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Business PerspectiveOne Language to Bind Them All: C# is more-much more-than a Java clone. It's the battlefield for a ne Why is C# the most successful of the languages running on the .NET Framework? Surveys done by BZ Media and others consistently show that C# is the most popular of the languages running on the .NET Framework an observation that is bolstered by a review of training resources on the Web or at the local bookstore. Yet the language that publicly debuted in 2002 was seen by many as a “Java clone” and had little to mark it as particularly innovative. LINQ is not confined to C#. It will be part of at least Visual Basic and C++/CLI. Nevertheless like so much of the Common Language Infrastructure (the technical term for the .NET platform) LINQ seems most naturally expressed in C#. The shadow of Anders Hejlsberg falls across broad swaths of the CLI and the design alignment of C# and the CLI is one of the major reasons why C# so dominates discussions of .NET. more > Delphi Comes Together as a Model for .NET Development Claiming its main competitors’ focus has shifted away from installation technology to licensing InstallAware Software last month released InstallAware 5 for Windows Installer with support for SQL Server Express 2005 and new scripts for collaboration. The acknowledged leader in installation software is digital rights management provider Macrovision after its acquisitions of InstallShield and Zero G Software in the past two years gave it cross-platform capability and a lion’s share of the market. But Sinan Karaca InstallAware’s chief architect said Macrovision’s focus “isn’t on installers anymore.” In a news release announcing InstallAware 5 Karaca said “Installations themselves have had to take a back seat in their new display of copyright protection technologies much to the dismay of the setup developer.” more > Borland: Delphi 2006 Will Build Morale As Microsoft marches its developers toward .NET and the future of Windows Borland Software with the next version of Delphi has set its sights on eliminating the common annoyances that plague developers throughout a project and filling in the gaps left by Microsoft tools. The company demonstrated an early version of the new IDE at its DevCon show in San Francisco in November. Rob Cheng Borland’s director of product marketing said that one of the most interesting pieces of functionality that doesn’t exist in Visual Studio is persistence. “[Developers are] familiar with J2EE object persistence and mapping [but] that doesn’t exist in .NET.” He said Borland’s Enterprise Core Objects persistence framework gives that capability to Visual Studio developers. more > Computer Reseller News Reports TenFold Outperforms .NET and J2EE TenFold(R) Corporation provider of the EnterpriseTenFold(TM) platform for building and implementing enterprise applications announced that CRN a leading news magazine for solution providers and technology integrators recognized TenFold's superior technology over .NET and J2EE in a product review published October 7. In the article the author Seth Johnson CEO of Redi2 a TenFold VAR points that according to Gartner 80 percent of IT budgets are spent on the management and maintenance of legacy systems leaving only 20 percent to be spent on innovative business practices. However when trying to spend IT resources on innovation (replacement of legacy systems or development of new applications) many companies are wasting time money and resources on what often ends up as failed IT projects. more > Compuware Affirms Support for .Net Compuware Corp. affirmed its commitment to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows and the .Net platform by announcing plans Thursday to increase support for the Microsoft Visual Studio suite of development tools. At the company's OJ.X developer conference here Bob Barker vice president of strategic planning for technology said Compuware will continue to deliver products that support the Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System development experience. In addition Compuware will provide expertise and best practices on top of its products aimed at helping IT organizations develop test manage and govern applications for the Windows platform. Compuware is a founding board member of the Microsoft VSIP (Visual Studio Industry Partner) Program and will be a gold sponsor of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 launch tour which kicks off on Nov. 7 in San Francisco. Rick LaPlante general manager of Visual Studio 2005 Team System at Microsoft said Compuware will be participating in demonstrations at the launch event. more > Codejockeys Assess the Risks and Rewards of Next-gen SQL Server Time after time in market after market Microsoft has used a similar recipe for success: Make it easy to use abstract the underlying complexity of what’s involved and customers will come—in truckloads most of the time. It’s a philosophy the software giant has employed to great effect with its Windows server operating systems Internet Information Services Web platform and Visual Basic IDE. Fewer programming languages are easier to pick up and start working with than Visual Basic and Visual Studio—even in its .NET flavor—is frequently celebrated for its ease of use along with its tight integration with the rest of Microsoft’s technology stack. more > Is .Net Failing to Draw Venture Capital Loyalty? Despite Microsoft's claims that its .Net platform is sprouting its own ecosystem and is undergoing substantial adoption in the industry some say the adoption of open-source opportunities appear to outpace .Net. Indeed if investors are any indication it appears that some are more apt to fund companies based on open source technology than they are to fund .Net-based opportunities. In fact one venture capital firm headed and run by a bunch of former Microsoft executives has cast a wary eye on investing in .Net-based companies. more > Microsoft Avalon Indigo to Help Align .NET Microsoft unveiled a new set of developer tools and partnerships today it hopes will make its .NET framework work better with the outside world. The announcements this week at the VSLive! 2005 developer show here highlight Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates' pledge of interoperability with other platforms like J2EE and Web services initiatives. Key to the strategy is advancement of the Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 developer platform code-named Whidbey along with a subsystem for its Longhorn platform known as Avalon and its unified programming model for building service-oriented applications called Indigo. A second beta version of Whidbey is due this spring. Microsoft advanced its release of Avalon today and is expected to do the same for Indigo later this week. more > eBay to Drop Passport .Net Support Auction site eBay announced to members on its Web site Wednesday afternoon that it will drop support for Microsoft's Passport and .NET Alerts by late January. Users were told that once this takes place the Microsoft Passport button that is currently displayed on Sign In pages will be replaced with links to a page with more information. The announcement came with practically no warning; however in recent months it had become much more difficult to sign up for alerts through Microsoft's .NET services as the pages to do so were buried on eBay's site. more > Longhorn debuts but few pay attention Over the past three years Jeff Parker has rewritten more than 60% of his company’s financial reporting applications to help it comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. Central to that strategy was adopting the Microsoft .NET Framework. Because .NET enforces more rigorous object-oriented software engineering practices he believes the new code could generate more reliable audit trails. Fast forward several years and Microsoft is now openly promoting the successor to .NET. Code-named Longhorn the platform encompasses Microsoft’s next-generation Windows operating system. Having benefited from .NET does Parker’s company now anticipate similar benefits from Longhorn and are they ready to embrace it? more > Windows & .Net: A Study Doesn’t Make It So A new study supports my belief that .NET is more productive than J2EE. Nevertheless I don’t think you should make business decisions based on the study. The Middleware Company’s “Comparing Microsoft .NET and IBM Websphere/J2EE” is probably the best-designed study of programming platforms that I’ve seen and the conclusions line up with my opinions on the relative strengths and weaknesses of .NET and J2EE. Nevertheless I think that developer-team and individual programmer productivity is so variable and long-term success is so dependent on iterating existing code that it’s unwise to base one’s decisions on any study that pits small teams of experts implementing a never-before-seen specification from scratch. more > HP Touts $600M from .NET Packages Looking to show that its $50 million software and services partnership with Microsoft is bearing fruit Hewlett-Packard said it has realized over $600 million in sales from the joint .NET initiative. That momentum amounts to more than 1 000 projects for nearly 700 customers worldwide claimed Nora Denzel senior vice president and general manager Adaptive Enterprise at HP who noted that the pact was not just a bunch of talk. more > Longhorn and Mono race for .net users Windows developers who want to move their applications and skills to other operating systems have had a limited choice in the past - develop in Java or rewrite source code to support different platforms’ APIs. Now the answer to application portability may have arrived from an unexpected source - Novell. Microsoft’s submission to the European Computer Manufacturers’ Association of specifications underlying its .net architecture was certainly an astute political move. The company had long suffered from accusations of proprietary marketing so submitting .net’s Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification was a way of silencing the critics. more > Longhorn Delayed Until 2006 The long delay for Longhorn just got longer. Microsoft Corp. said in a statement last month it will not deliver the next generation of the Windows operating system code-named Longhorn until 2006. It also acknowledged that the 2006 release will not include WinFS the XML-based storage subsystem previously touted as a key component of Longhorn. more > Microsoft: Study Shows Visual Studio .Net Tops WebSphere ORLANDO Fla.—Microsoft Corp. has commissioned a study showing that its .Net development environment is more productive than comparable Java environments a top company executive said at the VSLive! Orlando conference here. Microsoft Developer Division Corporate Vice President Soma Somasegar said Microsoft commissioned The Middleware Co. Inc. to study productivity and performance comparisons between Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net 2003 and IBM's WebSphere and other tools and Microsoft fared significantly better. more > Government Spending Boosts CSC's Earnings Sales in Europe and to the U.S. government drove double-digit growth in net income. Computer Sciences Corp. says strong European sales and increased spending by the federal government helped it post double-digit increases in net income and earnings per share for its fiscal first quarter. more > Macromedia ColdFusion to Get Feature-Rich Upgrade Macromedia Inc. has released some more details on the next release of its ColdFusion Web application development and deployment platform code-named Blackstone. The San Francisco company said it will formally announce ColdFusion Blackstone later this year and the product will ship early next year with several new features including new support for rich forms printing and reporting. more > SmartAdvice: Link Business Units With Common Architecture Empower your company with a defined enterprise information architecture The Advisory Council says. Also the pros and cons of using software and hardware emulation tools; and a review of network architecture means taking the big-picture view. more > Business Technology: From Offshore Outsourcing To Global Competitiveness Plenty of myths half-truths and misconceptions still swirl around the phenomenon of offshore outsourcing so Optimize magazine will explore this idea next month with a special issue featuring subject-matter experts discussing how the larger idea is one of global competitiveness. more > Mayo And IBM Search For Personalized Medicine Mayo Clinic and IBM are applying the kind of pattern recognition and data mining used to personalize direct marketing to health records to personalize treatment. Hoping to customize medical treatments to individual patients--such as picking the best chemotherapy for a colon cancer patient with a specific genetic marker--Mayo Clinic and IBM are trying to apply pattern recognition and data mining to electronic records of about 4.4 million Mayo patients. more > Opinion: Focus On RFID's Possibilities Manage The Pitfalls RFID's future in corporate application portfolios depends on companies leveraging RFID to improve their responsiveness and become more adaptive. But that will take time. Just as we gave the bar code time to mature we must demonstrate the same level of patience with RFID and its technology suppliers more > SmartAdvice: Customer Education Key Part Of Anti-Phishing Protection Educating customers to safeguard personal information helps prevent phishing thefts and builds loyalty The Advisory Council says. Also test to make sure systems are compatible with upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 release; and follow code-review practices to make sure your developers write secure code. more > SEC Gets Closer To XBRL Standard eliminates duplication of effort in preparing documents in different formats The Securities and Exchange Commission may soon permit filings to be submitted using the Extensible Business Reporting Language an XML-based markup language for tagging data in financial statements. The SEC is considering letting companies use XBRL to file financial data beginning with the 2004 calendar-year-end reporting season. more > Apple's CEO Steve Jobs Has Cancer Surgery In an E-mail message to employees he said he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas but expects a full recovery. SAN JOSE Calif. (AP) -- As Steve Jobs began his recovery from cancer surgery the charismatic chief executive of Apple Computer Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios took care to reassure employees friends and investors that he expects a full recovery more > Gartner Outlines Growth For IT Services Market By 2008 China is expected to become the second largest IT services market in the Asia-Pacific region. The IT services market is forecast to reach $762.3 billion by 2008 up from $608.1 billion in 2004 according to a report released by Gartner Dataquest. North American companies are expected to contribute $337.1 billion of that in 2008 up from $268.5 billion this year. more > Paving The Way For Web Services Service-oriented architectures let companies lay the foundation for software that is fast to write easy to integrate and runs on a range of platforms. EXP Pharmaceutical Services Corp. is in the business of collecting drugs that have exhausted their shelf lives at hospitals doctors' offices or drugstores--and destroying them. That way potent drugs don't find their way onto the black market. EXP also ships drugs back to manufacturers for a refund or credit to the purchasers who eagerly await word of their reimbursements. more > Data-Driven Hospitality Hilton's customer-data system tells the people who need to know who the best--and occasionally the worst--customers are John Fiorendino a classic road warrior who spends more than 200 nights a year on the road as senior director of global business development for Hitachi Data Systems is very clear on what it is hotels still get wrong. His short list: coffee that tastes like yesterday desk chairs that double as instruments of torture and shower curtains covered with grime. Business technology might not seem to have a role in preventing slimy shower curtains. But there's much within the hotel industry that stretches the mind--such as the fact that Hilton Hotels Corp. has learned that customers are more satisfied when they have a problem and the hotel staff takes care of it than if the stay goes flawlessly more > Lydian Trust: It’s the application framework “What we’re doing is building an app framework ” said John Stoddard CIO at Lydian Trust. “We include all of the basic functionalities security auditing Web-based schema validation self-documenting interfaces and even subscription capabilities where you can make a Web service so that if a request comes in it sets up a virtual tollbooth for every request that comes in.” more > Lydian Trust: It’s the application framework “What we’re doing is building an app framework ” said John Stoddard CIO at Lydian Trust. “We include all of the basic functionalities security auditing Web-based schema validation self-documenting interfaces and even subscription capabilities where you can make a Web service so that if a request comes in it sets up a virtual tollbooth for every request that comes in.” more > Safeway Turns To Velosel To Get Kinks Out Of Supply Chain The retailer is using Velosel's Collaborative Product Information Management tool to optimize its data-synchronization efforts When Safeway Inc. looked for a long-term strategic software partner that would not Band-Aid longstanding problems in its business process but instead help to reengineer them to drive efficiencies in the supply chain VP of supply chain Linda Nordgren tapped into Velosel Corp. for its Collaborative Product Information Management tool to optimize the company's data-synchronization efforts more > Fair Isaac's 3Q Profits Decline The credit-rating service and credit-analysis software supplier said revenue was up about 6% but net income was down almost 4%. Fair Isaac Corp. the credit-rating service and credit-analysis software supplier reported $28.8 million net income or 39 cents a share in its third quarter ended June 30 a decline from $30 million or 40 cents per share a year ago. more > Government IT Sales Boost Northrop Grumman The defense contractor posted double-digit gains in sales and net income largely due to increased sales of IT services to the government. more > Review: OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework If you've been sucked into watching the Food Network you surely know Emeril Lagasse and his trademarked kick it up a notch! That's the image that this product brings to mind for me. Even though the .NET Compact Framework is an absolutely fabulous environment for developing mobile applications (especially if you ever tried to do anything serious in previous PocketPC development tools) the addition of this open source application framework really kicks things up a notch. more > Review: OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework If you've been sucked into watching the Food Network you surely know Emeril Lagasse and his trademarked kick it up a notch! That's the image that this product brings to mind for me. Even though the .NET Compact Framework is an absolutely fabulous environment for developing mobile applications (especially if you ever tried to do anything serious in previous PocketPC development tools) the addition of this open source application framework really kicks things up a notch. more > Biometric Passports Pushed Back Legislation to push back the deadline requiring countries in the State Department's Visa Waiver program to issue the passports awaits President Bush's signature. Legislation that would extend by one year an October deadline requiring that 21 countries in the State Department's Visa Waiver program to begin issuing passports equipped with chips containing digital facial-recognition images or fingerprints awaits President Bush's signature after gaining unanimous approval from the Senate last week. The idea is that the biometric information stored in the chip could be compared against fingerprints or digital photos taken as foreigners enter the United States to verify that the holder of the passport is in fact the person to whom it was issued. more > Cape Clear officially joins ESB party Never underestimate the power of a name -- or in this case a category. Now that the enterprise service bus (ESB) has been officially identified by IT industry watchers life is a little easier for companies like Cape Clear Software. more > Fast Tracking Health-Care Tech Change Feds present framework but industry just starts to embrace standards. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson last week declared this the decade of health-information technology as the government presented a framework for transforming health care using IT. But at a health summit in Washington where Thompson spoke it was hard to find anyone who'd be satisfied if it takes that long to make major progress. more > Whose Web service is it anyway? If SOA is going to move from academic to practical application developers will need better mechanisms for managing identity issues from single-sign-on to service-level agreements said Ian Goldsmith VP product marketing at Digital Evolution. more > Mainframes And Services Bolster IBM The company posted solid second-quarter increases in revenue and net income thanks to gains in mainframe sales and several new services deals. more > Mainframes And Services Bolster IBM The company posted solid second-quarter increases in revenue and net income thanks to gains in mainframe sales and several new services deals. more > IBM Exec: Big Will Get Bigger Senior VP Steven Mills says the company's acquisition of Alphablox is an example of how IBM continues to build out its middleware offerings for business. more > Flash Memory Lifts AMD's Bottom Line Chipmaker returns to profitability as it reports strong second-quarter earnings. more > Supply-Chain Inefficiencies Exact Huge Toll A Yankee Group report says the consumer-product and retail industries are on track to lose $40 billion this year because of weak links in their supply chains. more > Intel's Net Income Nearly Doubles The chipmaker says profits rose 96% from the year-ago quarter thanks to stronger-than-expected demand for the flash memory chips used in cell phones. more > Regan Pays Price For Loyalty Connecticut's CIO is one of seven state officials replaced by new Gov. Jodi Rell though he says he's been asked to stay on to help with the transition. more > eBay courts developers eBay has expanded its developer program to include members of a newly formed 'affiliate tier ' significantly broadening its support for builders of third-party applications for the eBay platform executives told attendees of the annual eBay developers conference last week in New Orleans. more > Logistics Providers Ready RFID Services DHL Solutions expands RFID service to help customers across Europe with deployments European customers of DHL Solutions' logistics service now can call on the company to handle their radio-frequency identification tagging requirements. DHL this month expanded to companies across Europe its TagFIT RFID service which it had been offering only to Metro AG's top 100 suppliers to help them meet the retailer's RFID-compliance mandate. more > Corporate Cost Controls Push Up Cognos Profit Expanding use of business-intelligence tools is boosting the bottom line at Cognos Inc. which last week reported a 62% increase in net income for the quarter ended May 31. Revenue for the period rose 15% from a year earlier. more > Billion-Dollar Bet SAP's future began on a cold February day in 2002 during the company's annual retreat at Sylt an island in the North Sea just off the coast of Germany. There dozens of SAP executives first saw a technology that ultimately will replace almost all the code and logic underscoring SAP's existing and extremely successful applications portfolio. The architect: Shai Agassi a 36-year-old Israeli who's been with the company for just four years. more > Microsoft Fujitsu Expand Alliance On 64-bit Windows Servers Services Microsoft announced a major expansion of its alliance with global partner Fujitsu Limited as it tries to drive more mainframe-class Windows-based Itanium servers into the mainstream. more > Oracle's Profits Up Despite PeopleSoft Lawsuit Oracle's legal fight to take over PeopleSoft continued last week in a San Francisco courtroom but the federal antitrust filing hasn't diminished its appeal to customers as businesses open their coffers to buy the vendor's database and enterprise software. more > Business Technology: Microsoft's Strategic Biz-Process Shift Can Microsoft be a major player in the complex and sophisticated market for high-end enterprise applications? Bob Evans thinks Microsoft's recent and huge emphasis on weaving business-process expertise and flexibility into its code and its services is proof that the company has very ambitious plans in this $25 billion market. more > Visual Studio openness and arrogance Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 isn't in beta yet but that hasn't kept them from making lots of code available to outside testers already. The Community Technical Preview builds have provided early (and somewhat buggy) exposure to changes coming as Visual Studio .NET nears its next incarnation. But coupled with other Microsoft community efforts they've also made it easier for outside developers to find out what's coming - and to disagree with it. A few examples that have come out in recent weeks: more > Sales And Profits Jump At Progress Software The business-software vendor says 2Q sales were up 17% while net income jumped 21% thanks to a big jump in software license revenue. Progress Software Corp. riding a 36% surge in software license revenue on Thursday reported a 17% sales increase to $90.8 million in its second quarter ended May 31. Net income rose 21% from the same period a year ago to $8.1 million. more > Good Times Keep Rolling At Oracle The software maker in court over its hostile bid for PeopleSoft posted a 15% rise in 4Q net income--its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth. Oracle's legal fight to take over PeopleSoft hasn't diminished its appeal to customers as businesses continue to open their wallets for new technology. more > Microsoft Releases Two Patches For June Both were rated as Moderate the second-lowest rating on the company's four-step system. For the second month in a row Microsoft's list of security bulletins and patches was relatively short--just a pair both rated Moderate were released Tuesday. The vulnerability most likely to affect businesses lies in a flaw within software from partner Business Objects that's distributed with several Microsoft products including Visual Studio .Net 2003 Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager (included in the Small Business and Professional Editions of Office 2003) and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM 1.2. more > Taking Stock: Intuition Says Intuit May Not Be A Bargain We're almost halfway through the year and technology stocks have gone nowhere. Well that's not entirely true. First the Nasdaq composite was up 7.5% in late January in a continuation of the strong bull market of 2003. Then came the sell-off as interest rates rose from very low levels. Some stocks have performed considerably worse though. Intuit falls into this category after declining almost 27% so far this year. Is that opportunity my cynical bloodhound nose smells? more > Microsoft And SAP Say They Talked Merger Last Year Citing disclosure of confidential information in the Oracle-PeopleSoft trial Microsoft acknowledges it initiated merger talks with SAP. Microsoft and SAP had preliminary discussions late last year about a potential merger the companies revealed Monday. In a statement Microsoft said it initiated the talks with the German software company to explore the possibility of a merger. The discussions ended a few months ago Microsoft said due to the complexity of the potential transaction and the subsequent integration. There are no intentions of resuming the talks the company added. more > IBM Releases Test Version Of Corporate Search Tool The upgrade to DB2 Information Integrator code-named Masala is designed to make it easier for users to wade through business data. IT shops can now get their hands on the beta version of the forthcoming upgrade to IBM's DB2 Information Integrator. The product code-named Masala is scheduled for full release early in the fourth quarter an IBM spokesman says. The beta version was released Monday. more > One man's spam fight A while back Microsoft announced the Coordinated Spam Reduction Initiative which aims to severely reduce spam over the next several years. So far the CSRI has put out a bunch of ideas but hasn't actually released any software. Fortunately it's possible to put a severe dent in your spam without waiting. more > Sears Outsources IT Infrastructure To CSC The 10-year deal is valued at $1.6 billion. Sears Roebuck and Co. is hiring Computer Sciences Corp. to provide support services for its IT infrastructure under a 10-year $1.6 billion contract revealed Monday. more > BEA The Middleware Co. create SOA blueprints BEA Systems and The Middleware Company (TMC) have jointly published a set of 'blueprints' for developing and implementing applications that use Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) the two companies disclosed last week. more > Report Says IT Hiring Should Remain Positive Due To Business Growth A study by Robert Half Technology says only 3% of CIOs surveyed expect to pare staff in the third quarter while 8% expect to add workers and most will remain unchanged. The number of CIOs looking to increase their IT staff is forecast to dip in the third quarter but hiring should remain positive because of expected business growth a recruiting company said Tuesday. more > Sometimes Microsoft can keep a secret Microsoft is set to release the 2.0 version of its Web Services Enhancements for .NET (WSE or as the Microsofties pronounce it ''wizzy'') at the company's TechEd 2004 conference in San Diego which runs May 23-28. more > Defection: Microsoft Proponent Moves To Linux 'Suppose I upgrade to Windows 2003 and Windows XP. What would I be able to do then that I can't do with my current boxes? Nothing. I don't need all of the collaborative features ' Hentzen says. Since its inception more than a decade ago Linux has held a special appeal for small businesses because of its low startup cost kernel stability and communal approach to problem solving. It was so attractive that Whil Hentzen an eight-time recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Programmer Award has for the past two years been converting most of his company's Windows systems to open source. more > Ballmer: ITýýýs Potenial Untapped New MS Tools On Tap Steve Ballmer opened Microsoft's annual TechEd conference in San Diego on Monday promoting the need for business and technology people to think aggressively about the untapped potential of information technology. Microsoft's CEO then drilled into the nitty gritty of getting it done announcing Web services advances and new tools designed to help different kinds of IT professionals collaborate during the lifecycle of Visual Studio applications more > BEA Turns To Open Source To Boost Sales It plans to work with the open-source community to develop a better framework for building software. BEA Systems Inc. looking to boost sales by reaching more developers said Wednesday that it plans to work with the open-source community to develop a simpler framework for building software. more > Cisco to hire 1 000 in U.S. Silicon Valley seems to be getting a taste of the good old days. With the highly publicized Google IPO looming large industry bellwether Cisco Systems last week announced plans to hire 1 000 workers. The San Jose Mercury News characterized the plan as the ''biggest surge in its workforce since the Internet boom.'' more > The Cost Of Spam Spam is starting to cost businesses a substantial amount of money. A study released last week by technology-research firm Radicati Group says an organization with 10 265 employees that doesn't use spam filtering loses $2 923.20 per user per year or a total of $30 million annually in terms of E-mail productivity. The survey of 15 businesses representing 155 375 users indicates that after adopting anti-spam technology the average company reduced its annual loss to $4.8 million a difference of $25.2 million. With a total cost of ownership for anti-spam systems coming to $521.32 per person a year over three years the net savings comes to $19.9 million. more > Microsoft Looks For Gold In Search The software behemoth has used its strength money and reach to go from underdog to top dog on everything from Internet browsers to digital content players. Now its attention turns to the growing field of search with a broad-based push that extends from its dominant Windows operating system to its MSN online division. more > SAP Puts Its Money On Web Services The software maker will include NetWeaver its new computing engine based on Web services in all applications it ships. Every application SAP ships from now on will include a native version of NetWeaver its new computing engine based on Web services. By 2007 SAP will have retooled its entire software suite to run on NetWeaver and what SAP calls its Enterprise Services Architecture. And the German software vendor is redoubling its efforts to get NetWeaver in the hands of its customers promising that by year's end there will be 1 000 happy customers who can talk about the benefits they've achieved from the technology. more > Two Roads Ahead Every few years it's time for developers to take stock and decide where to put their efforts for the future. For the last decade or so I've been following along as Microsoft releases new versions of Windows and the odds are that you have been doing the same. After all that's been the safe choice. But for the next round it looks like there are more than ever two paths to follow. more > Worms Are Big Business For Antivirus Vendors Virus and worm attacks that increasingly plagued Internet users over the past year have proven profitable for Symantec Corp. and Network Associates Technology Inc. The two leading antivirus software makers last week reported strong growth in antivirus software sales citing persistent virus and worm outbreaks as largely driving that growth. However their market leadership may come under fire in coming quarters as other vendors move into this market. more > SAP development strategies: NetWeaver this way comes No company has come to better represent the idea of enterprise applications than SAP AG headquartered in Walldorf Germany. Today more than 20 000 companies run more than 64 500 installations of SAP software for their back-office infrastructure. The lion's share of those installations are SAP's R/2 and R/3 ERP systems. When big companies talk about integrating applications today there is usually an SAP application in there somewhere. more > A review of RMTrack 2.0 and Cape Clear SOA Editor 4.8 I reviewed RMTrack 1.2 last fall. Now that they have their 2.0 version out I figured it was time for another look. It remains a very customizable ASP.NET-based bug-tracking system that should be adaptable to nearly any organization's needs. more > Wanted: A brain the size of a planet I recently took the beta versions of Microsoft's upcoming Application Security exams on the MCAD.NET/MCSD.NET track (70-330 for VB .NET and 70-340 for C#). They were to be frank brutal. I've been taking MS certification exams for more than a decade now (isn't it time to retire yet?) and usually I leave the test center knowing that I passed. This time around I was wrung out and I'm still not sure what the score report will say when it comes back in a month or two. more > E-Trade Eases Funds Transfer Online Brokerage E-Trade Financial Corp. has licensed Yodlee Inc.'s Instant Account Verification software to let customers view account information from multiple banks at a single Web page and make funds transfers in real time. more > InfoWorld TechWatch: Microsoft holds out olive branch on Java Microsoft may not exactly embrace Java but the company is at least making strides toward accommodation. In attending recent Microsoft developer conferences including the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in September and VSLive last week I searched in vain on the agendas for something anything to do with acknowledging Java as a force in development other than sessions on how to migrate Java programs over to .Net more > SwiftNet Speeds Data Exchange Upgraded IP messaging system lets banks share information faster more securely and less expensively more > SmartAdvice: Define Data-Center Needs Before Selecting Hosting Solution Outsourcing your company's data-center management can be cost-effective but make sure you first understand the options The Advisory Council says. Also compare J2EE and .Net for building distributed service-oriented applications and learn how to become a player in organizational politics. more > New Security Imperative: Demonstrating Results IT professionals will soon be challenged to prove in measurable ways the value of their information security efforts measured by impact and results. Dealing-even successfully-with crises management plans and budget requirements will no longer be enough. more > E-Commerce Results Please Most Retailers Not only has internet shopping become mainstream for consumers most executives are pleased with their companies' investments in E-commerce. more > News Analysis: Sun-Microsoft deal: Now for the hard part The surprise announcement last week of an agreement between arch-rivals Sun Microsystems and Microsoft Corp. to settle their long-running legal dispute seems to herald a new era of cooperation and enhanced interoperability between widely implemented technologies which both firms hope can make life easier for enterprisedevelopers. more > Macromedia ships Flex rich interface server Macromedia has finally begun shipping Flex its much-anticipated presentation server and application framework for enterprise developers. The product has been in beta since November 2003 and began shipping last week. more > Outsourcing Isn't All Bad Offshore outsourcing of U.S. tech jobs sends some jobs overseas but it's creating jobs too. Growing economies are consuming economies Roy Dunbar president of international operations at Eli Lilly & Co. said last week at InformationWeek's Spring Conference. Yet recent research paints an uncertain picture of the net U.S. impact. more > .NET controls set to go NetAdvantage 2004 Volume 1 is the latest release from Infragistics a publisher of presentation layer development tools for Microsoft Windows Forms ASP.NET Tablet PC COM and Java platforms. The company is billing the new version of its flagship product as the ultimate presentation layer toolset for building commercial-class user interfaces with the look and feel of the latest Microsoft-style applications. That phrase may be a bit of marketing hyperbole but in my experience with the toolset -- which I use daily -- it's also pretty accurate. more > Too much too soon? How fast can Microsoft change technologies? More importantly how fast can developers learn and exploit the new technologies that Microsoft produces? Take building GUIs for instance. Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and Visual Basic 6 were the Windows standards for this in the pre-.NET era. When the .NET Framework shipped in early 2002 Microsoft told us to start building new app GUIs using Windows Forms instead. Windows Forms is an improvement on these earlier technologies and it also provides a common approach for any .NET Framework-based language so the change counts as progress. more > Noel-Levitz eases college recruitment process -- garners savings Competition among colleges and universities for the best and the brightest has never been stronger and institutions are always looking for an edge. It is the job of Noel-Levitz a unit of education funding provider SLM Corp. (better known as Sallie Mae) to provide that edge. The Littleton Colo.-based consultant has long aided university clients in student recruitment and retention financial aid market research publication and Web site development. more > Movin' on up IT job postings on dice.com have increased 16% overall since the beginning of the year providing more encouraging news that the job market is recovering. Demand is particularly building for web and web services pros as Perl .NET and XML are the fastest growing skills employers are seeking. more > In Short: Aprimo Builds Suite On .Net Platform Aprimo Inc. which makes marketing-management software for tasks such as lead generation and financial planning this week will release a version of its suite that's sold in modules based on function. The new approach provides customers with more purchasing options. It's also the first Aprimo release to be built entirely on the Microsoft .Net platform. VP of marketing Joe Meyer says the .Net architecture has improved the performance and scalability of Aprimo's software. Pricing for a five-person deployment of three to four Aprimo modules starts at about $125 000. more > Development Highlights from Around the Web Best of the Web Latest Additions: Generate dynamic content based on referring URL From Designplace.org: This string-battering tutorial demonstrates how to take the referring URL string and break it up with a view to generating dynamic content based on where the user came to that page from. more > Building Java .Net Apps Sans Coding A small but growing software company is rolling out a major upgrade that lets developers build standards-based Java and .Net applications with no coding. Kinzan Inc. this week will release Kinzan Studio & Server 4.0 a development and deployment environment that lets developers build enterprise applications through an assembly model by simply linking components in a drag-and-drop format. more > Web Power: More Interaction Equals More Value Paint manufacturer Behr Process Corp. saw an opportunity to use technology to make paint shopping online and in stores a whole lot easier for consumers. The company also wanted to offer highly interactive capabilities such as very quickly making slight changes of color or finding coordinating shades that stretched the limits of what many Web-development tools could do. more > Windows & .NET Watch: Dramatic Changes The first releases of the .NET Framework emphasized the similarities of languages adhering to the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). The ease with which one could move between programming in the 1.x versions of Visual Basic .NET and C# was startling. On more than one occasion I’ve opened some sample code or misclicked in the “New Project” dialog and found myself using a language different from the one I expected but just shrugged and got on with the task at hand. In the “Whidbey” release of the .NET SDK now in the hands of Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference attendees and MSDN subscribers the theme is language divergence. more > Modeling for .NET Modeling and software design are once again riding a wave of popularity at least in some limited circles. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) and recently the Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) have gained notoriety in the industry and the idea of better design up front clearly has interest. But the clamor around modeling does not always seem to encompass the .NET space. As much as any others what .NET programmers want most is to just code. But modeling improvements are proceeding on planet .NET at the same pace as on planet Java. more > In search of a gentler Java Corporate managers bought into J2EE technology and tools in a big way. Now faced with the difficult task of building complex enterprise Java applications they worry if they can find enough skilled Java programmers. For their part Java tool vendors are trying to bring out tools that make J2EE much easier to use. *********** more > Whidbey First Look Well we've been talking about Whidbey -- the next version of Visual Studio .NET -- for months now. At the PDC this year Microsoft handed out DVDs with early code to attendees. They also made them available to any MSDN subscriber who wants a copy (drop by the subscriber downloads page for details; you actually need to call customer service on the phone to get a copy). I've got mine and after various travails got it installed on a test box. more > Why Web services aren't just a rerun Web services can seem too good to be true. After decades of disagreement all of the major vendors have finally bought into a common approach to connecting applications. It's hard not to harbor some doubts about whether this technology will live up to its promise. Why should we believe that Web services will usher in ubiquitous connections between applications when every previous attempt has failed? The most often-cited counterexample is the OMG's Common Object Request Broker (CORBA) which shared many of the goals that Web services strive for today. more > NET Progress Worries Java Eighteen months ago many analysts (including me) felt that .NET and C# would face a daunting challenge in the quest for acceptance and adoption. We felt that if Microsoft would ever enjoy a success with these products it would be through the same method with which it established Windows: initial limited adoption followed by a continuous stream of releases that tweaked the product until it was adoptable. Meanwhile the company would lubricate the product’s growth and acceptance with a pipeline of marketing cash. *********** more > Microsoft Partner Conference: Security First Then the Longhorn Wave At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2003 late last week in New Orleans various Microsoft executives and representatives discussed the company's long- and short-term plans focusing primarily on security. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn't mention Longhorn once during his keynote address preferring to discuss more pertinent topics such as security partnering customers and why the company doesn't promote specific features of its products but rather concentrates on a whole that's greater than its parts. I really want to spend a lot of my time on the number-one issue that I'm hearing from our joint customers because if we understand ... both the [security] threat and the opportunity that it represents I think it's going to help ... all of us perform better in our own businesses and in service of our customers Ballmer said. more > Borland joins Together and .NET Borland has expanded its Together analysis and design tools with the unveiling last week of Together Edition for Visual Studio .NET which company reps say can provide architects and developers with a clear view of software development. “The solution is not a portal for Java or J2EE solutions; it’s really a native C# offering ” said Michael Faisst director of product management and product marketing for Borland’s Together Solutions group formed following Borland’s acquisition of TogetherSoft last year. The idea he said is to allow two normally separate groups to see projects in the same way. more > Borland IBM team for .Net apps Borland Software Corp. and IBM are teaming to boost development of database applications for Microsoft Corp.'s .Net Framework. The agreement between the two companies to be announced Thursday is intended to provide customers with offerings for developing and managing the application life cycle for .Net without vendor lock-in according to Borland and Microsoft. Officials at Microsoft and Scotts Valley Calif.-based Borland both said that momentum is growing for .Net. more > Straight Talk on Windows Migration Although the prospect of migrating to a new operating system can be daunting the more informed you and your team are the easier the move will be. .NET Magazine executive editor Elise M. Peterson sat down recently with Ronnie Blewer senior product manager for NetIQ Corp. to get his advice on ways to approach the process. He also addressed common misconceptions and discussed how NetIQ's administration and identity-management products can come into play. more > Simplify application deployment You want app deployment in your enterprise to go smoothly. That means ensuring the essential elements to support the product are in place which isn't always easy especially in a mass deployment. To simplify the process Wise for Windows Installer produces Microsoft Installer (MSI) installation packages which automate some of the steps you'd otherwise do manually. Wise for Windows Installer supports deployment to various platforms including .NET Win32 Palm OS and Pocket PC. Other features include the capability to configure Internet Information Services (IIS) a share point for team-based installation development support for SQL Server scripting assembly dependency checking and the ability to deploy application updates over the Web with WebDeploy and WiseUpdate. more > Q&A: SOAP gains traction SOAP message processing and interop and that goes across the board. Actually it’s more than just IBM and Microsoft it’s the Java world as well as other worlds that exist out there. There are Lisp implementations for instance that are finding interop as well as WSDL and the WS-I basic profile they’ve defined. There are about a 100 partners if not more collectively collaborating on profiling how you do interoperability of SOAP WSDL and the basic Web services protocol. There are also numerous implementations deployed based on that interoperability. more > Q&A: Microsoft’s Jim Allchin on the Longhorn timetable Longhorn is the code name for the next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system and the company often refers to the “Longhorn time frame” when discussing Windows and various associated products. But company officials have gotten increasingly sketchy about just when that time frame is. During an interview last week with Computerworld Jim Allchin group vice president of platforms confirmed that the target date for the next version of the Windows client operating system is still sometime in 2005. Allchin also discussed the philosophy behind the company’s operating system plans as well as the next service pack for Windows XP which is due next year. more > .NET & Beyond: One more time: What exactly is .NET I know marketing people who think that creating confusion in the minds of customers is a good thing. “If they’re confused ” one of them told me “they’ll need to come to us to get things cleared up.” Interesting reasoning I suppose but I don’t think it’s likely to be very successful. Your current customers might come in for a clarifying consultation but don’t expect many new prospects to turn up. If I’m confused about what you’re offering how do I know whether I want it or not? more > Microsoft plans to synch tools revisions with key When Microsoft’s .NET initiatives began it was Visual Studio (VS) and soon thereafter Visual Studio .NET that careered the architecture forward. The platforms to run the new .NET apps came later -- too much later for some developer groups. With this and other issues foremost Microsoft has let it be known that future versions of Visual Studio are to be more closely tied to new releases of the Microsoft platform mainstays -- SQL Server Office and Windows Server. This is according to a product roadmap announced at the VSLive! Conference in New York last week. more > .NET & Beyond: Why there’s no business case for Web services At a Web services conference earlier this year I sat through a talk titled “The Business Case for Web Services.” After listening to the speaker for nearly an hour I realized that he wasn’t addressing anything close to what his title suggested. When I thought about it the reason for his omission was obvious: He wasn’t talking about the business case for Web services because there is no business case for Web services. While we in IT are rightfully excited about these technologies businesspeople just don’t care about them. Here’s why. more > Maturing Java Gives Developers a Respite Java is a mature technology. In the eyes of many enterprises J2SE and J2EE are reasonably well-understood specifications with well-established brand names. Experienced Java programmers are readily available. And while few businesses are building or deploying applications on the embedded version of Java J2ME the technology has gained an early lead in the mobile device market with deeper and broader penetration than the handheld-centric Windows CE and Palm OS. more > |
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