Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff | September 2006

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September 2006

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Friday Five: Firefox extension resources

Check out these lists and resources for extensions that will let you do everything from block ads to blog about a page or check the weather.

1. Firefox Add-ons

2. The Extensions Room

3. The Extensions Mirror

4. If you have Greasemonkey, go to Userscripts.org for tons of scripts.

5. Find scripts based on the problem you want to solve at eConsultant.com's list

Alas, the Abe Vigoda Watch plugin is no longer available.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 29, 2006 04:59 PM

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: WebAssist eases Dreamweaver e-commerce dev

You might think that sophisticated e-stores are back-ended by elaborate applications like Microsoft's Commerce Server. While that's true in some cases, there are about 85,000 developers building great e-commerce sites with Adobe Dreamweaver and WebAssist's eCart extension. This potent combination provides coders with point-and-click, fully customizable shopping carts.

The just-released $249.99 eCart 3.7 ($199.99 until Oct. 10) takes the shopping experience to a new level, while still shielding developers from the hard work. As previously, you merely drag shopping cart components from the eCart Dreamweaver Behaviors panel to the desired spot on your ASP, ColdFusion, or PHP pages.

One significant new feature lets you select PayPal Website Payments Pro for checkout. Many merchants will find this important because there's one transaction rate for all payments and low monthly fees. Importantly, users don't have to leave the main site for payment processing with credit cards. In all, eCart now supports 35 checkout methods and eight merchant gateways, including PayPal Standard, LinkPoint, and WorldPay.

A separate new component, Digital File Pro ($99.99), securely delivers digital goods (software, pay-per-view, and digital assets) through your shopping carts. Again, there's no heavy coding involved - but excellent flexibility, such as restricting downloads to authorized users within a date range or limiting the number of downloads.

If you're still unsure about eCart 3.7, WebAssist offers a $19.99 monthly subscription (plus a one-time $19.99 activation fee). As with the purchased software, there's no limit on the number of online stores you can build. This subscription option, plus high quality support I've always received from WebAssist, is more reason for getting eCart 3.7 to polish your commerce websites in time for the fast-approaching holiday buying season.

For more information, go to www.webassist.com.

Posted by Mike Heck on September 29, 2006 11:51 AM

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

SIP-based VoIP devices proliferating

SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) continues to gain traction among hardware and software vendors in the VoIP (voice over IP) industry.

This week Codima Technologies, designers of network management tools, announced that it has extended the platform support in its Codima Toolbox to include Windows Server 2003. The new support enables Codima's VoIP tools to integrate directly with SIP servers running on Windows Server 2003.

Included in the toobox are simulation, monitoring, troubleshooting and mapping. Additional options include flow, RTP, and Path analyzers, plus remote management and asset management and mapping.

In the meantime, Paragon Wireless unveiled this week its HiPi-2200 cell phone that will include what it claims to be the first SIP-based Windows dual-mode device.

The 2200 features a WLAN to GSM switching technology and will include the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

Finally in the fourth quarter SMC Networkswill ship a SIP-based desktop VoIP handset and an IP PBX.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on September 29, 2006 11:27 AM

September 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Microsoft, security vendor?

Should Microsoft be in the security biz? The Big Redmondian Machine gets an arguably deserved bad wrap for inadequate security in Windows. Yet Security Adviser Roger Grimes notes that some critics wonder whether it's fair for company to reap profits selling tools to fix the holes it's responsible for opening in the first place. Grimes runs through Microsoft array of security offerings, then expresses mixed feelings on the matter. Among them: "As long as Microsoft is not anti-competitive -- pushing its computer defense choices over other vendors' in an illegal way -- additional choices are a good thing."

Webinars on the cheap: The InfoWorld Test Center is continuing to build on this here Weblog, adding not only product announcements but also previews and hands-on reviews we think you'll be interested in. Take, for example, Mike Heck's look at Citrix's GoToWebinar product: It's easy to use, has an impressive feature set (save for video), and it's remarkably inexpensive. Stay tuned to the Test Center Daily for more product evaluations from our expert analysts.

Sweet, sweet CRM: Speaking of product reviews, Matt Asay over in the Open Source blog has developed a real sweet tooth for SugarCRM 4.5. "First off, it's absolutely beautiful to look at. The UI has been seriously upgraded - Ajax and such, with dashlets that let me heavily customize my home "portal." It's also much, much easier to add custom fields - it's all drag-and-drop now...." Tasty!

Posted by Ted Samson on September 29, 2006 06:00 AM

September 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Virtual Security served with virtual lunch

Somehow I missed the free lunch, but I still got my fill at the Virtual Security Roundtable hosted by Intel and Symantec yesterday at Intel Developer Forum. The free sandwich was designed to lure journalists into learning about the dire threat of "safeguard disabling," whereby a hacker or a Trojan horse attack, or even an employee or software patch, turns off personal firewalls or anti-virus protections.

Intel and Symantec shared data from a recent survey of IT security managers at large companies. The data showed that, sure enough, nearly all of these folks registered some level of "concern" about safeguard disabling. You have to wonder about those who didn't.

More interesting is the way that Symantec, with a big boost from the virtualization capabilities in Intel's Core 2 Duo processor, plans to address this and other threats to the business desktop. In a nutshell, Symantec will make use of a "trusted hypervisor" to insert its intrusion prevention technology into a slim, protected partition that boots ahead of the user's operating system. Symantec says the embedded IPS "appliance" will scan and filter network traffic before it reaches the host, and will even isolate an infected host from the network to quarantine threats.

Symantec Virtual Security Solution was announced in April alongside the Intel vPro technology, but like yesterday's sandwich, it slipped right past me. Company reps said Virtual Security would be available first half of 2007 and would support Windows CE and a variety of other embedded operating systems. Symantec didn't reveal whether it would also be available for systems based on AMD processors, but of course this was Intel's show.

Finally, Symantec said Virtual Security was designed to protect a single user OS on a desktop system. But you have to wonder how soon we'll hear about a similar solution to protecting multiple virtual machines on a server.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 28, 2006 03:05 PM

September 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: Citrix hosts affordable online meetings

WebEx or Microsoft Live Meeting presenters know that creating and delivering online meetings isn't always straightforward -- and cost can be steep. In contrast, with one click, Citrix's GoToMeeting lets you conduct instant online demos. That same simple philosophy is behind the company's GoToWebinar online service -- which lets you hold unlimited seminars each month, with 1,000 attendees per event, for one low flat rate of $99 per month.

Beyond value and usability, GoToWebinar has an impressive feature set. There's free voice conferencing (toll-free is an option), polling and surveys, chat, Webinar recording, and a range of other functions, such as automated e-mail follow-up. That's all in addition to the basics, such as desktop and application sharing and multiple presenters.

While video would be nice, GoToWebinar leaves little else to be desired, and at an unbeatable price.

For more information, go to gotowebinar.com/podium.

Posted by Mike Heck on September 28, 2006 09:50 AM

September 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Recapping the Virtualization Executive Forum

Like being there... virtually: The first-ever InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum took place in New York this week, and if you missed it, David Marshall over at the Virtualization Report blog has a nifty recap. Watch this blog and the Virtualization Forum page for the slides from the forum's presentations. And check out our virtualiaiton report and reviews for more on how you can work this buzzwordy tech into your business.

Testing, one-two-three: Brian Chee and the ANCL lab rats have been busy -- he's got a look at Splunk 2.1 up on the Geeks in Paradise blog, as well as some nifty screenshots of Network General's NetVigil

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 28, 2006 06:00 AM

September 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Why more than four cores?

Chip wars: The saga continues: InfoWorld Chief Technologist Tom Yager chips away at the marketing mantra behind Intel's Core Microarchitecture. "Not terribly long from now, AMD could find itself cornered into explaining to non-gearhead buyers why AMD64 stayed put at 8 cores and 3.8GHz when Intel announces sixteen core, five GHz Core Microarchitecture CPUs with 2.5GHz front-side buses," he writes. "I want to tell AMD to keep to the high road and trust that the commercial market will come around as it did with Opteron." Yager argues that Intel (and AMD), with their newest chips, both should have stuck with four cores "and focused on fat and fast busses that give those cores something to fill instead of something to wait for."

Demofall goodies: Roving Editor at Large Paul Krill checked in to Demofall '06 and discovered nice array of tantalizing technological tidbits. Among them: "Void Communications' VaporStream is a Web-based hosted message service that eliminates all traces of a message once it has been read; readers can't even print it out or do a screen capture." Other exhibits included RingCube's MojoPac technology, which transforms an iPod or other USB storage device into a portable PC.

Pay as you print? Over in his SMB IT blog, Oliver Rist contemplates a new business model offered by some print vendors, such as Xerox. "It's like an all-in-one car lease. You get the printer(s), all the consumables and all maintenance from the manufacturer for a set monthly fee based on the manufacturer's assessment of your printing volume." That can save your company on the high costs of consumables, perhaps. Worth checking out? Let Oliver know.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 27, 2006 06:00 AM

September 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Interop news and software licensing

So long 'til next year: Another Interop show has come and gone, but some of the announcements and products at the New York show caught the eyes of our Test Center analysts. Brian Chee likes the conversion "doodads" from Transition Networks. Oliver Rist is still giddy about the storage possibilities of Iomega's REV 70 drive, but dishes about remote connection tech in the Emerging Enterprise podcast. Need more to satisfy your networking fix? We've got a slew of reviews in our Top Rated product listings.

License and registration, please: Remember when you paid for software based on the number of people using it? Or the number of processors running it? Well, the "good ol' days" are gone, thanks to dual-core processors, software as a service, and plenty of other innovations that are wreaking havoc with software licensing models. Check out our special report and find out how you'll have to pay for software in the (very near) future.

Recent Reviews: The Test Center adds a review of Vizioncore's esxRanger 2.0 to its virtualization bounty, marking this VM-backup plug-in as one to watch. And the speedy Mac Pro gets run through the gauntlet by Tom Yager, who likes the amount of storage that lies behind the desktop's pretty face.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 26, 2006 12:00 PM

September 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Foundry takes aim at smaller-scale biz

Foundry Networks has had a busy year. First, they rolled out the ServerIronGT high-end 10 Gigbit Ethernet switches in January. In late June, they pulled the covers off the mid-range ServerIron Plus appliances.

Now, they're taking a shot at smaller-scale enterprises with the ServerIron 4G family, announced last week at Interop and expected to be available in early October.

The ServerIron 4G and 4G-SSL put an emphasis on high-availability and security for Web-enabled apps at a lower price: according to Foundry, the switches come in $20,000 to $25,000 less than comparable switches from F5 and Cisco.

"From a performance standpoint, this switch will compare more to their midlevel products," says Gopala Tumuluri, director of product marketing for Foundry Networks.

"This is for the masses," he explains. "It's got very aggressive pricing [for a] full-featured application switch solution that's really targeting the mainstream enterprises for internal applications and small-scale external applications."

The new switches have redundant, hotswappable power supplies for failover protection, a dedicated processor for management and control and four ports for connectivity (hence the "4G" name), all copper and
fiber dual ports. This allows the "customer to never make a bad choice. However their network is designed, this can slide in pretty easily," says Tumuluri.

As more elite switch features, like integrated hardware for SSL acceleration, trickle down to smaller appliances, the main differentiators between Foundry's 4G switches and their larger brethren are traffic volume and number of users.

This isn't an SMB box, though. "Our primary target is enterprises of 1,000 or over," Tumuluri says, adding that the 4G appliances may be a good fit for remote offices that have apps and services requiring high performance and security features. "Even the very large enterprises may have some internal apps that are so small or used by so few groups in the organization, that they would benefit from a small switch like this."

Pricing for the ServerIron 4G starts at $11,995; the 4G-SSL, which includes SSL acceleration, comes in at $14,995.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 25, 2006 04:35 PM

September 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Storage Bridge Bay rounds up specs 1.0

Why should you be interested to know that today the SBB (Storage Bridge Bay) Working Group has quietly published version 1.0 of its specs?

I'll give you two reasons: reduced cost and improved flexibility of storage enclosures.

As you may remember, we first heard about SBB last Spring when founding members Dell, EMC, Intel and LSI announced their plans to create a set of commons specs to simplify the manufacturing of entry level and mid tier storage devices.

About six months later SBB counts more than 30 members, sorry, too many to list them all, while IBM, NetApp and Xyratex have also joined the Board. Why so much interest surrounding SBB?

Because, as many analysts indicate, SMBs is a yet unexploited market segment and bears the promise of increasing revenues for years to come.

However, competition in that space will be more focused on price/ performance ratio than on offering unique, hard to mimic features as it happens instead for the top tier.

Obviously, cutting production cost by adopting standard components as the SBB charter suggests, means being better aligned with other vendors' price list, hence more competitive or not less competitive.

Another interesting aspect of that market is that SMB customers are more inclined to choose from a variety of technologies, rather than pick from just a few as larger customers do. Therefore, storage devices with a modular structure, where for example it's easy to add a RAID controller or a power supply canister respond better to those requirements.

The first version of the SBB specs addresses topics such as the physical dimension of a controller board, and form factor and electrical characteristics to connect a controller to the enclosure backplane.

Boring topics? Perhaps, but you will probably change your mind if SBB specs bestow the ability of custom-configuring your storage enclosures with a variety of options.

Now that the specs are out other products and other vendors will follow, but for examples of SBB 1.0 compliant devices look at the Dell PowerVault MD1000 or at the IBM System Storage EXP3000 .

This first version of the specs is just a beginning, because SBB members have already begun working on a second version expected to complete next year, that will incorporate some recent technological innovations such as 6Gbps SAS, 4Gbps FC and 5Gbps PCIe components.

Perhaps the most convincing proof of the importance of SBB is that member vendors with licensed technologies are granting other vendors no fee licensing to develop compliant products if the other party returns a similar favor with its own licenses. How is this for collaboration?

Posted by Mario Apicella on September 25, 2006 10:36 AM

September 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Apple nibbling at the datacenter

Functional or forbidden enterprise fruit? There's a time and a place for everything, or so the saying goes. Is the time and place for Mac now and in the datacenter? InfoWorld Chief Technologist and Apple aficionadoTom Yager looks at the potentially potent additions of Leopard and Intel's 64-bit x86 chips to the mix as he attempts to debunk myths about Apple's corporate competency.

Planetation: InfoWorld Blogger in Chief Jon Udell had a podcast chat with Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Mexens Tech-nologies. In it, Houri talks about hopes of annotat-ing the planet (Earth) via the company's Navizon (a positioning system combining GPS, Wifi, and phone positioning). Specifically, users could "map the locations of both WiFi access points and cell towers. Then people using vast numbers of de-vices on WiFi or cellular networks can use location-aware applications without having to own GPS gear."

Open source doesn't get the picture: Succesful open-source software projects abound, but developers often struggle to enlist the artistic skills of graphic designer and illustrators to give their wares the aesthetic oomph the need to broaden their appeal. Are these visual artists too greedy to give freely of themselves? Nope, says Neil McCallister. Rather, they're just not familiar with open source because open source has can be, well, too ugly at times. "Have you seen the GIMP? While it's often billed as the "open source Photoshop," it lacks many of the tools that professional graphic designers need for print production. Even worse, its UI is about as handsome and user-friendly as a piranha. What self-respecting graphic artist could tolerate it?"

Posted by Ted Samson on September 25, 2006 06:00 AM

September 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Friday Five: Top five security challenges

In August InfoWorld and IDG Research Services Group surveyed 430 InfoWorld subscribers about the top security challenges they face. The threats they deemed most significant:

Employees underestimate the importance of following security policy (52% of respondents)
Increasing sophistication of attacks (51%)
Business executives underestimate the importance of following security policy (44%)
Budget too small to cover necessary security purchases (40%)
Increasing complexity of security solutions (39%) and increasing volume and complexity of network traffic (39%)

Other top concerns included mobile clients and unmanaged devices, wireless devices, an always-on environment, the patchwork nature of network security, and the lack of security experts within the company. Look for the full story in our October 30 issue.

Source: InfoWorld Security Research Report 2006.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 22, 2006 01:02 PM

September 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: The promise of virtualization

All virtualization, all the time:: The se-cret word in the Test Center this week has been virtualization. (So has the word exclusive, for that matter.) Paul Venezia got an exclusive opportunity to try out Scalent Virtual Operating Environment, a solution the company claims to be a truly adaptive datacenter. A bold promise? Perhaps, but the company has come pretty darn close. "Combined with a very attractive and usable Flash-based GUI, V/OE 2.0 is a glimpse of what a truly adaptive datacenter could look like."

Security at an unbeatable price:There may not be such a thing as a free lunch, but there such a thing as a free security tool, according to security-meister Roger A. Grimes. In fact, there's a bunch, and they're well worth the price of downloading (and more). You may not be seeing any nifty new freebies from Sysinternals, since Microsoft bought it a while back. However, Foundstone remains a great source. "Many of Foundstone's tools became instant computer security classics, such as Superscan (an excellent port scanner), Fport (a port enumerator), stress testing tools, and all sorts of malware scanners. These are programs and tools that Foundstone's own expert consultants and penetration testers use during security audits."

Live from Interop NYC: Geek-out-of-paradise Brian Chee isn't the only InfoWorld Test Center contributor at Interop NYC this week. Enterprise Windows columnist Oliver Rist couldn't resist the call of the network gear, either. Check out his Emerging Enterprise podcast from the event in which he talks about the state of the WAFS standard and shares some tips on hooking together near-remote sites with more than just T1 lines.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 22, 2006 06:00 AM

September 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Virtualization tech and Interop talk

Fresh from the Test Center: Our exclusive review of Surgient Virtual QA/Test Management System 5.0 is now online, and according to Contributing Editor Andrew Binstock's tests, this powerful test-lab automation software makes good use of virtualization technology. That power is tempered by complexity, however, so be prepared for a steep learning curve.

Interop-a-rama: Test Center Contributing Editor Brian Chee is at the Interop show in New York, working as part of the Interop NOC team to keep the show network up and running -- as well as getting his hands on some spiffy new technologies and seeing the sights on the show floor. He recently chatted with the CTO and vice president of marketing from WildPackets, a company that makes network monitoring and analysis products, and learned more about their open API project and future plans. Check out the Geeks in Paradise blog post for the full story. And stop by the Inside Interop blog if you're curious about what's going at the show and behind the scenes (they have nifty podcast interviews, too).

The password is "data security": There's much ado about data encryption these days, in the wake of so many lost laptops, lost tapes, and other scary instances of data leaks. Mario Apicella figures that the recent Sun and IBM data encryption technology announcements, promising as they may seem, won't plug all the security holes in a company. Jon Udell makes the point that sometimes you, yourself are the best possible data security monitor. That may be true, but IT can't police the entire organization with actual bodies unless your budget suddenly got super-super-sized -- so check out some of our data security reviews, such as Tablus Content Sentinel or these unified threat managment (UTM) boxes.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 21, 2006 06:00 AM

September 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google polishes its search boxes

Google has souped up its Google Search Appliance line, adding greater capacity and additional features.

Among them, the GB-5005 can now sift through 10 million documents; the GB-8008 can search over 30 million.

Additionally, the boxes offer date and number-range search, according to Google Search Product Manager Nitin Mangtani in the Google Enterprise Blog. "So now you can restrict your search to only those documents authored between say, January 1st and September 19th 2006. Similarly, when you're looking for that special Digital Camera, you can restrict your search to cameras in the $250 to $1000 price range."

Finally, Google has added administrative interfaces, product documentation, and search interface in an additional 10 languages, making the grand total 16. (That's Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.)

InfoWorld Senior Contributing Editor Mike Heck reviewed a Google appliance a while back, and we liked what we saw. Perhaps we're due for another.

Google Search Appliance start at $30,000. Updates for existing customers are available from the Google Support site.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 20, 2006 02:04 PM

September 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Exploring 10-Gig and beyond

What does 10-gig mean to me? Senior Contributing Editor Brian Chee knows networking, which is why he's a regular volunteer at Interop (currently going on now in New York). He had a chance to chat with Douglas Smith, the CEO of Network Instruments, who talked about 10GbE and the company's new across-the-product-line support for it.

I've seen the future, and it's accessibility: Tom Yager's column is aptly named "Ahead of the Curve," because that's where InfoWorld's chief technologist spends much of his time. Fortunately, he checks in with those of us rooted in the past to share observations and insights. This week, Tom ponders the evolution of information technology. "As I understand it, IT will be able to look into the future. It will tell you when someone is embezzling or committing fraud within your company well before you have to hire private investigators. It will keep every professional and, eventually, every person in real-time contact with specific information that changes dynamically."

9 steps for building a small data closet: Whales and minnows need blood to run; enterprises and small businesses both need data. If your company lacks the size and cash to invest in a pricey data center, fear not: Senior Contributing Editor Oliver Rist has some helpful guidelines for building and maintaining your data closet.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 20, 2006 06:00 AM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Update: Network Instruments revs for 10GbE

Meeting organizations' increased need for speed, Network Instruments has announced integrated support for 10GbE across its entire product line.

The move makes the company the first to deliver real-time analysis, monitoring and reporting of full-duplex 10GbE networks across all products, according to the company.

The refurbished systems provide full-duplex capture, monitoring and analysis at line rate. Admins can monitor and manage 10GbE networks with over 30 real-time statistics, set alarms to proactively notify on potential problems, and gather long-term trending and reporting.

In addition, features such as application analysis provide key application performance statistics, granular drill-down capabilities to view session-by-session communications, and analysis to quickly diagnose application issues or policy violations.

InfoWorld Test Center Contributing Editor Brian Chee, who is at Interop NY trade show where the announcement was made, had a chance to talk with Douglas Smith, Network Instruments' CE0. "We saw 10gig coming fairly early on and saw 10gig as the next logical step," Smith said of the company's 10GbE move.

Market for 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching equipment reached $302 million in the second quarter of this year. At $302 million, revenue is on pace for more than a billion-dollar annual run rate, according to Dell'Oro Group research.

A networking guru, Chee writes of Network Instruments' line:

"The first really big step came when the industry first started the move to gigabit and the change to full duplex monitoring systems. That experience is reflected by a unified code set through the entire Network Instruments product line. This commitment to a unified code set means that Network Instruments is able to release 10gig on their entire product line instead of a long release cycle as development groups struggle with a heterogeneous product line.

The secret sauce is Network Instruments investment in their NIDNA (Network Instruments Distributed Network Architecture) is their hardware investment that gives them the ability to continue to keep up with line speed packet capture.

Douglas admits that he's an engineer at heart and that's reflected in the company attention to the details of the task. Forensics is a big part of who Network Instruments is and their ability to do stream reconstruction for e-mail and Web forensics is an important feature for network forensics."

(Watch for Brian's reports from InterOP New York in his Geeks in Paradise blog.)

Enabling the 10-gig support in the products is the company's custom-engineered 10GbE capture card designed exclusively by the company.

Network Instruments' new appliances include the 10GbE Probe Appliance, the GigaStor-10 GbE for historical analysis, and the newly released all-in-one 10 GbE analysis system, which includes a local console for portability and isolated troubleshooting.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 19, 2006 12:51 PM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Storage and more

Fresh from the Test Center: Microsoft's latest foray into networked storage, Windows Storage Server R2, focuses on centralized management and a more effective file replication process. Our review gives it two thumbs up for adding more useable storage, but remember that it's an OEM product - you can't buy this one direct. Luckily, Mario Apicella got his hands on HP's new StorageWorks All-in-One (AiO) 600, which uses Storage Server R2. Turns out that the management is very impressive, thanks to HP's ASM management app, although you do have to watch out for some storage error message strangeness along the way.

Big storage, small package: When Iomega boosted the capacity of its plug-in REV drive, Oliver Rist knew it was a good thing for SMBs: this made the "sweet little SMB backup device that costs little more than a standard tape drive but doubles as a network hard disk" into a viable backup and shared storage drive combo. Check out his take on the Iomega REV 70 on the SMB IT blog.

Eclipse on the move: Looks like there's no love lost between Eclipse and Sun -- according to InfoWorld's interview with Eclipse Foundation Director Mike Milinkovich, the open-source group is happy to toe the line with Sun's NetBeans, but they've really got their sights set on Microsoft and .Net. For more on products using Eclipse, check out our review of Genuitec's MyEclipse, M7 NitroX, and some other important Java IDEs.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 19, 2006 03:00 AM

September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Network General digs into app performance

Aiming to better marry network monitoring and application performance management across its product line, Network General today unveiled Network Intelligence Suite, a melding of NetVigil 4.2 and Visualizer 4.2, as well as VoIP Foresnics, the first of several forthcoming Business Container additions to NIS.

Network General bought Fidelia last February, and with that acquired the NetVigil business-service monitoring technology that's now part of NIS. That combination has yielded a solution providing application monitoring integrated with traditional packet-level network and application traffic analysis capabilities.

The end-result, according to Network General, is that IT admins can with NIS enjoy a full view of the overall health of the network, then can drill down and determine specifically what's causing an application to underperform.

"Managing application performance and availability is getting more complex with many architectural styles, such as SOA and others. This introduces a lot more moving parts that can affect application performance and availability, said Milind Govekar, research VP at Gartner. "However, certain IT components, such as the network, are always blamed for poor performance. Thus it is important for IT to invest in application management tools that not only allow them to measure and monitor end user application performance, but also provide root cause analysis capability to proactively identify and rectify application performance problems."

Exemplifying the APM that Network General has melded with Visualizer is the birth of VoIP Forensics, which Network General says gives admins a window for deeply tracking and troubleshooting voice over IP performance, including common statistics such as MOSS score, in real time. It can also send alerts when performance degrades to particular levels.

VoIP Forensics is one of the company's Business Containers, part of the company's Business Forensics solution. Forthcoming containers will deliver drill-down performance views for service level agreements, virtualized environments, and others.

The Network Intelligence Suite, VoIP Forensics, and the 4.2 version of the latest products will be generally available on September 22.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 18, 2006 02:29 PM

September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: EMC Infoscape brings business rules to ILM

No sane person would ever think of organizing a warehouse based only on the external attributes of each box and ignoring their content. Still, that's the challenge that many storage administrators and IT managers face when trying to prepare their storage repositories for compliance and security, not to mention daily operations.

Data classification is an all too obvious remedy for information storage ills, but manually inspecting and categorizing each archive is a physical impossibility for companies with terabytes of data and millions of files. Moreover, there is no easy system to store the additional metadata gathered from a manual inspection of each file.

Enter EMC Infoscape, a new application that offers the tools to automatically inspect files from just about any storage system and to categorize them according to flexibly defined rules. Using those rules, customers can automatically move files across different tiers of Celerra storage or analyze their impact via a rich set of pre-built reports.

I got a look at Infoscape last week in EMC's Houston lab. The most striking aspect of Infoscape is its comprehensive classification structure that includes, in addition to content categories, service levels (logical containers that group files with similar handling requirements), domains (such as sales or marketing or engineering), and lifecycles (milestones in the life of a file).

But the foundation of the solution is the ability to create rules that can be applied automatically to classifying data. For example, Infoscape rules could automatically flag any file that contains social security numbers or credit card numbers as confidential, and a candidate for encryption. Infoscape doesn't automatically encrypt data, but it's easy to imagine other applications (from EMC or a third party) using its metadata to trigger encryption.

Similarly, Infoscape allows admins to assign files to a certain service level. For example, flagging files owned by a specific team or person as "mission critical" could result in a snapshot being taken at least every three hours. Here again, the snapshot itself is handled outside of Infoscape.

Lifecycle rules would allow you to apply storage policies based on how recently a file was accessed or modified. For example, you could set a rule that flags as "tier 2" files that haven't been accessed in the last three months.

Obviously different departments within your company might want different rules, so Infoscape allows you to define organizational domains and create separate rulesets for each.

How do you bring together all these different rules under a common umbrella? In Infoscape lingo you create a taxonomy, which serves as the wrapping paper for all of the above. In essence, a taxonomy is where you define a category and assign a service level and a lifecycle to it.

Infoscape can scan files (and index them if instructed to do so) from just about any place they may reside, but support is currently limited to Microsoft environments. This first release is also limited to files, which leaves out e-mail and structured data sources such as Oracle databases. Moreover, moving files automatically to different storage tiers is possible only across EMC Celerra devices.

Even with those exclusions, deploying Infoscape will be a complex endeavor, tantamount to a complete re-assessment of your data structure. It will also require re-discovering many of the business rules that are hidden in your applications.

It's no mere coincidence that EMC is offering a parallel consulting offer: For many customers that outside help will be desperately needed. From what I have seen so far, Infoscape is a good practical start toward the ILM (information lifecycle management) promised land that EMC and others have been preaching. ILM is a good place to go, and Infoscape points the way. But it won't be a short trip or an easy one.

EMC Infoscape
EMC
Available: September 18, 2006
Cost: Starts at $125,000 plus $9,000 per terabyte
Verdict: Easy to use but difficult to deploy is a fair characterization of my first experience with Infoscape. The application has a pleasant, browser-based interface and a rich toolbox for automatically classifying files according to sophisticated rules. However, Infoscape is limited to classification; other storage solutions will be needed to execute on its promise. Further, consulting services may be needed to implement it.

Posted by Mario Apicella on September 18, 2006 01:56 PM

September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: Scalent VOE proves hardware-agnostic

For the past few weeks I've been serving as host to a bevy of servers running under Scalent's Virtual Operating Environment (VOE). The hardware is a mix of HP DL360s, a DL380, a Sun V20, and a Dell PowerEdge 2800 that I threw into the mix. The upshot of all this hardware is that when running under VOE, it doesn't matter which is which, or what's running on it.

Working in the very slick Flash-based GUI, I can create entire application layouts by dragging server persona icons in a Visio-style panel, complete with virtual switches to separate traffic. I can link them together in a logical diagram, then group-select all the personas and watch them boot on either physical servers, or within a VMware host. Of course, these personas are built beforehand, but it's possible to clone them from a base image, then tweak them to spec.

Scalent handles this magic by relying on PXE booting, DHCP, 802.1q trunking at the persona level, and agents installed within each persona. Thus, by trunking all links to the physical switch, it doesn't matter what port a persona is actually talking to; the traffic will be routed correctly. Quite elegant.

There's plenty more to this solution, so look for my full review later this week online, or in the Sept. 25 issue of InfoWorld.

Posted by Paul Venezia on September 18, 2006 12:37 PM

September 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Take control of ASP.NET

AJAX meets Visual Studio: Developers looking to get more out of their ASP.NET 2.0 endeavors would do well to take a look at Test Center Analyst Martin Heller's review of two control collections: Infragistics NetAdvantage for ASP.NET and telerik r.a.d.controls for ASP.NET, as well as the complementary screencasts. "In my tests, I found both of these control sets to be potentially invaluable... . Both deliver excellent grid controls, rich edit controls, and a useful assortment of user input controls." Moreoever, they inject AJAX support into the mix, a must-have in this new Web 2.0 world.

Satisfy your Apple craving: Test Center Director Tom Yager peels away at the Power Mac G5 Quad, sharing some of the sweet slices that the confines of InfoWorld print simply couldn't contain.

Open source silicon: Open Enterprise scribe Neil McCallister investigates Sun's unique move to reveal the blueprints, as it were, of its 64-bit, multi-core, multithreaded UltraSparc T1 processor, also known by the codename Niagara. "These are developments the industry should watch closely. "As hardware design increasingly moves toward specialized chips for a variety of purposes, such as handhelds, routers, and videogame consoles, open source silicon could be an idea whose time has come."

Posted by Ted Samson on September 18, 2006 06:00 AM

September 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Friday Five: Top 5 virtualization challenges

In June InfoWorld and IDG Research Services Group surveyed 451 InfoWorld subscribers about their virtualization initiatives. In addition to their plans for server, storage, and application virtualization, respondents were asked about the hurdles they've encountered. The most popular complaints:

Inadequate skills/training issues 46%
Complexity 44%
Software licensing issues 41%
Performance and scalability challenges 38%
Inadequate management tools 32%

Oft-cited challenges also included the difficulty to prove ROI, measure results, and obtain buy-in from upper management and stakeholders.

Source: InfoWorld Virtualization Study.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 15, 2006 04:02 PM

September 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

WebEx takes AIM at the enterprise

Say what you will about AOL, but the company can be credited for bringing instant messaging to the masses, both at home and in the business world.

WebEx, known for its online collaboration tools, has built on AOL Instant Messenger, bringing enhancements to the quick-communication platform with the release of WebEx AIM PBE (Pro Business Edition), aimed at the enterprise.

Like AIM (and unlike other enterprise IM solutions), WebEX AIM PBE follows an on-demand model, meaning admins don't need to set up and deploy IM servers within the company. Instead, WebEx provides companies with centralized controls to managing user. "Administrators can centrally manage all accounts and configure URL and content filters to prevent the loss of intellectual property or confidential information," according to the company.

There are also controls for enforcing security and compliance within the organization, according to the company. "All WebEx AIM Pro traffic is secured with end-to-end 128 bit SSL encryption and WebEx AIM Pro assists customers in meeting compliance requirements for storage of electronic communications," according to a written statement from WebEx. "The service automatically scans file transfers, blocks SpIM (IM spam) to reduce the spread of viruses and worms, and protects against IM and p-to-p threats."

This isn't AIM's first foray in the enterprise world. Back in 2002, AOL announced its AIM Enterprise Gateway server, but that got phased out in 2004.

More recently, AOL released AIM Pro Professional Edition.

Users can download the secure WebEx AIM Pro Business Edition client for free. For companies looking to deploy the product, licenses start at $5 per user.

Quick test
I took an opportunity to download the WebEx AOL IM PBE client myself, and although I didn't spend too much time playing with it, I did like what I saw.

First of all, it was pretty easy to get up and running using one of my existing AIM screen names. I just entered the SN and password after installing the PBE client, and my Contact List was instantly populated with buddies and co-workers, sorted as they would be in AIM.

In addition to the Chat tab, there's a Calendar tab, which you reportedly can sync with Outlook and WebEx to view schedule. I didn’t try that out, though. Looks potentially handy if, for some reason, you don't have Outlook access.

Launching an IM session opens a new chat window, and the interface has a four tabs. The IM tab gives you a familiar-looking chat interface, where you can choose your font, font size, font color, and one of several smileys. The smiley menu includes helpful explanation as to what each little face means, such as "Smiling" and "Money Mouth."

In addition to the Chat tab, there's Voice (for VoIP sessions), Video, Share (to share your desktop with another user), and Files, for transferring files securely.

I didn't try the VoIP, Video, or Share, but I did play with File, sending IMs and files between an AOL SN on Trillian and an AOL SN on the WebEx client. When my Trillian persona sent a Word doc to my WebEx persona, I got a list of choices in WebEx as to what to do with the file: Scan at Host; Accept no Scan; Decline; Ignore; or Block,
I clicked Scan to Host, and my Trillian person got the following message:

[receiver] asks you to send the files to the AIMProVirusScan for virus scanning.Follow these steps:
1) Add the Buddy Name "AIMProVirusScan" to your buddy list area.
2) Send a message to the "AIMProVirusScan" Buddy to begin the scan.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the bot to accept my file from Trillian; perhaps this puppy is only compatible with true AIM clients.

Still, it's a pretty nifty looking client, and perhaps the low price tag and maintenance will compel organizations to abandon the standard AIM that so many use and give this more enterprise-geared model a try.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 15, 2006 02:45 PM

September 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Hard drive turns 50! So?

No gifts, please: The hard drive just hit the big 5-0 and, well, Test Center Senior Analyst Mario Apicella won't be throwing a surprise party for that particular piece of hardware. "I'll keep a bottle of champagne ready for when the disk drive will finally find its match," he writes. "Considering that many of the storage problems that we face today are more or less directly related to the characteristics of the disk drives, I for one will celebrate when we will finally turn page."

Clip 'n' save security tips Test Center Contributing Editor Roger Grimes has come up with 14 handy-dandy, low-cost tips for keeping your PCs secure, like automation, education, and encrypt(a)tion.

Yahoo for Yahoo e-mail?: Yahoo unleashed a spruced-up version of its free e-mail application, we reported yesterday in this very blog. New features include drag-and-drop simplicity and niftier search tools. There's also a bit of integration with Yahoo Calendar -- though not like what Microsoft Outlook offers. The question is, is Yahoo going to take the path of Google and put together a Web-based communications package that could rival Outlook. Yahoo's not saying, but we can always speculate.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 15, 2006 06:00 AM

September 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Opsware: Brace yourselves for virtual server sprawl

Opsware sees virtualization catching fire with customers, and the automation software vendor is sounding the alarm: IT orgs better come up with a plan, because virtual machines soon will be sprouting from the ground, falling from the sky, and multiplying like tribbles.

Opsware's plan for helping enterprises corral VMs is to build hypervisor hooks and VM management capabilities into its Server Automation System (SAS). Yesterday at the company's OPSWorld user conference, CEO Ben Horowitz trotted out a roadmap to bringing automation to virtual environments.

Here's a preview of the features list:

* Provision, configure, and manage heterogeneous virtualization platforms including VMware ESX, Solaris 10, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen.
* Create/start/stop/delete virtual machines and containers for all these virtual server platforms through a simple point-and-click interface.
* Track relationships among VMs and their hosts.
* Apply the same policies and best practices to managing both physical and virtual environments.

CTO Tim Howes said that the target delivery date is January, and demos at the conference showed that these four bullet points are largely accomplished for VMware ESX and Solaris Containers.

However, even with VMware and Solaris, Howe says his team still has work to do to tighten the integration with the virtualization platforms and tools:

"We can drive the vendor tools to create a container, or a host server, or create virtual zones or virtual machines inside of that. We can show relationships among them, and we can do impact analysis. We don't yet have extensive support for resource pooling. We can't through Opsware call VMotion and move a VM from one machine to another."

We'll check back in a few months.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 14, 2006 02:13 PM

September 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Slick Yahoo e-mail a challenge to MS?

With all due apologies to the Googlemaniacs out there, I do believe Yahoo has outdone Google and Gmail with the latest beta rev of its e-mail application. Moreover, Microsoft may just have a little more reason to worry about its e-mail market share.

Notably, Yahoo's new e-mail interface looks remarkably like that of Microsoft Outlook, but hey, Microsoft's new Live search engine looks a lot like Google's. Let's just chalk that near-emulation up to the highest form of flattery, like Homer Simpson's similarities to Fred Flinstone (who bears resemblances to Ralph Kramden from "The Honeymooners".)

So here are some of my first impressions on the refurbished e-mail interface. I like how Yahoo has injected drag-and-drop simplicity to e-mail sorting, which is handy, and something you don't see in Gmail. You also can drag an e-mail over the Contacts icon on the Outlookish left-side toolbar to add the sender to your address book. Also convenient.

Perhaps more interesting in terms of potential: Yahoo has better integrated its calendar with its e-mail. The link to the calendar is also in the left-hand toolbar, making it one click away.

Now, unlike with Outlook, you can't drag an e-mail over to the Calendar icon to automatically create a new Calendar entry (yet?). Also, clicking the Calendar button opens a new browser window, and the Yahoo Calendar hasn't changed much. Again, at least not yet. Yahoo spokesperson Karen Mahon tells me (via e-mail) that the calendar is still in its first rev and changes will emerge in coming months. She wasn't any more specific. ("We are planning some exciting new features but we don't want to spoil the surprise. We hope to make the product generally available in the coming months." Aw! Thanks, Karen. I do love surprises! ;-) )

Yahoo also added a Notebook tool to left-hand toolbar, and a tool for adding RSS feeds. Other neat features include tabs for sorting through multiple e-mails; search tools for finding words in e-mail body, subject, and header; the ability to view a map of a meeting or event location within the calendar timeline. And it's still free.

So what could this all mean? Well, as Microsoft has chased Google on the search front, Google has made a clear play to challenge Microsoft in the e-mail/communications space with its release of Google Apps for Your Domain last month, which comprises Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator -- as well as an administrative interface for managing users. The target is small organizations, though Google also has plans for a product aimed at larger companies.

The tools in that Google package, however, don't have much in the way of slick interoperability between, say, the e-mail and calendar, and nor slick drag-and-drop tools.

Then again, Google's a step ahead in terms of the central management features, plus it offers Writely and Google Spreadsheets, potential additions to a Web-based Office rival.

Now Yahoo may not have as many apps to offer, but it's done a very nice job with e-mail, and there's clear potential for a rich e-mail/collaboration/calender package here. Perhaps Yahoo is poised to follow the same path as Google toward challenging Microsoft's e-mail dominance. Mahon wouldn't comment on it, saying only, "We don't have any specific plans that we can share at this time."

Maybe she didn't want to ruin the surprise?

Posted by Ted Samson on September 14, 2006 12:10 PM

September 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: MyEclipse 5.0 gets a workout

Fresh from the Test Center: Feisty Genuitec has a new version of the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench IDE, and it's a broad (but not deep) toolkit that holds much promise for enterprise Java developers, according to contributing editor Andrew Binstock's review. My Eclipse 5.0 is also an example of how open source technology can benefit consumers: it incorporates Matisse, the GUI designer developed by Sun for its NetBeans IDE (which we reviewed in April). Because NetBeans is open source, Genuitec was able to quickly dive in and create a port of Matisse to Eclipse, giving developers the added functionality fast.

Office 2007: Simplicity, at last?: Oliver Rist agreed to a meeting with the Office UI crew because he was curious to see if the bugs from Office 2007's first beta were cleaned up (and because they might bring good cookies). But he got more than he bargained for -- turns out that Microsoft engineers really were listening to user feedback, and that results in a focus on simplicity. Does this bode well for the end result of Office 2007? Check out the latest installment of Enterprise Windows and see for yourself.

Salesforce ups customization: Salesforce.com is planning "unlimited customization" of analytics features in the Winter '07 release of its CRM suite, according to recent news reports. A new AJAX-based UI is reportedly in the works, too. Keep an eye on the InfoWorld Test Center for a review of Salesforce.com Winter '07 as soon as we get our hot little hands on it; until then, check out our take on a previous release.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 14, 2006 06:00 AM

September 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MS refreshes Longhorn Beta 2

Microsoft quietly released a refresh of Longhorn Server Beta 2 over the weekend, called Build 5600.

David Lowe, Windows Server senior product manager, wrote in the Windows Server Division Weblog Saturday:

You won't find many additional features over Beta 2, but there are big gains in performance and reliability as we've been able to bake in all the core OS improvements that were happening simultaneously in Windows Vista [as well as fix a bunch of our own bugs ;-)].

Known bugs in Beta 2 included problems with BitLocker encryption when a system wakes from hibernation, incompatibility with the subsystem for Unix apps. Build 5600 is available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers to download.

InfoWorld Chief Technologist Tom Yager reviewed Longhorn Beta 2 last June and was overall impressed with what he saw. " If there’s one way to sum up Longhorn Server, it’s that it presents a greatly diminished need for Microsoft-certified administrators," he wrote.

Oliver Rist, a InfoWorld Test Center senior contributing editor and author of the Enterprise Windows column, also had high praise: "Longhorn is a slam dunk, a must-have upgrade for practically every Windows systems administrator."

Longhorn Server Beta 3 is expected to come out in the first half of 2007. The final release is expected in late 2007.

For more InfoWorld coverage of Longhorn, check out our special report here.

Has any out there had a chance to check out Beta 2? What do you think so far?

Posted by Ted Samson on September 13, 2006 03:56 PM

September 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Riverbed 3.0 stirs more spice into WAN soup

When I first looked at Riverbed's Steelhead WAN appliance, I found it an impressively easy-to-set-up, streamlined WAN accelerator.

When I reviewed version 2.1.2 a year later, the results proved that my previous performance stats were no fluke, and the addition of Proxy File Service allowed specific performance enhancements for MS SQL and continuous service even if the WAN is down.

Now, after getting the chance to examine the third version of Riverbed's appliance, I'd have to say it's getting even better. The already-impressive performance is supplemented with another speed boost and a wider range of features.

Riverbed recently announced six new WAN acceleration appliances, five of which scale from 15,000 to 1,000,000 optimized TCP connections and up to 4Gbps of optimized throughput, far exceeding the 45Mbps of the last release.

New to RiOS 3 (Riverbed's operating system) are additional CIFS, MAPI, and NFS optimizations, and QoS for all TCP and UDP traffic. One of the biggest gains is in NFS performance. Riverbed's NFS application streamlining improves NFS performance by reducing its chattiness, allowing for a nearly ten-fold improvement over RiOS 2.1, the company says.

The new release includes policy-based QoS for all traffic going out over the WAN, both optimized and pass-through. Per-interface and per-class policies are now built-in. Also new is the ability to prioritize traffic based on bandwidth and latency, providing greater protection to real-time and interactive traffic. RiOS 3 will also address asymmetric routing issues on the client side, helping to simplify integration for remote sites with dual WAN routers and Steelheads.

Not to be ignored, RiOS 3 provides more visibility into WAN performance by exporting to NetFlow and comes with more flexible reporting. The reporting engine in previous versions was a bit anemic, but release 3 looks to give better feedback to network admins. I will have hardware in hand shortly to test and will see just how fast RiOS 3 can go.

Posted by Keith Schultz on September 13, 2006 09:59 AM

September 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Java and .Net come together

Shattering language barriers: Taking in such recent news as the release of IronPython 1.0 and Sun's snagging of JRuby, InfoWorld Blogger in Chief Jon Udell contemplates, "Why argue about dynamic versus static languages when you can have the best of both worlds?"

Talkin' 'bout SOA integration Real World SOA blogger Dave Linthicum contemplates WebMethods' acquisition of Infravio: " I suspect that the driving force behind this acquisition is the fact that the other major integration and SOA players are adding governance to their respective stacks, either building or buying."

A bigger bite of Apple: Tom Yager expands on his Mac Pro review: "Mac Pro is a model of efficiency. But it does not thrill next to Opteron with PowerNow! and Cool and Quiet enabled."

Posted by Ted Samson on September 13, 2006 06:00 AM

September 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

ISS steers into mail security

Internet Security Systems' 2004 acquisition of Cobion netted content analysis software and a URL database that added another security layer to the company's Proventia G series security appliances. Today, the Cobion technology helped give birth to a full-fledged mail security appliance, the Proventia Network Mail Security System.

Available by the end of September, the Proventia mail security box combines anti-spam, anti-virus, content filtering, and something you don't see in competing products, intrusion prevention. Senior Product Manager Matthew Ward notes that ISS Proventia intrusion prevention systems are often deployed in front of Sendmail, Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes, and even anti-spam devices, because all are afflicted by countless vulnerabilities.

The anti-virus defenses come in two forms: ISS's own behavioral-based Virus Prevention System (VPS), which promises zero-day protection against new viruses and variants, and optional signature-based protection from partner Sophos. Ward claims that VPS captures more than 93 percent of new viruses without a signature update. That includes spyware, trojans, and even rootkits.

As for the anti-spam module, Ward says it is 98 percent effective in identifying spam and phishing "out of the box," adding that you can tighten that down even further with additional tuning. (We're getting awfully close to 100 percent now.) "False positives are approximately one in ten thousand, or 0.01 percent," he says.

If those claims are true, then ISS's spam filtering would rank with the very best we've tested, which are the solutions from Proofpoint and Symantec (see the reviews). We hope to run Proventia through our spam gauntlet and provide the results by year end. Right now another latecomer to the enterprise anti-spam arena, Microsoft Forefront for Exchange Server, is on Logan Harbaugh's test bench. We should have that review for you in the next few weeks.

Like Proofpoint, Symantec, and some other mail security vendors, ISS is beefing up the content filtering to combat outbound risks such as leaks of sensitive information and private data.

"To a large degree we can do that today with lexicon analysis," says Ward. "But we are going to push further into that space by allowing you to configure sensitive directories and then be able to match content on those directories. One of the things this technology is good at is crawling a file share or server and categorizing data in there -- we do that all the time for the Web filtering. We can leverage that technology to classify and make a matching signature for data inside a proprietary document share, for example."

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 12, 2006 03:35 PM

September 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Lockdown extends Enforcer NAC

Lockdown Networks has taken a different approach to enforcing network access policies than most NAC upstarts. Instead of the inline enforcement favored by vendors such as ConSentry, Nevis Networks, and Vernier Networks (follow the links to our reviews), the Lockdown Enforcer appliance communicates with managed switches to shunt unknown or non-compliant users into policy-defined VLANs for quarantine, remediation, or limited access.

In our June shootout, Lockdown's solution proved strong in policy editing and reporting capabilities, but not-so-strong in management and scalability. Version 4.5, announced yesterday, fills in some of the gaps. In addition to beefing up the set of pre-defined policies, Enforcer 4.5 (due October) enables encrypted communications with enforcement points through support of SNMP v3, and, in an interesting twist, it brings inline policy enforcement to SSL and IPSec VPN traffic.

Here's how Lockdown's VP of marketing, Dan Clark, described the VPN support for me in an e-mail:

The product sits between the VPN appliance and the network. A device connects into and authenticates against the VPN, which decodes the packets which are then intercepted by the Lockdown appliance until the device is cleared against policy. In this way, deployment is extremely simple, and we can work with SSL or IPSec appliances. There is no integration required. The only additional requirement is that in this mode, users must be running an agent. We enforce traffic inline, not with the agent, but the agent is required to gather device compliance data, and to uniquely identify each device. The bandwidth of our box is much higher than that of the incoming VPN, so there is no concern about limiting the performance of VPNs.

Finally, Commander 4.5, a rev of the company's central management and reporting system (due Q4), now aggregates the data received from multiple Enforcer and Sentry appliances.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 12, 2006 09:44 AM

September 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Atlas AJAX tools renamed

Atlas shrugged off: Microsoft unveiled its plans to drop the code name "Atlas" from its AJAX dev tools, replacing it with the more formal "ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions." Too bad - "Atlas" was kind of catchy. Either way, the toolkit is about as open-source as Microsoft gets, and its breadth of features stood up nicely in our review of free AJAX toolkits. Check out Jon Udell's screencast for a closer look at Atlas/ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions. You can also get more specifics at Scott Guthrie's blog (Guthrie is a general manager with Microsoft's Developer Division).

Security alert: Roger Grimes is back from vacation with a heads-up on reports of a Microsoft patch that's causing data corruption. Check out the Security Adviser blog and see if you're affected.

Desktops and servers and datacenters, oh my!: Virtualization is the buzzword du jour, but early adopters are seeing benefits despite some management hurdles and a huge range of choices, especially on the desktop virtualization front. InfoWorld's special report breaks down the basics and offers some options; we've also got a host of analysis articles to get you up to speed on the many available options, as well as plenty of virtualization product reviews, including Parallels Workstation for client virtualization, SWSoft Virtuozzo for Linux (server virtualization), and Softricity SoftGrid for virtualized application deployment.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 12, 2006 06:00 AM

September 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Mandriva Linux 2007 RC unfurled

Named after the God of the Moon, Mona, aka Mandriva Linux 2007 RC, has risen.

Mandriva, formerly Mandrakesoft, reports several improvements over the beta version of the OS, including fixes to the network module b44 and to proprietary drivers such as nvidia.

Changes from since the 2006 iteration include:

Gnome 2.16
Kernel 2.6.17 (based on 2.6.17.11, with ALSA 1.0.12 final, i965 support, and new kernel factorization: normal, enterprise and legacy)
KDE 3.5.4
New VPN configuration tool (drakvpn)
New tool to configure a redundant firewall with ucarp (invictus-firewall)
New 3D desktop support (both with AIGLX and Xgl) and new tool to configure it (drak3d)
New 'Ia Ora' Mandriva theme

For more information, go here.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 11, 2006 09:25 AM

September 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Open source-.Net ties

Open source tangled in .Net?: Open Enterprise columnist Neil McAllister observes that, like it or not, the the cross-pollination between Microsoft technologies and open source software is here to stay. He cites as examples the recent release of IronPython 1.0, which enables Python programs can run as first-class managed code on the .Net platform. There's also Gnome 2.16, which has a notebook app requiring Redmond's CLR implementation.

Desperately seeking calendar help: Dave Rosenberg over in the Open Sources blogs reports having a "painful time trying to figure out how to do shared calendaring across Mac and Linux users." He's tried .Mac for shared calendars, box.net, and Google Calendar. Scalix, Zimbra, and WebDAV/iCal accounts don't seem to do it either. Have any ideas for him?

VMware readies Lab Manager equipped with Slingshot:After snagging Akimbi earlier this year, VMware has announced that fruits of its acquisition: the VMware Lab Manager 2.4 Beta Program, writes David Marshall in the InfoWorld Virtualization Report. The program is built around Akimbi Slingshot. "Interestingly, rather than starting over with a 1.0 release, VMware chose to continue the versioning of the product where Akimbi left off." The company describes the program as a "premier Virtual Lab Automation System for Development and Test organizations. It provides software development and test infrastructure that automates the rapid setup and teardown of even the most complex multi-machine software configurations ... ."

Speaking of virtualization: InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum is approaching quickly. Several InfoWorld Test Center analysts and editors will be there, joined by IT leaders well-versed in virtualization. The event takes place Sept. 25 and 26 at the Roosevelt Hotel, in New York, NY. Go here for more information.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 11, 2006 06:00 AM

September 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

HP boosts its Integrity

Were I a cynic, I'd suggest that Hewlett-Packard's announcement last week of improvements to its Integrity server line was an effort to get the words HP and Integrity in the same sentence.

OK, cheap shots aside, the company announced last week that it's implanted the Intel Itanium 2 dual-core Montecito chip into the members of its Integrity server line, the HP Integrity rx6600 and rx3600 servers. (Alan Zeichick looked at the Integrity rx1620-2 last year.)

The refurbished servers, HP claims, deliver twice the performance of the previous Integrity servers. Specifically, the company claims that its current HP rx4640 4p/4c with Oracle 10g Enterprise Edition runs at 161,217 tpmC, whereas the forthcoming HP rx6600 4p/8c with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SP1) runs at 344,928 tpmC.

Additionally, HP reports to have extended the Integrity line's OS support of HP Virtual Server Environment for Integrity servers to help customers grow and shrink virtual servers.

The HP Integrity rx6600 and rx3600 servers also will include the HP zx2 chipset, which the company asserts delivers up to twice the energy efficiency of previous generations and slashes power and cooling costs by up to 50 percent.

"This new server lineup is a key example of HP's Adaptive Infrastructure offerings, which help customers stay ahead of changing business and IT demands and enable them to build cost-effective, next-generation data centers," said Rich Marcello, senior vice president and general manager, Business Critical Servers, at HP.

Later this year, HP plans to add support for Windows to HP Integrity Virtual Machines and allow multiple operating system instances to share a single processor. At that time, HP plans to extend support for HP Integrity Essentials Capacity Advisor and Virtualization Manager to from HP-UX 11i to Windows and Linux.

The new Integrity servers, due out in December, will include HP's latest OpenVMS v8.3 OS.

Go here for more information about HP's Integrity line.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 9, 2006 09:45 PM

September 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: crossover targets SOA, Vivisimo splendissimo

Slow-starting ESB: Rick Grehan gets on board Software AG's crossvision enterprise service bus. Its destination: SOAville. The ride starts out bumpy, but in the end, "its development capabilities and tight integration become apparent. Nonprogrammers can rapidly create usable services that are easily deployed for use throughout the enterprise."

Search satisfaction: If your organization's wealth of information is as elusive as buried treasure, consider enlisting Vivísimo Velocity 5. Mike Heck has seen his fair share of search engines, and he says this iteration of Velocity, with its collection of excellent functionality and administration tools, puts it in the lead.

Should the AV club disband?: Crimeware is becoming too smart and stealthy for anti-virus scanners, opines Security Adviser Roger Grimes. "The prevalence of new, undetectable malware is quickly headed toward a tipping point. If anti-virus vendors don't take a serious look at the state of their products as compared to the current threats and build a better mousetrap, it's clear to me that they won't last another five years."

Blog roll call: Open Sources blogger Matt Asay gives a nod to Salesforce.com for taking a step toward being open with its ideas.salesforce.com project, but says that company really should open its code up entirely.

Over in Virtualization Report, David Marshall investigates Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite, an end-to-end solution for the VMware (VDI) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 8, 2006 06:00 AM

September 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

GNOME v2.16 brings more features, fewer bugs

The GNOME Project has released Version 2.16 of its multi-platform desktop environment, delivering several new features and fixes for hundreds of reports bugs.

Among its reported improvements are:

tools for managing laptop battery, UPS, and wireless peripheral

a new quick-note-taking application called Tomboy

an improved menu editor called Alacarte (which Ubuntu users should recognize)

a disk-usage-analyzer called Baobab

enhancements to the Totem video player; and an improved bug-reporting features.

The desktop runs platforms, including Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, and Apple's Darwin. The new version eases porting GNOME tools to Windows, according to the GNOME Project site.

GNOME is part of The GNU Project, and is free software.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 7, 2006 10:05 PM

September 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Update: FreeDOS hits the big 1.0

After a long 12-year journey, FreeDOS has achieved Version 1.0.

"FreeDOS 1.0 is a major milestone that has finally been released," writes Blair Campell, aka blairdude, on the FreeDOS Project Web site. "By now, we have a stable and viable MS-DOS replacement."

He reports that FreeDOS (which, as the name suggests, is gratis) now delivers long filename support in several of its apps, including COMMAND.COM. The kernel supports FAT32 and most applications. Additionally, he writes that HIMEM and EMM386 are "extremely stable considering the complexity."

There's also a new installer with user-friendly menus and a free-disk space checker.

FreeDOS has a following among admins at organizations running older software and diagnostic tools. Some end-users use it for running old DOS games, too, a la Doom.

Here's a take from Test Center Senior Contributing Editor Brian Chee, author of the Geeks in Paradise blog:

"FreeDOS is an interesting beast in that it answers issues for quite a few folks in the embedded systems world and other specialty vertical markets. A good example is the EnCase Network Boot Disk that was created by their users group to support easy acquisition of 'suspect' computer hard drives.

Previously you had to 'obtain' a bootable disk, and then add the pieces necessary to do the job. Now with FreeDOS, you can package it all into a single ISO image.

FreeDOS should make it much easier for integrators to create bootable media that should be able to run on just about anything, with a much smaller learning curve than stripping down a Linux distro.

Basically, to create a bootable anything in the past you either had to purchase a license for MS-DOS, pirate a copy, or work on cutting down a Linux image."

(For those who don't know, Brian is also the director of the Univ. of Hawaii School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology's Advanced Network Computing Lab.)

So, now that FreeDOS is stable, can we next expect an open source version of Windows to run on top of it? And will it take another 12 years to get?

Wikipedia has ample information about FreeDOS. Version 1.0 is downloadable here. Customers also may order it on a CD.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 7, 2006 01:32 PM

September 07, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: JackBe AJAX screencast and Vista redux

New AJAX Screencast: We've added a new screencast to our AJAX gallery: JackBe Visual GUI Builder. Check out the demo and see how this proprietary app compares to the open-source AJAX alternatives.

Fresh from the Test Center: Encrypting e-mail for a couple of users is one thing, but when you've got thousands of inboxes under your umbrella, encryption gets far trickier. Voltage Security's 2.0 version of the SecureMail appliance puts encryption at the gateway, so you can automatically encrypt messages based on a host of variables. Learn more about SecureMail 2.0's pros and cons in our new review.

Vista - On second thought: Oliver Rist is rethinking his proclamation that Vista is "revolutionary" after spending more time with the latest Release Candidate for his preview analysis. Find out more about why he's changing his spots in this week's Enterprise Windows column.

Blog Roll Call: Jon Udell is spanning the gulf between dynamic and static programming languages with a simple declaration: Use both.

The Grid Meter offers up a handy introduction for those wanting to explore the world of grid computing, but aren't quite sure where to start. (Here's a hint: Check out the Globus Alliance's Globus Toolkit for building grid apps.)

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 7, 2006 10:27 AM

September 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Vista vexes, FreeBSD impresses

Vista RC1 verdict: Windows wiz Oliver Rist peered into Vista RC1 and wasn't enamored by what he saw. Hardware hiccups and compatibility concerns suggest that this release might not be worth deploying for anyone but the power users in your organization. The good news: RC1 looks polished enough that Rist predicts that Vista will ship by January 2007. Those of you still hankering for Vista news should bookmark InfoWorld's ever-expanding Vista special report page.

FreeBSD still looks good to me: Over in The Deep End, Paul Venezia shares his experiences dipping in to FreeBSD 6.1. He acknowledges the upgrade from Version 4.9 came bit late, but that really speaks well to the reliability of the OS, right? As for 6.1: "This server does just about everything, from handling a massive mail volume and the associated filters and virus scanning duties, to mailing lists served via mailman, to hosting over 80 domains for both DNS, mail and Web hosting."

Phenomenal routing power, itty-bitty living space: Cisco announced the newest and smallest member of the CRS-1 family. This four-slot CRS-1 model delivers 320Gbps of total switching capacity in a 40Gbps-per-slot chassis. It's built to support the growing demands for IPTV, digital video, and other advanced business and residential IP services. Networking superstar Brian Chee, who ~~pens~~ keys the Geeks in Paradise blog, declares that rookie router (due out in November) will help Cisco give Juniper a run for its money and will "most likely become the core switch/router for most future Cisco solutions."

Blog roundup: Virtualization Report-er David Marshall peeks at Vizioncore esxRanger Professional 2.0, a hot backup and recovery solution for VMware Infrastructure 3.

Paul Krill points out a couple of product announcements out of Redmond, including Expression Web Beta and IronPython 1.0, which recently starred in a screencast by Blogger in Chief Jon Udell.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 6, 2006 06:00 AM

September 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The verdict on Vista RC1

Oliver Rist spent the last few days sailing Windows Vista RC1 through the rocks of software incompatibility and the hard places of hardware support. His take-away:

"If there's one immediate use we can think of for Vista RC1, it's setting up learning machines for the power users in your organization so you can begin the training process now. Overall, we did find it to be far more polished and reliable than even the latest beta build. As new Vista-compatible software arrives from third-party ISVs, RC1 is definitely the OS we'd use for testing. This version is close enough that we feel a release date of January 2007 is not only possible, but likely. Use RC1 to get ready."

Read the full report.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 5, 2006 04:36 PM

September 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Cisco spawns small CRS-1 sibling

In a move that could be a boon for ISPs, companies with remote offices, and end-users and organizations craving faster streaming media, Cisco today unveiled a compact four-slot version of its CRS-1 routing line.

This four-slot CRS-1 model delivers 320Gbps of total switching capacity in a 40Gbps-per-slot chassis. It's aimed at providing quick deployment in locations such as regional POPs, MSO hub locations, and data-center peering sites. The purpose: to support the growing demands for IPTV, digital video, and other advanced business and residential IP services.

"Cisco developed the four-slot CRS-1 in direct response to requests from our service provider customers, who wanted to be able to deploy the 40Gbps CRS-1 with a smaller form factor and less capital expenditure per deployment," said Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager of the Service Provider Routing Technology Group at Cisco.

InfoWorld Contributing Editor Brian Chee shared positive predictions for the four-slot CRS-1. "Finally, this is the son (or daughter) of the old GSRs [gigabit switch routers] that have been at the core of many networks for many years. Juniper has been eating Cisco for quite a while because the GSR has become long in the tooth," said Chee, author of the Geeks in Paradise blog and founder of the Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the University of Hawaii's Department of Information and Computer Sciences.

"This will most likely become the core switch/router for most future Cisco solutions," Chee added.

Among companies expressing an interest in the new diminutive member of the Cisco CRS-1 family is Sprint, which plans to deploy it in Q4 of this year. "By creating a smaller form factor for the CRS-1 platform, Cisco is enabling us to lower costs and more efficiently handle the convergence of voice, video, data and mobility services, while still gaining the scalability, reliability and service flexibility that the platform provides," said Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development at Sprint.

The four-slot Cisco CRS-1 will be available starting in November for $160,000. For more information, go here.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 5, 2006 01:21 PM

September 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Varying views of Vista

More Vista details: The Vista view is getting brighter as Vista RC1 sees the light of day. Test Center Executive Editor Doug Dineley got the low-down from Christopher Flores, Microsoft's Group Product Manager, Windows Marketing Communications and compiled a long list of improvements and new features, while Online Editor Mike Barton likes the cleaner install (and posted a few screen images for your viewing pleasure). But Contributing Editor Sean McCown had a less-than-enjoyable upgrade experience, as detailed on Database Underground. Keep watching this blog and the InfoWorld site - we have a review of Vista RC1 coming soon.

Open Source as innovation incubator: Community-driven software may have more benefits than it's oft-stated flexibility and low price. Dropping the proprietary fences encourages sharing, experimenting, and innovating, from messaging products to Java innovations. Find out more in this week's special report, and check out some of our open-source product reviews, including open-source PBXes, AJAX app dev toolkits, virtualization/emulation tools, or Linux e-mail platforms (or learn to build your own open-source messaging server).

Then again, there's always Tom Yager's take: that Linux will be driven underground by Apple UNIX. Agree? Disagree? Post your comments to our Talkback forum.

Blog roll call: Tom Yager's Mac is totally hot... in a Dell-inferno kind of way thanks to CPU-sizzling Office updates. The Enterprise Mac blog post has all the details.

Victor Garza reminds everyone that "buyer beware" advice also applies to any dealings with hackers in Zero Day Security.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 5, 2006 10:20 AM

September 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Vista RC1 release notes

When Christopher Flores, Microsoft's Group Product Manager, Windows Marketing Communications, came by the office last Tuesday, bearing Windows Vista RC1 installation DVDs, he was full of good news. He announced that performance and stability had been vastly improved over Beta 2, with Vista now offering a user experience as fast as Windows XP. And he said that Microsoft was on track to deliver Vista to volume license customers in November and to the retail channel in January, though his Windows Vista Timeline slide noted "enterprise availablity EOY 2006."

During an hour-long briefing, Flores also shared a list of specific improvements ranging from improved responsiveness and consistent performance that won't degrade over time to widespread elimination of annoying prompts and driver support for thousands more devices. On the downside, anti-virus software support is still forthcoming, but Flores said Vista's APIs are now frozen so third-party ISVs are finally able to build on them.

Here's the list:

* Elimination of crashes caused by incompatible Internet Explorer toolbars. IE 6 toolbars caused some trouble; Vista can now detect incompatible ones.

* Improved usability of BitLocker. It seems a complicated UI was leading to users locking themselves out of their own systems. An easier UI helps users activate BitLocker safely.

* Media Center now leverages tags for browsing photos and videos. Beta 2 ignored the tags.

* High Definition DVD and Blue Ray DVD are now supported (in both 32 and 64 bit modes).

* Presentation settings now suppress all pop-up messages. Beta 2 prezo settings quashed only IM popups.

* Vastly improved device coverage. Thousands more in the box, including wireless devices, printers, SATA controllers, MCE tuners.

* WinFX now named .NET 3.0 and installed by default.

* A host of peformance improvements: Windows Defender, disk defrag, and other functions have been given lower I/O priority to reduce their impact on system performance. Also, Windows SuperFetch and Windows ReadyBoost reduce the need to read and write from disk, reducing performance impact of Windows BitLocker drive Encryption.

* Lots of changes to User Access Controls to eliminate annoyances. Microsoft acknowledges that Beta 2 prompted users too often. Administrators can now delete shortcuts from public desktops without a prompt. Users can copy files to newly formatted external drives without prompt. Non-admins can manually install high priority updates without nagging. Prompts for viewing firewall settings, for "Ask Me Later" device install, and for connecting to a network (Beta 2 prompted twice for connecting) have been removed. Windows Defender no longer prompts to update signatures. No prompt to open Scanners and Cameras control panel. And no prompt during Media Player "Express" setup; Beta 2 incorrectly prompted users for permission. Finally, prompting at startup is no longer allowed.

When asked why users often were confronted with prompts for the same approvals again and again, Flores' reply was that no "forever" permissions were allowed because other programs could piggyback on that with harmful results.

And a few things Microsoft calls Additional Experience Improvements:

* ActiveX installer service enables standard users to install approved ActiveX controls. This feature is aimed at supporting home-brewed ActiveX controls for corporate intranets; through Group Policy, admins can make permission prompts unnecessary for certain ActiveX controls.

* Programs cannot prompt during the logon process unless configured by Group Policy.

* The command prompt window is marked with "Administrator" if run with elevated permissions.

The main reasons for the stability issues in earlier betas, according to Flores, was that Microsoft was still working on driver support, and had not yet "cleaned up the code." (But you knew that.) The first priority was to make the code feature complete, and then worry about tuning. They're worrying about tuning now.

We'll have our review of Vista RC1 for you in the next day or so. Keep your eye on infoworld.com.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 4, 2006 01:00 PM

September 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Vista RC1: First looks, screengrabs

Here are my notes from my install of Vista RC1 (Build 5568.16384.060827-1900) on a Dell E1405 Core Duo laptop with GMA 945:

-- Most notable of all with RC1 is that Aero Glass, which lets you see through windows and toggle/tab through 3D stack of windows, now works swimmingly (view image) with Intel's GMA 945, which has no discrete graphic card.

Vista has a new driver for the Intel GMA 945 graphics system (core duo) and it works well. No lagging. There was a lot of fuss around the Web with earlier betas because it simply was not clear who was going to get the "full" Vista experience, and with prices of laptops coming down with in-built graphics cards, it seemed a bit rich to not support it. I chose this $699 Dell E1405 as just the kind of machine that should be able to run it (with its 1GB RAM).

-- Clean install much quicker and all drivers except for media card reader were installed. However, all did not work properly, namely the MS-installed Broadcom Wi-Fi driver for my machine's Dell 1390 WLAN card.

-- Everything feels a LOT more finished and look and feel is near final; time will tell on reliability, etc.

InfoWorld's Test Center will be looking at it more closely and have a more in-depth preview for enterprise buyers soon. Follow InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Vista here.

Some more screen grabs: Start-up greeting; Security Center

Posted by Mike Barton on September 1, 2006 05:38 PM

September 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

BEA puts SALT on Tuxedo

BEA Systems this week released SALT 1.1 (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo), extending Tuxedo applications to SOA.

SALT 1.1 provides a Web services layer on top of Tuxedo.

"It allows a whole new generation of Web services clients to get access to mainframe-style applications based on Tuxedo," said Bill Roth, vice president of the BEA Workshop group. SALT serves as a Web services stack on top of Tuxedo for doing high-throughput, transactional Web services, Roth said. Web serices and XML can be used instead of an older native language, Roth said.

"BEA SALT provides a high performance, easy to use, configuration-driven model that accesses existing Tuxedo services as standard Web services using SOAP over HTTP protocol," according to BEA's Web site. SALT is configuration-driven and does not require programming changes for accessing Tuxedo services.

A separately licensed product, BEA SALT complies with Web services specifications such as WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing, SOAP 1.1, SOAP 1.2, and WSDL 1.1. The Tuxedo security framework is used for authentication with SALT.

Posted by Paul Krill on September 1, 2006 05:29 PM

September 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: A pricey third eye for admins

Fresh from the Test Center: Senior Contributing Editor and networking guru Paul Venezia recently braved Entuity's Eye of the Storm, a Web- and Java-based network monitoring package designed to get deep inside a network's routers and switches, inspecting device metrics and port data. He concludes that despite some rough edges, it's a solid solution that can give some valuable insight to admins of large networks -- as long as they can convince the accounting department to sign off on the $50,000 price tag. Click here for a peek at the Eye's UI

Burning firewall love: When Security Adviser Roger Grimes is this gaga for a firewall, you can bet the server farm that it's worth checking out. The object of Grimes' affection: Juniper Networks NetScreen firewall. Adjectives such as "excellent" and "versatile" spring up, not to mention compliments for stellar documentation and tech support.

Microsoft Virtual Server evolves: As virtualization garners increasing interest throughout the IT world, the technohemoth of the Northwest has injected greater functionality into the beta version of Virtual Server. Available for download now, VS Beta 2 features support for AMD's virtualization technology, integration with Active Directory, and a Volume Shadow Service, which improves the server backup process.

Blog roll call: Geek in Paradise Brian Chee is wowed by DD-WRT, an open-source access point combining Linux and a Linksys WRT-54G that enables a bushel full of enterprise features.

Dave Rosenberg dabbles in some cross-platform fun in Open Sources, running three OSes on a single (yet stressed) PC.

Finally, David Marshall investigates virtualization support for the Mac Pro tower in the InfoWorld Virtualization Report.

Posted by Ted Samson on September 1, 2006 06:00 AM