I had an interesting problem today.

I received a press release from Redhat in which they refered to themselves as "the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise", and thought "Oh really? I wonder if that is true."

So I set out on a quest to find out if Redhat was within their rights to make such a bold claim.

I knew it would be hard, but I'm the "Storage and Servers" editor for Network Computing. If I couldn't figure this out and let you know, who could? So I hit the old research.

I found what has frustrated many of us for years is still very true. There is no good way to count Operating Systems installations, or for that matter any Open Source installation other than Web and Application servers that are public. For web and application servers, NetCraft does a fine job, even if some decry the methodology of only looking at public servers.

The problem is the same old one - that a single sale or download could represent a single machine, or it could represent an entire enterprise data center. Since enterprise software architectures are not something companies like to advertise - giving away information about your environment is in the I.T. Security Handbook under the heading "stupid" - so even polling is difficult.

Not too long ago we surveyed you, the readers, about Microsoft, and found that even good surveys can have holes. No sooner did I get the results back than I realized that we should have asked for more detail in the "have you moved from Microsoft Operating Sytems to other Operating Systems?" question. Once you see that a majority of our readers answered "yes", then the questions come in a flood "How many machines?" is the big one that we should have asked. Moving a single machine for a pilot or to support a particular application is a different world than moving your entire architecture.

But I digress. The fact is that there is no way to quantify Redhat's claim. It is tough enough to calculate a rough market share of Linux because Microsoft keeps these numbers and requires a license per machine, but Open Source applications are much more loosely tracked.

So I'll give it to them, but I wonder what Novell and IBM - the companies I would consider their largest competitors for the title "Worlds leading provider of open source solutions" think of this press release. Maybe I'll call them and ask.

There's nothing like spending a couple of days crawling around on roofs and in attics (in June, and in Florida) to make you appreciate the concept of "inside". Add the "excessive rainfall" (a genuine National Weather Service term) that we've been getting for several days, and it's a good time to stay inside and get some work done. You'll see the reason for the outside work in a few weeks--it's for a review of fixed-point wireless networking that will be coming up in Network Computing. It involves testing out in the real world, and down here the real world includes high humidity, warm temperatures, and a fair number of insects, reptiles, and very swampy walking tours. We've just deployed the first of the free-space optical systems, and I get to spend a little time inside, at my desk, while waiting for some more stuff to arrive.

While I've been at my desk, I've seen all sorts of press releases, including two that caught my interest because they talk about surveys conducted on security-related topics. One came from The Conference Board, a business group that's usually in the news with their survey of consumer or purchasing agent confidence, and one came out of a gathering of CSOs in Chicago. Both point to the same conclusion from different angles: Our technology fixes for security are working pretty well, but the problems for which we don't have a good technology solution are cause for ever greater concern.

I've built a podcast on the two surveys. You can find it here and, as always, let me know what you think. There are some more great interview-based podcasts coming up, and some infrastructure changes that should let you subscribe to the podcast and have it arrive automatically. Cool stuff--just what we need as we enter the hot days.

We have more virtualization news this week, with SWsoft's plans to release software that will let multiple Windows servers run on one machine. There's no denying the merits of server virtualization: You can run different operating systems, of course, but you can also run variants of the same OS on a system that are tuned to specific needs, and -- as SWsoft's example shows -- save on licensing costs by leveraging an single underlying OS for multiple environments.

If you had any doubt that big business is calling the shots with the Bush administration, they must have been removed by Monday's decision in the 'Brand X' case before the Supreme Court. If you follow the big political contribution money, you will find the winners -- a good rule of thumb to remember as Congress ponders telecom regulatory reform this summer.

Podcasting is now officially mainstream. Is this because Apple has released a new version of iTunes that supports podcasting? Sure, that's partly to blame. The podcast directory is a great way to see just how much is out there. There are hundreds of podcasts available for preview. But podcasting is being picked up by radio organizations out there, more specifically talk radio. I'm a bit of a talk radio junkie, and so are millions of other people. Rush Limbaugh's 20 million listeners hear the word podcast several times a day. Sean Hannity is podcasting. Glenn Beck is podcasting. I think Laura Ingraham is too. Just about all of Air America is available through the iTunes browser. That's a massive amount of people who are being informed about podcasting, and it's not just techie IT people. It is changing the face of talk radio, let alone Internet radio. Miss a show, no problem. Can't listen at noon, no problem. Want to listen to Rush and Hannity? No problem anymore. Download the program, load it on your ipod, get the FM broadcaster adapter, and listen in the car. I just wish it was easier to split up and edit an mp3, which you just can't do in itunes. These podcasts can get very large, and I don't want to store 30MB when all I want is a 3 minute segment.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday (June 27) that peer-to-peer networking sites can be held liable when their users swap music, movies and other protected works without the copyright holders' permission. The high court, in a unanimous decision, overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that had shielded the P2P networks from copyright-infringement suits as long as the sites were also used for legitimate purposes. Justice David Souter wrote: "One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

Within an hour of the announcement, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and Free Press issued a release denouncing the ruling, arguing that it poses "a significant challenge for consumers, innovators and the economy" but never quite making the case for why the ruling is bad law. For instance, in trying to counter the entertainment industry's claims that P2P networks are copyright-infringement schemes, the consumer groups state that such networks are more popular and efficient than conventional media distribution outlets. OK, so they're popular and efficient. So are many other black markets, but that doesn't give them the right to traffic in stolen goods.

The groups also argue that the ruling reinforces the entertainment industry's "near monopolistic control over the prices consumers pay and the choices consumers make." Monopoly how? Myriad music labels and movie studios distribute through myriad brick-and-mortar and electronic outlets. If the industry is somehow fixing prices, let the Federal Trade Commission make that case. It's in the entertainment industry's best interests to seek out the cheapest, most efficient distribution outlets, but it's not going to stand by as its content is pirated and given away. There's no such thing as a free lunch, even on the Internet.

Today's peek into the shopping cart of large ISVs takes us to California, where early (VERY EARLY for me) this morning Sun Microsystems announced its intention to acquire integration and SOA vendor See Beyond.

The acquisition of See Beyond at a mere $387 MILLION in cash (I want to see where Scott McNealy was hiding that wad of cash as he shopped around) will bring Sun's integration and SOA story into line with competitors BEA Systems and IBM as well as competitive offerings from Oracle.

While See Beyond's integration technology will definitely benefit Sun's Java Enterprise System software, the bigger story here is the acquisition of a more mature SOA framework. Coming on the heels of BEA's announcement of its SOA offering, AquaLogic, this acquisition will certain turbo-charge Sun's current SOA offerings, which are less mature than its competitors.

The race is definitely on as platform vendors seek to enhance their current SOA story with acquisitions and new offerings, and we expect that this is not the last we'll hear in the SOA space in terms of acquisitions, mergers and partnerships as platform vendors vie for a piece of the SOA pie.

For those who care about technology, freedom, and competition, this was perhaps the worst week in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court this week handed down two rulings which will stifle broadband competition, infringe on intellectual freedom, and slow or halt the development of new technologies.

Yes, that's right, there's only one again this week. No arguments, it's been a very busy week with testing and articles due and The News Show.

This week's freebie was discovered while I was trying to test Systinet's Business Service Registry 6.0 today. I needed a way to verify the functionality of its underlying UDDI v2/v3 functionality and the tools I normally use just weren't cutting it.

The answer? A freebie from UDDIBrowser.org. It's been released under the GPL license and it's a great little tool for browsing and searching one or more UDDI registries.

(I'd show you a cool image of what it should look like but we recently migrated to a new system for Blogs and quite frankly me and my M.S. in Computer Science can't figure out how to upload images anymore)

Here's my million dollar idea for the day. I want to be able to copy content from one machine and paste it on another machine. This could be done somehow over the network. Maybe two machines grant each other a trust relationship, and you can send data from one to the next.

I'm using a traditional KVM, and have my documentation on one machine, active work space on another machine. I want to be able to select text from the documentation and paste it on my second, third, fourth or fifth machine. I don't want to have to use USB flash drives or FTP or tinyurl.com or email or any of that stuff. Networked clipboards. It'd be great in the lab, but also at home. There are times when I'm viewing a link on my Mac and I want to transfer it to my Windows machine, but I can't do that easily or quickly. I would gladly pay upwards of $19.95 for it. And this post shall be considered prior art if any of you try to patent it.

Our very own Don MacVittie received an interesting e-mail in what appeared to be Russian (I can't really tell -- I have enough trouble with English). This prompted Don's following comments:

Note to spammers in any language...

Don.

Too wacky to be true? Feast your eyes on the prize:

Man, it just doesn't pay to defraud investors anymore. In the first of three major sentencing decisions facing former high-tech executives gone bad, Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John Rigas and his son, CFO Timothy, this week received 15 and 20 years of hard time, respectively, from a U.S. District court. (See "Jail Terms for Two at Top of Adelphia")

The 15-year term is virtually a life sentence for John Rigas, who is 80 years old and in failing health. The younger Rigas is 48. Both men were convicted of stealing approximately $100 million from Adelphia's coffers, bankrupting the company in one of the largest frauds in corporate history.

In our June 23rd edition of The Last Mile, we told you about a team of Italian Engineers who created their very own RD-D2. It chirps like the original, walks on two or three legs, and--get this--comes equipped with Bluetooth and USB. Their hope is that robots like this could someday be used in museums, hospitals, and even homes.

Naturally, we wondered how such a technical wonder might be used in an IT department. Here are a few ideas:

• Projects a hologram of your boss saying, "Luke, you must install the new blade servers today--you're our only hope"

• Translates convoluted end-user problem calls into technically accurate trouble tickets

Now we want to hear from you, oh wise Jedi. How would you use a real droid in your IT department? Submit your ideas here.

Boy, it's been a busy couple of weeks, with travel (NetSec in Scottsdale was a killer conference at a great resort), getting ready for a huge test (fixed wireless networking), and several smaller tests in progress. Oh, yeah, we (CMP, that is) also started a daily video project that I'm contributing to. If you haven't seen The News Show, you should really check it out.

Now on to this edition of the blog and podcast. I had a chance to sit down with Rich Baich, CISO of ChoicePoint, and talk about what it takes to succeed as a CISO in today's environment. He's obviously put a lot of thought into the question, and his answers are a good starting point for anyone on the verge of adding a "C" level title to their security portfolio. You can grab the podcast here and, as always, let me know what you think.

Everyone always said that when computers made it to common use that we'd just be making errors faster than ever.

That's definitely true in the BPM (Business Process Management) game, where exception handling has been propelled into its own subset of applications by niche player Vitria

Vitria, who declined to play in our upcoming BPM comparative review, has released its new Resolution Accelerator product, which is basically a BPM server and workflow specifically geared toward handling exceptions that occur not only out of processes automated using BPM solutions, but plain old vanilla applications as well.

The Resolution Accelerator will allegedly make handling exceptions, which are generally never all handled properly with BPM implementations because of the number of permutations (or is that a combination?) that can go wrong.

IONA today announced its intention to launch an open-source ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) project. The ObjectWeb open-source middleware consortium will host the project, which will be known as Celtix.

Celtix will be based on IONA's existing ESB product, Artix, and will support a bevy of standards including:

- JBI (Java Business Integration)
- WS-RM (Web Services Reliable Messaging)
- JMS (Java Message Services)
- SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
- POJO (Plain Old Java Objects)

We found it amusing that at least one industry analyst was quoted by several publications as saying, "I'm not really quite sure how this is going to work for Iona."

The first hit's free, baby. It's a gateway ESB into the harder, more serious and scalable implementations offered by IONA with its core Artix product. It's not any different than IBM's strategy of buying up Gluecode and offering up its application server for free with the hopes of gaining new converts to WebSphere.

Those that don't graduate to the harder hitting products can always be hit up for the cost professional services. Either way, it's a new revenue stream for IONA, which is what they're really after.

Anyone doing video conferencing for small meetings? I'd like to talk to you about the experience, issues and effectiveness. Drop me an email.

A few months ago, I did a video conference meeting between myself, a PR rep of a web-based video conferencing vendor and their product manager. The conference went smoothly. My webcam worked fine. I was able to see other participants with excellent video quality. There were no technological problems at all. But it was also the most stressful vendor briefing I've ever done. Being on camera and watched, I felt a need to constantly appear interested, attentive and not distracted. Not that I normally blow off vendors and pretend to listen to them in a briefing. But you know how when you're on the phone, you sometimes look around the room, wave off coworkers to say you're busy, play with a pen on your desk, or refresh your email inbox to scan for urgent messages? You can't do that while being constantly watched on a webcam. Taking notes, which often require you to look down, may also be interpreted as disinterest through the webcam's eye (and sometimes, I don't want the caller to know when I'm taking a note). The whole process seemed a bit too unnatural. Maybe that feeling goes away with time.

Of course, there is also the fact that showing up on a video conference in a bathrobe, uncombed hair and poofy bunny slippers gives off a slightly unprofessional image.

Okay, this Friday it's just the Friday Freebie, as I only have one cool sounding freebie for you.

Oracle DeveloperTools for Visual Studio .NET

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET is a tightly integrated set of tools for Visual Studio .NET which should help developers build Oracle database driven applications much easier.

New features include:

• Automatic code generation


• Powerful designers and wizards


• Context-sensitive online help


• Easy-to-use stored procedures editor

Our IT haiku competition is still going strong -- check out this week's poem, By Allen Hess (though we're not sure if Allen's actually insulting us or not here):

Fools art thou who try
To encourage geek Haiku
For hell awaits them

Well done Allen. You receive our official 'no-prize' of the week (anyone else remember those from Marvel Comics years ago)?

The rest of you, send those haikus in. And remember, the 5/7/5 syllable per line rule? It's not 5/22/17 -- sheesh. This ain't T.S Elliot here, folks.

When I was little, I was always amazed at Maxwell Smart shoe phone. Not only was it a phone inside a shoe, it didn't have any wires attached to it! Of course, I always chuckled wondering if the person on the other end would ever say "Boy Max, your feet sure stink."

Hey, I was a kid. Bet you thought the same thing!

Anyway, digression aside, Agent 86 can kick off his shoes and try something new for dialing up the chief -- The world's first 'Phone Glove!'

All you need to make your own is:

Any Bluetooth headset
Small Clippers
Electrical Tape
Soldering Iron and bits
Any thin flexible electrical wire - colour coded will help
A few strips of transparent plastic (ripped up old sandwich box)
Your glove of choice
Lining fabric (not all that necessary, but sensible)

Good luck! And remember, if it blows up in your face (or your hand for that matter), you can just say "Missed it by that much." (Just don't sue us. We didn't actually tell you to try this -- you crazy person you).

How far has IBM strayed from its mainframe roots? Today (June 16) it bought a company in order to get the tools and expertise it needs to manage mainframe applications. (for more, read "IBM Acquiring Isogon To Bolster Mainframe Apps-Management Lineup"

IBM acquired Isogon Corp., a privately held company that makes mainframe and Unix software asset management tools, for an undisclosed sum. Isogon's software will be integrated into IBM's Tivoli line of enterprise management products, where IBM's old line of NetView mainframe applications management tools has largely been left to rust.

NWC Inc. is busy busy busy lately. Right now, we're getting ready for Bruce Boardman to test a bevy of BSM (Business Service Management) suites which will track all our transactions and tell us ... something about our business.

Getting NWC Inc. ready for Bruce means some additional applications and infrastructure, so yours truly has been installation apps and writing code frantically to get everything in place for Bruce's testing.

At the same time, we're gearing up for a Business Intelligence suite review. We'll be examining NWC Inc.'s massive amounts of data to search for trends (which widgets are hot, which ones are not) and which region of the world likes to buy which widgets, and why has Mike Fratto been ordering so many widgets for only 5 cents??

We'll start our testing in July to get ready for an October issue, so watch this space for updates and juicy tidbits about NWC Inc.'s widgets as we dig into the data with Business Intelligence suites.

The OnDemand CRM space continues to be a hotbed of new releases and new entrants into the market. We've got a review of hosted CRM (I mean "OnDemand CRM") suites coming up later this summer, but in the meantime here's another one for you to put on your list of options.

Siebel Systems, Inc. announced the launch of Release 8 of Siebel CRM OnDemand, the company’s hosted CRM offering. This release introduces new features that streamline team collaboration and enable sophisticated segmentation for targeted marketing programs.

New in this release is:

• Group calendaring and delegated task management—View consolidated team calendars and task lists to coordinate schedules, balance workloads, and align resources with built-in Microsoft Outlook integration
• Advanced collaboration and group sharing—Easily customize groups to share accounts, contacts, and opportunities among team members and share consolidated team calendars for maximized productivity and insight
• Contact networking—Track business and social relationships between contacts to uncover new revenue opportunities and build new relationships
• Advanced marketing segmentation wizard—Perform multidimensional segmentations to target the right marketing message to the right contact for improved ROI of marketing campaigns

When I was a kid there was a joke about how a guy walked into a convenience store and asked for a pack of

cigarettes. By the time he got through all the choices (filtered or non, menthol or non, etc) he had decided

to quit smoking out of frustration.

That's where the storage industry is today. Imagine this conversation between a CIO and a Storage

Architect:

CIO: We have a secret project going on that will need 20 terabytes of storage that is not tied to our

existing systems. What do you recommend?

SA: Do you want DAS, NAS, CAS, SAN, or iSCSI?

CIO: What's the difference?

SA: NAS is easy - throw it on the network and it appears as shares, CAS is NAS for archiving - kind of

- DAS is the simplest to configure, but it is nearly impossible to centrally manage, SAN is the easiest to

centrally manage, but is expensive like there's no tomorrow, and iSCSI is like SAN meets NAS - you can do both

with it, but unless you buy top-of-the-line there might be performance issues.

CIO: SAN. Definitely SAN.

SA: Great then, do you want FC, SCSI, SAS, SATA, or PATA drives?

CIO: HuH?

SA: FC is fastest, but the cost is higher in multiples than the others...

CIO: Never mind, we want NAS. Easy is good.

SA: Great, then do you want FC, SCSI, SAS, SATA, or PATA drives?

CIO: Sheesh. You figure it out.

SA: Okay, then do you want CIFS or NFS Support? Or both?

CIO: What's the difference?

SA: CIFS for Windows, NFS for all flavors of UNIX - Kind of.

CIO: Both.

SA: Good then, do you want it to be CAS, or straight NAS?

CIO: Forget it! Direct Attached is PERFECT!

SA: Good then, what RAID levels do we need?

CIO: What are the options?

SA: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10 - which is really RAID 1+0 - RAID 50, which is...

CIO: You're fired. I need space to store data, not acronym soup. I could get this crap from a

vendor.

Before you freak out on me here -- I am absolutely, positively NOT endorsing this.

With that in mind, may I present to you instructions on how to clean your keyboard in a dishwasher.

Come on. You know you've got an old sticky soda-covered keyboard somewhere in your basement. You know you wanna try this just once!

A couple of interesting freebies for this Friday for you.

The first is eSigma web services testing. There's quite a few 'free' web services testing sites on the web, but after trying out eSigma I have to say I like this one quite a bit. They're promoting, of course, their own hosting and registry services, but the free web service testing is pretty cool and lets you see the request and response in unadulterated, raw XML.

Another freebie for you is from Adeptia. Adeptia BPM Server v4.2 (in beta right now) is available for ... free (as in gratis). What a deal if you're looking to start playing around with BPM suites. We've got an upcoming review of these suites but believe me, none of them are even close to being free, though you can also download and play with Oracle's BPEL Process Manager for a while before laying out the cash.

Enjoy!

Goes to the Cloudy Nights Astronomical Community for their t-shirt with the logo "Cloudy Nights-- Where Astronomers Cluster."

And the "I can't believe you bought this" award goes to our very own Brad Shimmin!

EII vendor Ipedo recently announced availability of its latest release, XIP 4.0.

Ipedo XIP 4.0 introduces a dual SQL/XQuery engine, giving enterprises broader options for building out their information infrastructure. This is a great move for Ipedo, who was held back in our last review of EII suites by its lesser support in this area so it's great to see this otherwise very cool product supporting SQL as well as XQuery. The new release also features several new capabilities designed to reduce the cost and complexity of information integration, including a visual rules processing interface, Web Services publishing, and integration with BusinessObjects and Crystal Reports.

Ipedo XIP 4.0 is available now for Windows 2000, Windows NT, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux. Pricing is on a per-CPU basis.

CA today announced its intentions to acquire portfolio management vendor Niku

Portfolio management, more recently coined IT Governance, has been growing as a concern for the past year. Compuware acquired Changepoint Corporation, winner of our 2004 Well Connected Award for Portfolio Management and top scorer in our review of ITPM products and recently integrated it more thoroughly into its own set of management solutions. We anciticipate that CA, with its broad portolio of management products, will walk the same path with Niku.

IT Governance solutions are designed to manage project life cycles and assist IT and line of business managers in aligning IT projects with the business by organizing, prioritizing and scoring projects based on traditional IT factors such as resource availability and cost as well as more nebulous criteria such as business value and alignment with corporate strategy.

CA indicates that Niku's IT management and governance solutions will be integrated with CA's Business Service Optimization (BSO) unit, headed by Senior Vice President and General Manager Jacob Lamm. The acquisition is expected to be completed within three months, pending regulatory approval and the approval of Niku's shareholders.

Forget-Me-Not Panties.

There has never been so obvious a case of technology gone wrong as this.

I won't even comment on the fact that they aren't selling "Forget-me-not-Boxers" for the men in your life.

Greetings all,

The June 9th Edition of Network Computing is now available. Here's what you'll find:

Sometimes, the strangest things drive us to find interesting little utilities.

I'm preparing for a test of Sun's Application Server 8.1 and NetBeans 4.1. The test bed requires Red Hat AS 3.0 Update 3. No problem, right? Just download the ISOs and burn them, right?

Either I'm too comfortable with a Linux desktop or Windows makes the process of creating a CD from an ISO too hard. (I'm guessing it's a little of both, but I never had a problem doing this on the command line in Linux... )

A quick search finds me the perfect tool for XP. ISO Recorder. After installation I was two clicks away from burning a CD from an ISO. No heavy lifting required.

The only gotcha is that if you're running XP SP2 you need to install the beta version - anything before SP2 requires the original version. Other than that, it's just the thing for quick burning of ISOs to CDs.

And the best part was that it was F R E E. So check out Alex Feinman's ISO Recorder if you're looking for a down and dirty, easy to use ISO to CD burning tool.