Cisco - TABPI

VOLUME 20, NUMBER 21 n $6 

NEWSPAPER PERIODICALS 

NEWS & ANALYSIS 

Adding polish to 

Windows Server 

Microsoft mulls add-on 

technologies 7 

IBM banking on 

UML approval 

Version 2.0 could fuel 

new modeling tools 7 

PC makers look 

beyond desktop 

Acer, MPC take aim at 

server, storage space 12 

Anti-spam push 

picks up steam 

Microsoft, Symantec 

offer plans in D.C. 15 

2.6 kernel: More 

memory, storage 

Linux database users 

await new features 39 

GWEEK LABS REVIEW: State-of-the-art 

firewalls prevent the exploitation of 

Web application holes PAGE 47 

gWEEK LABS 

May 26, 2003 

From WEP 

to WPA 

and beyond 

What to consider 

when retooling 54 

OPINION TIMOTHY DYCK 

Seven years of 

perspective 52 

JOHN TASCHEK 

Product activation sends 

the wrong message 61 

Feds to open 

cyber-security 

ops center 

SUCCESS OF CENTER 

WILL HINGE ON HIRING 

OF HIGH-LEVEL LEADER 

Blue Titan 

unscrambles 

Web services 

Network Director 

taps XML 56 

Ultralight 

Actius excels 

at portability 

Keyboard, speed 

are trade-offs 59 

SUN, ORACLE STRENGTHEN ALLIANCE 36 N SERENA ACQUIRES TEAMSHARE 38 N CISCO UPGRADES SWITCHES 42 N ZYXEL BOOSTS ZYAIR SECURITY 58 

FOR DAILY TECH NEWS, ADDITIONAL REVIEWS AND MORE OPINION, GO TO IWEEK.COM 

By Dennis Fisher IN BOSTON 

and Caron Carlson IN WASHINGTON 

officials at the department 

of Homeland Security plan 

to announce this week the establishment 

of a national 

cyber-security 

center, which 

brings all the 

department’s 

information 

security assets 

under one umbrella,accord- 

Clarke:“The right 

person” is key. 

ing to people briefed on the plan. 

So far, however, no one has 

been named to head the center, 

and security experts warn that 

without a strong leader, the 

center will lack the muscle it 

needs to be effective. 

One of the main drivers be- 

[CONTINUED ON PAGE 16]

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FWEEK.COM 

THIS fWEEK 

find a weak point; build a firewall. 

It’s an ad hoc approach, but it’s the one corporate IT is following as it 

gropes its way to more secure Web computing. This week, eWeek Labs 

West Coast Technical Director Tim Dyck reviews three Web application 

firewalls designed to protect an extremely weak link in the Web infrastructure. 

And application holes are often exploited. Tim says the vendors tell 

him that customers come calling when they’ve failed a penetration test. The 

products he reviews are for critical servers and take a Draconian approach 

to security, eliminating access except by specifically allowed, or white-listed, 

entities. Tested were Sanctum’s AppShield 4.0, 

Teros’ Teros-100 APS 2.1.1 and Kavado’s InterDo 

3.0. Teros won Tim’s Analyst’s Choice award. 

Tim notes that we already have conventional 

firewalls, of course, and two of these can be 

used to create a demilitarized zone around 

a particularly sensitive server. Then you can 

add a Web application firewall and maybe 

a database firewall. The result is a firewall 

infrastructure that’s ripe for consolidation. 

Tim predicts this will happen, with such larger 

players as Check Point Software Technologies 

leading the way. 

Ah, security. We just can’t get enough. And if 

you listen to Richard Clarke, we’re not about 

L Tuesday, 

check out 

eWEEK’s online 

exclusive interview 

with 

Richard 

Clarke, former chairman of 

the President’s Critical Infrastructure 

Protection Board, 

and find out why he’s so criti- 

cal of the government’s 

cyber-security strategy. 

L Wednesday, 

join Cameron 

Sturdevant 

for 

an online 

walk 

through one of the latest 

patch management 

The NCC is expected to emerge 

from the DHS next month. 

to get enough of it from the Department of Homeland Security. Now that 

he has left the government, Clarke is very active on the speaking circuit. 

Dennis Fisher interviewed Clarke when he came to Boston last week and 

heard Clarke reiterate his call for a National Cybersecurity Center with 

direct access to the president. 

But if you look at the organizational chart, the NCC appears buried beneath 

levels of bureaucracy. Clarke has a point. For whatever reason, Clarke feels 

he was slighted when the DHS structure was created, so it’s hard to tell whether 

his critiques of the structure are objective or merely sour grapes. 

Finally, some good news: Microsoft has listened to customers. As Peter 

Galli reports, customers have told Microsoft that waiting three years for a 

major product upgrade is too long. So Redmond plans to deliver new technologies 

as incremental add-ons, “out of band” from the regular upgrade cycle. 

The first candidates, as Peter reports, are likely to be Network Attached 

Storage 3.0, Small Business Server 2003 and a version of Windows 

Server 2003 for AMD’s processors. Customers get to enhance the products 

at a pace of their own choosing. What’s not to like? ´ 

Till next eWEEK, send your comments to stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com. 

products reviewed by eWEEK 

Labs, PatchLink Corp.’s 

PatchLink Update 4.0. 

dFriday, get your fix of tech 

rumors early: 

Eweek.com posts 

Spencer F. Katt’s 

Rumor Central 

column that night 

each week. 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 3

MAY 26, 2003 

CONTENTS 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

7 Microsoft is thinking about 

strategies for future releases 

of Windows Server 2003. 

7 IBM eyes innovations that 

tap UML 2.0, which is up 

for a vote next week. 

12 Acer and MPC unveil servers 

and storage devices, 

moving beyond the desktop. 

12 Microsoft agrees to an 

intellectual property license 

with SCO. 

14 Startup Device IQ hopes 

to pick up where Thin- 

AirApps left off. 

15 Microsoft, Symantec and 

AOL join the anti-spam 

crusade. 

15 The SNIA expects major 

advances in communication 

among storage devices. 

16 Tools from Sunbelt are 

designed to speed analysis 

of network directories. 

18 The Buzz 

20 Nextel targets the enterprise 

with new push-to-talk 

and VPN services. 

22 BMC and Quest tools 

extend support for IBM’s 

DB2 database. 

22 Rendition’s TrueControl 

focuses on extensibility 

and administrative ease. 

24 Face to Face: VP Masters 

sees a bright future for 

Sun’s high-end servers. 

33 Security: The Department 

of Homeland Security is restructuring 

to give network 

safety a higher profile. 

36 Sun and Oracle strengthen 

their alliance in an effort 

to lower deployment costs. 

36 Cisco rolls out new and 

enhanced security management 

tools. 

37 CA’s and Veritas’ backup 

and restore tools link suites 

with other technologies. 

37 Swingtide and Blue Titan 

products take different paths 

to managing Web services. 

38 Serena gains collaborative 

technology through its 

acquisition of TeamShare. 

39 Storage: The forthcoming 

2.6 kernel will let Linux 

tackle big, enterprise-class 

database applications. 

41 Tadpole Computer’s first 

mobile workstation is fast 

and inexpensive. 

42 Cisco’s switch strategy 

focuses on upgrades 

and cost reduction. 

42 SPSS and SAS will 

expand Web tools’ 

predictive capabilities. 

33 

fWEEKLABS 

54 Tech Analysis: WPA and 

802.11i will boost WLAN 

security, but IT staffs must 

weigh all options 

before retooling. 

55 REVIEW: Linksys’ 

WRT55AG router 

offers new flexibility to 

organizations upgrading 

WLANs. 

56 REVIEW: Blue Titan sorts 

out Web services but 

needs better reporting. 

58 Pings & Packets: SOAP 

1.2 nears ratification; ZyXel 

adapter gains Aegis client; 

file size doesn’t matter for 

WinZip 9.0 beta. 

59 REVIEW: Sharp’s Actius 

SECURING 

WEB APPS 

47 Tech Analysis: 

New white-list 

approaches provide 

a higher level of 

security for Web 

applications. 

47 REVIEW: Kavado, 

Sanctum and Teros 

firewalls plumb 

HTML to lock down 

Web apps, but similarities 

end there. 

50 Case Study: 

AppShield has the 

Web app security 

prescription for 

Blue Cross and 

Blue Shield of 

Kansas City. 

redefines portability, but its 

keyboard is cramped. 

60 Tech Analysis: Storage 

World highlights basics 

and innovators. 

62 REVIEW: A Net Express 

update retools legacy apps 

for Web services. 

55 

OPINIONS 

3 This eWEEK: IT is using 

firewalls to protect weak 

links in Web infrastructures. 

26 Eric Lundquist: Lessons 

can be learned from older 

technologies. 

40 Peter Coffee: Statistics on 

sleep deprivation point to 

problems for employers. 

44 Editorial: Internet merchants 

should collect 

state sales taxes. 

44 Reader Mail 

45 Free Spectrum: Wellintentioned 

worms may be 

dangerous and illegal. 

52 Timothy Dyck: The driving 

forces of today’s IT spending 

will be here for a while. 

61 John Taschek: “Activation” 

aggravation is justified. 

66 Spencer F. Katt chuckles 

at a Freudian slip and 

toasts Chi-Town spirits. 

Clarke cover photo: Mark Alcarez 

47 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 5

16 SUNBELT 

TOOLS SPEED 

NETWORK 

DIRECTORY 

ANALYSIS 

20 NEXTEL 

SERVICES 

OFFER DIRECT 

ENTERPRISE 

CONNECTION 

24 SUN VP 

DISCUSSES 

FUTURE OF 

HIGH-END 

SERVERS 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Beyond Windows Server 

MICROSOFT PLOTS HOW TO IMPROVE THE PLATFORM OVER THE LONG HAUL 

By Peter Galli 

With windows server 2003just a month out of the 

gates, Microsoft Corp. is already looking at ways 

to deliver add-on technologies and wrestling with 

the issue of how to price these technologies. 

“There is some deep thinking and strong con- 

sideration going on inside the server team about how to best 

stage future releases and what the core elements of our 

strategy should be,” said Jay Jamison, director of product plan- 

ning for the Windows Server division, in Redmond, Wash. 

According to Jamison, one of the ways Microsoft intends 

to deliver some of that functionality 

is through an “outof-band” 

mechanism, where 

new technologies and tools 

are delivered between major 

server releases. 

Out-of-band technologies 

could range from tools and 

things such as the group 

policy management console 

to layered add-on services, 

such as the Real-Time Communications 

Server, he said. 

Sources close to Microsoft 

said the company is expected 

to release several out-of-band 

upgrades to Windows Server 

2003 this year, including an 

iSCSI initiator, Network 

Attached Storage 3.0, Small 

Business Server 2003, Windows 

Virtual Server and Windows 

Server 2003 for Advanced 

Micro Devices Inc.’s 

processors. When asked about 

the list, Jamison said, it 

“sounds about right.” 

Thompson: “Innovation does not 

have to wait for major releases.” 

When it comes to largeenterprise 

customers, some 

are willing to pay for additional 

technology rather than 

have it built into the core 

operating system. 

“We like the idea of being 

able to choose what functions 

we want to install on top of 

the operating system. In 

some ways, it would be less 

problematic than having all 

of this built into the core kernel,” 

said Jeff O’Dell, vice 

president of archi- 

tecture for health benefits 

provider Cigna 

Corp., in Bloomington, 

Conn. “But, on 

the other hand, if 

functionality is already 

built into the 

operating system, we 

can just turn it on if we 

want.” 

Jamison said the majority 

of new functionality made 

available through the out-of- 

Developers expect nod 

for UML 2.0 standard 

By Darryl K. Taft 

The object management 

Group will meet in Paris 

next week to vote on Version 

2.0 of Unified Modeling 

Language, a language that 

supports analysis and design 

in a variety of tools and promises 

to open new horizons 

for developers. 

The first UML 2.0 specifications 

were adopted as OMG 

standards in March—covering 

Infrastructure, Object 

Constraint Language and Dia- 

33 DHS 

REORGANIZES 

TO GIVE NET 

SAFETY HIGH- 

ER PROFILE 

band process will be things 

that customers can download 

and use freely. 

“In some cases, there will 

be new technologies made 

available through this process 

that may require an enterprise 

server to run or could 

require a Windows [Client 

Access License] or the like, 

but we have not made any 

final decisions on this,” Jamison 

said. 

‘We like the idea of 

being able to choose 

what ... to install on top 

of the operating system.’ 

—JEFF O’DELL 

Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst 

for International Data Corp., 

in Framingham, Mass., said 

Microsoft is trying to uncou- 

[CONTINUED ON PAGE 10] 

gram Interchange Protocol. A 

fourth specification, Superstructure, 

is expected to be 

voted on at the meeting next 

week, completing the recommendation 

process for the latest 

UML version. 

Few developers will be looking 

forward to UML 2.0 more 

than IBM. Sridhar Iyengar, a 

Distinguished Engineer with 

IBM, in Raleigh, N.C., and a 

member of the OMG Architecture 

board, said IBM 

[CONTINUED ON PAGE 10] 

MAY 26, 2003n eWEEK 7

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

LATE NEWS 

Microsoft tape 

backup flaw found 

MICROSOFT OFFICIALS LATE LAST WEEK CONfirmed 

they are investigating reports that 

tape backups made with Windows 

Server 2003 cannot be read by older 

versions of the operating system.The 

problem lies within Windows’ built-in 

NTBackup program.The 2003 version 

writes 64KB blocks while older versions 

use 32KB,industry analysts said.Thirdparty 

backup programs that do not use 

NTBackup.exe are not affected. 

E-mail scam targets 

Citibank customers 

ANOTHER BANK-RELATED E-MAIL SCAM 

began circulating last week,this one targeting 

users of a money-transfer service 

owned by Citibank. 

The fraudulent e-mail attempts to lure 

customers of the c2it money-transfer service 

into divulging user names,passwords 

and credit card numbers.The message 

appears to be from c2it customer service 

but is actually from a Hotmail account. 

The e-mail arrives with the subject line, 

“Your account is on hold.” 

Salesforce offers 

‘keys’ to CRM system 

SALESFORCE.COM IS PLANNING TO SHORE UP 

its application integration capabilities 

with a new developer’s tool kit called 

Sforce,which the company will 

announce next week.The hosted CRM 

services provider is partnering with 

Microsoft,BEA,Sun and Borland for the 

offering,which will give developers the 

“keys”to the Salesforce.com system, 

exposing code,system intricacies and 

database key indices.The hosted service 

will support Web services integration 

with other applications and be preconfigured 

for use with development tools 

such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio .Net 

and Borland’s JBuilder.Sforce should be 

available June 3.´ 

10 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

WINDOWS SERVER 2003 FROM PAGE 7 

ple updates from the basic release of 

the platform itself. But the challenge 

was the business, licensing and pricing 

model under which these were 

released. 

“That is not clear at this point. Will 

end users have any idea what the total 

cost of operation will be if every now and 

again Microsoft changes the prices on 

some functions?” Kusnetzky asked. 

Dave Thompson, corporate vice 

president of the Windows Server Product 

Group at Microsoft, said out-of-band 

releases are effectively part of Windows 

Server. “Innovation does not 

UML FROM PAGE 7 

researchers are looking into several innovations 

using the new specification. 

IBM will be looking to build a UML 

profile for testing. This work will lead 

to “using modeling not just for analysis 

and design but for testing,” Iyengar 

said. “We expect this technology will 

become a standard,” he said. 

IBM’s approach to modeling signals 

a race with Microsoft Corp., which is 

warming up to the OMG for similar purposes. 

Microsoft will support modeling 

in its upcoming Jupiter e-business suite, 

which will compete with IBM’s Web- 

Sphere. 

Iyengar said IBM is also looking to 

provide support for modeling business 

rules and add business modeling standards. 

The OMG has a business rules 

working group to which IBM has submitted 

a paper describing its work. 

“But this is in the early stages,” Iyengar 

said. Standards in these areas are 

expected next year, he said. 

In addition to its use of the MDA 

(Model Driven Architecture) specification, 

IBM is pushing toward a new 

area, which Iyengar calls Model Driven 

Business Integration, while the company 

also has a focus on model-driven tool 

integration and model-driven application 

development, he said. 

MDA allows developers to design, 

build, integrate and manage applications 

throughout the life cycle while separating 

technology and business concerns, 

Iyengar said. 

EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) 

is the glue that holds together IBM’s 

modeling strategy. “EMF is the technology 

that unifies the world of model- 

have to wait for major releases,” Thompson 

said. 

Jamison suggested that a Windows 

Server release in the “Longhorn” client 

time frame, expected to ship in early 

2005, is not likely. He did say that “Blackcomb,” 

the major Windows release following 

Longhorn, could be expected in 

a time frame “roughly similar to how 

we’ve done it before [three years].” 

Jamison said this release will extend 

the underlying security work in Windows 

Server 2003 and build on the work 

already done in .Net Framework and Universal 

Description, Discovery and Integration 

in Server 2003. ´ 

Modeling at IBM 

�Being implemented in all major 

brands: Rational,WebSphere,DB2 

and Tivoli,with Lotus to come 

�Modeling used for tools integration,application 

development,data 

warehouse management and Web 

services 

�Moving from MDA to Model Driven 

Business Integration 

�Mapping UML to Business Process 

Execution Language 

ing in WebSphere and DB2,” Iyengar 

said. “The use of EMF will increase 

within IBM and externally,” among 

members of the IBM-sponsored 

Eclipse.org organization, which oversees 

the Eclipse open-source development 

platform, he said. 

“I was at an IBM Web services meeting 

in Atlanta recently, and it is clear they 

are with the [modeling] program,” said 

Tom Henner, a principal with BankHost 

Inc., an Atlanta-based banking company 

that has used modeling to develop a 

browser-based international banking 

application. “BankHost developed its 

application using IBM’s Rational Rose 

for UML modeling,” Henner said. 

In a report on IBM’s modeling strategy, 

Aberdeen Group Inc. analyst Tim 

Sloane, in Boston, said: “For competitors, 

the fact that IBM has made modeling 

central to its go-to-market model 

for both IBM Global Services and IBM 

products should give them pause for 

consideration. Is your company positioned 

to implement a similar plan?” ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Acer, MPC set server 

sights on enterprise 

OFFERINGS TO INCLUDE RACK-MOUNTED SYSTEMS 

By Jeffrey Burt 

Acer america corp. is 

looking to expand beyond 

PCs and laptops and reestablish 

itself in the more 

lucrative server and storage 

space with new rack-mounted 

systems and storage devices. 

The Altos R300, a rackmounted 

1U (1.75-inch) 

server, is a one-way system 

powered by Intel Corp.’s Pentium 

4 chip running at speeds 

up to 3.06GHz, said officials 

Acer’s Altos R300 rack-mounted 

server runs on Pentium 4 chips. 

at the San Jose, Calif., company. 

The unit, due this week, 

is priced starting at $1,600 and 

is targeted at midsize companies, 

although officials said 

several servers can be tied 

together into a Linux cluster 

to deliver high-performance 

capabilities. 

The company this summer 

will add to that line the 2U 

(3.5-inch-high), two-way 

R700, based on Intel Xeon 

chips. 

Later this year or early 

next year, Acer will ship the 

Altos S300 and S700 storage 

devices, officials said. 

Acer’s parent company 

sells the systems in Europe 

and Asia, but this will be the 

first time the company’s rackmounted 

and storage devices 

are introduced to North 

America. 

The moves represent a 

growing trend among PC 

12 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

makers, including Gateway 

Inc. and MPC Computers 

LLC, to branch out beyond the 

desktop. 

According to some IT 

administrators and industry 

observers, it is not yet 

clear whether the companies 

can grow beyond their 

installed base of PC customers. 

“We’re running all of our 

mission-critical stuff on our 

[Dell Computer Corp. and 

Compaq] 

servers,” said 

Roy Cashman, 

CIO for RUAN 

Transportation 

Management Systems 

Inc., in Des Moines, 

Iowa. “We would not take a 

chance on a niche player ... 

who didn’t have a market 

presence.” 

But that installed base 

could be the place to establish 

a presence. The State Journal- 

Register, a Springfield, Ill., 

newspaper, has been an MPC 

PC customer for almost four 

years. 

Based on that history, the 

paper this year began buying 

servers from the Nampa, 

Idaho, company and will consider 

its storage equipment 

when the need arises. 

MPC last week rolled out 

its first two storage offerings, 

the DataFrame 310fc Fibre 

Channel product and a SCSI 

counterpart, the 310s. 

“From this point on, it’s virtually 

100 percent MPC in 

this building,” said Terry Claypool, 

IS operations manager. 

“They work very hard 

to keep our business, both 

with price and service.” ´ 

Microsoft covers back 

with SCO Unix license 

By Peter Galli 

The crusade by the sco 

Group to protect its Unix 

intellectual property took 

an unexpected turn last week 

when Microsoft Corp. said it 

was licensing the Unix source 

code and patent from the 

company. 

“SCO approached us a couple 

of months ago, and they 

had a valid IP claim, and, as 

we do quite regularly, we 

agreed to a broad IP license 

with SCO and as such have 

stepped out of the fray,” said 

Alex Mercer, a Microsoft 

spokeswoman, in Redmond, 

Wash. 

In the last month, SCO, 

of Lindon, Utah, has made a 

number of moves, charging 

that IBM, Linux and many 

of SCO’s own customers are 

violating SCO’s Unix IP. 

Mercer said it was not 

Microsoft’s intent to exploit the 

IP license as a way to fund 

SCO’s campaign against IBM 

and Linux—which SCO is 

suing for $1 billion—and 

against Linux. “There is 

absolutely no correlation 

between the IBM suit and our 

IP license with SCO,” she said. 

Furthermore, Microsoft’s 

agreement is not an admission 

that the company and its 

Services for Unix product violated 

SCO’s IP but rather is 

a pre-emptive move to avoid 

possible complications, said 

Mercer. Details about the 

financial value and conditions 

of the Microsoft-SCO deal are 

confidential, and Mercer 

declined to say whether 

Microsoft is contemplating 

other deals with SCO. 

As for SCO, its legal moves 

are not sitting well with some 

customers. “More and more, 

it looks like SCO is just 

scratching the sides of the 

well as they plummet to their 

death,” said one SCO user, 

who requested anonymity. 

A Unix/Linux programmer 

in Boston also questioned 

whether Microsoft really 

needed another Unix license 

given that it held one of the 

original ATT Unix licenses, the 

same one Sun Microsystems 

Inc. has. Microsoft’s Mercer 

declined to comment. 

But Chris Sontag, senior 

vice president and general 

manager for SCO’s intellectualproperty 

division, said the 

licensing deal ensured Microsoft’s 

intellectual-property compliance 

across all Microsoft 

solutions and will better enable 

Microsoft to ensure compatibility 

with Unix and Unix services. 

“There are many companies 

in the IT industry who 

acknowledge and respect the 

intellectual property of software,” 

said Sontag. “Microsoft 

is showing the importance 

of maintaining compatibility 

with Unix and Microsoft’s 

software solutions.” 

The Open Source Initiative 

last week hit back, updating 

its attack against SCO. OSI, 

a nonprofit educational association 

with offices in Palo Alto, 

Calif., is one of the principal 

advocacy groups for the opensource 

community. In a position 

paper, OSI argues that 

an SCO victory could do serious 

damage to the open-source 

community. “SCO’s implication 

of wider claims could turn 

Linux into an intellectualproperty 

minefield, with potential 

users and allies perpetually 

wary of being mugged by 

previously unasserted IP 

claims,” it said. ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

FRONT OFFICE 

Oracle enhances 

Sales application 

ORACLE LAST WEEK RELEASED 

Version 11.5.9 of its Oracle Sales 

application, with several new 

enhancements designed to help 

salespeople. 

The enhancements include 

a new application called Oracle 

Proposals, which generates personalized 

sales proposals from 

templates. These proposals can 

then be tracked and monitored 

for effectiveness. 

This release also supports 

tighter integration with Oracle’s 

Order Management applications, 

allowing sales representatives 

to check customers’ 

credit histories during the 

quoting process. 

The software is available now 

with suite and component pricing 

models. 

The next version of the software, 

11.5.10, expected in nine 

months to a year, will add new 

capabilities for collaborative 

selling and partner relationship 

management, officials said. 

—Dennis Callaghan 

STANDARDS 

OASIS ratifies 

UDDI specification 

THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE 

Advancement of Structured 

Information Standards last week 

announced the ratification of 

Universal Description, Discovery 

and Integration Version 2 as an 

OASIS open standard. 

UDDI, the most broadly supported 

Web services standard, 

allows users to publish, find and 

use Web services. 

OASIS officials said members 

of the OASIS UDDI Specification 

Technical Committee include 

Computer Associates International, 

Fujitsu, IBM, Iona 

Technologies, Microsoft, Novell, 

OpenNetwork Technologies, 

Oracle, SAP, SeeBeyond Technology, 

Sun Microsystems, Tata 

Consultancy Services and others. 

—Darryl K. Taft 

14 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

Handheld applications redux 

DEVICE IQ SHUNS 

MIDDLEWARE FOR APPS 

By Carmen Nobel 

Ateam of engineers and 

developers from Palm 

Inc.’s ill-fated enterprise 

software group this fall will 

launch a company that will aim 

to create more enterprise applications 

for more devices than 

their previous employer. 

To do it, Device IQ Inc. is 

avoiding a generic 

middleware platform 

in favor of customizing 

applications for 

companies. 

“There is an enormous 

lack of good 

device-side software,” 

said Bob Pascazio, 

president of Device 

IQ, in New York. “So 

there is some work we Palm 

are doing on mobile 

embedded systems— 

that are not Palms or 

phones—that do not 

have an OS but communicate 

to a PC periodically 

through USB 

[Universal Serial Bus] 

or Bluetooth.” 

Pascazio declined 

to name the devices 

for which Device IQ 

will be designing software 

because many of them have yet 

to be released, but he said 

the company is working on 

applications for existing hardware, 

too. “We are also writing 

some sophisticated client-side 

applications on phones, Palms 

and Pocket PCs,” he said. “Also 

for PDAs we have a Web site 

deal, similar to Vindigo [Inc.’s] 

offering.” Vindigo creates 

Web-based, location-based 

applications for several handheld 

platforms. 

Pascazio was a lead devel- 

oper at ThinAirApps Inc., a 

company that Palm bought 

in December 2001 to create a 

wireless middleware platform 

for its Tungsten handheld line, 

which is aimed at corporate 

users. At the time, Todd Bradley, 

then chief operating officer 

of Palm, called the acquisition 

“a linchpin of our longterm 

enterprise and wireless 

strategies.” But Palm nixed the 

plans for the middleware, 

Wavering on wireless 

Microsoft Corp. 

� 1998 Co-founds Wireless Knowledge Inc. 

� 2000 Announces initial plans for Microsoft 

Mobile Information Server, which will compete 

with Wireless Knowledge 

� 2001 Sells off Wireless Knowledge stake 

� 2002 Announces phaseout of MMIS 

� Early 2001 Announces plans to buy 

Extended Systems Inc.; nixes the plans a few 

months later 

� Late 2001 Announces acquisition of 

ThinAirApps 

� 2002 Announces Tungsten line of handhelds 

and accompanying middleware based 

on ThinAirApps technology 

� 2003 Reveals that it will not release middleware 

for Tungsten 

dubbed Tungsten MIMS 

(Mobile Information Management 

Server), a couple of 

months ago, saying it no 

longer fits its focus. 

Life at Palm after the Thin- 

AirApps acquisition was frustrating 

up until Palm shut 

down the New York office in 

March, Pascazio said. “We had 

Tungsten MIMS Version 1.8 

almost out the door,” he said. 

“It was an amazing product. It 

worked on the Tungsten T with 

Bluetooth to a GPRS [General 

Packet Radio Service] 

phone, worked on the Tungsten 

C, Tungsten W, et cetera. 

It had full groupware support 

for Exchange, Domino, 

IMAP. They dumped the 

whole thing.” Palm officials 

said the company’s future software 

plans are based on partnerships 

with large software 

companies and carriers, which 

like to choose their own backend 

software. 

“Some of the ThinAir technology 

is still in use,” 

said Jon Oakes, senior 

director of business 

solutions at Palm and 

former CEO of Thin- 

AirApps, who works 

from his New York 

home now that Palm’s 

office there has closed. 

“Some technologies 

will be a part of the 

IBM WebSphere Everyplace 

Access suite. 

We were proud to be 

part of WEA Version 

4.3.” 

Explaining why 

MIMS was nixed, 

Bradley said in March, 

“In the enterprise 

arena, market conditions 

have caused us 

to rebalance our areas 

of emphasis.” 

Palm will still make client 

software. Oakes said: “We will 

continue to develop our own 

software solutions. But we 

intend to leverage software 

partners for most of our backend, 

connectivity-oriented 

solutions.” 

Palm has a history with IBM 

competitor BEA Systems Inc. 

In August, Palm announced 

plans to work with BEA and its 

WebLogic Server to develop 

what was to be the first Web- 

Logic Workshop control for 

handheld devices. ´

War on spam gains 2 allies 

MICROSOFT, SYMANTEC GO TO WASHINGTON TO PUSH NEW PRODUCTS 

By Caron Carlson IN WASHINGTON 

The anti-spam crusade is 

gaining momentum as 

industry players, including 

Microsoft Corp. and 

Symantec Corp., counter 

pending bills on Capitol Hill 

with legislative proposals of 

their own. 

To date, proposed ideas 

have covered a wide range 

of measures, from jail time 

for repeat spammers to a tiny 

charge on every piece of spam 

sent. The Senate is slated to 

sort through all the options 

and vote on one proposal 

before summer’s end. 

Microsoft, of Redmond, 

Wash., got into the act last 

week when company Chairman 

and Chief Software Architect 

Bill Gates called for Congress 

to create incentives for 

e-mail marketers to adopt best 

practices and become certified 

trusted senders. As part of 

the proposal, the Federal Trade 

Commission would provide 

a safe harbor for companies 

that join an FTC-approved selfregulating 

group. Legislation 

would require marketers to 

properly label their e-mail and 

would give ISPs the right to 

take spammers to court. 

Symantec suggested to lawmakers 

last week that legislation 

should focus on false 

labeling and require a physical 

address in commercial bulk 

e-mail. The Cupertino, Calif., 

company, whose brand and 

products have been fraudulently 

peddled by e-mail, also 

asked Congress to give the 

FTC more resources to prosecute 

electronic fraud. 

For America Online Inc., 

spam is the most important 

issue today, Ted Leonsis, AOL 

vice chairman, told the Sen- 

ate Commerce Committee 

last week. “There is raw anger 

that spam generates,” Leonsis 

said, adding that the government 

needs 

stronger tools to 

track down the 

most fraudulent 

offenders. 

Others maintain, 

however, that 

anger stems not 

only from fraudulent 

e-mail but 

also from the 

growing volume 

of unsolicited 

messages, to which ISPs contribute. 

Charging that AOL, 

of New York, operates its 

“own personal spam com- 

Schumer’s bill would give 

repeat spammers jail time. 

pany,” Ronald Scelson, 

owner of Scelson Online 

Marketing Inc., in Slidell, 

La., told lawmakers that 

some ISPs are 

filtering out 

legal messages 

if they receive 

one complaint, 

driving bulk 

e-mailers to 

forge addresses. 

Calling himself 

“the most 

hated person” at 

the hearing, 

Scelson said he 

sends as many as 180 million 

e-mail messages every day 

and that it takes him less 

than 24 hours to thwart an 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

ISP’s spam filters. 

The industry approaches, 

which urge Congress to preempt 

state anti-spam laws, are 

largely consistent with the 

longest-standing anti-spam 

bill, the CAN-SPAM initiative 

sponsored by Sens. Conrad 

Burns, R-Mont., and Ron 

Wyden, D-Ore. CAN-SPAM 

would ban the use of false or 

deceptive headers or subject 

lines, require senders to provide 

users with an opt-out feature, 

and prohibit private 

rights of action. 

Consumer groups, and 

many state attorneys general, 

are calling on Congress 

to take a tougher approach. 

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., 

is sponsoring a bill that would 

establish jail time as a penalty 

for serious, repeat spammers 

and create a national 

“Do not spam” list. Sen. Mark 

Dayton, D-Minn., last week 

suggested that a small tax on 

e-mail would deter spam. ´ 

Smarter storage on horizon? 

By Evan Koblentz 

For several years, users have clamored 

for more management features to be added 

to existing hardware. Now, a number of 

vendors are suggesting it’s better to build 

smarter hardware in the first place. 

In fact, technologies are under development, 

according to industry experts, that improve 

the way low-end RAID controllers communicate 

with drive clusters and that enable highend 

array intelligence to reside as objects in 

central servers. 

“The future of the storage industry looks 

just like the future of the rest of computing,” 

said John Webster, an analyst at Data 

Mobility Group Inc., in Nashua, N.H. “People 

build functions, express it in hardware or software, 

and [eventually] express it in more efficient 

ways of doing things.” 

On the low-end storage front, users in the 

future will be able to consolidate storage, 

move drives among controller units, replace 

failed parts and upgrade to new features—all 

among different vendors and without having to 

use backup data sets or remap every drive and 

volume, said Wayne Rickard, chairman of the 

Storage Networking Industry Association’s Technical 

Council and vice president of advanced 

technology at Seagate Technology LLC. 

Such interoperability will be facilitated by the 

Disk Data Format Provisional Working Group 

proposed this month by Adaptec Inc., Dell Computer 

Corp. and LSI Logic Corp., Rickard 

said. Creating the standards could take two years, 

said Rickard, in Scotts Valley, Calif. 

In high-end storage, object-based storage is 

also on its way to becoming a context-aware, 

native technology. For evidence, users can look 

to hardware such as EMC Corp.’s Centera and 

software such as IBM’s StorageTank. 

Instead of mapping logical units, numbers 

and zones directly between servers and 

storage, “with object-based storage, the devices 

are doing all this themselves,” said Mike 

Mesnier, co-chair of SNIA’s object storage 

devices working group and storage architect 

at Intel Corp. 

By this fall, the working group will complete 

its security and data sharing documents, 

said Mesnier, in Pittsburgh. ´ 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 15

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Network analysis: Fast and frugal 

SUNBELT TOOLS CUT 

COSTS, SPEED TASKS 

By Paula Musich 

Sunbelt software inc. 

hasdeveloped a pair of administrative 

tools that deliver 

fast, inexpensive analysis 

of directory and network protocol 

issues for administrators. 

The Clearwater, Fla., company’s 

directory reporting tool 

works across multiple directories, 

including those of 

Novell Inc., Microsoft Corp., 

IBM and Sun Microsystems 

Inc., as well as any LDAPenabled 

directory. It reports on 

security, integrity and com- 

CYBER-SECURITY FROM PAGE 1 

hind the center is the need 

to improve the government’s 

incident-response and information-sharing 

capabilities, 

which have come under fire 

in both public and private sectors, 

said Richard Clarke, former 

special adviser to the 

president for cyber-security, 

who resigned earlier this year. 

That criticism is likely to continue 

unless the department 

can attract a well-known security 

expert to run the center. 

“The center will never 

become what it should be in 

terms of the national locus for 

policy unless there’s a nationally 

recognized and high-level 

person with high-level access 

in the administration,” Clarke 

said in an interview in Boston 

last week. “Because otherwise 

people will just consider it 

another bureaucratic organization. 

It’s very key that they 

get the right person; very 

key that person has access 

to the president, the homeland 

security adviser and 

homeland security secretary.” 

For others, however, such as 

16 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

pliance in enterprise directories, 

officials said. The Directory 

Inspector tool, due this 

week, lets directory or system 

managers easily answer 

such questions as: Where 

are the users? Do some users 

have too many security privileges? 

Are there unused user 

accounts? Are there duplicate 

account names? 

“It is a management issue 

when you have multiple 

directories,” said Alex Eckelberry, 

president of Sunbelt. 

“For companies with that 

hodgepodge, to be able to report 

on them from a single 

view—this lets you distill 

security experts in the private 

sector, who have accused the 

government of failing to 

respond quickly to emerging 

security threats and of being 

difficult to deal with, the choice 

of a leader for the national center 

is not as crucial. 

“I don’t think it’s possible 

Clarke: New chief will need top access. 

for the government to have 

much of an effect. The government 

acts in a reactive 

fashion,” said Eric Stromberg, 

senior electrical engineer at 

The Dow Chemical Co., 

based in Wilmington, Del. 

complex information.” 

Directory Inspector, which 

provides Wizards to guide 

users through complex directory 

data, is priced starting 

at $1,295 for 500 user objects. 

Sunbelt’s other tool, LANhound, 

also due this week, cuts 

the cost of basic protocol 

analysis and network monitoring—especially 

for switched 

LANs—in a commercial-grade 

product. The cost to capture 

and analyze network protocols 

such as TCP/IP, NetBEUI, 

IPX/SPX and AppleTalk on 

switched networks can be 

high, since vendors often 

charge for each remote seg- 

“There will always be the leading 

issues that eventually 

cause government to react. 

But as the government is 

reacting to issues that were 

birthed yesterday, new issues 

are forming today.” 

The national center will be 

part of the Directorate of 

Information Assurance 

and Infrastructure Protection 

at the DHS, Clarke 

said. As a center of gravity 

for government information 

security, it will 

combine the functions 

of the National Infrastructure 

Protection Center, 

the Critical Infrastructure 

Assurance 

Office, the Federal Computer 

Incident Response 

Center and the National 

Communications System. 

As the DHS meshes 

the center together, members 

of Congress charged 

with overseeing the department’s 

cyber-security efforts 

are scrambling to understand 

how all the pieces will fit. 

For example, two separate 

House panels—the Commit- 

MARK ALCAREZ 

ment or switch port. Typical 

protocol analyzers can start 

at $1,000, plus $395 per remote 

agent. LANhound, which 

includes three remote agents 

for $595, could greatly reduce 

the cost to monitor and analyze 

network traffic across multiple 

segments. 

“That pricing will make a 

big difference,” said beta tester 

Erik Goldoff, systems manager 

at The HoneyBaked Ham Co., 

in Norcross, Ga. “You are 

talking a factor of 10 cheaper. 

With LANhound, it just starts 

monitoring the network and 

shows where the protocol 

distribution is [and] what the 

network statistics are.” 

LANhound displays statistics 

in charts and bar graphs 

and lets users set alarms that 

trigger a packet capture to 

aid trouble-shooting. ´ 

tee on Science and the cybersecurity 

subcommittee of the 

Select Committee on Homeland 

Security—have unsuccessfully 

sought answers to 

such questions as, How many 

resources are being devoted 

to cyber-security? 

Cyber-security is among the 

priorities for the Science and 

Technology Directorate, 

Charles McQueary, DHS 

undersecretary of the directorate, 

told the cyber-security 

subcommittee of the House 

Select Committee on Homeland 

Security at a hearing in 

Washington last week. 

McQueary said the DHS 

will create a technology clearinghouse, 

which will enable 

it to work in partnership 

with private industry. 

DHS officials said they are 

still working out the details of 

the national cyber-security 

center, including its formal 

name and organizational 

structure. ´ 

For more on DHS,see. 

story,Page 33.

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

the 

buzz 

TECHNOLOGY 

NEC desktop: 

Cool and quiet 

NEC ANNOUNCED IN NEW 

York last week what it 

calls the world’s first 

water-cooled PC system—which 

also 

promises to be one of 

the quietest. 

The desktop PC’s 

water-cooling system uses 

liquid to cool off the CPU, 

enabling operating noise to be 

suppressed to about half that of a 

conventional PC that uses a cooling 

fan, or about 30 db, according 

to company officials. 

The machines, due this week, 

come in two models: the 

Valuestar TX server and the 

Valuestar FZ desktop. 

FINANCIALS 

PC group fuels 

HP’s second quarter 

HEWLETT-PACKARD EARNED $659 

million on $18 billion in revenue 

for the second quarter, fueled in 

large part by its PC group and 

SCO’s implication of wider claims 

could turn Linux into an intellectualproperty 

minefield. 

18 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

NEC’s desktop PC is the world’s 

first water-cooled system. 

printing division. 

The numbers represent a 

$100 million jump in revenue 

over the previous quarter. 

Chairman and CEO Carly 

Fiorina said the company’s focus 

is on building the business rather 

than absorbing Compaq 

Computer. 

“We still have a lot to do, but I 

feel confident that HP is no 

longer an integration story,” 

Fiorina said during a conference 

call with analysts and reporters. 

For the quarter ended April 30, 

HP’s Personal Systems Group— 

which includes such devices as 

desktop PCs and laptops—made 

$21 million in profit on $5.1 bil- 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK 

DOSI position paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM complaint 

lion in revenue. Fiorina said the 

gains made on the commercial 

side of the ledger were offset by 

seasonal weakness in the consumer 

business. 

BUSINESS 

Does IT matter 

anymore? 

A MAY HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 

article by Nicholas Carr claims 

that, due to technology commoditization, 

“IT doesn’t matter” as a 

strategic advantage. 

“By now, the core functions of 

IT—data storage, data processing 

and data transport—have become 

available and affordable to all,” 

the report said. Turning expenditures 

on technology into the costs 

of doing business is an evolution 

similar to that of the steam 

engine, the telegraph, the telephone 

and the internal combustion 

engine. Similarly, the report 

said, overinvestment in technology 

in the 1990s echoes overinvestment 

in railroads in the 1860s. 

The scary question is whether 

“people have already bought most 

of the stuff they want to own,” 

said Bill Joy, chief scientist and 

co-founder of Sun Microsystems, 

who was quoted in the article. 

Vendors that are evolving to survive 

in this commoditized environ- 

BY THE NUMBERS 

ment include Microsoft, which 

turned its Office software suite 

into an annual subscription service. 

That is a “tacit acknowledgement 

that companies are losing 

their need—and their appetite— 

for constant upgrades,” the report 

said. 

PEOPLE 

Oracle turns to 

Wall Street analyst 

ORACLE IS PLUGGING MORGAN 

Stanley analyst Charles Phillips 

into one of the company’s top 

positions, the company 

announced this month. 

Phillips will become executive 

vice president in the office of the 

CEO and will report directly to 

Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison. 

The analyst, who’s reported on 

the software industry for Morgan 

Stanley since 1994, will focus on 

customer-facing activities, partners, 

corporate strategy and business 

development, officials said. 

Phillips has been ranked the 

No. 1 enterprise software industry 

analyst by Institutional 

Investor magazine each year 

since 1994, Oracle officials said. 

He has also been recognized as 

one of the Top 50 black professionals 

on Wall Street by Black 

Enterprise Magazine. ´ 

RDBMS new-license revenue 

Worldwide revenue estimates for 2002 (in $ billions) 

$7.5 

$6 

$4.5 

$3 

$1.5 

0 

2.4% 

IBM Oracle Microsoft NCR Others 

9.7% 

14.3% 

39.7% 

33.9% 

2001 REVENUE 2002 REVENUE 

Source: Gartner Dataquest (May 2003) 

9.2% 

18% 

33.9% 

36.2% 

2.7%

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

SERVERS 

StarView remotely 

monitors systems 

STARTECH.COM THIS WEEK IS 

rolling out a tool designed to 

enable IT administrators to manage 

and monitor their servers 

remotely via the Internet. 

The company’s StarView IP2 

enables BIOS-level remote control 

of a single server or multiple 

systems connected to a 

KVM switch over TCP/IP. Using 

the device, administrators can 

reset, reboot and control the 

servers through any Web 

browser. 

The StarView IP2 can support 

servers from most vendors, 

including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, 

IBM and Sun, and is compatible 

with most KVM switches, 

according to the company. 

The device will be available 

this week, priced starting at 

$999. —Jeffrey Burt 

INTERNET 

AOL 9.0 beta released 

AMERICA ONLINE LAST WEEK MADE 

its AOL 9.0 client available to 

beta testers. 

The software, code-named 

Blue Hawaii, is a marked departure 

from the last release, AOL 

8.0, in offering a skinnable, or 

changeable, user interface codenamed 

Prescott. With it, AOL 

members will have many more 

opportunities to customize the 

navigation and design of the AOL 

client. 

AOL 9.0 also introduces a 

feature called QuickViews, 

which allows members to 

obtain information by rolling 

their mouse over a feature. 

—Craig Newell, ZDI 

20 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

Nextel targets the enterprise 

PUSH-TO-TALK AND VPN 

SERVICES ON LINEUP 

By Carmen Nobel 

Nextel communications 

Inc. is taking several 

steps to strengthen its 

reputation as a company 

that caters to the enterprise. 

The Reston, Va., company 

is rolling out a nationwide version 

of its renowned Direct 

Connect push-to-talk service, 

offering new software based 

on technology from IBM, forging 

partnerships with enterprise 

application companies 

and launching new hardware 

throughout the year. 

“When used properly, it has 

the feel of a less disruptive 

phone call. I use it especially 

for quick questions or checking 

if someone is available.” 

The service has been credited 

for giving the company 

a higher average revenue 

per user—$67 last quarter— 

than its competitors. Other 

carriers have voiced vague 

plans to offer their own pushto-talk 

services, but Nextel 

officials shrugged off the idea 

that this might make Nextel 

lower its prices. 

“We don’t think so,” said 

Greg Santoro, vice president 

The StarView IP2 manages servers. Direct Connect, which lets Nextel’s direct 

a phone work like a walkietalkie, 

is currently available 

only within a customer’s local 

calling area. But that will 

change this summer. A longdistance 

Direct Connect service 

is in beta tests in Boston, 

Southern California and 

Florida. It will be widely available 

in those areas by next 

month, with service available 

to more than half of Nextel’s 

coverage area by July and 

throughout the United States 

by August, officials said. 

Nextel plans to offer two 

pricing options for Nationwide 

Direct Connect: an 

unlimited plan for $10 per 

month or a pay-as-you-go plan 

for 10 cents a minute. 

The scanner attachment 

will cost $249. 

Mobile workers say a direct 

connection is simply less of a 

hassle than a phone call on 

both ends. 

“For certain types of communication, 

push to talk is 

particularly useful,” said 

Christopher Bell, chief technology 

officer at the People- 

2People Group, in Boston. 

enterprise connection 

� Launching Nationwide Direct 

Connect service this summer 

� Offering a mobile VPN service 

that uses IBM’s WebSphere 

Everyplace Connection Manager 

� Selling a bar-code scanner 

attachment from Symbol for Nextel 

phones 

of Internet and Wireless 

Services at Nextel. “We don’t 

think [competitors] can create 

a service that meets ours.” 

In the meantime, Nextel 

last week announced a new 

VPN (virtual private network) 

service based on IBM’s Web- 

Sphere Everyplace Connection 

Manager software. The VPN 

compresses data up to three 

times faster than previous 

solutions, Nextel officials said, 

and uses several encryption 

standards, including Data 

Encryption Standard, Triple 

DES, RC5 and Advanced 

Encryption Standard. 

“It finally brings together 

encryption and compression,” 

Santoro said. “It was 

either/or up until now.” 

He added that Nextel is 

working with several companies 

that specialize in corporate 

data applications, especially 

for creating software 

designed to run on the Black- 

Berry 6510, an e-mail/phone/ 

walkie-talkie device that 

Research In Motion Ltd. created 

for Nextel’s network. 

“We’re getting traction with 

people who never thought 

about using a BlackBerry 

before,” especially in vertical 

markets, Santoro said. 

To that end, Nextel this 

month began selling a barcode 

scanner attachment 

for its i88s and 

i58sr phones. 

Symbol Technologies 

Inc.’s PSM20i 

scanner clips on to the 

end of the phone. It 

weighs 1.4 ounces. 

Users scan the bar 

codes by pressing the 

Direct Connect button 

on the side of the 

phone and then use 

a Java-based application 

to send the information 

out over the iDEN, or 

Integrated Digital Enhanced 

Network. 

The scanner requires 

third-party software from a 

company such as AirClic Inc. 

to work properly, officials 

said. 

One device Nextel may not 

be offering in the near future 

is a phone that offers voice 

over IP via 802.11 wireless 

LANs. Although company 

officials said earlier this year 

Nextel and Motorola Inc. 

are testing such a product, 

Santoro said that the companies 

test many things and 

that Nextel has yet to commit 

to a Wi-Fi phone. ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

BMC, Quest tackle DB2 

TOOLS BOOST MANAGEMENT IN 

HETEROGENEOUS ENVIRONMENT 

By Lisa Vaas 

Users of ibm’s db2 software can 

turn to tools from BMC Software 

Inc. and Quest Software Inc. to 

manage the enterprise DBMS. 

BMC, as part of its Project Golden Gate 

initiative to enable data management in 

a heterogeneous environment, has added 

support for IBM’s DB2 Universal Database 

in its SmartDBA performance, 

administration and recovery tools. Working 

in the same vein, Quest is shipping 

Quest Central for DB2 3, which is management 

software for DB2 that features 

deep diagnostic capabilities for IBM’s 

database partitioning technology and support 

for heterogeneous environments. 

Both database management products 

were rolled out at the annual International 

DB2 Users Group Americas 

conference in Las Vegas last week. 

BMC’s tools include SmartDBA Performance 

Management for DB2 UDB 2.5, 

which provides event management, diagnostics, 

visualization, administration, 

Tool tracks network changes 


The second release of 

Rendition Networks Inc.’s 

TrueControl network configuration 

tool focuses on 

greater extensibility and ease 

of administration. 

The software, which allows 

users to track and better 

control configuration changes 

in routers, switches, firewalls 

and load balancers in large, 

enterprise networks, can 

automatically detect when 

changes are made and notify 

appropriate network operators, 

officials said. 

Released last week, True- 

Control works across multiple 

vendors’ networking 

22 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

space management and tuning of DB2 

UDB environments. The software integrates 

common alerts that let database 

administrators more easily monitor, tune 

and manage space within DB2 databases, 

said officials at Houston-based BMC. 

BMC’s SmartDBA tool watches DB2 systems. 

Also included is SQL-BackTrack for 

DB2 UDB 3, which allows DB2 users to 

perform database backup and recovery 

through the SmartDBA Web console. The 

console also allows users to manage 

Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp. SQL 

equipment and is intended to 

help reduce the repair times 

when outages occur. 

Competitive offerings from 

AlterPoint Inc. rely on polling 

devices to determine whether 

a configuration change has 

been made. But with polling 

intervals as long as an hour, 

detection can take time and 

cost money, according to 

Raghav Kher, president and 

CEO of Rendition, in Redmond, 

Wash. 

The instability of networks 

in a time of tight IT budgets 

is focusing attention on ways 

to reduce operational costs. 

Automation is a key mechanism 

to help reduce those 

costs, said Peter Christy, an 

analyst at NetsEdge Research 

Group, in Los Altos, Calif. 

“The network as a whole 

is an unreliable system. Now 

what’s important is that networks 

become better and 

cheaper to operate, and automation 

is a key element to 

making that happen,” Christy 

said. 

TrueControl serves as a 

repository of log information 

that includes comments from 

network engineers about why 

they made certain changes. 

When a change results in 

an outage, TrueControl can 

be used to return the network 

to an earlier, stable configu- 

Server databases from one common spot. 

SmartDBA Performance Management 

for UDB 2.5 is slated to be available 

next month. SQL-BackTrack for 

DB2 3 is due in July with support for 

DB2 UDB Versions 7.2 and 8.1. 

Meanwhile, Quest Central for DB2 

3 also supports heterogeneous environments. 

A new compare-and-synchronize 

feature allows DBAs to compare databases 

and identify differences to ensure 

that all changes are in place before 

deploying applications into 

production. The product also 

features DB2 alerts and diagnosis 

at a summarized database 

level as well as at the level 

of detailed partition. 

Fast Communication Manager 

in Quest Central for 

DB2 3 allows DBAs to quickly 

identify hot spots in multipartition 

databases. This lets 

them identify performance 

problems at the summary level 

and drill down into the partition 

to get enough detail to 

solve a given problem, according 

to Quest officials, in Irvine, Calif. 

Quest Central for DB2 3 supports DB2 

7.1, DB2 7.2 and DB2 UDB Enterprise 

Server Edition 8.1. Pricing starts at $1,500 

for the Developer Edition and $10,000 

for the Professional Edition. ´ 

ration, Kher said. 

TrueControl Version 2.0 

adds the ability to integrate 

with Hewlett-Packard Co.’s 

OpenView Network Node 

Manager. TrueControl can be 

launched from within an 

OpenView console. Rendition 

is also planning to integrate 

with tools from NetIQ 

Corp., BMC Software Inc.’s 

Remedy Action Request System 

and Computer Associates 

International Inc.’s Unicenter. 

Version 2.0 includes a software 

development kit for 

adding new drivers that allow 

users to attach other networking 

equipment not currently 

supported. The release 

is available now; prices start at 

$29,990 for 75 managed 

nodes. ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Face to Face: Clark Masters 

Sun aims high 

VP SEES LOTS OF VIGOR LEFT IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING 

In recent months, sun 

Microsystems Inc. has 

made a big push into lowend, 

low-cost computing. 

The Santa Clara, Calif., 

company rolled out blade 

servers as part of its N1 data 

center virtualization strategy, 

as well as two low-end x86 

servers, and promised to 

continue providing more of 

the same. But high-end Unix 

systems are still an important 

part of Sun’s overall strategy, 

and Clark Masters, executive 


manager of the company’s 

Enterprise Systems Products 

group, spoke with eWeek Senior 

Editor Jeffrey Burt about 

Sun’s plans for its top-of-the 

line servers. 

Low-end servers and blade 

servers have gotten a lot of 

publicity. What is Sun doing 

with high-end servers? 

I think the high end matters 

more today than ever, 

really. At the $500,000-andup 

price point—these are 

[International Data Corp.] 

data, not Sun data—in the 

year 2000, it was 20-someodd 

cents out of every server 

dollar was spent on the halfmillion- 

dollar-and-up market 

range. At the end of 2002, 

that was over 30 cents, so that 

the amount of IT dollars 

going toward the high end ... 

is larger today than ever 

before. 

Is this because the systems are 

more expensive or because there’s 

24 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

Masters: High-end spending climbing. 

a growing demand for them? 

It’s two things. The weakness 

in the market we see is more 

the midrange. 

So we’re seeing [high-end 

server growth] with server consolidation 

and data center 

consolidation and the drive 

toward efficiency. Also, we’re 

seeing strength in government 

spending, high-performance 

technical computing [HPTC], 

all of those things. 

What’s driving the demand for 

the really high end? 

Two or three key factors that 

I see. One is server consolidation. 

Two years ago, when 

I talked with customers, it was 

all about staying out in front 

of the wave. ... It was the dotcom 

boom times. It was all 

about deployment. 

Now, today, it’s all about 

doing more with less—total 

cost of ownership. How do I 

drive costs out of the system? 

Another thing is, most 

large organizations are 

structured in business 

units, and a lot of business 

units have their own IT 

infrastructure, and now I 

think the political walls are 

broken down, that cost 

control is much more 

important than the autonomy 

of a particular business 

unit. You see people, 

to save costs, much 

more willing to consolidate 

workloads and combine 

computing environments, 

and that helps drive the 

high-end server business 

and data-center-class machines. 

Regarding N1, can you provide 

me with an idea of how 

Sun’s largest servers—the 12K 

and the 15K—fit in with that 

strategy? 

With N1, the better we can 

do at driving up the utilization 

and efficiency, the 

more applications we 

can dynamically provision. 

That’s a huge 

opportunity for us. So 

with the software tools 

we’re developing with 

N1, to manage and 

provision it, plus the 

virtualization in the hardware 

with domain and the Solaris 

operating environment, with 

resource management and 

software partitions—or containers—we 

have very powerful 

technologies to leverage, 

to simply be the best in the 

world at that. 

How important is HPTC to 

Sun’s high-end computing strategy? 

It’s very important to Sun up 

and down the product line. 

... We’re developing visualization 

technology like Java 

3-D, for example. That’s big in 

the research and technical 

computing area. 

We’re finding that technical 

[computing] has much more 

growth potential and is becoming 

much more integrated with 

most every organization, 

whether it be manufacturing 

to do design optimization 

before you actually do implementations 

to biotech companies. 

What are some of the other areas 

in HPTC that Sun needs to 

address? 

We’re very good at large physical 

memory, so that gives us 

an advantage. High-bandwidth 

I/O we have. 

We have a storage business 

and very good technology 

there. When we get our Ultra- 

SPARC 4 machines—and I 

think in the worldwide analyst 

conference I said we would be 

introducing those before the 

next analyst conference, so 

about year-end or early part of 

next calendar year—that will 

have multiple threads ... so it 

will double the floating-point 

performance that we have in 

the same footprint. 

‘Today, it’s all about 

doing more with 

less—total cost 

of ownership.’ 

Long term, we’re investing 

in additional cluster technologies; 

investing in InfiniBand 

for high-speed networking, 

for both I/O and machines to 

machines; and also new processor 

technologies and interconnect 

technologies aimed 

at HPTC. ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Eric Lundquist: Up Front 

Golden-oldie lessons 

Vendors and prognosticators are either 

wringing their hands looking for the next big 

thing or worrying that IT has become a lowpriced 

commodity to be purchased like electricity 

or paper clips. They could learn a thing 

or two from mainframes, pay phones and backhoes. 

Here’s why. The mainframe business has been predicted 

to die ever since IBM developed the Model 704 

in 1957. Full-time venture capitalist and part-time Fortune 

columnist Stewart Alsop predicted that the last 

mainframe would be unplugged in 1996. This month, 

IBM once again proved Alsop’s and others’ predictions 

to be ludicrously off the mark by introducing the z990, 

code-named T-Rex. The advance of Intel-based microprocessors and Microsoft 

software was supposed to be the equivalent of the cataclysmic asteroid impact that 

wiped out the dinosaurs. It has been little more than a summer meteor shower. 

Why do mainframes continue to 

inhabit the planet? That they work as 

advertised is probably the immediate 

answer. The stories about old mainframes 

still cranking out reports and 

doing financials on some proprietary program 

written in the 1970s are legion. A 

second reason is that if you are willing 

to invest—say, about $1 billion over four 

years—you can make a mainframe 

that looks a lot like what IBM is selling. 

“We continue to invest in those features 

and capabilities our customers 

are asking for,” Peter McCaffrey, IBM’s 

director of product marketing for the 

zSeries of mainframes, told me. Combining 

the reliability and scale of mainframes 

with recent developments such 

as Linux has created an alluring platform 

for e-commerce. 

What’s more, working on a platform 

that pundits are forever declaring extinct 

has proved motivational to IBM engineers. 

“Every once in a while, they 

have a good laugh over it. In the end, it 

drives our engineers to constantly reinvent 

the platform,” said McCaffrey. 

26 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

Now, pay phones. They are ubiquitous 

and yet underused in this era of cell 

phones. When Intel introduced its 

wireless chips under the Centrino 

label, it produced a movie, ostensibly 

humorous, that included a spoof on 

pay phones. Now, Verizon is striking 

back by adding wireless hot-spot capabilities 

to its pay phones. Starting in New 

York, Verizon is making hot-spot access 

for 802.11-enabled devices free for Verizon 

Internet access customers. 

This is a smart move for Verizon 

and a challenge to all those venture 

capitalists who were betting on the 

vendors of equipment you’d need to be 

wirelessly logging on at McDonald’s as 

you scarf down your Big Mac. Philip Nutsugah, 

executive director for broadband 

wireless at Verizon, said the company 

intends to have 1,000 pay phone hot spots 

in New York by year’s end. 

Now take a guess what the following 

quote refers to. “Every feature was 

designed with productivity, serviceability 

and reliability in mind.” No, it’s not 

Scott McNealy trying to persuade you to 

buy more Solaris, and it’s not Bill 

Gates contending he finally has the security 

thing under control. The quote was 

part of a press release for the new John 

Deere 710G backhoe introduced in 

January and replete with new features 

and technologies. In a 1997 article on 

HotWired.com titled “50 Ways to Crash 

the Net,” security expert Simson Garfinkel 

included buying 10 backhoes as 

one of the 50. That’s because, back 

then, critical Internet backbones too 

often ran through underground cables, 

which too frequently fell victim to the 

digging of backhoes. 

When a backhoe blade sliced through 

a cable and cut off Internet access to a 

big chunk of Boston on May 13, I started 

to wonder if backhoe technology is evolving 

faster than the physical security of 

the Internet. 

I tracked down Garfinkel, now going 

for his doctorate at MIT. While it 

might take more than 10 backhoes to 

do the job now, the physical security 

of the Internet’s routers, name servers 

and associated hardware remains far 

too vulnerable for the elevated threats 

the Net faces, Garfinkel said. “There 

ERIC_ LUNDQUIST@ZIFFDAVIS.COM 

Why do mainframes continue to inhabit 

the planet? That they work as advertised 

is probably the immediate answer. 

is a very high risk of physical damage. 

People tend to forget about physical 

security,” he said. 

Part of progress is the illusion that we 

leave some things behind. But some 

golden-oldie technologies stick around 

for a reason. They’re good at what they 

do. Still, that backhoe technology remains 

one step ahead of Internet architects 

should give us all pause. ´

Security: Government 

DHS revamp on tap 

IN WAKE OF CRITICISM, CYBER-SECURITY TO GET HIGHER PROFILE 

By Caron Carlson IN WASHINGTON 

After months of escalating criticism 

from the IT industry that the 

Bush administration is devoting 

insufficient resources and attention 

to cyber-security, the fledgling 

Department of Homeland Security is 

already restructuring to give network 

safety a higher profile. 

The organizational changes, due to 

take place over the coming months, 

will show that the executive branch is 

taking cyber-security seriously, according 

to Charles McQueary, undersecretary 

for science and technology at the 

new department. 

McQueary addressed lawmakers here 

last week at a hearing of the House Committee 

on Science. The session took on 

a very un-Washington, almost-surreal 

quality as legislators chided civil servants 

for not chasing after enough funding for 

cyber-security research and development, 

and civil servants answered that there 

is plenty of money already being spent. 

“We’re not lacking for funds,” Anthony 

Tether, director of the Pentagon’s Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency, told 

the committee. “I funded every idea that’s 

come forth in this area this year. We’re 

more idea-limited right now than we 

are funding-limited.” 

Acting on ramped-up industry lobbying, 

legislators took to task the DHS, 

DARPA, the National Science Foundation, 

and the National Institute of Standards 

and Technology for not seeking out 

or setting aside adequate funds for cybersecurity. 

The preoccupation with national 

security since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 

11, 2001, was expected to unleash a torrent 

of government spending on IT goods 

and services, but the federal funds have 

not been as forthcoming as the industry 

had hoped. 

According to committee Chairman 

Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., there have 

been complaints from throughout the 

research community that the DHS is not 

focusing on solving network vulnerabilities 

and that DARPA is operating 

under reduced resources. 

“It’s impossible to conclude that far 

more needs to be done,” Boehlert said, 

DHS’ Ridge (center) and DARPA’s Tether (right) are tuning out 

Boehlert’s complaints that cyber-security gets short shrift. 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

directing DARPA’s Tether to “enlighten 

us as to why we’re moving in the wrong 

direction.” 

Most of DARPA’s resources are 

directed at classified projects, according 

to Tether, who said that a peek at 

the agency’s classified budget would 

make lawmakers more comfortable with 

the funding level. 

“We’re not concerning ourselves [with] 

the commercial networks,” Tether said, 

adding that DARPA is focused on solving 

problems that the private sector 

currently does not confront. The military 

faces threats from “attackers whose 

life depends on taking the network 

down,” he said, and projects are under 

way to make those networks increasingly 

wireless and peer to peer. 

“We’re really far ahead of the commercial 

world in this regard,” Tether said, 

adding that a prototype military network 

with 400 nodes to use for simulated 

attacks is in the works. 

Last week, DARPA sent its data 

mining report to Congress. Following 

public outcry over the research last 

year, the agency changed the project’s 

name from Total Information Awareness 

to Terrorism Information Awareness. 

When President Bush disbanded 

the President’s Critical Infrastructure 

Protection Board earlier this year following 

the resignation of its chairman, 

Richard Clarke, responsibilities for cybersecurity 

were transferred to DHS Secretary 

Tom Ridge. However, the subject 

was not given a sufficiently high 

profile or a sufficiently high-ranking 

executive to satisfy the industry. 

Turning the tables and taking a shot 

at the private sector, federal research officials 

told the Science Committee last 

week that if there is less-than-optimal 

attention devoted to cyber-security today, 

it is a result of problems in industry, 

not the government. 

“As a nation, our 

greatest vulnerability 

is indifference,” said 

Arden Bement, NIST 

director, citing recent 

surveys indicating that 

private enterprises “don’t 

really see themselves as 

a target.” 

“They just haven’t 

quite stepped up to ANDERSON 

the plate,” said Bement, 

in Washington. ´ STEPHEN 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 33

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Sun, Oracle tighten alliance 

COMPANIES TO REDUCE 

DEPLOYMENT COSTS 

By Jeffrey Burt and Lisa Vaas 

It departments under 

pressure to keep costs 

down welcome a move by 

Sun Microsystems Inc. and 

Oracle Corp. to lower the cost 

of deploying the two companies’ 

software and systems. 

Sun, of Santa Clara, Calif., 

and Oracle, of Redwood 

Shores, Calif., are tightening 

their 20-year-long alliance 

with what officials said will 

result in a “no finger-pointing” 

service and support scenario 

for joint customers. 

“What this means is you 

have absolute, total choice 

across the two product lines, 

with only one throat to choke,” 

said Scott McNealy, president, 

chairman and CEO of Sun. 

At an event in San Francisco 

last week, McNealy and 

Oracle Chairman and CEO 

Larry Ellison spoke about how 

many data centers in the 

near future are going to run 

smaller servers linked by technology 

such as Oracle’s Real 

Application Clusters and 

running as one large system. 

In support of that vision, 

Sun has made available two 

new low-cost, rack-optimized 

servers, the Sun Fire V60x and 

V65x. The V60x is a 1U (1.75inch-high) 

one- to two-way system 

powered by Intel Corp. 

2.8GHz Xeon processors that 

can run either Red Hat Inc.’s 

Red Hat Linux or Sun’s Solaris 

x86 Platform Edition. The 

entry-level server—which is 

aimed at such jobs as Web 

serving, e-mail and caching— 

also features up to 6GB of 

memory and three Ultra320 

SCSI hard drives, according to 

Sun. The 2U (3.5-inch) V65x 

can run one or two 2.8GHz 

36 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

or 3.06GHz Xeons and comes 

with up to 12GB of memory, 

six 36GB or 73GB hard drives, 

and up to six PCI-X slots, 

Sun officials said. In addition, 

McNealy said 

Sun has formed a 

global agreement 

with Linux developer 

Red Hat. 

At the event, 

McNealy and Ellison 

said Oracle 

software will run 

with the Solaris 

and Linux operating 

systems on all 

x86 hardware from 

Sun. The software 

includes everything 

from the Oracle9i database 

and Oracle9i application 

server to Oracle Collaboration 

Suite. 

The two companies are also 

going to ensure that Oracle 

software can be automatically 

deployed within data centers 

powered by Sun’s N1 strategy, 

an initiative to virtualize the 

data center, enabling the 

dynamic management of 

Ellison, left, and McNealy, right, are looking to 

populate data centers with smaller servers. 

resources within the centers. 

The two companies will 

also integrate Sun’s StarOffice 

suite with Oracle’s Collaboration 

Suite and will collaborate 

on joint marketing and 

support programs. 

Oracle users have been waiting 

a long time for Oracle software 

to run on low-cost Sun 

boxes, according to Richard 

Niemiec, president of the 

International Oracle Users 

Group and CEO of TUSC (The 

Ultimate Software Consultants), 

an Oracle consultancy. 

“People [are saying that] this is 

huge and that it’s about time,” 

said Niemiec, in Chicago. “It’s 

good for Oracle. They need 

to be hardware-agnostic. They 

have a large contingent on Sun 

[hardware], and they need to 

keep that contingent happy.” 

Any ground gained at the 

lower end of the market will 

likely carve away territory now 

claimed by Microsoft Corp.’s 

SQL Server, Niemiec said. 

“It positions Oracle at the 

lower end to a much-greater 

degree than they were previously,” 

he said. “Another benefit 

is that many people, for 

their main server, have Sun. 

For their departmental, 

smaller servers, there’s now 

potential to consolidate on 

Sun as an alternative to SQL 

Server.” ´ 

Cisco beefs up security tools 


Cisco systems inc. continues to broaden 

its portfolio of security management tools 

with the introduction of 14 new and 

enhanced security management, threat protection 

and VPN offerings. 

Among the upgraded offerings is the 

Cisco IP Solutions Center Version 3.0 Security 

Technology Module, which allows users 

to set up common configurations for multiple 

virtual private network devices from a central 

location and push those out to remote sites. 

The tool, introduced last week, also allows 

the VPN tunnels to be pushed out from a 

central location to remote locations, according 

to early user Carol Henson, director of IT for 

the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural 

Development, in St. Louis. The organization 

is using Cisco IP Solutions Center 3.0 as part 

of a rollout of 2,500 VPNs to field offices, replacing 

more costly frame relay links. 

The module provides an audit trail function, 

ensuring that “every VPN we install will be 

installed the same way,” Henson said. “If we 

have to make a change, we can make it 

within the VPN and use [the Cisco Intelligence 

Engine 2100 Series] to keep them all in 

sync.” 

Cisco also introduced Cisco Security Device 

Manager Version 1.0, which manages Internetwork 

Operating System-based security functions 

for Cisco 830- and 3700-series access 

routers. CiscoWorks Security Information 

Management Solution 3.1 adds enhanced event 

scoring, business impact and threat analysis 

to the base security event monitoring function. 

Version 2.2 of CiscoWorks VPN/Security 

Management Solution integrates administrative 

control of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Firewall 

and VPN services modules, monitoring 

of Cisco intrusion detection systems, and support 

for the new Cisco Security Agent. ´

Software links backup, SRM 

CA, VERITAS HONE DATA 

RESTORE UPGRADES 

By Evan Koblentz 

Summer upgrades for 

Computer Associates 

International Inc. and 

Veritas Software Corp. backup 

and recovery programs will 

help users link existing suites 

with other technologies. 

Features in CA’s BrightStor 

Enterprise Backup 10.5 and 

Veritas’ Bare Metal Restore 

4.6 are also part of the trend 

of focusing on data restores. 

With CA’s upgrade from 

Version 10, users can set up 

policy-based job scheduling, 

linked with BrightStor Storage 

Resource Manager and 

related products, said Ed 

Cooper, CA product manager, 

in Islandia, N.Y. 

Enterprise Backup also 

now links to Unicenter’s soft- 

ware distribution feature, for 

sending backup configurations 

to remote sites, and to 

Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 

Server 2003, through the Volume 

Shadow Copy Service, 

Cooper said. In 

addition, it works 

with software from 

switch makers BrocadeCommunications 

Systems Inc. 

and McData Corp. 

and now has a feature 

for verifying 

service-level agreements, 

officials 

added. 

The new version 

ranges from $5,000 

to $20,000, Cooper 

said. Available now, it includes 

five licenses for BrightStor 

Enterprise Portal. 

User reactions are mixed. 

“I really like the speed and 

console that allows me to 

manage all of the different 

machines,” said Greg Taffet, 

CIO of MxEnergy Inc., a 

natural gas reseller in Stamford, 

Conn. 

Conversely, “I haven’t been 

terribly impressed,” said Matt 

Paull, systems administrator 

at Redflex Traffic Systems 

Inc., in Scottsdale, Ariz. 

Web services get more options 


Two web services management 

software suppliers announced new 

products last week, approaching the 

issue of managing Web services from 

two perspectives. 

Both Swingtide Inc., of Portsmouth, 

N.H., and Blue Titan Software Inc., of 

San Francisco, unveiled new Web services 

management solutions, with 

Swingtide offering a more passive 

solution and Blue Titan delivering a more 

active product. 

Swingtide made its announcement at 

the annual Association for Cooperative 

Operations Research and Development 

conference in Orlando, Fla. The 

company announced two products, 

Swingtide Monitor and Swingtide Scorecard, 

which enable users to view, analyze 

and manage the data they send 

via ACORD, SOAP (Simple Object 

CA’s BrightStor portal manages rival Veritas’ backup. 

Access Protocol) or XML standards, officials 

said. Swingtide Monitor tracks 

the growth and business usage of Web 

services and XML networks and not 

the performance of the physical network. 

Swingtide Scorecard is a methodology 

for improving return on investment 

from XML-based Web services. 

Swingtide officials said the products 

can be tailored to industry needs. The 

first industry supported is insurance, for 

which Swingtide has incorporated 

complete ACORD standards into the 

products. Future support will be added 

for banking and securities trading. 

Meanwhile, Blue Titan announced the 

release of Network Director 2.0, its 

Web services management solution that 

delivers event-driven control for serviceoriented 

architectures (see review, 

Page 56). 

New capabilities in Network Director 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

“For the most part, I can get 

away with Microsoft, the 

built-in backup.” 

For its part, Veritas, of 

Mountain View, Calif., last 

week announced Bare Metal 

Restore 4.6, which can restore 

a Windows server onto different 

hardware from the 

original, said Richard Harrison, 

Veritas product manager. 

With the new feature, 

administrators don’t 

have to wait for an 

identical server to 

arrive, and it is useful 

in cases where 

the original equipment 

isn’t made anymore. 

Bare Metal 

Restore 4.6 requires 

Veritas’ high-end 

NetBackup software, 

Harrison said. 

Until next quarter, 

the new version 

will cost $695 for 

Windows licenses and $895 

for Unix licenses. After that, 

licenses will cost $900 for Windows 

and $1,000 for Unix, 

Harrison said. ´ 

2.0 include fabric services, which expose 

functions as Web services; active event 

messaging; adaptive policy execution; 

SOAP stack interoperability; and support 

for emerging standards such as Web 

Services-Security, Web Services-Policy 

and Web Services-ReliableMessaging. 

Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with Zap- 

Think LLC, in Cambridge, Mass., said he 

views Swingtide as unique in its category. 

“Instead of rushing the first version 

of their software product to market, they 

developed an extensive professional services 

offering to build relationships with 

their customers, build awareness within 

their selected target industry and to 

gather a detailed understanding of 

their customers’ needs,” Bloomberg said. 

“By ‘passive,’ we mean that it monitors 

XML activity without affecting it and 

provides visibility into the XML on a company’s 

network,” he said. “In contrast, 

Blue Titan has an active management 

approach that controls the traffic, ensuring 

reliability and actively managing 

security policies.” ´ 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 37

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Serena snaps 

up developer 

TeamShare 


Corporate developers are getting 

more collaboration capabilities 

in their development 

tools, thanks to acquisitions by Serena 

Software Inc. and CollabNet Inc. 

Serena, of San Mateo, Calif., which 

last week agreed to buy TeamShare Inc. 

for $18 million, sells change management 

solutions that automate 

changes to enterprise code and content. 

With TeamShare, a Colorado 

Springs, Colo., developer of collaborative 

software development solutions, 

Serena plans to bolster its product line 

with collaboration technology and 

extend its reach in application life-cycle 

management, company officials said. 

Serena’s acquisition followed by a 

few weeks CollabNet’s buyout of Enlite 

Networks Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. 

CollabNet is a Brisbane, Calif., provider 

of collaborative software development 

solutions; Enlite is an enterprise 

collaboration technology startup 

with a facility in Chennai, India. 

A variety of software makers are 

adding collaboration into core components 

of their offerings, according 

to Erica Rugullies, an analyst with Giga 

Information Group Inc., in Cambridge, 

Mass. However, “many vendors 

will have to set back their collaboration 

strategies as Microsoft 

[Corp.] and IBM provide collaboration 

tools,” Rugullies said. 

Microsoft is moving collaboration 

capabilities into its Windows operating 

system with Windows SharePoint 

Services, expected this year, and 

IBM is componentizing its collaborative 

offerings and making them 

available through the various IBM 

software brands, Rugullies said. “With 

these two big vendors coming into the 

market, it’s going to be harder and 

harder for proprietary collaboration 

tools to flourish,” she said. ´ 

38 eWEEK � MAY 26, 2003

Storage: OS upgrade 

Bigger, better Linux 

LINUX 2.6 TO HANDLE MORE MEMORY, THREADS, STORAGE OPTIONS 

By Lisa Vaas 

Users of linux databases are 

drooling over the list of features 

promised by the forthcoming 

upgrade to the Linux kernel, 

Version 2.6. 

The Linux 2.6 production kernel, 

expected to be released later this year, will 

enable Linux to handle big, enterpriseclass 

database applications. New features 

integrated into the main kernel will spare 

users the need to adopt 

them as back-ported capabilities 

in the 2.4 production 

kernel. Such abilities 

include support for much 

larger amounts of memory, 

support for a larger number 

of threads, improved 

networking performance, 

increased storage and types 

of storage, and better volume 

management. 

Tim Kuchlein, director 

of IS at Clarity Payment 

Solutions Inc., a developer 

of prepaid electronic payment 

systems, said the 

ability for the kernel to support 

extra memory will 

enable his company to 

work its database like 

Google—running on all 

memory, all the time. 

Clarity will soon move 

to the IBM DB2 8.1 database 

running on Red Hat 

Inc.’s version of Linux. To 

get it all running with maximum 

affordable memory, managers 

plan to move to a 64-bit architecture and, 

to that end, are checking out Advanced 

Micro Devices Inc.’s 64-bit architecture. 

The move could mean that Clarity 

could kiss writing to disk goodbye. 

“We want to have as much memory in 

our systems as we can,” said Kuchlein, 

in New York. 

The ability to support 64 bits isn’t new 

to the Linux kernel, but the affordability 

of 64-bit boxes is, Kuchlein said. “Only 

recently have you been able to buy 

hardware without having to mortgage 

your life to make use of [64 bits],” he said. 

Kuchlein has priced IBM pSeries servers 

with 16GB of memory at about $230,000, 

compared with AMD boxes with two 

CPUs and 8GB that sell for about $6,150. 

But perhaps the most enticing lure 

of the 2.6 kernel is its promise of better 

volume management. “Sizing of partitions 

and stuff is always a pain in the 

[neck],” said Kuchlein. “You have what 

you think will happen [with partitioning 

needs], and you make plans, and two 

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

weeks later it changes. Just being able to 

dynamically resize partitions is obviously 

a very good thing.” 

Officials at Aventis Behring—a company 

that develops therapeutic proteins 

to treat people with immune and 

protein deficiencies, such as hemophiliacs—are 

also itching to get their hands 

on the 2.6 kernel. The reasons: better volume 

management, asynchronous I/O 

and better management of multiple 

applications on one server. 

Asynchronous I/O is appealing 

because the company, based in King of 

Prussia, Pa., is considering a project 

deploying Web services on Linux that 

requires scalability. “[Asynchronous I/O] 

allows command queuing to improve 

CPU utilization, which can result in performance 

improvements for Web servers 

and databases,” said Jesse Crew, manager 

of global systems. 

The ability to better manage multiple 

applications on one server running 

separate logical images 

can help administration and 

consolidation, as well as 

reduce complexity and 

lower costs. “From experience 

with the Windows 

environment, running two 

applications on a single 

server can cause coexistence 

nightmares during future 

upgrades of either one,” 

Crew said. “With Linux, 

we may be able to put an 

end to these types of issues. 

Running multiple applications 

on the same server 

knowing they are logically 

partitioned makes things 

easier to maintain.” 

Vendors are just as excited 

about the 2.6 kernel. For one, 

Gary Ebersole, president of 

ANTs Software Inc., maker 

of a new high-performance 

DBMS, said the company 

will snap up 2.6 as soon as 

possible. Motivating his decision 

is, again, 64-bit address 

space. Another draw is support for a large 

number of threads, which will allow the 

company to scale up on symmetric multiprocessing. 

“We’ll grab as many threads 

as there are microprocessors in the system,” 

said Ebersole, in Burlingame, Calif. 

“Good thread management in the kernel 

is good.” ´ 

PAUL CONNOLLY 

MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 39

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Peter Coffee: Port Scans 

The case for rest 

As i looped around the east edge of phoenix, 

heading home from the GigaWorld IT Forum, 

I heard NPR’s salute to National Night Shift 

Workers Day conclude with a poem by Karen 

Jane Glenn. “Let us now praise the night shift,” 

she began. “Those on the 8-to-4, the 10-to-6 ... the sleepdeprived 

... the wired.” I could relate. It seems as if every 

week brings me more e-mail messages that are timestamped 

during the interval that Navy men call the midwatch, 

from midnight to four in the morning. And I 

have to admit that I’m also sending more of those 

midwatch messages myself. 

As it happened, the theme of the conference I’d 

just attended was “Deliver more with less.” I don’t remember seeing “less sleep” 

as a formal part of the agenda—but as I listened to Glenn’s poem, it seemed as if 

that topic should have been addressed. After all, National Science Foundation 

statistics estimate U.S. adults averaging 

less than 7 hours’ sleep at night; 

other studies point to sleep-deprivation 

effects that include difficulty following 

discussions; poor judgment in complex 

situations; difficulty in devising a 

new approach to a stubborn problem; 

and failure to notice changes in situations. 

In practical terms, this means that 

people aren’t functioning as well as 

they should in everyday situations 

such as planning a project, responding 

to a cyber-attack, debugging an application 

or monitoring network operations. 

Spread thin by staff reductions, and 

losing formerly productive time to diversions 

such as extra security delays in airports, 

people are putting in 10-hour and 

even 20-hour days for what used to be 

considered 8 hours’ pay. That may not 

be as good a deal for the employer as 

it first seems, if the extra hours represent 

neutral or even negative contributions. 

Yes, it’s great that people can work 

at any time, from anywhere, but sleepdeprived 

zombies aren’t the shock troops 

40 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

of enterprise success—whether they’re 

“the wired” of Glenn’s poem or not. 

International operations can approach 

the 24-hour day as a relay race, rather 

than a marathon. IBM, for example, 

has adopted a two-shift approach to some 

of its software development efforts, with 

teams in Seattle setting daily work 

specifications for offshore teams in India, 

China, Latvia and Belarus. Overnight offshore 

development returns product to 

Seattle the next day for review, and the 

cycle continues. 

The company says this process 

reduces development cycles by 35 percent, 

yielding time-to-market benefits 

that are worth even more than the reduc- 

tions in development cost. Note well that 

this is not about stretching a given number 

of people across a greater number of 

hours: It’s about taking advantage of 

the 24-hour day in operations that circle 

the globe. 

The problem with success stories like 

this is that smaller companies may feel 

that they must do likewise. I’m reminded 

of former Avis CEO Robert Townsend’s 

warning that some corporate behaviors 

don’t scale well from large to small organizations. 

The smaller company that 

decides to open an office in Bangalore, 

or outsource some of its operations to 

a contractor in Tel Aviv, may find that 

it has blunted its competitive edge of 

being able to get close to its customers 

and thoroughly understand their needs. 

Being just like IBM, only a hundred 

times smaller, is like being a miniature 

elephant in an ecological niche that’s better 

suited to a fox. 

In organizations of every size, managers 

need to avoid letting IT push their 

people across the line that separates anytime/anywhere 

flexibility from all-thetime/everywhere 

expectation. When 

intermediate deadlines start being 

regarded as purely pro forma, and everyone 

knows that the real schedule 

squeezes three days on the timetable 

into a 24-hour all-nighter at the end of 

every product cycle, that’s a cultural 

problem that has to be solved by cultural 

forces. When managers treat 

crash-and-burn schedules as a sign of 

commitment and not as a problem to 

be fixed, that’s a cultural force that 

PETER_ COFFEE@ZIFFDAVIS.COM 

Sleep-deprived zombies aren’t the shock 

troops of enterprise success—whether 

they’re wired or not. 

pushes in the wrong direction. 

C. Northcote Parkinson was right: 

Work does expand to fill the time 

available. IT can make that available 

time appear to be “all the time.” I’m not 

saying that our e-mail systems need a 

curfew. I am saying that the human side 

of management includes making it clear 

that you want good hours, not just more 

of them. ´

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

SPARC workstation 

is going mobile 

By Jeffrey Burt 

Tadpole computer inc. 

is making good on its 

promise to extend beyond 

its high-end Unixbased 

desktops with a line of 

less expensive mobile computers. 

The Cupertino, Calif., company, 

whose primary customer 

base has been 

government 

agencies, is 

shipping 

the first of 

these products, 

a 64-bit 

Unix mobile 

workstation 

called the Spar- 

cle. 

The new notebook 

is binarycompatible 

with 

Sun Microsys- 

The 

Sparcle 

notebook has a 

fast chip and low price. 

tems Inc.’s SPARC chip technology 

and Solaris operating 

system. A high-end 

version offers a 650MHz 

SPARC IIi chip, 2GB of 

memory and an 80GB hard 

drive. It weighs in at 6.5 

pounds, offers up to 3 hours 

of battery life and comes with 

StarOffice productivity applications 

installed, said Tadpole 

officials. 

They said the Sparcle 

should not be viewed as 

just a notebook but more as 

a server with notebook capabilities 

that can run Java 

applications. In addition, a 

CPU-sharing technology lets 

users run tasks in a background 

mode via a wireless 

802.11b Wi-Fi network. 

The new laptop will be 

available in several models 

that range in price from about 

$3,000 to $6,000—about 

half that of Tadpole’s earlier 

least expensive notebook, the 

SPARCbook 5000. The average 

price of a Tadpole product 

until now was $25,000 

to $30,000, officials said. 

“The opportunity here is 

to leverage the technical 

piece and get a product out 

there to the market, and a big 

step in that is the price,” said 

Mark Johnston, president 

and CEO of Tadpole. 

Though Tadpole traditionally 

works in 

the Unix space, 

officials 

said the 

company 

will keep an 

eye on how Intel 

Corp.’s 64-bit 

Itanium chip and 

Advanced Micro 

Devices Inc.’s 64-bit Opteron 

processor develop and 

will consider them in the 

future. 

The Sparcle’s support for 

64-bit processing is a first for 

a mobile workstation, said 

Kate Sullivan, an analyst with 

International Data Corp., of 

Framingham, Mass. Others, 

including Dell Computer 

Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. 

and IBM, offer only 32-bit 

systems. As a result, Tadpole 

will find its customers 

among companies such as 

oil and gas firms that run 64bit 

Unix workstations and 

haven’t yet ported their work 

onto Linux or Windows, Sullivan 

said. 

Tadpole “will be trying for 

different customers,” Sullivan 

said. “Sixty-four-bit is a 

very special requirement.” ´ 

eWEEK � MAY 26, 2003 41

NEWS&ANALYSIS 

Cisco switching gears 

UPGRADES, COST CUTS 

KEY TO ITS STRATEGY 

By Paula Musich IN SAN JOSE, CALIF. 

Cisco systems inc.’s strategy 

for switching—which 

makes up 41 percent of 

the company’s revenues— 

includes a number of planned 

upgrades as well as efforts to 

streamline product development 

and reduce costs, according 

to company officials here. 

Most new developments 

focus on the high-end Catalyst 

6500 chassis switch, 

although many innovations 

trickle down to other switching 

platforms from there, 

according to Charlie Giancarlo, 

senior vice president 

and general manager of product 

development at Cisco. 

Cisco is focusing its innovation 

efforts on continued 

manageability improvements 

for this year and beyond— 

especially on centralized management 

functions that can be 

“pushed out” to remote sites, 

according to Andy Bechtolsheim, 


manager of Cisco’s Gigabit 

switching business unit. 

Most often with security 

functions, “there is a shortage 

of experts,” Bechtolsheim 

said. But Cisco, through its 

experience running a large 

global network, can “advise 

customers on how best to 

organize the security functions,” 

he said. 

Bechtolsheim acknowledged 

that Cisco is working 

on more global authentication 

systems that can better safeguard 

company secrets from 

internal threats. For such protection, 

a multilayer system is 

required to ensure the right 

people get access to appropriate 

information. 

In tackling configuration 

42 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 

management, which will 

become more complex as 

Cisco adds more switch functions, 

Bechtolsheim said 

Cisco’s goal is to automate 

setup, configuration and maintenance 

“as much as we can. 

We want to give a single person 

a view of the whole thing.” 

In switch architecture, Luca 

Cafiero, senior vice president 

and general manager 

of switching, voice and storage, 

outlined Cisco investments 

in high performance. 

Cafiero said that a new chip, 

code-named Sacramento, will 

contain 180 million transistors 

on a single chip—four 

times as many as that of the 

On tap at Cisco 

Pentium 4 chip at the same 

size. That is among 29 other 

application-specific integrated 

circuits in development at 

Cisco today, Cafiero said. 

Cisco’s new Catalyst 720 

Supervisor module delivers 

for the Catalyst 6500 chassis 

the ability to support 40G-bps 

throughput per slot today. 

Cafiero said he expects to be 

able to double that to 80G bps. 

The time frame for release 

of such capability is dependent 

on customer demand, 

he added. 

Cafiero, as an aside, said 

he does not expect to see 

Ethernet data rates increase 

by another factor of 10— 

breaking into 100G bps, but 

he does expect to see 40G bps 

in the next two years. ´ 

SPSS, SAS take predictive paths 

By Dennis Callaghan 

Data mining stalwarts spss inc. and sas 

Institute Inc. are each planning to add 

more predictive capabilities to their 

respective Web analytics software offerings. 

SPSS announced last week a product called 

Predictive Web Analytics, which will combine 

the Chicago-based company’s NetGenesis Web 

analysis software with its flagship Clementine 

data mining software. 

SAS, of Cary, N.C., is developing a bundled 

offering of its own, to be known as SAS Web 

Analytics. It is expected to be generally available 

by the second quarter of next year, after a 

limited test rollout in the first quarter. The application 

is expected to combine elements of 

five existing SAS products to enable predictive 

analysis of Web site visits, officials said. 

Most Web site analysis tools have usually 

focused on historical analysis of visitors’ activities 

at the site, such as page views, clickthroughs, 

and the sites users came from or went 

to. But predictive capabilities could take that 

analysis and build customer segmentation models 

that could build better sites and marketing 

campaigns, as well as e-mail marketing 

campaigns, to generate maximum response. 

SPSS’ Predictive Web Analytics will add 

Clementine’s data mining engine to 

NetGenesis Web analytics so that users will 

be able to detect patterns in large volumes 

� Manageability enhancements 

for the Catalyst 6500 

chassis 

� Sacramento chip to contain 

180 million transistors 

� Catalyst 720 Supervisor 

module for the Catalyst 

6500 to support 40G-bps 

throughput 

of Web data and predict the best way to 

serve customers via the Web, officials said. 

Clementine performs advanced predictive 

analysis on customer behavior data in the Net- 

Genesis eDataMart and reports the results of 

that analysis to the NetGenesis reporting environment. 

Users of Predictive Web Analytics will be 

able to segment site visitors based on their 

behavior; detect content and product affinities; 

identify the most significant paths taken 

through a Web site; and predict visitors’ 

propensity to purchase, view particular content 

or to churn, officials said. 

Predictive Web Analytics is available now, 

with pricing starting at $135,000 plus services. 

SAS, meanwhile, is developing a bundled 

solution for predictive Web analysis that will 

offer similar capabilities. While the company 

already delivers predictive Web analysis 

through its IntelliVisor hosted services for specific 

vertical industries such as pharmaceuticals 

and financial services, this bundled 

solution will add predictive capabilities to SAS’ 

WebHound Web analysis tool, officials said. 

Plans call for SAS Web Analytics to include 

technology from WebHound as well as SAS’ 

Enterprise Miner, Web Report Studio, Portal 

and Interaction Manager applications, although 

the exact product bundling has yet to 

be determined, officials said. ´

Cisco - TABPI

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