Plus: Judge says Oracle can continue to try to swallow PeopleSoft; McAfee IPS earns federal certification; Cisco snaps up NetSolve; spam is everywhere; broadband usage up.
Microsoft last week added 120 days to the time a special registry key will block the automatic installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2. Corporations that use the Automatic Updates feature of XP originally were given a reprieve on automatic installation until Aug. 16. The date has now been extended to Dec. 14. Automatic Updates users had requested a way to stop the download of the service pack to have time to adequately test their applications against security changes in XP SP2. Microsoft responded with a special registry key that blocks XP SP2 but allows the download of other updates and patches via Automatic Updates.
A federal judge last week ruled that Oracle can proceed with its bid for PeopleSoft, thus removing one obstacle preventing the hostile acquisition. The ruling rejects the Department of Justice’s anti-trust claims, contending the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the merger of Oracle and PeopleSoft is likely to significantly lessen competition for business software.
The decision is a setback for PeopleSoft and a blow to the Justice Department, but it’s far from a green light for Oracle’s 15-month takeover battle. Oracle still has to deal with PeopleSoft’s “poison pill,” an anti-takeover provision in its bylaws that lets it manipulate its shares to make a hostile acquisition prohibitively expensive.
McAfee‘s intrusion-prevention system IntruShield has become the first IPS to earn the “Common Criteria” product-testing certification issued by the federal government’s National Information Assurance Program, which is jointly managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency. The Level 3 Common Criteria certification earned by IntruShield will let the commercial off-the-shelf product be considered for purchase by the Department of Defense for some high-security environments where certification is required. The Common Criteria certification also is accepted by some European and Asian countries, which also might have preferences for products that have passed the evaluation and test procedures in accredited labs.
Cisco channel partners will be able to offer real-time monitoring of enterprise networks after the company’s planned acquisition of NetSolve, which was announced last week. NetSolve sells a service that remotely monitors the performance, health and status of data networks and can diagnose problems and provide troubleshooting. Cisco will let channel partners provide the NetSolve technology to enterprise customers as part of their service and support offerings. Customers will get a view into the network through a Web portal, and the channel partners will be able to use the monitoring information to give better support, Cisco said.
Cisco will buy all outstanding shares of publicly held NetSolve for $11 per share, for a total of about $128 million. Because NetSolve has approximately $40 million in cash, the effective cost of the acquisition will be about $90 million to $95 million.
Spurred by back-to-school sales and political pitches, spam accounted for 82% of all inbound e-mail processed in August and made up 90% of all mail sent during one spam-filled day last month, according to an e-mail security firm. FrontBridge Technologies said it blocked 2.5 billion spam messages in August of 3.1 billion messages processed that month. The e-mail storm reached a peak Aug. 30, when 90% of all the messages FrontBridge processed were spam, the company said. The one-day high of 90% topped the previous one-day concentration of spam of 85%, set in June, the company said. FrontBridge, which offers e-mail management and security services for companies, compiled its data from more than 2,200 global customers and 15,000 e-mail domains.
The number of broadband users in the U.S. nearly tripled in the past two and a half years to more than 48 million subscribers, according to a report released last week by the FCC. High-speed lines providing connectivity of more than 200K bit/sec in at least one direction almost tripled from June 2001 to December 2003, from 9.6 million lines to 28.2 million lines, according to the FCC report.
The number of subscribers to advanced services providing connection speeds of more than 200K bit/sec in both directions has more than tripled since the FCC’s last report, from 5.9 million lines in June 2001 to 20.3 million lines in December 2003. Cable modem and DSL services provided the majority of advanced services lines, with cable representing 75.3% and DSL representing 14.9%. The percentage of cable lines increased from the 2001 report, when 56% of broadband lines were cable, according to the FCC.
