Nov 2007 - Misc Technical observations

(prompted by many things)

CONSUMER SERVICES
Social networks ~ MySpace/Google: join forces to launch a new social platform which has a set of APIs for developers to build social applications. The OpenSocial standards are designed to evolve through contributions from the open-source community and from partners like Friendster, LinkedIn, Ning, Six Apart, Plaxo and Salesforce.com.

IM ~ Meebo service: allows JavaScript or Flash applications to be registered so they can call on Meebo's APIs to send IMs to various IM systems.

PRODUCTIVITY
Office ~ Document Standards: The South African government is to adopt ODF (i.e. not MS's OOXML). Many countries (Russia, Malaysia, Japan, France, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, South Africa, Netherlands, Korea, Vietnam, Finland/Justice, British/Education, Australia/National Archives) have announced laws or rules that favor the use ODF (over proprietart formats such as MS's "Open XML"). Some are switching to OpenOffice (e.g. France is switching half a million government employees) others are using plug-ins to their existing MS Office suite.

UI
Browser ~ Mozilla's Prism (was called WebRunner): lets Web applications to be stripped from the browser and work on the application if it were a traditional desktop program. It is in prototype, but can separate a Web application from its browser, drop it onto the desktop in its own window, and manage its icon and placement on the desktop like any locally installed program. It is stand-alone application, but they are working on a Firefox plug-in.

DATA
Industry consolidation ~ Iron Mountain buys Stratify: who make document discovery software. Iron Mountain sees benefits in combining Stratify's document discovery technology with its storage offerings/services (Cf. EMC and Documentum).

BI ~ IBM buys Cognos: for around $5b. IBM had partnered with Hyperion, BO, and Cognos for BI. Now the 3 major database vendors all have a BI offerings. IBM said they still intend to stay out of the applications space. Though boundary between applications and infrastructures is blurred (e.g. collaboration, communication etc.) They are sticking to SW infrastructures that link to services offerings. (Cf. SAP buys Business Objects, Oracle buys Hyperion, MS buys ProClarity)

LOCATION
Location ~ GeoXG: influenced by OGC/georss.org, publish "W3C Geospatial Vocabulary" and "W3C Geospatial Ontologies." The Vocabulary Report defines a basic ontology and OWL vocabulary for representation of geospatial properties for Web resources. The Ontologies Report supplies an overview and description of geospatial foundation ontologies to represent geospatial concepts and properties for use on the Web. Just as there are physical (IP address) and conceptual (domain) locators on
the Web, there are physical (coordinates, sreet addresses) and conceptual (placenames and political divisions).

IDENTITY
Identity ~ Oracle Adaptive Access Manager: has 2 components: Adaptive Strong Authenticator and Adaptive Risk Manager. The Adaptive Access Manager adds turnkey Knowledge-Based Authentication and system monitoring dashboard features.

LANGUAGES/SYSTEMS
Open ~ Open Systems adoption in Gov: 55% of Gov agencies in the US have been involved in an open-source implementation. 29% who haven't adopted open-source software plan to do so in the next 6-12 months (leaving only 16% not using or planning to use Open source). 90% of those who have implemented open-source software said they believe their agency benefits.
Security is often a top reason for implementing open source and 88% of those in intelligence agencies said that their agencies can benefit from open source (NSA has been supporting a secure Linux project, called Security Enhanced Linux, since 2001). The bugs and backdoors are more quickly identified (and addressed) when everyone can see the source (Cf. MS's SW as the virus vector of choice).

Closed ~ MS's Oslo: (market badge Cf. .Net) will deliver a unified platform integrating services and modelling. It will include changes to: Visual Studio (model-driven design of distributed apps), System Center (direct deployment from aligned metadata repositories across server and tools productswith intermediate steps), BizTalk, .Net Framework (model-driven dev for WCF, WWF), ), etc. due next year. What MS means by Model driven is different from what others mean by MDA - and is more akin to 4GLs offered decades ago on closed prorietary stacks. Oslo has a modeling environment, a BP server and a new deployment models.

Closed vs Open ~ Linux vs Windows in Nigeria: Mandriva (Linux) will provide a customized Linux OS and support for 17,000 PCs for Nigerian schools. The IT Department (Technology Support Center - TSC), plans to wipe the computers' disks and install Windows XP. The agency funding the PCs wants to keep Mandriva Linux on the Classmate PCs. This highlights the battle being waged against business users/funders when their desire is for non-Windows solutions (e.g. by appealing to IT departments, who realise that if stable IT appliances are implemented their arcane knowledge of MS's support resource intensive solutions - will be of little value).

DEVICES
Phone ~ Google phone: wireless handhelds running Google applications and OS are expected 1st half of 2008. Google phones would be open i.e. interoperable with different carriers (not locked to a carrier), portable (run on HW form many vendors e.g. HTC). What is unclear is if it will be Linux based.

Phones ~ Phone to dominate web access: 75% of consumers worldwide will have a mobile phone by 2011. 1.5 billion new mobile consumers are expected to emerge over the next four years (60% from Asia Pac). Smartphone shipments could reach 300m next year (after doubling this year to 200m). Apple aims to sell 10 million iPhones next year.

Phones ~ LG KS20: has a 70mm QVGA touchscreen that dominates the front of the phone so looks a bit like an iPhone, but is cursed with a MS' OS (which is not as slick as a Apple Phone OS). It has tri-band GSM/3G/HSDPA (3.6Mbits ps), browser, Wi-Fi, handwriting recognition, 128MB memory, Micro SD card slot, Bluetooth 2.0, 2-megapixel camera, FM radio.

Phones ~ Google Android: is mobile phone platform (OS - Linux, APIs, customizable UI, mobile browser, IM protocol support, etc.). It supports a custom-built virtual machine called Dalvik designed to maximize application performance and security. Third parties will provide other drivers (e.g. Synaptics will provide Touch-screen driver). It is free, open and expected to results in phones by the second half of 2008 (from many vendors, including perhaps Google). The SDK (includes tutorials, sample code, plug-in for integrating with Eclipse) is available from the OHA Web site. A six-minute video shows two prototype phones that are running Android applications - one device shows a small-screen phone that integrates a contact list with calling capability and a Google Maps, a second prototype uses a larger touch screen (similar to an iPhone) offering a glimpse of 3-D and 2-D graphics capabilities that run over a 3G network. OHA members supporting the initiative include: China Mobile (world largest wireless carrier with 340m subscribers), Deutsche Telekom, HTC Corp, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sprint.

PCs ~ low cost: Everex introduces a $200 Linux desktop Wednesday and will introduce a $300 Linux Laptop. The Desktop (TC2502) has 1.5-GHz Via C7-D CPU, 512MB of RAM, 80GB drive, a DVD player and an Ethernet port (no monitor).

PCs ~ instant on: HyperSpace would offer instant-on functions including multimedia playback, e-mail, IM, browsing or remote system maintenance, all without the ridiculous time need to boot an OS such as Windows. HyperSpace is built on a VM (hypervisor) that is called the HyperCore that allows applications (of OSes) to run independently and concurrently on a single processor, in a way that prevents them from interfering with one another. Phoenix developed the BIOS that PCs run after they power on and before loading a full OS (e.g. Windows) and provides a standard interface to the HW components in a PC. HyperCore will run between the BIOS and the OS and HyperSpace will offer a quick-starting alternative to a full OS. It is very slowing starting to be recognised that MS's propensity for continually adding of new features to Windows (or Office for that matter), or just changing the ways existing features operate (or their UI), is going down a failed path. This is a reason it so hard to actually demonstrate business benefits for upgrading to their technologies that exceed the costs of those upgrades.

Devices ~ Phones a better basis for device that the PC: ARM provides 95% of the CPUs in Smartphones (Symbian, iPhone etc.) and their view is that emerging markets are better served by something evolving from the mobile phone end than something evolving from PC. ARM/Smartphone based devices may be more secure (i.e. ARM's architecture was originally for the Arcon PC which had fixed ROM so the OS was inviolate - so no viruses), cheaper to operated (and phones follow an appliance model - which is far cheaper than the PC model with its common operating environments and associated teams of LAN support people keeping up with continual changes to the OS), greener (they have lower power usage), are more reliable, and a communications oriented (which is increasingly the predominent use of PCs).

PC ~ Hasta la Vista, baby: Exhaustive testing confirms that Vista (SP1) is at least twice as slow as XP (on the same hardware). It is hard to see the business case (e.g. benefits) for implementing Vista in business except of technologist who will: have new technologies to play with, have more work to do - and the IT industry who will be able sell more HW, SW and services.

STORAGE
Storage ~ Flash disk: Samsung is producing sample 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drives that have a sequential write speed of 100MBps and sequential read speed of 120MBps and use SSD (flash memory rather than magnetic storage). They consume about half the power of current SATA I interface drives and one-tenth the power of enterprise 15,000 rpm drives.

Storage ~ SATA 320Gb: Western Digital ships Scorpio 2.5-in (9.5mm form-factor) SATA (3Gbit/sec) hard drive that can store 320GB.

Storage ~ Volumes up, prices down: 134m hard drives shipped in Q3 (up 21%). Most laptop drives are around 100GB and $50 (320GB laptop drives are $65). Solid-state drive pricing are dropping but they are still an order of magniture (or more) more expensive than disks. Desktop drive prices are not dropping but capacity is increasing (approach 1TB).

MODELLING
Business operations: Oracle buy Interlace Systems: Interlace has software called Integrated Business Planning that integrates data from planning and operational systems to uncover gaps between financial and operational plans. It allows business planners to change operational assumptions and assess the business impact on operations. It uses a "change-based data modeling server" that pulls together data from disparate operational plans into an integrated model to allow multiple users to run what-if scenarios by changing operational assumptions and then see the outcome of the changes on business plans.

MS's comments: MS says "Anytime you're looking at a model, you're only looking at a piece of the application because each of those models is separate," "Today, modeling is really only something that a select group of users and a select group of companies can do,". MS's approach is not about UML (MS is not a a big supporter). A modeling language is part of Oslo (MS's will build its own) and MS say it will unify existing modeling languages ("similar to MS's CLR for application development"). CLR did nothing to "unify" development languages it just locked the execution to MS's proprietary OS. We can expect similiar from their modelling language i.e. it will lock models to their proprietary SW stack.

Infrastructure modeling: Wachovia is generating 3D models of its infrastructures using Tideway (Foundation is a tool for mapping dependencies among applications and hardware) and Intepoint (which focuses on visualization and event simulation for IT systems). The modelling goes down to servers in buildings at present and aims to provide a better visualization of IT assets, power consumption, etc.

MANAGEMENT
Industry consolidation ~ EMC buy Voyence: to assist in the administration of changes in their network and security devices. VoyenceControl manages NW changes and configurations on multiple vendors' equipment.

Industry consolidation ~ Cisco buys Securent (its 125th acquistion) for $100 million. Securent's distributed policy platform lets companies administer, enforce and audit access to data, communications and applications in heterogeneous IT application environments.

Industry consolidation ~ Symantec is interested in buying companies that do: data loss prevention, transaction-based security, server management, and then complementary services across those three software domains

Management: Consolidation Discovery and Analysis Tool allows IBM resellers to evaluate smaller environments of 50 servers or fewer and suggest what IBM products/services should be bought. IBM suggests that server consolidation using virtualization technology can save up to 60% of IT costs while quadrupling utilisation.

Privacy ~ IBM PCI offerings: IBM has some new product/services to help customers tackle major elements of IT security and compliance project work in a more integrated fashion. Driven by privacy associated with PCI (payment card industry) standards. Basically it looks some existing tools bolted together with some services (Proventia Network Enterprise Scanner product with vulnerability checks tailored to address regulation requirements, Tivoli Compliance Insight Manager report templates customized to handle the different aspects of the PCI guidelines, etc.).

OPERATIONS
Service management ~ Europe ahead: Europe is ahead of North American counterparts in the adoption and execution of IT service management guidelines. Aberdeen say 55% of European businesses are managing their IT as a service according to ITIL best practice framework guidelines, compared to 33% in North America.

Service management ~ HP BSM: is an updated version of Business Service Management (BSM) that allows IT to gauge both technical performance of a service and its importance to employee productivity and customer service.