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InformationWeek readers were the first to learn about Intel’s efforts to pack a data center onto a single chip, via my recent interview with Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner. (See Intel CTO Envisions On-Chip Data Centers.) Now, the chip behemoth has taken things one step further, formally announcing its single-chip cloud research project.

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I sat down recently to chat with Juan Santana, chief executive of the largest security vendor you might not be familiar with. Yet Panda Security, founded in Spain in 1990, is huge in Europe and no slouch either in the United States, where it competes against the likes of Symantec, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, and McAfee. I talked with Santana amid the launch of Panda Cloud Protection Service, which moves threat analysis to the cloud and installs with a very small footprint on the client.

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On the cusp of launching its Azure cloud computing service, Microsoft is also making a savvy bid to lock up a patent for one of the main worries--vendor lock-in--of cloud users. (The other big concern is security.) The folks from Redmond have filed a patent application for migrating data to a new cloud, which is what you'd have to do when leave your first vendor.

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I'm beginning to think that fears about cloud security are overblown. The reason: an intellectual framework is already in place for protecting data, applications, and connections. It's called encryption. What's evolving now, and isn't anywhere near fully baked, is a set of agreed-upon implementations and best practices. Today's post talks about some relevant and interesting work from Trend Micro and from IBM.

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Yeah, I know, this is another one of those "everything changes" moments where we're prodded into frenzied activity--as opposed to effective action--because an emerging technology has surged ahead of our ability to properly manage it. I'm talking about cloud computing, and the attendant fears not just of data theft, but of breaches of SaaS computing resources themselves. Fortunately, there are a bunch of below-the-radar efforts attempting to address these worries.

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This week's 60 Minutes broadcast should make everyone afraid, very afraid, of the real, looming specter of cyberwarfare attacks. As I recently blogged, government agencies are already going full-bore to come up with guidelines to protect federal networks. So when an Admiral goes on national television to say hackers have the ability to take down our power grid, he's doing it to deliver a warning.

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There's a security problem on the horizon, which could derail the progress of social networking has made in breaking down the barriers between business and personal Internet usage. (Whether that's a good thing or not is a separate argument.) I'm speaking of the rising tide of fake Facebook messages, phishing threats, and malware.

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Analysts who've lately focused on a Cisco's decade-long buying binge will surely weigh in on the networking powerhouse's Monday announcement that it plans to acquire Hong Kong set-top-box maker DVN. Yet most of these financial musings, which focus on Cisco's stock price, are missing the point. It's all about bandwidth, stupid.

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It hit me the other day that something's missing amid the Windows 7 launch hoopla. Last time around--indeed, during every prior upgrade cycle--we've witnessed the fanboys pop up like Whack-A-Mole survivors to hector us about the big mistake we're about to make and to proffer the open-source operating system as the better option. This time, nada. Why?

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Thursday's Windows 7 consumer launch finds me wondering about a seemingly radical idea suggested by a chief technology officer. Namely, enterprises should open up their networks, effectively turning them, as far as users are concerned, into Internet hot spots. The emergence of both cloud computing and Windows 7 could push this forward, though one will be able to argue that this is simply conventional networks in hot-spot clothing.

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Is Big Brother about to muck about with your toaster? That's that latest concern--out of left field though it may be--which is being raised about Smart Grids, the technological push du jour to update our creaking electricity transmission infrastructure with efficiency inducing digital controls. Or, as I call it, the utility is the network.

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Have you been wiki-ized? I don't know if that's a word, but if you work at a tech company, you know exactly what I'm talking. Mostly it's been Clearspace which has provided the platform that's doubled your e-mail load, even as it has genuinely helped us all grope towards greater levels of collaboration. But there are other innovators in the wiki space, notably Socialtext, which has just advanced the cause of group-wise spreadsheets. In the process, they could push wikis towards better real-world usability.

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The big takeaway that surfaced at the successful Windows 7 Virtual Event we held on Wednesday is that many CIOs and admins are moving beyond the big-picture question of "should we upgrade or not" and are now focused on technical point issues, mostly related to performance and compatibility. (For those who couldn't attend, we'll have a replay archive posted within 48 hours, and I'll put up the link.)

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In getting ready for Wednesday's 10 am eastern Windows 7 Virtual Event, hosted by the InformationWeek Business Technology Network (i.e., us, and you can register here), I've been trying to get a feel for just how rapidly enterprises will adopt the new operating system.

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Here's an odd twist that might give new life to the dying horse of music digital-right management. Microsoft has just been awarded a U.S. patent for a distributed DRM system -- it works over peer-to-peer networks -- which uses encrypted public and private keys as the licensing mechanism. This is significant because, while centralized music stores like Apple's iTunes have forsaken DRM, the Microsoft patent would enable peer-to-peer networks to reemerge as viable, albeit protected, content sources.

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Microsoft is firing on all marketing guns as it moves to create an adoption groundswell for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. For enterprise users, another key piece of the ecosystem is about to fall into place. That would be the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2009 R2, a multi-tentacled toolkit containing virtualization technologies and a bunch of management tools.

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Against the backdrop of rising malware threats and organized cybercriminal rings, a national cybersecurity initiative is taking shape which will bring a "locked down" mentality to the way we authenticate users, apps, and anyone or anything that touches a network. I'm talking about the Cryptographic Key Management (CKM) project that is being run out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Computer Security Division.

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While server technology is proceeding apace -- see my column, "AMD, Intel Remake Servers From Processor Up" (here) -- shipments themselves are being challenged by the overall economic environment. That picture is apparent in the latest worldwide server market report from Gartner, with results from the second quarter of 2009. One bright spot is that blades sagged less than any other segment.

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I caught up with SAP recently during their customer tour to roll out their hot new, intuitive Business Intelligence product, and shot a short video demo. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is billed as a venture into real-time BI. What that means is it enables non-power-users -- as in, sales and marketing folks looking for quick data runs -- to extract useful information via simple, Google-like queries.

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An important Trend Micro paper, spotlighting a cybercriminal hub operating out of Estonia, has surfaced on Slashdot. The racket here is that a seemingly legitimate Internet Service Provider is in reality the headquarters for a rogue network, which extends into Europe and the United States. The breadth of the deception outlined in the paper is scary; doubly so because cybercrime is emerging as the single biggest security threat of the next decade.

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Two unpleasant bouts with updated software have led me to formulate Wolfe's First Law of Programming: An upgraded, enhanced, or otherwise supposedly improved software release will always perform more poorly than the rev which it replaces. My two cases in point are AIM 6.9.15.1 -- you gotta love their configuration control -- and Time Warner Cable's latest electronic programming guide.

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I wanted to share with you an insider comment I received in response to my Wednesday column, Recession Or Bust, R&D Spend HP Must. According to my correspondent, Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd is a "show me the money" kind of guy. Which is not a criticism -- it simply means that company's research engineers have to earn their stripes every day.

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The quad-core processor battle between Intel and AMD remains the most exciting arena in PC technology, where consumers can get the latest stuff at what amounts to cut-rate prices. The newest entry is AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. The 3.4-GHz quad-core chip, which modders are already overclocking to 3.9-GHz, goes for $245.

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Recent criticism of NIST's cybersecurity guidelines for federal agencies raises the logical question: If government networks are at risk, how do I ensure that my operation is protected? One place to start is US-CERT's IT Security Essential Body of Knowledge.

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I'm in the unenviable position of defending Microsoft, but dive into the United States Patent and Trademark Office's database, and see if you don't agree with me that last week's court decision banning Microsoft from selling Word is nuts. The i4i patent Microsoft supposedly infringes seems loosely applicable to Word at best, and obvious enough software-wise to make you wonder why there are software patents at all. Plus, Microsoft holds some seemingly applicable XML patents of its own.

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Interest in Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format is heating up as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 move out into the marketplace. So here's some VHD news you can use in the form of pointers to two free online user guides.

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The way I read it, Windows 7 is launching not with a bang, but a whimper. Which is a good thing. Unlike Vista, whose January 2007 debut was accompanied by Microsoft protests that it really, truly was great (even if the WDM display drivers clearly weren't), Windows 7 simply works. Anyone who has test-driven the beta gets that. Now that I'm about to install the final, release-to-manufacturing version, it's time for a quick OS recap. Click ahead for a video and some MS PowerPoints.

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Here's the first image of one of Microsoft's planned retail stores, as tweeted by the corporate communications team at Redmond. Actually, it's a shot of the drywall in front of the store, which is presumably still under construction.

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Cisco CEO John Chambers took a glass-half-full approach to Wednesday's earnings report, which saw fourth-quarter profits at the networking behemoth slide 46% compared to the year-earlier period. Undaunted, Chambers issued a statement saying he saw a number of positive signs this quarter and thinks the business might be at the "tipping point," which precedes a rebound.

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Here's a radical -- but eminently business-sensible -- idea for enterprises wondering why they've got to eat thousands of dollars each year per employee for PC support costs: No more laptops. Hey, if cloud and SaaS mean anything, it should be big savings by bagging the self-hosted software paradigm. How about you give your workers $500 each to buy a netbook instead, and they can support themselves? Workers tethered to an office can use a thin client, or -- perish the thought -- a desktop computer.

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I hate to dive into the traffic-trolling antics of TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, but I will (and not just because I'm chasing clicks, too). In his post about why he's abandoning the iPhone, he's apparently coming around to the view I've espoused for years. Namely, there are better options out there. He's opting for an Android; I say Blackberry's better.

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Being a big fan of Windows 7, I was surprised to find that there's no mad rush by enterprises to migrate to the new operating system, and that Microsoft's ending of support for XP is the biggest factor in pushing businesses to upgrade. These are the early results of a just-completed InformationWeek Analytics survey on Windows 7, of which I'll offer a partial peek, if you click ahead.

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A liquid-cooled PC is like the Hummer of computers, which is why I've always wanted to build one. (Plus, it provides ample thermal support for overclocking.) This latest project came about because I wanted to top my last two quad-core builds -- 2008's QX9770 and 2007's QX6850 box -- and also because I wanted to check out the new Intel Core i7 processor. Click ahead to see a short video of the project's first phase, where I unbox the Thermaltake BigWater 760is liquid cooler.

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You think the drug wars are bad? Then just wait until we've got SWAT teams, empowered by the upcoming ACTA anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, taking down the local DVD duplicating operation. It'll make anti-DRM advocates long for the grandma-suing ways of the RIAA.

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The significance of Google's Chrome OS announcement is not the OS itself -- remember, it's not an actual product yet. Rather, it spotlights the shift away from laptops to netbooks and smartphones. Laptops are still corporate tools. But once applications and data are in the cloud, enterprises will ditch the costlier computers and get with true lightweight platforms.

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I've just posted a short video about SAP's deal with Jive Software, which lets you embed dynamic analytics widgets inside your blog posts. I mean "dynamic" not in the sense of multicolor whiz-bang (which usually aren't) charts. I'm talking serious Crystal Reports graphics, so you can showcase Business Intelligence (BI) with multiple data slices before your entire company, right there on the corporate Clearspace wiki.

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I'm encouraged that the dirty little secret of Web 2.0 and social media technologies is finally being openly addressed by early adopters and vendors alike. At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, there's been frank discussion this week of the question average users have been whispering (so that their bosses don't hear them): Namely, what can this stuff do for me that's actually useful?

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The infinite, self-referential loop which is the modern Web came into relief Monday, on the occasion of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. Fanboys gathered in San Francisco at WWDC's keynote for the introduction of the iPhone 3GS. So many people were tweeting, though, that I felt more plugged in online than I would've if I'd been there live. The tweets gyrated wildly between tweeters bored with the phone and those who were fanboyishly enthusiastic.

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I hate to be a whiny blogger -- I know; are there any other kind? -- but with news swirling that Apple is set to call its third-generation funky mobile device the iPhone Video, what can I say except I told you so? Back in February, I was first to uncover hints about video, in a patent document, and posted the news in Apple Planning Video-Call iPhone.

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On the face of it, Intel's announcement that it's going to buy embedded-software vendor Wind River Systems for $884 million is just another ho-hum corporate acquisition. But the back story is much more interesting: This Intel's umpteenth attempt to diversify beyond PC processors. This time they hope they've got it right, by acquiring a company with expertise in the software which powers emerging mobile devices like handheld Web browsers.

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Two just-in reports suggest AMD has a success on its hands with its new 6-core Istanbul. Early tests are showing that the processor, which is a drop-in replacement on mobos supporting quad-core 'Shanghai' Opterons, delivers great performance while being very power-efficient.

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AMD will take Opteron to the next level on June 1, when it formally unveils its 6-core Istanbul processor. The exciting angle for users of high-powered servers (and also viewed from a data-center consolidation perspective) is that Istanbul in 4-socket servers will deliver 24 physical cores. (And you can add virtualization on top of that.) When you add the AMD launch to Intel news last week about its 8-core Nehalem-EX, I'd say we have a have a processing-power revolution on our hands comparable to that which occurred when RISC displaced CISC.

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I'm not a big fan of David Pogue (this video is one reason, though mainly it's because he has a larger audience than I), but I took notice when he reviewed the latest Kindle alternative. What does it all mean? Ebooks are real, and they'll eventually replace print, but for now I'm ticked there are no good portable PDF readers for smartphones.

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Forget four cores -- even though it's the sweet spot of the market. I write that only half in jest, because with announcements from Intel (an 8-core Nehalem) and AMD (6-core Istanbul), the lid has been ripped off the supposed upper limit on cores and threads. Consider that a Nehalem-EX with 8 physical cores and 2 threads per core for 16 total logical threads. In a four-socket server configuration, this can deliver 64 logical cores. [Update: This number has been corrected to 64 logical cores; when I originally posted, in my haste I calculated incorrectly.] Click on to see slides from Intel and AMD.

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OK, so I only actually have four photos so far. But they're fresh from the morning keynotes, where HP announced its unified communications alliance with Microsoft, and VMware discussed how virtualization has become a serious enabling technology for cloud computer. I'll be tweeting (@awolfe58) and posting more photos throughout Interop. Click ahead to see the first batch.

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We're in the midst of a mobile enterprise tornado, Terry Stepien, president of Sybase iAnywhere, told me when we did our podcast the other day. (Actually, it's a perfect storm.) Used to be, companies would dole out smartphones to anointed employees. Now, workers are storming the IT gates, demanding corporate e-mail connectivity for their iPhones. And software vendors are partnering up with mobility shops to roll out smartphone clients for their apps. Click on to hear our podcast.

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Sick of reading about MP3 and movie piracy, and how it's killed the music business and is destroying Hollywood, too? Then let's take a break and talk about e-book piracy. The usual suspect -- Cory Doctorow -- posits that the author's real enemy is obscurity, not piracy. Wrong. It's a different "p" word: Poverty.

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Here I've been on a kick the past year saying that the Smartphone Is Your Next Computer. Turns out, while that's true -- more people are leaving lapbricks at home in favor of Blackberrys and iPhones -- there's another trend brewing. Namely, your mobile device is about to become an unwired wallet.

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If an engineering education teaches one anything, it's that proper process begets beneficial results. The reverse case is scarily evident in the transcripts of the Colgan Air disaster, where a discombobulated crew was a disaster, waiting to happen, which did.

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When I sat down with Bill McDermott, president of SAP's Global Field Operations, all I wanted to talk about was whether software-as-a-service is upending traditional self-hosted software. So it almost went by me when he mentioned that SAP would soon have some Business Intelligence news. We also discussed mobile apps, plus Bill had some tough words for competitor Oracle. Click on to access the video and podcast.

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