. 1 spot for IT jobs
the focus of an Economic
Letter released Aug. 3 by
the Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco, which
looked at the evolution of
IT employment trends and
how they have affected the
regions long dominance
in this area.
Revi ewi ng regi onal
shares of the nations IT
employment from 1990
to 2006 over five metro-
politan regions, the report
covered developments in
the late 90s that led to the
dot-com boom, the reces-
sion in 2001 and 2002,
and a retrenchment and
subsequent recovery in IT
investment.
The Bay area remained
the leader among metro-
politan areas throughout
these booms and busts,
although market shares
of other top IT centers
have shifted. While Los
Angeles has maintained
its second-place ranking,
its share of the nations IT
employment has fallen.
This has been the case in
the Boston area as well,
which has seen some of
its IT employment base
erode.
Most recently, the Bos-
ton area ceded its third-
place ranking to the Wash-
ington, D.C., area, which
has grown rapidly from
its government contract-
ing roots.
In our own research
as well, a lot of people
were surprised when Vir-
ginia surpassed Colorado
as a technology employ-
ment hot spot, Matthew
Kazmierczak, an analyst
at the Washington-based
Ameri can El ect roni cs
Association, told eWeek.
Kazmierczak was refer-
ring to the AEAs annual
CyberStates report, from
which the Federal Reserve
paper drew much of its
research. The D.C. area
used to be j ust i nfra-
structure for the govern-
ment, but it has grown up
beyond that to software as
services, he said.
Seattle remained in fifth
place, but its share showed
ANALYSIS
Silicon Valley
still IT epicenter
By Deborah Perelman
I
f you want to know how silicon valley manages
to remain, after 16 years, the center of U.S. IT
innovation and production, Roger Kay will take
you first to Morocco.
Many years ago, when I was traveling, I went to the
central market in Marrakech looking for a drum, Kay,
president of analyst company Endpoint Technologies
Associates, told eWeek. At the edge of the market,
there were some people selling a drum or two, but [the
drums] werent that great, and the tables were filled
with many other items. If you went further into the
center of the souk, you could find 12 master drum
makers selling in the same area, and there you had
the best drums for great prices.
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e
Keeping a balance
90
75
30
0
15
60
45
IT manufacturing IT services
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
1995 2000 2006 1995 2000 2006
Silicon Valley has maintained an even mix of IT manufacturing and
services jobs.
Bay area United States
www. eweek. com
27p24.indd 24 8/23/07 2:37:27 PM
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75409R
a steady rise over the 16-
year period.
In contrast, the Bay
areas share of the nations
IT employment has trav-
eled a bumpier road, hov-
ering around 8 percent
through most of the 1990s
before spiking to just
above 9 percent in 2000,
at the tail end of the IT
boom. In the years since,
its share has leveled off to
7 percent.
That said, analysts dont
see Silicon Valleys smaller
piece of the nations IT
employment as a sign of
the imminent demise of
the tech epicenter.
That slippage seems to
be from the 2000-to-2001
height, said Kazmierczak.
In that period, things were
gangbuster, and [venture
capitalists] were spending
crazy amountssome-
thing like $67 billion,
compared to $12 billion
between 2002 and 2006.
There were jobs, but
they were not sustainable
jobs; things were built with
backing but little merit.
We really didnt need a
store that delivered noth-
ing but pet food by FedEx.
Its true that IT has slipped
from the period before the
downturn, but only a little,
and its fairly flat now.
A closer look at what
has transformed the IT
sector can shed light on
the regional shifts in IT
employment in the same
period. While the industry
was once associated with
developing faster proces-
sors and PC production, it
has evolved into a software
and SAAS (software as a
service) environment.
Vendors in the enter-
prise are shifting more
and more to software-
based offerings, basically
using the PC as the server
or the storage device to sell
value-added services and
software. This trend has
crossed the entire indus-
try, said Charles King, an
analyst with Pund-IT.
IT manufacturing also
has become commod-
itized and gl obal ized,
shifting overseas to Asia
and other locations where
labor is inexpensive. This
development has been
reflected in the rising
share of IT service jobs in
the United States. Nearly
t hree- quart ers of Bay
area IT jobsand almost
half nationwidewere in
manufacturing in 1995.
In 2006, the Bay area was
nearly balanced in its split
of IT manufacturing and
service jobs, while in the
rest of the United States,
IT has swung entirely in
favor of services.
Areas that were more
manufacturing-oriented,
such as Los Angeles and
Boston, saw their shares
of the nations IT jobs
slip, while those more
services-oriented areas,
such as Washington and
Seattle, enjoyed sustained
growth.
This shift benefited
the Bay area as well. The
regions growth in jobs
providing Internet-related
services such as Web por-
tals and data processing
gives it an edge over the
rest of the country.
However, capitalizing
on the manufacturing-to-
services shift is not all that
has kept Silicon Valley on
top. The adaptability of
technology also has played
a role. Historically, other
industries that became
commoditized and then
shifted offshore, such as
automobiles in Detroit or
manufacturing in Pitts-
burgh, did not come back
from their downturns.
IT is a product set that
is much more adaptable
to change than steel and
automobiles, Pund-ITs
King said. You can only
do so much with old-world
steel stock. Computer and
ancillary devices can be
adapted to change as the
demand does.
Also keeping the Bay
area on top is its trifecta of
a nearby urban area that is
a magnet for young profes-
sionals, excellent universi-
ties spilling bright minds
into the work force and
the attention of venture
capitalists.
You need a combina-
tion of two things: money
and talent. [You need] the
money coming from the
VC communitywhich is
able to fund projects and
see the vision of where
these projects are going
and you need a ready sup-
ply base of labor. Most of
these places have both,
said Kazmierczak.
If you have an inad-
equate supply of one, you
need more than enough of
the other, he said. Some
places have done a great
job. Seattle has specialized
in software and software as
services, and they continue
to grow from that. Austin
[Texas] has a concentra-
tion of universities. Los
Angeles has large amounts
of labor, and its a huge
city, but it doesnt have the
concentration of people
working together in the
same field.
California itself has
remained a friendly place
for business to develop,
with its legal arms open to
entrepreneurs and the free
exchange of ideas.
You have to look at
where the value has been
generated, Kay said. Cali-
fornias legal environment
is ideal for entrepreneurs;
there are no noncompete
laws. Plus, [there is] this
idea of a central market-
place. Once a place is
known as the center of
development, all of the
pros will want to be there,
Kay said.
Yet, like all world-class
regions, the Bay area has
kept itself relevant by
never getting too stuck
in one mind-set or model
of success. Silicon Valley
has stayed vibrant by con-
tinually reinventing itself,
Kay said.
www. eweek. com
ANALYSIS
IT JOBS FROM PAGE 24
[You need venture
capital] money ...
and you need a
ready supply base
of labor.
MATTHEW KAZMIERCZAK
27p24.indd Sec1:26 8/23/07 2:37:39 PM
By Clint Boulton
T
his much we know:
Skypes two-day out-
age was triggered
after its peer-to-peer net-
work became disrupted
following a massive restart
of its users computers as
they rebooted after receiv-
ing a routine set of patches
through Windows Update.
The blitzkrieg of restarts
caused a flood of log-in
requests, which led to a
global bog-down in service.
In the course of the outage,
Skype engineers discovered
a software bug within the
network resource alloca-
tion algorithm that pre-
vented the service from
righting itself.
So, is it Skypes fault, or
are the routine Microsoft
Windows Update patches
to blame? VOIP (voice
over IP) experts believe
Microsoft cant be blamed
because service provid-
ers are supposed to be
prepared for the regular
Whos to
blame for
Skype
outage?
Massive disruption raises
responsibility questions
updates the software power
automatically deploys.
IDC analyst Rebecca
Swensen said the fault was
only indirectly related to
the Microsoft updates.
It basically had to do
with a bug in Skypes P2P
[peer to peer] network
al gorithms, Swensen
said. They hadnt found
the bug i n thei r code
until this huge Micro-
soft update. The way that
Skype built their network,
they relied heavily on these
super nodes [clients], and
because so many of them
went down, that put a lot
of strain on the network.
Usually, they have a fail-
over, which would allow
their servers to pick up
the slack, so I guess thats
where the bug was.
Swensen said its indic-
ative of how different a
VOIP network is from
PTSN (Public Telephone
Swi t ched Net wor ks) ,
which rarely go down and
dont typically go down for
two days the way the Skype
network did.
Over time, service pro-
viders will continue to learn
how to make sure that a
VOIP service is more reli-
able, Swensen said. Inher-
ently a VOIP network is less
reliable than a PTSN.
Forrest er Research
analyst Sally Cohen said
that it is Skypes respon-
sibility to not just know
how Microsoft does its
updates but also to be
aware about soft ware
bugs bef ore t hey can
cause an outage.
For all they know, they
were fixing the bug, and
this just came at a really
bad time, Cohen said. As
far as Skype is concerned, I
guess they might not have
foreseen millions of people
signing on at the same time,
but ... there is no excuse.
Regardless of the what,
where, why and how,
Cohen called the outage a
black eye on Skypes ser-
vice. Cohen predicted that
some user groups will look
for a new service.
Up until last week, a lot
of businesses had shown
significant interest in
Skype or similar services,
Cohen said. The fact that
the service was down for
so long shows that these
servicesSkype and its
competitorsare not a
viable option if you want
to run a business.
For eWEEK Labs Senior Ana lyst
Andrew Garcias take on the
Skype outage, see Page 59.
ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
Skypes home page recently included an apology from its CEO.
Inherently a VOIP network is
less reliable than a PSTN.
REBECCA SWENSEN
27p27.indd 27 8/22/07 4:49:03 PM
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Deb Perelman: Careers
DIGITAL DIRTY LAUNDRY HURTS PROSPECTS
Its better to Google yourself before a prospective
employer does.
According to a survey released Aug. 14 by Execu-
Net, a Norwalk, Conn., executive recruiting firm,
the percentage of recruiters who say that they use
search engines to learn more about
job candidates has grown from
75 to 83 percent since February
2005. Furthermore, the number
of recruiters who have eliminated
a candidate based on what was
discovered during one of these
searches has jumped from 25 per-
cent to nearly 43 percent during
that same period.
Increasingly, report these recruiters, the discovery of
damaging information or a lack of professionalism online
is a deal breaker when the candidate pool is tight.
For better or worse, the Internet provides recruit-
ers and employers with a wealth of unfiltered infor-
mation thats used to help evaluate candidates, said
Dave Opton, CEO and founder of ExecuNet. From
a candidates perspective, theres no question that
managing your reputation online is as important as
it is offline.
A separate survey of 218 executives revealed that
though most (76 percent) candidates expected compa-
nies and recruiters to conduct a search of their name
online during the hiring process, 22 percent had never
entered their own name into a search engine to deter-
mine what personal or professional information would
be uncovered.
Not only that, but 11 percent of executives admitted
that they feared that what could be discovered online
about them would ruin their chances of landing a job.
One-fifth had made an effort to increase the positive
information that could be found out about them online,
up from 13 percent the year prior.
Posted by Deb Perelman on Aug. 16, 2007 6:35 PMEDT
www. eweek. com
ANALYSIS
eWEEK in the blogosphere
Michael Hickins: e-Piphanies
WHOS A GOOD COMPETITOR?
It was kind of funny hearing Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer call Cisco a good competitor at the Mandarin
Oriental hotel in New York, where he shared a stage
with Cisco CEO John Chambers.
After all, Microsoft itself has been as much as labeled
a bad competitor by the likes of the U.S. Department
of Justice, both the European Union and South Koreas
respective competition commissions, and countless
industry rivals.
When I asked Ballmer whether, in light of all this,
he considered Microsoft itself a good competitor,
he laughed and said he meant that Cisco was a fierce
competitora company he respects.
I think he was being disingenuous. The real reason for
the growing partnership between Microsoft and Cisco
is that customers are requiring such erstwhile rivals to
create products that truly interoperate, to clarify their
product road maps, and to allow them to pick solutions
from multiple vendors a la carte without paying for or
having to resolve conflicts in over-
lapping technology.
The truth is that Ballmer is not
looking to align himself with fierce
competitors. Hes looking for trust-
worthy alliesallies that sell propri-
etary software and solutions; allies
not named IBM; allies that play by
Microsofts rules.
For his part, Chambers said he has no illusions about
Microsoft, but he believes that Ballmer really shares his
vision about the importance of collaboration. I have a
healthy respect for Microsoft, he said with a grin. But
I trust the man.
Thats an important distinction.
Posted by Michael Hickins on Aug. 20, 2007 2:58 PM
EDT
27p29 29 8/23/07 11:29:33 AM
ANALYSIS
Cameron Sturdevant: Permit/Deny
PDF SPAM CONTINUES TO SPEW
An apparent pump and dump scam has generated nearly
500 million spam e-mail messages in the space of six days.
According to Ron OBrien, security researcher at
anti-spam vendor Sophos, the company has seen a 30
percent increase in spam related to this scam alone.
Thats pretty remarkable. The spam
in this scam also uses a PDF file to
sneak past anti-spam filters.
Adam Swidler, a senior manager at
message security company Postini, said
that one of several Postini systems that
filter spam went from 384,000 mes-
sages per second to 976,000 messages
per second. Swidler said the attack is
very sophisticated, tightly written [and]
debugged with reporting and performance tools.
Doug Bowers, a senior anti-abuse engineer at Syman-
tec, said he observed a spike in PDF-based spam starting
at 7 a.m. on Aug. 7.
Aside from being delivered within a PDF file, the for-
mat and content of the spam message isnt that unusual.
Neither was the target company, Prime Time Group, a
small company that trades over the counter. The first
page of the message pumps up Prime Time. The rest of
the message appears to be random characters.
Sophos researchers suspect that the nine pages of
junk text in the PDF are designed to throw off check-
sum detection.
OBrien thinks there is a correlation between this
scam and a wave of malware sent out over July 4th that
was also tracked by Sophos. One scenario has the July
4th malware wave laying out the botnet that is now being
used to send the scam spam.
After reading the sample spam message captured by
Sophos, its relatively easy to see how investors might
be taken in by the spam. From what I could tell from
a cursory look at Prime Times site, the news of store
openings in Puerto Rico was true.
Its also true that following the Security and Exchange
Commissions advice on how to avoid a pump and
dump scam would likely help those who might other-
wise be taken in by the spam message.
Posted by Cameron Sturdevant on Aug. 17, 2007 3:10 PM
EDT
Peter Galli: Platform Dive
IS MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA CULPABLE?
Will Microsoft handle the release of Windows 7, the
next version of the operating system, slated for 2010, a
lot better than it did with Windows Vista?
We can only hope that Microsoft will do a better job
of making clear which hardware will run which of the
many versions of Windows 7 that are likely to ship,
perhaps preventing a recurrence of the customer lawsuit
the company is currently battling in Washington.
There is little doubt that Microsoft was guilty of poor
marketing ahead of the Windows Vista launch and of
doing a pretty shoddy job of getting a clear message out
to consumers about what Windows Vista was and what
was needed to run it ahead of its launch.
That confusion, along with the fact that (a) Microsoft
wanted to help push as much Vista-capable hardware as
possible in advance of Vistas much-delayed release, and (b)
those delays meant it missed both the critical 2006 back-
to-school and end-of-year holiday sales cycles, resulted in
the embarrassing lawsuit the company now faces.
In brief, Dianne Kelley of Camano Island, Wash., bought
a new PC in November 2006 that had a sticker labeled Win-
dows Vista Capable affixed to it. As Windows Vista had
not been released at that time, customers bought machines
with Windows XP preloaded and were given a coupon that
allowed them to upgrade to Vista when the operating system
was released at the end of January 2007.
Kelley then discovered that her machine was capable of
running only Vista Home Basic, which does not include
the new Aero user interface, advanced graphics and
other signature features available
in Vista Home Premium and other
more advanced, and more expensive,
versions of the product. So she sued
Microsoft.
I asked Rob Enderle, principal
analyst for the Enderle Group, what
he thought of Kelleys case and its
likely impact on Microsoft.
While Enderle said the case would
have no impact on future Vista sales, because it is based
on hardware sold prior to the products release, he said
he believes Kelley has an argument that appears sustain-
able, but also feels that Microsoft may want to let the
matter become a class action before offering to settle,
thereby helping prevent similar cookie-cutter filings.
Posted by Peter Galli on Aug. 10, 2007 6:25 PM EDT
www. eweek. com
BLOG WATCH FROM PAGE 29
27p29 30 8/23/07 11:29:48 AM
NEWS&ANALYSIS
www. eweek. com
MONTH DAY, 2007 n eWEEK 1
CHANNELSOLUTIONS
Dutch treat
EUROPEAN INSURANCE COMPANY UNIV GETS
SOA UNDER CONTROL WITH AMBERPOINT
www. eweek. com
E
rwin kersten led his company through a revolution.
As lead IT architect for Univ Verzekeringen,
Kersten helped the Zwolle, Netherlands, insur-
ance company adopt the very first pieces of what
would become an organizationwide SOA.
D7 ORACLE TO CHALLENGE IBM, MICROSOFT AND OTHERS IN ALM SPACE
Solutions
DEVELOPER
r go.eweek.com/casestudies
But even as the project
blossomed, Kersten rec-
ognized a problem. Five
services became 10. Ten
be came 15. And soon
management of his fledg-
ling service-oriented archi-
tecture became as big a
challenge as uprooting
the legacy systems them-
selves.
His is a cautionary
tale. In my experience,
the management portion
of an SOA always comes
later, Kersten said. Thats
the one thing I think most
of us do incorrectly. My
advice to anyone consider-
ing an SOA implementa-
tion now is to start look-
ing for management tools
as well, in order to keep
everything steady.
Univs motivation dif-
fers from that of most con-
ventional enterprise busi-
nesses. A not-for-profit
cooperative, the insurance
carrier is driven not by rev-
enue goals but purely by
providing the best service
for member customers.
So it was fitting that
in 2004, Univ began
its IT systems metamor-
phosis. The organization
took its first steps toward
eliminating a dated, siloed
approach to IT and started
implementing an SOA. As
with most SOA pilot pro-
grams, there was a strong
business incentive for
doing so. In the fiercely
competitive insurance
field, speed and quality
of service are keys to cus-
tomer retention.
In that respect, Univ
typifies many insurance
companies that have much
to gain from SOAs, since
most have large invest-
ments in legacy systems,
as well as heterogeneous
environments resulting
from mergers and acqui-
sitions. An SOA can often
give an insurance carrier a
critical business edge.
Univ, which offers
business and consumer
insurance and financial
services products such as
life and property policies
and mortgages, has 1.3 mil-
lion customers and some
3.7 million insurance poli-
cies. The company employs
more than 3,100 people
across Europe.
The SOA efforts ultimate
goal, Univ officials said, is
to develop a standards-based
system that helps the com-
pany automate and move
away from traditional paper-
based processes, as well as
Business problem
The large Netherlands
insurance company
needed to find a way
to manage its rapidly
growing SOA system
Recommended
solution Deploy
AmberPoints SOA
Management
System, integrating
AmberPoints run-time
governance software
with Microsofts MOM
Time frame
The company began
its SOA transformation
in 2004 and adopted
AmberPoints solution
in 2006
ROI With SOA use
expanding throughout
the company, officials
now have greater
end-to-end control of
service-based applica-
tions, which allows for
a greater overview of
the environment, better
reliability and scalabil-
ity, and more flexibility
CASE FILE: Univ Verzekeringen
[CONTINUED ON PAGE D4]
By Chris Gonsalves
Insurer Univ brought
in AmberPoint to help
with SOA deployments.
27pD1.indd D1 8/22/07 11:11:23 AM
job name: Visual Studio - Rome
media type: Magazine
media unit: Spread
b/w or color: 4/C
client: Microsoft
job #: MDEV-GEN-50700084-A
size: A
live: 14.5 in x 9.5 in
trim: 15.5 in x 10.5 in
gutter: 0.75 in
studio artist: Studio G5 [Sandra Calisi]
date: 4/19/07 3:40 PM
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inks: CMYK
fonts: Segoe Condensed (Regular), ExcaliburEFOP-Medium (Regular), Segoe
(Regular, Bold)
notes: None
185348mea02A to
IT TOOK A THOUSAND YEARS TO BUILD ROME;
YOUR DEV TEAM HAS A MONTH.
Your challenge: nish big projects eons faster.
Defy it: communicate and collaborate
better with Visual Studio
Team System.
More tips and tools at defyallchallenges.com
S:14.5 in
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Date:
185348mea02A.ps_MEA
07-04-19
job name: Visual Studio - Rome
media unit: Spread
b/w or color: 4/C
client: Microsoft
job #: MDEV-GEN-50700084-A
size: A
live: 14.5 in x 9.5 in
trim: 15.5 in x 10.5 in
gutter: 0.75 in
studio artist: Studio G5 [Sandra Calisi]
date: 4/19/07 3:40 PM
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inks: CMYK
fonts: Segoe Condensed (Regular), ExcaliburEFOP-Medium (Regular), Segoe
(Regular, Bold)
notes: None
185348mea02A to
Your challenge: nish big projects eons faster.
Defy it: communicate and collaborate
better with Visual Studio
Team System.
More tips and tools at defyallchallenges.com
S:14.5 in
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07-04-19
enable communication
across all the companys
heterogeneous systems. As
a consequence, the change
should help Univ find new
ways for using and combin-
ing legacy data to unlock
business opportunities and
improve customer service,
officials said.
Like most enterprises,
Univ started small with
its SOA. The effort began
as a response to changes in
Dutch law that allowed citi-
zens to change health insur-
ance carriers annually. Our
first SOA implementation
was for health insurance
registration and quotations.
What we had normally been
doing on paper, we took
online, Kersten said.
That initial SOA proj-
ect, which included about
a dozen interconnected
services, resulted in the
automation of 60 percent
of Univs 100,000 health
insurance transactions
annually. That sort of suc-
cess fueled an expansion of
the insurance carriers SOA
efforts. Suddenly all parts
of Univs legacy systems
and practices were under
review as the fundamen-
tal shift toward delivering
better customer service
through newly combined
and collaborative offerings
got under way.
The legacy IT stove
pipes we had in place no
longer reflected our busi-
ness processes, said Bob
Alberts, project manager
for Univ. The services-
based approach not only
delivers greater IT and eco-
nomic efficiencies but also
streamlines our internal
business processes, pro-
viding both significant per-
formance improvements
and greater flexibility.
Such t hi nki ng has
pushed Univ into a broad
SOA i mpl ement at i on
aimed at automation and
the removal of traditional
paper-based processes.
So far, through the work
of some 30 developers,
the company has imple-
mented 74 .Net-based Web
services with 177 end-
points or individual ser-
vices. The full system will
eventually be rolled out
as a Web-based platform
interacting with millions
of users, Alberts said.
But with the growth of
Univs SOA deployment
came pain points. Kersten
said theres a big differ-
ence between managing
10 to 15 services and man-
aging more than 70.
So in 2006, as part of
the companys vision for
its multitier architecture,
Kerstens team at Univ
began looking for a way
to corral SOA growth and
manage the burgeoning
number of sources to keep
the SOA benefits flowing.
That search resulted ear-
lier this year in Univs tap-
ping local systems integra-
tor Systemation to roll out
AmberPoints SOA Man-
agement System. Univ is
integrating AmberPoints
run-time governance soft-
ware in conjunction with
Microsofts MOM (Micro-
soft Operations Manager)
to manage and monitor its
SOA systems. According to
Kersten, the AmberPoint
tools essentially ensure
the health of Univs SOA
through dynamic imple-
mentation of policies in the
run-time environment.
As a result, AmberPoints
tools give customers such as
Univ more adaptive end-
to-end control of services-
based applications.
AmberPoints software
was chosen in part because
of its ability to tightly inte-
grate with MOM. Combin-
ing the two complementary
products improves effi-
ciency and performance
by letting Univ centrally
monitor and manage all its
distributed systems.
Kerst en especi al l y
praised the AmberPoint
products ability to not
only monitor all services
activity between Univs
two data centers but also
actively engage in failover
routing when performance
is affected. In addition, the
SOA Management Sys-
tem tools are used to track
dependencies among ser-
vices to gain insight into
which are heavily used
and how development
changes can affect overall
system performance.
The SOA Management
System can ferret out excep-
tions issuesintercepting
input and output messages
so you can always see
what went wrong, Ker-
sten said. The AmberPoint
tools also allow users to see
which services are becom-
ing obsolete.
The AmberPoint man-
agement systems ability
to proactively manage an
SOA is a major differen-
tiator, according to John
Hubinger, AmberPoints
president and CEO, in
Oakland, Calif.
Many times, the main
issue with SOA manage-
ment products is that they
are observers but not par-
ticipants, Hubinger said.
Univ is a good example of
a user that wanted increased
visibility and action.
When I see services out
of compliance with service-
level agreements or the like,
you have to tell me, and
you have to do something
about it, Hubinger said.
You have to add services
or retry. Its not enough to
simply look at the problems
and report on them.
Former eWEEK Executive
News Editor Chris Gonsalves
is a freelance technology editor
based in Southwest Florida.
SOA FROM PAGE D1
DEVELOPERSOLUTIONS
D4 eWEEK n AUGUST 27, 2007
www. eweek. com
When [services
are] out of
compliance ...
you have to do
something.
JOHN HUBINGER
AMBERPOINT PRESIDENT, CEO
27pD1.indd D4 8/22/07 11:12:19 AM
Microsoft moves forward with
software modeling technology
PROJECTS IN THE WORKS WILL EASE DELIVERY
OF APPLICATIONS, MICROSOFT OFFICIALS SAY
Richard Mark Soley,
chairman and CEO of
Obj ect Management
Group, in Needham, Mass.,
which oversees many of
the modeling specifica-
tions, such as UML and
MDA, said developing
applications via modeling
is entirely feasible.
The answer is abso-
lutely, yessoftware [and
hardware have] already
been generated from UML
models, Soley said. Other
modeling languages can
also be used to generate
applications, such as BPMN
(Business Process Modeling
Notation), SysML (Systems
Modeling Language) and
those from MDA, includ-
ing UML and MOF (Meta-
Object Facility), he said.
Grady Booch, chi ef
scientist at IBMs Ratio-
nal business unit and
the co-creator of UML,
talks about the use of
the technology in various
instances. For example,
Booch points to the ref-
erence to the technology
on an episode of the CBS
television show NUM-
B3RS, which involves a
math genius who helps
the FBI.
The genius cites a UML
model as key to delivering
an application that helps to
solve a case. Booch showed
a clip of the show at the IBM
Rational Software Develop-
ment Conference in June.
However, Microsoft
sees UML and its ilk as
too hard and too heavy a
process and is working on
delivering its own model-
ing technology.
S. Soma Somasegar,
corporate vice president
of Microsofts Developer
Division, said Microsoft
has some incubation proj-
ects that focus on model-
ing. Somasegar said he
expects to see fruit from
those projects in the next
six to 12 months.
Somasegar said the
modeling effort has been
a pet project of Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates. The
Redmond, Wash., com-
pany has put some of its
best developers on the
effort, including Don Box
and Chris Anderson, who
helped build the compa-
nys Microsoft Windows
Communication Founda-
tion, a key pillar of .Net
Framework 3.0.
On the notion of cre-
ating applications from
models, Somasegar said,
Weve had aspirations in
this company for a long
time. Weve had aspira-
tions saying, using busi-
ness process modeling,
we should be able to lay
down a set of models and
people have to deal with
the models and, if they
By Darryl K. Taft
www. eweek. com
AUGUST 27, 2007 n eWEEK D5
DEVELOPERSOLUTIONS
W
ith the target of generating applications
from simple models an elusive goal, Micro-
soft and others are working on technology to
make it a reality.
Some say the possibility of delivering applications
from models exists today in the form of UML (Uni-
fied Modeling Language) and MDA (Model Driven
Architecture). But the use of tools supporting these
technologies typically requires serious expert involve-
ment, some observers say.
[In general,] if
you can have a
central repository
of models ... then
you can do a lot.
S. SOMA SOMASEGAR
CORPORATE VICE PRESIDENT,
MICROSOFT DEVELOPER DIVISION
27pD5.indd D5 8/22/07 11:44:03 AM
Developers News Flash
DevsourceBlogs
DevSourceVideo
Great Minds in Development Video Series
DevSource is brought to you by:
So plug into DevSource, and get what
you need today!
DevSource.com
Jennifer Tharp discusses the role of project
managers in agile development, why software
projects are notoriously late, and how
regulatory requirements place additional
constraints on developers.
Jeff Cogswell's new blog, MSDev, is for
Visual Studio developers. Jef f covers hands-
on coding techniques and practices, including
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YOUR VISUAL STUDIO PROGRAMMING RESOURCE
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Oracle eyes ALM
SOFTWARE MAKER LOOKS TO TAKE ON IBM, MICROSOFT
AND OTHER COMPANIES IN THE COMPETITIVE FIELD
racle is planning to enter the application lifecycle
management space, taking on the likes of IBM Rational,
Microsoft, Borland Software and Serena Software in deliver-
ing tools that empower enterprise developers to more effectively
build complex solutions.
In an interview with
eWeek at Oracles cor-
porate headquarters here
Aug. 6, Thomas Kurian,
senior vice president of
development for Oracle
mi ddl eware pl at form
productsincluding Ora-
cle Application Server and
development toolssaid
the software maker hopes
to make the same kind of
splash in the ALM space
that it did when it entered
the application server
market years ago.
Propelling the push
kurian said the basic
idea for Oracles push into
the new space was the
realization that the devel-
opment process requires
an overall management
scheme throughout the
life cycle. When develop-
ers build typical applica-
tions today, they might
have a user interface built
in JavaServer Faces, busi-
ness logic built with Enter-
prise JavaBeans, workflow
processes built with BPEL
(Business Process Execu-
tion Language), and open-
source and community and
collaborative technology
from a variety of systems
in a portal, he said.
One of the things you
realize is that first, youve
got lots of different arti-
facts youre managing,
he said. Youve got code
of different kinds, youve
got metadata, etc. And sec-
ond, youve got a number
of people collaborating on
this environment.
So Oracles ALM ap -
proach will focus on three
main elements, Kurian
said. The first is collabora-
tion between the business-
person and the IT person
or the developer.
The first area to con-
quer is how to bring the
business person together
with the developer, and
weve done some things
with our business process
analysis and design tool set
and how the JDeveloper ex -
perience is integrated with
that, Kurian said.
The second area is the spe-
cific elements of managing
the life cycle of the software
artifacts across the design,
test, deploy and manage-
ment scheme, he said, add-
ing that Oracle plans to do
this differently from other
vendors in the space.
Not a reality
if you look at other
vendors, they basically
come in with a tool set, he
said. Lets take IBM. They
come in with Rational, and
Rational gives you appli-
cation lifecycle manage-
ment, but in order to adopt
Rationals ALM capability,
youve got to standardize
on IBMs tools for every-
thing. Thats not a reality
were encountering. Com-
panies have got different
source code management
systems. Some of them
will surely use Rational
ClearCase, but there are a
lot of people using [open-
source tools] CVS, Subver-
sion and other things.
The second aspect of
Oracles approach to ALM
will be to allow customers
to use tools of their choice.
Oracle will offer an ALM
solution, but its going to
coexist and be much more
open to the systems that
they are already deploying,
Kurian said. It will be plug-
and-play with their existing
investments, rather than
being a monolithic system
that comes in and says,
Here is what youre going
to use from Oracle, and if
you want to use it, youve
got to standardize on Oracle
for absolutely everything.
Ted Farrell, Oracles chief
architect and vice president
of tools and middleware,
said that even in the best
situation or the perfect
world, nothings going to
be all Oracle, so being able to
interoperate is key for us.
Oracles third area of
focus, which Kurian said
differs from others, is the
way the company is inte-
grating the developer expe-
rience in the ALM solution,
with the administrative
experience in operating
the overall system.
Kurian did not give
a time frame for when
Oracle will deliver these
capabilities, but he said
the company is going to
Kurian: Develop-
ment requires
an overall man-
agement plan.
By Darryl K. Taft IN REDWOOD SHORES, CALIF.
www. eweek. com
AUGUST 27, 2007 n eWEEK D7
DEVELOPERSOLUTIONS
O
27pD5.indd D7 8/22/07 11:44:55 AM
define the models right,
then the applications pop
out. So you really dont
need to write code.
However, thats really
one extreme view of look-
ing at it, he said.
In certain domains,
we will be able to do
that sooner than later, he
added. But I foresee peo-
ple writing code for a long,
long time, particularly in
building business applica-
tions. But Microsoft has
long talked about raising
the abstraction level.
What you had to write
five to 10 years ago in terms
of the number of lines of
code for a particular applica-
tion, today I am sure it is in
orders of magnitude less,
Somasegar said. Weve
abstracted, weve got frame-
works, weve got controls,
weve got this and weve got
that. And to me, modeling
has taken the abstraction to
a whole new level.
Somasegar would not
go into detail on how
Microsoft is approaching
the issue of simplifying
the model-driven devel-
opment process. In gen-
eral, though, he said: If
you can have a central
repository of models or
a common way of work-
ing against models ... then
you can do a lot.
In short, Somasegar
said Microsofts develop-
ers believe the platform
has advanced enough and
the tools have advanced
enough that we feel like we
have an opportunity to go
make some big steps
forward in the model-
driven development
world. So we have a set
of incubations going
on, and Don Box is one
of the key guys, along
with some others, who
are working on this.
Further, Somasegar
said that he hopes
to be able to display
some early prototypes
of what Microsoft
has been working on
within a year.
In the meantime, Mi -
cro soft has been working
on its Software Factories
approach to enabling the
generation of software for
specific uses by following
a factorylike approach.
This is the companys
implementation of the
software product l ine
method of development.
IBM also has similar capa-
bilities. The goal of these
approaches is to drasti-
cally increase productivity
and promote more reuse
of software components
and models.
DEVELOPERSOLUTIONS
MODELING FROM PAGE D5
Soley: Modeling is a feasible option.
build out specific products
to address these areas.
Oracles move into the
ALM space will take the
company deeper into the
pure tools aspect of the
software business than
ever before. Kurian said
market leader IBM is
definitely within Oracles
sights, as is up-and-comer
Microsoft with its VSTS
(Visual Studio Team Sys-
tem) offering. The move is
an aggressive one, but one
for which Oracle is up to
the task, Kurian said.
Five-and-a-half years
ago, when we got into the
application server market,
IBM, BEA [Systems] and
others went around saying,
Weve got the customer base
locked up, he said. But we
went from zero [in revenue]
in 2001 to over a billion [dol-
lars] in 2006. And since then,
weve grown over 60 percent.
We see the same kind of
thing with application life-
cycle management.
The billion-dollar figure
represents the whole of Ora-
cles Fusion Middleware, of
which Oracle Application
Server is a key component,
company officials said.
Oracle started on the
road to delivering ALM
solutions last year, when
the company announced
some relevant capabilities
with Configuration Support
Manager, which is part of
Oracle Premier Support.
Oracles ALM plans
are meeting some skepti-
cism. I think that Oracle
can provide ALM capa-
bilities specific to Oracle
applications, said Carey
Schwaber, an analyst with
Forrester Research. In
fact, Oracle is already start-
ing to do so. But I am very
skeptical about their abil-
ity to provide ALM capa-
bilities that span their own
applications and either
third-party applications or
custom applications.
ALM and the enterprise
Source: Forrester
39 percent said they are already using ALM
37 percent said they are aware of ALM
25 percent said they are unaware of ALM
Are you aware of ALM?
39 percent said they were somewhat interested in using ALM
39 percent said they were not interested in using ALM
19 percent said they were interested but had no plans to adopt ALM
Of those who are aware but not using ALM, Forrester
asked them how interested they were in adopting it:
7 percent said they will pilot ALM in the next 12 months
Forrester in 2006 surveyed 1,060 decision makers at North
American and European companies about application lifecycle
management:
ORACLE FROM PAGE D7
D8 eWEEK n AUGUST 27, 2007
www. eweek. com
27pD5.indd D8 8/22/07 11:45:10 AM
INSIGHT
www. eweek. com
MONTH DAY, 2007 n eWEEK 31
P
H
O
T
O
eapfrog enterprises,
maker of childrens
learning toys and
electronics, is in
the process of ramping up its
Internet operations to serve a
new series of Web-aware edu-
cational products. At the same
time, the companys best-of-
breed infrastructure planning
strategies are leading the com-
pany in the direction of open-
source software.
A best-of-breed
philosophy is leading
LeapFrog Enterprises
increasingly toward
open-source options
BY JASON BROOKS
INSIGHT
Eugene Ciurana
Leaping
into open
source
Leaping
into open
source
27p31.indd 31 8/23/07 12:32:47 PM
Until the beginning of this year,
LeapFrog.com had been focused
primarily on product information
and e-commerce. During the next 18
months, LeapFrog is set to roll out
a site redesign and a series of new
Web-based properties. According to
Eugene Ciurana, LeapFrogs direc-
tor of systems infrastructure, the
companys plans for those initiatives
rely very heavily on open source for
a lot of the infrastructure.
For one thing, the company is
shifting from hosting the bulk of its
Web sites in a third-party ASP model
to bringing its new Web properties
into LeapFrogs own data centers
on a platform of RHEL (Red Hat
Enterprise Linux) and the Apache
Tomcat Application Server.
The company has worked with
open source since way before I came
in, but I also believe that its only
recently, in the last six months or
so, that the adoption of open-source
applications for main line-of-busi-
ness applications has been more
apparent, said Ciurana.
By the end of the year, pretty
much everything youll see on the
Internet from LeapFrog U.S. will ...
work with open-source software in
one way or another.
Although selecting open-source
components is sometimes not the
obvious option or the most heavily
trodden path, LeapFrog, based in
Emeryville, Calif., finds that its often
the best route.
But, Ciurana said, the ultimate
choicebe it open source or a pro-
prietary applicationdepends on
whats best for the project at hand
and best for the company overall.
We have what we call the best-of-
breed philosophy for development,
Ciurana said. Normally, larger
companies tend to be very safe
about going for the tried and true,
but the teams we work with at Leap-
Frog, were more into, Tried and
true is good, if it helps me deliver.
We are not closed to looking at open
source or other newer technologies
if there is enough critical mass and
enough momentum behind them
to make us feel comfortable that
theyll be around for a while (see
chart, Page 34).
The Wicket and the Fly
when it came to building the
presentation infrastructure for the
first of LeapFrogs new Web-aware
products, the Fly Fusion Pentop
Computer, the firms best-of-breed
calculus came down on the side of
open source.
Describing the Fly Fusion, which
LeapFrog began shipping in July,
Ciurana said, Basically, its a pen
that has a computer on it that rec-
ognizes your handwriting. It has
a number of applications, but the
device is also Internet-enabled,
using your PC as a gateway to get
onto the Internet.
As a result, and in contrast to the
2005 version of LeapFrogs Fly pen-
top, you can get new content on
the pen, you can get applications
INSIGHT
on the pen, and so on, directly from
the Internet without having to buy a
cartridge, Ciurana said.
The PC application for the Fly
Fusion (which, despite LeapFrogs
embrace of open-source software
on the back end, runs only on Win-
dows) works with the pentop similar
to the way in which Apples iTunes
works with its iPod music play-
ers: The application connects users
to sites viewable only through the
application, through which users
may acquire content for their pen-
tops.
The cornerstone for the content
delivery portion of the Web-based
store is Wicket, an open-source Java
Web application framework that
dates back to 2004 and that recently
graduated from Apache incuba-
tor status to become a full-fledged
Apache Foundation project.
For Ciurana and his team, Wicket
perfectly fits the best-of-breed defini-
tion. Its one of those technologies
that really works, Ciurana said. If
you look at other Java technologies,
open source or commercial for Web
The PC application for LeapFrogs Fly Fusion product relies heavily on the open-source
Wicket Web application framework.
LEAPFROG FROM PAGE 31
www. eweek. com
27p31.indd 32 8/23/07 12:33:29 PM
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2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. All logos and trademarks are property of their respective owners.
tion tasks required to implement
the software would prove too exten-
sive.
Based on LeapFrogs requirements,
one of the proprietary contenders
emerged as the best tool for the task
at hand. (Ciurana declined to name
the chosen application.) Despite
the closed-source nature of Leap-
Frogs selection, however, openness
remained a priority.
The commercial application
was clearly better than the others,
Ciurana said. All that we were con-
cerned about was that the
interfaces between the
commercial software and
any other portion of the
[infrastructure] did not
become proprietarydid
not become a way for the
vendor to lock us into
something we would not
like to have there in the
long term.
To ensure that the propri-
etary CMS would play well
with the rest of LeapFrogs
infrastructure, Ciurana and
his team turned to another
open-source project: the
Mule ESB (Enterprise Ser-
vice Bus).
Mule is a piece of soft-
ware that lets you take dif-
ferent systems and differ-
ent services and use them
as they exist already on the
corporate network or on the
real-world networks, with-
out you having to do a lot
of point-to-point customiza-
tion, Ciurana explained.
Normally, if you need two
systems to talk to each
other, you end up having
to write a lot of custom code
or a custom transport. Mule
lets you interconnect these
systems with very, very little
fuss.
sites, theres this mishmash of XML
configuration files, plus Web pages,
plus some tagging, and it gets really
messy.
In contrast, Ciurana continued,
Wicket allows you to just have
one model that is Java-based, and
it requires very little configuration
to coordinate with what the Web
browser is doingWicket does all
that implicitly for you. Thats pretty
important because what that trans-
lates into is time to market.
For LeapFrog, Wickets time-to-
market advantage proved
considerable. We were able
to ship a Java Web site proj-
ect in about 90 days, Ciu-
rana said. If we had used
any other technology for the
same type of deliverable, it
probably wouldve taken us
six months instead of three
months to do the same
thing. Thats a good example
for us of how something
open source with a rich
community with enough
credibility from the techni-
cal folks working on it also
can help us deliver some-
thing really fast.
Coupling the
open and closed
of course, with a best-of-
breed strategy such as the
one LeapFrog pursues, the
open-source option doesnt
always rise to the top. In
the case of the CMS (con-
tent management system)
that LeapFrog selected for
its Web initiative, the com-
pany evaluated a handful
of open-source options,
including Alfresco and
Magnolia, alongside a set of
proprietary applications.
LeapFr og r equi r ed
that its CMS option be
Java-based to take advantage of its
teams Java development expertise
to smooth implementation. Ciurana
and his team were also looking for a
CMS option that complied with the
Java Content Repository standard.
Magnolia and Alfresco fit the bill
by those measures but fell short in
other areas. For example, during
LeapFrogs evaluation of Magnolia,
Ciurana and his team encountered
issues integrating the CMS with
LeapFrogs commercial database.
And, with Alfresco, Ciuranas team
concluded that the integra-
INSIGHT
Before you toy around ...
Source: Eugene Ciurana
The softwares features must meet all functional require-
ments and quantifiably address your companys service-
level agreements, whether internal or external.
Before your company commits to building
an open-source software component into
your enterprise infrastructure, its important
to discern whether that project is stable and
healthy enough to rely on. Here are some ele-
ments to consider, based on the experience of
LeapFrogs Eugene Ciurana (at right).
The open-source project must have a rich, thriving com-
munity around it, and it should be either growing or very
active. Its also important to consider how easy or hard it
is to participate in that community as users or contribu-
torssome open-source projects degenerate into cliques,
and that threatens the long-term viability of the software.
The open-source projects leaders should often revise
and publish the projects road map, with feedback from
the open-source community and in alignment with users
needs.
The products license, and those of any third-party sub-
components, must be compatible with your business
objectives.
The project should have one or more commercial entities
providing support or at least providing indemnification to
shift liability away from the company. Popular projects wind
up having a federation of companies providing products
and services around them.
The commercial entity should be well-funded and properly
insured/bonded.
If your own engineers participate in the project, there
should be no conflicts of interest or licensing issues that
would cause problems if they contribute back to the proj-
ect. Project leads should be engineers contributing code
or fixes.
www. eweek. com
27p31.indd 34 8/23/07 12:33:37 PM
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having to change all the other stuff
around.
Committing to
open source
while open-source and proprie-
tary software are judged by the same
standards at LeapFrog, the company
recognizes that open-source projects
present unique challenges, as well as
unique opportunities to help address
these challenges.
For instance, for Ciurana and his
team at LeapFrog to feel confident
As with Wicket, one of the pri-
mary benefits of adopting Mule
at LeapFrog is reducing time to
market. If integrating two sys-
tems would normally take a month,
between coding and testing and
so on, the same two systems can
be interconnected with Mule in
less than a week because youre
not changing the way the systems
work, Ciurana said. You only add
a layer of communication between
the twothats the only thing that
needs to be developed and tested
and otherwise ironed out.
In selecting a CMS, the ability
of the application to talk to Mule
and, by extension, to Wicket, to the
open-source Apache Lucene search
engine and to LeapFrogs other
infrastructure componentswas
paramount.
If for whatever reason a sys-
tem doesnt work, Ciurana said,
we can completely remove it, put
something else in instead, and just
worry about doing the transforma-
tions and the interfaces between
Mule and that new system without
INSIGHT
www. eweek. com
E
UGENE CIURANAS FOCUS AT LEAPFROG ENTERPRISES IS BUILDING
infrastructure for the companys Web-enabled
product initiatives, but his role also has allowed
Ciurana to get involved with the One Laptop Per Child
organization. The OLPCs XO laptop and the open-source
Sugar interface that runs on the system have drawn the
attention of many in the IT community, including me.
We at LeapFrog, being an educational company, get
the OLPC and understand its value. We were approached
by the guys with the initiative, and were trying to figure
out what the synergies are, said Ciurana, director of
systems infrastructure at the Emeryville, Calif., company.
Its another example where LeapFrog is aware of things
happening in the open-source world and trying to figure
out how to contribute to [that community], while at the
same time doing something good for the company.
Ciurana has spent time testing one of the OLPCs
groundbreaking XO laptops and has gotten involvedin
his spare timewith efforts to debug the XOs networking
software stack.
As someone whos had the opportunity to get intimately
acquainted with the much-discussed but still-elusive
device, I was eager to hear Ciuranas impressions of the
XO. After all, while the XO is intended for use by children
in developing countries, its new technologies appear to
hold promise for computer users on both sides of the
digital divide.
Networking: The XO is designed around Wi-Fi network
connectivity, and, based on Ciuranas experience with the
device, this focus appears to be bearing fruit. The UI [user
interface] portions of the networking are still a little flaky, but
the networking hardwarethe infrastructure for supporting
networkingI think is better than on my MacBook, Ciurana
said. Im able to pick up wireless access points with the
OLPC that otherwise I dont see with the MacBook.
Applications: Ciurana also has high hopes for XO appli-
cations. The applications are very useful, he said. As
far as taking it as a travel computer, I tried that during the
last conference I spoke at in Barcelona. I was able to take
notes [and] save them to Wordit supports all the standard
formats you can imagine.
Thats not to say the XO could drop into any environment.
The problem youre going to find is that the keyboard is
designed for small hands, said Ciu-
rana. If youre a touch-typist, youll
catch yourself looking at the keyboard
because your hands are probably going
to be too big for it. But the Web browser
is excellent; [its] based on Gecko,
which is the Mozilla Firefox engine. ...
So, if you can see it on Firefox, itll look
almost identical on the OLPC.
In the end, of course, the XO is designed to provide
children with new opportunities, and Ciurana thinks its
hit the mark. I think theres an interesting lesson to learn
there, he said. Most geeks would start complaining about
not having a mouse and not having all the accoutrements
of a regular GUI, but I believe the target audience for [the
XO] is totally ready, and I think its very well designed for
that. Jason Brooks
LeapFrog evaluates synergies with OLTP project
27p31.indd 36 8/23/07 12:34:53 PM
Gt your r EV whit papr at www.vorisign.comomovssl or call -866-893-6565.
dows machines as well. We need the
Windows software basically because
of [Microsoft] Exchange [Server] and
Outlook, Ciurana said. As long as
those things are there and there is
no decent way of connecting them
from Linux, its going to be very hard
to move people from it.
Right now, LeapFrog is running
RHEL on its production servers, but
the company is investigating Canoni-
cals Ubuntu and Sun Microsystems
Solaris as potential alternatives.
Red Hat is kind of brittle, kind of
hard to deal with, and were
finding a lot of really cool fea-
tures in Ubuntu that I think
would help with overall sys-
tem administration, Ciurana
said. He added, however, that
any such change would be
subject to a fuller evaluation
in cooperation with LeapFrogs
IT infrastructure team.
Ciuranas interest in Solaris
as an alternative to RHEL is
rooted in his testing experi-
ences while he was an enter-
prise architect at Walmart.com.
Were hoping to become very,
very, very successful, Ciurana
explained. Solaris in general
is still more stable, and it has a
more predictable curve under
heavy load than Linux does.
Moving forward, LeapFrog
is planning on rolling out
rich Web-based applications based
on the OpenLaszlo platform. Ciurana
and his team are also investigating
Googles Web Toolkit for building
Web applications. The tool kit, which
Google bills as a framework for build-
ing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript
and XML) applications in the Java
language, appears to be a good fit for
LeapFrogs Java-centric development
team.
eWEEK Labs Executive Editor Jason
Brooks can be reached at jason.brooks@
ziffdavisenterprise.com.
about committing to an open-source
software component, the project
under consideration must enjoy a
vital development and services eco-
system. At LeapFrog, we need to
have a support organization and
level of indemnification associated
with the software, said Ciurana.
Fortunately, as Ciurana has learned
through his experiences in the Mule
community, its possible for compa-
nies to help vitalize the open-source
projects on which they depend
through their own participation.
In the process of learning about
Mule, I became involved
with the community, Ciu-
rana said. I host one of the
ESB channels in the IRC
[Internet Relay Chat] net-
works; Ive spoken at sev-
eral conferences on ESBs
in general, and on Mule in
particular, in the last year. By
creating awareness of it, we
invite more people to partici-
pate in the project, and that
participation in turn creates
more synergy and more par-
ticipation from others and
better adoption.
Parti ci pati on i n the
open-source community
has also turned out to be a
good recruiting tool.
We have a lot of inter-
action with the community, and
LeapFrog sees it not only as good for
overall karma but also as an excellent
recruiting tool, Ciurana said. If I go
to a conference and share the kinds
of things that were doing, people on
the outside can appreciate the kinds
of things that were doing and they
can see, cool, LeapFrog must be a
cool place to work. That creates more
synergy, and maybe if when were
recruiting someone in particular, or if
the friend of a friend is looking for a
job and wants to do open-source stuff,
they may end up at our doorstep and
know theyll be welcome. Several of
the consultants that we have working
with us right now are people whom
I originally met on IRC.
Desktop use
and future projects
open-source software hasnt
penetrated the general desktop space
at LeapFrog as broadly as it has the
server room. The client space is
mostly Windowsits very corpo-
rate, Ciurana said.
The situation is different, however,
on LeapFrogs Web development team.
As Ciurana explained, In terms of
development for all the Web proper-
ties, I would say that a good 85 or
90 percent of it is happening under
Linux. The part thats not happen-
ing under Linux is happening under
[Macintosh] OS X. Both the contrac-
tors and the guys who are working
from within my team at LeapFrog,
were all Unix-like. We basically only
go to Windows when we need to test
or develop something that interacts
with the front end, which for us is
very minimal.
However, those using Linux and
Unix systems must be issued Win-
INSIGHT
www. eweek. com
Leaps and bounds
1995 LeapFrog is founded
1999 LeapFrog ships the LeapPad electronic
learning toy
July 2002 LeapFrog goes public
Spring 2007 LeapFrog builds out Web
infrastructure for Fly Fusion with a presenta-
tion layer based on the open-source Wicket
July 2007 LeapFrog introduces the Fly
Fusion pentop computer, which gets applica-
tions and content from the Internet rather
than through a cartridge
Next 18 months LeapFrog plans to
expand its Web presence from the primarily
informational/e-commerce form to include
more Web-based offerings akin to the Fly
Fusions content store
Source: LeapFrog
27p31.indd 38 8/23/07 12:35:01 PM
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Link Name: IG_BluBckgrnd_mag_lrg.tif (CMYK; 461 ppi), IG_PC5750_PCCard_mag.psd (CMYK; 643 ppi), 3Dchk_4cRed_
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Client: Verizon Wireless (VZW)
Product: Business (BS)
Job #: M07VW068
Ad #: 529_R2
Headline: Give your employee the freedom.
Visual: BBA PC Card -
Space/Color: P4CB IT Version
Publication: Various Pubs 2007
Bleed: 8.75 in x 11.375 in
Trim: 8 in x 10.5 in
Live: 7 in x 9.5 in
Gutter: None
AD: R. Warner
CW: C. Jackson
CD: J. Prabhu
AP: W. Barron
PP: P. Gravenhorst
Created by Interface
Graphics, a division of
McCann Erickson
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Test Drive: BroadbandAccess plan required; not available with embedded laptops. Customer must pay all other charges, incl. taxes & surcharges. Early termination fee applies unless device is returned.
Activation fee: $35. IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: Subject to Customer Agmt, Calling Plan rebate form & credit approval. Up to $175 early termination fee & other charges. Rebate takes up to 6 weeks. BroadbandAccess
is available in 242 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. See verizonwireless.com/bestnetwork for details. 2007 Verizon Wireless.
click verizonwireless.com/broadbandaccess | visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store | call 1.800.VZW.4BIZ
BBA w/TDTN: IT DECISION MAKERS
Well pay for your service. Now you can test drive Americas most reliable wireless broadband network for 30 days. If
were not the best broadband experience youve had, take your number elsewhere and well pay for the service youve used.
Credit/refund for activation & plan access.
Give your employees the
freedom of the Network.
(And give yourself a pat on the back.)
FREE BroadbandAccess Card
with a new 2-yr. activation on a $59.99 BroadbandAccess plan
$49.99 2-yr. price minus $50.00 Mail-In Rebate = Free
Give your employees the freedom to email,
download and browse the Internet at even
faster speeds on our EV-DO Rev A network.
Simple. Secure. Faster Than Ever.
job name: System Center Elevator
media unit: Page
b/w or color: 4/C
client: Microsoft
job #: MPLT-SC-50700992-A
size: A
live: 7 in x 9.75 in
trim: 7.75 in x 10.5 in
bleed: 8.5 in x 10.75 in
gutter: None
date: 7/24/07 3:55 PM
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link names: Microsoft_Elevator_PG_SWOP.tif (CMYK; 333 ppi; 89.96%), System_Center_Building_Sprd_EB_dk.ai (94.93%), SysCenter_bL_r.eps,
YPOP_Corp_w.ai (100%)
inks: CMYK
fonts: Segoe (Regular, Semibold, Bold)
notes: ComputierWorld, eWeek, InformationWeek, CIO Insight, Baseline. Web
Native for PDI
Microsoft
System Center is a family of

IT management solutions (including Operations
Manager and Systems Management Server)
designed to help you manage your mission-
critical enterprise systems and applications.
Nissan manages 56,500 PCs on three continents
with System Center. Thats big. See Nissan and
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MICROSOFT SYSTEM CENTER. DESIGNED FOR BIG.
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07-07-24
INSIGHT
New Web applications
are bringing us closer
to the Web as
operating system
s the web was born and grew in importance in the early
1990s, it immediately changed the way the world connected,
communicated and gained knowledge. And while the Web
has had a major impact on all aspects of society, it has had an espe-
cially big effect on businesses.
From the get-go, the Web has been a moving target when it comes
to a companys ability to stay on top of changing technologies and
dynamics.
At first, the Web was mainly a static place, consisting of basic
HTML pages. But as the first-mover companies got up to speed,
it quickly changed into a place that used CGI (Common Gateway
Interface)- and Perl-based applications, along with new security tech-
nologies, to enable a whole host of new capabilitiesmost notably,
e-commerce.
And again, just as companies were
getting comfortable, XML, SOAP
(Simple Object Access Protocol) and
other new technologies opened up
the world of SOA (service-oriented
architecture), completely changing
how applications, systems and busi-
nesses connected. This was followed
by the whole 2.0 phenomenon of
blogs, wikis and social networking.
Now, just as your company is
finally feeling at ease with 2.0 tech-
nologies, the Web is set to move on
again.
The next generation of the Web
is marked by dynamic, interactive,
open and highly flexible applications
that not only go beyond the capabili-
ties of classic Web applications but
also exceed the features of desktop
applications.
In short, this next generation of
Web applications is bringing us
much closer to a future of the Web
as an operating system. And now
is the time for businesses to get
ready for the latest change in Web
technology.
In this IT Planner, eWeek looks
at the five key attributes of these
cutting-edge Web technologies and
offers some tips on ways that com-
panies can prepare for and even
begin building and deploying some
of these innovative Web applica-
tions.
After all, when it comes to Web
technology, standing still is not an
option.
BY JIM RAPOZA
A
www. eweek. com
The Yahoo Mail beta is an example of a Web application updated with an AJAX interface.
27p41.indd 41 8/22/07 3:32:58 PM
When a Web or Internet applica-
tion is referred to as rich, it gener-
ally means that it is highly interac-
tive, has an intuitive user interface
as good as or better than a desktop
application, and has a wealth of fea-
tures and capabilities.
On the Web, a rich application
interface will include things such
as drag-and-drop capabilities in the
places where a user would expect
it, contextual drop-down and right-
mouse menus, and interactive and
real-time data responsiveness when
it comes to things such as graphs
and reports.
An important thing to understand
about a rich Web interface is that
it doesnt necessarily entail lots of
flashy animations and flashing icons.
A simple and plain administrative
interface for a server or service appli-
cation can be extremely rich in the
ways it provides information to users
and allows them to define settings
and parameters.
One of the main technologies in
this area is AJAX (Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML), a standards-
based language that makes it pos-
sible to write a rich, browser-based
interface that works identically in
any standards-based Web browser.
The funny thing about AJAX is
that it isnt really a new technology.
Most of AJAX is based on established
technologies such as JavaScript, but
it is used in unique ways to create
interactive Web applications.
One of the great things about
AJAX is that it doesnt require learn-
ing new things. AJAX applications
can be built in almost any editing
and authoring environment, and
tools from Microsofts Visual Studio
to Adobes Dreamweaver include
lots of tools and aids to get up and
running with AJAX.
Other products to consider include
Adobes Flex and Microsofts Win-
dows Presentation Foundation, both
of which are designed for developing
rich Web applications that can run
outside of a Web browser. However,
keep in mind that both platforms
rely on non-Web technologies, with
Flex requiring Flash to run on a
system and WPF needing Microsoft
technologies such as WPF/Every-
where.
Finally, they say you can never
be too rich, but thats not the case
when it comes to Web apps: Too
much interactivity can ruin a Web
application. Just because you can
add lots of menus, windows and cool
animated graphics doesnt mean that
you should.
One of the most amazing tech-
nological revolutions of the last 10
years has to be Web services and
SOA. If you want proof, think back
to the state of application and data
integration before XML and Web
services came on the scene in the
late 1990s.
Back then, doing application and
system integration meant dealing
with a messy hodgepodge of custom
data wrappers, APIs and proprietary
connection systems. In many cases,
it was nearly impossible for busi-
nesses and partners to connect their
disparate business systems.
But in a short few years, Web ser-
vices changed all this. Now, every
modern enterprise application, data-
base and framework uses standards-
based technologies to easily enable
complex and robust data and applica-
tion integrations.
How did this happen? In a word,
openness. Right from the beginning,
the world of SOA decreed that if
a business, developer or software
vendor wanted to play, it had to
be based on open standards. Even
vendors that had traditionally been
inclined to go the proprietary route
embraced standards in SOA, clearly
understanding that not being able to
integrate with standards would leave
them on the outside looking in.
In the world of next-generation
Web applications, this kind of adher-
ence to openness is just as crucial.
Gone are the days when sites and
applications could work on just one
Web browser and just one operating
system.
For the most part, the core tech-
INSIGHT
Build rich Web
applications
1
New formats such as JSON are making it possible to add robust data management.
www. eweek. com
IT PLANNER FROM PAGE 41
Remain
open-minded
2
27p41.indd 42 8/22/07 3:33:09 PM
nologies of next-generation Web
applications make it very easy to stick
to both long-standing and emerging
Web standards. As noted earlier,
AJAX itself is based on common
Web standards, and most good AJAX
applications should work identically
across browsers and platforms.
In addition, standards bodies such
as the World Wide Web Consortium
and OASIS are currently working on
several new formats and standards
specifications, such as Compound
Document Format, that will add new
capabilities for next-generation Web
applications.
There is some concern over cer-
tain next-generation technologies,
such as Flex and WPF. Since these
are based on vendor technologies,
there is the possibility that they
wont be as open as options such
as AJAX.
We recommend that businesses
choose the open and standards-
based path wherever and whenever
possible. An application that is writ-
ten in a proprietary way that makes
it difficult to integrate with is one
that will not be participating on the
cutting edge of Web technologies.
If the customers of an application
find that it is dictating to them how
they can use it, they will most likely
stop using it. Sticking to open stan-
dards and systems ensures that an
application can grow and adapt to
emerging trends.
With old-school Web applications,
data is treated in much the same
way that a faucet treats water: The
application can access the data but
doesnt have much control over the
data once it arrives.
Next-generation Web applications,
in contrast, increasingly are able
to handle data on the fly, allowing
users to interact with data in real
time rather than having to constantly
reload the Web application to get
new data.
Using technologies such as JSON
(JavaScript Object Notation), next-
generation Web applications give
users more control over the data
that is delivered to their applications.
They also provide a much more
robust level of fault tolerance, mak-
ing it possible for data to be resident
on client systems. This contrasts
with the classic client/server-style
Web application, where all access to
the application and data is lost if the
connection is lost.
Another important change when
it comes to data is the emerging
Semantic Web and its related stan-
dards and technologies.
Semantic Web technologies will
enable Web applications to query
and interact with data held in sites
and applications across the entire
Web, making possible a whole new
generation of data-aware applica-
tions.
The ability for next-generation
Web applications to more robustly
handl e dat a al so has great l y
improved the ability to create and
test applications. Many standard
Web application development envi-
ronments make it possible to use
small XML and other data files
to prototype, debug and test new
Web apps.
This improved data manage-
ment makes it possible to include
in Web applications many of the
things that are more common in
standard desktop apps, such as
local data stores, a high level of
responsiveness and, of course,
offline capabilities.
Its kind of funny to talk about
offline as a next-generation feature.
After all, isnt offline access a hall-
mark of old-school desktop applica-
tions? And isnt the future vision of
the Web one in which people are
always on and always connected, no
matter where they are?
Well, that may be the vision, but
it isnt the realityand may not be,
especially in the United States, for
some time.
For next-generation Web appli-
cations to truly step to the fore-
front as alternatives to traditional
desktop applicationsand even
as potential Web-based operating
systemsthey have to embrace the
seemingly old-fashioned notion of
INSIGHT
www. eweek. com
Keep data
dynamic
3
Make it
available offline
4
An emerging trend in Web applications is the ability to work on them offline.
27p41.indd 43 8/22/07 3:33:13 PM
offline access.
Think about it: Your company
may have created a great new SAAS
(software as a service) product that
provides lots of value to customers.
But if your customers employees
cant use the product during a 6-
hour flight, a desktop-bound app
might just start to look much more
attractive.
The reality of the need to provide
offline capabilities hasnt gone unno-
ticed by major players. Google, one
of the biggest proponents of next-
generation Web applications, has
released a product called Gears, cur-
rently in beta, that makes it possible
to provide offline access to Google
applications.
In addition, Adobes AIR (Adobe
Integrated Runtime), set to ship
by the end of the summer, makes
it possible to build rich Internet
applications that run outside of a
browser and can use offline data
(yes, this does sound much like a
normal desktop application). Fur-
ther, the Mozilla Foundation is
planning on adding offline support
in the next version of its Firefox
browser.
Right now, many of the tools for
offline access are still immature or yet
to be released. And there hasnt been
much activity related to standardizing
offline access to Web applications,
meaning that there will be competing
and distinct tools for creating offline
access for some time. However, busi-
nesses should begin evaluating these
technologies now. As you build your
next-generation applications, dont
forget that your users and customers
will be asking, Is there a way to use
this application when Im not con-
nected to the Web?
Imagine youre a chef in a popu-
lar restaurant. Youve put together
your special dishes for the evening.
Hopefully, customers will like them,
but if they dont, theres not much
that can be done to change the spe-
cialsat least not immediately. This
is basically the same model for clas-
sic Web and desktop application
development.
However, now imagine that many
of your restaurant customers decide
that they want to go into the kitchen
and change and adapt your dishes
themselves. They like your pasta, but
they think they have a better recipe
for shrimp. Or they want to use your
burger, but add it to a pizza from
another restaurant.
This is the model of next-genera-
tion Web applications: Users expect
to be able to tweak, adapt and change
the applications in unique ways to
meet their own specific needs. This
is often called a mashup.
In this model, your cool new appli-
cation might find itself combined
with an internal business application
or mashed up with a popular free
application from a big Web portal
or search engine. It may even end
up being combined with another
application from a vendor you see
as a competitor.
Especially for software vendors,
this can be a scary proposition. In
traditional models, these compa-
nies try to maintain strict controls
over how their applications are used,
upgraded and integrated.
But when it comes to next-generation
Web applications, locking down your
application is a mistake. To many
users, a Web application that cant
be easily customized or mashed up
with other programs is a broken
applicationand one that wont be
used or purchased. Letting users
create mashups and allowing them
to plug in functionality and integrate
your application with other systems
is the way to gain user loyalty.
Probably more than anything
else, this is the key lesson about
next-generation Web applications.
The ability of these applications to
constantly change and adapt to new
technologies, standards and end-
user desires will radically change
not only Web application delivery
but also how people look at all the
software that they use.
Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza
can be reached at jim.rapoza@
zif fdavisenterprise.com.
INSIGHT
Next-generation Web applications are open to being combined or mashed up.
www. eweek. com
IT PLANNER FROM PAGE 43
Be flexible
5
27p41.indd 44 8/22/07 3:33:17 PM
45 eWEEK n JULY 9, 2007
www. eweek. com
By Jim Rapoza
As a Web developer, where do you go when application
requirementsnot to mention the demands of your cus-
tomersare exceeding the limitations of the browser-based
Web application model?
One way to go is in the direction of RIAs (rich Internet
applications). RIAs are programs that work in many of the
same ways as standard Web applications but are also able
to work outside a Web browserin many ways, becoming
much like a standard desktop application.
By running outside the browser environment, RIAs can
take advantage of standard desktop GUI conventions, can be
integrated with other applications, and can be more effec-
tively delivered to mobile devices and smart phones.
However, the technology of RIAs is changing on a daily
basis. This means that companies evaluating RIA platforms
need to understand not only where the platforms are today
but also what options and capabilities will be available in the
near future.
Following are sample questions that will help you develop
an RFP that will deliver the right solution for your organization.
RICH INTERNET APPLICATIONS
INSIGHT
www. eweek. com
DEVELOPMENT
What level of internal development expertise does your
company have? Will your applications be built mainly by
experienced developers, or will more visually oriented
authors be creating RIAs?
Some RIA platforms offer both code-based and visual drag-
and-drop development environments.
What languages does the platform support? (Please
check all that apply.)
JavaScript ActionScript
Java Ajax
.Net Other (Please specify.)
What existing tool sets does the platform integrate with?
(Please check all that apply.)
Adobe Flash Adobe Dreamweaver
Eclipse Microsoft
Eclipse Microsoft Expression Suite
Microsoft Visual Studio Other (Please specify.)
When youre evaluating RIA development platforms, be
sure to find out whether you use your current develop-
ment tools and environments. Some RIAs can be created in
almost any editor, some offer plug-ins for popular environ-
ments such as Eclipse and some require unique develop-
ment environments.
PRESENTATION
When developing your RFP, you will need to articulate the
purpose of your RIAs. Will they be mainly form-based
applications that would work equally well in a browser?
High-usability application GUIs with contextual menus and
drag-and-drop capabilities? Presentationlike applications
with lots of animations and media support? Knowing the
purpose of the applications youd like to develop will help
you get the best platform on which to develop them.
What types of applications will you be building?
Fully functional desktop applications
Animated demos and presentations
Data entry forms and questionnaires
Reporting and analysis tools
Other (Please specify.)
INTEROPERABILITY
What endpoint run-times does the platform support?
AIR Flash Flex
Java JavaFX WPF
Other (Please specify.)
DEPLOYMENT
How are applications deployed to end users and employees?
Stand-alone downloadable executables
Customized RIA deployment server
Third-party application delivery systems
ACCESS AND ACTIVATION MECHANISMS
What tools are provided to control how applications are
used?
Built-in anti-piracy protections
Digital rights management
Service-based activation tools
Time-based trials options
PRICING AND SUPPORT
How much does the platform cost?
What support options are available?
Are there training and developer courses offered?
27p45.indd 45 8/23/07 10:06:00 AM
All we are saying is give perfectly
good hardware a chance.
VoIP is the future. So step into it.
Not by ripping and replacing, but by
sticking with the here and now. Its
possible because now moving to VoIP
isnt about hardware.
Its about software.
You can keep your hardwareyour
PBX, your gateways, even your phones.
Simply move to VoIP with software.
Software that integrates with Active
Directory
, Microsoft
Ofce, Microsoft
Exchange Server, and your PBX.
Maximize your current PBX and
phone investment and make it all part
of your new software-based VoIP
solution from Microsoft. Your hardware
is ready when you are. Learn more at
microsoft.com/voip
All we are saying is give perfectly
good hardware a chance.
VoIP is the future. So step into it.
Not by ripping and replacing, but by
sticking with the here and now. Its
possible because now moving to VoIP
isnt about hardware.
Its about software.
You can keep your hardwareyour
PBX, your gateways, even your phones.
Simply move to VoIP with software.
Software that integrates with Active
Directory
, Microsoft
Ofce, Microsoft
Exchange Server, and your PBX.
Maximize your current PBX and
phone investment and make it all part
of your new software-based VoIP
solution from Microsoft. Your hardware
is ready when you are. Learn more at
microsoft.com/voip
INTERVIEW
then have to go home. Bill
[Gates], Steve [Ballmer],
myself and others are all
speaking at universities
to get them excited about
getting into the technol-
ogy field.
The one thing that I
think about every day
from when I get up in the
morning until I go to bed at
nightis how we continue
to develop and train our
people, how we improve
their capabilities and get
more people into the pipe-
line so they can grow and
scale this.
You know the breadth
of the portfolio we have
across the company, and
its an awesome thing, but
What is the biggest challenge
you face in your job this year,
and what is the biggest chal-
lenge facing Microsoft?
I think they are one and
the same: people. Mak-
ing sure we have enough
qualified, capable, talented
people that can continue
to scale with the com-
pany. You know, the whole
shortage of IT graduates
and how that number is
shrinking as less people
enter the technology field
is a major burden, and
we are doing all kinds of
things: Were in Wash-
ington, D.C., lobbying
for relief, and its unfor-
tunate that we can edu-
cate people here but they
Kevin Turner
Microsofts learning curve
COO Turner discusses challenges of
software-plus-services, Live initiatives
s microsoft embarks in a new direction
with its software-plus-services and Live strate-
gies, the company is pulling out all the stops
to get its partners and customers on board.
Leading the charge is Chief Operating Of-
ficer Kevin Turner, who recently sat down with Senior
Editor Peter Galli to talk about these new initiatives, as
well as the challenges, threats and competition facing
the software maker.
The whole shortage of IT
graduates and how that
number is shrinking ...
is a major burden.
its something that takes a
lot of people to do.
So, how do you differenti-
ate yourself and make these
people want to work for Mi -
crosoft rather than, say, a
Google or Yahoo?
There are a couple of prob-
lems. One is that you have
about a third of the num-
ber of people entering the
IT field than you did dur-
ing the dot-com era. The
second thing is that one
of the stiffest competitors
we face today is from the
hedge funds, for all the
major systems and analysis
and decision support-type
activity they do and which
is pretty intensive.
There is excitement and
glamour associated with
working for a hedge fund,
so we are finding that some
of the best competition that
we get in the marketplace
is coming straight from
them. Over the past few
years they have added a lot
more people than Google
and Yahoo.
We are now coming
to grips with the issue of
how we make this company
aspirational, how we make
it a company that people
want to work for. One way
we are doing this is by talk-
ing about our future, like
INTERVIEW
www. eweek. com
27p48.indd 48 8/23/07 11:35:46 AM
Adver t i sement
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A SPECIAL REPORT
W
indows Vista has finally
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compatibility. While it may not happen
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Defragmentation
Technology
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Its well known that a high number
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3
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Only a completely automatic defrag-
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Instead of providing partial benefit
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With Windows Vista, disk activity on
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Diskeepers automatic defragmenta-
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software plus services, and
inviting people to come and
be a part of that. Having a
company that can describe
and articulate its vision,
and transitioning from the
vision of a PC on every desk
and in every home to being
the one company that can
connect that digital lifestyle
and workstyle, we think is
a powerful thing and that
people want to be part of
that.
The partner ecosystem
is also an important part
of that. But we work on
talent recruitment every
day, and I tell our team that
every single one of them
is a recruiter by what they
do every single day in the
marketplace.
On the competitive front, is
Linux a bigger or smaller threat
now versus when you joined
Microsoft two years ago?
I dont know that its big-
ger or smaller. Its a threat,
and certainly when you are
competing with the per-
ception of free, you have
to continue to see that you
get the facts out. We have
to differentiate ourselves
on value creation and what
we can bring to the market-
place. I think that whats
different today is that cus-
tomers are starting to figure
it out, and our technology
solutions are better. Both
of those dynamics have
allowed us to really seek the
momentum. The company
does not view the threat
as less or more, but as an
opportunity to continue to
differentiate every single
day, to get our story and the
facts out, create value with
customers and partners,
and make sure that we are
bringing the truth to the
marketplace.
I also think it comple-
ments the fact that there are
new releases of SQL Server
and Windows Server coming
in 2008, that we have a high-
performance computing
solution in the market now
and the .Net Framework.
There are just a lot of good
things coming to fruition
from a product standpoint.
We are not on the defen-
sive as perhaps we once
were. We are taking an
offensive approach and tell-
ing customers that while
our stuff costs money, if
they really do the math,
so does Linux, and we are
not competing on that. We
are competing on the fact
that we are going to bring a
better solution to the table
and win on that, and hope-
fully earn the right to win
on that with customers.
What are the biggest threats
facing Microsoft at this time?
I think the company has
three threats: Open source
and Linux is certainly a
threat; cloud-based com-
puting is certainly a threat,
which is why the software-
plus-services transition is
so important to us; and I
think that there are various
players in the entertain-
ment devices space that
are threats: RIM, Black-
Berry, Sony and Apple.
Obviously, the $1 billion
in costs to service customer
Xboxes is not something that
sits well with you as COO.
How do you view what hap-
pened there, what is your
response to it and how does
that impact what you do
going forward?
The first thing that comes
to mind is that Im proud
of the fact that we are step-
ping up and taking care
of our customers. We are
not a perfect company. We
strive for perfection, but we
are not perfect, and when
we are not perfect we are
going to work hard to make
it right.
The second thing that
comes to mind is that we
had better learn from it.
This is not something we
want to repeat. The finan-
cial thing is a bad thing,
but affecting customers is
a worse thing.
We want to do those
things that create delight
and joy and happiness, and
I, for one, with my Xbox and
my three kids, have not had
a problem. The majority
of customers have also not
had a problem, but some
have, and so theres a lot
of correction of errors in
that we cranked the learn-
ing in and we have to get
better at it.
But thats an area where
we are in the hardware busi-
ness and we are a software
company, so we dont have
decades of experience in the
hardware business. We are
learning as we go in that
space, and we still have a lot
to learn, so we dont have it
completely figured out.
We are still as commit-
ted as we have ever been as
this is a vibrant platform
for us. We have Halo com-
ing out and all kinds of
great games and all kinds
of stuff there that are really
good stories.
Steve [Ballmer] tells me
that Windows took eight
or nine years to make
any money, which no one
talks about today. But he
reminds me of that all the
time. Today everybody just
believes it made money
from the start, but that was
not the case.
Everyone I talk topartners,
developers, customersall
want to know more about
your Live strategy. People
dont understand what it is,
and [Chief Software Archi-
tect] Ray Ozzie is not out
there talking about it. Are you
planning to address that?
Sure, thats the reason why
we are talking deeper about
software plus services than
we have before. Steve will
continue to do more of the
deep dive, and I will do
more of the strategy and
where we are going, as an
attempt to bring that to the
marketplace.
But there are two things
that you have to under-
stand: One is that we did
not, and still do not, have
that completely figured out.
There may be a belief that
we are holding our cards
so close to our vest and
that we know something
no one else does, but there
TURNER FROM PAGE 48
INTERVIEW
www. eweek. com
We work on talent
recruitment every day, and
I tell our team that [each]
one of them is a recruiter.
27p48.indd 50 8/22/07 2:09:50 PM
INTERVIEW
www. eweek. com
is a competitive element to
that. Yes, we do have some
of the things figured out,
but why would we want
to tip our hand and allow
people to go and pick those
off and terrorize us with
that? So we have decided to
be thoughtful about it, and
share what we know when
we know it, and when the
time is right.
So you will see and hear
more and more from Ray,
but Bill [Gates] still has
another year in his job. So,
once Bill makes the tran-
sition a year from now, I
suspect youll see a little bit
more of Ray.
You are really upbeat about
the prospects for Office Live
going forward. What is it
about Office Live that you
find so compelling?
There is a real opportu-
nity to get after small busi-
nesses and help them.
Small business is a tough
segment to reach, and
there are a lot of carcasses
on the road of trying to
reach them through the
years. We have 400,000
small businesses signed
up. It has taken off, and
were going into five of
the biggest countries in
the world, and we are in
the U.S. today. Im hear-
ing back from these small
businesses about how
happy they are to have
someone finally helping
them, and there are ele-
ments to Office Live that
are free, others that are
subscription-based, that
partners can monetize.
Office Live is sort of the
open source of Microsoft,
in that our approach is to
rally the community to take
an active role in building
an ecosystem around the
product. We want partners
to deliver even more value
to the offering for small
businesses. Also, through
features such as our Mar-
ketplace, we are not only
connecting partners to
potential customers, we
also enable partners to
connect with each other,
which is hugely valuable in
the software-plus-services
market.
There are a lot of questions
about your software-plus-
services initiative, which in
some instances challenges
partners head-on in their
areas of expertise and com-
petency. What are you hear-
ing from them about this
strategy, and what are you
telling them?
Mostly what Im hearing
from them is that they need
information. They want to
know what we are doing,
what the monetization
models are going to look
like. We teed this software-
plus-services initiative up a
year ago at our Worldwide
Partner Conference in Bos-
ton, but unfortunately there
was very little information,
which led people to believe
we were holding back. The
fact of the matter is, the
truth of the matter is, we
were figuring it out. And
today Im not here to tell
you that we have that com-
pletely figured out. Im here
to tell you that were a lot
smarter than we were a year
ago. Next year we are going
to be a lot smarter than we
are today. But thats a jour-
ney that we are on to be able
to figure this out.
But partners can mon-
etize one of three ways:
either have it [on-premises],
take a hybrid approach or
host it externally, but those
are all opportunities for
them. We are also going
to create ecosystems that
allow them to extend the
functionality, to differenti-
ate, and Ive issued a call to
action for them to closely
look at that.
Id like to see more part-
ners actually believing and
trying to work it out and
figure it out along with us
rather than waiting on the
sidelines to see how it plays
out. We think that they run
the risk of getting left behind
if they do that.
Are companies such as Google
a threat on the software-plus-
services front?
We are the company with the
partner ecosystem. Those
companies dont really have
a partner ecosystemnot
like the one we have. That
ecosystem, sincerely, is how
this company was built.
It was with partners and
extending and the ability to
get reach and all of those
things. This is just another
avenue, and hopefully we
will get them to go with us
on the journey for software
plus services.
A more humble Microsoft?
On the competition for talent Microsoft faces from
the hedge fund industry: I dont know that we realized
how much they were peeling off in that particular space.
On the threat posed by
Linux and open-source
software: We are not on
the defensive as perhaps we
once were. We are taking an
offensive approach and telling
customers that while our stuff costs money, if they really do
the math, so does Linux.
On the $1 billion hit Microsoft has taken for servicing
costs for customer Xboxes: Thats an area where we are
in the hardware business and we are a software company, so
we dont have decades of experience on the hardware side.
We are learning as we go in that space, and we still have a lot
to learn, so we dont have it completely figured out.
On its Live initiative: You have to understand that we did
not, and still do not, have that completely figured out.
On its software-plus-services strategy: The fact of the
matter is, the truth of the matter is, we are figuring it out. And
today Im not here to tell you that we have that completely
figured out. Im here to tell you that were a lot smarter
than we were a year ago; next year we are going to be a lot
smarter than we are today.
While Microsoft rarely admits its faults, COO Kevin Turner
has made quite a few surprising admissions:
27p48.indd 51 8/22/07 2:09:54 PM
Financial fact and friction
Skip the frictionless-economy ideas and stick with the customer
ERIC LUNDQUIST
orget about the
frictionless high-tech
economyhow about a
little more friction instead?
In between flights recently, I
caught tidbits from CNN at
the airports on the continu-
ing subprime-mortgage melt-
down. In the stories about
hapless homeowners facing
ever-rising mortgages, there
was an undercurrent of the
unknown.
The biggest unknown:
Exactly how serious is the
mortgage crisis in the finan-
cial markets? How were all
those mortgage bonds dis-
tributed to second- and third-
party brokers, banks, and
securities firms? How was it
that you could get a top mort-
gage company like Country-
wide Financial, on one day,
contending it was above the
mortgage fray and, the next
day, saying it was tapping
its entire $11.5 billion credit
line to provide liquidity?
Financial organizations
have always been big com-
puter purchasers. They are
usually among the first
to install the latest super-
computers and big storage
servers to process and track
the millions and millions
of shares traded each day.
In the last couple of years,
computing attention has
turned to quants: quantita-
tive analysts who contend
they can model the entire
financial market and would
love to talk to you for hours
about stochastic calculus.
Yet, despite all those
quants and all that comput-
ing horsepower on Wall
Street and elsewhere in
the financial world, it is
increasingly evident that no
one really knows where the
money goes, how it moves
and how much the leveraged
buyout firms really have in
their wallets at the end of
the day. Why is that? Wasnt
all this computing purchas-
ing supposed to result in a
frictionless economy where
the movement of money and
other financial instruments
slides seamlessly through
the worlds economy and
everyone can sleep well at
night knowing how much
money is in the bank?
When I add up all those
CNN tidbits and wild swings
on Wall Street as quant-driven
computer trading tries to track
the untrackable, I have to con-
clude that all the computing
horsepower has been aimed
at making money move faster
with little regard for trying to
settle accounts at days end.
A computer is an obedient
device that will do exactly what
you program. If your goal is
to track the flow of money
after it gets splintered into
the worlds financial markets,
then that is what the com-
puter will do. If your goal is to
accelerate that money move-
ment and not really be con-
cerned about where the funds
go after they leave your com-
pany, then you will get what
we have: a lot of panicked
investors and corporate man-
agers unable to say where the
money has gone. Forget about
the frictionless economy and
lets count on building some
friction based on accountabil-
ity and concern for customers
who want to know where the
money went.
Editorial Director Eric Lund quist
can be reached at eric.lundquist
@ziffdavisenterprise.com.
It is increasingly evident
that no one really knows
where the money goes.
F
COMMENTARY
www. eweek. com
27p52.indd 52 8/23/07 10:43:23 AM
Whats the best approach to information
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Open standards, closed minds
Standards groups waste their time when focusing on state governments
JIM RAPOZA
T
oday, i come to give praise
and honor to a group that
is fearless in its abilities to
choose and deploy cutting-
edge technologies. Ladies
and gentlemen, I give you
state governments!
Whats that? State govern-
ments dont tend to be fear-
less when it comes to inno-
vative technologies? They
tend to deal with layers of
bureaucracy that make even
the most conservative busi-
ness look nimble?
Come to think of it, thats
right! Governments are typi-
cally not the place one expects
to see groundbreaking uses
of new technologies. But if
thats the case, why do open-
standards bodies work so
hard to woo governments?
The latest standards
group to put on a full-court
press to win the love of
state governments is the
ODF Alliance, which is
pushing governments and
states such as Massachu-
setts to adopt Open Docu-
ment Format as a standard
for public documents.
However, I think the alli-
ance is making a mistake by
putting so many of its eggs
in the government basket.
First, anecdotally I cant
think of many formats or
standards I use today that owe
their popularity to government
deployments. If anything, gov-
ernments tend to be behind the
curve, often stuck using older
technologies and formats.
But if the ODF Alliance
shouldnt be pushing for
government adoption, where
should its focus be? I think
the group should be working
to make ODF more visible
and usable in the applica-
tions and tools that people
are already using. In fact,
there is already an example
where this approach is work-
ing very well for ODF.
Over the years, Ive been a
heavy user of OpenOffice.org. I
cant think of one occasion dur-
ing that time where someone
sent me a document in ODF,
but, in the last few months, Ive
actually had several documents
forwarded to me in ODF.
Were those documents created
in Open Office.org or StarOf-
fice? Nope, they were created
in Google Apps. And when I
brought this up to a member
of the ODF Alliance, he told
me that since Google Apps
went live, there has been a large
increase in the number of ODF
files found on the Internet.
So it seems that, thus far,
one of ODFs biggest growth
areas hasnt been a government
adoption; its been Google Apps
adding ODF as a save option.
While Im not arguing that
the alliance should completely
forgo lobbying governments,
I do think there needs to be
more focus on getting the for-
mat into places where people
will want to use it willingly.
When you look at most of
todays ubiquitous formats,
from .zip to MP3 to JPG, they
didnt get to that point because
a government chose them;
they are what they are because
people found them easy to cre-
ate and use. Once the people
choose to use a format such
as ODF, the governments will
follow. Thats because, when it
comes to technology, govern-
ment isnt fearless, and it usu-
ally isnt a leader.
Chief Technology Analyst Jim
Rapoza can be reached at jim.
rapoza@ziffdavisenterprise.com.
If anything, governments
tend to be behind the curve
in using new technologies.
COMMENTARY
www. eweek. com
27p55.indd 55 8/23/07 10:53:03 AM
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confrences_ad_v27.indd 1 8/16/07 10:08:18 AM
Windows goes Xenby proxy
Citrixs XenSource deal could help both Microsoft and open source
JASON BROOKS
W
hen microsoft
announced its plans to
build a brand-new hyper-
visor into a future version
of Windows Server, it
seemed to me that a much
simpler path to baking vir-
tualization into Windows
would be to join the ranks
of vendors developing and
shipping products around
the open-source Xen hyper-
visor project.
Microsoft must have
judged that relying on an
outside sourceand a
General-Public-Licensed
one, at thatfor a piece
of technology as central as
a hypervisor would be too
risky or uncomfortable,
leading the Redmondians
to opt instead to go it
alone.
However, as the slipping
ship dates for Microsofts
home-baked hypervisor,
Viridian, demonstrate,
rolling a new hypervisor
is no small task. Whats
more, once Viridian does
go live, the difficulty of
convincing customers
to entrust production
machines to an unproven
new technology threatens
to unacceptably stall Micro-
softs virtual ambitions.
Enter Citrix, which fol-
lowed in a long tradition
of making technology
bets on Microsofts behalf by
announcing an acquisition
of XenSource, the company
started by the founders of the
Xen project to commercialize
the technology.
While I typically associate
Xen with Linuxsince Linux
is the platform on which Xen
was born and on which Xen
is most often deployedthe
folks at XenSource have their
aim focused most keenly
on Windows. On the Citrix
investor call Aug. 15, Xen-
Source President and CEO
Peter Levine summed up
that focus well. Our product
focus is to provide the best
Microsoft Windows virtu-
alization experience on the
market, he said.
For Citrix, the move means
entry into the server virtu-
alization space, as well as
a rather prominent seat at
the open-source community
table. The XenSource pur-
chase is akin to the big leap
into the Linux community
that Novell undertook when
it purchased Ximian and
SUSE back in 2003.
As with Novells Linux
pickups, the biggest impact
of the Citrix deal for Xen-
Source will be the broadened
customer reach that the com-
panys Xen-based products
will enjoy as they tap into the
Citrix network of some 5,000
channel partners.
Also like the Novell-Linux
deal, the Citrix move will
probably spur concern from
some that the open-source
Xen might start moving in
a less open direction. So far,
however, the new partners
seem to be saying the right
things.
For now, I dont see a rea-
son to doubt Citrixs inten-
tions, as its the ecosystem
thats sprouted up around
Xen that has built the open-
source project into the prom-
ising rival to virtualization's
current king, VMware, that it
is today.
eWeek Labs Executive Editor
Jason Brooks is at jason.brooks@
ziffdavisenterprise.com.
For now, I dont see a
reason to doubt Citrixs
intentions for Xen.
COMMENTARY
www. eweek. com
27p57.indd 57 8/23/07 10:41:43 AM
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The 2007 Ziff Davis ChanneI Summit, hosto by th oitors o oWFFK 3tratogic Partnor ano Channol /nsioor, is
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CCLL CC /C/C CC L/L CC
Skype protection is limited

Outage shows that business-class users get no extra safeguards
ANDREW GARCIA
kypes two-day-plus out-
age in August was caused
by, of all things, Microsofts
Patch Tuesday. But the
outage has served as an
excellent reminder that
Skype is an as you can get it
service, with no additional
protections for business-
class users and accounts that
may already pay the most for
the service.
During the outage, Skype
provided a bare minimum of
information about the root
cause of the problem. Com-
pany representatives quickly
assured users that the outage
was not caused by scheduled
maintenance to the billing
system (which had been
completed the day before
the service interruption), nor
had the network experienced
any form of malicious attack.
Rather, they blamed an
unspecified algorithm prob-
lem with the Skype network-
ing software that has affected
the client sign-on process.
In the end, it turned out
that Skypes infrastructure
failed the stadium flush test,
as Microsofts most recent
Patch Tuesday triggered
the outage when too many
Skype-enabled comput-
ers were rebooted around
the globe in the same time
period. A lack of peer-to-peer
resources on the network,
an oncoming wave of log-
in requests as the patched
systems came back online
and a heretofore-unknown
software glitch combined
to keep Skypes self-healing
algorithms from automati-
cally resolving the problem.
In the wake of these find-
ings, what becomes clear is
that despite the remarkable
resilience Skype has shown
over the last few years, the
sign-on/authentication proc-
essthe most centralized
component of the network
is a susceptible bottleneck
that can bring down the
entire network. In addition,
although Skype officials have
uncovered the bug in the
resource allocation algorithm,
there is no guarantee this
problem wont occur again.
But what I have found
most disappointing about
this failure is that it has con-
clusively proved there is no
separation of services when it
comes to business-class versus
individual accounts using the
Skype service, as both types
were affected equally during
this outage. While Skype does
not have a great track record
catering to the needs of busi-
ness users, it has made moves
during the last year to improve
account management, cen-
trally control Skype services
across a companys network
and lock out the use of certain
features. But the next step
in Skypes evolution toward
business adoption needs to be
an additional layer of fail-safe
redundancy for those custom-
ers paying the most to use
the service, plus separation of
log-in and accounting services
from standard users.
Certainly, such changes
would lead to more costs
for business customers.
The question would then
be whether such additional
stability would be worth the
additional costs, or whether
another alternative may
become more attractive.
Senior Analyst Andrew Gar-
cia can be reached at andrew.
garcia@ ziffdavisenterprise.com.
Sign-on/authentication is a
susceptible bottleneck that
can KO the entire network.
COMMENTARY
S
www. eweek. com
27p59.indd 59 8/23/07 10:48:13 AM
e n t e r p r i s e
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27p65.indd 65 8/23/07 5:35:06 PM
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Spill your guts at spencer.katt@ziffdavisenterprise.com, or give the Katt a howl at 781-938-2627.
SPENCER F. KATT
War and peace, Linux style
CAs Artzt supersizes his shares; Gates says hes lovin it
T
herell be peace in the valley for me, someday,
sang the dulcet-toned Drudge, Elvis-like. The Kitty
wasnt hung over from the recent Elvis week in
Memphis but instead was contemplating the aftermath of
SCOs major court defeat in its ongoing Linux IP battles.
This must feel similar to the end of WWII for Linux lov-
ers, laughed the Lynx, as he envisioned the open-source
crowd kissing nurses in the
street, filling their freezers with
meat, buying big-finned auto-
mobiles and enjoying some well-
deserved leisure time.
The Furball also contemplated
whether there could be some
Linux-like Yalta, where the future
of open-source software might be
decided by major players such as Novell, IBM and Richard
Stalin er, Stallman. The Furballs post-Linux war fantasies
were soon interrupted when a crony called to ponder Motorola
CEO Ed Zanders fate. Besides suffering three bad quarters in
a row, the crony noted, the Z-man is facing a campaign to oust
him led by Eric Jackson, a Florida-based consultant.
Jackson, who had once waged a similar campaign to oust
former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, has reportedly rallied more
than 130 Motorola shareholders to support him in his cause.
Although the Motorola board
claims it has no plans to replace
Zander, the crony said the word
on the street is that the company
may be seeking a high-profile
exec, such as Michael Capellas,
to step up to the plate.
Hmm, lets see ... Capellas
past strategies seem to be
to either merge with another
entity (such as the Compaq-HP
deal) or rebrand the troubled
company with a former name
(such as redubbing WorldCom
with its previous moniker, MCI),
mused the Mouser. So, I guess
if Capellas ever did take over
the CEO reins at Motorola, hell
relive 1928 and rename the
troubled company the Galvin Manufacturing Corp.
Before bidding Spence adieu, the phone pal also noted
that the Motorola Z6ca CDMA slider phone featuring
Bluetooth and GSM capabilityis rumored to be hitting the
streets by November.
The Furry One wondered how former CA CEO Sanjay
Kumar was holding up since beginning his 12-year jail
sentence in the Federal Correctional
Institution in Fairton, N.J. A friend
in the financial biz told Spence
that CA Vice Chairman and founder
Russell Artzt sold off more than $15
million in CA stock on Aug. 13, the
day before Kumar began serving
his sentence. The sale has caused
some CA insiders to speculate on
whether Artzt might be looking to exit the company sooner
rather than later, said the friend.
The pal also noted that the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation reportedly holds 740,000 shares of the
McDonalds fast-food chain. Its amusing that a foundation
that aids the starving has stock in a company accused of
causing obesity, no? asked the friend.
Not really. Besides, Bill actually created FAT back in 1977
with a guy named McDonald, no less, cackled the Kitty.
@
LITTERBOXLYNX
iwanexstudio.com
hiddenfrontier.com
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And dont forget me at go.eweek.com/kattoon
RUMOR CENTRAL
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