- Standards? What Standards?
- Test Center Tracker: Bridging technology and finance
- Preview: Parallels Server beta looks promising
- Test Center Tracker: Greener docs and a six-month itch
- A NAC for policy enforcement: Lockdown Networks, RIP
- Train Signal knows training.
- Test Center Tracker: Sticky sweet Sun storage, plus a hardy Ubuntu beta
- Eye-Fi reinvents SD
- Highlights of Windows XP SP3
- Highlights of Windows Vista SP1
March 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)
In a comment to my recent blog entry regarding Lockdown Networks' departure from the marketplace, "Brian" takes issue with my comments about standards always win in the end.
While it's clear that you need to take the time to consider which standards to support (whether de facto or de jure), it is equally clear that over any reasonable stretch of time, communications systems will consolidate around standards. Using Brian's example, even though ISDN never caught on in residential lines in the US, it became ubiquitous in many countries around the world, and still delivers last mile PRIs in many locales in the US.
The comments I made about standards in the context of policy-based network security are vitally important for organizations recognizing their needs for that security. To adopt proprietary, closed systems at the current level of maturity of the emerging standards is unwise.
Where the standards exist, engage technology that uses them. Where they don't, focus on those solutions from companies committed to the emerging standards or accept the probability that your approach will be relatively short-lived.
After all, standards benefit customers primarily, by providing greater choice. Companies who create products in competition with standards are broadcasting their disinterest in competing on a level playing field and their preference for using installed-base as their primary benefit.
I've been around long enough to remember when, "No one [got] fired for buying IBM." The company name has changed a few times over the years, but that unfortunate idea is still around.
Isn't it better to solve the long-term problem with effective, standards-based solutions than to play it safe with a closed, proprietary system that relies on the herd mentality?
Posted by Stephen Hultquist on March 27, 2008 09:07 PM
March 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Bridging technology and finance
Today's Test Center Tracker starts from the heart of computing to end up with a mention of IPOs and SEC reports connecting those two extremes in a single jump. Please read on.
More powerful machines or more machines? For the not so young among us this question will bring to memory an old debate between mainframes and minicomputers, or between minicomputers and open systems. Well in today's "Ahead of the curve" Tom Yager is proposing the modern day version of that dilemma that compares two competing architectures from AMD and Intel. Read it all here.
Do you need more "V"? "V" as in Virtualization, server virtualization to be precise. If you do, don't miss this early peek of Parallels Server a new product still in beta that challenges the big names of virtualization as a hosted or self standing solution. In his eval Randall Kennedy finds some promising new features that should make Parallels Servers more competitive and more desirable.
Your IPO dollars at work Speaking of big names of virtualization, VMware has plans to invest $100 million in India David Marshall is reporting , and to increase the number of employees in that area to 1,000 units, or about 20 percent of the total workforce declared in the last SEC 10-K report. Do I see anything wrong with that? No, I am glad for my Indian friends, but I'll follow other investments of the company with much interest. Meanwhile, join me in reading David's report.
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 26, 2008 09:05 AM
March 26, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Parallels Server beta looks promising
The market for hypervisor-based server virtualization is about to get more crowded. Parallels, the one-time nascent maker of desktop virtual machine (VM) solutions for the Mac, is preparing to jump into the server virtualization arena with offerings for Mac OS X Server, Linux, and Windows.
This is a major step up for Parallels, which, following parent company SWSoft (the combined company was recently rebranded under the Parallels moniker), is aggressively targeting the enterprise datacenter. Previously, Parallels had been known for its Parallels Desktop solution for OS X-based Macs, a traditional desktop VM product that allows Apple users to run Windows in a VM.
Benefiting from the management tools built around Virtuozzo, the company's OS partitioning solution for Linux and Windows, Parallels Server takes aim at the 800-pound gorilla of server virtualization (VMware ESX) and the looming elephant (Microsoft Hyper-V) by providing a product that supports both “bare metal” and “lightweight hypervisor” runtime models. In the former, Parallels will boot a scaled-down Linux kernel that acts as the hypervisor layer upon which you can build your VM (the ESX model). In the latter, Parallels will install a combination device driver/service on a host OS (the Hyper-V model), allowing you to build your VM infrastructure atop an existing server platform.
Parallels was kind enough to allow us a sneak peak at an early beta build of Parallels Server. Installing the Windows hosted version onto an existing Windows Server 2003 system was straightforward, and it didn’t even require a reboot. Once installed, Parallels Server presented me with a well-crafted management UI that allowed me to easily create and configure new VMs.
The “Add Virtual Machine” wizard was particularly well thought-out, providing all of the usual configuration settings (number of CPUs, memory size, disk configuration) as well as prompting for optional – yet important – parameters, such as which CD drive or ISO image to use as the Guest OS installation source. All of these elements worked together to streamline the VM creation process and help get my Parallels Server configuration up and running quickly.
Note: Since this was an early beta release, I didn’t pay much attention to performance. However, I did find Parallels Server to be quite responsive, allowing me to install Windows Server 2003 into a new VM at a very competitive pace. I also found the various performance and resource utilization counters to be both helpful and informative, with everything arranged neatly in a series of tabbed panes within the VM console window.
One feature I found most welcome was support for multiple virtual CPUs. Many server applications are tuned to behave differently on a single-CPU system, limiting scalability in non-SMP VM environments. Parallels Server’s multi-CPU support should give these applications a healthy performance boost.
Another welcome addition – the absence of which I found to be a major deficiency when I reviewed Parallels Workstation against VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC, and innoTek (now Sun) VirtualBox last March – was support for Network Address Translation (NAT) for VMs. Now you can give your VM access to the outside world without having to create a network bridge or otherwise exposing them to other systems.
In summary, the inclusion of multi-CPU support and improved networking in Parallels Server – plus the aforementioned “bare metal” option (which I didn’t get to test here) – are important steps forward and should help the company to establish its virtualization offering as a viable data center competitor to VMware and Microsoft.
Posted by Randall Kennedy on March 26, 2008 06:00 AM
March 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Greener docs and a six-month itch
In the Tracker today, we look at a Xerox tool to help green your document processing, and another look at the latest Ubuntu beta, this time from the enterprise desktop perspective.
Calculate your doc's greenness: Saying that you want your operations to be more environmentally sound is easy -- figuring out just how much impact your decisions have is much more difficult. In Sustainable IT, Ted Samson looks at a new Sustainability Calculator from Xerox. The tool is designed to help companies evaluate their document processing operations -- one of the back-office areas that could certainly use help from an environmental perspective. According to Ted, the calculator can be used for more than marketing hype since it points out practices that have significant impact on a company's environmental footprint.
Another Ubuntu beta view: Faithful readers were pointed to a Test Center Review of Ubuntu beta 8.04, and today we give you another opinion. Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall Kennedy has been looking at the latest from Ubuntu with a decidedly enterprise bent, and he has some questions -- like, what else is available? It's not that he doesn't like Ubuntu, but Kennedy has been experimenting with desktop operating systems and he's reached the conclusion that there are many paths to possible happiness. Head over to see what he's discovered -- and see if you can help him figure out the answers to the big questions.
Posted by Curt Franklin on March 25, 2008 11:10 AM
March 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
A NAC for policy enforcement: Lockdown Networks, RIP
About three years ago, I was one of a core group of network engineers sitting at the Interop Hotstage facility working through the details of policy-based networking and the Interop Lab that we were designing to demonstrate it. There were a number of players in the marketplace, and it was clear that the technology was reaching a tipping point. In the intervening years, "NAC" (for Network Access Control) became a classic hyped technology, with dozens of companies creating products for the market, a number of established companies relabeling their existing products, and the confusion of multiple semi-compatible standards efforts.
Last week, yet another sign of the maturing of the market appeared when one of those companies involved in that early Interop demonstration announced that it was ceasing operations. Lockdown Networks is no more.
Although Lockdown Networks is not the first company to depart the market, it is perhaps one of the more widely deployed to do so. In Lockdown's announcement, the company cited "overall economic trends and slower than predicted adoption of Network Access Control (NAC) technology" for its failure to secure additional investment capital. However, its announcement was grist for industry insiders to expand the conversation surrounding the NAC and policy-based product marketplace.
And I think there is validity to their postulations.
If there are any key lessons that we can learn from the past waves of network-related technology, the first two are these:
1. Standards win
2. In-line devices collapse into the infrastructure
Although the marketplace is still far from consolidated, products from a broad range of providers including Cisco and Microsoft (whom we will be reviewing in the not-too-distant future), Enterasys, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro (click the link to see our comparative roundup), and ConSentry (reviewed in February) demonstrate that companies already deeply involved in enterprise infrastructure understand the necessity of policy enforcement to protect that infrastructure from both rampant malware and the ever-present threat of data breaches.
You ignore policy enforcement at your own peril. Ignoring the risk will make you more vulnerable. Trying to implement without design won't work, either.
The focus of your decisions around policy implementation are directly related to the granularity of your policies, the importance of your information infrastructure, and the critical nature of your data. Only you can decide.
Given that, though, focusing on infrastructure-centric solutions to policy enforcement makes the most sense. Whether in your switches, endpoint security agents, or the systems that manage these and other network components, using policy management that integrates with the components that see the traffic and client characteristics makes the most sense, don't you think?
Posted by Stephen Hultquist on March 25, 2008 10:18 AM
March 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)
I had a chance to meet up with the owner of Train Signal, Scott Skinger, this week. Train Signal provides training courses for server-side applications like Exchange, Windows management, etc. Though they don't do databases from what I've seen, so we're going to have to put some pressure on them.
Anyway, the reason I'm blogging on this is because I was reasonable pleased to see the types of courses they have and the depth they cover. I'm always looking for new training and I'm really only becoming interested in that which covers more than just the basics. And from what I've read, Train Signal should fit nicely.
Their biggest draw for me though is their price. They're priced so that ordinary techs can afford the courses themselves and don't have to rely on their company to pay for it. Some of the other training vendors cost over $1,000 per course and while the training is really above average, it's really hard to talk your boss into paying that much for DVD training, and impossible to afford it yourself. So I like vendors who offer materials that are priced to own. And these courses being scenario-based, they walk you through each task and explain things along the way. I'm really getting tired of combing through books as my only source of information. Sometimes, I'd really like to just have an expert sit down and explain something to me.
I'll be doing a review of the course material here pretty soon so stay tuned. I'll probably post it on my personal review site, www.ITBookworm.com, but I may also post it here. I'll at least link to it from here, how's that?
I caught up with Scott and he gave me a short interview. Here's how it went.
1. How long have you been making courseware?
Train Signal was started in 2002, so this is our sixth year in business.
2. What prompted you to start doing this?
Before starting Train Signal, I was an instructor at several different schools. I was very disappointed with the instruction found in Microsoft Press books and also the school’s general curriculum. It was very theoretical and the students weren’t learning as much as I thought they should. I decided to use the books/curriculum as a guideline and add more hands-on exercises to the instruction.
I would bring in a lot of my own equipment, create labs, write scenarios and do a lot of troubleshooting to ensure that they were really learning networking and not just how to pass a test. The students really liked it and I could see a big difference in their knowledge and confidence. After doing this enough times I decided to create lab books and sell these on the Internet. Originally, the videos that I created were meant to supplement the lab books. However, I tend to be long-winded and detailed and I realized that the videos were even more valuable than the lab books.
3. How many employees do you have, and are you an actual company who does this fulltime, or a group of techies doing it in their spare time?
I founded Train Signal by myself in 2002. I really had no idea what I was doing and no formal business plan. We have grown every year since and we currently have 15 full-time employees and about 15 independent contractors working with us.
4. How do you choose the courses you teach?
We listen to our customers first and foremost. We also pay attention to the industry and what is hot. We really don’t go far outside our niche, Computer Networking professionals, so it is easier to focus in on the hottest courses.
5. How do you qualify and choose instructors?
I was the original instructor and I am very picky about the quality of the material and ensuring that we under promise and over deliver. I no longer teach but I am still involved in the process of choosing instructors. We are VERY picky and only choose instructors who are “great instructors” first and technically sound second. We are regimented in the procedures we follow (email to the instructor, information given, etc.) and we gauge responses to determine a good fit. Once we fell like we have a potential good fit, we require a practice teach video. I pay close attention to everything looking for clues about the instructor’s overall performance. We have been very fortunate with our instructors and we currently have 7 very solid instructors.
6. What do you think makes your training different from the others?
Our products are scenario-based and taught in a way to give the student as close to a “real world” experience as possible. Our primary focus in on making sure the student knows as much as possible on the subject matter and not just enough to pass a certification test.
I also think that we honestly care more than other training companies. It sounds silly but I have made it very known to all of our instructors that our mission is to create the “Best Computer Training on the Planet”. We put a lot of time and effort into making sure each course contains everything that it should.
7. Are there any exciting courses we can look forward to soon?
I am really excited about our Server 2008 line. We will release our first product in early May and we will be releasing about 12 more Server 2008 products over the next year.
We are also trying something new that I am pretty pumped up about, an Advanced Exchange Server 2007 line. Basically, we will be releasing a whole series of courses to supplement our main Exchange 2007 release. Our Exchange 2007 course is 20 hours long and is very comprehensive but it is impossible to cover everything. Our Advanced line of Exchange Server courses will cover specific topics in more depth. We will be releasing courses like Powershell in Exchange 2007, Exchange Anti-Spam/Virus, Exchange Backup & Disaster Recovery, Unified Messaging and a few others. Our Powershell course is schedule for June.
8. Do you or have you considered offering your courses online... what was the outcome?
This is really a hot topic for us right now. I personally like physical products and we will continue to sell physical products. However, the trend is definitely towards online training, so this is something that we will start to offer in 2008.
9. Is there anything else you want people to know about your training or anything related to it?
We put time and effort into every release to make sure that it is a “Train Signal” quality course. We will provide you with a high quality product that represents an exceptional value AND we guarantee it. We offer a 90 Day, Unconditional Money Back Guarantee on ALL of our courses, because we flat out believe in our product. No other training company even comes close to matching our guarantee. Although, we do have people who scam us (watch the course or copy the course and return it), I love offering this guarantee because I have so much faith in our product.
Also, we are here for our customers. If you have a question, give us a call and we will help you out. You will be talking to a live person on the phone from the very beginning and we won’t let you off the phone until you are happy!
OK, well I guess that's all I've got on Train Signal for now. I'll have more when I get the material and find out if they're really as good as they say they are. But from the little I've seen, it's encouraging.
Posted by Sean McCown on March 25, 2008 08:05 AM
March 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Sticky sweet Sun storage, plus a hardy Ubuntu beta
Abuzz over Honeycomb: Test Center Analyst and storage guru Mario Apicella has savored a sweet taste of Sun's new StorageTek 5800, aka "Honeycomb," a impressive solution for meeting your company's fixed-content archiving needs. Sun delivers in Honeycomb easy management, strong performance, and extraordinary resilience, says Mario -- plus the company's ties to the open source world mean promise more software features faster than competing proprietary solutions.
Ubuntu 8.04 beta proves hardy: Ubuntu developers have clearly poured a lot of hard work into the latest beta release of the popular desktop OS. While not much has changed in terms of its appearance, writes InfoWorld contributor Neil McAllister, there's plenty to admire beneath the hood, from improved installaion to superior security.
Posted by Ted Samson on March 24, 2008 02:58 PM
March 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
I just got my new Eye-Fi SD card and I'm just excited to get going with it. I'll have to admit that it never even crossed my mind to have a card that wirelessly uploads your pics from your camera to your computer, but I'm glad there are people like the folks at Eye-Fi thinking about things like this.
One of the biggest headaches I have is trying to upload all my pics every week. It usually takes me 2 hops; one from the camera to the laptop and another from the laptop to the server. And that's after having to chase down my card reader and messing with the tiny eject mechanism on my camera. With Eye-Fi I should be able to go directly from my camera to my server.
I'll be putting it through its paces here in a little while and I'll let you know what I find. But I'm already encouraged. This is the kind of innovation we need in the rest of the industry.
Posted by Sean McCown on March 24, 2008 10:36 AM
March 20, 2008 | Comments: (0)
| Change/Feature | Details | Impact/Benefit |
| Revised Network Stack | "Black Hole" router detection; WAP2 Wi-Fi security support; NAP (Network Access Protection) support | Improved performance; works with newer wireless security standards; policy-based protection of network against unhealthy PCs |
| Internet Explorer 7.0 | Latest version of Microsoft’s Web browser | Tabbed browsing; phishing filter; better standards compliance |
| Windows Media Player 11 | Latest version of Microsoft’s audio/video playback application | Bug fixes and security improvements; supports broader range of media types |
| Performance Improvements | Better throughput at a variety of business productivity tasks | Gives IT shops one more incentive to stay with Windows XP |
Read Randall Kennedy's guide to the Vista and XP service packs.
Posted by Doug Dineley on March 20, 2008 03:00 AM
March 20, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Highlights of Windows Vista SP1
| Change/Feature | Details | Impact/Benefit |
| Compatibility Improvements | Expanded driver database on Windows Update; improved battery life for notebooks | More devices should work out of the box; mobile users will get more time between charges |
| Performance Improvements | Local and Network file copy operations have been retooled; better time estimation and faster time to completion for long transfers | Less frustration while waiting for sluggish transfer to complete; better perceived responsiveness from the OS |
| Kernel Tweaks | Vista now shares same kernel version as Server 2008; Kernel Patch Protection modified in x64 version | Service Packs will now be released in lockstep with Windows Server; third-party anti-malware vendors can now hack the Windows kernel to install their own hooks |
| Miscellaneous | Expanded BitLocker support; WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) anti-piracy less draconian | Can encrypt more drive types and configurations; WGA errors less likely to trigger total lockout |
Read Randall Kennedy's guide to the Vista and XP service packs.
Posted by Doug Dineley on March 20, 2008 03:00 AM
March 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Smart phones, safe VMs and the future of Open Source
The beauty and the beast. The personal gadgets battle seems to be polarized around the joust between Blackberry and iPhone, while other illustrious players may have lost ground before even starting to be popular, Tom Yager suggests in Ahead of the Curve. Which one should you choose? Well, it depends on where your priorities are. In many ways, comparing these two phones is like making a choice between form and function. The iPhone has much to be liked, but hasn't , and perhaps never will, come even close to the industrial efficiency of the Blackberry, Tom explains.
VM safety, true concern or hype? While many more voices begin to suggest that a virtual environment is open to specific security breaches, others take a more cautious view, David Marshall explains in Virtualization Report. There are good points to be made for each side. Is VM security mostly a vendors driven concern to open yet another target platform for their products? If that's the case, the additional cost of the security products could be an unnecessary burden that slows down the "P" to "v" move. On the other end, customers will hesitate to move applications to a virtual environment if they fear it could be less protected. Read more here about those opposite points of view.
The future of Open Source? I see too many surveys for my own good, but this study on the future of Open Source has got my attention. Perhaps it's because it was launched by a Venture Capital party, which it's newsworthy in itself. Perhaps I am biased because the results of the survey will be disclosed at the upcoming, InfoWorld hosted, Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. If you are also intrigued by that survey read more here from Zack Urlocker
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 19, 2008 04:59 AM
March 18, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Web services tied and tested
Free mashups: Built on an Apache Axis2-based application server, the WSO2 Mashup Server (in its 1.0 debut) lets you stitch together Web services, Atom, RSS, HTML, and other data sources, and share them with your inner or outer circle. Mashup Server is completely, 100 percent, absolutely free and open source, with support available from the company starting at $2,000 per server per year. Steven Nunez has the review; this would be the same Steven Nunez who brought us the review of WSO2's "lightweight, fast, and free" Enterprise Service Bus 1.0 in November.
LISA fakes it: As a SOAP test tool, iTKO's LISA 3.6e was not as easy to use, as rich in Web service testing features, or as nicely documented as Parasoft's SOAtest 5.1 or Crosscheck's SOAPSonar 3.0.5, as per Rick Grehan in his November 2007 roundup. LISA 4.0 rebounds with a cool virtualization capability that allows QA folks to quickly and easily create simulated Web services for testing. Plus, LISA is hardly limited to SOAP or even RESTful Web services, but also provides tools for testing Web apps, Java applications, JMS systems, and enterprise service buses. See Rick Grehan's review of LISA 4.0 here; you'll find his November comparison of AdventNet's QEngine, Crosscheck's SOAPSonar, iTKO's LISA, Mindreef's SOAPscope Server, and Parasoft's SOAtest here.
Three free and fabulous Web service test tools: LISA and the other commercial tools allow users to test Web services without having to muck around in the XML. For users with a technical command of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, a freebie can take you further than you might think. Check out Rick's comparative look at Eviware SoapUI, PushToTest TestMaker, and WebInject from last May.
Posted by Doug Dineley on March 18, 2008 06:00 AM
March 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Windows XP TKO's Vista in 10 rounds
Here at Save Windows XP campaign headquarters, we're not all anti-Vista. Some of us, notably Test Center Chief Scientist Tom Yager, have begun to see the light. For Tom, if you like Windows Server 2008 you'll want Vista too, because only Vista takes advantage of some nice WS08 features. This about-face from Tom's originally lukewarm reception of Vista was sparked by his quality time with the head-spinning new Server 2008, chronicled here.
And then there's our man on the Enterprise Desktop, Randall Kennedy, who refuses to abandon old prejudices. For example, because Vista requires significantly more resources than XP in order to run half as fast, Randall has the idea maybe Vista is a bloated pig. Randall's going so far as to argue that businesses can afford to skip the Vista upgrade entirely, and ride XP until the dawn of Windows 7, which is expected in 2009 or 2010. No, performance isn't the only reason to stick with XP. Read Randall's 10-point analysis, then consider adding your name to our Save XP list.
A torch for Frankenvista: Microsoft engineer Vijayshinva Karnure blogged his instructions for creating a "super" workstation OS based on Windows Server 2008 in mid February, and Randall Kennedy has been putting the concoction to the test ever since. For one, "Workstation" 2008 is snappier than Vista. For two, WS08's Server Manager rocks as a central control panel. For three, it can run Active Directory, Exchange, and other server applications, which of course can be wonderfully convenient for developers. If Server '08 sounds like your kind of desktop, don't miss "Weird, wild, wonderful Windows "Workstation" 2008."
Posted by Doug Dineley on March 17, 2008 06:00 AM
March 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Clocking Vista and XP performance: About OfficeBench
I created the OfficeBench test script back in 1999/2000 while my company, Competitive Systems Analysis (CSA), was under contract to Intel's Desktop Architecture Labs (DAL). CSA was responsible for a great deal of internal benchmarking and white paper development surrounding the Pentium III and Pentium 4 CPU launches.
OfficeBench was designed from the beginning to be a "run anywhere" benchmark. By "run anywhere" I mean that the script will execute reliably under almost any Windows runtime environment. At the time it was being developed, this meant Windows 2000 and Terminal Server. As Windows evolved, so did OfficeBench. Today it supports every version of Windows since 2000, including XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, all flavors of Terminal Server, and all known application and desktop virtualization environments.
OfficeBench is also version independent. That is, it's designed to work with any version of Microsoft Office. When it was originally conceived, the state of the art was Office 2000. Since then, Microsoft has rolled out three additional versions: XP, 2003, and, most recently, 2007. OfficeBench runs unmodified across all four versions. Combined with the support for the various Windows platform releases, OfficeBench is the only test script of its kind that allows you to compare performance across multiple generations of Windows and Office.
OfficeBench uses OLE automation to drive the applications. This is different from most test scripts, which use window messages or keystroke and mouse click simulation. Using OLE automation has numerous benefits, including allowing test scripts to run unmodified across the four Office versions. It also factors out any input-related anomalies while eliminating the chance that a UI change or third party modification will somehow break the script.
Key OfficeBench tasks include the following:
Reformat all section headers and subheads in Word.
Generate multiple chart objects in Excel.
Generate complete multi-slide presentation in PowerPoint.
Multi-page scroll w/copy paste of chart objects into Word.
Slide sort/apply multiple templates in PowerPoint.
Multi-page scroll/print preview/print-to-file in Word.
Multi-chart print preview/print-to-file in Excel
Global search/replace in word (multiple).
Multi-slide preview/print-to-file in PowerPoint.
Navigate simulated research Web site in IE (multiple).
The above are just some highlights. There's a lot more going on than meets the eye, and the key is that it's the exact same set of tasks executing across all versions of Office.
OfficeBench doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's delivered as part of a sophisticated, extensible, multi-process testing framework we call DMS Clarity Studio. DMS Clarity Studio provides a variety of scalable workload objects for testing everything from client/server database connections to MAPI-based message store access to streaming multimedia. OfficeBench has been engineered to run in parallel with these workloads, providing for a rich variety of targeted test scenarios spanning the range of Windows client and server platforms. It's all coordinated through the DMS Clarity Studio framework and also seamlessly integrated with the exo.performance.network's Clarity Analysis Portal.
Note: DMS Clarity Studio is offered for free as part of the exo.performance.network. It's also part of the larger DMS Clarity Suite framework in use across thousands of trading workstations and other mission critical systems in the financial services sector. Some of the largest trading firms in the world trust DMS Clarity Suite to tell them when their systems are under-performing.
In summary, OfficeBench is part of a proven testing ecosystem that spans the range of Windows platforms and runtime scenarios. It is a sophisticated, version-independent benchmarking tool that executes reliably under almost any Windows runtime environment, allowing IT organizations to accurately assess multi-generational performance across all versions of Windows and Office.
Posted by Randall Kennedy on March 17, 2008 03:00 AM
March 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Escape from reality?
Don't you wish sometimes you had a magic wand to free your memory, and perhaps the world, from things like the idiotic behavior of a sleazy politician caught in a scandal? You know who I am referring to, don't you?
Well I have that magic wand. Perhaps it will work only for a few minutes, but enjoy this short vacation in today's Test Center daily pick.
Let the iPhone games begin
Or so we hope. Tom Yager gives a quick overview of what the upcoming SDK could bring to the iPhoners, and games are not a small part of his dream. Think for example, what powerful games developers could build around the exceedingly rich set of gestures of the iPhone. Read this and more in Ahead of the Curve.
Speaking of smartphones...
Zack Urlocker describes his own experience with the Palm Treo Centro. Admittedly the Treo Centro doesn't compete well with the brightest and smartest gadgets in that space but in Zack's own words is a no-brainer upgrade from Treo 650.
Show me the power of the CLI
It may sound ironic, perhaps even a vindication to the *nix folks, but lately Microsoft seems to express its best when a GUI is not in the way. This time the focus is not on the Linux-like ability of Windows Server 2008 to run without a graphic interface but on PowerShell. If you read TechNet PowerShell is an old and indeed powerful friend that now has received a surprising public acknowledgment from VMware, David Marshall reports.
Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, SDK, Palm Treo, smartphones, Windows, Microsoft, PowerShell, VMware, TechNet, Windows Server 2008
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 12, 2008 09:17 AM
March 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Windows improvements, iPhone app dev, and network security
Longhorn top 10 - Though not as amusing as anything you'll see on "Letterman," Sean McCown and Tom Yager's top 10 list of improvements to Windows Server 2008 provides a useful overview of the key features that earned the server high marks in our recent review.
Review: RedSeal delivers the big security picture - Securing your IT assets is a seemingly never-ending task. Figuring out just where to begin can be induce heavy sweating. InfoWorld contributor Steve Hultquist has discovered a powerful solution in RedSeal Security Risk Manager: "Combining device configuration data with vulnerability data and other information, SRM creates a visual map of high-value, high-risk assets, and provides a collection of views and reports that help you zero in on the most effective path to mitigation," he writes.
App licensing and the iPhone - Donning his Enterprise Mac hat, Tom Yager contemplates Apple's $299 enterprise development license that entitles developers to create and distribute custom iPhone software strictly for internal use. Details from Apple are hazy, and Tom has plenty of questions on the subject.
Posted by Ted Samson on March 10, 2008 12:04 PM
March 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Top 10 improvements in Windows Server 2008
1. Windows Hyper-V hypervisor-based, hardware-accelerated server virtualization supports 64-bit guests, VM snapshots, VM relocation, access to offline disk images, and reservation of physical peripherals and CPU cores for exclusive use by specific guest OS instances.
2. Network Access Protection enforces health and remote access policies to keep noncompliant and unauthorized clients off the internal and external network.
3. Vastly improved Terminal Services with HTTPS tunneling and RemoteApp double-click launch of server-hosted Windows applications.
4. HTTPS tunneling and TCP socket sharing allow publishing of services through a small number of restricted, heavily monitored sockets.
5. A new "majority quorum" model for fail-over clustering lets you assign a vote to each cluster node and also to a shared storage device, assuring that if any one fails there is still a majority to constitute a quorum. The quorum disk in a two-node cluster is no longer a single point of failure.
6. Server Core provides a stripped-down server install with only essential services, giving virtual guests a smaller footprint and streamlining the operation and security of main Windows roles such as DNS, DHCP, and file serving.
7. Next Generation TCP/IP dramatically improves network performance through regular, automatic adjustments of the receive window size per connection, though support is currently limited to Windows Server 2008 and Vista. Also big in Next Generation TCP is the offload of TCP processing to supporting NICs, so the server's CPU can concentrate on server processes instead of communication processes.
8. Transactional NTFS lets you define transactions for server-level operations (e.g., to copy files to a directory, create a registry entry, and register a DLL) to ensure that they all complete or that the entire operation rolls back.
9. Restartable Active Directory Domain Services allows you to stop and start directory services without rebooting the domain controller or interrupting other Active Directory services. That means Windows Server 2008 can still handle DNS, DHCP, WINS, and all other requests during directory maintenance.
10. Object-oriented PowerShell replaces the DOS box for command-line administration and scripting.
Honorable mentions: Also noteworthy are Windows Server 2008's extremely strong, flexible, and standards-compliant encryption and security, .NET 3.0 implemented in ASP.NET and throughout the user level, self-healing NTFS, read-only domain controllers, multi-path I/O, and WS08's full support for enhanced features in Windows Vista.
For a closer look at these features, see "Product review: Windows Server 2008 is the host with the most, and the perfect guest" and "Secrets of Windows Server 2008."
-- Sean McCown and Tom Yager
Posted by Doug Dineley on March 10, 2008 03:00 AM
March 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: From secure VMs to stable desktops
Today's Test Center Tracker touches on three equally important topics: Securing you virtual machines, giving your business associates tools to better monitor performance and why you should hold on the best fitting, more stable Microsoft desktop OS. Please read on.
Virtualizing security? - Or should we say securing virtualization? Regardless of which expression feels more proper, bringing more security to guest VMs could become a tad closer now that VMware has made public VMsafe, a vision and an API to reach that goal.
Providers of security products are jumping at the opportunity but there are good reasons why these new security tools in the make should have the blessing of standards bodies, David Marshall explains.
An obstructed Vista - I would be really surprised if you haven't noticed the "Save XP" campaign on our pages. What are our motivations for keeping XP going? Glad you asked because Galen Gruman has put together a comprehensive laundry list of why we are doing it. Even more important Galen explains what the campaign is not about. Not Microsoft bashing, not an endorsement for Linux or Mac... Please click here for more.
To BI or not to BI? - The name, PerformancePoint Server 2007, can be deceiving but this latest application from Microsoft actually targets the business intelligence space, J. Peter Bruzzese reports.
How does PerformancePoint compare with other applications in the same space? Initial feedbacks from one early user seem to be positive, but read all the details in Enterprise Windows.
Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, VMware, virtualization, VMsafe, BI, Windows XP, Vista, Linux, Apple, Microsoft
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 5, 2008 06:59 AM
March 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Ajax, Vista troubles, and green lightweights
While politics junkies wait for polls to close in places like Ohio and Texas, IT pros can spend time thinking about serious issues -- like critical differences in open source Ajax toolkits, critical flaws in Windows Vista, and the critical question of which lightweight laptop really has the smallest footprint. InfoWorld writers are all over the critical questions this week, so let the counting begin...
A deep look at Ajax toolkits: Ajax was supposed to smooth over the differences between browsers, but what do you need to know to choose an Ajax toolkit? There are hundreds of options out there, and Peter Wayner looks at eight open source Ajax toolkits to help you figure out which is the best for you. Peter takes a close look, and if you're in the market for a new development tool you'll want to pay special attention to the screencast tours of all the candidates.
Vista knowledge: That Vista and its attending flotilla of drivers didn't really play well together is well known. The question for many users has been whether Microsoft knew about the situation before they released the latest operating system, or were caught by surprise when millions of users started to have problems. According to the latest article by Randall Kennedy, Microsoft knew, and pushed forward with the release. The problem now isn't so much what to do with Vista (with SP1, things are starting to settle down), but how much the lingering memory of Vista will effect adoption of Server 2008. What are your plans?
Light green computers: Apple's MacBook Air and Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 are the standard-bearers in the race for small, light, high-powered computers. The footprint each occupies on the desk is well-defined, but how about the environmental footprint each leaves? Is there a clear winner in the Green Computing Sweepstakes? InfoWorld's Ted Samson evaluates the two lightweight laptops to see which is the most environmentally responsible. Along the way he finds things like Energy Star compliance and the amazing 85-pound battery charger. Which machine won? Go read Ted's post, and find out.
Posted by Curt Franklin on March 4, 2008 12:47 PM