Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Wednesday 31 January 2007, 12:13 PM
When Goliath manipulated Goliath
Get this. This is a short chronology of how a rather large software company can influence one of the largest government administrations in the world. I repeat the timeline of events without comment.
Nov 20, 2006 Team of respected academics from the United Nations University in Maastricht, paid by the European Commission, prepares report praising the deployment of open source software. Open source software produces a lower total cost of ownership in 'almost all cases', say the authors.
Jan 12, 2007 European Commission publishes the report on its own site.
Jan 15, 2007 We run an article saying the European Commission has published the report, and we describe some of the contents.
Jan 18, 2007 Microsoft-funded organisation, the Initiative for Software Choice, which is headed by CompTIA, writes to the Commission asking it to address the reporting of the issue in the "international press".
Jan 25, 2007 CompTIA calls us to ask us to distance the European Commission from the report. CompTIA says the Commission is concerned about the article. We decline to react to the lobbying to change the article on the grounds that our article is correct and unbiased.
Jan 30, 2007 The Commission calls us, drawing attention to our article. It keenly stresses its independence and how it is not (apparently) now favouring open source software.
Nice chain of events. The Commission told us it's not being pressurised by anyone. We'll leave it up to readers to make up their own mind.
Friday 26 January 2007, 6:07 PM
Massaging the figures
One of my pet hates is massaged statistics. Now you might think that with a degree in Mathematics I might be fond of statistical manipulation.
But here my journalistic side digs in. Accurate statistics can be very useful. Manipulated, or massaged, stats are not.
So it is with a slightly suspicious angle that I read Microsoft's run of four Vista press releases. 'Vista expected to generate $2billion in new revenue for Massachusetts IT industry in 2007' claimed one, boldly. A similar predicted increase followed in another release about New Jersey. Then it was $4bn of new revenue for Florida. And $7bn for New York.
How much? How on earth did IDC, the analyst firm behind the research, come up with these figures?
"Massachusetts' IT industry will begin seeing considerable increases in new jobs and revenue," IDC's work finds.
"18% of total IT employment related to Vista," screams another bulletpoint.
This one makes me laugh. "Total Windows-related employment in Massachusetts is expected to jump by more than 5,000 jobs."
Please.
I've heard of the economic multiplier effect, and of course some folks will buy Vista. But if the US economy benefits by $2bn+ PER STATE, I will eat my hat.
And I reckon my headwear will be firmly intact right through 2007.
Thursday 25 January 2007, 6:04 PM
Just how successful is the MS/Novell pact?
I'm getting cold feet about Microsoft's latest so-called Linux victory. The software giant said on Monday that Walmart, the supermarket giant, was migrating from RedHat Linux across to a combination of MS/Novell software.
It was the fourth deal Microsoft has shouted about since it started doing business with Novell in the autumn, following wins with Credit Suisse, AIG and Deutsche Bank.
But this 'win' doesn't feel quite right. Walmart owns Asda in the UK, and, what with Walmart and Microsoft being global companies, it only seemed right to want to know how Asda were going to start utilising Novell open source infrastructure.
Both myself and Andy McCue at our sister site Silicon.com" have been on the case for more information. But we've both been met by a stony silence.
Microsoft's UK publicists knew little of how Asda would benefit. When pushed, they said they couldn't answer my questions.
Asda said I'd need to speak to their US parent. Walmart wouldn't speak to me.
Usually companies jump at the chance of publicising their partnerships, so this stony silence is starting to concern me.
Is Walmart really getting many benefits from Microsoft/Novell? Or is it all just one big publicity stunt?
It's just a bit ironic that Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner is a former vice president of Walmart.
Thursday 18 January 2007, 7:04 PM
Building security to the Maxx
Today I've been on the T.K.Maxx story, another case of a large retailer falling victim to credit card theft. In case you missed it, the cut-price clothes chain's parent company, TJX, has yielded to a hacker, who has run off with its customers' credit card numbers.
Now I'm not implying that cut-price retailers have cut-price security, but I guess targets with lesser IT budgets would tend to be easier to steal information from. To its credit TJX moved quickly to bring in the security experts to shore up its defences.
But the case does highlight some interesting questions about how customers' financial data should be stored. Should the retailer hold on to the information? What should they hold on to? How long should they hold on to it for?
Interestingly, there seem to be standards on the way which will help to clarify some of the answers to these questions. Visa, Mastercard and American Express, among others, have set up the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, which has developed the PCI Data Security Standard, containing some pretty well-defined security practices for organisations that hold credit card information.
I don't think for one moment that even if all retailers adopted best practice security that we'd see the end to credit card data theft, but surely it would be a very positive step in the right direction.
Wednesday 17 January 2007, 12:37 PM
Microsoft, Nortel line up today with Unified Alliance
Microsoft will today launch a partnership with Nortel to develop unified communications.
The two companies are waiting until late this afternoon to announce a joint development effort which will be called the Innovative Communications Alliance.
Unified comms, in case you've avoided the buzzword for the last 18 months, means bringing together desktop and PBX functionality to make it easier for users to make voice and video calls at their desk, and switch between such calls.
The two companies have worked together for some time, integrating Nortel's Multimedia Communications Server with Microsoft Live Communications Server, spawning such applications as click-to-call and presence.
Microsoft has so far not exclusively done this with Nortel; indeed it has a significant relationship with Cisco concerning the integration of Call Manager, as well as tie-ups with all the other major PBX vendors.
So it will be interesting to see whether there is a change in strategy towards favouring Nortel when the Alliance is launched this afternoon.
The companies are keeping schtum on the detail until then, but we do know that both chief executives - Ballmer and Zafirovski - are involved, so it should be significant. See our news pages for the full story as it happens.
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