Software

Microsoft makes a scale-out play, and Cisco Infiniband is in the mix

CurtMonash — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:51:58 -0400

Microsoft is buying DATAllegro for, in essence, its data warehouse scale-out technology. And guess what? DATAllegro relies on Infiniband. The last time I looked, DATAllegro's Infiniband supplier was Cisco.

Read more

Microsoft is buying MPP data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro. This is big news on multiple levels.

CurtMonash — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:39:29 -0400

Microsoft announced today that it is buying privately held data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro. This is big news, for a number of reasons.

Read more

Data warehouse appliances and columnar DBMS

CurtMonash — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:45:56 -0400

When I listed 5 data management technologies you probably should know more about, two of them were data warehouse appliances and columnar DBMS.

Read more

The Future of the Key System

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:35:19 -0400

Ah yes, the "key system". Doesn't that just conjure up images of old AT&T Merlin sets, where you could holler to your co-worker: "Your wife is on Line 3?" The sad part is that these PBX-wanna-bes are still being sold across the world to SMBs everywhere. But don't assume that a lack of scalability leads to a significantly lower price tag. Where I live, I still see a huge following of Avaya Partner, Nortel CICS, and Toshiba Strata systems and users. When one dies, well, they're replaced quickly by yet another key system. So why do SMBs continue to invest thousands of dollars in old technology? Simply, I believe it's because they don't know much better.

Read more

RE:Salesforce.com bites bullet on need for integration

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:53:09 -0400

Salesforce really tries to make an effort with Appexchange. We at Apatar actually submitted a solution for data synchronization between Salesforce.com and QuickBooks. You may want to check it out (http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000005kn33AAA). AppExchange is a great place to submit the solutions for everyone to check out.

After trying to buy Yahoo, running Juniper should be an easier job

Microsoft Subnet — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:22:10 -0400

Do we need to ask why Kevin Johnson, the man behind Microsoft's troubled bid to buy Yahoo is leaving Microsoft? Well, he's not leaving for a bad job either - he'll be running Juniper Networks, according to a report on WSJ.com. Johnson's group - Microsoft's largest by headcount, according to the WSJ - will be split into two: one that will manage the Windows OS and Windows Live, and the other that will manage Microsoft's online services, according to the story.

The WSJ writes:

Read more

Chinese Paper Says Blacks Banned From Bars during Olympics

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:22:57 -0400

Being an African American living in America and bound for the Beijing games in a few days and the founder of www.olympiconenessdream.com a social site for international Olympic attendees, I have a keen interest in this story. Join with me and take a stand with the Chinese motto for the Olympic Games in Beijing “One World One Dream”. How do you say “I have a Dream” in Chinese? Hugh Browne

Researchers tout newfangled tool to predict network vulnerabilities

Layer 8 — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:47:01 -0400

It seems like that for as many network security threats there are , there tends to be an equal number of new methods to stop them. Today we find a promising new tool from researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that uses security metrics and network pathways to predict attack risks that could ultimately help IT folks keep ahead of network security battles. For a moment anyway.

Read more

Do no evil???

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:40:16 -0400

Google, like any other giant, is having trouble telling right from wrong. Not for the first time and, I am sure, not the last.

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:48:23 -0400

hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Anatomy of a Data Breach

rsherstobitoff — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:22:52 -0400

In 2007 and 2008 the industry has seen an upsurge in data breaches affecting millions of consumers and causing corporations to pay heavily in fines.

Despite the increase in the number of data breaches via illicit means, internal controls seem to fail when it comes to the assurance that critical assets remain uncompromised. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center a total of 336 breaches have been reported in 2008 alone, putting the overall number at 69% greater then this time last year . This is a concern for security teams especially given the fact that a lack of dedicated resources exist to combat and revert this trend.

Read more

Photos from OSCON 2008 Expo Hall ... #oscon

mhalligan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:10:48 -0400

Here's a small batch of photos from the expo floor today at OSCON in Portland.

Ajax Scripting is extrenmely poor

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:34:06 -0400

Many times, the scripts need to be disabled as they return 1000 of errors. many sites display the problem of page not loading, many errors, not working in slow network connections, poor performance characteristics, and after all, whole logic fails because Other components which are depending upon eachother show error if some user clicks two to three items that invoke ajax script. So,

Windows Search

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:26:16 -0400

I have just had terminal servers slammed to a halt with this search indesing. Perhaps Microsoft does not invisage that there are environments with large Termina servers which don't get mouse or keyboard activity. The server was unresponsive within 30 minutes of installing this great feature. Sure I think it will be good once the indexing is done but the initial indexing needs to be done without killing the machine.

PIPE Fairy

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:29:59 -0400

The time of SCO's demise cannot be guestimated by looking at their current financial situation or how badly they are losing in court. Several times in the past SCO's own personal PIPE Fairy has resuscitated SCO from near death experiences. SCO will not die until the PIPE Fairy stops resuscitating SCO. When that will be is known only to the PIPE Fairy. ------------------- Steve Stites

copyrights - not patents

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:55:09 -0400

Software should never have been allowed into patent system. Copyright should have been used. The rest of the world uses copyrights (at best, as China and Russia don't seem to have much enforcement - but I'm no expert). US patents of software is becoming a liability for US businesses, in my opinion - what do others think? Especially those who don't understand Open Source.

Cisco pink slips its famous PIX firewall July 28: AlgoSec aims to make the transition painless and hassle-free for customers

Brad Reese — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:49:39 -0400

This coming Monday - July 28th, Cisco is quietly giving the boot to its scandalously and outrageously successful PIX firewall. AlgoSec is one company that is offering Cisco customers a migration service. According to information on their website, AlgoSec's service enables enterprises upgrading from PIX to ASA to:

	Control professional service costs associated with the migration.
	Receive an independent third party *proof of correct migration* audit.
	Automate the error-prone and labor-intensive manual task of rule-by-rule comparison.
	Proactively ensure business continuity by validating that critical traffic will keep flowing.

View the AlgoSec Cisco PIX to ASA migration service Register for a free 30-day evaluation of the AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA). According AlgoSec's website, you'll also get automatically completed PCI and SOX compliance reports.

"Firewalls are often the organization’s first and continued line of defense," said Dr. Avishai Wool - AlgoSec Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder. "When migrating from one platform to another, especially when their interfaces and configuration language options are different, as is the case with PIX and ASA, it can be very daunting for organizations to ensure a smooth transition."

"At AlgoSec, we strive to provide enterprises the ability to intelligently automate what were until now manual functions." "Our migration solution for those enterprises moving from PIX to ASA does just that." "It provides enterprises a way to quickly and cost-effectively guarantee that the migration was as planned and maintain the integrity of their security policy."

AlgoSec firewall analyzer summary page: According to AlgoSec, the screenshot above of the AlgoSec firewall analyzer summary page is displaying the risks identified during the analysis. Risks are color coded with red being the most severe and the numbers marking how many times that risk is present. Each risk has a link that drills down to the particular industry standard that identifies it as a risk and recommendations on how to remediate.

Standard by which risk is measured and how to remediate: According to AlgoSec, after clicking on the risk on the summary page the screenshot above displays the standard by which the risk is measured and how to remediate.

The actual rule associated with the risk: According to AlgoSec,, the screenshot above delves even deeper, showing the actual rule associated with the risk to enable IT to remediate.

Overview comparing policies between PIX and ASA firewalls: According to AlgoSec, the screenshot above is an overview comparing policies between two firewalls, a PIX and ASA firewall. It provides an overview with everything being a hyperlink that you can drill down to. It details which firewalls, IP addresses, number of rules, services and hosts (for example) and provides an automatically generated network connectivity diagrams for the two firewalls. Additionally, it shows at the top the amount of traffic, definitions and topology and how many risks you are exposed to. Keep in mind that because it is a hyperlink, if you are interested in seeing the risks you can click and drill down and receive guidance on remediation. Restating once again according to AlgoSec, the above screenshot is an overview because AlgoSec can also show if traffic is blocked when you compare old policy to new and what the other implications are.

You may also wish to investigate: End of Sale Q&A for Cisco PIX Products and Migration Guide from Cisco PIX 500 to Cisco ASA 5500 Series as well as Migration from PIX 500 Series Security Appliances to ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances and finally Cisco PIX to Cisco ASA Security Appliance Upgrade Program Related story: How to troubleshoot hardware issues with the Cisco PIX 500 series firewall

Don't YOU wish that the AlgoSec Firewall Analyzer (AFA) was your idea? http://www.BradReese.Com Search 55,498 current Cisco Job openings worldwide!


	RBC analyst on Cisco FY4Q08: Indications that bookings are tracking slightly ahead of plan
	Foretelling the future of cloud computing
	UNEDA: Cisco secondary market is not the Cisco gray market
	Cisco CCIE number reached 21419 on July 8th, 2008
	Cisco vs. Nortel: Who's the customer support champ?
	Brad Reese on Cisco Story Archives

Cisco Refurbished Cisco VoIP Gateways Cisco Power Supplies Cisco Aironet Wireless

Read more

A good post on the OpsMgr 2007 Authoring Console

Kerrie Meyler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:50:32 -0400

Stever Rachui, technical reviewer for the upcoming System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed book, also shines with OpsMgr 2007 support. He recently blogged on which console to use for MP authoring at http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2008/06/29/the-authoring-console-or-the-operations-console.aspx. His first comment, similar to my previous blog entries, is that "it depends" (see http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24208 and http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20315).

Read more

Live Mesh Sighting For Macs

Mitchell Ashley — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:15:17 -0400

The Live Mesh barn door was open long enough for the guys at jkOnTheRun to give us a peak at Live Mesh running on Intel Macs. Guess what, it looks a lot like how it works on Windows Vista machines but still retains the Mac's overall look-and-feel. For the most part, the same capabilities are present on the Mac version as are in the Windows version. Remote desktop control isn't there yet but it's possible it could be added since this is still pre-beta bits.

I have to commend the Live Mesh team at Microsoft on two fronts. First, they chose to go the way of Google and offer Live Mesh services in beta form until they are ready.

Read more

Vista prods enterprises to Google Apps

Google Subnet — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:06:35 -0400

Vista could be just the catalyst enterprise IT needs to begin taking Google Apps and other cloud-based computing infrastructures more seriously. Avoiding the cost of a refresh and moving to Google Apps, while keeping the old Microsoft infrastructure in place, results in the best of both worlds: Cloud computing's collaborative capabilities plus local app access. It will be interesting to see if more enterprises follow suit.