http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2011-04-09T00:00:00ZSocial applications in the enterprise are moving up the adoption curve--and newcomers own this market at the expense of big tech vendors.http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/229400883?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_security<!-- Image Aligning Right --> <div style="float:right; padding-left:10px; width:263;"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1297/297QTent_chart2.jpg" width="253" height="243" alt="Are you using Enterprise 2.0 apps?" title="Are you using Enterprise 2.0 apps?" /> </div> <!-- / Image Aligning Right --> Business collaboration and social software--what we call Enterprise 2.0 applications--have moved from the hype phase into serious consideration and adoption at most companies. </p> <P> Our <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/10/5374/Social%20Networking-Collaboration/it-pro-ranking-enterprise-2-0-applications.html"><i>InformationWeek Analytics</i> Enterprise 2.0 Vendor Evaluation Survey</a> of 619 business technology professionals shows that 68% of their companies have deployed at least one Enterprise 2.0 application. While Microsoft is the leader in terms of vendors in use now, thanks to SharePoint and Office, when it comes to overall performance, IT pros ranked Socialtext and Jive Software the top two providers, and IBM a close third. Microsoft checked in near the bottom. Customers are clearly finding value from small and upstart vendors, not just the largest players.</p> <P> Our IT Pro Rankings are derived by surveying IT professionals who actually evaluate and implement the relevant products. We use two sets of criteria to rank vendors. The first set rates the relative importance of 12 standard benchmarks used for all product sets. The other measures vendors against criteria tailored to specific features and capabilities customers seek in the product category--for Enterprise 2.0 applications, these include the ability to integrate with internal applications, quality of the user interface, and completeness of the feature set. Notably, respondents to this survey favored smaller players like Socialtext even when we delved into very specific Enterprise 2.0 features (see chart, below).</p> <P> As for what IT is looking for, Enterprise 2.0 applications, which include everything from Jive Clearspace to Oracle WebCenter, must address business needs and keep data secure, first and foremost. But we were surprised that product innovation ranked low. One explanation: It's not automatically assumed that offerings from companies like Microsoft are more innovative than those from, say, Drupal or Socialtext. IT's keeping an open mind. So what else, besides security, do respondents want?</p> <P> "Features have been commoditized and are no longer the differentiating point," says one IT pro. "Enterprise 2.0 represents a paradigm shift in how people work, not which features they use. Successful Enterprise 2.0 vendors understand this and provide assistance implementing adoption, driving change, and educating users on new ways to work."</p> <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1297/297QTent_chart1.jpg" width="486" height="272" alt="chart: How important are these features?" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /></center></p> <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1297/297QTent_chart3.jpg" width="580" height="263" alt="chart: Overall performance vs. Enterprise 2.0 features" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /></center></p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center> <div id="printfeaturePDFpromo"><div class="printfeaturePDFCover"><a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/issue/2243/informationweek-full-issue-april-11-2011.html"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1297/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek: Apr. 11, 2011 Issue" title="InformationWeek: Apr. 11, 2011 Issue" /></a></div> <div class="printfeaturePDFCopy"><strong><a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/issue/2243/informationweek-full-issue-april-11-2011.html">Download a free PDF of <nobr><em>InformationWeek</em> magazine</nobr></a><br /> (registration required)</strong></div> <div class="clearBoth"></div> </div> </center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2011-01-27T09:16:00ZDiversifying beyond the PC, Intel's multi-billion dollar embedded computing push envisions Atom processors in millions of appliances, Smart TVs, and other connected devices.http://www.informationweek.com/news/229100344?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityIntel appears on the verge of achieving CEO Paul Otellini's long-held dream of diversification, moving beyond near-total dependence on x86 PC and server processors. <P> I wouldn't say they're there yet -- that's why I wrote "inches" in the headline -- but Intel has made significant progress in its bid to get off its traditional-processor addiction. The effort revolves around Atom, the downsized, low-power chip which has become the de facto device for netbooks. Intel has expanded Atom into a System-on-Chip (SoC) offering -- an explanation about that later -- enabling it to play in the burgeoning embedded computing arena. <P> First, some history. The idea that Otellini wants to broaden Intel's horizon's is nothing new. As <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163104192">I wrote</a> when he became chief executive in May, 2005: <P> "A future-directed focus will likely become a hallmark of the Otellini regime, as he formulates a strategy for building up some of Intel's non-processor businesses--particularly, communications--that haven't been achieved their full potential." <P> That strategy hit a rut in 2006, when Intel sold its ARM-based XScale processor operations to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. for $600 million. The XScale devices were communications processors, which appeared in a variety of mobile phones, including some Blackberrys. At the time, I wondered why Intel was bailing on an effort which had previously been touted as a major communications push. In retrospect, I can see that the operation must have been a minor revenue contributor (Assume that the $600-million sales price was a multiple of revenue, and note that Intel's 2006 revenue was $35.4 billion.) <P> More importantly, Intel must've figured it would have required significant investment to maintain XScale's position in the rapidly evolving communications sector-- an arena where the product life cycle is faster than in PC processors, and, more to the point, where the timing of revisions is not dictated by Intel. <P> So Intel bailed. But now it's back, in a non-PC arena where it's nicely positioned to win. That area is embedded. <P> <b>What's Embedded Computing?</b> <P> Back in the day, the term "embedded computing" conjured up industrial, board-level computers usually controlling a manufacturing process in a factory. Adding to the esoteric patina, the boards were programmed by developers expert in C++, or, better yet, real-time assembly language. <P> Embedded computers are so-called because they don't look like general-purpose desktop computers -- they're typically mounted <i>inside</i> a box splattered with the logo of a manufacturer whose name is unfamiliar to the PC faithful -- hence the term "embedded."In truth, embedded computing long ago shed its sole link with the factory. For years, there have been processors inside televisions and appliances. The difference today is that embedded computing on the consumer front is poised for a major expansion. <P> That's because consumer embedded apps like TVs, washing machines, and coffee makers are doing what desktop PCs did back in the 1990s -- they're transitioning from standalone bricks into Web-connected appliances. This is pretty simple technically but also profound in terms of market impact. We're talking about millions of televisions, cars, etc., as new-found platforms in which to stick a computing device. <P> Enter Intel, which intends for that device to be an SoC version of its Atom processor. "We have a vision of 15-billion connected devices," said Ton Steenman, general manager of Intel's embedded and communications group. "This is one of the big growth pillars of the company." <P> Steenman notes that Intel's already healthy embedded business is about to explode. "Between 2002 and 2008, we grew our embedded business between 16% and 18%," he said, noting that those percentages reflect a compound annual growth rate (CAGR). <P> Steenman won't provide hard numbers, but he said Intel is currently doing well over $1 billion in yearly embedded revenues. "Going forward, over the next five years, we predict we will grow 25% annually," he said. <P> In its public messaging, Intel is most enthusiastic about Smart TV. That's the Internet-enabled television platform co-developed with Google, Sony, and Logitech. Personally, I see Smart TV as approaching the opportunity from the wrong end. Consumers are OK with televisions offering a few extras, like Netflix access and maybe YouTube. Not so much with big screens grafted atop computers. <P> That was essentially the problem with Logitech's Google TV, which fizzled upon its January 2011 launch at the Consumer Electronics Show. A big impediment was a user interface only those C++ embedded programmers could love. (BTW, Google TV is essentially Smart TV under the Google brand, and it's not a stretch to foresee that term replacing Intel's desired moniker.) <P> Even if Smart TVs don't displace 40-inch Samsungs, it shouldn't put a crimp in Intel's embedded plans. Steenman said that Intel has "4,000 design engagements" -- people considering using Atom in embedded -- right now. Speaking to the potential success of Otellini's broadening-beyond-the-PC strategy, some 60% of those look-sees are from customers who have never bought from Intel before.<b>Inside Atom SoC</b> <P> Earlier, I spoke about SoC. That's a fancy term in the semiconductor world, used to refer to silicon that's customizable in a cost-effective manner. Specifically, a bunch of off-the-shelf blocks of intellectual property (IP) are available and can be plopped onto a silicon die, according to an individual customer's demands. IP blocks refer to functional sections like a CPU, input/output handler, digital signal processor, network interface, etc. <P> It appears to me that Intel has slightly misappropriated the SoC term in applying it to what they're calling the "Intel SoC processor for cars, Internet phones and smart grid devices" &#91;<a href="http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/idf/2010_fall/pdfs/Day2_Tunnel_Creek_Factsheet.pdf">pdf press release</a>&#93;. <P> These SoC Atoms are really regular, off-the-shelf CPUs. If they were true SoCs, they'd be different for each customer. However, they'd also be prohibitively expensive for most buyers. What Intel has done is to select the most popular functional blocks to create a "custom" part usable by nearly everyone. This is analogous to what Detroit used to do when they stuck a "custom" badge on a mass-produced variant of a popular sedan. The biggie in the Atom is an interconnect intended for easy pairing with a variety of input/output devices, the better to be useful in embedded apps. <P> No matter. Intel has brilliantly broadened its Atom brand beyond the netbook. That's something I never thought Intel would be able to pull off. <P> When Atom first appeared in 2008, I wondered how Intel was making any money on such a low-priced processor. The cheapest Atom netbook chip sells for around $29. The newer Atom SoC parts range from $19 up to $85, though volume prices paid by vendors buying in bulk are less. <P> In early 2009, Intel VP Stephen Smith <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/interview_intel.html">told me</a> that the company was achieving very high yields and that's how it was able to make a profit. <P> "We get something like 2,500 die locations on the wafer. We already have very good yields, very low defect densities," he said <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/embedded_watch.html">at the time</a>. "We're not concerned about the cost of the Atom processor." <P> <b>Looking Ahead</b> <P> That's good news for Steenman, who in December was named general manager of Intel's embedded and communications group. He's got two potent levers to drive the embedded business forward: Atom's apparent profitably, and the huge expected uptick in volume, sparked by Atom's appearance in every greater numbers of connected consumer appliances. <P> "You'll have 15 to 20 connected devices in your home, easily," Steenman said. Intel's embedded business already does well over $1 billion in annual revenues. All of which means that Intel CEO Otellini's dream of diversification appears well on its way to becoming a reality. <P> <P> <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900567">Top 5 Tech Trends For 2011</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228201067">Top 5 Reasons Intel Is Winning And 4 Potential Pitfalls</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900049">Top 5 Reasons Windows Phone 7 Will/Won't Succeed</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>.)<br> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below. <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>.) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>.) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>.&nbsp; <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a>. <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.<br clear="all">2011-01-10T08:51:00ZIf you don't embrace a social platform in the next year or two, you'll probably be out of a job, says the chief executive of the company which wants to provide that platform.http://www.informationweek.com/news/229000365?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityWhen I <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900567">opined on Enterprise 2.0</a>, back in June, I complained that the biggest impediment to the adoption of social collaboration tools in the enterprise has been the fact that the benefits are difficult to quantify. <P> Over the past six months, the obsessive focus on coming up with an ROI for E2.0 seems to have abated. Instead, it's pretty much become received wisdom that we're all going to be using these tools, and probably sooner rather than later. No enterprise 2.0 app has become more firmly established than the wiki. <P> If you're using a wiki, there's a very good chance you're working with an instance provided by Jive Software, either on premises or in the cloud. I should caveat this by noting that Jive would say they offer <a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/solutions">much more than wikis</a>. Their main product used to be called Jive Clearspace; now it's called Jive SBS, for social business software, which reflects its broader, platform nature. However, to keep things accessible in plain English, it's fair to say their basic underpinning is a wiki. <P> I sat down with Jive Software CEO Tony Zingale &#91;picture, upper right&#93; at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. I apologize for the lag -- the event took place last November -- but Tony's insights remain worthwhile. <P> Zingale took the helm of Jive Software as interim CEO in February 2010; that appointment was made permanent in May. Zingale came to Jive from IT management software vendor Mercury Interactive, where he was president in 2006 when HP acquired the company for $5.1 billion. <P> During the past year, Zingale has significantly revved up Jive's footprint, making a number of smart moves to position Jive not just as an app but as a platform. First, Jive created the Jive Apps Market through which users can fold additional apps -- such as Box's file-sharing tools or Brainshark's multimedia presentations -- into the instance of Jive they're running. Jive also entered the Google Apps Marketplace, though which customers could try free trials of its software. <P>Finally, the company released its Jive Apps SDK to developers, the better to seed broad creation of apps. This seems like a very smart move, analogous to what Google did with Android. It could ultimately position Jive as the top E2.0 product, but in any case it moves them out of the "just a wiki" box and puts them on an even competitive keel with the large, platform-like enterprise 2.0 offerings from Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and SAP, to name just a few. (You will be able to read more on where users think the vendors stand when my <i>InformationWeek Analytics</i> IT Pro report on Enterprise 2.0 applications comes out in a month or two.) <P> OK, so thus far I've done all the talking. Let's hear what Tony Zingale had to say: <P> <b>On Enterprise 2.0 In Business:</b> <P> "I think social is the next massive enterprise app. Organizations will embrace social as a platform and then a series of applications. <P> "We had to do a lot of evangelism. The IT community has gotten much smarter over the past year -- they know they have to do something." <P> "A year or two from now if you haven't done this -- embrace a social platform in your enterprise -- you're probably out of a job." <P> <b>On Jive In The Enterprise:</b> <P> "We're often the first screen you bring up. Jive is the only other application which touches everyone internally, &#91;other than Microsoft&#93;." <P> "We aspire to be the application people love to live in." <P> On collaboration via video: "We do it &#91;video support&#93; through a bunch of partners today. I think we have to get much better at it. It's obvious that Cisco exploits video because it's their strength." <P> <b>On The Competition:</b> <P> "Do IBM and Microsoft give up on their bankrupt platforms or acquire &#91;more E2.0 capabilities&#93;?" <P> On the failure of Google Wave: "I think it's really hard to go in the enterprise." <P> "Inside the enterprise it's a per-seat price war, &#91;but&#93; I'm not in the business of free. I&#8217;m not giving it away." <P> <b>On The Future</b> <P> "We've got to execute our ambitious product vision. The other dimension is to evangelize the market." <P> On the <a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/apps/market">Jive Apps Market</a>: "We think it's going to be hundreds of apps over time." <P> On growth: "It's never our strategy to be acquired. Our strategy is to go public -- to be the single largest standalone social business provider." <P> <P> <b>Further Info On Jive</b> <P> Jive Apps Market, <a href=" http://www.jivesoftware.com/apps/market">here</a>. <P> Jive Apps Developer info, <a href="https://developers.jivesoftware.com/community/community/docs">here</a> and <a href="https://developers.jivesoftware.com/">here</a>. <P> <P> <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900567">Top 5 Tech Trends For 2011</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>.)<br> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below. <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>.) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>.) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>.&nbsp; <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a>. <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.<br clear="all">2011-01-03T08:20:00ZA shift in the way we think about security, along with predictions about the death of the desktop, the rise of the "Internet of Things," and HP's rebound from the Hurd scandal are on our columnist's list of prognostications for the new year.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228901589?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityLast fall, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900567">I predicted</a> that the big IT trends for 2011 would include a emphasis on innovation, and a search for better ways to analyze the immense quantities of data we're all getting buried under. Now that the new year is actually upon us, here are five top-level trends I believe will set the tech agenda in the coming months. <P> <b>1. Security Moves From Software To Hardware.</b> <P> When Intel bought McAfee last year for $7.68 billion, many observers viewed it as just another manifestation of the business consolidation cycle. From my perspective, something much bigger was and is going on -- Intel has been working to disintermediate the entire, traditional software security industry, by implementing security directly on the microprocessor. <P> This is something that's been advancing in the background for several years already. When I spoke with <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/print_entry.php?eid=84055">Intel CTO Justin Rattner in 2009</a>, he told me: "We're researching a general-purpose solution for being able to run high-trust computations." <P> You'll hearing more on this very soon -- at CES, in fact -- when Intel formally unveils its Sandy Hook family. The processors boast a "kill switch," which will enable your PC to be remotely disabled if it's stolen. They also include instruction-set extensions designed to help implement encryption keys in hardware. <P> This is big stuff, not simply for traditional computing but also for the cloud, where security remains the overarching worry of all users. I'll be writing a lot more about hardware-centric security throughout 2011. <P> <b>2. Death of Desktop Computing. </b> While this is perhaps the most provocative prediction, I put it second rather than first because it's also fairly obvious. (Can you say iPad?) Note that I don't mean "desktops" as in "desktop PCs," as distinct from laptops. The mini-tower is already a metaphorical tombstone to a computing era now past. What I'm getting at is an atmospheric observation that desktops and laptops, <i>as a mode of user engagement</i> are the past, not the future. <P> This is true notwithstanding the fact that you're probably reading this article -- particularly if you're at work -- on your laptop. Go home, though, and see how your kids engage with the Internet. Chances are its via a smartphone or netbook. Slightly older folks, having more $$$, favor tablets. <P> What it all boils down to is, to revamp that canonical Sun Microsystems catchphrase yet again, the browser is the computer. Or, we are all thin clients now, even if a particular piece of hardware we're holding remains heftier than it really needs to be. <P> This trend is only going to accelerate. I might also archly ask, now that traditional computers have become less relevant, mightn't 2011 <i>finally</i> be the year of desktop Linux? <P><b>3. For-Real Greening of Servers. </b> <P> As I wrote in my <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State Of Server Technology 2010</a> research report for <i>InformationWeek Analytics</i>, the most exciting platform innovations in recent years have occurred <i>around</i> the processor, rather than in it. <P> Specifically, this design activity has focused on making servers less power hungry, the better to cut down on the date-center electricity costs which are every CIOs nightmare. <P> I don't mean to detract from the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/data_centers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222200075 ">great server architectures</a> released by Intel and AMD over the past few years. There will be some exciting new processors this year, too. <P> However, compute cycles are no longer the gating factor for performance or, for want of a better phrase, operational affordability. (This is a rolled-up way of saying that processing is ubiquitous, or, better yet, computing is free.) Where the differentiating rubber meets the road, and one of the arenas in which Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, and Oracle will compete, is in who can built the most efficient servers. <P> I got tuned into the significance of "less power is more" when I talked with Hewlett-Packard chief blade-server architect Gary Thome early last year. Here's a snippet from <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600635">Server Den: Inside HP's Converged Infrastructure</a>: <P> "Thome really got passionate when we began talking power and cooling. . . 'We can throttle CPUs, voltage-regulator modules, memory, fans, power supplies, all the way down to trying to keep the power consumed as low as possible at any given time.' " <P> OK, so let's admit that it's hard to make server power and cooling interesting. Let's also take it on faith that, in 2011, its boringness will be inversely proportional to its importance. <P> <b>4. 'Internet Of Things' Takes Off. </b> <P> Is Big Brother watching? That's the concern of folks who've been wondering what'll happen when their coffee makers and microwave ovens are connected to the Internet. However, such privacy worries obscure the real significance of the coming hook up of pretty much everything electric to that big network in the ether.The Chinese, which are out front here like they soon will be for the world economy overall, call this the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things">Internet of Things</a>." <P> For consumers, it's a chance to save some money on electricity by having appliances tune their usage to off-peak times. (And also to worry if some government functionary is monitoring how much power you send to your no-doubt-legal hydroponic plant setup.) <P> For technology vendors, it's an obvious opportunity to embed computing capability in everything. Intel is one company which, in particular, sees a huge market here. However, they believe "smart TV" is the biggest embedded play. Strictly speaking, Googly televisions are not part of the Internet of Things. I don't believe such TV-cum-Internet appliances will ever take off in a big way. Computationally enabled "things," though, could sneak up on us in the chaotic fashion which is the hallmark of the 'Net. <P> <b>5. HP Gets Back to Business.</b> <P> In 2010, Hewlett-Packard was the New York Jets of computer companies, in that their off-field flubs distracted from a pretty decent record of real accomplishments. <P> It's still a mystery how one <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7934060/Actress-Jodie-Fisher-cost-Hewlett-Packard-CEO-Mark-Hurd-his-job.html">non-relationship</a> could set of such a tortured sequence of events, in which Mark Hurd <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/info_management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300221">left</a> the CEO position at HP and moved over to Oracle as co-president, while ex-SAP CEO Leo Apotheker assumed Hurd's old job. <P> In 2011, assuming HP's board lets bygones be bygones, there's good chance we'll spend more time talking about the computing powerhouse in terms of technology leadership. As Global CIO guru Bob Evans <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228800316">has written</a>, HP has a claim on server market supremacy. The company is also fielding a solid data-center strategy in the form of its <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600635">Converged Infrastructure</a> offerings. <P> As well, what formerly looked like Carly Fiorina's folly -- the acquisition of Compaq -- is now no longer widely viewed as a failure. In a similar vein, new CEO Apotheker will have an easy shot at changing the narrative from "left SAP after less than a year as sole CEO" to "new CEO who led HP to a bunch of successful quarters." Heck, he's already <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/hp-gets-apotheker-era-off-to-good-start-earnings-outlook-strong/42039">partway there</a>. <P> Apotheker also has an opportunity to establish himself as an industry voice of reason -- or, at least, a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228800609">non-bomb thrower</a>. But first he'll have to come out of his bunker. <P> <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900567">Top 5 Tech Trends For 2011</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228201067">Top 5 Reasons Intel Is Winning And 4 Potential Pitfalls</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900049">Top 5 Reasons Windows Phone 7 Will/Won't Succeed</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>.)<br> <P> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below. <P> <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>.) <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>.) <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>.&nbsp; <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a>. <P> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.<br clear="all"> <P>2010-12-10T12:45:00ZHewlett-Packard appears done with bashing it's received from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and is answering back in a statement which minces no words.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228800158?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityHP is firing back at the persistent dissing it's received at the hands of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, ever since HP forced out chief executive Mark Hurd in August. HP sent me a statement in which it minces no words about who it thinks is the top server vendor, and what it thinks of Oracle's claims of benchmark superiority; I'll get to that below. First, some context. <P> The most recent Oracle salvo came on Dec. 2. As Global CIO guru Bob Evans noted in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228702008">his column</a>, Ellison went after HP's servers at Oracle's UltraSparc Supercluster introduction: <P> "We're one big cheetah, and IBM's a stallion . . . and HP's a Turtledome," said Ellison with a huge laugh. &#91;"Turtledome" is an arch reference to HP's high-end Itanium 2-based Superdome servers.--Editor&#93; . . . We think the HP machines are vulnerable, we think they're slow, we think they're expensive, we think they're vulnerable in the marketplace, and we're gonna go after them." <P> What's mystifying about Ellison's approach is the fact that HP and Oracle are partners. Here's a quote from the Sept. 20 press release, <a href="http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100920e.html">HP and Oracle Reaffirm Commitment to Long-term Strategic Partnership</a>, which appears intended to bury the hatchet after the bad blood over Hurd: <P> " 'Oracle and HP will continue to build and expand a partnership that has already lasted for over 25 years,' said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison." <P> Sure, tech companies often compete against the very same companies with which they cooperate--it's called "co-opetition." What's unusual is the level of vitriol Ellison has hurled at HP. <P> <b>HP's Response</b> <P> My entree into this contretemps comes because of a column I wrote Dec. 2, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228500162">Wolfe's Den: Why Oracle's Sun Servers Are Sinking (And Why That's A Good Thing)</a>. <P> The piece praised Ellison's focus on the emerging category of optimized systems--tuned hardware/software platforms--at the expense of the commoditized server business Oracle took control of when it acquired Sun Microsystems.The temporal peg for my article was Gartner's Q3 server figures. Those numbers placed HP at the top of the server heap, and also noted that Oracle's commodity shipments are sliding. <P> Given the good HP news I'd relayed, I was surprised to hear from an HP spokesperson, who sent me a statement noting that "HP is the number one provider of enterprise servers in the world." Hey, that's what I related in the column. <P> But then when I read further, I realized I was onto some news, which is that HP was conveying through me a message to Larry that they've had it with his trash talking. Here's the HP spokesperson's statement: <P> <b>"Larry Ellison bought a money-losing business that had steady market share declines for years, and which still ranks at the bottom of the market. Customers aren&#8217;t fooled by outdated benchmarks, no matter what Oracle says. HP&#8217;s market share results prove it. Sun customers are running to HP in droves because they recognize we deliver superior technology, performance and pricing."</b> <P> I don't want to deconstruct this too much, because the importance of the statement is largely the simple fact that they've said it. However, I should note that HP is focusing on the commodity server market--or, more correctly, the server market as a whole. Whereas my column was about Ellison's strategy of distancing Oracle from the commodity game in favor of higher-margin, high-end and optimized systems. <P> Indeed, that juxtaposition between commodity servers and optimized systems is something of an elephant in the room, as far as really understanding what's going on in the server market. More on that in a future column, but the short take is that the traditional way Gartner runs the numbers is has become outmoded, and doesn't provide a true picture of today's increasingly diverse and complex server landscape. <P> That said, this is where we are now: Oracle, the ball is in your court. <P> <b>RECOMMENDED READING</b>: <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228702008">Global CIO: Larry Ellison Vows To 'Go After' HP; Is Alliance Dead?</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228500162">Wolfe's Den: Why Oracle's Sun Servers Are Sinking (And Why That's A Good Thing)</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222600635">Server Den: Inside HP's Converged Infrastructure</a> <P> <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State Of Server Technology Research Report</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228500123">Global CIO: IBM Details Raids On Customers From HP And Oracle</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600299">Global CIO: Oracle's Fowler Says Systems Performance About To Explode</a> <P> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below . <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>&nbsp; <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.2010-12-07T12:20:00ZThe networking behemoth intends to automate cloud deployment, as spotlighted via its just-announced partnership with BMC. We chat with Lew Tucker, Cisco's chief technology officer of cloud computing, who talks about cloud-o-nomics, interoperability standards and how Cisco aims to be the go-to supplier of equipment to cloud providers. http://www.informationweek.com/news/228600151?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_security"The cloud is the computer" could be Lew Tucker's updated version of the famous Sun Microsystems catchphrase. Tucker &#91;pictured at right&#93;, the one-time Sun chief technology officer for cloud computing, is now in that role at Cisco, where he's working to position the networking behemoth as the leading equipment supplier to cloud providers. <P> Tucker is also deeply involved in industrywide standards efforts aimed at supporting cloud interoperability. I sat down with Tucker in New York City last week for a chat, where he emphasized that we're still in the early days of the cloud era. Users are defining and planning their modes of interaction with the cloud, and the economics are beginning to become more transparent. <P> Topping Tucker's list of objectives is helping enterprises turn cloud setup from a kludge into a streamlined set of repeatable processes. "We're working on making networking a platform," he explains. "You want to be able to treat the network as a system--not a set of boxes--with an API so you can automate deployment." <P> To that end, Tucker says Cisco is looking build its own automation technologies, but is also willing to play the acquisition card when appropriate. <P> Partnerships are also being brought to bear on cloud enablement. A major deal in that regard was announced Monday, when Cisco and BMC Software <a href="http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_120610b.html">formed an alliance</a> to develop solutions for multitenant cloud computing infrastructures. The two companies announced the Integrated Cloud Delivery Platform, which will help cloud providers deploy end-to-end cloud services. Cisco and BMC said they'll also continue working closely together to provide additional automation-related solutions. <P> The Cisco-BMC deal spotlights the potentially lucrative angle Cisco is taking with its cloud strategy. Typical discussions of cloud computing, at least in the press, tend to focus on who's supplying services (e.g., Google App Engine, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure). Yet the broader business opportunity may be to supply those service suppliers. As in, sell them the routers, switches, and Unified Computing System (UCS) platforms, which are needed to deliver scalable, on-demand computer cycles. <P> "We sell to people who are building clouds; we also sell to people who want to deploy cloud services," Tucker says. He sees the service provider market as particularly active, pointing to Verizon, Savvis, Terremark, and Telstra as Cisco customers which are offering enterprise-class cloud services. <P> <b>Where We Are</b> <P> Despite the current level of frenzied activity, Tucker says that "we're still at the beginning of cloud computing; we're taking baby steps." <P> "Most enterprises are looking at the 'cloud-o-nomics' of the public cloud because the market price -- for an hour of CPU time and a gigabyte of storage -- is being set," Tucker says. "But they're very uncomfortable with the lack of enterprise-class security and potential compliance issues. So they're thinking about how they can adapt that model, so they can run their own private cloud instances."In today's still-uncertain economic environment, it's perhaps not surprising that everyone's cost-conscious. "Users want everything to be pay as you go and pay only for what you use," Tucker says. "This is true for both private and public cloud." <P> On a technical basis, Tucker views cloud -- or more precisely, the deployment and management of large-scale clouds -- as a network intelligence problem, with virtualization the key item upon which that intelligence must be brought to bear. <P> He points to Cisco's Nexus 1000 virtual switch, which runs in the hypervisor and enables the network to connect to virtual machines, as an example of how traditional switching is morphing into something new. "There's this notion that we're recreating networking in the virtual machine space," he says. <P> "Network technologists are looking at it from the point of view of what are the protocols, what are the innards," Tucker explains. "What combo of hardware, software, virtualization, API and automation can be brought together to create the right combo to run apps in the cloud?" <P> It's a safe bet that whichever vendors collectively own the stack will be the major players of the cloud era. Tucker points to VMWare, Citrix with XenServer, and Red Hat with KVM as examples of current market leaders, but says at this point there's no consolidated, one-size-fits-all "here is the cloud" stack. <P> Cisco has aligned itself with VMWare and EMC, in its so-called VCE partnership. That's not a standards effort, per se, but enables the three participants to present a united front of storage, networking and virtualization, which work and play well together. <P> Of course, Cisco has a host of competitors who'd be happy to eat its cloud lunch. Tucker points to HP and IBM as the two companies looming largest on his radar screen. On the pure-play networking front, one would have to also keep an eye on Juniper, which offers cloud-ready infrastructure solutions and has been on an acquisitions tear recently. <P> Moving forward, although Tucker has characterized cloud as being in its infancy, he sees rapid movement ahead. "I think a year from now we'll have a lot more successful deployments, a lot more of the common patterns understood," he says. "People will be able to point to real, measureable cost savings." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/04/suns_deep_tech.html">Sun's Deep Tech Bench Is Biggest Asset For Oracle</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/data_centers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224600353">Server Den: Cisco Turning UCS Into Server Battleground</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224000039">Branding Brilliance Behind Cisco's Borderless Networks</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223500077">Server Den: Juniper Fires Back At Cisco CRS-3</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/client/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222200638">CES Den: Cisco Video Thrust Telegraphs Bandwidth-Bandit Strategy </a> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below . <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>&nbsp; <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P> <br clear="all">2010-12-02T13:43:00ZGartner reports scary Q3 sales news for the server business Oracle took control of when it acquired Sun Microsystems, but Larry Ellison's focus on optimized systems such as Exadata is the reason Oracle needn't worry.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228500162?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityOracle CEO Larry Ellison is betting all his hardware chips on the emerging category of optimized systems, at the expense of the commoditized server business Oracle took control of when it acquired Sun Microsystems. That's the clear message I get by juxtaposing the shocking slide of Oracle's Sun servers against Ellison's intense emphasis on optimized hardware-software combos, notably Oracle's Exadata Database Machine. <P> Yet I believe this is all good for Oracle. <P> First, let's unravel some data points. Gartner <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1479923">recently released</a> its worldwide server shipments numbers for the third quarter of 2010. Those figures are good news for the economy as a whole--worldwide Q3 shipments grew 14.2% year-over-year, and revenue was up 15.3%. <P> The totals also show that HP's executive-suite distractions have not impacted its server business. Hewlett-Packard remained the market leader, topping IBM with a 32.1% market share, as compared to 30.2% for Big Blue. <P> Note that HP's dominance was stoked by a year-over-year shipment bump of 16.3%, driven largely by HP's ProLiant family. ProLiant is an industry standard commodity line. That's not to denigrate it, just to note that it plays in tiers with tight margins, where a company can never rest on its laurels. (Indeed, in commodity markets, laurels don't matter. Low price does.) <P> Which brings us back 'round to Larry Ellison. Here's the money quote from Gartner's Q3 server <a href="http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1479923">press release</a>: <P> "Oracle was the only vendor of the top five to show a decline year over year. 'Following the acquisition of Sun&#8217;s hardware business, the company now faces the challenge of preventing further declines in the hardware segment,' Gartner research director Adrian O&#8217;Connell said." <P> At first glance, this reads as bad news. In Gartner's Q2 figures, released in August, Oracle was number four server by revenue--after HP, IBM, and Dell--with an 8.1% market share. Going by shipment volume, Oracle was number five in Q2--after HP, IBM, Dell, and Fujitsu--with 48,000 units shipped for a 2.2% market share. <P>As O'Connell's comment telegraphs, things were much worse this cycle. In Gartner's Q3 tally, Oracle's "by revenue" market share fell from 8.1% to 6.2%. More glaringly, Oracle <i>dropped entirely off</i> of the top 5 volume list. (They've been displaced by NEC.) <P> <b>Ace In The Hole</b> <P> So why I am so blithely sloughing over the sagging Sun server numbers? It's because building mostly commodity servers doesn't provide a long-term strategic advantage. Integrated offerings like Exadata do. (I use the phrase "mostly commodity," because I don't want to lump UltraSparc systems in the low-end bucket.) <P> Integrated offerings are the future, particularly when you're talking about a vendor with an enterprise software portfolio, which is trying to make a case for the high value of its product. That's even more important in a world where a second wave of commodity pressure has emerged on the apps front, via cloud and SaaS. <P> So far, Exadata is looking like a smart play, the pressure from IBM notwithstanding. (Actually, what IBM is doing further validates this area.) Earlier this year Ellison said the value of Exadata <a href="http://www.thestreet.com/story/10791879/oracle-beats-sees-sun-profit.html">deals in the pipeline</a> approached $1 billion. That was in June, so if things remain on track, Oracle's optimized systems sales will presumably make up for much of the revenue lost by the drop in commodity servers. <P> There's also a technical advantage attendant to Exadata. Integrated and optimized systems have a spillover effect in that they support the more rapid advance of compute platforms than would otherwise occur in a grind-it-out commodity market. <P> I got some perspective on this earlier this year when <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/oracle_server_a.html">I talked with John Fowler</a>, Oracle's executive vice president of systems. He talked about some of the internal optimizations being designed into Exadata, aimed at reducing latency (the amount of time needed to access data):"What we did with Exadata is design a set of flash components, which became part of the storage server, that get used by the partitioned database query engine. . . With Exadata, we've a constructed a completely integrated appliance where we put together storage, Infiniband fabric, and servers together with the software. We've designed the storage of Exadata so a portion of the database queries are actually executed on the storage side. In fact, &#91;we've&#93; partitioned some of the database and put it on the storage side. So this is a complete holistic design." <P> Now, it's true that focusing on decreased storage latency isn't unique to optimized systems; regular servers are taking this approach, too. Still, I do believe that the high-performance patina surrounding integrated platforms drives this stuff forward very rapidly. <P> I also don't want to pretend that Exadata makes everything smooth sailing for Oracle on the business front. As Global CIO guru Bob Evans relates in his <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228500123">latest column</a>, IBM is going directly after Oracle customers in the market for integrated and optimized systems. <P> But this is a good battle, at least from the perspective of people who are interested in a scenario where advancing technology lifts all boats. <P> Of course, the danger in a shift towards integrated hardware-software platforms is that the server pendulum swings back from the commodity towards a market filled with what are effectively proprietary offerings. Good for vendors profits, not so good for customers' pocketbooks. <P> <b>Heard From Hurd?</b> <P> Finally, one prospective wild card in the equation is Mark Hurd, the new Oracle co-president who formerly ran HP. Hurd knows a lot about selling server hardware, having come over to Oracle from the server sales leader. <P> My thinking here is that Hurd, being an astute business operations manager, might resuscitate some of Oracle's lost commodity server volume. One can argue that Oracle is leaving money on the table simply because it's been neglecting a business which wasn't managed all that well to begin with. This is another way of saying that focusing on Exadata doesn't mean you have to let your lower end lapse. <P> However, Hurd undoubtedly won't change Ellison's maniacal focus on optimized systems, and that's a good thing, both for systems technology and, strategically, for Oracle. <P> <P> <b>RECOMMENDED READING</b>: <P> <P> <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State Of Server Technology Research Report</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228500123">Global CIO: IBM Details Raids On Customers From HP And Oracle</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227701233">Global CIO: EMC Taking Plunge Into Red-Hot Optimized Systems Market </a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600299">Global CIO: Oracle's Fowler Says Systems Performance About To Explode</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/07/oracle_server_a.html"> Oracle Server Architect Emphasizes Exadata</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226500193">Global CIO: Larry Ellison & The New Oracle Rock The Tech World</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226100133">Global CIO: IBM Doubles Down On Red-Hot Optimized Systems</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225800024">Global CIO: Oracle Reveals Strategy & Customers For White-Hot Exadata</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702624">Global CIO: Larry Ellison's Hardware Boasts Are Nonsense, Says IBM</a> <P> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701468">Global CIO: Larry Ellison's IBM-Slayer Is Oracle Exadata Machine</a> <P> <P> <P> <P> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below . <P> <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>&nbsp; <P> <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P> <br clear="all"> <P>2010-11-29T09:45:00ZRapiscan, the company supplying the controversial x-ray backscatter screeners, has won a patent for a machine which detects threats "with minimum display of anatomical details." Its competitors, and body scanner pioneer Martin Annis, are also pursuing enhanced privacy approaches. Here are the technology details.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228400087?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_security<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400085"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/alex/junkpatent.jpg" alt="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" title="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" width="175" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Slideshow: 5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Are the airport body scanners, which have provoked a raging controversy, "porn machines," as they've been dubbed by <i>Atlantic</i> blogger <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/">Jeffrey Goldberg</a>? Or are they the most effective means going of identifying terrorists carrying explosives? <P> A bunch of U.S. patents I've dug up indicates that the former is definitely not the manufacturers' intent, notwithstanding the 100 leaked naked body scans posted recently by <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5690749/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans">Gizmodo</a>. Those scans, btw, were at a courthouse, not an airport. They're very blurry besides, though <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20022541-281.html">this picture</a> from one of the Rapiscan scanners actually used at U.S. airports is anything but. <P> As for the effectiveness of backscatter X-ray technology at sussing out bombs, that's an issue open to debate. Experts have pointed out that the machines will not reveal contraband secreted in a bodily orifice (nor, it is to be hoped, will the TSA pat downs). Other observers have noted that the long airport lines snaking toward the security checkpoints are themselves unprotected targets, which are scarily ripe for suicidal terrorists. <P> Finally, health activists have raised alarms about yet another source zapping people with X-rays. For its part, Rapiscan <a href="http://www.rapiscansystems.com/sec1000faqs.html#7">claims</a> that exposure levels are so low, an individual can safely undergo "up to 5000 scans per year." (If so, maybe they should install the machines at the Admirals Club.) <P> Me, I stumbled thru a non-opt-out scan on Nov. 18 at SFO. At the time, I hadn't been aware of the debate, which was shortly to go viral. So I wondered what the heck was up with the machine to which I was being directed. At first glance, it reminded me of a revolving darkroom door, but also could've been a salvaged "Orgasmatron" from Woody' Allen's 1973 film "Sleeper." <P> The experience itself was uneventful, though I have to say I wasn't happy with the "Up Against The Wall" position one is directed to assume while being imaged. On a technical basis, it did occur to me that, if these machines can photograph genitalia, they should also be able to visualize feet, in which case can't we all just put our shoes back on? <P> Mostly, my reporter's eye was curious about the technology behind the airport body scanners, which I suspected was being mis-, or at least loosely, characterized by writers who hadn't bothered to do much digging. (In their collective defense, what Web worker has time for that nowadays?) <P> So I went where I always go, to the patent record, and dug up some interesting information. <P> As a quick intro, before we dive into five patents I've selected, here are a couple of stories worth check out. This <a href="http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-government/13377309-1.html">AllBusiness</a> article gives a quick overview of the airport scanner marketplace. Three companies were originally competing to win the U.S. airport body scanner contract: Rapiscan Systems Inc. , of Torrance, Calif., L-3 Communications Security and Detection Systems Inc., of Woburn, Mass., and American Science and Engineering Inc. (ASAE) of Billerica, Mass. <P> Rapiscan won the contract as the sole supplier of airport scanners in Sept. 2009. (Rapiscan's representation by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has been much <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-11-22-scanner-lobby_N.htm">in the news</a> recently. ) <P> ASAE is notable because it was found by Martin Annis, who was recently identified in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/us/24scanner.html">New York Times article</a> as the father of X-ray body scanners. Annis is no longer associated with ASAE, but even in his mid-80s he is still cranking out scanner patents, as we shall see shortly. <P><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400085"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/alex/L3patent.jpg" alt="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" title="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" width="175" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Slideshow: 5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <b>The Patents</b> <P> I've selected five recent scanner patents, not randomly, but because they all illustrate salient points about the technology. Go to the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400085">companion slideshow</a> to see relevant diagrams from each the patents. <P> The first patent, number 7,796,733, is entitled "Personnel security screening system with enhanced privacy." It was awarded this September to inventor Ron Hughes and Rapiscan. (Technically speaking, it was assigned to PatentMatrix, which is some kind of patent intellectual property management house, but it's a Rapiscan patent.) <P> This patent is interesting because it clearly shows that scanner manufacturers are aware of privacy concerns. Thus, the fault with leaked images probably lies more with process and usage scenarios than it does with the machines themselves. <P> The technical challenge in obscuring the naughty bits is that it also tends to null out what you're looking for. Or, as the Rapiscan patent explains it: "Conventional image processing techniques for protecting privacy, tend to diminish non-body images as well." <P> The application continues: "What is needed therefore is an image processing technique that allows for maximum threat detection performance with minimum display of anatomical details." That's accomplished using a composite imaging technique. The result is a system which "does not require the operator to view an actual image of the subject's body to obtain an indication of potential objects desired to be detected." <P> That's good news. OTOH, one can wonder whether or not there's a smokescreen element to the privacy stuff. As in, are real-world operators going to see the mannequin-like images promised by this patent, or full frontals like this <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20022541-281.html">CNET grab</a>? <P> <b>Rapiscan's November Patent</b> <P> A more recent Rapiscan patent, number 7,826,589, is interesting because it shows the continuing evolution of the company's technology. This patent is entitled "Security system for screening people." It was awarded on Nov. 2 to inventors Andreas Kotowski and Ron Hughes. <P> It's billed as "an X-ray screening system capable of rapidly screening people for detection of metals, low Z materials (plastics, ceramics and illicit drugs) and other contraband which might be concealed beneath the person's clothing or on the person's body." <P> This patent carries forward the privacy shield of the previous invention, "provid&#91;ing&#93; a means for creating a non-human representation of the body being examined to thereby permit faster inspection with less invasion of privacy." <P> <b>Pioneer's Patent</b> <P> Now we're on to two patents by body scanner pioneer Martin Annis. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/us/24scanner.html">Times article</a> pointed out that Annis's first scanner patent came in 1980, so he gets points for persistence. <P> In patent 7,561,666, awarded in July, 2009 for a "Personnel x-ray inspection system ," Annis also appears to address the health concerns raised by the scanners. "An object of the present invention is to provide a personnel inspection system that detects contraband better than systems of the prior art while using less power," says the patent. <P><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400085"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/alex/junkpatent.jpg" alt="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" title="5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down" width="175" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /> <i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /> <div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0;font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Slideshow: 5 Airport Body Scanner Patents Stripped Down</div></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> It's also got a highly sophisticated X-ray setup. Beams of higher and lower x-ray energies are chopped into a fan pattern by a rotating disk, the better to "enable differentiation between innocent and contraband materials." <P> In his second patent, Annis is reshuffling the scanner deck by from airport applications to medicine. Patent 7,620,150, of Nov. 2009, is entitled "X-ray backscatter system for imaging at shallow depths ." <P> From the description: "The invention relates to medical diagnostic systems, more particularly, to diagnostic instruments for detection of tumors of the skin." <P> The idea is to do it at lower power and with greater detail than conventional systems. More from the patent: "Current x-ray procedures for examining the region of the body just below the surface of the body utilize transmission x-ray systems. These systems must penetrate the entire width of the body that lies below the region of interest just below the skin lesion. In order to do this, the peak energy of the x-ray spectrum must be sufficiently high to penetrate the body and the x-ray exposure to the patient is correspondingly high. In addition, the contrast in observing small differences in the density in the soft tissue is not sufficiently great to make such an x-ray examination useful. <P> "It is important that the system be of low radiation exposure to the healthy tissue deep within the body. This is accomplished in the current invention by using backscattered x-rays that expose only a relatively small volume of the patient's body. The system is also compact and inexpensive, which is desirable given the large number of patients that must be served in doctor's offices." <P> A specific application noted by Annis is to check out suspicious regions of the breast, which have initially been identified during mammography. <P> <b>L-3's Patent Application</b> <P> Our fifth and final example is from L-3 Communications. The company didn't win the airport contract, but it is still very much a player in explosive detection, selling systems to the military. What we're looking at here is not an awarded patent, but rather patent application number 20100141502, which was filed this past June. <P> The application is entitled, "Contraband Screening System With Enhanced Privacy." The documentation shows that L-3 is pursuing the techniques for muting out raw-body images to focus instead on the bad stuff. <P> Here's the money quote: "The system preferably does not directly display images of a person formed from a mm wave camera scan. Doing so creates privacy concerns. Because the millimeter (mm) wave camera effectively "sees through" clothes, an image formed with the mm wave camera resembles a picture of a person taken without clothes. Thus, detecting contraband in a mm wave image but displaying an indication of the contraband in connection with a visible light image addresses potential privacy concerns as well as presenting the information in a format readily understandable to the human operator of the inspection system." <P> <b>FOR FURTHER READING</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222301388">Wolfe's Den: IBM Patenting Airport Security Profiling Technology</a> <P>2010-11-29T09:43:00ZHere's a deep dive on five patents applying X-ray backscatter technology to airport contraband detection. These screening machines have been much in the news recently, amid controversy regarding both their effectiveness and the amount of radiation exposure to which travelers are subjected. The patents we'll look at are from prime players in the airport body scanner field. This list is led by Rapiscan Systems Inc. , of Torrance, Calif., which in 2009 won the TSA contract to supply whole-body imaging scanners to U.S. airports. Also included is Martin Annis, a pioneer in body scanning who founded American Science and Engineering Inc. (ASAE) of Billerica, Mass. in 1958. In 1980, Annis was awarded one of the first personnel scanner patents. Finally, L-3 Communications Security and Detection Systems Inc., of Woburn, Mass., has sold numerous explosives detection devices to the military and vied for the TSA contract. Selected diagrams from five patents are included to illustrate inventors' efforts at enhanced privacy, through which explicit body part imagery is replaced by a mannequin-like view, as well as to show attempts to reduce traveler exposure to x-rays through more sophisticated radiation source arrays.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228400085?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityThe first sheet from Rapiscan's patent 7,796,733, entitled "Personnel security screening system with enhanced privacy" is shown. According to the patent document, the invention "relates to image processing techniques that employ maximum threat detection performance and minimal information loss. More particularly, the invention relates to the field of radiant energy imaging systems and methods and to image processing techniques for detecting concealed objects carried on the body or clothing of a person without compromising the privacy of the person." A further explanation delves into how contraband can be detected by X-rays: "Non-metallic objects are commonly composed of low atomic number elements similar to those of human tissue, i.e. hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. Soft human tissue scatters a significant amount of X-rays due to the relatively low atomic number of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen in relatively high concentration. Due to the high atomic number of calcium, bones near the surface of the body, comprised mainly of calcium, produce much less scatter. Concealed objects, especially metals, can be easily visualized in the images due to their significant difference in atomic composition from the background of human tissue." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Rapiscan patent 7,796,733, showing a series of X-ray images generated from complicated image processing methods. Note that, at higher privacy levels, while the general outline of the body and metal object still appear, details around the feet and fingers begin to disappear. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>General schematic diagram of the processing techniques employed in Rapiscan's patent 7,796,733, entitled "Personnel security screening system with enhanced privacy." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Schematic of the backscatter detection system employed in Rapiscan's patent 7,796,733, "Personnel security screening system with enhanced privacy." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Flow chart of the operational steps of the processing methods used in Rapiscan patent 7,796,733, "Personnel security screening system with enhanced privacy." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Illustrations of processed X-ray images at low, medium, and high settings, respectively, from Rapiscan patent 7,796,733. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>An alternate representation of processed X-ray images at low, medium, and high settings, respectively, from Rapiscan patent 7,796,733. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Side view of the screening system, illustrating the position of a subject under inspection, from Rapiscan patent 7,826,589, "Security system for screening people." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>A look at the setup for generating a vertical sweeping pencil beam of X-rays, from Rapiscan patent 7,826,589, "Security system for screening people." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Cover sheet from Martin Annis's patent 7,561,666, Personnel x-ray inspection system. Annis was an early inventor of X-ray body scanners , in the late 1970s. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>A simple view of a subject undergoing a backscatter X-ray inspection, from Annis's patent 7,561,666, Personnel x-ray inspection system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Top view of the components of the backscatter X-ray inspection, from Annis's patent 7,561,666, Personnel x-ray inspection system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>Front view of the components of the backscatter X-ray inspection, from Annis's patent 7,561,666, Personnel x-ray inspection system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a> <P>Side view of the components of the backscatter X-ray inspection, from Annis's patent 7,561,666, Personnel x-ray inspection system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>The purpose of patent 7,620,150, X-ray backscatter system for imaging at shallow depths, is to provide a system to examine the region below suspicious lesions on the surface of the skin. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>The purpose of patent 7,620,150, X-ray backscatter system for imaging at shallow depths, is to provide a system to examine the region below suspicious lesions on the surface of the skin. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>A sketch of a millimeter wave inspection system used in L-3 Communications' patent application 20100141502, Contraband Screening System With Enhanced Privacy. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>A top view of the inspection system when no contraband is present. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>An illustration of an operator display of L3's millimeter wave contraband screening system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>The guts of the inspection portal, showing the inside walls of the millimeter wave contraband screening system. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>A block diagram of a broad, integrated airport security system, of which the millimeter wave contraband screening unit would be one component. <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228400087">Wolfe's Den: Airport Scanner Patents Promise Not To Show Your 'Junk'</a>2010-11-16T14:33:00ZWins include the dominance of the Xeon server processor and research into data centers on a chip, while stumbling blocks center on a second-place communications chip business and settling on a potential successor to CEO Paul Otellini.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228201067?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityRich, smart, and seemingly set for the future is no way for Intel to be -- if you're one of its competitors. From the perspective of the chip behemoth, though, things have never looked better. Last week, <a href="http://www.intc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=50863-10-119">Intel announced</a> plans to increase its stock dividend next year, which prompted CEO Paul Otellini to crow: "Intel remains on track to have our best year ever." <P> Otellini has enabled Intel to achieve its enviable position via a series of smart moves through which he has broadened its revenue-generation base away from an overdependence on PC processors. Therein lies the story of both Intel's current success and future potential "gotchas." <P> "We are transforming from a company with a primary focus on the design and manufacture of semiconductor chips for PCs and servers to a computing company that delivers complete solutions in the form of hardware and software platforms and supporting services," is how Intel characterized that strategy in its most recent <a href="http://www.intc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=950123-10-99521">quarterly report</a> . <P> I contend that, while Otellini has moved rapidly, his journey isn't complete yet, and it can also be argued he hasn't moved rapidly enough. (Case in point: He's thus far failed to make Intel a dominant player in smartphone chips.) Still, sometimes it's as important to be lucky as it is to be smart, and the rising economic tide is certainly lifting Intel. <P> Whether such forward progress can proceed unabated depends on whether Intel continues to capitalize on its recent successes, five of which are outlined below, and manages to avoid the list looming pitfalls, which follows: <P> <b>Top 5 Successes</b> <P> <b>1) Xeon Server Processor. </b> One might assume that Intel's dominance in server chips has long gone unchallenged, and that this bullet point is a no-brainer. One would be wrong. <P> From April, 2005, when AMD introduced its Opteron server chip, pretty much until early 2009, when Intel debuted its Nehalem Xeon -- billed at the time as its most important server launch in 15 years -- leadership of the server processor arena was hotly contested. For much of the period, AMD arguably held a technology lead. <P> However, those Nehalem Xeons -- along with business troubles and a chip launch glitch which derailed AMD's efforts to keep up its pace -- put Intel firmly back on top. According to the most recent IDC numbers , Intel currently holds 80.7% of the server processor market. And Xeon is used in the most powerful supercomputer in the newly released Top 500 rankings. <P> Intel has continued to apply pressure with subsequent launches like the Xeon 5600 and 7500 Series. I don't mean to imply that AMD has ceded this space -- that's far from the truth. Indeed, as has historically been the case, one could argue that it's only the presence of AMD which has forced Intel to drive its designs forward. <P> Looking ahead, Intel will seek to maintain leadership by folding into Xeon more of those features currently only available on its ultra-high-end Itanium architecture.<b>2) Atom Netbook Chip. </b> Intel sowed the netbook wind and is now hoping to reap a tablet whirlwind. OK, this analogy is a little forced, but it highlights the truism that you don't get lucky if you're not smart, and ahead of the market. <P> That's the position Intel was in when it introduced its first Atom processors in 2008. These were small, mobile, low-power chips ideal for the then-emerging lightweight computing devices called netbooks. Atom quickly became the dominant netbook processor. <P> More importantly for Intel, it did so without cannibalizing its sales of higher-priced laptop processors (its Core mobile family). That's notable because any incursion by Atom into the laptop market would have eroded Intel's revenues. The other place Atom could've bombed was margin, as in, how can you make much money on a chip that's so cheap? Intel indeed is making money on the part, according to vice president Stephen Smith, who has told me that Atom's high yields (number of working chips available off of each die that's manufactured) support solid margins. <P> Most recently, Intel is aiming Atom at tablets, and is seeing early success in models like the Dell Duo. Of course, serious uptake of tablet Atoms is predicated on some vendor(s) fielding a viable competitor to Apple's iPad, which is powered by a custom-build ARM-based processor. <P> For AMD's part, the scrappy semiconductor vendor has issued a revised roadmap which includes its own tablet processors, but those aren't due until 2012. <P> <b>3) 'Waterfall' Manufacturing Prowess. </b> <P> Nothing spotlights the technical depth and business-operations acumen of Intel as do its factories. It's here where, not to stretch the truth too much, sand is turned into a gold mine. <P> Here's what I wrote about Intel's management of its chip manufacturing plants --known industry as "fabs" -- in early 2009, when the company said it was planning to pony up another $7 billion in fab investment, the recession at the time notwithstanding: <P> "Over the years, I've been impressed with the way Intel manages the massive capital flows involved in funding the construction and operation of chip fabs. If you've ever heard presentations from Andy Bryant, formerly Intel's chief financial officer and now its chief administration officer, you know it has engineered its cash flow as expertly as it does its chips. <P> Intel has a waterfall model where a few cutting-edge plants crank out the fanciest (and most profitable) processors. When plants age and become not quite so state-of-the-art, they move over to cranking out mainstream product, and so on down the chain. It's a factory flow model Henry Ford would've been proud of." <P> Intel doesn't go with the waterfall analogy -- which relates to financials, not technology. Rather, it talks about its "tick tock" strategy, through which it introduces in alternate years either a new silicon technology (aka smaller "design rules," such as 32-nm) or a new processor microarchitecture. That's a smart method for maintaining its market leadership. <P> It's not a stretch to say that fabs are one of the last vestiges of American national competitive dominance. Only twenty years ago, a fab cost around half a billion to build. That wasn't cheap, but it was doable by let's say a dozen companies. Now, putting up a fab can tie up $5 billion in capital. This means that the number of players in the game will thin out even further, while Intel remains robustly positioned for the future.<b>4) Smart TV. </b> I'm not really excited about this one, but Intel is, so it's incumbent upon me to mention it. Smart TV is the computer-platform version of television that's seen its initial productization as Google TV. <P> Google TV uses what's called an SoC (system on chip) version of Atom. This means it's got a basic Atom processor around which a bunch of other processing blocks have been added, such as one to handle advanced graphics. It's called an SoC because in theory any TV manufacturer could call up Intel and ask for its own version of an SoC Atom. Different blocks of so-called "intellectual property" (IP) are available off-the-shelf, from which SoC devices can be cobbled together. <P> Fielding SoCs enables vendors like Intel to satisfy the needs of many unique customers without having to redo chips from the ground up, which would be an uneconomical proposition. An Intel spokesman told me they're excited about Smart TV because they see it as a big potential market. I think it's important more for what it says about Intel's SoC strategy, which presumably will enable it to address many emerging "Smart TV"-like markets, and finally capitalize on whichever one it is which takes off. <P> <b>5)Stellar Research. </b> <P> Like all heavy duty tech corporations past and present -- read, Bell Labs or IBM -- Intel has a lessor-known research side. Intel Labs, headed by chief technology officer and Intel Fellow Justin Rattner, is by definition doing lots of interesting stuff, most of which will never see the product light of day. Still. . . <P> The reason I list Intel Labs in my "plusses" tally is that things I've heard about are so potentially game-changing that I believe they definitely constitute an "something up the sleeve" advantage. In the category of "the aliens have landed," you've got your <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/03/intel_envisions.html">shape-shifting smartphones</a>. <P> If you go to the link, you can view a short video I shot with Intel senior researcher Jason Campbell, where he explains how the shape-shifting materials he's studying could one day enable a smartphone to expand to the size of a netbook once you take it out of your pocket, and even go spherical so you can stick it on your ear, Bluetooth-like, to make a call. <P> Who doesn&#8217;t love this stuff, but I know you're asking, what relevance this has to anything Intel is doing today? Well, then check out my interview with Rattner, in <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-networking-management/q-a-intel-cto-justin-rattner.php">Wolfe's Den: Intel CTO Envisions On-Chip Data Centers</a>. In our chat, conducted a year ago, he was already talking about on-chip security, which indicates Intel's work was clearly in process long before it decided to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion.When I asked Rattner about Intel's 80-core research processor, he took the idea one step further. "If we could build tomorrow's processors out of arrays of relatively simple cores, we could deliver data-center-class solutions. It would be data centers on chips, and then arrays of those chips," he said. <P> I personally don't think this stuff is as far off as one might think, though of course the software is going to be the hard part. <P> <b>Top 5 Potential Pitfalls</b> <P> <b>1) Telecom Leadership Remains Elusive. </b> <P> Intel will tell you that Atom is making headway in the cellphone market. But that's as an applications processor, rather than on the radio-frequency (rf) end where the calls are made. Maybe that's a distinction without a difference that much matters in market terms. After all, ruling the smartphone applications processor space would be big potatoes. <P> OTOH, one thinks of Qualcomm, which has locked down both the application- and rf-processor ends. <P> I don't mean to deprecate Intel's efforts in communications. I believe they're necessary, and, truth be told, Intel appears to be making the most headway in this space in years. Indeed, it's an astounding rebound from the plug-pulling of 2006, when Intel sold its XScale comm-chip business to Marvell for $600 million. <P> I guess I would say I'm more confused than anything else. In 2006, Intel seemingly pulled back on the one area where everyone who watched the company would've thought was not something they would've done, strategically speaking. That's because Paul Otellini, who became president in May 2005, was and is the key advocate for Intel's diversification beyond PC processors. <P> Possibly the Marvell sale was driven by financial considerations. Likely today's renewed comm emphasis is supported by Intel's current financial health. I do worry, though, whether Intel has the commitment to see this through for the long haul (i.e., past the next CEO transition) and whether Intel has the responsiveness to succeed in the smartphone market, where it's the dictee rather than the dictator, if you get my drift. <P> <b>2) Who's The Next CEO? </b> <P> Succession is a big question for Intel. It's not a burning issue right now, because current CEO Paul Otellini is only 60 and so has up to five years left in his post. However, who's next in line for the executive suite is a popular topic, and indeed one that's business-survival-related when you're talking about, say, Apple. <P> For Intel, at this point, the company is bigger and stronger than any one person. (The counter-argument to this theory is that a poor choice can create unnecessary upheaval. Paging Carly Fiorina.) <P> The unique rub at Intel is that there had been a potential successor waiting in the wings. I wrote about him in Sept. 2009 in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/processors/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220100178">Wolfe's Den: Why Intel's Reorg Puts &#91;Sean&#93; Maloney In CEO Successor Seat</a>.Unfortunately, Intel chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney suffered a stroke in March, 2009. (I wrote about that in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/03/how_will_sean_m.html">How Will Sean Maloney's Stroke Affect Intel?</a>.) At the time, it was hinted that Maloney's return would be, if not soon, then certainly not in the distant future. However, when I chatted with an Intel spokesman a few week ago, it appears that Maloney is still recovering. <P> Maloney is only 53, and when I saw him in April, 2009, he could've easily passed for 42. So I feel for him personally, because he's an enthusiastic representative for his company and a charming guy. Looking at it dispassionately, his unavailability, however long it lasts, is bad news for Intel's long-term future. That's because, while Intel has a deep bench, all the other contenders appear relatively bland, as compared to Maloney. Then again, Otellini is fairly laid back, and he hasn't done too badly. <P> <b>3) Marvell's New Server Processor.</b> <P> I mentioned the Marvell sale in "Telecom Leadership Remains Elusive," above. For years, no one paid much attention to Marvell, but the ARM-centric vendor resurfaced in a big way last week. That's when it released its first server processor. <P> Normally, a server chip wouldn't be big news. That's because, as I wrote above, Intel has pretty much locked up the server market with Xeon. However, Marvell's Armada XP processor is an interesting and potentially significant development. It's aimed at applications in stripped-down servers such as those used by Google and by the emerging large data centers which support cloud computing. <P> The Armada design is a low power and quad-core part ideal for "cloud" servers. It's an ARM-architecture part, which means it's going to run Linux, rather than Windows. (Also, ARM is on a roll lately.) That's not a negative, merely a data point emphasizing its enterprise intent. <P> Armada also has an SoC heritage, which means that Marvell could presumably gin up other versions. So while one never wants to make too much of a point product announcement, it seems like Marvell might have something significant here. <P> <b>4) What To Do With McAfee?</b> <P> In August, Intel said it would spend $7.68 billion to buy security vendor McAfee. That's a lot of money to pay if all you're interested in is selling packaged security software. Turns out this is not what Intel is looking to do. Apparently, the McAfee deal is part of a strategy to fold security features into the hardware itself. <P> Putting security code directly on chip would obviously enable it to run faster. Equally importantly, it would allow Intel to charge a premium for said features. This is no small deal, especially in a market where desktop and laptop processors are mostly commodity products, and where downward pricing pressure continues unabated. <P> As Intel puts it in the current quarterly report: <P> "Our goal is to enhance security features through the combination of hardware and software solutions. This may include identity protection and fraud deterrence; detection and prevention of malware; securing data and assets; as well as system recovery and enhanced security patching. We entered into a definitive agreement in the third quarter of 2010 to acquire McAfee Inc. We believe this proposed acquisition would accelerate and enhance the combination of hardware and software security solutions, improving the overall security of our platforms." <P> This isn't the first stab Intel would be taking at trying to put an extra-revenue gloss on a plain-vanilla processor. As I wrote in <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/09/unlocking_intel.html">Unlocking Intel's $50 CPU Upgrade Program</a>, Intel has begun testing the sales of $50 processor upgrade certificates to unlock multitasking features in certain processors. <P> I'd guess that there wasn't much consumer update, since anyone computer-literate enough to understand what multitasking features are, knows enough about when and where they're needed and which CPUs support them. <P> OTOH, security is probably an easier sale. Even I, a person who's long thought security software is a waste of money, has come round to installing security software on my family's various computers. Hey, maybe this item should be in the "plusses" section, not the pitfalls. Unless you can't go into task manager to turn it off, that is. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below . <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/facebook.png">&nbsp;<a title="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744" target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=649354744">Facebook</a>&nbsp; <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P>2010-11-10T12:26:00ZThe networking powerhouse is poised to extend its Unified Communications-centric collaboration product, currently available as a hosted version for large enterprises, by adding a cloud-based iteration aimed at the SMB market.http://www.informationweek.com/news/228200652?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityCisco doesn't have a big presence at the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/santaclara/">Enterprise 2.0 Conference</a> in Santa Clara, Calif., this week, but its Quad social-collaboration product is very much on the minds of everyone who's assessing where this nascent market is headed. <P> As users move from the evangelism and hype phase into assessment and adoption mode, Cisco has quickly become one of the big elephants in the emerging E2.0 market, alongside Microsoft, with Office365 (aka Office and SharePoint in the cloud), IBM Lotus Live and Jive Software. All three of these vendors have made recent announcements. <P> Only Cisco has been mum of late. Not that they don't have a big story: When Quad was announced in June, it was positioned as a product for large enterprises, who would host it within their own private cloud infrastructure. <P> With Quad now in limited availability -- and poised to move into general availability in 2011 -- Cisco is getting ready to disclose a public cloud-based version aimed at SMB customers. Cisco won't confirm precisely when that announcement will come, but it could be as early as Cisco's Collaboration Summit, which will be held the week of Nov. 15. <P> Emphasizing the Unified Communications aspect of Quad -- it's a highly video-centric product -- the cloud offering will be marketed in conjunction with Cisco's telecom partners such as Verizon. <P> "We think our telecom partners over time will have the opportunity to deliver full services using our products." Murali Sitaram, the Cisco vice president in charge of Quad, told me in a recent interview. "So &#91;that can include&#93; cloud-based, or private cloud based or hosted services for our customers, using the range of UC and collaboration components we have." <P> Add to this the fact that Cisco says it currently has more than 60,000 enterprise customers who use its UC platform, and whether you're talking direct sales or the telecom partner channel, Cisco has fertile territory to mine. <P> In this sense, Cisco is perhaps in a similar position to Microsoft, which has its own humungous installed Office base, presumably ripe for migration to Office 365. <P> Indeed, those large Cisco and Microsoft installed bases make one think that E2.0 is being propelled as much by its market potential as its use-case benefits. <P> For Cisco, the video-centrism of Quad is not surprising considering Cisco's networking heritage and its ongoing fervor for all things bandwidth-intensive. (See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/client/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222200638">Cisco Video Thrust Telegraphs Bandwidth-Bandit Strategy</a>.) <P> "We come from the communications platform perspective," said Sitaram. "We're going to make sure that our products, especially Cisco Quad, are in tune with real-time communications and collaboration. They'll have all the other E2.0 features, but the key thing that differentiates &#91;Quad&#93; is the ability to quickly reach out to a person or a group, see if they're available and connect with them, better than any of the other vendors." <P> Cisco is also going to add mobile connectivity to Quad. Over the next couple of months, we're going to release the iPhone and iPad application for Quad, and soon after that the Android device -- so that we'll have full coverage on the major smartphone and tablet platforms," said Sitaram. "Think any content to any device, anytime, anywhere." <P> <strong>FOR FURTHER READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Top 5 Enteprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <P> To watch a video on Cisco Quad by my colleague Fritz Nelson, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/mastermix/652304261001">go here</a>.2010-10-31T20:27:31ZDo you E2.0? If so, I need your help. <i>InformationWeek Analytics</i> is conducting a survey to determine what's important to you when you're choosing Enterprise 2.0 applications, and how vendors stack up against a list of criteria rating the performance, applicability, cost, and reliability of their software.http://www.iweek-interim.com/news/229200630?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityDo you E2.0? If so, I need your help. <i>InformationWeek Analytics</i> is conducting a survey to determine what's important to you when you're choosing Enterprise 2.0 applications, and how vendors stack up against a list of criteria rating the performance, applicability, cost, and reliability of their software.The results will be an IT pro-driven assessment of the vendors and will published in an upcoming issue of InformationWeek as well as an in-depth InformationWeek Analytics report. <P> Here's your chance to let vendors know what's important to you, and where they need to improve their apps or strategies. <P> Since the readers of the Enterprise 2.0 blog are people who have experience with, and opinions on, these apps, I'm posting a notice here to invite you to weigh in. You can take the survey by clicking on this link: <a href="http://informationweek.enterprise20vendoreval.sgizmo.com">http://informationweek.enterprise20vendoreval.sgizmo.com/</a> <P> The survey will take under 10 minutes to complete. Your responses will remain confidential and will only be reported in aggregate. <P> The survey closes on or about Nov. 5, so please go there at your first opportunity. Thanks to everyone in advance for their input. <P> Once again, to take the survey, please click on the link: <a href="http://informationweek.enterprise20vendoreval.sgizmo.com">http://informationweek.enterprise20vendoreval.sgizmo.com/</a>.2010-10-23T06:00:00ZBig ideas heard at the InformationWeek 500 conference include a renewed focus on innovation, the importance of data visualization, and the ongoing agony of maintenance fees.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227900567?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityMy top-level take away from the recent InformationWeek 500 <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/conference/10fall/agenda.jhtml">Conference </a> is that the economic doldrums may not be completely over, but people are working as if they are. I sensed more pent-up enthusiasm in the conference hall than at any time during the past three years. CIOs are chomping at the bit, not just to keep their business in the game, but to pull ahead of competitors. <P> I can't tell you how many times I heard the tired saw, "Nobody ever shrunk their way to success." Well, nobody's in shrink mode now, though peoples' budgets don't necessarily match their developmental ambitions. Perhaps that's why the ideas floating about the collective industry subconscious as we wrap up 2010 all seem to have a heavy ROI component. Here they are, in no particular order. <P> <b>Innovation Is back.</b> OK, maybe it never left. But what's different this time is that some companies are attempting to codify the processes through which innovation can be nurtured. More important than ideas, which quite frankly are cheap, is the ability to pick which concepts are worthy of the heavy investment of time, money, and corporate mindshare required to take them to productization. <P> Leading the pack here is Dell. At the IW500, I spoke with Chief Innovation Officer James Stikeleather, who is working to establish and spread a methodology for innovation throughout the computer powerhouse. More on that to come in future columns. <P> <b>Business data is the answer. </b> (And it doesn't matter what the question is.) I'm being glib, but only to spotlight what's perhaps the greatest unacknowledged challenge facing everyone in business from tech folks, through marketing, to accounting. <P> It used to be that if you couldn't measure it, you couldn't manage it. While that truism still holds sway, it's obsolete when it comes to the modern, multivariate world. Indeed, there's so much data that it's impossible to even know what to discard so that you can begin to makes sense of the numbers. <P> Enter data visualization, a field which used to be the province of supercomputer scientists. Now, it's beginning to resonate with CIOs, who see it as a method for delivering useful data dumps to users. How do I know that? Well, at the InformationWeek 500, I saw a presentation, which started off as a head-in-the-clouds tour of a visualized "brain," resonate with the audience when the presenter let on that her data-representation techniques could be applied to real-world business situations. <P> Of course, market usefulness in this realm will require a company to lead the way, analogous to what, say, iRise has done regarding visualizing software process flows. For now, you can read more about what JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, is doing at the AlloSphere Research Facility at the University of California at Santa Barbara, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/database_apps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227400384 ">here</a>. <b>Maintenance fees will remain a point of contention.</b> The largest single sunk cost for businesses, after personnel, is software. Tens of thousands of dollars here, tens of thousands of dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking real money -- money enterprises resent paying. (<i>Jeopardy</i> question: Who am I <a href="http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senator_Everett_Mckinley_Dirksen_Dies.htm">paraphrasing</a>?) <P> Almost a year ago, Global CIO guru Bob Evans brought to the industry's forefront the subject of sunk costs spent on, as Seinfeld might put it, nothing. (OK, software updates and support which you may or may not use in an amount commensurate with what you're paying.) Check out the columns which got the debate started: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222000174">Global CIO: Will SAP Move To Tiered Maintenance Fees?</a> and <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222002898">Global CIO: Oracle's Incredible Profit Machine: 22% Maintenance Fees</a>. <P> At InformationWeek 500, I heard from Rimini Street, which has carved out a business model based on undercutting maintenance-contract fees by as much as 90%. Currently, Oracle and Rimini are in a court battle. Oracle sued Rimini for intellectual-property theft and Rimini countersued; read Bob's <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224200696">Global CIO: Oracle's Dazzling Profit Machine Threatened By Rimini Suit</a>, for more details. <P> This is a legal drama which bears watching, because if Rimini prevails, it means the market for cut-rate support is just beginning. This is Rimini's conundrum. If it loses, it's probably out of business. And if it wins, it's just opened the market up to dozens of competitors. <P> For CIOs who might be pulling for Rimini, there's also some angst, because opting for cheap maintenance could come at the cost of ticking off your primary software vendor. Rimini suggests that perhaps you don't <i>want</i> to be pulled along into product upgrades you might not want just because they're needed to get you aligned with a vendor's support cycle. So I'll cut it off here, but the outro is that this issue will be a big one during the next 12 to 24 months. <P> <b>Enterprise 2.0 is a way of thinking as much as it is a product(s).</b> I'm a big supporter of social tools in the enterprise, but not so big that I can't see there are some issues attendant to the mad adoption rush. (I've recounted some of these in my column, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a>.)The biggest impediment towards E2.0 surviving beyond the hype phase is that its quantifiable benefits remain unclear. Perhaps that's more true when you're talking generalized usage -- such as an activity stream for <i>everything</i> you're doing -- than it is for social tools directed at specific, tightly targeted, purposes. <P> Here, the canonical example is what Salesforce.com has shown can be done on the customer-relationship front by smartly monitoring Twitter. <P> At the InformationWeek 500, I saw a second interesting example, in a meeting where SuccessFactors discussed its acquisition of social-collaboration software provider CubeTree. SuccessFactors is tightly integrating CubeTree's tools into its own business-execution software. The latter is itself something of a new category, in that SuccessFactors is working to raise traditional human-resources-planning tools onto a more strategic plane. So in some sense you have a dual-pronged attack here, with two new areas combining to potentially deliver more value than simply the sum of the component parts. <P> <b>The Internet Is making us stupid.</b> Sitting down to write this column, I initially thought my riff on Nicolas Carr's new book, "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/web2.0/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225400004">The Shallows</a>" was going to be simply for the purpose of stretching out this article so I wouldn't have to headline it "Four Trends. . ." <P> I speak of Carr because he spoke at the InformationWeek 500. His talk wound its way through the not-very-disruptive thesis that rampant multitasking has rendered us all incapable of tending to any task which takes longer than the making of instant oatmeal. However, his discussion was engaging, perhaps because he peppered it with quasi-academic references -- the invention of the printing press, blah, blah -- or maybe because he seemed like a thoughtful and decent guy. <P> So why am I mentioning this? Well, as the infamous Imus once said about rapper Eminem: "If <i>we're</i> talking about him, it means he's over." Similarly, if everyone now accepts that the short attention span fostered by the Internet is having deleterious effects, then maybe we're all ready to step back from our Blackberrys for a bit and do some longer-term thinking. <P> Speaking of which, I already detect rising social approbation for obsessive e-mail checking in meetings; this wasn't the case only a year ago. So maybe there's hope. And, hey, if this isn't a message to Google to rethink Instant Search, I don't know what is. <P> <b>What's Your Take?: Leave A Comment</b> <P> What are your top tech trends for late 2010 and 2011? Let me know, by leaving a comment below, which will in turn stoke the discussion with your fellow readers. <P> <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/mobile/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227900049">Top 5 Reasons Windows Phone 7 Will/Won't Succeed</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P> <br clear="all"> <P>2010-10-16T11:30:00ZOur columnist makes the possibly contrarian assertion that, with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is reinvigorating the smartphone. Read his take and see if you agree or not.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227900049?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityI admit it--I was impressed with Windows Phone 7. True, the press conference Microsoft held on Monday in New York City to announce its new mobile platform didn't have the same cache as equivalent bashes back in the day. <P> Monday's announcement did repeat a couple of too-familiar Microsoft tropes -- an enthusiastic Steve Ballmer kickoff (he was actually rather restrained this time) and a no-feature-left-undemonstrated walkthrough by #windowsphone7 design team leader Joe Belfiore. <P> That stuff aside, the there there that Microsoft debuted is the real deal this time. True, it took them umpteen iterations to get their mobile platform right. Paradoxically, this may be to Redmond's benefit. Windows Phone 7 might not display noticeably more innovation than Blackberry, iPhone, and Android, which is my No. 1 minus. However, its elegant interface puts enough daylight between Microsoft and its competitors so that that shouldn't matter. <P> Where I think Microsoft is missing an opportunity is that they're bending over so far backwards to appeal to consumers that they're neglecting a big potential market. (This is my No. 2 minus.) That would be enterprise users. <P> I know what you're thinking: How could an activity stream-centric phone possibly appeal to corporate types? My answer is Enterprise 2.0, also known as the collaborative imperative that's sweeping the business world. OK, maybe I'm slightly ahead of the curve -- and the market -- here, but I think there's the germ of something big brewing. <P> Now that I've given my two negatives, here are the three big pluses of Windows Phone 7: <P> <b>Plus: Microsoft Finally Got The Software Right.</b> This is actually the least interesting reason why Windows Phone 7 should slowly but surely carve out a niche amongst Blackberry, iPhone, and Android, because getting it right should be a given. <P> When I mentioned at Monday's event my tortoise-and-hare market scenario -- Microsoft is the tortoise -- my listener responded: "Microsoft spent $400 million on Windows Phone 7. A small market share would be failure." To paraphrase Ann Landers: And what would their market share be if they hadn't spent the $400 million? <P> If one steps back from the reflexive tendency to deprecate everything Microsoft does, it think it's fair to say that the company is getting over its developmental paralysis and is making early progress in getting away from its overreliance on Windows and (old-style) Office. The object cases are Windows Phone 7, the Azure cloud computing service, and the enterprise 2.0-enabled Office 2010 (and SharePoint). <P><b>Plus: The Handsets Don't Suck.</b> OK, maybe my verbiage shouldn't be so negative. However, Apple's iPhone - the death-grip antenna aside -- has clearly set a high bar for industrial design. So a nice phone might cost more, but, heck, I'm worth it. <P> Which is where the initial Windows Phone 7 handsets almost, maybe, but not totally, pass the test. The launch devices are the Samsung Focus, HTC Surround, LG Quantum. I don't know about you, but I don't get a Mercedes-Benz-like brand association when I think of HTC, LG, and Samsung. (Read Eric Zeman's first impressions <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227701099">here</a>.) Yet, at the launch, Paul Thurrott, who's deeply <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/">knowledgable about Microsoft</a> and <a href="http://windowsphonesecrets.com/ ">Windows Phone 7</a>, was telling me I should check out the Focus, cause it's got a super screen. It turns out that he's right. <P> So perhaps my tech snobbery is getting the better of me here. However, I still believe Windows Phone 7 will need to cement some kind of user association with a Grade A1 handset. That's what both Apple and RIM have done, and where I feel Android falls short, though in response, Google would say a multiplicity of offerings is an advantage, not a drawback. <P> <b>Plus: Microsoft Is Reinvigorating The "Smartphone Is The Computer" Meme.</b> I know what you're thinking--What's a "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme</a>"? Seriously; this is my big point, and why it's why I'm so enthused about Windows Phone 7. When I wrote the <i>InformationWeek</i> cover story "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605369">Is The Smartphone Your Next Computer?</a>" in October 2008, enterprises were beginning serious work on connecting their mobile workforce beyond simple voice calls and e-mail. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; float:right; width:185px; text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226200202"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/471/2marketplacehub_tn.jpg" width="175" alt="Microsoft's Windows 7 Revealed" title="Microsoft's Windows 7 Phone Revealed" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin:0 0 3px 0; padding:0;" /></a><br /><i><span class="covercredit">(click image for larger view)</span></i><br /><div style="margin:5px 0 0 0; padding:0; font-weight:bold; font-size:1.2em; color:#990000;">Microsoft's Windows 7 Phone Revealed</div></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> As I wrote at the time: <P> <blockquote> " Smartphone makers are rushing to partner with software houses, as both see big bucks in giving their customers mobile enterprise access. The former envision over-the-air ERP and CRM as ways to drive expensive handsets into the hands of workers who currently don't rate more than commodity cell phones. And software vendors anticipate broader usage--or at least heightened mindshare--for their apps if they can get many more people to spend more time interacting with customer and transaction-oriented data on their handsets." </blockquote> <P> The idea was that tiny smartphone apps would serve as portals to serious back-end enterprise software. Fast forward to late 2010 -- two years later -- and it's clear that, though there's been a proliferation of apps, smartphones haven't become anything like a PC replacement. (That almost-honor belongs, kinda sorta, to the iPad.) <P> Rather, smartphones have become, by analogy, more of a ruggedized handheld for white collar workers. As in, the delivery truck driver totes an Intermec, while the salesman enters the info on his last call into an iPhone app. <P> I believe that Windows Phone 7 can take the smartphone back toward that "PC replacement" model, if only because of its aforementioned collaboration posture. OTOH, maybe I'm engaged in wishful thinking here, but it's also true that the "Windows" in Windows Phone 7 has nothing to do with desktop Windows. Microsoft's new phones come from a Windows CE heritage. <P> <b>What's Your Take?: Leave A Comment</b> <P> Those are my pluses and minuses. Now I'd like to hear your take on Windows Phone 7, and, more specifically, on my assertion that Microsoft is reinvigorating the smartphone. Let me know, by leaving a comment below, which will in turn stoke the discussion with your fellow readers. <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P>2010-10-02T00:00:00ZThe former Intel chairman thinks 'we have our priorities a little bit wrong'http://www.informationweek.com/news/227501130?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_security<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- Image Aligning Right --> <div style="margin:0; padding: 0 0 10px 10px; width:185px; float:right; text-align:center;"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1281/281CScraigbarrett.jpg" width="175" height="175"> <div style="margin:4px 0 0 0; padding:0;"><span class="artCaption">"We have Our Priorities A Little Bit Wrong" </span><span class="covercredit"><i>-- Craig Barrett</i></span></div> </div> <!-- / Image Aligning Right --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Craig Barrett is not only the renowned former chairman of Intel-he stepped down in May 2009 after a 35-year career at the semiconductor leader--but he's also a vocal advocate for reforming the U.S. education system and enhancing the country's technology-based competitiveness. Barrett recently talked with <i>InformationWeek.com</i> editor in chief Alexander Wolfe about the steps he thinks the U.S. must take to secure and bolster its tech leadership position. </p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: What's your assessment of where U.S. competitiveness stands today?</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> The United States has moved from a period where we were really the only game in town to one of greater worldwide competition. The National Academies' report "Rising Above The Gathering Storm" lays out the challenge. It's education, it's R&D, and it's the environment in the United States to promote investment in innovation. Other people are making bigger investments and working harder than we seemingly have over the past couple of decades.</p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: Does this mean that national policy makers overseas are helping their domestic tech industries, and here in the U.S. companies such as Intel are on their own?</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> I don't think it's so much tech policy as it is the recognition of what the 21st century is all about. The rest of the world recognizes that education is important, that investing in new ideas--R&D--is important. And then you need to have the right environment to get smart people together with smart ideas. That right environment is everything from corporate tax rates to Sarbanes-Oxley to the availability of venture capital and intellectual property protection. A lot of the world has recognized that smart people, smart ideas, and the right environment are the only three levers you can pull, and they're pulling them.</p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: You sound like you despair of the situation, so let me ask you: Is there any danger Silicon Valley could become the next Detroit?</b></p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- Innovation Mandate Promo --> <div style="width:177px; float:right; margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px; text-align:center"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/innovation-mandate/index.jhtml"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/graphics_library/misc/Innovation_Mandate_162x76.jpg" width="162" height="76" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 10px 0;"></a> <div style="margin:8px 6px 6px 6px; font-size:1.1em; font-weight:bold;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/innovation-mandate/index.jhtml">InformationWeek's Series On U.S. Tech Competitiveness</a> </div> </div> </div> <!-- /Innovation Mandate Promo --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> It's got a long way to go before it gets to Detroit. You've still got a couple of great universities--Berkeley and Stanford. They're spinning off smart ideas and smart people, and you've got lots of venture capital. So you've still got a catalytic environment there.</p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: When you talk about education, you seem to be alluding to the fact that our culture doesn't value intellectual achievement or point kids toward science and engineering.</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> We do on average a terrible job of educating our young people in mathematics and science. That in itself is almost an automatic filter against those young people going to college and majoring in mathematics and science. It's not so much a culture problem, but it's a K-through-12 problem, which then impacts all of our young people.</p> <P><b>InformationWeek: What's your prescription for education?</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> The most important education reform in the U.S. is to look at our K-through-12 system. Compare it worldwide to the best in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and start to use tests based on international benchmarks, not based on state-by-state benchmarks. We do not compare ourselves to the best in the world. We compare ourselves to each other. That's inappropriate.</p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: What needs to be done by the government to foster continued U.S. competitiveness in technology?</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> Invest in peer-reviewed, university basic R&D. Take the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, DOD--double that investment over a finite period of time, five years or so. It's not picking winners and losers, but it is investing in peer-reviewed basic research in our universities. Our universities are the basic research laboratory of the United States. That's where the next ideas come from.</p> <P> <b>InformationWeek: Give us your bullet points for what needs to be done.</b></p> <P> <b>Barrett:</b> Fix K through 12. Get some internationally benchmarked standards to judge our performance. Recognize that the 30% of the kids in the U.S. who don't even graduate from high school are boat anchors around the economy's neck, and do something dramatically about that 30% dropout rate.</p> <P> Recognize that R&D is the seed corn of the future. The government has to invest in basic R&D at our universities. </p> <P> Recognize that even if you have smart people and smart ideas, you need to have an environment which promotes investment in the U.S. For a country which has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, that is not an incentive to invest. That's a disincentive. So we need to look at what other countries are doing to promote investment. We don't have to copy everything, but we at least have to have the fundamentals right. </p> <P> We have pretty good intellectual property protection in the U.S., but we put a horrendous burden on corporations with Sarbanes-Oxley. That limits startups. We have healthcare costs which are out of control. And we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. </p> <P> We can throw hundreds of billions of dollars at shovel-ready, asphalt-ready projects and not put anything into the industries of the 21st century. We have our priorities a little bit wrong. </p> <P> This is not a Republican or Democrat issue--it's the longstanding Washington, D.C., image that you don't make any investments beyond a two-year cycle because you don't get any return on investments for the next election cycle. That's why R&D has suffered for the last 30 years. Nobody wants to fund R&D because there's no payback for the election cycle. Its payback is in five to 10 years. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- RECOMMENDED READING --> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #3399CC; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#3399CC; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>More In This Series</b></div><div style="margin:8px;"><center><strong><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/innovation-mandate/index.jhtml">InformationWeek's Series On U.S. Tech Competitiveness</a></strong></center> <br /> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/innovation-mandate/index.jhtml"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1281/promo_innovationmandatetype.jpg" width="165" height="88" hspace="0" vspace="2" border="0" align="right" style="margin:0px 0 9px 9px;" /></a> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227600041">Innovation Mandate: Does America Have The Fire For Innovation?</a></li> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227600039">Innovation Mandate: Has America Lost Its Innovation Edge? </a></li> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227600083">Innovation Mandate: Valero Execs On Keys To U.S. Success</a></li> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227501130">Innovation Mandate: An Interview With Craig Barrett </a></li> <P> <P> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/83/3725/IT-Business-Strategy/research-innovation-mandate.html">Download: Innovation Mandate Full Analytics Report</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </center> <!-- / RECOMMENDED READING --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> </p><br clear="all"> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6" style="border:solid 1px #cc0000; background-color:#e1e1e1; width:300px;"> <tr valign="middle" align="center"> <td> <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/issue/1283/informationweek-full-issue-october-4-2010.html"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1281/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek: Oct. 4, 2010 Issue" title="InformationWeek:JOct. 24, 2010 Issue" width="65" height="87" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="left" style="margin:0 10px 0 0;" /></a> <strong> <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/issue/1283/informationweek-full-issue-october-4-2010.html"><br />Download a free PDF of the Oct. 4, 2010 issue of <nobr><em>InformationWeek</em></nobr></a><br /> (registration required)</strong> </td> </tr> </table> </center> <P> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2010-09-30T17:16:00ZLeo Apotheker, unexpectedly resigned as CEO of SAP in February, has been named to replace Mark Hurd.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227501120?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityFollowing nearly two months of intense speculation since the sudden resignation of Mark Hurd, HP late Thursday announced the selection of former SAP head Leo Apotheker as its new CEO and president. <P> Apotheker himself is no stranger to sudden changes in the executive suite, having himself unexpectedly resigned as CEO of SAP in February. (For insight into Apotheker's history and what he's likely to bring to the HP job, read our Global CIO analysis, "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227501133">HP CEO Apotheker Has Deep Expertise But Checkered History</a>.") <P> HP characterized Apotheker's 20 years at SAP as positioning him ideally for the HP gig. "Leo is a strategic thinker with a passion for technology, wide-reaching global experience and proven operational discipline--exactly what we were looking for in a CEO,&#8221; said HP board member Robert Ryan, in the press release announcing his selection. <P> Apotheker himself didn't provide any hints as to the direction he'd take HP, following Hurd's often-stormy tenure. "As we move forward, HP will continue to be a valued partner with our customers as well as a fierce competitor," he said in the HP press release. "I look forward to working with the outstanding people at HP to write the next chapter in the company&#8217;s long and proud history.&#8221; <P> HP is coming off of a solid third fiscal quarter, in which it reported revenue of $30.7 billion and an operating profit of $2.3 billion. It has also recently forecast a healthy 2011. <P> Nevertheless, the company, which is the largest purveyor of computer technology in the world, is playing in an intensely competitive sector. IBM and Oracle -- the latter coming off its recently completed acquisition of Sun Microsystems -- have HP firmly in their respective sites. Both have put a big stake in the ground in the emerging area of optimized systems. These are tuned computing systems which combined server hardware and enterprise software , in a package which delivers performance which far outpaces conventional set ups. <P> On the marketing front, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has made himself the face of his company's optimized systems effort. Perhaps that's one reason some industry analysts expected HP to pick a high-profile candidate for the CEO post. Apotheker while not the most charismatic executive, certainly fits the profile of a seasoned leader who's done time in the command chair. <P> On the data center front, HP has gone with a strategy called the Converged Infrastructure as a play to tap into enterprise customers' desire to put their computing architectures on a "2.0" generational footing. HP's go-to-market approach bundles its servers -- such as HP's popular BladeSystem blade offerings -- with storage and networking. HP has recently increased the heft of its networking portfolio, adding its $2.7-billion acquisition of 3Com to its in-house ProCurve brand. <P> Over the next decade, stoked by the need for server consolidation, the infrastructure 2.0 market will be an intense battleground. HP faces competition from IBM's Dynamic Infrastructure approach, which was recently and smartly placed under the "Smarter Planet" banner. Dell's portfolio is dubbed the Efficient Enterprise. Cisco, which recently used its networking beachhead to launch a foray into the server space, rolls everything up under the umbrella of Unified Computing. <P> While Apotheker may face a learning curve on the hardware front, his heavy hitting enterprise-software experience could help HP make new inroads in that market -- some at the expense of his former employer. <P> That's consistent with the take of Stuart Williams and Ezra Gottheil, analysts of Technology Business Research Inc. In a note e-mailed Thursday evening, they opined: "The experience Mr. Apotheker brings in running and selling an enterprise software company is directly beneficial to HP. Given the strong margin contribution of enterprise software, TBR believes Mr. Apotheker will reinvigorate the Software portfolio under the HP Software and the Enterprise Server, Storage and Networking divisions as a highly profitable lever that can help to quickly lift overall HP profitability. The appointment reinforces the perceived importance of outside experience in running the software business following the hiring of ex-Microsoft executive Bill Veghte as the head of the HP Software and Services division." <P> HP will hold a conference call Friday morning to provide more details on the selection. <P> Cathie Lesjak, who served as interim HP CEO since Hurd's August resignation, will remain in her post as CFO. <P> <strong>SEE ALSO: <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227501133">Global CIO: HP CEO Apotheker Has Deep Expertise But Checkered History</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227500934">Global CIO: HP's $130-Billion Gamble</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222700188">SAP CEO Apotheker Resigns; Co-CEOs Named </a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/database_apps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300221">Hurd In, Phillips Out As Oracle President </a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226700433">Who Should Hewlett-Packard Buy?</a> </strong>2010-09-23T11:18:07ZSans any official word from Oracle, the sun has seemingly set on the use of AMD Opteron processors in the company's Sun Servers. Even though Oracle won't comment on the issue, word has been circulating since spring, when I posted <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/oracle_axing_am.html">Oracle Seen Axing AMD Opteron On Sun Servers</a>. Recently, I received an e-mail from an Oracle customer, which seems to provide corroboration that AMD is done on Sun.http://www.iweek-interim.com/news/229200723?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securitySans any official word from Oracle, the sun has seemingly set on the use of AMD Opteron processors in the company's Sun Servers. Even though Oracle won't comment on the issue, word has been circulating since spring, when I posted <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/oracle_axing_am.html">Oracle Seen Axing AMD Opteron On Sun Servers</a>. Recently, I received an e-mail from an Oracle customer, which seems to provide corroboration that AMD is done on Sun.I should note for the record that when I spoke with Oracle server chief John Fowler in April, he said the company continues to consider both Intel and AMD processors. <P> Nevertheless, AMD's Oracle prospects starting looking bleak in May, when Australian IT Gary Burgess <a href="http://ideasint.blogs.com/ideasinsights/2010/05/the-latest-on-oracles-intentions-for-the-sun-hardware-portfolio.html">wrote</a> that he'd attended a local Oracle event, where he learned that "It appears that the company may focus on Sun x86 servers using only the Intel processor architecture." <P> (FYI, Sun Servers is the product-line name by which Oracle refers to the machines it acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems.) <P> My subsequent attempts to get amplification from the stateside Oracle folks haven't been answered. So my virtual ears pricked up the other day when I received an email from a sysadmin who's an Oracle customer. Here's what he wrote: <P> <blockquote> "Since all non-Netra AMD blades have been EOL'ed &#91;end of lifed--editor&#93; and no new AMD blades have been announced or mentioned at Oracle World, it sure seems evident that AMD is no longer an option. <P> It really puts my company over a barrel. We standardized on, and made a significant investment in, VMware and AMD processors in the Sun 6000 blade chassis. It forces our hand to purchase AMD-based blades elsewhere. Can't live migrate between AMD and Intel. What a shame. We can't wait for what may or may not transpire." </blockquote> <P> In careful journalistic fashion (what we used to do before the Internet destroyed everything), I have to add that one user e-mail does not confirmation provide. However, a dispassionate observer might infer that something's clearly happening here. <P> My e-mailer certainly appears correct about the end-of-lifing. For example, if you go <a href="http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/031228.htm">here</a>, to Oracle's product page for its Sun Fire X4600 server, a system which supports up to 32 Opteron processor cores, you see this message: "This product has reached the end of its life and is no longer orderable." <P> So if AMD is out, the question is, why? True, Intel's latest Xeons have pretty much closed any real or perceived performance gaps which existed for a long time between Intel and AMD. Perhaps Oracle wants to pare down its focus to AMD and Sun's homegrown Sparc. <P> Perhaps it's the fact that, as my <i>InformationWeek Analytics</i> research report, <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State Of Server Technology 2010</a> found, while there are many people who will buy either AMD or Intel, or Intel only, there are few who demand AMD only. <P> On the other hand, Xeon and Opteron now each have their adherents, and both have places where they are appropriate and even incrementally better for an application, when take into account the whole ball of wax, including cost, power consumption, number of sockets, and benchmarks. So in that sense, it's mystifying decision, particularly since Oracle has the engineering resources to support both processor lines. <P> One would also think that Fowler would like to at least be able to play around, engineering-wise, with HyperTransport--the channel used in Opteron--as part of the latency-busting system designs he's been pioneering. <P> On the business front, there is also the installed base to consider, as the e-mail from my admin reader makes clear. <P> Oracle? <P> What's your take? Leave a comment below or e-mail me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>) <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.2010-09-22T10:01:19ZAnother salvo in the battle for social enterprise market- and mindshare is being fired on Wednesday, when Salesforce.com takes the stage at Oracle OpenWorld to unveil what it's calling a major upgrade to its Chatter collaboration tool.http://www.iweek-interim.com/news/229200657?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityAnother salvo in the battle for social enterprise market- and mindshare is being fired on Wednesday, when Salesforce.com takes the stage at Oracle OpenWorld to unveil what it's calling a major upgrade to its Chatter collaboration tool.Chatter, released three months ago, is, like most enterprise 2.0 tools, a mashup (mishmash?) of Facebook- and Twitter-like features. Except, instead of giving status updates and shout-outs to your 5,000 BFFs, you're making your workday transparent to far-flung colleagues -- many of whom you don't yet know -- so your skills and projects can serendipitously intersect for the benefit of your organization. <P> The twist Salesforce.com adds -- and one which may turn out to be a big market advantage -- is that it's also turned Chatter outward, enabling it to plug into its Salesforce CRM and Force.com solutions. So I'm not saying that this'll enable Salesforce.com to "win" the E2.0 race. Au contraire; there are powerful competitors, notably what I call the Big Three-and-a-Half. That's Cisco, with Quad; IBM, with Lotus Live; Microsoft, with Office 2012 and Sharepoint; and Jive Software with Clearspace. <P> Where Salesforce.com does seem to have carved out a niche lead, though, is in applying collaboration tools to workplace teams who deal with customers--particularly customer problems. I saw a powerful demo about a year ago where Salesforce.com showcased how it enabled monitoring of customer Tweets, to get ahead of the complaints curve. (Like when you tweet that your cable is down, and a company rep tells you they're on it, so that you feel better, even if it doesn't really get fixed any faster.) <P> OK, so back to Salesforce.com's OpenWorld announcement, which is all about Chatter 2. From what I can tell from the info Salesforce.com sent me, Chatter 2 adds a whole bunch of under-the-hood tools, such as information filters, reports, and analytics dashboards. Nice stuff, but it doesn't move the needle on the main point of interest, which is the market jockeying for position. <P> In that regard, Salesforce.com is touting the fact that "more than 20,000 companies including Hitachi, Misys, Reed Exhibitions and Softbank have deployed Chatter" and that "Dell has deployed Salesforce Chatter across its sales and marketing departments." <P> Good news, but remember that early deployment wins are necessary, though not sufficient, for ultimate enterprise success. As in, the current phase of the E2.0 battle involves companies pushing out their collaboration tools to their installed base of customers of their other (main) products. The real big wins will come when users decide which tools they really want to embrace. More about that in upcoming columns and posts. <P> Meanwhile, send me your E2.0 interests and opinions. Leave a comment below or e-mail me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>) <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.2010-09-21T11:20:09ZSometimes you can't win for losing. Intel is getting hammered by the Web-o-sphere for purportedly ripping off consumers by selling a $50 upgrade to unlock some hidden processor features, when the chip behemoth's main intent is to help its authorized system builders earn a little extra cash. Read on for a possibly deeper dive than you may be interested in.http://www.iweek-interim.com/news/229200762?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securitySometimes you can't win for losing. Intel is getting hammered by the Web-o-sphere for purportedly ripping off consumers by selling a $50 upgrade to unlock some hidden processor features, when the chip behemoth's main intent is to help its authorized system builders earn a little extra cash. Read on for a possibly deeper dive than you may be interested in.Engadget broke the story (see <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/">Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do</a>). They did a decent job, as did <a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pentium-g6951-clarkdale-upgrade-card,11320.html">Tom's Hardware</a>, but both stories are missing a key data point, which provides deeper context. <P> Namely, the "$50 upgrade" seems to be a somewhat tangential consumer angle, whereas the main thrust of the Intel Upgrade Program, as far as I can tell, is channel-oriented, aiming at Intel-authorized resellers and system builders. <P> Not that Engadget and Tom's are incorrect to raise consumer-side questions. You gotta ask yourself what type of casual customer is buying processor upgrade certificates at Best Buy. I'll tell you who: an uneducated consumer, which, as those clothing ads used to assert, is not the best customer. A retail PC buyer should not be paying to add enhanced multitasking features which aren't going to goose the performance of their copy of Microsoft Word one whit. So in that sense, yes, one should resoundingly ding Intel for what amounts to trying to separate grandma from the money she was planning to use to buy some floppy disks. (She's wondering why she can't find them anywhere in the store; she's going to go ask that nice Best Buy salesman what the deal is.) <P> OK, so back to the Intel Upgrade Program, which as I mentioned is intended as a channel play. Here's the explanation from Intel's own reseller site: <P> <blockquote> <P> "Intel Upgrade Service enables down-the-wire upgrades of PC platform capabilities after the initial hardware shipment, offering unprecedented flexibility to resellers. Now your customers have more options with an easy upgrade path for additional performance or features when they are needed. In 2010 we are rolling out a small pilot program offering performance upgrades on Intel&#174; Pentium G6951 Processors." </blockquote> <P> The G6951 happens to be the same processor Engagdet identified as the object of the Best Buy upgrade offer. Turns out that the G6951--a desktop processor--is the only chip to which this upgrade program currently applies in its pilot phase. As to what those upgrade features are, the channel documentation enumerates a lengthy list, probably to give resellers something to "sell" their customers on. Here's the data dump, again via Intel's site: <P> <blockquote> "Intel Upgrade Service enables down-the-wire hardware upgrades after a system's been purchased, providing new levels of platform flexibility to service providers and end users alike. With the purchase of a PC with qualifying CPU and upgradeable chipset, you'll get future-ready flexibility designed to change with your growing needs. <P> <b>Level III Manageability Upgrade</b> <P> <b>Asset inventory, HW alerting, SOL/IDE-R, remote configuration, agent presence, and system defense plus:</b> <P> <li><b>DASH 1.0 compliance</b> for support of industry standards. Support for profile updates. <P> <li><b>Measured Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT)</b> allows Intel AMT to be part of trusted platform <P> <li><b>Host VPN</b> gives support for local management VPN tunneling <P> <li><b>Fast access to fix PC problems</b> inside or outside the firewall <P> <li><b>Remote scheduled maintenance</b> allowing IT to pre-schedule when a PC connects for maintenance <P> <li><b>Automatic remote alerts</b> so IT is aware when computer issues arise <P> <b>Level I Manageability Upgrade</b> <P> <li><b>Fast access to fix PC problems</b> inside or outside the firewall <P> <li><b>Remote scheduled maintenance</b> allowing IT to pre-schedule when a PC connects for maintenance <P> <li><b>Automatic remote alerts</b> so IT is aware when computer issues arise <P> <li><b>Microsoft NAP support</b> allows your computer to gain access to enabled 802.1x networks regardless of PC health or power state <P> <li><b>Access monitoring</b> provides oversight to support security requirements." </blockquote> <P> This is clearly very incremental stuff, so one wonders how much revenue opportunity it actually provides. One would think that such monitoring features are geared more towards larger enterprise and are of minimal interest to SMBs, unless they're paying their VARs to remotely oversee their installations. (Perhaps this'll often end up being bundled into the build price, as an incomprehensible charge, like that minibar item you didn't ask for but mysteriously ended up on your hotel bill anyway. ) <P> Or, as the most astute story on the subject, ChannelWeb's <a href="http://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/227500305/intel-upgrade-service-beneficial-to-partners.htm">Intel: Upgrade Service Beneficial To Partner</a> quoted Todd Swank, vice president of marketing at system builder Nor-Tech, as saying: "I'm struggling to see where the benefits are for system builders." <P> <b>UPDATE: After I posted this blog, Intel e-mailed me a comment on the upgrade program.</b> Here it is: <P> <blockquote> "Intel is exploring a way to give customers the flexibility to determine the level of performance they want in their processor, without having to change hardware. This gives customers an extra configuration option that isn't available on standard Pentium processors. <P> We are planning a pilot program in a limited number of retail stores using one Pentium processor SKU that will enable a consumer to upgrade the performance of their PC online. The new CPU upgrade is designed to deliver additional performance as an option on Pentium Processor-based PCs included in the pilot program. <P> We will continue to gather customer feedback throughout the pilot program." </blockquote> <P> Leave a comment below or e-mail me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>) <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.2010-09-06T20:51:00ZOracle has hired former HP CEO Mark Hurd to be its president, replacing Charles Phillips, who has resigned. Hurd will take the reins of Oracle's strategy of combining software and hardware, as it battles IBM.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227300221?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityCapping a weekend's worth of speculation, Oracle on Monday evening announced it has hired ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd to be its new president. In a separate press release, Oracle revealed that current president Charles Phillips has resigned that post. <P> Hurd's emergence as a candidate for employment at the enterprise-software powerhouse was telegraphed during the saga surrounding his exit from HP in early August. At the time, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison famously criticized HP's board of directors, telling <i>The New York Times</i> that Hurd's forced resignation was "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." <P> Ellison's high opinion of Hurd was similarly in evidence in the Monday press release trumpeting his new job. "Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he&#8217;ll do even better at Oracle," said Ellison's statement. "There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark. Oracle&#8217;s future is engineering complete and integrated hardware and software systems for the enterprise. Mark pioneered the integration of hardware with software when Teradata was a part of NCR." <P> Hurd will actually be one of two executives holding the title of president at Oracle. Safra Catz, who has served as co-president alongside Phillips, will maintain that title going forward. As former CFO of Oracle from 2005 to 2008, Catz brings deep financial expertise to the executive suite. As for Hurd, he's expected to focus on boosting the company's strategic product initiatives. <P> Indeed, Ellison is widely viewed as having tapped Hurd to help whip Oracle's hardware strategy into shape. Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in early 2010, and is in the processing of fielding bundled hardware-software products, which typically combine Sun's server hardware with Oracle's enterprise software. The offerings are marketed with the message that such combos offer tuned performance which outpaces what competitors can deliver. <P> Oracle's Exadata V2 database machine is a prime example of the company's hardware-software combinations. Along with making the case for Exadata, Hurd will also likely expend effort on creating a more cohesive story line around the Sun servers Oracle now sells. <P> Hurd spoke to this in Monday's press release. "I believe Oracle&#8217;s strategy of combining software with hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage," he said in the statement. "Exadata is just the beginning. We have some exciting new systems we are going to announce later this month at Oracle OpenWorld. I&#8217;m excited to be a part of the most innovative technology team in the IT industry." <P> As for outgoing president Phillips, his exit after 29 quarters follows a recent tough patch. In 2010, a purported ex-mistress rented a billboard in New York's Times Square, trumpeting her alleged relationship with him. <P> This past July, Phillips received what amounted to a public rebuke from Ellison, who gainsaid Phillips's statement that Oracle has a $70-billion acquisitions war chest. (You can read Bob Evans's take on that <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226200301">here</a>.) <P> Today, both parties professed mutual admiration, with Ellison characterizing Phillips's departure as something he had a hand in initiating. "Charles has evolved our field culture toward a more customer-centric organization and improved our top line consistency through a period of tremendous change and growth," Ellison said in the statement. "When Charles approached me last December and expressed his desire to transition out of the company, I asked him to stay on through the Sun integration which has gone well. We will miss his talent and leadership, but I respect his decision." <P> <b>For Further Reading</b> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300223">Global CIO: Resurrecting Mark Hurd: Larry Ellison's War With IBM</a>; <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300216">Global CIO: Larry Ellison And Mark Hurd: The Job Interview</a>; <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226700527">Global CIO: Oracle Execs Offer Deep Insights Into Company's Soul </a>; <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600299">Oracle's Fowler Says Systems Performance About To Explode</a>; <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/windows_servers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225600295">State Of Server Technology</a>.2010-09-06T08:00:00ZHighlights of exclusive InformationWeek Analytics research as it appears in "Server Technology Hits a Crossroads," our report evaluating changes in the server market motivated by the push to consolidate data center systems, get power and cooling costs under control and make the most of the cloud.http://www.informationweek.com/news/227101750?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityOne-quarter of the 579 business technology professionals who responded to our 2010 State of Server Technology Survey told us their organizations plan to invest in more physical servers in 2010/11. But far more -- 44% -- said they intend to <em>decrease</em> their server counts, indicating that system consolidation and virtualization are becoming increasingly critical to efficient data center operations. Those planning to keep server counts about even over the year: 31%. <P> The result is that the server value proposition is shifting from the processor to peripheral considerations, such as the ability to effectively implement virtualization, system manageability, and power and cooling. <P> Indeed, after acquisition cost, the ability to deploy, manage and redeploy on-the-fly virtual processors (from physical or logical cores) is the single most important factor in server technology today. The uptake of these supporting technologies has been slowed to some degree by constrained IT budgets, set in late 2009, before the green shoots of recovery sprouted. Nonetheless, system consolidation and increased use of virtualization will continue to drive server updates, as IT organizations extract maximum usage from available resources. That's the top-level finding from the 579 business technology professionals who responded to our <em>InformationWeek Analytics 2010 State of Server Technology Survey. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.Recovery or not, maximizing existing resources is a top priority. Nearly two-thirds of our poll respondents said their server spending this year will stay even or increase only slightly over last year. Only 11% said they expect to spend more on servers this year, while nearly double (20%) plan to spend less. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.The battle between the x86 giants rages on, spurred by the March entries of Intel's Nehelam EX (Xeon) and AMD's Magny-Cours (Opteron). Still, many server buyers remain processor-vendor-neutral; more than one-third of survey respondents told us, given equal price/performance, they'd buy either AMD or Intel or the processor wouldn't even factor into their decision. Nearly another third said, price/performance being equal, they'd go with Intel, vs. only 5% who said the same about AMD. Nearly a quarter said they'd go with Intel no matter what, vs. only 1% who expressed similar loyalty to AMD. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.Exactly half of the business technology pros responding to our poll said their organizations' servers have sufficient local storage to accommodate just the operating system and hypervisor, but their applications reside on networked storage. More than one-third said they don't need much networked storage--their servers are big enough to handle it all. The remaining 15% said no room at the inn-their servers are diskless and boot from SAN or NAS devices. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.Virtualization, with its inherent need for mass quantities of data to be transferred between servers, is driving a migration from the standard 1-Gb Ethernet on the motherboard to 10-Gb Ethernet and beyond. More than 10% of our survey respondents already require that their server motherboards support 10-Gb Ethernet networking technologies, and of the 58% of respondents currently requiring 1-Gb Ethernet support, nearly half told us they're considering moving to 10-Gb Ethernet. What's more, 40-Gb Ethernet is already making headway in core switch-to-switch apps. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.Nearly 80% of our server tech poll respondents said they have implemented or plan to implement virtualization, and another 15% are evaluating virtualization or intend to start trials for their organizations-all this despite the inevitable challenges of managing virtual resources. To meet this unprecedented demand, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM are offering both VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V as virtual environment platforms, in addition to supporting Citrix XenServer, and Oracle, which now owns Sun, is promoting Oracle VM. <P> Download the full <em>InformationWeek Analytics</em> report <a href="http://analytics.informationweek.com/abstract/24/3373/Storage-Server/research-2010-state-of-server-technology.html">State of Server Technology 2010</a>.2010-08-07T06:00:00ZSelect Enterprise 2.0 intellectual property filings from Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, as well as a couple of lesser-known social tech vendors.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226600066?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityFigure from Cisco's patent application "Asynchronous Workflow Participation Within An Immersive Collaboration Environment." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Figure from Vyew CEO Henry Hon's patent application,"System and method for collaborative web-based multimedia layered platform with recording and selective playback of content." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Login screen from Patent 7,707,249, "Systems and methods for collaboration," by document-management specialists OpenText. <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Figure showing a user's status and history, from Patent 7,707,249, "Systems and methods for collaboration," by document-management specialists OpenText. <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.LivePlaces' "place" interface screen, which is a kind of central status repository showing everything in one's collaborative workspace, from Opentext patent 7,707,249. <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Diagram from SAP's patent 7,676,542, "Establishing a Collaboration Environment," showing a mock up of one user's virtual workspace. <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.SAP's patent application 20100162131, entitled "Collaboration Interface For A Multi-Channel Collaboration Window With Context Support." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.IBM holds patent 7,734,691, for "Providing collaboration services to a wireless device." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Patent application 20100175129, submitted by IBM on July 8, 2010, is for "Method for Notification Upon Exposure To Offensive Behavioural Patterns In Collaboration." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.AT&T gets enteprise social comm in gear with patent application 2010013849, "Method and Apparatus For Multimedia Collaboration Using a Social Network System attempts to plug that gap." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Patent application 20100169888, "Virtual Process Collaboration," seems to take advantage of thread server technology developed by San Francisco's Resilient Network Systems." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.Groupwise communication functionality from Microsoft patent number 7,747,719,"Methods, tools, and interfaces for the dynamic assignment of people to groups to enable enhanced communication and collaboration." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.A second diagram, showing a sample user profile, from Microsoft patent number 7,747,719,"Methods, tools, and interfaces for the dynamic assignment of people to groups to enable enhanced communication and collaboration." <br><br> For the full article discussing Enterprise 2.0 patents, see <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600073">Wolfe's Den: Mad Rush For Enterprise 2.0 Patents</a>.2010-08-07T06:00:00ZVendors are vying to lock up rights to the social-enterprise. Here's a selective look at cool patent tech from Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText , and SAP, as well as two surprising newcomers.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226600073?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_security<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/1cisco7189_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Cisco's Immersive Environment</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Like any nascent technology, Enterprise 2.0 is still searching for its sweet spot. Right now, the first wave of adoption has seen heavy user uptake of wikis. But wikis are just the curtain-raiser, and a minor first act, at that. The main performance is the crop of serious, first-generation products currently rolling out from vendors such as Cisco, IBM, Jive Software, Microsoft, and SAP. <P> Which got me to thinking: Whenever a new area starts to take off -- <i>before</i> it hits the public consciousness, actually -- companies rush to lock up its intellectual-property underpinnings. This means patents. <P> Looking at patents is worthwhile, because they give a heads up on interesting developments which might lie down the road. They provide inferential insight into vendors' possible product plans, or, more correctly, the type of stuff they've been thinking about and the problems they've had to work to overcome. <P> Thus I embarked on an unscientific survey and searched both awarded patents and patent applications. The latter are sometimes more interesting, because they're of recent vintage. Applications typically take several years to wend their way through the system, so patents are by definition slightly older technology, and more indicative of a vendors' potential position regarding reaping future intellectual-property licensing revenues than of what they've got up their sleeves, product-wise. <P> This is a long way of saying that I undoubtedly missed some important stuff. OTOH, I did turn up some interesting tech from (in alphabetical order) AT&T, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText , and SAP. I also turned up two new companies I'd never heard of before: Resilient and Vyew. <P> Note that the patents in this story are not necessarily directly connected to products such as Cisco Quad, IBM Lotus Live or SAP Streamwork. (Though of course it makes sense that each vendor will apply the respective methodologies they've developed.) <P> Here's a summary of 13 interesting patents and patent applications, which can be group under the umbrella of collaboration technologies. You can also go directly to the companion slideshow to click through screen grabs from the patent and patent applications. <P> <b>1) Cisco: Virtual Reality Meets Telepresence</b> <P> When it comes Quad vendor Cisco's Enteprise 2.0 intellectual property, one could predict a mashup of a social connectivity and communications. That's precisely what's at play in patent application 20090307189, "Asynchronous Workflow Participation Within An Immersive Collaboration Environment." <P> Unlike most Enterprise 2.0-oriented patent applications, this one expends a lot of ink talking about virtual and augmented reality. Mostly, that seems to be a fancy way to position the teleconferencing that's the basis for its collaborative connectivity.Hey, does that "immersive collaborative display" shown in the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">diagram</a> make you think of Cisco's recently introduced Cius tablet? Maybe these patents aren't so disconnected from products after all. However, the patent application sheds no additional light on any tablet device. Rather, it reads more like telepresence on steroids, or telepresence as Enterprise 2.0 collaboration. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/2vyew_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Vyew's Collaborative War Room</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Here's an ambitious description, from the patent's overview section: <P> <blockquote> "This specification discloses appropriate technology and processes to create the paradigm shift that moves real-life enterprises into the immersive world that was traditionally reserved for three-dimensional (3D) gaming technologies. Essentially, integrated data in an immersive collaboration environment can provide for activating changes in behaviors of persons--awareness is critical to efficiency and productivity. More particularly, the aspects described herein provide for an ability to capture a time-based historical record of activities and actions that occur within a virtual workspace." </blockquote> <P> <b>2) Vyew: The Collaborative War Room</b> <P> Here's a patent application from a new company. New to me that is, though not to Henry Hon, the CEO of <a href="http://vyew.com/site/company/">Vyew</a>, a startup based in Berkeley, Calif. Vyew is actually in the collaboration business, offering an online meeting service billed as "The Collaborative WarRoom &#91;sic&#93;." <P> Hon's patent application, 20100185733, entitled "System and method for collaborative web-based multimedia layered platform with recording and selective playback of content," appears to be a natural outgrowth of his company's efforts. <P> For example, the figure I've grabbed from the application could indeed come from an online meeting "war room." It "illustrates an example of synchronizing an annotation of a drawing in a shared space through various input devices in accordance with an embodiment of the invention." <P> The broader invention, according to the abstract, "relates to a method and system for creating a collaborative file in a shared network including: accessing one or more user machines in a shared space." <P> The collaborative multimedia technology also focuses heavily on session control and selective recording and playback of content. You be the judge of whether this stuff -- and I don't mean to single out this company's patent application -- is obvious from prior art. That's not really the point. (Because while it might be a point of law, it's not always an impediment to obtaining a patent, and only comes out, if at all, in the litigation wash afterwards.) <P><b>3) OpenText: 'LivePlaces' Collaboration</b> <P> Here's a patent which looks to be paving the way for a product, though vendor <a href="http://www.opentext.com/">OpenText</a> hasn't taken anything to market under the "LivePlaces" moniker which appears in patent 7,707,249, "Systems and methods for collaboration." (Maybe they should; it's a great name!) <P> OpenText is known as an enterprise content management (ECM) company, so perhaps it's not surprising that LivePlaces is neatly organized, and "include&#91;s&#93; chatting, viewing and/or editing one or more data files, and sharing one or more applications, data files, and/or displays." <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/5opentext3_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">OpenText LivePlaces</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> I found this patent, awarded in April to inventors Jared Spataro, Cornelia West, David Glazer, and Ronald Schneider, to be unusually direct in its descriptions. (Most inventions are written in "patent-lawyer-ese," which is intended to lock up as many potentially litigable claims by being as broad, and thus as vague, as possible.) <P> Here's a snippet which demonstrates what I'm talking about. (You'll have to take my word that this is clearer than the writing in most patents.) <P> <blockquote> "A collaboration application may include a feature for providing "peripheral vision" to one or more users by informing users of activity within a collaborative application. Such information can be related to number of users, roles of users, the existence of meeting, etc. For example, peripheral vision can be provided by providing a database for storing data associated with two or more independent collaboration places, administering collaboration activities among participating clients in each of the two or more independent collaboration places,. . . <P> Other features can, for example, also include persistence of a tool, a place, or a database dedicated to a place, polling, content sharing, voice conferencing, video, meeting related features, activity threads, workflows and templates, indexing, place presence, integration of enterprise document management software with collaboration tools, worldview, "drag-and-drop" features, access, and security." </blockquote> <P> Shown is a LivePlaces' "place" interface screen, which is a kind of central status repository showing everything in one's collaborative workspace. <P> <b>4) AT&T : Multimedia Collaboration Apparatus</b> <P> Speaking of communications, AT&T's patent application 2010013849, filed in June, revolves around collaborative multimedia interaction. It's heavily comm-centric, with both a conferencing system and network usage discussed in the application. <P>As befits a filing from a communications powerhouse, inventors Carlos Guzman and Sanjay Agraharam note: "Individuals using social network systems can communicate synchronously or asynchronously, but these systems lack integration with real-time services such as telephony, video, and data sharing. In addition, these systems lack the means to communicate with individuals who are "offline" or to reach these individuals based on their current or last known digital presences (i.e., the communication devices currently or last known to be used by the individuals)." <P> "Method and Apparatus For Multimedia Collaboration Using a Social Network System" attempts to plug that gap.(click through to the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">slideshow</a> to see an image from the AT&T patent application.) <P> <b>5) SAP's Collaboration Environment </b> <P> Well before the SAP released its StreamWork product in March 2010, SAP was attempting to patent collaborative technologies. Patent 7,676,542, "Establishing a Collaboration Environment," awarded in March, began as an application in 2002. Inventors Martin Moser, Stefan Mueller, Martin Kreyscher and Christian Nester are claiming a "computer-implemented method of establishing a collaboration area that facilitates collaboration on a project between members of an enterprise." <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/7sap2131_full.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">SAP's Collaboration Environment </B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The patent acknowledges that there are many existing collaboration tools. What SAP is bringing to the party is the ability to establish virtual collaboration areas, and to manage the movement of users and content in and out of those sandboxes. The figure I've reproduced (click through to the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">slideshow</a>) illustrates a mock-up of one user's overview, showing her ability to add co-workers into her collaboration space. <P> More recently, on June 24, 2010, SAP applied for a patent which extends collaboration into a multi-channel environment. (Patent application 20100162131 is entitled "Collaboration Interface For A Multi-Channel Collaboration Window With Context Support.") Another image I've grabbed (at right) shows a nice stab at a well-contained collaborative window, which includes contact information as well as navigation panes. A notation at the bottom about telephony gives a nod to the fact that most social enterprise apps live or die on the strength of their unified communications backbone. <P> <b>6) IBM: Collaboration Goes Wireless</b> <P> Can't get enough of enterprise sociability at your desk? Well, IBM wants to help you take the experience with you. Patent 7,734,691, issued June 8, 2010, is for "Providing collaboration services to a wireless device." <P><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/9ibm5129_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">IBM's Offensive Content Catcher</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> This invention is pretty much along the lines of "don't leave home without it." (Where it = Enterprise 2.0.) From the patent's description section: <P> <blockquote> "Conventional collaboration software solutions can require that two users be subscribed to a collaboration server and be online before collaboration communications can be established between the two. . .Requiring both users be linked via and IP network ignores many communication possibilities with mobile computing devices, which can be accessible via a mobile wireless network. That is, conventional technologies do not permit a user to initiate collaborative communications from a client computing device with a second user having access to a mobile computing device. . .The present invention provides a method, a system, and an apparatus for providing collaborative services to a mobile device via a wireless communication link." </blockquote> <P> <P> Once you've got all your social workplace tools in place, the next question that might arise is: Can we be sure everyone is collaborating appropriately? Fear not; IBM has you answer. Patent application 20100175129, submitted on July 8, is "Method for Notification Upon Exposure To Offensive Behavioural Patterns In Collaboration." <P> Like the abstract says: <P> <blockquote> "The offensive content analysis system may measure the level of current offense in the communication and determine a historical offensive behavior pattern for the user. The offensive content analysis system may then determine if the offensive behavior, both current and historical, rises to a threshold behavior level. The offensive content analysis system may take notification action if the offensive behavior meets the threshold level." </blockquote> <P> The figure I've reprinted is a "block diagram illustrating a communication management system configured to detect offensive behavior in a communication and notify an enforcement entity in an embodiment of the invention." <P> Interestingly, the walk-through of the diagram says that a "guardian" (aka parents, shown as 302a; click on diagram to enlarge) "may be notified of offensive material being communicated to the guardian's child. The guardian may then take action to protect his or her child. " E2.0 collaboration for youngsters? <P> <b>7) Resilient Goes Threaded</b> <P> Here's a patent application a company out of San Francisco company and a couple of serial entrepreneurs with whom I wasn't familiar. The company is <a href="http://www.resilient-networks.com/">Resilient Network Systems</a> which provides Internet-server identity and authentication services. The guys are Jonathan Hare, Resilient's chairman and founder, and Mathew Spolin, who is co-founder and chief technology officer of the mobile geolocation app startup <a href="http://doubledutch.me/">DoubleDutch</a>. <P><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <table width="185" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="right"> <tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066"><IMG SRC="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/476/11resilient69888_tn.jpg" WIDTH="175" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BORDER="0"></A><BR> </td> <td ALIGN="center" VALIGN="middle" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" ROWSPAN="2"><BR></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="175" align="center"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/spacer.gif" width="175" height="4" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0"><br><B style="color:black">Resilient Goes Threaded</B></td></tr><tr BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td width="185" align="center"><A href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">(click for larger image and for full photo gallery)</A></td></tr></table> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Their E2.0 patent application, number 20100169888, "Virtual Process Collaboration," seems to stem from Resilient's work. It makes use "thread servers," which are the traffic cops of the envisioned collaboration process: <P> <blockquote> "Process Thread Servers may have built-in support for defining and executing the common building blocks of any process--reviews, approvals, delegation, assignments, messages, reminders, forms, security, rules, etc. They may function as a built-in project manager and personal assistant for process participants, keeping the information about the processes they stores organized, accessible and secure, reminding participants of pending or late deliverables, etc." </blockquote> <P> Reading deeper into the application, one gets the impression that it revolves around keeping collaboration environments synchronized. For example, it notes that when one process or thread is modified, that may reflect user actions, which in turn have to be communicated out to other processes. <P> One can see how a company involved in acting as an interceptor for http requests, authenticating them and then granting access to a server (or not) would have the smarts applicable to manage a collaborative environment, which likely looks not all that dissimilarly schematically. <P> <b>8) Microsoft: Managing Group Communications</b> <P> Patent number 7,747,719, awarded on June 29, 2010, has the full title, "Methods, tools, and interfaces for the dynamic assignment of people to groups to enable enhanced communication and collaboration." Credited to inventors Eric Horvitz, Carl Kadie, and Sean Blagsvedt, its intent, putting it into my own words, is to connect affinity groups of people via a communications channel. <P> This functionality is illustrated a screen showing the members of a volunteer fire department handled by a groupwise manager. A second figure (click through to the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/software/reviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600066">slideshow</a> to see both views) is a simulated shot of a user interface screen by when individuals set policies for how often, and under what conditions, they receive update messages. <P> <P> <P> <a name="recommended"></a> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; border:solid 1px #cc0000; text-align:left; width:440px; font-weight:bold;"> <div style="padding:4px; text-align:center; background-color:#cc0000; color:#ffffff; font-size 1.3em;"><b>Recommended Reading:</b></div> <ul> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225701194">Wolfe's Den: Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Roadblocks</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/cisco_quad_exec.html">Cisco Quad Exec Talks Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/video_sap_demos.html">Video: SAP Demos StreamWork At Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/ibm_adds_heft_t.html">IBM Adds Heft To Enterprise 2.0</a> <li style="margin-bottom:7px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/05/top_3_pluses_mi.html">Top 3 Pluses & Minuses Of Enterprise 2.0</a> </li> </ul> </div> </center> </p> <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below or e-mailing me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P> <P>2010-08-06T18:15:00ZOur columnist wonders whether Hewlett-Packard's board isn't taking the easy way out--and potentially reducing future shareholder value--by forcing CEO Mark Hurd to resign.http://www.informationweek.com/news/226600190?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityWhatever Hewlett-Packard's employees are feeling in the wake of the <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/desktop/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600187">sudden resignation</a> of CEO Mark Hurd, I suspect that the company's shareholders are thinking differently. Hey, I'm not defending Hurd for violating HP's standards of business conduct, but if the board's first responsibility is preserving shareholder value, isn't there a better way of handling things than a zero-tolerance kicking out the door of the guy who cleaned up Carly Fiorina's mess? <P> HP is going through a very delicate time right now, what with two major acquisitions -- 3Com and Palm -- still being integrated into the company. Hurd, who righted a listing corporate ship when he replaced Fiorina in March, 2005, is a proven leader who would've successfully seen those through. <P> But what of my point about the investigation, which "found that there was no violation of HP's sexual harassment policy, but did find violation &#91;by Hurd&#93; of HP's standards of business conduct"? Probably HP's board was thinking they want no part of any impropriety whatsoever, what with some sordid events in HP's recent past that they'd rather forget. <P> These include the HP <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_spying_scandal">journalist spying scandal</a> of 2006, in which then-chairwoman Patricia Dunn--later cleared of all allegations--was implicated in the Watergate-like "pretexting" of some CNET reporters. (HP was chasing down an internal leak and in doing so attempted to gain access to reporters' call logs.) <P> OK, so what of Hurd's "he didn't harass, but he did violate standards" resignation before he was pushed? (I wonder what kind of parachute he gets in a case like this?) There are clear precedents for stepping down for fooling around on the job. The most notable recent case was Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher, who was ousted <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13173-2005Mar7.html"> over an affair</a> with an employee. <P> There's a little HP-connected trivia in that case. Boeing's non-executive chairman at the time was the late Lew Platt, who was chairman and CEO of HP in the 1990s. Of Stonecipher, Platt told <i>The Washington Post</i>: "It's not the fact that he was having an affair" that caused him to be fired..."But as we explored the circumstances surrounding the affair, we just thought there were some issues of poor judgment that . . . impaired his ability to lead going forward." <P> Perhaps it's similarly poor judgment in Hurd's case, though again he was supposedly cleared on the harassment angle. However, the business-practices violations are that he reportedly filed false expense reports on multiple occasions. <P> That's a very serious charge. But, again, my point here is: Isn't HP's board cutting off its nose--which it's hoping to keep squeaky clean--to spite its face? <P> When you weigh everything together, is the board really doing the right thing for the shareholders? Can't some infractions be best handled another way, like with a suspension or admonition, or partial loss of stock options? <P> Possibly the board is more afraid of shareholder lawsuits now, if they don't move Hurd out, than they are of getting dinged for a non-quantifiable--and impossible to prove--failure to increase shareholder value further down the road because they get an inferior CEO as a successor. <P> As I alluded to at the outset--and let's just say it plainly--many HP employees are undoubtedly cheering today. Hurd was not beloved, and plainly didn't care to be. I well remember his first press conference, where he was prodded by reporters to put a cap on the turmoil of the Fiorina years by giving HP's employees a verbal pat on the back. He was also egged on to state that there would be no upcoming layoffs. He refused to do either. <P> I thought it was cold and callous, given that HP had (prior to Carly, anyway) a very collegial and supportive culture. But I also took it as a sign that Hurd would succeed, reviving in spectacular fashion HP's then-sagging numbers. And he did. <P> Will his successor be as able to run HP as adeptly? It's on the board to get somebody who can. <P> What's your take? Let me know, by leaving a comment below or e-mailing me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> <P> <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>)<br> <P> <P> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com. <P> <P> <P>2010-08-05T09:21:38ZYou can't be a serious player in the upcoming Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 world if you don't have a communications and collaboration platform. That's why it's alarming that Google is <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600016">pulling the plug</a> on further development of Wave, even though they're saying the technology will appear in other products. This is where one sees the failure of their model of throwing betas against the wall to see what sticks. They should've toughed this one out, not waved a white flag of E2.0 surrender.http://www.iweek-interim.com/news/229200901?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Antivirus_securityYou can't be a serious player in the upcoming Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 world if you don't have a communications and collaboration platform. That's why it's alarming that Google is <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226600016">pulling the plug</a> on further development of Wave, even though they're saying the technology will appear in other products. This is where one sees the failure of their model of throwing betas against the wall to see what sticks. They should've toughed this one out, not waved a white flag of E2.0 surrender.Google's move can only be good news for Cisco, IBM, and SAP, to name just a few of the vendors fielding enterprise collaboration products. True, Wave was perhaps more of a consumer play than an offering pitched at the workplace. But Google's cool quotient made it the elephant in the room, at least as far as customers sitting there wondering which Web/E2.0 product they should throw their lot in with. <P> That's not an effect to be minimized. Remember that most users have only recently begun to dip their workplace wicks into wikis. Thus they're not yet fully acclimated to the ways of online collaboration. In terms of figuring out where this will all lead, they best analogy I can come up with is, they're caught between a bunch of newbies and a hard place. The newbies being the cubicle dwellers who have to be convinced (or forced) into online collab mode, and the hard place being upper managers who are generating pressure to start using this stuff. <P> So what if Google had a problem with Wave in that it wasn't fully baked as far as the user experience was concerned? (Skeptics might wonder why that's a problem for a collaboration platform in this early stage of the game.) That's what a "beta" process is for. <P> All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Web/Enterprise 2.0 is very fluid landscape right now, and Google is insane to pull the plug on something just because adoption isn't as rapid as it would like. Even if you stipulate that Wave <i>isn't</i> an enterprise offering, Google is giving up a huge opportunity to get 'em while they're young. (Young users favoring Wave could one day force it up the enterprise chain, iPhone-like.) <P> What, does Google have some kind of case of corporate attention-deficit disorder, where they turn to the next shiny thing anytime a Segway rolls down the hallway? Hey, you gotta give Microsoft comparative credit here, in terms of typically not throwing in the towel on stuff until they're a lot further down the road. <P> Now that I think about it, the comparison with Microsoft is apt. The folks in Redmond are expending a lot of effort to elevate the functionality in Sharepoint, and convince enterprise customers that it's nicely expandable and adaptable platform to use as your company's Enterprise 2.0 foundation. <P> Google should have taken a page from Microsoft's book here, because this is a case where Microsoft's incremental development model shines. Don't expect that getting collaboration right will be easy, either on the user or developer end. <P> Leave a comment below or e-mail me directly at <a href="mailto:alex&#64;alexwolfe&#46;net">alex@alexwolfe.net</a>. <P> Follow me on <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/twtter.png"> Twitter: (<a href="http://twitter.com/awolfe58" target="_blank">@awolfe58</a>) <P> Like this blog? Subscribe to its <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/rssicon.jpg"> RSS feed: (<a href="http://feeds.informationweek.com/infoweek/blog/wolfes_den" target="_blank">here</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/youtube.png">&nbsp;My videos on (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/alexwolfe66" target="_blank"> YouTube</a>) <P> <img style="width: 16px; height: 16px;" src="http://i.cmpnet.com/informationweek/graphics/socialnets/linkedin.png">&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/213/3b3" target="_blank"> LinkedIn</a> <P> Alex Wolfe is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek.com.