CIO Today

Brocade Execs Offer Look Under OpenScript Engine's Hood

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:27:17 -0500

Can customers predict the future? Brocade is suggesting the notion as it launches its latest switch innovations.

This week, Brocade rolled out software advancements to its Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of cloud-optimized delivery switches. Brocade's stated goal is to help customers gain greater application control and service scalability.

The latest iteration of Brocade's ServerIron ADX comes equipped with a new OpenScript engine, an open platform that sets the stage for innovation. That is where the "predicting the future" comes in. The OpenScript engine can intelligently predict the effect of a script on a network before the script is deployed into production.

"Basically, we ported the Perl programming language to the ADX application processor so that you can use APIs to control application delivery with a script," said Greg Hankins, a global solutions architect at Brocade. "This means you get all the Perl goodness that you know and love for writing custom scripts to read or write layer three to seven headers based on your particular application needs."

Customizing Services

Keith Stewart, director of product management at Brocade, stressed that OpenScript allows network operators to bring new services to market faster, and tailor them to the specific needs of their customers and business models.

"Unlike other closed and proprietary systems, Brocade OpenScript provides the scalability that network operators need, built on top of an open, standards-based Perl platform," Stewart said. "Brocade OpenScript gives operators the flexibility they need without locking them into a proprietary implementation."

Brocade OpenScript and Brocade ADX are key elements of Brocade's strategy for next-generation data centers, according to Stewart. He pointed out that Brocade is an active supporter of the Open Networking Foundation, and is building the enabling platforms for a world where applications and data can reside anywhere in the cloud.

IPv6 Improvements

IPv6 increases the pool of global IP addresses and simplifies...

Smartphones Overtake Computers and Tablets

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:58:03 -0500

Move over, computers and tablets. For the first time, annual worldwide shipments of smartphones are larger than PCs and tablets.

According to figures released Friday by industry research firm Canalys, there were more than 158 million smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter of last year, a whopping 57 percent increase over the same quarter in 2010. For the entire year, smartphones were up 63 percent, to 487.7 million units.

'Significant Milestone'

By contrast, the global client PC market grew 15 percent last year, to 414.6 million units. This includes a huge, 274 percent growth in tablets, which are now the fast-growing segment in the client PC category.

Chris Jones, Canalys vice president and principal analyst, said in a statement that this is a "significant milestone." Jones said that, within a few years, smartphones "have grown from being a niche product segment at the high end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition."

The milestone comes as a previous report from Canalys, released earlier this week, showed that tablets are now 22 percent of all PC shipments. Coupled with Friday's report on the growth of smartphones, it's clear that the center of mobile computing is now in smartphones and tablets.

The Canalys report said that, while decreasing price points have been a key driver of the smartphone growth, there also has been an "increasing consumer appetite" for using smartphones for Net browsing, content consumption and apps.

However, the era of smart phones being more popular than computers or tablets may be short-lived. Canalys said it expects smartphone growth to slow this year, as vendors begin to emphasize cost control and profitability.

As an example, the company noted that some vendors who have focused on the low end, such as Huawei, ZTE and LG, are now turning their attention to higher-level, pricier models that cost more,...

Mobile Phone Growth Slides In Fourth Quarter

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:59:52 -0500

Mobile phone shipments on a global basis reached 427.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 -- a tepid 6.1 percent rise from the year earlier period, IDC says.

The global handset market's single-digit growth in the seasonally strong fourth quarter shows that handset vendors are not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide, the firm's analysts said Thursday.

A surge in smartphone purchases led by Apple's iPhone 4S in the final three months of 2011 also caused feature phone shipments to decline faster than analysts had expected. Smartphone growth in Western Europe was not enough to offset the feature phones decline, despite successful product performances from Apple and Samsung.

With the exception of Apple, feature phones still account for a majority of unit sales at four of the five top handset vendors, said IDC Research Analyst Kevin Restivo.

"The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth," Restivo said. "Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since the third quarter of 2009 -- when the global economic recession was in full bloom."

Strong iPhone Customer Loyalty

Unit shipments of Apple's red-hot iPhone 4S reached a record 37 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, which propelled the company into the No. 3 slot in the global handset market overall. During last year as a whole, Apple shipped 93.2 million iPhones.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple is on track to ship well more than 100 million iPhones during 2012.

"China is becoming a key market for Apple this year, and we expect Apple's share to grow rapidly in 2012, despite countless copycat rivals," said Strategy Analytics Director Tom Kang.

Investment firm Piper Jaffray expects Apple to ship 134 million iPhone units during calendar year 2012.

"Despite the lack of...

AMD Makes Risky Move Toward 'Ambidextrous' Strategy

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:20:01 -0500

While not leaping into the arms of ARM, AMD is hinting it's less wedded to the traditional x86 architecture that is its history.

AMD calls its strategy "ambidextrous" and says it builds on the company's current strengths in x86 and graphics products while embracing other technology and intellectual property the company hopes will differentiate its products in a competitive market.

The Intel rival sees its future in HSA, or heterogeneous system architecture. AMD outlined its strategy at its Financial Analyst Day this week.

"AMD's strategy capitalizes on the convergence of technologies and devices that will define the next era of the industry," said Rory Read, president and CEO of AMD. "The trends around consumerization, the cloud and convergence will only grow stronger in the coming years."

Repositioning AMD

As Read sees it, AMD has a unique opportunity to take advantage of a key industry inflection point as executives continue the work they started last year to reposition the company. Read says the new strategy will "help AMD embrace the shifts occurring in the industry, marrying market needs with innovative technologies, and become a consistent growth engine."

A major part of the plan includes HSA, which promises software developers a way to program APUs by combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the graphics processing unit -- all while offering high-bandwidth access to memory at low power. AMD is working to make HSA an open industry standard for the developer community.

"The battle plan that Read is articulating isn't to go head-to-head with Intel. He's suggesting going around Intel," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, who attended AMD's Financial Analyst Day. "Read was talking about going where the market was going, using whatever technologies they have access to in order to get there, including both x86 and ARM. You had to read between...

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Reportedly Will Share Code

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:14:00 -0500

With Windows 8 moving toward release later this year, providing an integrated operating system for laptops, desktops and tablets, new details are beginning to emerge about Microsoft's plans for its next phone OS. Recent reports point to the ways in which Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo, will advance the company's mobile platform and tie in with the tablet and computer OS.

The online reports began appearing this week. They build on a leaked video of a Microsoft phone executive, Joe Belfiore, which reportedly had been intended only for the eyes of Nokia executives, as well as various postings and hints by Microsoft.

Web Browsing, NFC, BitLocker

According to the reports, the Apollo OS will provide support for multi-core processors, four different screen resolutions, removable microSD cards, wireless e-commerce, and near-field communication, which allows tap-to-share functionality that will work with other phones, computers and tablets.

From the perspective of user interface and application development, the interfaces between Windows 8 and Apollo are expected to be similar, and Phone 8 is expected to reuse the kernel, network stacks, security and multimedia coding of Windows 8. As a result, applications developed for Windows 8 could potentially run, with relatively little modification, on Apollo phones.

To speed up Web browsing, Apollo will also reportedly use proxy servers that compress and deliver pages to the Internet Explorer 10 browser on the phone, a la the Opera browser. The reports also indicate that a revised Skype, now owned by Microsoft, will be integrated with Apollo, there will be automatic Wi-Fi connectivity, and Microsoft's 128-bit BitLocker will be used for full disk encryption, which is expected to appeal to businesses. Support for SkyDrive will allow data to be shared among Windows 8/Phone 8 devices.

Apollo's release schedule has not yet been announced, but it is expected to occur sometime after the coming...

Google's Bouncer Searches for Misbehaving Android Apps

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:01:42 -0500

Looking to bolster confidence in the security of its fast-growing market for mobile applications, Google is posting a bouncer at the door.

The service analyzes new applications in the Android Market as well as those already posted, and even developer accounts, looking for known malware, spyware and trojans.

Google's Bouncer also looks for "behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving," according to a post on Google's mobile blog Thursday announcing the service.

The service develops a baseline of previously analyzed apps and compares it with new ones for signs of trouble.

"We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior," writes Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice president of engineering for Google's Android division.

And Stay Out!

Bouncer will also scrutinize new developer accounts to make sure those who are tossed as repeat offenders do not come back.

Bouncer works in addition to existing Android tools such as sandboxing, which builds virtual walls between applications and other software on the device so malware can't access data; permissions, which scrutinizes the capabilities of apps to help users make decisions; and malware removal tools that can remotely scrub intruders from a phone or tablet.

Still, the Android Market's growth -- it topped 11 billion downloads -- has made it a top source of malware. Juniper Networks in November announced that its Global Threat Center believes the easy process for posting apps led to a 472 percent increase in malware samples since the previous July.

"These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications," wrote Juniper on its threat center blog. Lack of sufficient screening means poorly defined, unscreened apps will only be removed if malware is reported or detected by...

Mozilla's Firefox 10 Targets Businesses, Developers

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:15:28 -0500

Mozilla has unleashed a new Firefox 10 browser that marks the organization's first implementation of a new schedule that will give businesses and their vendors enough time to certify each new Firefox release while maintaining a high level of Web security.

Many enterprises, SMBs, academic institutions and government agencies have found it difficult to deploy Firefox to their users in a managed environment. To address their concerns, Firefox 10 will be Mozilla's first extended support release, or ESR.

Though future ESRs for business environments will occur at 42-week intervals, enterprises and other organizations will continue to receive security updates in the interim -- but without Mozilla making any other changes to the Web or its Firefox add-ons platform.

The new ESR schedule is key for enterprise adoption, said Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC.

"Mozilla does not have a big base of enterprise customers at this point, but does have a few who have found rapid, forced updates a problem," Hilwa said in an e-mail Thursday. "This should help these customers and also potentially win over others."

Keeping Developers in the Fold

Thursday's release of Firefox 10 comes at a time when the upward trend for Google's Chrome browser on desktop PCs and laptops has come to a halt, according to Net Applications. The bad news for Mozilla is that Internet Explorer's market share rose 1.1 percent last month to 53 percent, while Firefox slipped one percentage point to 20.9 percent. Google's Chrome declined 0.17 percent to 18.9 percent of the browser market.

Going forward, however, Mozilla will be able to distinguish itself by offering "a more customized browser that supports a broader range of operating systems -- and one that can help enterprises protect their privacy," Hilwa said. "I think this is a win for Mozilla, which stands to...

Internet Breeds Political Incivility, Threats

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:39:38 -0500

As campaign rhetoric boils and Americans on both sides of the political divide hurl insults, law enforcement officials are watching social media carefully for threats or signs of violence.

The Secret Service says political incivility is nothing new, but the Internet is making more of the venom public.

"Historically, it's the same issues we've always had and the same things people are upset about," Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan said. "There are just a lot more venues for people to put it out there, including the Internet."

Last week, a group of Arizona men, including a Peoria, Ariz., police sergeant, triggered a federal investigation when they appeared in a photo posted on Facebook with weapons and what appears to be a bullet-riddled image of President Obama. The sergeant has been removed from patrol and assigned to desk duties pending an internal investigation.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service assigned protection to Mitt Romney, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Republican contender Herman Cain, who has dropped out of the race, had also received federal protection.

The Secret Service assesses every potential threat, or what Sullivan calls "inappropriate interest," to determine whether someone is simply mouthing off or intends to act. The agency won't say how many threats it fields. "We are very aggressive in running it down," Sullivan said.

The agency established an Internet threat desk in 2000, spokesman Ed Donovan said. "Logic dictates we receive more information to sift through and look at, but it doesn't necessarily translate to more cases," he said.

Donald Tucker, a Phoenix private investigator who served as a Secret Service agent for 25 years, says he's stunned by the level of incivility and disrespect. He said he fears the nasty rhetoric could trigger violence.

"I have never seen any political campaign with the type of hatred, animosity and language directed not only...

Investors May Feel Unfriended by Facebook IPO

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:41:38 -0500

Investors wanting to get in on the Facebook IPO might soon find out what it feels like to get "unfriended."

When it comes to the initial public offering of Facebook, the world's largest social network, there's ironically very little for the masses. Facebook's IPO, as with most IPOs, will only be sold at the offering price to privileged investors. Most regular investors who want a piece of the company will have to wait until the shares start to trade on the stock market, possibly at a price much higher than at which they were offered to initial investors.

Facebook is following the traditional investment banking model for IPOs, which typically limits the number of individual investors who can get access at the IPO price. How it works:

The company will first file the prospectus, or S-1, a document that explains the details of the business and IPO. As regulators review the S-1, Facebook will then meet with large investors such as mutual funds and pension funds.

When it comes time for the shares to be sold, they're first offered to these large mutual funds and pension funds able to buy the largest amounts of stock. Meanwhile, the major investment banks leading the deal, specifically Morgan Stanley, may allow some of their best customers, typically high-net-worth individuals, to buy shares at the IPO price, says Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida.

Once the stock starts to trade on the exchange, those privileged investors may then sell into the open market, where all investors may compete to buy the shares. Most likely, if demand is as strong as expected, the share price may jump, forcing regular investors to pay up for the shares.

There has been some effort by discount brokerage firms to offer IPO shares to customers. Fidelity, for instance, has offered more...

Challenge to Schools: Embracing Digital Textbooks

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:45:02 -0500

Are hardbound textbooks going the way of slide rules and typewriters in schools? Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years. The Obama administration's push comes two weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school books for use on its iPad tablet.

Digital books are viewed as a way to provide interactive learning, potentially save money and get updated material faster to students.

Digital learning environments have been embraced in Florida, Idaho, Utah, and California, as well as in individual schools and districts such as Joplin, Mo., where laptops replaced textbooks destroyed in a tornado. But many schools lack the broadband capacity or the computers or tablets to adopt the technology, and finding the money to go completely digital is difficult for many schools in tough economic times. And, in some places, adopting new textbooks is an arduous process.

At a time when technology has transformed how people interact and even led to social uprisings in the Middle East, education has too often lagged, Duncan said.

"Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it's a very simple choice," Duncan said in an interview.

Tied to Wednesday's announcement at a digital town hall was the government's release of a 67-page "playbook" to schools that promotes the use of digital textbooks and offers guidance. The administration hopes that dollars spent on traditional textbooks can instead go toward...

Microsoft Cuts About 200 Marketing Employees

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:51:08 -0500

Microsoft Corp. said it laid off some of its marketing staff on Wednesday as part of an effort to restructure its operations.

The company did not specify how many of its 92,000 employees were let go, but a person familiar with the software maker's strategy said about 200 people lost their jobs.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the restructuring effort.

In a statement, the Redmond, Washington-based company said it was taking steps to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its marketing operations.

"Some of these changes involved the reduction of a small percentage of marketing positions to better align our resources with our business needs and clarify roles across the marketing function," the company said.

Last month, Microsoft posted flat earnings for the final quarter of 2011 and improved sales of servers, Xbox games and its Office productivity software. Revenue rose 5 percent.

The company is gearing up to release a slate of new products this year, including phones, PCs and Windows 8, an operating system that should work similarly over PCs and tablet computers. A beta version of the software is due out later this month.

Shares gained 36 cents to $29.89 in regular trading. The stock added 6 cents to $29.95 in extended trading.

Microsoft Slams Google User Data Policy in New Ads

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:51:56 -0500

Microsoft Corp. slammed search rival Google Inc. with full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, saying that recent changes at Google that allow it to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers.

Google has touted the overhaul it announced last week as a simplification of detailed but obtuse policies and a way to provide a better user experience.

Microsoft offered up its own Web-based alternatives, saying for instance that users of its free email service, Hotmail, don't have to worry about the content of their emails being used to help target ads.

The attack ads appeared in newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

"Every data point Google collects and connects to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser," Microsoft says in the ad.

In response, Google published a blog post in which it refuted what it called "myths" about its new privacy policy, saying, "Our privacy controls have not changed. Period."

The company does not dispute that it serves up ads based on words in private emails written by users of Gmail, but says such scanning is automated and is similar to how many email providers filter out spam. It has operated that way since Gmail's introduction in 2004.

Both companies offer several controls to prevent advertisers from tracking users' online activity.

Online expert Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Web site Search Engine Land, said that Google's privacy policy simplification has turned into a public relations "nightmare," but only because it again focused attention on the kind of data that Google has collected for years.

He said Microsoft is in no position to point fingers, since it also collects a lot of user data from its search engine, Bing, and will adjust search results based...

Zuckerberg Describes 'The Hacker Way' at Facebook

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:42:30 -0500

In Facebook's regulatory filing for an initial public offering of stock, CEO Mark Zuckerberg included a letter to potential investors about the company's thinking. He described it as a social mission to make the world more open and connected. He also discussed Facebook's approach to culture and management in Wednesday's letter:

"As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

"The word `hacker' has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

"The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it -- often in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo.

"Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words `Done is better than perfect' painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

"Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of...