Novell, SAP bring together security, compliance wares

Novell and SAP Tuesday announced a partnership to integrate, certify and support their respective security and identity technology and governance, risk and compliance software. In the next 30 days, that certification will extend to the other two applications in SAP's Business Objects governance, risk and compliance (GRC) suite - Process Control and Risk Management. "We cover the entire stack of GRC from applications to IT controls," says Ranga Bodla, senior director for governance, risk and compliance for SAP. The Novell software provides user provisioning, access control and security event monitoring, while the SAP tools address risk and access management, data monitoring and compliance management and reporting. Novell has integrated and certified its Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP, Novell Identity Manager and Novell Sentinel to work with SAP's Business Objects GRC Access Control.

The two vendors hope the integration lets IT reduce costs and infrastructure by combining IT access controls and business process controls in a single integrated system. The companies also said they would optimize Novell's operating system for SAP's data center infrastructure. In essence, the two are creating a hub for defining security, identity and GRC across a network. "Users can synchronize across not only SAP applications but across all applications," says Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for identity and security at Novell. "So processes and policies in SAP Access Control can be mapped to another enterprise application with the same access controls tightly linked."The partnership between the two vendors http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031708-novell-modular-infrastructu... ">began early last year when Novell also announced a partnership to optimize SAP on SuSE Linux Enterprise and with Novell's virtualization and identity platforms. Follow John on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnfontana

Psystar selling software to run Mac OS on generic hardware

Oh, Psystar. We lov-well, we put up with you. We know you.

But still, you continue to let the dream of Mac cloning live on, EULAs, sketchy products, and pending trials be damned. This all sounds very familiar to us, as though it's based on a virtualization technology that Psystar's been trying to license. The company's latest invention is Rebel EFI, a product sold exclusively through Psystar's company store for the "special price" of $50. It claims to offer the ability to run up to six operating systems (including Mac OS X Snow Leopard) on six different hard drives on the same computer. Hmm. Psystar's Web site claims that Rebel EFI uses the company's very own Darwin Universal Boot Loader to load Mac OS X. It also comes with "supported hardware profile features and related drivers, and support for [Rebel EFI]". As for which drivers or hardware profile features Psystar's talking about, we cannot say.

Before you dive into this kludge of unsupported engineering, Psystar claims-through the use of legally-binding boldface-that it is "not responsible for possible data loss due to installation or use of Rebel EFI." Assuming that you're down with the idea of spending money on questionably legal software that could destroy anything (or everything!) on your computer, let us tell you what Psystar promises. Apart from a numbered list explaining how to install Snow Leopard on Rebel EFI, there's nothing on the Web site that explains what will work. Rebel EFI is being offered now for $50, down from the "regular" price of $90. A trial is available that will let you use Rebel EFI with limited functionality for up to two hours, but we honestly have no idea what will happen after two hours. [via The Loop] Besides in-app support, anybody brave enough to give Rebel EFI a try is really on their own.

13 hot products from DEMOfall '09

Network World's DEMO conference always features a wide range of flashy new consumer and enterprise technologies and this fall's show is no exception. In this article, we'll run through 13 of the new technologies generating the most buzz and highlight some of the innovations on display at the show. Products from DEMOfall '09 run the gamut, from cloud video surveillance technology to Web 2.0 patent databases to software that helps you scope out your dates for sketchy Internet activity. Get an overview of the products Company: Third Iris Corp.

The company's package includes video cameras that users can manage from a central Web site and that use "intelligent camera" software to provide analytics. Product: VIAAS With IT video surveillance becoming increasingly more complex, Third Iris Corp. has developed the Video Intelligence-as-a-Service (VIAAS) system that outsources analysis to the Third Iris cloud. Company: Armorize Technologies, Inc.  Product: Armorize HackAlert This software-as-a-service automatically scans Web Sites for injected malicious codes and links and also provides users with real-time alerts if their computers are visiting a site containing malware. Company: Intelius Product: DateCheck This is a mobile application that allows you to check up on your potential date any place where they have a presence on the Web. According to DEMO, this product has had success in Asian markets in recent years and is coming to the U.S. for the first time this year. So for instance, if you have their e-mail address or phone number and their e-mail address or phone number is linked to their Facebook and Twitter accounts you can check up on them to see if they are who they say they are or to find out if they have any sleazy interests.

The HP SkyRoom video conferencing service aims to change that by providing high-definition videoconferencing technology that HP says can support "up to four people using rich media content over standard business networks." DEMO says that while the system shouldn't be seen as a strict replacement for high-end conference room equipment, it does provide improvement for people working at individual stations who want to collaborate more easily on projects. The slogan that the company is using for the app is (we're not making this up): "Look up before you hook up." Company: Hewlett-Packard Product: HP SkyRoom If you want to participate in a video conference from your office computer, you typically have to use a puny Web camera that provides low resolution and high jitter. Company: Hashwork Product: Hashwork This is a sort of Twitter for your workplace that can integrate Google Calendar and Twitter to give workers a hub they can monitor throughout the day to see what their coworkers are up to. Company: dotSyntax, LLC Product: Digsby One annoying feature of having multiple accounts with different social networking and instant messaging protocols is the need to keep multiple windows open at once if you want to keep track of them all. The folks at DEMO claim that Hashwork has become a staple in their daily work environment.

Digsby is a program that aims to consolidate all these protocols by merging all instant messaging screen names onto one single messenger and by merging social networking sites to give real-time updates on all of them simultaneously. Company: Article One Partners, LLC  Product: AOP Patent Studies The goal of this technology is to apply Web 2.0 collaborative technology to the field of patent research. For instance, if you had accounts with MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, Digsby would serve as a one-stop hub that would tell you every time a friend wrote something on your wall or responded to your tweets. In other words, if you are a company looking to see if your patent claim will hold up in court, you can use AOP's community of patent advisors to help you out. The application is now available for the iPhone and it will let iPhone users sync with Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal and Entourage for Macs. Article One says that it charges clients for an annual subscription that will give them "real-time access to validity evidence" and communication "with AOP's scientific community… to optimize their research."~~ Company: Tungle Corp.  Product: Tungle for iPhone Tungle, which debuted last year at DEMO, is a planning application that helps friends and coworkers share their calendars and create schedules for meetings based on availability.

Company: Waze, Inc.  Product: Waze Waze combines the open-source editing capabilities of Wikipedia with the real-time immediacy of Twitter to provide users with fast-breaking updates on traffic conditions. This technique can also be used to flag areas that have speeding cameras or areas that are well-known police speed traps. Essentially it works like this: If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you send an update explaining your location and the density of the current traffic. This mobile app is available on Android phones, the iPhone, RIM devices and Windows Mobile devices. Product: Micello We all love Google maps for helping us get from one place to another on the road.

Company: Micello, Inc. But what happens when we're inside a large building such as a stadium and we're looking for a particular restaurant or souvenir shop? This application supports user-generated maps of large public places that will eventually help you find a public restroom no matter where you are. That's where Micello comes in. Company: Piryx, Inc.  Product: Piryx Think of Piryx as sort of a PayPal for politics.

DEMO praises the Piryx platform for bringing "smart payment processing technology to the $300+ billion non-profit sector." Company: Answers Corp. It essentially lets users send contributions to political candidates, action committees and non-profit groups. Product: Answers.com Answers Corp, which already maintains the popular WikiAnswers, is launching this new Web site as a way to provide "one-stop answers about anything, combining the world's best licensed and user-generated content." The site will incorporate similar features to WikiAnswers, where users ask questions and rely upon a team of open-source writers and editors to answer them. Product: Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud This is new approach to cloud storage that Symform describes as a "storage potluck." When users sign up for the Cooperative Storage Cloud, they can get as much storage space as they want within the cloud as long as they contribute an equal amount of storage space on their own premises for Symform to use as storage for other customers. DEMO says that the new site's strength is that it integrates "the depth of ReferenceAnswers with the breadth of WikiAnswers." Company: Symform, Inc. As Kevin Brown, the vice president of sales and marketing for Symform, explains it, the customer "contributes what they consume." So for example, Brown says that a customer "can contribute from an internal drive or some external drive, e.g., a $100 USB drive, and backup an unlimited amount." This cooperative approach to storage makes Symform's cloud storage cheaper than other kinds of cloud storage.

Lawyer in Tenenbaum music piracy case to seek retrial

The Harvard Law School professor who defended a Boston University doctoral student in a music piracy case plans to seek a new trial. A hearing on the motions is scheduled for Jan. 4. Nesson plans to argue that Tenenbaum's file-sharing activities occurred before digital music could be purchased legally in MP3 format. Charles Nesson, a law professor and the founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said he is also filing a separate motion challenging the constitutionality of the $675,000 fine assessed against Joel Tenenbaum and asking that it be reduced to a more reasonable amount. He pointed to remarks made by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner in her decision yesterday that he said supported such an argument.

In her remarks, Gertner noted that individuals "who used new file-sharing networks in the technological interregnum before digital media could be purchased legally, but who later shifted to paid outlets," might be able to use a fair-use defense. Gertner signed off on a $675,000 fine against Tenenbaum, who was found liable for illegally downloading and sharing 30 copyrighted songs in a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the major music labels. In her decision, Gertner wrote that the court might have been willing to hear the "fair use" defense asserted by Nesson had it been presented in a proper manner. If Nesson had tailored his defense to suggest a "modest exemption" to copyright protections, the court would have been willing to entertain the defense, Gertner noted. Gertner said she had to forbid Nesson from presenting a fair-use defense in the case because the manner in which it was presented to the court was too broad and vague.

As an example of such an exemption, Gertner wrote that individuals who had used new file-sharing networks in the "technological interregnum" before legal paid music downloads were available might be able to rely on a fair-use defense, if they had later started paying for such downloads. The key question is, when did that period come to an end?" he said. The fair use doctrine allows for the use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holders in certain limited circumstances. "Her opinion on their being an interregnum between when Napster came online and the time the industry finally responded," with legal MP3 music downloads is interesting, Nesson said in an interview with Computerworld . The comments suggest that Gertner recognizes many Napster users might have had a legitimate fair use, Nesson said. "She has established the foundation by recognizing this interregnum period. Nesson said he will also use Gertner's refusal to permit the fair-use defense in the case and other "major evidentiary errors" as a basis for seeking a new trial. Her refusal resulted in the jury walking away with a false impression of Tenenbaum's commitment to settling the case, Nesson claimed.

One example of such an error was the judge's refusal to allow the jury to see the entire contents of a letter Tenenbaum had written to the RIAA offering them $500 by way of a settlement, Nesson said. Nesson said he will also argue that the copyright statutes used in the case were not meant to be used against individuals, but against commercial enterprises that break copyright laws. "We will be asserting the unconstitutionality of applying these bankrupting damages to individual persons like Joel," Nesson said. Nesson's tactics in the case have previously drawn fire from other legal experts. How successful such arguments are likely to be remains to be seen. Some had predicted that his assertion of a fair-use defense would fail, well before Gertner threw it out.

Gertner, in her decision yesterday, criticized Nesson's behavior and called his use of the fair-use defense an "afterthought" that he came up with "literally on the eve of trial." "Defense counsel repeatedly missed deadlines, ignored rules, engaged in litigation over conduct that was plainly illegal," Gertner wrote in explaining some of the reasoning behind her decision to forbid the fair use defense in the Tenenbaum case. Others questioned his decision to challenge the constitutionality of the statutes under which Tenenbaum was sued. Nesson, however, brushed aside the judge's criticism and maintained that it was she who had gotten it wrong. "I was sorry she did not respond to our fair use defense. Gertner in her decision also said she was concerned with "astronomical penalties" available to music companies under copyright laws, She called upon Congress to amend copyright statutes to reflect the realities of file-sharing among students. She had a considerable amount of trouble rejecting it," he said.

Dell-Perot deal: Big price tag, small industry impact

Dell's bid for outsourcer Perot Systems marks a significant move for the hardware vendor, but industry watchers say the pending acquisition won't do much to alter the current IT services market. The deal marks a very deliberate strategy from Dell to add IT services expertise to its mostly products business, industry watchers say. "Dell has been a bit more gradual embarking on its services strategy, but it has been very deliberate in determining who is the right player at the right time," says Dane Anderson, research vice president at Gartner. "Perot offers something that can be complementary to the Dell business and at the same time, it is very digestible and integrate-able." Slideshow: Recapping the hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 Perot, which is already a Dell partner and delivered a healthcare solution based on a Dell platform earlier this year, does business just shy of $3 billion, according to Anderson. Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion Dell Monday announced it would pay $3.9 billion to acquire existing partner and IT services provider Perot Systems.

A deal would enable Dell to sell products into Perot accounts and vice versa. For one, Dell needs to maintain its foothold in the small and midsize enterprise market and not yet attempt to become an "anywhere, anytime global services provider," Anderson says. "This deal increases Dell's footprint, but it doesn't give them a license to play anywhere. If the two companies can stay focused, analysts say, the opportunity for a successful integration is large. They have to be selective and disciplined about the markets the combined company addresses." That means Dell could excel in vertical markets such as healthcare and government, considering Perot's strong history in both areas. The acquisition will impact Dell and Perot and their customers, and it is interesting, but it's not game-changing for the industry." Others say the deal represents an aggressive move on Dell's part that impacts both the hardware and IT services market, and vendors such as HP and IBM specifically.  HP and IBM have long been able to couple their product offerings with professional services, and HP recently upped the ante by acquiring EDS. Dell being a pure-play hardware vendor with partnerships in software and services wasn't able to effectively compete with the market-leading services vendors. Industry watchers say with proper execution the acquisition could be the beginning of Dell expanding beyond being a product maker to becoming a provider of IT services, which would benefit both companies involved in the pending deal. "Perot Systems is a conglomerate of goods and services outside the scope of IT. This acquisition is a first step in Dell's long-held desire to provide more than just desktop solutions," says Steve Brasen, principal analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "Leveraging Perot's broad market base, however, Dell will likely find direct marketing opportunities to expand its core IT business – particularly among government, financial and healthcare institutions." Dell is planning to keep the leadership team at Perot in place, which could bode well for the success of the acquisition, says Mark Mayo, partner and president of global resources management at TPI. But aside from the deal representing a trend toward consolidation in the IT services market, Mayo doesn't see the final acquisition as having a big impact on the competition or the market in general. "We expect to see more consolidation because it is a very competitive market and a surge of new players came into the market globally in the late 1990s and early 2000s," Mayo explains. "But this is not an industry-leading or industry-making event.

Now with Perot's services business, Dell is on track to better compete with the likes of Accenture, CSC, HP and IBM, analysts say. "Perot and Dell together are able to compete with HP and IBM, specifically, in ways that neither was able to before. Dell was on a losing path as a pure-play hardware vendor," says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates. HP and IBM (and to a lesser extent Sun) have been able to offer a complete data center infrastructure - from facilities, through server and storage hardware, to software, and implementation and operational services – for some time. Acquiring an IT services arm will help Dell better compete and expand into new markets, but it won't be enough to enable it to fully compete head-on with the likes of HP and IBM, Mann adds. "If Dell really wants to compete on even footing with HP and IBM, it is going to need a software stack of its own. Do you Tweet? It can continue to cede solution revenues to its partners for some time, and this buy will cause significant indigestion and inertia that will hold up any new acquisition, but eventually Dell must pick up a software stack," Mann says.

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GlobalFoundries woos customers with expansion plans

The acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor by Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) and its planned integration with GlobalFoundries will help the contract chip maker win more customers, GlobalFoundries CEO Doug Grose said Wednesday. "This enhances our ability to then service a much broader and deeper range of customers" Grose said during a presentation at Advanced Micro Devices' 2009 Analyst Day. The company is a joint venture between AMD and ATIC and the microprocessor vendor remains its biggest customer. GlobalFoundries, formerly the manufacturing arm of AMD, was spun off as an independent company and began operating on its own earlier this year. In September, ATIC offered to acquire Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor, which uses the same manufacturing process technology as GlobalFoundries.

Besides adding manufacturing capacity through ATIC's acquisition of Chartered and the construction of a new plant in New York, GlobalFoundries is counting on advanced process technologies to help it win customers and compete with rivals like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Nearly all of GlobalFoundries' current production uses its 45-nanometer process, reflecting AMD's role as the company's dominant customer, Grose said, adding that the more advanced 32 nanometer process is in pilot production and is "ready to go" next year. Chartered shareholders voted to approve the deal earlier this month. "We have one more regulatory approval to get in the world and we're working towards year end to close this ... and to do the planning to integrate, on an operational basis, Chartered and Global Foundries into a single face to the customer," Grose said. GlobalFoundries has also started pilot production using its 28-nanometer process technology, which will be used for commercial production starting late next year.

Intel, Numonyx create breakthrough in phase-change memory

Intel Corp. and Numonyx B.V. announced a breakthrough in the development of phase-change memory today that has the potential to allow developers to stack multiple layers of chips atop each other, thereby greatly increasing the density of the nonvolatile memory medium. Greg Atwood, a senior technology fellow at Numonyx, said the breakthrough in stackable PCM, which is being called PCM-stackable (PCMS), has the potential to create products that can replace DRAM, NOR and NAND flash memory because it will have better bandwidth, greater density and a cost per gigabyte of capacity comparable with today's solid state disk (SSD) drive products. "We believe it enables the possibility of combining the functionality and performance of phase-change memory with more NAND-like cost structure," Atwood said. "And, it's of particular interest given the challenges the existing non-volatile memory technologies are facing over the next decade as well as the continued expansion of [PCM] usage." The two companies have been working on development of PCM products since 2000, and a stackable PCM product since 2002. Al Fazio, an Intel fellow and director of memory technology development, said it's not unusual for a new memory type to take as many as 10 years to develop. Calling the discovery a "milestone" in phase-change memory (PCM) development, the researchers said they have so far only been able to build a single-layer, 64Mbit chip with the potential to be stacked with other 64Mbit chips.

Atwood said that because the stacking breakthrough builds on top of PCM, a technology already in production, "it's a leading candidate amongst the various stackable memory concepts, most of which have no basis in a proven technology." Other non-volatile memories in development include graphite memory , and race track memory . Atwood added that Intel and Numonyx have no current time line for bringing PCMS products to market. Current NAND flash memory lithography technology resides at the 32-nanometer level. Phase-change memory is made up of a glass-like material called chalcogenide that can be can be switched between a crystalline and random state using very low-voltage electricity. Future roadmaps scale NAND flash to 20 nanometers, but physical limitations present a barrier to creating anything more dense than that. The structure of a typical non-volatile memory cell includes a storage element combined with a selector element. PCM, however, currently has the ability to scale to 5 nanometers in size, and the potential of even greater densities, Fazio said.

The function of the storage element is nonvolatile storage of data and the purpose of the selector element is to connect storage elements into a cross-point array of cells. Unlike NAND flash memory, which requires a entire block of memory cells to be rewritten each time new data is stored on a device like a SSD drive, PCM allows for single bits to be changed, greatly increasing the efficiency and performance of a device. "It has features of a low-latency memory and high bandwidth so we can combine many of the good attributes ... of NAND flash, DRAM and NOR flash," Fazio said. The connection allows for the selection of a single storage element inside of a large array of cells - a billion or more. The breakthrough in stacking PCMS came with the use of a thin film selector substance that is in the same class of materials as chalcogenide and is built above the silicon substrate. It has a low current in the off state and a high current in the on state," Atwood said. "Combining the OTS with the thin film storage material, a similar material used in phase-change memories today, enables a cell that can be stacked multiple layers high." Additionally, since the silicon substrate that isn't being used as a selector, as it is in today's PCM product, can now be used for building the support circuitry used that's required to decode, read and write to the cells. "So the combination of these two advantages results in a much smaller die size that's a lower potential cost structure for the memory," Atwood said. The companies are calling the thin film selector an Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS), which acts like a resister between the stacked layers of PCM chips. "This switch demonstrates a diode-like behavior.

On Dec. 9, the two companies plan to present a paper on their discovery at the 2009 International Electron Devices Meeting, titled "A Stackable Cross Point Phase Change Memory."