IT PRO - Today

Citrix Synergy 2013: The time is now for IT to become the hero, claims Citrix

maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:52:02 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Maggie Holland

IT departments can now really make a positive difference rather than just saying no, according to Citrix.

Now is the time for those working in IT to make a difference and turn around their fortunes and those of their organisation in the process.

So claims Citrix CEO Mark Templeton who used the company’s Citrix Synergy conference in LA this week to detail how tech departments need to become service aggregators rather than barriers.

We think that’s the new role of IT. To be the IT fiduciary, securing data and being the service provider that delivers the kind of mobile experience that makes people more productive.

Unveiling a slew of announcements focused on the maximising workforce productivity through mobility – notably the launch of XenDesktop 7 and MDM solution XenMobile Enterprise – Templeton used the phrase ‘the power of any’ to highlight how a multi-platform focus can benefit businesses.

“This idea of any has always been important. It’s always been critically important to what we believe and what we stand for. We think the power of any is of great value to you. So you can make the bets you want and not the bets you don’t want to make. You can focus on aggregating services, delivering them and being a next-generation service provider that’s driving the business agenda and creating business impact,” Templeton told conference attendees.

“It allows people to work anywhere and it allows services to be made anywhere. We think that’s the new role of IT. To be the IT fiduciary, securing data and being the service provider that delivers the kind of mobile experience that makes people more productive and allows them to off-shore projects, onboard people quickly, and [carry out] integrations and reorganisations and restructures quickly. It allows you to redesign your workplace and move people around because they’re not hard-coded to places and devices. And to easily plug in all the services you need to make all that happen, whether you make them in your own datacentre or they’re made by third parties, like the IaaS or PaaS you buy from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, VMware or some of our fantastic cloud service providers running our platform.”

Citrix CMO Steve Daheb echoed the Citrix ethos around empowering tech departments to become a real catalyst for change, suggesting the emergence of shadow IT could be seen as an opportunity more than anything else.

“All of a sudden it really is IT-as-a-service. IT has to get ahead of that curve pretty quickly and that helps as with shadow IT it gets you outside of governance and you’ve got different groups using different thing. It’s dangerous,” Daheb said.

“It’s reimaging that role and what IT becomes. It’s cool for IT as they have been the department of no for a while and they can now become the department of yes. IT becomes the great enabler. How do they become the hero instead of the guy always telling you no?”

Templeton concluded his keynote speech at the event with somewhat of a rallying call to those working in the IT industry. This was against the backdrop of a video playing showcasing a children’s hospital surgeon to highlight the power of technology to touch every part of our work and personal lives for the better.

“This is our vision: giving you the power of any, extending the power of any and giving you an experience that’s really special. It’s like the moment of weightlessness at the top of a trampoline jump where it feels like anything is possible. That experience is something you can create for the people you serve and help them work better,” Templeton said.

“When people work better, I think they live better. When you put all this together it creates really special outcomes and impacts that, above everything, you can be proud of, sleep well and brag about, smile about and feel really good. It really matters for people who really care about what they do.”

Strategy

Citrix

Citrix Synergy

IT strategy

BBC cans tapeless Digital Media Initiative

CarolineD — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:42:53 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Rene Millman

Auntie admits to wasting nearly £100 million on failed digital content management system.

The BBC has scrapped its £98.4 million Digital Media Initiative (DMI) and suspended its chief technology officer on full pay.

The project was intended to make it easier for staff to find and retrieve video footage from their computers and was supposed to save the corporation over £95 million.

I have serious concerns about how we managed this project

However the initiative did not deliver on its promise after a review found that 'its ambitions had not been met' and director general Tony Hall took the decision to halt the project with immediate effect.

The waste is the equivalent of almost 660,000 licence fees.

"The DMI project has wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money and I saw no reason to allow that to continue which is why I have closed it," said Hall.

"I have serious concerns about how we managed this project and the review that has been set up is designed to find out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned."

Hall said that ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure. "It does not mean we should not attempt them, but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here."

In a letter to Margaret Hodge, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the BBC Trust's Anthony Fry said DMI had generated "little or no assets".

"It is of utmost concern to us that a project which had already failed to deliver value for money in its early stages has now spent so much more of licence fee payers' money," he said.

DMI was started in 2004 and outsourced to Siemens, however the company failed to deliver the project and it was then brought back in-house. An internal review was set up in October 2012 after the BBC Trust expressed serious concerns.

Following the DMI debacle, John Linwood, the BBC's chief technology officer, has been suspended. The corporation's technology controller Peter Coles will take over as acting chief technology officer.

A commercial alternative will now replaced the doomed IT system, while the only part of the system to go live, the Fabric archive database, will continue to be used by the BBC.

content management system

database

Zeus resurfaces to steal credit card details

CarolineD — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:00:53 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Rene Millman

Cybercriminals resurrect old malware to snaffle online credentials.

The Zeus malware has re-emerged and is being used by criminals to steal financial information, according to IT security company Trend Micro.

The firm claims the malware has re-appeared amidst a spike in numbers of active threats in the wild and has predicted that this year will be characterised by slightly modified old threats resurfacing, with new features added in order to avoid detection and infect more systems.

Peddling stolen banking information is a lucrative business in the underground market

The Zeus or ZBOT variants began to increase from the beginning of February, according to Trend Micro's Jay Yaneza.

"ZBOTvariants surged in the beginning of February and continued to be active up to this month. It even peaked during the middle of May 2013. The malware is designed to steal online credentials from users, which can be banking information or other personally identifiable information (PII)," said Yaneza in a blog post.

Yaneza warned that this variant of the Zeus malware was now more dangerous as it uses advanced techniques to avoid detection by security systems.

"ZBOTmalware of this generation are found to be mostly either Citadel or GameOver variants. Unlike earlier versions, the mutex name is randomly generated," said Yaneza.

"Both variants send DNS queries to randomised domain names. The difference in GameOver variant is that it opens a random UDP port and sends encrypted packets before sending DNS queries to randomised domain names. Zbot malware connects to a remote site to download its encrypted configuration file."

He said that these configuration files contain banks and other financial institutions that ZBOTs monitor in browsers.

"Since configuration files are downloaded from remote sites, the contents of these files may change any time. Malicious actors can change the list of sites they want to monitor on the affected system."

The firm said that there are ways to stop the Zeus malware in its tracks.

"There are several avenues for detecting ZBOT variants. First, as the malware tries to write to the registry ‘Userinit' entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. Secondly, detecting the call-back routine to the remote site upon execution, as it acquires its configuration file," he said.

Yaneza said that old threats like ZBOT can always make a comeback because cybercriminals profit from these. "Peddling stolen banking and other personal information from users is a lucrative business in the underground market," he said. "It is important to be careful in opening email messages or clicking links. Bookmark trusted sites and avoid visiting unknown ones."

Dell Latitude 6430u review

KhidrS — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:52:12 PDT

Reviews 24 May, 2013 Mike Jennings

The toughest Ultrabook on the market. But has Dell had to sacrifice performance?

Price:

£769 (£923 inc VAT)

Pros:

Military-grade design; Good performance; Quick SSD; Decent battery life; Lengthy warranty; Customisable

Cons:

Poor quality, low-resolution screen; A little chunky and heavy for an Ultrabook

Verdict:

With military grade design and excellent battery life, the 6430u will satisfy the need of most business users. The only weakness is the screen. The low-quality means it's not ideal for graphical work.

Intel has pumped a colossal amount of cash into consumer Ultrabooks, but business editions are hard to find. Dell has finally launched its first corporate Ultrabook, and the Latitude 6430u look like it's worth the wait.

Military standard

The Latitude 6430u is tougher than any Ultrabook because it’s passed the MIL-STD-810: a set of tests that adhere to the United States Military Standard. They’re designed to simulate a broad range of environmental conditions – and make sure products can withstand extreme. Dell has dialled down onto the “G” category, which subjects new products to a battery of laboratory tests.

The Latitude has undergone passed 16 tests and is certified to withstand extreme altitudes, high/low temperatures, humidity, dusty locations and more than its fair share of drops, shocks and vibrations.

Dell’s laboratory testing is one thing, but we’re pleased to report that the Latitude lives up to its billing in real-world use. It’s a tough piece of kit, with barely any give in either the base or the lid – no matter how much we flexed. There are neat touches throughout; the display is inset from the bezel so the keyboard isn’t damaged, and the metallic borders around the device are made from Magnesium alloy.

The military-standard design also make the Latitude practical. The keyboard is a standard Scrabble-tile unit, and it’s backlit for low-light visibility. The concave keys are comfortable with a crisp, light action, and there’s a Lenovo-style trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard that’s responsive and accurate. The traditional touchpad is sandwiched between two pairs of mouse buttons, and they’re similarly light to the touch. The touchpad works with all of Windows 8’s edge-swipe gestures.

There’s a downside to all of the practical design: this isn’t pretty device. It’s made from a selection of matte black panels, with those Magnesium bands the only aesthetic touch, and there’s no room for finery. The 22mm-thick Dell is chunkier than most Ultrabooks, and its 1.6kg weight puts it into the top tier of these slimline laptops.

Core i5 power

The Core i5-3427U is the chip of choice for Ultrabooks. It’s a 1.8GHz part that sits towards the top of Intel’s low-power Ivy Bridge range, and it’s got a decent specification: two cores, a maximum Turbo Boost speed of 2.8GHz, and the HD Graphics 4000 integrated GPU.

It’s combined here with 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128GB PM830 SSD, and it returned an application benchmark score of 0.69 – as good as it gets for this generation of Ultrabook. It’s worth mentioning that SSD, which is blazingly quick – it scored 459MB/sec and 231MB/sec in the AS SSD sequential read and write tests. The end result is a system the boots and loads swiftly and shows no hint of struggle until it’s asked to run intensive workplace software.

The nippy specification is assisted by a capable specification. Intel vPro aids office manageability, and Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 4 handle connectivity. TPM 1.2 provides a little added security, and a reasonable selection of ports and sockets is scattered around the Dell’s borders: three USB 3 ports, an eSATA connection, SD card reader and both S-DUB and HDMI display outputs. There’s a physical Wi-Fi switch on the side of the machine.

The six-cell battery puts in a good shift. It lasted for 10hrs 51mins in our light-use benchmark, which browses web pages with wireless turned off and the screen calibrated to a brightness level of 75cd/m2. That’s twice the lifespan of the Microsoft Surface Pro, but the Dell Latitude 10 tablet, with its extended and replaceable battery.

If there’s one disappointment, it’s the 14in screen. We like the matte anti-glare finish, and the resolution of 1,600 x 900 is enough to make the panel feel pin-sharp. The brightness level of 344cd/m2 is good, too, and ensures the panel will remain legible under bright office lights. The big problem, though, is poor image quality. The measured contrast ratio of 191:1 means the colour gamut is narrow, and black levels aren’t deep at all – the whole screen looks lifeless. The average Delta E of 10.3 means that colour accuracy is wide of the mark, too. It's fine for general work, but this panel isn't cut out for graphical tasks.

Upgrades

The Latitude can be customised with an extensive selection of different components. Trading up to a 2.1GHz Core i7-3687U processor costs an extra £54. An extra £49 doubles the RAM, and paying a whopping £147 sees 16GB of memory crammed into the machine. A 256GB SSD costs a further £125, and fitting a self-encrypting 256GB SSD adds £244 to the price.

A Dell Wireless 5630 card adds 3G, and paying £68 extra sees the chip fitted alongside an O2 SIM card. A fingerprint reader costs a meagre £4, and free downgrades to various versions of Windows 7 are also available. The 1,600 x 900 costs an additional £32.

Most of these changes add cost, but a cheaper Latitude 6430u is also available. The entry-level model costs £699 and drops down to a slower Core i3 chip rather than the Core i5 model installed in our review sample.

Support

The Latitude is packed with a generous three-year warranty out of the box, but various options improve this deal. The same deal for five years costs £55 extra, and adding ProSupport and on-site servicing for three or five years costs £91 or £200 respectively. Other available services include accidental damage protection, data recovery, system tracking and anti-theft options.

Specifications:

OS: Windows 8 64-bit
Processor: 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3427U
RAM: 4GB DDR3
Storage: 128GB SSD
Screen: 14in 1,600 x 900
Connectivity: Dual-band 802.11n WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: 2 x USB 3,eSATA, HDMI, D-SUB, SD card slot, audio jack
Dimensions: 338 x 230 x 22mm (WDH)
Weight: 1.6kg/2.1kg
Warranty: 3yr RTB warranty

Key Specs:

Laptops

Dell

latitude

Google engineer slams Microsoft over vulnerability disclosure handling

CarolineD — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:49:23 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Rene Millman

Microsoft confirms it's looking into flaw that could allow hackers additional privileges on target computers.

A security researcher working for Google has accused Microsoft of treating external bug hunters with "great hostility".

Google's Tavis Ormandy posted information about a security flaw in Windows late last week on a public web site. The vulnerability is in the Windows kernel driver, Win32k.sys. The exploit could allow hackers to carry out denial-of-service attacks of elevate privileges in the OS. However, the vulnerability cannot be exploited remotely from malware infected websites.

We have not detected any attacks against this issue, but will take appropriate action to protect our customers

In a posting on the Full Disclosure section of Seclists.org, Ormandy said there was a “pretty obvious bug” in Windows, which he first reported in March.

"I don't have much free time to work on silly Microsoft code, so I'm looking for ideas on how to fix the final obstacle for exploitation," he said.

In an advisory, IT security company Secunia said that the vulnerability is "caused due to an error within 'win32k.sys' when processing certain objects and can be exploited to cause a crash or execute arbitrary code with the kernel privilege."

“The vulnerability is confirmed on a fully patched Windows 7 x86 Professional (win32k.sys version 6.1.7601.18126) and reported on Windows 8. Other versions may also be affected.”

But Ormandy said that Microsoft did not treat security researchers with respect. He said in his personal blog that "Microsoft treats vulnerability researchers with great hostility, and are often very difficult to work with. I would advise only speaking to them under a pseudonym, using Tor and anonymous email to protect yourself."

Microsoft failed to respond to Ormandy's jibes but did acknowledge the flaw.

"We are aware of an issue affecting Microsoft Windows and are investigating. We have not detected any attacks against this issue, but will take appropriate action to protect our customers,” said Dustin Childs, group manager at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing.

Microsoft did not disclose whether it had been aware of the flaw before it appeared on the Full Disclosure website or when a patch would be available.

In a second posting, Ormandy provided a demonstration of code that could exploit the bug.

"I have a working exploit that grants SYSTEM on all currently supported versions of Windows," said Ormandy. "Code is available on request to students from reputable schools."

Security

Hacking

Microsoft

critical vulnerability

Google

flaw

Google in bidding war with Facebook over Waze

CarolineD — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:11:50 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Rene Millman

Search giant considering purchase of social navigation company.

Google is said to be considering a bid for social navigation firm Waze. Any attempt at a deal could bring the search giant into a bidding war with Facebook, which is said to be in advanced talks with the Israeli company.

Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg reporters that a deal was possible. Waze is thought to be courting a number of different companies and is said to be putting a price tag on itself of $1 billion (£662 million).

Google could integrate Waze into its own mapping software and take out a competitive threat

Waze spokesperson Julie Mossler said the firm does not comment on rumors or speculation.

Waze may also stay in private hands instead by raising another round of venture capital. In 2011, Waze managed to successfully raise $30 million (£19.86 million) in a funding round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Horizons Ventures Hong Kong. Microsoft is also said to be an investor, as is Magma Venture Partners, Vertex Venture Capital and BlueRun Ventures.

The firm provides mapping and navigation apps on mobile devices that use information from other users to improve driving directions. The service currently boasts around 40 million users and was set up in 2007.

Facebook was thought to be lining up a possible purchase of the firm. It could integrate its social network into the navigation service it much the same way it does through its partnership with music streaming service Spotify. It has been suggested that the leak of the original interest by Facebook in the company was done to provoke interest from other firms in Waze, such as Google, and start a bidding war.

However, Google could integrate the tool into its own mapping software and take out what could be perceived as a competitive threat. According to sources, Apple is not taking part in any discussions over the firm, despite false rumours in January that it too was interested in buying to company in a bid to boost its unloved mapping efforts.

Microsoft did not violate Google patent, says ITC

JaneMc — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:10:39 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Reuters

Xbox does not infringe Moterola Mobility patents, commission rules.

Microsoft won a round in a complex patent war on Thursday when the International Trade Commission (ITC) said the company's popular Xbox entertainment system did not violate a patent owned by Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility.

If the ITC had found that Microsoft infringed, it could have barred the Xbox from being imported into the United States.

This is a win for Xbox customers

The fight over the Xbox is related to a larger smartphone patent war between Apple, Microsoft and the mobile phone makers who use Google's Android software, including Motorola Mobility.

Motorola Mobility originally accused Microsoft of infringing upon five patents when it filed its complaint in 2010. Four were dropped in ensuing months, leaving just one - a patent which allows devices to communicate wirelessly over short distances.

"This is a win for Xbox customers and confirms our view that Google had no grounds to block our products," David Howard, a Microsoft deputy general counsel, said in a statement.

Motorola was "disappointed with this decision" and is evaluating its options, a company spokesman said in a statement.

Technology companies have spent billions of dollars to buy patent portfolios, and still more money litigating patent cases around the world.

The Xbox case has seen many twists and turns since it was filed in late 2010.

In April 2012, ITC Judge David Shaw said in a preliminary decision that Microsoft infringed four patents and did not infringe on a fifth. But instead of deciding the case, as is usual, in June 2012, the trade panel sent the case back to the judge for reconsideration.

In January, following an antitrust settlement with federal regulators, Google asked a trade panel to drop two patents from the complaint because they were essential to a standard. These types of patents ensure interoperability and get special treatment.

Google had promised the Federal Trade Commission that it would no longer request sales bans based on the infringement of standard essential patents.

By that time, just one patent remained. In March, an ITC judge said that Microsoft did not infringe that technology and recommended that the case be terminated. The full ITC followed that recommendation on Thursday.

The case is at the International Trade Commission, No. 337-752.

Apple e-book price fixing case may go in favour of US, says judge

JaneMc — Fri, 24 May 2013 01:01:09 PDT

News 24 May, 2013 Reuters

District judge makes comments more than one week ahead of trial start.

In an unusual move before a trial, a federal judge expressed a tentative view that the US Justice Department will be able to show evidence that Apple engaged in a conspiracy with publishers to increase e-book prices.

US district dudge Denise Cote, who is set to oversee a trial on June 3, gave her view during a pretrial hearing on Thursday.

We look forward to proving that Apple did not conspire to fix price

While she stressed that the view was not final and that she had read only some of the evidence so far, her comments could add to pressure on Apple to settle the lawsuit, in which the Justice Department accuses the company and five publishers of conspiring to fix e-book prices.

"I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that," Cote said.

Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Apple, said in a statement, "We strongly disagree with the court's preliminary statements about the case today."

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Apple is the sole defendant remaining after litigation was settled by five publishers - Pearson's Penguin Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, CBS's Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and MacMillan.

Thursday's hearing had largely focused on pretrial matters and motions, such as which expert witnesses could testify and how long the trial would last.

Cote, who is hearing the case without a jury, said at the start of the proceedings that she was working on a draft of a written decision that she would expand and publish after the trial.

Toward the end of the hearing, Mark Ryan, a lawyer with the Justice Department, asked if she would be able to share any of her thoughts on the case so far.

Cote then gave what she called her "tentative view," which she said was based largely on material submitted as evidence - emails and correspondence that took place over a six-week period between December 2009 and January 2010.

She emphasised that no final decision would be made until after the trial takes place. And she also said she had not read many of the affidavits submitted in support of the parties' positions.

Snyder, of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, in his statement disputed Cote's opinion, saying the evidence would show Apple benefited consumers by providing competition in an emerging market.

"We look forward to presenting our evidence in open court and proving that Apple did not conspire to fix prices," he said.

Pearson had been set to go to trial alongside Apple on remaining claims asserted by states attorneys general. On Wednesday, Pearson agreed to a proposed $75 million (£49.7 million) settlement with the states and plaintiffs in consumer class-action lawsuits.

The case is United States v. Apple Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-02826.

Strategy

Apple

price fixing

Citrix Synergy 2013: Citrix unveils new MDM capabilities to help CIOS go mobile

maggie — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:49:38 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Maggie Holland

XenMobile Enterprise will help firms manage apps, data and devices, Citrix claims.

Citrix has responded to the growing BYOD phenomenon by launching a mobile device management (MDM) solution that manages more than just the device itself.

Dubbed XenMobile Enterprise, the solution helps enterprises get a handle on the management of apps, data and devices as simply focusing on one of those components is not enough, according to Citrix CEO Mark Templeton.

Imagine one of the apps stores – Google or Microsoft or Apple – without the ability to add more apps and more developers. It would be useless.

The solution supports a broad array of devices and enables workers to view and edit documents wherever and whenever as if they were in the office in addition to providing one-touch access to support thanks to the integration of Citrix GoToAssist.

“[Mobile] is dominating mindshare across organisations. I hear the same thing from CIOS: ‘I want to mobilise my business.’ It’s ‘Bring Your Own Everything’ now,” Templeton said during his keynote speech and the Citrix Synergy conference in LA.

“We’re seeing the pace of change pick up. In recent years, it has grown in magnitude and velocity. We’re not built for this. This is uncomfortable. You need a strategy for this,” he added before citing two different approaches he has heard in recent engagements with CIOs.

He said he met with the CIO of a large beverage company who said his organisation’s strategy was DOS. Rather than referring to an age-old operating platform, he meant ‘Don’t own stuff’ according to Templeton.

In the second example, this time focused on the CIO of a large bank, the strategy as MAC. But, again, instead of this being a sign of devotion to Apple, it actually translates as ‘Moves, adds, changes.’

Moving forward, organisations will support myriad of device approaches ranging from corporate-owned and issued devices to Bring Your Own and Choose Your Own, according to Templeton.

“It’s not enough to just manage apps. It’s not enough to just manage data. You’ve got to bring it all together to provide a beautiful consumer-like mobile experience. It takes three things. The first is you have to have infrastructure to manage the mobile lifecycle from beginning to end. You have to add to that ways of users to be productive with mobile apps and data designed for business. The third thing you need is a platform that extensible where you can add your own apps, third-party apps and developers have the tools and ecosystem to actually continue to expand that,” he said.

“Imagine one of the apps stores – Google or Microsoft or Apple – without the ability to add more apps and more developers. It would be useless. We think these things that are required and that’s why we really super excited to be introducing XenMobile Enterprise here today. It’s a revolutionary platform for mobilising your business.”

Referencing the digital natives now entering the workplace, he added: “The web is built for this generation but our IT infrastructure has never been built for this generation. Mobilising [will help] get the best of the best into organisations and retain them.”

The solution will be available from June with licensing options on a per-user or per-device basis with annual or perpetual contract terms.

To complement the new MDM solution, the company also launched a business mobile app market which already features more than 80 offerings from a number of big names, including cloud storage and collaboration specialist Box, which competes with Citrix’s own ShareFile offering. This isn’t a conflict of interests though, according to Citrix CMO Steve Daheb, who believes it’s just responding to users’ needs and giving them freedom of choice.

Citrix Synergy 2013: Citrix eyes mobile enterprise with latest XenDesktop version

maggie — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:00:49 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Maggie Holland

First fruits of Project Avalon are borne as Citrix offers businesses a way to maximise legacy Windows app investments in the mobile world.

Citrix has unveiled the latest iteration of its XenDesktop virtualisation solution, claiming it will enables business to port Windows applications to mobile devices quickly and easily with minimal ongoing support.

XenDesktop 7 was unveiled by Citrix CEO Mark Templeton at the company’s Citrix Synergy conference in LA this week. He said around 90 per cent of the apps used by businesses today are Windows-based so believes Citrix needs to offer something to help address the shift from the desktop to greater mobility.

“This is application and desktop virualisation re-imagined for simplicity and mobile,” he said of the tool that is the first borne out of the company’s Project Avalon initiative which is focused on mobilising apps and services and making them fit for purpose in the cloud era.

With an increasingly mobile-hungry workforce, XenDesktop 7 will help business respond by enabling them to deliver Windows applications and desktop services as cloud-based services across any device, according to Citrix.

It can be as few as eight clicks to go from scratch to basic set-up and it could be just 20 minutes until you get started. It’s pretty amazing.

XenDesktop 7 features HDX technology that boosts WAN bandwidth efficiency by 100 per cent, thanks to the incorporation of H.264 compression, which also optimises full HD video bit rates to enhance the 3G viewing experience.

There’s also touch screen capabilities that ensure multi-touch gestures/swipes into scrolling commands and easy navigation as well as native menu controls that make complex mouse navigation requests and pull down menus a simple affair on mobile devices.

Furthermore, Citrix believes it is helping “take your enterprise mobile in a secure and productive way” by utilising tools such as the Citrix StoreFront interface and Citrix Netscaler Gateway offering.

“Do you know what I hate about it?” Templeton said. “Absolutely nothing!” as he said the solution eradicates the need for three previously resource draining tasks: workload provisioning, app-by-app publishing and Windows app migration.

“There’s only one package to download and you get automated installation and deployment. It can be as few as eight clicks to go from scratch to basic set-up and it could be just 20 minutes until you get started. It’s pretty amazing,” Templeton said, highlighting the new solution’s ease of use which is claimed to reduce the time it takes to deploy new services by up to 80 per cent.

XenDesktop 7 will be available from June in Enterprise, Platinum and VDI editions with a choice of per-user, per-device and concurrent licensing options.

Boston Igloo 2U-24T-Stor review

KhidrS — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:51:54 PDT

Reviews 23 May, 2013 Dave Mitchell

Boston’s Igloo combinesWindows Storage Server 2012, a high capacity and Xeon E5 performance. Is this the perfect storage partnership?

Price:

As reviewed, £4,699 exc VAT

Pros:

Preinstalled with WSS2012 Standard, Xeon E5 CPU; High deduplication rates; Good value

Cons:

No external expansion options

Verdict:

This Windows Storage Server 2012 powered appliance is a good choice for SMBs as it offers a big capacity and heaps of features for the price. NAS and IP SAN performance is very good, it’s easy to deploy and use and is 10-Gigabit ready out of the box.

Windows Storage Server 2012 (WSS2012) is now a formidable force in the network storage market and a good choice for SMBs thanks to the raft of feature introduced by Microsoft. Along with combined NAS and IP SAN services, it introduces block-level deduplication, thin provisioning, storage pools and much more.

Boston has always been a keen supporter of Microsoft’s storage software and its latest Igloo 2U-24T-Stor teams WSS2012 up with a powerful hardware package. This 2U rack appliance delivers 24TB of raw storage in a Xeon E5 equipped appliance and all at a very reasonable price.

It has twelve hot-swap drive bays at the front all kitted out with 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS2 hard disks. All 24TB is up for grabs as the OS is loaded on a pair of mirrored 250GB Seagate SATA SFF hot-swap drives lurking at the back alongside the dual redundant 920W PSUs.

The Server Manager console provides plenty of wizards to help configure volumes and storage services

Storage and network features

This all-Supermicro system uses an X9DRH-7TF motherboard supporting dual E5-2600 Xeons. The price includes a single 2.4GHz E5-2609 CPU – a member of Intel’s Basic family with four cores, a 10MB L3 cache, support for 1,066MHz DDR3 speeds and a low 80W TDP.

The front drive bays are connected directly to the embedded LSI SAS2008 controller which has 1GB of battery protected cache. A useful feature is the backplane’s pair of expanders allows the drives to be connected via dual redundant paths.

Network features are good as the motherboard has an integrated Intel X540 dual-port 10GBase-T adapter. However, Boston won’t beat Broadberry’s CyberStore 316S-WSS for expansion as the Igloo is not designed with extra external disk shelves in mind.

The various WSS2012 storage features can be enabled as required from the Server Role screen

Serving up storage

You’re ready to start serving storage out of the box as WSS2012 is pre-installed. The price includes the Standard version which is packed with features including block level deduplication, thin provisioning, storage pools and SMBv3 and NFSv4.1 support.

It has an unlimited capacity license and doesn’t need any CALs either. The clustering/failover features are ready to go as well so you just add hardware to use them. WSS2012 Workgroup edition is aimed at smaller appliances and limited to one processor socket, 32GB of memory, up to six internal hard disks and fifty user connections.

A valuable feature of WSS2012 is Storage Pools which allows you to combine physical disks of different makes and sizes. Similar to Synology’s Hybrid RAID, you can use pools to create mirrored, striped or RAID-5 virtual volumes and expand their capacity by adding new drives to the pool.

Both the embedded LSI and Intel RAID controllers have their own management and monitoring consoles

Nifty performance

Prior to share and iSCSI target creation we needed to enable the Windows File and iSCSI Services which had been left disabled. This is easy enough to do and during this phase you can enable other storage services such as data deduplication and the File Server Resource Manager which you’ll need if you want the storage reports, quotas and file screening features.

NAS performance is excellent with Iometer reporting high raw and read and write rates of 113MB/sec for a share mapped to a Dell PowerEdge R515 server loaded with Windows Server 2012. Real world performance was impressive as well with drag and drop copies of a 2.52GB video clip returning read and write speeds of 108MB/sec.

Data deduplication performance is vastly superior to ZFS-based storage appliances and on a par with more costly proprietary systems. When we ran the Binary Testing deduplication test suite against Broadberry’s WSS2012-powered CyberStore 316S-WSS, it returned a high reduction ratio of over 7:1 for a one month backup simulation.

A useful feature if you want to provide secure FTP services is the new Logon Attempt Restrictions in IIS8

FTP and IP SANs

If you want to host FTP services you still need to install IIS but version 8, as provided with WSS2012, adds the new FTP Login Attempt Restriction feature. This allows you to set a threshold on the number of failed logins within a time period in seconds after which you can block the IP address or just log the details.

Performance is nothing to sniff at with the FileZilla FTP client uploading and downloading our test video clip at 109MB/sec. General NAS backup operations will be good as well with our 22.4GB collection of 10,500 small files copied at an average of 74.5MB/sec – faster than most Linux based NAS appliances.

IP SAN targets are just as easy to create and a useful feature of Microsoft’s thin provisioning is it works directly with storage pools so can be applied to shares as well as iSCSI volumes. Performance is tops with Iometer reporting fast raw read speeds of 113MB/sec over Gigabit for a 500GB target.

Conclusion

With the Standard version of Windows Storage Server 2012 included, the Igloo 2U-24T-Stor isn’t found wanting for storage features. Capacity can’t be expanded outside the box but NAS and IP SAN performance is excellent, Microsoft’s deduplication delivers big savings in storage and it’s good value as well.

Specifications:

Chassis: 2U Supermicro 826BE26-R920LPB

Motherboard: Supermicro X9DRH-7TF

CPU: 2.4GHz Xeon E5-2609 (max. 2)

Memory: 32GB 1066MHz DDR3 (max 512GB)

Storage: 12 x 2TB Seagate Constellation SAS2; 2 x 256GB Seagate Constellation SATA SFF

RAID: Embedded LSI SAS2008 with1GB cache and BBU

Array support: RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60

Network: Intel X540 dual-port 10GBase-T

Power: 2 x 920W hot-plug supplies

Software: Windows Storage Server 2012 Standard pre-installed

Warranty: 3 year on-site NBD

Key Specs:

Virgin Media Business and BSkyB sign £49m fibre deal

JaneMc — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:29:25 PDT

News 23 May, 2013

Five-year agreement will connect up 30 per cent of Sky’s exchanges to its network.

Virgin Media Business has signed a deal with BSkyB (Sky) that will see Virgin’s fibre network used to connect around a third of Sky’s unbundled local exchanges with its nationwide broadband network.

The five-year agreement, which Virgin claims is worth over £49 million, will see the core of the network in place by the end of 2013 and will deliver speeds of up to 10Gbps through its High Capacity Services offering.

Virgin claims to be the second biggest provider of backhaul infrastructure in the UK

The agreement will not use or affect Virgin’s access network, which connects to customers’ homes and offices.

Tony Grace, managing director of Virgin Media Business, said: “High capacity connectivity is vital in today’s digitally driven world. Whilst we’re concentrating on developing better services for the public in our consumer division, we also believe that our high capacity network is ideally placed to provide the underlying infrastructure that can help other providers with their backhaul capacity needs.”

While the two companies are competitors at the consumer level, it is not unusual for rival firms to provide business services for each other, claims Catherine Haslan, senior analyst in the telecoms wholesale division of Ovum.

“We’re not surprised as this is the latest in a series of backhaul deals that Virgin Media Business has secured with telecoms and media companies in the UK. Indeed, the backhaul infrastructure business has accounted for the vast majority of growth for Virgin Media Business in the last 18 months," Haslan.

“Such deals work for both parties as the wholesale provider receives additional revenue on its network investment, while the buyer gets the benefit of using that network without having to invest in building it itself.”

Broadband

Virgin Media Business

BSkyB

BT to bring superfast broadband to Staffordshire

CarolineD — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:08:53 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Telco bags another deal through BDUK procurement framework.

BT has agreed to oversee the rollout of superfast broadband services to 97 per cent of Staffordshire’s homes and businesses by spring 2016.

The telco has agreed to stump up £12.47 million to support the project, which is the latest in a long line of deals it has secured through the Government’s Broadband Delivery UK scheme.

The scheme was set up to bankroll the deployment of superfast broadband to a third of the UK using £530 million of the Government's money.

As such, BDUK will contribute £7.44 million towards the rollout, a sum that has been matched by Staffordshire County Council.

The project’s aim is to provide fibre broadband access to 472,000 (or 97 per cent of) premises in the region, as well as speeds of 24 Mbps and above to 95 per cent of homes and businesses there.

Mark Winnington, Staffordshire County Council’s cabinet member for economy and infrastructure, said the project will open up new business opportunities for local residents.

“We see this infrastructure as important as road or rail in providing the accessibility and opportunities for our residents and businesses. It will ensure we can compete with other areas of the UK and Europe. That is why we took the crucial decision to invest £7.44million,” he said.

“While it will take a number of years to roll out across the county, work will start straight away and means that the first communities in Staffordshire will be enjoying high-speed broadband from early 2014 as a direct result of our partnership.”

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Next Generation Access, added: “The development of a high-speed communications infrastructure [will] harness economic growth that will herald a new era of creativity and prosperity for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.”

Broadband

BDUK

superfast broadband

Staffordshire County Council

Kim Dotcom claims to have invented two-step authentication

JaneMc — Thu, 23 May 2013 06:21:39 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Jane McCallion

Mega founder says he hasn’t sued over patent filed in 1998 yet, but may do in the future.

Kim Dotcom, founder of Mega and Mega upload, has issued a claim stating that two-factor authentication was invented by him as a means of ensuring account security in the late 1990s.

The claim refers to a patent filed in the US in April 1998 under Dotcom’s original name, Kim Schmitz.

I believe in sharing knowledge and ideas for the good of society

In the abstract of the patent, which was granted in 2000, states: “The invention relates to a method and to a device for the authorisation in data transmission systems employing a transaction authorisation number (TAN) or a comparable password.”

It goes on to describe a system where a user inputs their identification, such as a username and password, into their computer. That data is then transmitted to a computer at the service providers' end, which uses it to automatically generate a TAN. The TAN is sent to a second device in the possession of the user “for example a pager”, with the user then being able to enter it into the original computer in order to complete the log-in process.

This, Dotcom claims, is descriptive of the process used in two-factor authentication today, although a phone is generally used to receive the code now, rather than a pager.

The 39-year-old internet entrepreneur and former hacker, who is now resident in New Zealand, said on Twitter: “Google, Facebook, Twitter, Citibank, etc. Offer two-step authentication. Massive IP infringement by US companies. My innovation. My patent.

“I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge and ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now cause of what the US did to me,” the latter part of the statement referring to the closing of Megaupload by the FBI and the seizing of his assets, as well as a failed extradition attempt by the US from New Zealand in 2012.

Facebook and Twitter declined to comment on the issue. Citi and Google had not responded to reqeusts for comment at the time of publication.

How hiring people with autism could benefit IT

CarolineD — Thu, 23 May 2013 06:17:54 PDT

Analysis & Insight 23 May, 2013 Stephen Pritchard

Inside the Enterprise: Autistic adults can struggle in mainstream employment. But tech firms are making use of their skills.

Think of autism and information technology, and Gary McKinnon – or perhaps Alan Turing – come to mind. McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in 2008, and Turing is also thought to have been on the autistic spectrum, although little was known about the condition in the 1940s.

Ignorance about autism continues. According to the National Autistic Society, in only 15 per cent of UK adults with autism are in full-time employment. This is despite the skills that people with autism can bring, such as a facility with numbers, and an analytical mind.

A more diverse workforce will, SAP believes, make for better products.

The reasons for the poor employment prospects for people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are complex, as the condition covers a wide spectrum, from people with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s to those who may have little or no verbal communication skills.

Even among people with Asperger’s, full-time employment rates are very low indeed. Part of the problem is the way ASD affects social communications, and the “soft” skills that are highly prized in today’s workplaces.

As the NAS points out, autism is also usually a “hidden” disability, and so colleagues and bosses might not even know someone is autistic – just that they struggle to fit in.

But employers are starting to realise the potential of people with ASD. SAP, the enterprise software company, has just announced an initiative to hire people with autism to work as software testers and developers.

The numbers are still small – and none of the posts are in the UK as yet – but the company believes that workers with autism can bring real benefits. A pilot, carried out at SAP Labs in India found that the teams with ASD members saw measureable productivity gains.

And, according to SAP’s global head of HR, Luisa Delgado, there is a strategic reason for hiring people with ASD. Innovation, she says, often comes “from the edges”.

A more diverse workforce will, SAP believes, make for better products, and the company is expanding the recruitment of autistic staff in Ireland, the US, Canada and Germany.

SAP, though, is working with an outside consultancy, Danish-based Specialisterne, to help with the programme. Companies employing people with ASD face two challenges: finding the roles where autistic people can be at their most productive, and providing the right working environment.

As one HR director at an IT consultancy explained to IT Pro, it is as much about educating HR staff, managers and colleagues as it is about providing assistance to autistic employees themselves. In particular, managers need to understand the talents of someone with ASD, and know how to manage the difficulties the condition can create.

IT is a global industry that prizes analytical thinking and thoroughness, and it is also one that is suffering from a skills shortage. SAP’s project might be small in scale, at least for now. But it is on the right lines, and it is a lead other tech firms could follow.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT Pro.

Can the Windows 8.1 update win over the enterprise?

CarolineD — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:53:04 PDT

Analysis & Insight 23 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Business users have been slow to adopt Windows 8. Could the forthcoming release of Windows 8.1 change that?

The release of Windows 8.1 could jump-start enterprise adoption of Microsoft’s latest operating system, especially if the update sees the software giant reinstate the much-missed Start button.

The company announced earlier this month that more than 100 million licenses of Windows 8 had been sold since its launch in October 2012.

Copies sold through volume licensing agreements, which are used by companies to procure multiple Microsoft software licenses, were not included in this tally, but OEM and upgrade sales were.

As a result, exact details of how many businesses are running the operating system are difficult to pin down.

The Start button is something that was absolutely fundamental to the way people are used to experiencing and handling Microsoft operating systems.

In a statement to IT Pro, Microsoft said it was unable to provide details of the number of Windows 8 copies sold through volume licensing agreements at this time.

“We recently surpassed the 100 million licenses sold mark for Windows 8 [and] this number includes Windows licenses that ship on a new tablet or PC, as well as upgrades to Windows 8,” the statement said.

“We feel good about the progress since launch, including what we’ve been able to accomplish with the ecosystem and customer reaction to the new PCs and tablets that are available now and will soon come to market.”

Microsoft did, however, recently confirm that two thirds of enterprises are now running Windows 7, and – given the continued hold XP still has on many business desktops – we think it’s fair to suggest that not many have made the move to Windows 8 just yet.

There are many reasons for this. Firstly, Windows 8 has only been on sale a little over six months, and secondly – as market watcher IDC and Gartner have both suggested – the revamped Windows user interface may have caused some IT decision makers to hold fire on buying it.

After all, much has been made of Microsoft’s radical overhaul of the operating system’s look and feel. The firm has been criticised for replacing the Start Menu with a new tile-centric Start Screen and for introducing a new gesture-based navigation style.

Jeremy Davies, chief executive and co-founder of analyst firm Context, said the concerns raised by IDC and Gartner were justified, as the adoption of Windows 8 within the business community has been "very slow" to date.

“The Start button is something that was absolutely fundamental to the way people are used to experiencing and handling [Microsoft operating systems],” he told IT Pro.

“The way you transition people over to something like this is by taking it a step at a time. You don’t take gargantuan leaps that will involve them having to learn how to do something from scratch again,” Davies added.

Meanwhile, Richard Gibbons, software manager at Microsoft reseller Bechtle Direct suggested that few CIOs rush to deploy new operating systems as soon as they launch.

“A lot of IT managers have this idea that you shouldn’t upgrade to a new Microsoft operating system until the first service pack is released, so you can let everyone else find the issues and bugs,” he told IT Pro.

“So the fact [businesses are] not jumping right onto the new OS right now isn’t that surprising.”

A lot of companies delayed their Windows 7 deployments until the first service pack dropped. “Unless they were on Windows Vista, that is,” he added.

Windows 8 downgrades
And the ones that have bought Windows 8 may have chosen to exercise their downgrade rights – if they are running an OEM version of the software or have acquired it through a volume licensing agreement – and reverted back to Windows 7.

Davies said these versions of Windows 8 have been selling very well through B2B go-to-market channels.

“That’s been going gangbusters and accounts for around 17 per cent of sales, which is up from virtually nothing a few months ago,” he explained.

So, while Microsoft might be trumpeting the fact 100 million copies of Windows 8 have been sold, Davies’ observation suggests the number of people actually using the operating system could be lower than that.

Although, Clive Longbottom, service director at market watcher Quocirca, said few consumers would know how to go about downgrading an OEM copy of the software to Windows 7.

“Consumers will take Windows 8 and keep it. Even if they do not like the new way of working, few would know how to downgrade a machine and fewer still actually do it,” he told IT Pro.

“Those in the know will just download an app to bypass the modern UI of Windows 8 and put the Start globe back where it should be, enabling run a faster, more secure version of Windows 7.”

From a business user point of view, Longbottom said there are probably practical deployment reasons why sales of downgradable licenses are on the rise.

“Business customers are unlikely to jump onto a new operating system as soon as it comes out, so they downgrade to what they already have,” he said.

“This is no reflection on the new version of Windows, it’s just the company is not ready to move because users are unfamiliar with it, the help desk hasn’t been trained and retro-testing of existing applications needs to be carried out,” he added.

The upcoming release of Windows 8.1, an upgrade that is expected to reinstate the Start button, could arrest the growth of these types of licenses, Davies claimed.

“The arrival of Windows Blue [as it was previously known] will absolutely kill that,” he said.

“Its release is a savvy move on Microsoft’s part, and it was good to see them listen to what people said about the software and move so quickly to put things rights,” he added.

This is a view shared by Bechtle’s Gibbons, who said the release could go some way to kick-starting adoption of Windows 8 in the enterprise.

“The Windows 8.1 update should make quite a difference because it counts as a service pack, which will deal with the problem of users holding off on upgrades until that’s released,” said Gibbons.

“It will also alleviate the two biggest issues we hear about from customers about Windows 8 by allowing them to boot to the desktop and use the Start button again.”

However, if the Start button doesn’t make a reappearance, Longbottom said Microsoft will find it much harder to convince business users to deploy Windows 8.

“If it insists Modern UI is the way forward, it will have to set off various large explosives under the arses of the monitor manufacturers – as there are few touch-based monitors available and the ones that are available are far too expensive,” he said.

“Even with touch sensitive monitors in place, PCs aren’t the place for it to be used all the time, as users need a means of dealing with the machine in a way they are used to. For example, through the reappearance of the Start Globe and alt/tabbing between apps on a desktop.”

Microsoft takes aim at the iPad with Windows tablet advert

KhidrS — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:46:01 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Khidr Suleman

iPad is only good for playing chopsticks, according to Redmond.

Microsoft has taken aim at Apple in its latest round of TV advertising – with Redmond claiming the iPad is only good for playing a virtual piano.

The 30-second advert compares an Asus Windows 8 tablet head-to-head with an iPad. It shows the Windows 8 device updating Live Tiles, multitasking and using PowerPoint, all things the Apple device cannot do.

In a dig at Apple, the advert simulates the voice of the Siri personal assistant which apologies for the iPad’s inability to perform the requisite tasks.

The advert ends with Siri suggesting the user should “just play chopsticks” and then compares the pricing of the devices.

The 64GB iPad is priced at $699 (£559 in UK) whereas the Asus VivoTab Smart is $449 (£399 in UK with Office).

Ironically, Microsoft is unable to promote its own Windows Surface Pro tablet in the advert because the 64GB device has a starting retail price of $899 (£719 in UK).

The move is an aggressive strategy from Microsoft, which has been content with running flashy choreographed adverts to date. It will be interesting to see how Apple responds and whether it will launch its own version of the advert, which shows the strengths of the iPad.

This isn’t the first time the two companies have called out each others products publicly. Apple ran the famous “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC" adverts from 2006 to 2010.

HP 2013 outlook on the rise as Whitman plan takes hold

JaneMc — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:26:02 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Reuters

Shares up by 14 per cent following better than expected performance.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) raised its 2013 earnings outlook after quarterly results beat low expectations, as CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan helped offset shrinking personal computer sales with enterprise computing services.

While fiscal second-quarter profit plummeted 32 per cent, Wall Street had braced for worse. HP shares gained 14 per cent after the company projected full-year earnings per share of $3.50 (£2.33) to $3.60 (£2.39), raising the lower end by 10 cents, and fiscal third-quarter profit that topped analyst estimates.

We are roughly where we want to be in total on the company

Whitman, who took the helm at the world's largest PC maker more than a year ago, is orchestrating a turnaround, trying to recapture some of the Silicon Valley icon's former strong growth. She has said the process could take years.

HP received a warmer welcome from investors for its results than smaller rival Dell, which last week reported a 79 per cent slide in profit and is now mired in a takeover battle between founder Michael Dell and activist investor Carl Icahn.

"This is another good deposit on the road to our turnaround here," HP Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said in an interview. "We are roughly where we want to be in total on the company."

Enterprise services and printing units are "probably a little bit ahead," she said, adding the two businesses helped drive the company's gross margin improvement during the quarter.

HP's net income fell to $1.08 billion (£717.29 million), or 55 cents (36.5p) a share, from $1.59 billion (£1.05 billion), or 80 cents (53p) a share, a year earlier.

The company earned 87 cents (57.7p) per share on an operating basis during the second quarter on revenue of $27.6 billion (£18.32 billion).

HP had been expected to post earnings of 81 cents a share on revenue of just over $28 billion (£18.6 billion), according to the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

For its fiscal third quarter, it estimated non-GAAP earnings per share of 84 to 87 cents (56p to 57p), higher than 83 cents (55p)expected by Wall Street analysts.

Its shares, which have climbed 51 per cent in 2013 as investors gradually gained confidence in its prospects, rose 13 per cent to $24.08 (£15.98) in extended trading after closing at $21.23 (£14.09) on the New York Stock Exchange.

HP, whose name is synonymous with the birth of Silicon Valley, has suffered years of turbulence. Whitman became HP's third CEO in as many years after Leo Apotheker's abrupt dismissal.

She is now pushing layoffs, cost cutting, and expansion into markets and areas with longer-term potential such as enterprise computing services. The move, intended to bolster margins, pits HP against the likes of IBM.

HP is laying off 29,000 employees over the next two years and has written off $10.8 billion (£7.16 billion) mostly related to the writedown of its EDS services business.

Lesjak said so far the company had reduced 18,800 jobs and intends to cut a total of 26,000 by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, the company reported that revenue fell across HP's main business divisions, with the steepest decline in the personal systems group. Sales from HP's largest, PC-focused unit dived 20 per cent to $7.58 billion (£5.03 billion).

But that same division recorded a 3.2 per cent operating margin, up from about 2.7 per cent in the previous quarter, as the company focused on improving profitability.

The printing division had the smallest revenue decline, of 1 per cent, year over year, but the company said it had a "strong operating margin" of 15.8 per cent.

HP generated $3.6 billion (£2.38 billion) in cash flow during the quarter and used some of the funds to reduce net debt by $1.8 billion (£1.19 billion) to $2.9 billion (£1.9 billion). The company had $13.6 billion (£9.02 billion) in gross cash at the end of the quarter.

Strategy

Meg Whitman

Financial results

Twitter beefs up security after hacking spree on media

JaneMc — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:05:05 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Reuters

Social network introduces two-factor authentication to halt account compromises.

Twitter unveiled technology to boost security for its users, following a spate of attacks on accounts of prominent media outlets including the Associated Press, the Financial Times and The Onion.

The micro blogging site, which transmits some 400 million messages a day, said on Wednesday that it had begun rolling out an optional "login verification" service to thwart hackers seeking to hijack accounts with stolen passwords.

This would have made the AP hack more difficult to accomplish

Security experts welcomed the move as a positive step toward securing a service that is widely used by consumers, political activists, advertisers and news outlets around the globe to quickly exchange information.

Twitter had come under fire over the past year for failing to offer such an option, which is known as two-factor authentication, amid a surge in breaches of high-profile accounts. That criticism intensified in April after a fake tweet about a non-existent White House explosion sent from the Associated Press account briefly roiled US financial markets.

"It's been a long time coming," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer of White Hat Security. "It's not going to solve all problems, but it's a step in the right direction."

When users log in to Twitter via a web browser, they must confirm their identity by entering a six-digit code that Twitter delivers to their smartphones. To access the service through applications for PCs and smartphones, users must use an automatically generated temporary password for each of the programs.

Twitter described the offering in a blog post, reminding users that they still need to use strong passwords to keep accounts secure.

The approach is similar to security tools previously introduced by other internet services from companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

"This would have made the AP hack and other hacks against Twitter more difficult to accomplish," said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cyber security firm Taia Global.

Yet he added that hackers looking to break into corporate accounts will still be able to do so if they can take control of PCs or smartphones running applications authorised to use the service.

"Two-factor authentication isn't perfect," Carr said. "If you own the machine, it really doesn't matter."

NetApp confirms plans to cut 900 jobs

CarolineD — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:27:40 PDT

News 22 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Storage vendor has embarked on a company realignment scheme as Q4 profit dips.

Storage vendor NetApp has embarked on a company realignment programme that will result in 900 of the firm’s staff losing their jobs.

The company confirmed the move during a conference call to discuss its fourth quarter financial results, which saw it post a profit of $174 million on the back of sales totalling $1.72billion.

This was slightly down on last year when the firm reported a $181 million profit on sales of $1.7 billion during Q4.

While difficult, we believe these decisions position us well for the future.

During the call, transcribed here by Seeking Alpha, Tom Georgens, chief executive of NetApp, said the company had performed well during Q4, with strong demand for its products across all regions.

“[We saw] an increase in the number of deals over $1 million and a record number of deals over $5 million,” he said.

“We are seeing rapid uptake of clustered ONTAP as well as our new platforms. We recently announced a family of all-flash arrays...we also saw a record quarter for branded E-Series products and expansion of our Flexpod solution set.”

Despite this, he said the company has started to undergo a restructure, which will result in the “elimination” of just over 900 jobs or seven per cent of its global workforce.

“We took this action to better align our resources and investments to our most strategic initiatives,” he continued.

“While difficult, we believe these decisions position us well for the future, enabling us to achieve our business objectives, profitability and profit growth expectations.”

The vendor also announced plans to give its stock repurchase programme a $1.6 billion boost over the next three years, which would increase its overall value to $3 billion.

This is part of a wider plan by NetApp to increase the value it returns to shareholders.

Blue Coat to acquire big data security analytics player Solera Networks

CarolineD — Wed, 22 May 2013 06:17:31 PDT

News 22 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Web security vendor snaps up big data security firm.

Online security vendor Blue Coat Systems is to acquire big data security analytics firm Solera Networks for an undisclosed sum.

The deal is expected to close within the next 30 days, and will allow Blue Coat to build out its product portfolio to include Solera’s tranche of enterprise-focused security software products and appliances.

The vendor’s DeepSee brand of products are designed to help organisations quickly detect data breaches, as well as mine big data sets for security insight and analytics purposes.

In a statement, announcing the deal, Blue Coat said the merger will allow it to combine Solera’s real-time intelligence and forensic capabilities with its web-based threat knowledge and, in turn, allow companies to take a more proactive approach to tackling emerging security threats.

“This comprehensive web intelligence combined with the ability of Solera’s DeepSee software and appliances to provide an historic record of all network traffic will enable enterprises to efficiently identify and resolve the full scope of advanced threats,” the statement claimed.

Greg Clark, chief executive of Blue Coat, said the merger will help the company respond to security threats in real-time.

“Today’s approach to securing the enterprise is missing an essential element – the ability to defend, react and resolve security issues by efficiently mining a very large dataset of network history to gain previously unavailable insights,” he said.

“Retrospective capture and analytics are now an essential component of modern security architecture, and Solera has pioneered this field, creating a DVR for the network that records traffic and allows customers to easily mine that information.”

Mergers and Acquisitions

IBM Watson to take on customer service big data problems

CarolineD — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:56:37 PDT

News 22 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Ask Watson service to respond to customer needs.

IBM is to launch a cloud-based version of its artificial intelligence system Watson to allow organisations to quickly process big data sets and boost the way they deal with customers.

The IBM Watson Engagement Advisor will allow customer service staff to answer queries from their clients using insights gleaned from their company’s big data stores.

The system will use a mix of cloud-based services and online chat sessions to provide faster responses to customer questions, and help brands cope with the deluge of queries they receive each day through social media sites and web portals, for example.

The system’s "Ask Watson" feature is designed to greet customers that interact with website chat windows or mobile push alerts, and will draw on Big Blue’s big data analytics technologies to guide them through purchases or troubleshoot problems.

Big Blue claims Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities will allow it to pick up on the nuances of the human language to communicate and learn from customers, and respond to their questions in personalised way.

“The newest capabilities of IBM Watson are a natural fit for customer engagement, based on its ability to understand the nuances of human language, process questions akin to the way people think, and quickly cull through vast amounts of big data for relevant, evidence-based responses to its human users' needs,” said IBM in a statement.

“Consumers expect brands to know them individually, deliver personalised interactions and self service options, [meaning] business leaders must transform the way they interact to build brand loyalty and improve customer service.”

The vendor claims using Watson could help companies improve customer service by reducing the number of queries that go unresolved.

Manoj Saxena, general manager of IBM Watson Solutions, said the customer service environment is a natural fit for artificial intelligence systems.

“Users will come away feeling known as people, empowered as consumers, and engaged as satisfied brand ambassadors who are willing to champion the business to friends and family," explained Saxena.

Asset Management

IBM Watson

HTC reveals more staff losses

JaneMc — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:08:27 PDT

News 22 May, 2013 Jane McCallion

Chief product officer heads for the exit.

HTC’s chief product officer Kouji Kodera has become the latest in a slew of executives to leave the beleaguered Taiwanese phone manufacturer.

The steady flow of staff departures began approximately three months ago, but has picked up pace in recent weeks with the departure of Kodera coinciding with vice president of global communications Jason Gordon quitting on 17 May.

Other recent exits include retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, who has since joined Microsoft, worldwide director of digital marketing John Starkweather, who is now at AT&T, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.

While Lin, who has since become product marketing manager at Skype, was one of the first to leave in February, he has been the most verbose about his departure.

On 20 May, Lin advised his former colleagues to “leave now” in a tweet.

The apparent exodus follows disappointing results for the company’s One and First models.

HTC’s Q1 results revealed a slump in sales of over 36 per cent, to £930 million, with operating profit plummeting 98 per cent to £1.8 million.

Chou told analysts that “demand had greatly improved”, however figures from Gartner show it sold over 10 million fewer phones in 2012 compared to 2011 and that in the fourth quarter it dropped out of the top ten phone manufacturers by market share altogether.

The company was also disappointed when its First ‘Facebook Phone’ was not given the head start it expected, as the social networking giant made the Home app available simultaneous to the launch of the First.

HTC declined to comment on Kodera’s resignation, but said in a statement: "HTC continues to invest in talent ... to ensure the continued strength of our company's organisational structure".

Mobile

Windows Phone

AMD Temash chipset to lower cost of Windows tablets

KhidrS — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:54:06 PDT

News 23 May, 2013 Khidr Suleman

iPad-equivilant pricing on the way, says semi-conductor firm.

AMD claims its next-generation of chips will help OEMs decrease the price point of Windows tablets and provide high-performance graphical capabilities within laptops.

The semiconductor vendor has confirmed details for its forthcoming Temash, Kabini and Richland chipsets. AMD hopes this generation will help it battle against firms such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Intel who are all making significant pushes into the mobile market.

Tablets

The Temash SoC is designed to be utilised primarily in tablets, but will also be available for use in small-form factor clamshells.

AMD is confident the low power draw of the Temash chips (3.9 Watts in some cases) will help OEMs lower the price of tablets.

“Windows [8] couldn’t hit the price of the iPad (£399), we want to make sure with Temash we can get OEMs and customers at the price point," Sasa Marinkovic, head of technology marketing at AMD told journalists at a pre-brief.

AMD will release dual-core and quad-core varieties. The entry-level A4 Temash chipset will feature up to eight hours of battery life, and have AMD’s proprietary video streaming, Radeon HD graphics and video stabilisation technologies built in.

The more powerful A6 family will have the same base-line features and also ship with Gesture Control, Face Login and Screen Mirroring capabilities as standard.

Clamshell devices will also include AMD’s turbo dock technology. When a user plugs a display into the keyboard, the firm claims performance will be automatically ramped by up to 40 per cent.

The A4 and A6 Temash chips are expected to have better performance than Intel’s Atom chips, but will fall short of the competing Core i3 range.

Marinkovic claimed that Temash will be highly competitive - and supports a variety of technologies that competing products do not.

“You'll see we have a whole bunch of features that CloverTrail cannot do. So much so that we’ve seen Intel pulling in their schedule for next-gen products to compete with [Temash]," he said.

These include support for VGA, DirectX 11, up to 8GB memory, USB 2 and 3 ports as well as application acceleration.

Laptops

Despite OEMs such as Dell seeing a 79 per cent slide in profits during the last quarter, AMD believes there is a market out there for traditional devices.

“When I look around the room, everyone still has a laptop with them. It is the primary device for work/productivity,” Marinkovic continued.

“Our focus is going to be on new devices – all-in-ones, clamshells [and] hybrid tablets."

AMD will release two chipset dedicated to laptops – the entry-level Kabini and high-end Richland family.

Kabini will compete with Intel’s Pentium and Core i3 ranges, and offer nine hours of battery life for web browsing and six hours for 1080p HD video playback.

AMD is touting high performance and graphical gains over the previous generation. The firm says it is 25 per cent more efficient than its predecessor and graphics performance per watt is 133 per cent better.

Richland will go head-to-head with Intel's Core i5 range, and provide around 7.5 hours of web browsing, according to Marinkovic.

He claimed overall performance of the Richland system is up 20 per cent on the previous generation.

Government extends rural broadband funding application deadline

CarolineD — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:32:02 PDT

News 22 May, 2013 Caroline Donnelly

Government gives local groups an extra three weeks to submit their applications.

The Government has given local councils and community groups an extra three weeks to apply for a share of £20 million to fund the rollout of broadband services in rural areas.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) confirmed the deadline extension earlier today, which will see participants given until 17 June to submit their applications.

Funding is still available and I don’t want communities to miss out on this great opportunity.

The original deadline had been set for 24 May, but the department has pushed this back to give local authorities more time to apply.

The previous two funding rounds closed on 31 January 2012 and 6 July 2012.

So far 50 applications have been invited to participate in the final round, which will see them fight it out for a share of the Rural Community Broadband Fund’s £20 million.

A wide range of rural community groups – including local charities, trusts, and social enterprises – were invited to apply for funding to support the rollout of superfast broadband services to areas with little or no internet coverage.

Through the initiative, these organisations were invited to bid for as sum that would cover up to 50 per cent of their broadband project’s infrastructure costs.

Richard Benyon, environment minister, said the project was an important part of getting rural economies moving.

“Funding is still available and I don’t want communities to miss out on this great opportunity,” he said.

“Superfast broadband is transforming the lives of rural businesses and communities by helping them tap into new markets, get better exposure and save time in their working day,” he added.