MultiFactor SecureAuth(R) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Delivers Efficient, Inexpensive Solution for Secure Portals

MultiFactor Corporation, an innovator in 2-factor authentication, Microsoft web application security and VPN Authentication solutions, today announced the availability of SecureAuth 4.5 for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, a secure access solution for enterprise portals.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft's industry-leading platform for document management, enterprise content search and data aggregation. Office SharePoint Server 2007 is increasingly utilized as the offering of choice for scalable portals to both internal users, extranet partners and customers. The ability of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to expose content, previously only available to intranet users, is unparalleled in portal products.

MultiFactor's SecureAuth, a Microsoft Certified solution is specifically designed for integration into the ASP.NET application framework. SecureAuth offers a deployable, non-phishable, authentication solution that requires no extra servers or infrastructure.

"Office SharePoint Server is a robust platform designed to meet the business needs and resource constraints faced by the enterprise today," said Deb Bannon, SharePoint Senior Product Manager. "The integration of Office SharePoint Server with products like MultiFactor SecureAuth enables the enterprise to further secure content shared across the intranet and with extranet partners."

"SecureAuth utilizes native ASP.NET authentication and data integration features to seamlessly integrate into an Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment. SecureAuth takes advantage of the new forms based authentication features in SharePoint Server 2007 to redirect the user to the SecureAuth solution and then conduct a secure, non-phishable validation," said Garret Grajek, COO of MultiFactor Corporation. "Upon authentication the user is redirected back to SharePoint Server 2007 to obtain the roles and permissions set up by the SharePoint Server 2007 administrative console."

In conjunction with the Office SharePoint Server platform, SecureAuth is able to deliver a secure credential, mapped directly to the individual user. SecureAuth utilizes the existing data store shared by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform, thus eliminating the need to create or replicate an additional data store.

About MultiFactor Corporation

MultiFactor Corporation delivers proven two factor authentication, web application security, and VPN security methodologies. SecureAuth is a tokenless authentication solution generates and validates client and server side certificates without PKI. MultiFactor Corporation's real-world security solutions draws from a diversified team of cryptographers, network and Web application specialists and certified security engineers to provide inexpensive and easily deployed security solutions.

source:- marketwatch.com/

Drupal Addresses Security In 6.3, Usability in 7

Earlier this week, Drupal 6.3 and 5.8 were released to fix multiple bugs and patch some recently discovered security issues in the popular open-source content management system. These fixes, which are detailed in the release notes, don't add any new functionality, because all enhancements are being saved for the release of Drupal 7.

Although no specific timeline or final list of features has been publicly announced for Drupal 7, we do know that addressing a number of the ongoing usability concerns that have dogged the system are high on the list.

Dries Buytaert, the creator and project lead for Drupal, mentioned two recent Drupal usability studies last week on his personal blog - one conducted at the University of Minnesota and another in the Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore. Both studies came to similar conclusions - although strong in many areas, certain aspects of Drupal's administration interface can be confusing and intimidating, particularly to new users.

The University of Baltimore study is available both as a PDF download and a video, which clocks in at just under 10 minutes.

Major Drupal releases have typically been 12 or more months apart, and with Drupal 6 debuting earlier this year, it's likely to be a while before 7 sees the light of day. Fortunately, it appears that the Drupal development team has heard what the user community is asking for, and is working hard to deliver it.

source:- informationweek.com/

Web Design- the invisible hand to the success of your business

Business and website go hand in hand. Website is the focal point of your business, interacting with your customers and clients round the clock. People judge you by your covers and this is where a good looking website design steps in. A professional website layout puts your business where it matters the most- in front of your customers and set you apart from the noise and clatter of your competition. How many times have you walked in a store which appears shabby? I bet you avoid stepping in, leave alone doing business with them. The same rule applies to your website- it is your virtual storefront and by designing an eye catching website, you are bound to turn a few heads and keep visitors coming back.

Picture this- your website acts as your storefront, your web layout and design the first impression your customers get, your content acts as brochure and catalogs for your customers to browse through, would you be willing to take a chance with any of the pointers that directly affect your business? A professional looking website layout portrays that your website means business. A website should be designed like a car with the purpose it needs to serve in mind. What´s the use of creating a vehicle without passengers? Getting a good looking website does not necessarily cost you a fortune. A well thought out website design would not only add value to your website but open up host of revenue avenues for your website besides creating value to your business. Making your website easily accessible and providing relevant content with your business niche creates a winning combination.

Before you start creating a website, there is an important factor to be borne in mind- your target audience. Your target audience should dictate your website theme and design. For instance if your business niche is real estate, your target audience is in the age group of 25-55 years and your website theme, layout and concept should be governed by your target audience and by over looking this key component you would end up turning your website-"internet real estate" into an "internet wasteland" . Your website should speak the language of your customers. Hiring a professional web designer to turn your vision into reality might come in handy but remember no one knows your business better than you, so your involvement would always create a personalized professional website leaving your footprint on the website, helping you to communicate efficiently with your customers. Make sure the website serves the purpose for which it has been created.

Business is what Business does- making contacts with the right people at the right time at the right place. But how can we do it all the time? This is where a website steps in. In simple terms it puts your business on auto pilot. Every Business needs a website-PERIOD.

source:- americanchronicle.com/

Use PNG Images Format in Your Web Designing

The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use. The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use.

One large hurdle in particular faced by PNG's was Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Far and away the most popular browser, IE offered particularly poor support for the file format. However, with the release of IE 7 as well as several JavaScript hacks, this has all changed, and PNGs are more popular than ever.

But who cares!? And besides being one letter short of my favorite 1972 video game, what makes a PNG so great? Below, are three reasons why PNGs are the best image format since the Polaroid.

They’re See-Through! (Alpha Transparency):
As compared to the GIF, PNG offers a far less basic form of transparency. With GIFs, a particular color (or colors) is able to be saved as transparent, leaving colors either entirely opaque or transparent. There is no in-between.

PNGs have a distinct advantage in this area. The PNG file format supports "semi-transparent pixels," meaning a PNG can be saved with a soft drop shadow and floated over any background. It can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradiented background. It can even be smoothly faded from fully opaque to transparent, revealing the web page contents beneath.

Summerour.net features a logo which demonstrates this function. The homepage layout called for a logo with a soft drop shadow over a textured background of architectural sketches that regularly change. Using a GIF or JPG would be highly impractical, because every time the image changed, the logo is background would need to be edited. A PNG, however, is floated over the image with a faded drop shadow, making the task quick, simple and dynamic. PNGs make the look and feel of your page flexible.

They Look Great! (Lossless Compression ):
Every time a JPEG is saved and compressed, it loses some of the original file's information and the image quality degrades. The GIF file format offers lossless compression (so the file can be saved and resaved without losing image quality), but it only supports a limited 256 color palette, making it useless for full-color photography and other such complex images.

PNG offers the best of both worlds. It displays full color photographic images, like the JPEG, but it also supports a managed color palette, like the GIF format. While the PNG will typically have a larger file size than the JPEG for photographic images, it does have a distinct advantage: its compression is lossless, meaning images never degrade in quality or suffer from "compression artifacting" which affects many JPEG images.

The results are crisper, brighter images that will on your pages unlike ever before.

They âre Self Optimizing! (Gamma Correction ):
Adjusting the brightness and contrast of images to look correct on a wide variety of monitors and operating systems is a common problem facing web designers. This problem is primarily related to different monitor Gamma settings.

Gamma is a method monitors use to distribute their luminance evenly across the display. Unfortunately, different operating systems (in particular the Mac and Windows) use different Gamma settings. So an image that is color-corrected for the Macintosh operating system may look too dark on the Windows operating system and vice-versa.

sourcee:- www.pr-usa.net/

Joomla! Downloads Exceed 5,000,000 and community.joomla.org Launched

Joomla!, the award winning open source content management system, has been downloaded over 5,000,000 times since March 2007 when the project began using the JoomlaCode.org repository. Recently, the 300,000th thread was created in the Joomla! forum where the community will soon welcome the 200,000th member. In the feature article of the first online Joomla! Community Magazine, Louis Landry, Joomla! Core Team member and Communications Team lead, cited these facts as "very encouraging signs that Joomla! is useful to people all around the world." He asked the community to get involved with project to help make Joomla! better, providing a list of easy ways to get started as a contributor. Joomla! 1.5 was released January 22, 2008, after over two years of development effort to refactor the code base into a modern application architecture utilizing MVC, object-oriented, event-driven approaches. In the article, Landry, also a lead developer for Joomla! 1.5, focused community attention on improvements in the area of localization support.

"Joomla! 1.5 was created with our international community in mind. Localization support is built into the core code to make translations easier," Landry stated, "Already, community translators have made Joomla! 1.5 available in many languages so that those who speak those languages can more easily build and administer Joomla! Web sites." Landry further encouraged the community to translate Joomla! into their own language, if not available, and to take advantage of the ability to easily add localization support to third party extensions offered at extensions.joomla.org.

These announcements were made in the feature article of the first monthly Joomla! Community Magazine which includes information on Joomla! 1.5 GPL-compliant extensions and Joomla! 1.5 Web sites. Community events, involvement opportunities, and articles about local communities, along with learning material for introductory learners, professional Web site integrators, and talented developers are provided to the community. The magazine also highlights release information, working group spotlights, and other important project headlines.

The July 1 launch of the Joomla! Community Portal at community.joomla.org, is part of a larger strategy by the Joomla! Core Team to enhance support for community working group activities and to encourage others to participate. In addition to the magazine, the portal includes a section for the Joomla! Core Team and each working group to share information and to blog, and an Events center with a community calendar, articles on Joomla! Days, lists of Joomla! User Groups, and announcements of other community meetings.

About Joomla!

Joomla! is an award winning open source content management system used to build Web sites for a wide variety of purposes. It is an easy to use, standards-based, extensible, GPL'ed application architecture available for download at no charge at joomla.org.

source:- freepressreleases.co.uk/

Borland Seeks To Unify Software Development Information, Management

"We want to transform software delivery, which doesn't have the best track record, into a managed business process. ... This is aFedEx (NYSE: FDX) tracking system for IT projects," said Rick Jackson, senior VP of corporate strategy from what is now Borland's Austin, Texas, headquarters. In other words, Borland claims it can make the heretofore inscrutable software development process measureable and able to be monitored. Borland is launching a framework for placing management tools on top of the software development process. The idea is to provide visibility for the business stakeholders, developers, project managers, and software executives into the development process.

The announcement of Borland Management Solutions raises the stakes for the former Santa Cruz, Calif., development tools company. It's left its Delphi and Turbo Pascal days behind; it's not yet clear how well its development expertise translates into a new management layer over the sometimes-cantankerous code construction process.

Its framework will sit atop a development team's preferred tools and over Borland's own existing application life-cycle management products, such as its Caliber requirements management tool or Together visual modeling tools. It also will add the following:

-- TeamDemand, the business stakeholders view into how work is progressing on the application sought by his business unit.

-- TeamFocus, a high-level project management system that support different development methodologies, including modern Agile methods, traditional waterfall development, or a rapid, iterative development approach.

-- TeamAnalysis, a business intelligence tool sitting atop development tools and application lifecycle management products to glean an overall picture from interrelated teams, discover trend lines, and project finish dates.

All three are scheduled to become available in the fall with pricing to be determined.

The management tools have already been deployed at several large customer sites and internally in Borland's own development process. Chuck Maples, Borland's VP of application development, said he used to assess projects for top management by interrupting the work of each team and demanding a set of statistics from them indicating their progress. It would take him two weeks to collect the information. By the time he presented his summary to top management, the data was out of date.

"This system replaces two weeks of work, where I would do a mini-operations review to get ready for the operations review," he said in an interview. Most of his interactions with his project managers and team leaders were to get a fix on where the process stood, not whether the goals were the right ones or the team's understanding of the business was correct.

The framework will be able to leverage data collected by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Project, Borland Caliber, Borland StarTeam change and configuration management system, Borland Silk Central Test Manager and HP (NYSE: HPQ) Quality Center and assemble it in a single repository as it emerges this fall. TeamDemand, TeamFocus, and TeamAnalysis will all share the information in the repository.

Jackson said Borland plans to expand the tools covered by the framework beyond the initial set "to major market tools," such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) Rational RequisitePro requirements manager, IBM Rational ClearCase change management, Telelogic's Doors (a requirements management tool now owned by IBM), and other standard bearers in the marketplace. The scope may be sweeping, but the Borland executives could not at this point put a timeframe on when other elements of the extensive Rational toolset or products in Microsoft's Visual Studio toolset might get included.

"We are working with several third parties who will produce connectors" between tools that Borland can't get to itself, or build connectors to the custom tools used in-house that enterprise managers will want to tie into a management platform, Jackson said.

The management interface to the three new management tools produces dashboards and project summaries with many graphical elements.

Maples illustrated a Agile development method chart that tells him how many user stories (software use cases in more traditional development lingo) are associated with a sprint, or a three- to four-week period of a project. The chart showed use cases completed versus those still to go. Another chart showed how much of the code had been tested, what the defect rate was, and how many defects remained to be resolved. Such data takes some of the guesswork out of projecting how a development process is progressing and when it might be completed.

source:- informationweek.com/

PR10_2008_07_15_Magento Customization

In the period of June-July, Offshore software development India has delivered Magento customization to their UK, USA, Canadian clients. Following are the customized solutions for the Magento to different clients.

Magento custom design templates and themes

Magento themes from PSD/JPEG/Any Site

Magento module development

Payment module solutions

Cart module solutions

Migrate OSCommerce site to Magento

Migrating Data to Magento Site

Creating multiple online storefronts and store websites

Magento setup hosting

Magento Development team at offshore software development India has expertise to deliver Magento Customized solution in 15 working days for an average project. Magento developers at offshore software development India has good experience on Magento customization and development based on the Zend framework. Zend framework is core framework used by Magento. All the application development at offshore software development India are based on Zend framework.

Please find more details at Magento development page on http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com/.

Please contact info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com for the inquiry of logo design, flash website design, theme design, and website development using Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Wordpress and development based on Zend framework.

About Magento Commerce:

Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. With Magento, never feel trapped in your eCommerce solution again. You can Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more. There are no limits to creativity with Magento.

Please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/ for more details.

About Offshore Software Development India:

OSDI offering a wide range of skills in IT Services, Mainly focusing in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Software Development, IT Consultancy, Web Designing / Web Development, Offshore Outsourcing, Multimedia, Customized Software Applications and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

OSDI offers following services

· B2B, B2C portal Designing, CMS, E accounting solution,

· Web development of full-scale enterprise applications using Asp.NET. PHP, Flash

· Customization of Drupal Themes, Joomla Templates, Magento Commerce Layouts, Oscommerce

· PHP Development using Zend framework, Symfony framework.

· Enterprise solutions using share point server and project server

· Solutions, administrations and maintenance for the Microsoft Commerce Server.

· Development using Microsoft BizTalk Server

· Programming, designing, customized software development, script installation.

· Hire dedicated team, Designer and Developer.

For more information please refer http://www.offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com.

Address:

Offshore Software Development India
406, Shiromani complex,
Nr Nehrunagar cross road,
Nehrunagar,
Ahmedabad-380015
India.
Ph: 91-79-65457841
info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com

Offshore software development India’s Magento team has successfully Magento ecommerce customization, custom themes, Payment gateway solutions, migration from oscommerce for Canadian, US and UK clients.

• Offshore software development India has Delivered Magento custom design templates and themes.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Magento themes from PSD/JPEG/Any Site.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Magento module development.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Payment module solutions.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Cart module solutions.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Migrate oscommerce site to Magento.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered Migrating Data to Magento Site.
• Offshore software development India has Delivered multiple online storefronts and store websites using Magento.

Supervisors OK design themes for harbor work

The redevelopment of Channel Islands Harbor will include a walkway that traces nearly the entire waterfront and a new system of parks that pay homage to each of the islands off the coast, according to a set of development guidelines approved Tuesday by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

The plan sets design themes and other requirements for the public, dry-land areas of the harbor, including sidewalks, parks and parking lots. The county and the private landowners who lease the commercial portions of the harbor will incorporate the new plans when they redevelop their properties.

The board approved the plan by a unanimous vote.

"Generally, I really like this plan," said Supervisor John Flynn, who has at times been critical of Harbor Director Lyn Krieger's plans for the struggling harbor. "I especially like the island concept. I think that really focuses us."

The makeover won't be finished for about a decade, but parts of it are already under way. The first spot to get the island makeover will be Mandalay Bridge Park, which is now a barren piece of land under where Channel Islands Boulevard passes over the harbor. The new park will have Santa Barbara Island as its theme and will include signs with information about the history of the area and the wildlife on the island.

The waterfront pedestrian walkway is also in the works already, with marina owners incorporating pieces of it as they renovate their docks.

The proposed hotel, shopping and apartment complexes on the peninsula and at Fisherman's Wharf also include plans for wide waterfront promenades.

There are a few places where the walkway will have to veer away from the water, Krieger told the board. These are on the east side of the harbor, at the boat yards along Victoria Avenue.

"There are some areas where it's just not logical to force a walkway into the middle of an industrial business operation," Supervisor Kathy Long said.

In a sense, the development of the public areas depends on the success of the private redevelopment that's proposed for the harbor, because developers will pay for many of the new parks and sidewalks.

"This is a significant project, and it will unfortunately affect the fees we have to charge at the boat yard," said Bob Naum, the general manager of Channel Islands Landing Marina and Boatyard. Naum and some of the harbor's other business tenants attended the meeting to voice their support for the plans.

source:- venturacountystar.com/

eProvider Intros Hosted ePages eCommerce Solution for SMBS

eProvider, the Silicon Valley based pure play eCommerce hosting provider, has launched a hosted eCommerce offer for small and medium sized companies based on ePages technology.

The selecting of ePages enables eProvider to offer three different comprehensive shop types in a software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)) model. Businesses and consumers seeking to sell online only can sign up at eProvider to start their own online business without installing software.


“Thanks to the ePages technology, our customers don't need programming knowledge and we save them the hassle of installing complex web shop software. And we save ourselves the related support inquiries,” said Ross Fujii, CEO of eProvider, in a Wednesday statement.

“Now our customers can focus on making their web shop a success commercially, instead of worrying to keep it running technically. Furthermore, with our white labeled setup of the web shop platform, we can offer our resellers a great opportunity to offer ready-to-go web shops to their customers.”

“Winning eProvider as our first hosting partner in the U.S. underlines our continuous global success in offering hosted e-commerce platforms”, added Wilfried Beeck, CEO of ePages, in Wednesday’s statement.

The new portfolio of eProvider offers three different, easy to set up eCommerce options. This powerful eProvider online shop is designed to fit all needs of online merchants, keeping in mind their challenges and opportunities.

This shop is equipped with more than one hundred configurable professional design templates, intuitive usability, strong eMarketing features, seamless integration to eBay,Google ( News - Alert) Product Search and Shopping.com. Also available are secure payment options with Google Checkout, PayPal and Wordplay.

Set up for the online shop using ePages technology is easy as it requires no design or special computer skills as it can be done in little time. The online administration of the online shop is easy to handle through a simple browser. Online traders have access to a 24/7-support hotline.

Consumers throughout the world are increasingly relying on the Internet, not only for information, but also to conduct research and make purchases. As this trend grows, so does the demand for solutions that make the online shopping experience as satisfying as possible. By providing such solutions, eProvider is meeting a need and thus driving demand for its solutions.

eProvider was founded in 1998 and is a provider of comprehensive, state-of-the-art hosting solutions for small and medium sized enterprises. The company expanded its business across the United States as well as internationally offering a variety of diversified and integrated core competencies to include, e-commerce solutions, custom application design, domain registration and collocation services.

source:- hosted-communications.tmcnet.com/

BOI launches revamped website based on Microsoft technology

MUMBAI - The Bank of India on Friday announced the launch of its revamped website which is based on Microsoft’s Web 2.0 business framework technology. The new website will enable real-time content sharing and exciting collaboration services, and customers will now be able to access the best of breed web banking facilities complete with an interactive platform and next generation Internet services.

The new website boasts technology support from Microsoft and uses its latest tools including Windows Server 2008, Internet Information Services(IIS7), Silverlight 2.0, Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5. The Microsoft platform allows seamless integration and development of content with ease of end user consumption. Bank of India is the first nationalised bank in India to deliver the state of the art web banking facilities to its customers.

Using the Internet Banking facility of Bank of India, a customer can carry out every type of transaction, be it simple enquiry, lodging cheque book request, payment of bills, taxes, booking ticket. Bank of India is one of the few banks in the country which offer funds transfer even to accounts with other banks through their Internet banking infrastructure. Chic Infotech, Mumbai, a global information technology company, has developed the new website based on Microsoft tools and technologies.

At the occasion, Mr T S Narayanasami, CMD, Bank of India commented: “We have seen a lot of our customers shift to broadband recently and expect a lot more to get broadband access in the coming time. The new website and services are tailored to provide them a seamless and high quality internet-banking experience. At the same time, we have ensured that customers accessing our services through a regular internet continue getting a convenient banking experience. We expect this service will help us in increasing our customer base while providing existing retail and business customer base a secure and informative banking.

source:- navhindtimes.com/

Opinion: So many platforms, how does a developer choose?

Developers are faced with more choice in platforms today than ever before. There are social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and OpenSocial. There is the iPhone SDK, Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry. There are communications tools like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.

There's the choice of development languages and associated tools. Do you choose Java? Ruby on Rails? Python? PHP? Flash? Django? .Net?

How about cloud computing infrastructures? Amazon? Google AppEngine? Do you risk some unknown start-up?

And the computing platform — Windows, Mac, Linux or some combination? Or Web-only?

So many choices. How does a developer decide?

The easiest way is to follow the money. That certainly drove development on the Windows platform 20 years ago. But what if there is no obvious money?

In a world of free products, you'll need to choose the path to the greatest reward. That usually means that the chosen route will get your product or service in front of the greatest number of people as quickly as possible.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a free offline blogging tool named Bleezer — just because I wanted to see if I could, and because I wanted to return the favor for all of the free software I've used over the years. For multiplatform support I chose Java, and I implemented the Blogger, Movable Type and Wordpress interfaces. That was my last real desktop application.

A year ago, when Facebook Platform was announced, I could see that Facebook was growing exponentially. I could see the potential for getting Web-based applications in front of groups quickly, and virally, so it was a simple decision to learn that platform. That decision in turn drove me to learn PHP and MySQL, since the platform provided a PHP API. My first app also required me to learn Flash, but I'm not happy with the exorbitant price of the development tools, so I've stopped working with it. I've also been doing some cross-social-network stuff, so I'm looking at OpenSocial.

Today I'm learning Ruby on Rails, because I've seen how quickly it can be used to build a Web application. However, I'm also keenly aware from the experience of Twitter that it may not be the most scalable choice. But I'm not building anything that big yet, and time-to-market is of greater concern.

And like many others, I have the iPhone SDK sitting on my laptop, though so far it is untouched. I'm in Canada, which doesn't have the iPhone currently, but I have an iPod Touch, and I can already see that this is going to be an important platform. So the iPhone is next.

Back before the days of the Windows platform, it was like the Wild West. Every application looked different, and acted differently as well. Windows standardized everything so you only had to create one product, and all of the products on the platform behaved similarly.

Today we have much greater choice of tools to use, but we're back on the frontier again: a different platform for every tool, and precious little standardization, except for efforts by Google such as Android and Open Social. And a new platform announced virtually every week.

Given a finite limit of development resources, maybe we should stop picking platforms and start pushing for some standardization. Is it really necessary to have so many different ways of working with so many products that, at their core, do much the same thing?

source:- computerworld.com/

Sitecore is Rated Positive in the MarketScope for Web Content Management Report by Leading Analyst Firm

The leading provider of .NET Web Content Management System (CMS) software, today announced at the 2008 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference that top analyst firm Gartner, Inc. has rated Sitecore a “Positive” in the “MarketScope for Web Content Management” report by Mick MacComascaigh, Mark R. Gilbert, Toby Bell, Karen M. Shegda, and Whit Andrews published on June 26, 2008. This report covered the state of the market and evaluated 17 Web content management (WCM) vendors. Gartner notes, “The Web content management market is mature and expanding. Buyers are placing their increasingly demanding requirements in a more appropriate business context and vendors are rising to the challenge of meeting those requirements.”

Sitecore is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and has won the Microsoft ISV of the year award previously. Sitecore CMS is based upon .NET technology and operates either standalone or smoothly integrates with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS).

The Gartner report is available, compliments of Sitecore, here: http://www.sitecore.net/Products/Resources/whitepapers/Gartner- Marketscope.aspx (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

“We are proud to be recognized in Gartner’s report as, in my opinion, it demonstrates our success in the WCM market worldwide,” said Michael Seifert, CEO of Sitecore. “We believe this rating by one of the industry’s top analyst firms reflects our core strengths including usability and being able to rapidly meet the needs of our customers. I believe this further validates our continuing growth and ability of our team to offer our customers and partners a pioneering solution to advance businesses worldwide.”

About Sitecore

Sitecore’s Web Content Management System (CMS) and focused software solutions enable companies to deliver compelling web experiences. Sitecore’s award-winning CMS software makes it easy for businesses to create and keep up-to-date dynamic, full featured Web sites of all types. Sitecore’s industry leading flexibility and scalability allows companies to better leverage their content to improve customer experience and drive business growth.

Thousands of public and private organizations, including national governments and Fortune 500 companies, utilize Sitecore solutions for their Web sites. These organizations have created and now manage over 5000 dynamic Web sites with Sitecore including Microsoft, Sara Lee, Siemens, Toshiba, Omni Hotels, Computer Associates, WebTrends and Thomas Cook.

About the MarketScope

The MarketScope is copyrighted June 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

source:- businesswire.com/

How to get into e-business?

Q. I think I have the ideas and the dedication to be a successful internet entrepreneur, but my degree was not related to business or computing, so I have little technical know-how. Is there a postgraduate course that I could take?

The government-funded scheme Business Link (www.businesslink.gov.uk) helps budding entrepreneurs. The site has useful advice and information on finance and grants, links to other websites, and a section dedicated to IT and e-commerce. You could also try one of the workshops on how to set up your business.

From a technical point of view, much will depend on your ideas and what you need your website to do. If you know absolutely nothing about computers, the most basic qualification is the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), which will introduce you to most software used in business. Most colleges run an ECDL course: to find your nearest provider, visit www.ecdl.co.uk. Other similar courses focus on the software packages used to create simple websites, or offer training in more complicated programming skills. It all depends on how much – or little – you already know.

In terms of postgraduate courses, again, you're spoilt for choice. Coventry, London South Bank, Westminster and Plymouth universities have Masters degrees in e-commerce; institutions such as Birkbeck, Hertfordshire, Newcastle and Liverpool offer similar qualifications under the guise of e-business. Entry requirements vary though, so contact the course leaders before applying. A database of such courses can be found at www.prospects.ac.uk/links/pgdbase.

Right time for property?

Q. I'd like to become an estate agent with a view to becoming a property developer later in life. Should I do a course before I apply for a trainee position, or just hope for some on-the-job training?

Property development has always been a high-risk career, but currently it's riskier than ever, with talk of a long-term slide in house prices nationwide. You'll need a thorough knowledge of the housing market, as well as a sound understanding of economics if you're going to succeed.

Experience at an estate agency would be invaluable, giving you the chance to learn the basics about which properties sell and why, as well as what today's typical house-hunter is looking for. There are no specific entry requirements for estate agency, but it helps to have good people skills, a knack for sales and to be comfortable using a computer. While you work, you could take industry-specific qualifications through the National Association of Estate Agents (www.naea.co.uk), but because you're viewing the career as a stop-gap on the way to property developing, experiencing the industry first-hand will probably prove more useful.

On the other hand, you might actually be better off staying at university to train as a chartered surveyor. This would give you more professional credibility as a new property developer, which you'd need when it came to seeking investment for a project. For a list of undergraduate and postgraduate courses accredited by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, visit www.ricscourses.org.

Drawing on talent

Q. I'm in the second year of my BA in fine art, but when I graduate I'd like to do a Masters degree in illustration. Could you tell me which courses are the most highly regarded?

There is no league-table system for Masters courses, but it could be worth checking your chosen department's score in its most recent teaching quality assessment. But before you start, think about what you actually want from your studies: is it a broad overview of the field you're after, or do you have a specialism in mind? Two institutions do a highly specific course in children's-book illustration, for example, while Edinburgh College of Art is the only place that offers a postgraduate degree in fashion illustration.

Ultimately, your ideal course will be the one that best meets your professional needs and learning style. Write down everything you want out of the degree – training in digital illustration or work in other disciplines, for instance – and see which course ticks all the boxes. A searchable list of the possibilities is available at www.prospects.ac.uk/pgdbase.

Once you've started your course, you might want to join the Association of Illustrators (www.theaoi.com), which offers special rates for its student members. Benefits include impartial advice on how to lay out your portfolio, and a handy directory of potential clients.

source:- independent.co.uk/

Armored Car Company Chooses Microsoft Dynamics CRM To Secure Increased Sales Effectiveness

Microsoft Corp. recently announced that Dunbar Armored, the largest independently owned American armored car company, has selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 to provide its sales teams with all prospect and customer information from an integrated database. Dunbar, headquartered in Hunt Valley, Md., will bring together data from its 80 facilities and 5,200 employees across the United States. In addition to its armored car operations, Dunbar also provides cash vault and cash management services.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides powerful, role-based customer relationship management capabilities. Dunbar will replace its current system with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be the repository for all the company's prospect information. The Microsoft solution will be integrated with Dunbar's legacy software, which houses current customer information, routing programs and other modules. Previously, Dunbar staff members needed to bridge the gap between prospect information and customer information with spreadsheets and a number of manual processes. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is expected to automate the process, eliminating manual operations and making all relative data available to Dunbar teams across the nation.

"We will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a sales force automation tool," said Seth McElroy, vice president for marketing and sales administration for Dunbar. "When a prospect converts to a win, the technology will feed that information directly into our customer data with no additional manual keying or replication of data entry.

"One of the main reasons for choosing the Microsoft solution was its integration into and synchronization with Microsoft Outlook, as well as the ability to customize the application," McElroy said. "We had migrated all of our sales team members to Outlook for e-mail and appointments 18 months ago, so adding a system that's similar in look and feel will speed adoption."

McElroy also cited Microsoft's reputation in the industry, his company's familiarity with Microsoft Office applications and a desire for an on-premise (rather than Web-hosted) solution as factors in the decision.

As its technology partner, Dunbar chose Ascentium Corp., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a 2008 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year finalist and the Overall Excellence winner of the 2008 Customer Excellence Awards. Ascentium's Baltimore office will lead the engagement, and it had recommended Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the right fit for Dunbar.

With Ascentium, Dunbar will implement the sales force automation capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "Seventy-four of our 80 offices have sales force teams that will tap into the integrated database," McElroy said. "Our Microsoft technology also will promote cross-selling. For example, when a franchise location in one geography chooses our services, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will alert and share information with a Dunbar office in another part of the country that may apply that knowledge to similar franchise outlets in its locality."

Dunbar expects to gain a number of benefits from the new processes, integration and automation afforded by Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

• Increased sales effectiveness. Dunbar anticipates that the administrative load on its teams will be reduced with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, providing them more selling time and resulting in more revenue and more customer attention, which should increase retention. Many of the administrative functions now will be handled automatically within the integrated database, which is expected to eliminate the manual processes and spreadsheets previously used.
• Cost savings. Internal labor costs are expected to be lower with elimination of the need for multiple entries of data. Dunbar is examining whether the company's universal access to integrated data will increase the return on investment of travel costs accrued by sales teams traveling for face-to-face meetings.
• Improved reporting. The Microsoft technology will allow Dunbar to have a dashboard of its field activities, showing its pipeline, sales by services and other indicators in real time. It also enables salespeople to pull their own reports, rather than requesting them from headquarters, and pinpoint prospects that may be easily accessible on their routes.
• Time savings. Salespeople for Dunbar will save time because they can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for booking and recording appointments and tasks directly, rather than sending a spreadsheet to the headquarters at the end of each week to advise management of each individual's activity. At headquarters, management no longer will need to spend hours rolling up data from the company's eight regions into an aggregate snapshot. With a dashboard, all the data will be available in real time, with activity indicated by individual and service line.
• Better data accuracy. Microsoft Dynamics CRM aggregates and offers up all customer and prospect data automatically, doing away with the need for multiple people to send data to headquarters or to recompile that data into reports. In addition, the originators and users of the data -- the members of the sales force -- are the ones who will be entering it, further improving its accuracy. Data will be much timelier with the integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM technology than with the previous system, and management will have visibility into the system.
• Improvement in revenue. The company will use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide new cross-selling opportunities. For instance, the salesperson for a major retailer whose deposits are transported by Dunbar Armored can be linked with salespeople for a major bank where Dunbar provides cash vault services, bringing those relationships together and providing multiple revenue streams.
• Support for growth. By bringing together information from multiple offices, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will serve as a tool to help Dunbar determine where it should open new offices to serve a growing account base.
• Integration throughout the company. The company's marketing team will be tied into the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database so that it can create e-mail campaigns for sales staff and mine the data for marketing information. For the first time, the client services team will be able to place its notes regarding resolution of issues directly on the same system with other customer information that is accessible to the field sales team.
• IT support and management. By automating reports and automatically moving information to the customer database when prospects turn into wins, Microsoft Dynamics saves time for the IT team. Further, with data feeding directly into CRM initially, the IT staff will avoid the considerable time devoted to a steep learning curve for users, troubleshooting and managing errors.

"We believe Microsoft Dynamics CRM can make a sales force far more efficient than less-integrated systems do," said Michael Park, corporate vice president for Microsoft's U.S. Dynamics business. "By effectively automating the sales and customer relationship processes, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can expose new opportunities for cross-selling, customer-service improvements and marketing that may not have been apparent with stand-alone or manual systems."

About Dunbar
The Dunbar Companies, America's largest independent, 100% American-owned, full-service security organization is composed of six operating companies, including Dunbar Armored -- America's largest independent armored transportation carrier serving major retailers, financial institutions and government entities nationwide; Dunbar Cash Vault Services -- state-of-the-art money rooms providing a complete line of cash management services to major banks and retailers; Dunbar Global Logistics -- providing secure transportation solutions for the movement of vulnerable cargo worldwide; Dunbar BankPak -- designer and distributor of the world's finest security containers; Dunbar Guard Services -- supplier of professionally trained, uniformed guards and Dunbar Security Systems -- designer and installer of electronic alarm and 24-hour monitoring systems supported by a UL-approved central station.

About Ascentium
Ascentium is ranked 27th largest digital agency in the nation according to Advertising Age's Top 50 Digital Agencies annual list. The award-winning company is focused on customer loyalty and branding through integrated creative and technical solutions. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Ascentium has offices across the U.S. and in the U.K. Clients include Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Dell, Expedia, InfoSpace, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo and Providence Health Systems.

About Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of financial, customer relationship and supply chain management solutions that helps businesses work more effectively. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialized services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

source:- http://www.crmmarketplace.com/

A New All-in-One Server

Almost exactly seven years ago, I reviewed four different "All-in-One" Internet appliances that included file, e-mail and Web servers and some other workgroup type utilities. A purple cube, eight inches on each side, called the Qube 3 from Cobalt (purchased by Sun) won the comparison. The review is here, but alas, none of the products are. The All-in-One market is tough, and many small businesses go with the flow and buy Microsoft's Small Business Server, which includes most of the All-in-One features.

Jumping into the fray is a new product from a fairly young company near Vancouver called Sutus. The system includes basic file server, e-mail server, Web server, and routing and firewall functions. Being modern, Wi-Fi adds to the network options along with Power over Ethernet (PoE) connections. Being very modern, Sutus also includes a small company phone system, running VoIP along with a gateway supporting three lines to the traditional telephone system. Any Polycom IP telephone, from the high-priced ones down to the affordable ones, will automatically work with the system.

Security issues make me wary of small businesses supporting their own e-mail and Web servers, especially when Microsoft servers are used since they attract so many attacks. Sutus avoids these issues by using a hardened version of Gentoo Linux with all non-essential services stripped out.

Sutus uses a managed service model, with all server functions managed by the Sutus reseller or other managed service provider, which also aids security. The level of support will be critical because Sutus aims its products at the 25 employees and under business market, and darn few of those companies have any full time technical support on the payroll. Of course, if the box crashes, phone service, e-mail, Web and Internet access all disappear.

Officially, I tested the Sutus Business Central 200 which came largely preconfigured, the way almost all units will arrive at their new homes. While this level of hand holding isn't always the norm in file servers, it is in telephone systems, and that's the primary foundation for the Sutus box. Functionally, you can't tell if it's a phone system with file services built on, or a file server with phone support added, but the Sutus folks have telephone backgrounds. More than that, the feature list leans toward more phone goodies than network and server goodies, although the goodies list is fairly even.

Pricing makes sense for this market: $3,995 for nine and fewer users, and $5445 for 10 or more. There are no user license fees like with Microsoft. Phones are not included in the base price.

My test system arrived with 250GBs of disk space configured as RAID 1 (two redundant disks to protect against disk failure), eight 10/100 PoE ports, one 10/100/1000 GigE port, and 802.11b/g wireless, the most common Wi-Fi option today. The router and firewall came configured intelligently, meaning insecure network access is blocked while allowing normal connections. Client connections worked flawlessly from Windows XP, Windows 2000, Apple OS X and Ubuntu 8.04 Linux.

Biggest surprise? The router function automatically configured my AT&T DSL connection. No router I've tested has done that; usually I have to provide name, password and other details. Clients connected immediately through the BC 200 to the Internet.

The browser-based administration screens are all done in Flash and take longer to load and change than any other comparable admin utilities on similar systems. Sutus Executive VP Shawn Chute admitted the laggard screens, and said internal discussions were long and detailed, but the company decided to use Flash because of workflow and usability. The company will soon move to the newer Flex architecture to speed things up.

Private workspace folders, created for departments and users, aren't the most refined structure, but at least they give companies a workable folder system to start with. Public workspaces support different departments, and include features such as group addressed e-mails and phone services.

The world can find your server by routing through Sutus using an address like YourCompany.SutusCentral.com, or you can work with your reseller to point your own domain name to the Web and e-mail servers. The Web server works well enough for basic Web sites, but e-commerce players will need more.

One sales outlet for Sutus will be large telephone companies and ISPs that want to serve more small businesses but can't afford to send techs out for initial installation and support. Sutus handles those issues by shipping preconfigured models and by making the administration wizards simple enough for any power user. Remote management capabilities should carry remote support the rest of the way, meaning only hardware failures require personal visits by technicians.

While computer support calls have a reputation for high fees, phone vendors tend to be worse. Moving, adding or changing extension phones and numbers within companies can cost well over a hundred bucks per phone. The intelligent VoIP system included with the Sutus BC200 makes all of that disappear. Want to move your extension? Unplug it from the Ethernet connection, then plug it in at your new location. Done.

The Sutus Business Central 200 looks to include just about everything a small company needs, supplying both computer and telephone services. And if you look at it just the right way, you get a free file server system with your new telephones, or free telephones with your server system.

source:- http://www.pcworld.com/

IDS Scheer Announces Successful Integration of ARIS Platform and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2

At ARIS ProcessWorld Europe in Berlin IDS Scheer, the leading international solution provider for Business Process Management, announced the availability of its integration of the ARIS Platform with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2. As a preferred Business Process Management (BPM) modelling and monitoring partner for the Microsoft Business Process Alliance, IDS Scheer will be presenting the details of the integration at the conference on June 17 and 18, 2008

"With this integration, companies can accelerate their return on business process management improving their business performance. They are able to seamlessly model and design business processes using ARIS, and then execute them through Microsoft BizTalk Server and respective web services", said Allen Johnson, Director Partner/ Alliances at IDS Scheer. The integration of the ARIS Platform with Microsoft BizTalk Server offers time and cost savings not only in the development of individual software and implementation of middleware; it also enables the orchestration of business processes through industry standard web services and BPM protocols. Moreover it features complete, always up-to-date documentation for better communication between technical and development departments.

Based upon our joint collaboration and innovation, we are delivering on our vision of taking business process management mainstream. The integrated offering allows businesses to design, simulate and execute business process dynamically through BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and also enables Process Analytics and Intelligence to be built into the business process which in turn enables a continuous improvement capability with a dashboard for process based decision making for the business.

"We are very pleased about the launch of ARIS for Microsoft BizTalk Server, which represents our deepening strategic relationship with IDS Scheer through the Microsoft Business Process Alliance. This is a significant step along the path toward the vision for delivering model-driven SOA and BPM capabilities to our customers," said Volker Rosendahl, Worldwide Director of Sales, SOA and Process Platform Solutions at Microsoft Corp. "Based upon our joint collaboration and innovation, we are delivering on our vision of taking business process management mainstream."

About IDS Scheer
IDS Scheer is the market leader in Business Process Management (BPM) software, solutions and services for corporations and public organizations worldwide. With its unrivaled ARIS Platform for Process Excellence, the company offers an integrated, comprehensive solution portfolio for the strategy, design, implementation and controlling of business processes. Utilizing the ARIS Value Engineering (AVE) approach, IDS Scheer consultants bridge the gap between corporate strategy, business processes, IT solutions and process controlling. Approximately 3,000 employees in over 70 countries serve the company's 7,000 customers. In 2007, IDS Scheer's revenues reached 393.5 million Euro. Established in 1984 by Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer, IDS Scheer is listed in the TecDAX on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (Germany).

source:- http://www.prweb.com/

Search Engine Optimization Firm Develops New Methodology

Everyone wants to create more web traffic, but finding a very progressive and forward thinking search engine optimization firm that is fast, dependable and affordable is not an easy task. Simply put, most SEO firms are still using antiquated methods that no longer work to get clients highly ranked.

ThinkBIGsites.com (www.thinkbigsites.com) based in NY, WA and AZ is on the cutting edge of a newer and more effective Search Engine Marketing strategy that is comprised of four powerful components, 1) Search Engine Optimization 2) Strategic Inbound Linking 3) Blog Marketing and 4) Social Networking. ThinkBIG's co-founder and Managing Partner, Marc Arner has formulated a unique and valuable understanding of how the various search engines such as Google, Yahoo & MSN respond to various social networking/Inbound linking strategies. The architect of this proven strategy, Mr. Arner has developed a state of the art, leading edge internet marketing process that is routinely getting 95% of clients a page 1 organic ranking on the major engines within 90 days. This proprietary method has its roots firmly planted in Web 2.0 using corporate blog marketing, strategic inbound linking and social networking strategies that are now gaining a great deal of popularity around the world. When asked about this technique, Marc Arner said, "Most SEO firms are experts in one, two or even three areas of internet marketing, but very few if any have a deep understanding of how all the important components that make up a solid Internet Marketing campaign should be seamlessly woven together in sync. It's that broad level of understanding that really separates ThinkBIG from the pack."

"Many organizations of various size and scope throughout industry have struggled for years trying to figure out how the search engines operate, what criteria is used to rank websites and most difficult of all, how to get a website highly ranked 'organically' on the major search engines such as Google. ThinkBIGsites.com has mastered this technique and is now one of the fastest growing Internet Marketing companies in the world with revenues increasing at a staggering rate of 20% per month," said Managing Partner PJ Cammarata.

Web 2.0 or the "humanization of the internet" has changed everything when it comes to Internet Marketing. With the advent of blog marketing, video blogging and social networking in general, an entirely new industry has emerged lead by many new popular, social media websites such as: YouTube, My Space, Facebook, Craigslist, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn and Wikipedia to name just a few.

Unlike in years past, website owners around the world can now rest easy knowing that there are knowledgeable experts in the Internet Marketing field such as ThinkBIGsites.com who can help them with all of their web related needs especially the most formidable of which is increasing their online visibility via the major search engines. Creating value in a website, putting it front and center so that potential customers can find you within seconds has forever changed the way the world does business.

source:- http://sev.prnewswire.com/

Hyper-warped-visor-consolidation Confabulation

Excuse me if I sound stupid but consolidation and virtualization could be two separate processes or system management criteria. Depending on the application, having a SQL server of some type or other could conceivably serve multiple database applications. Consolidation could be as simple as just moving a database application(s) onto a partially utilized SQL server and not require any virtualization at all.

Likewise virtualization might allow for some special applications to run that don't have heavy usage or limited appeal. Like using a backup server as a network monitor for instance.

I have seen tremendous amounts of IT-spam recently in the last 6 months advertising, announcing or proselytizing virtualization software. And yes its going to be the browser wars all over, especially if they give it to us free and expect us to buy either support or "enhanced performance" professional versions. Snake oil all of it.

Yes I have used Virtual PC 2007 and tried VMWare and they are fine for what they are and do. But no matter how you cut it, there is a cost of power that can be associated with every bit and byte forced through a Hypervisor/virtual machine/root kit or OS. The CPU is going to run hotter and harder and probably won't last as long. Yes you might save some money by combining tasks or applications onto fewer servers ONLY if you haven't ALREADY installed them onto their own servers. If the servers are still running, do they really use that much AC power and cooling to justify replacing them with something that will run hotter and cost more? Maybe you should have replaced or shutdown those servers and applications already?

What's it going to cost to buy a high powered server, install an OS on it, install a hypervisor (huh? Since when is that a software application or component?) and then install all the not-so-virtual OS licenses onto the system? Then test it to make sure it doesn't bring down the entire house of cards you've made by putting multiple applications onto one system. You want to try and monetize that and then justify it to management? Try generating/calculating a legitimate ROI for an application that doesn't evidently see much usage. If its significant enough to be more than 1% of your total system bandwidth or gross product, I wouldn't screw with it. If the application is generating more than 1% of your business traffic on the network or Internet, you might want to seriously consider mirroring or clustering instead of using virtualization.

If it's generating less than that, WHY RUN IT AT ALL? Give your customers a copy of the software and show them how to run it locally on their server and then offer a remote service contract to maintain it if you have to.

If you're worried about security threats from it, GET IT RE-WRITTEN to eliminate the threats.

I am amazed that the latest buzzword or fad software becomes an answer to all sorts of questions that should have more intelligent answers than just shoving it into a virtual machine.

If the code is buggy, it stays buggy on the VM.

If its a security threat, that doesn't change much either. How long do you think it will take for the malware miscreants to find holes in MS or anybody else's VM software and take advantage of it?

I think that like Vista for Microsoft, virtualization has become the cash-cow everybody can own. All they have to do is buy some software or hire some programmers for the project and then white-paper/advertise the crap out of it and then bingo the cash starts coming in, no Microsoft required. Now Microsoft wants a piece of the market.

The mechanism all of the virtual-fan-boys use is a survey.

One of the problems I have run into answering surveys is that the preset expectations or mindsets of the testers has a tremendous impact on how well designed the survey is and how effective it is at soliciting meaningful and unbiased data. I have given up answering the damn things because its obvious in most cases that the selections set as possible answer choices in most cases will force or bend the survey to a specific goal.

The flood of babel-speak is tremendous. Grab a bunch of buzzwords jam them together in questions that sound more like pick one from column A and 2 from column B and poof you have a tech-geek survey. Its like picking or writing your own set of benchmark tests to demonstrate your CPU is better than a CPU from somebody else. Likewise I don't bother reading the reports from them any longer for the same reasons.

Combining virtualization and consolidation in the same answer selection block prevents finely defining or allowing the difference between the two. Consolidation doesn't require virtual-anything in all cases. The reason I jumped on this specific phrase is that I've seen this combination cited or offered as an answer in more than one survey in the past and more recently as word-fodder in an article promoting or announcing the (now 2 week old) potential release of a Microsoft Hyper-Visor management tool.

source:- http://community.zdnet.co.uk/

Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint Hit the Cloud

Microsoft is heading deeper into the cloud with a new suite of online business applications that will be available to individual subscribers for a monthly fee.

The offering, dubbed Microsoft Online Services (MOS), is being targeted to those customers who might be more tied to their BlackBerry than their workplace PC. For $3 per month, a user can get access to Microsoft's new Deskless Worker Suite, which includes Web-based access to Exchange and SharePoint.

"Today we are taking an important next step in delivering Microsoft Online Services, and we're doing so with a broad set of Microsoft partners, that are crucial to bringing this solution to our customers," Elop said at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston. "Microsoft Online Services is a key component of the software plus services initiative, and we're seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace this flexible approach to the cloud."

Exchange subscribers will get e-mail, calendar, address book, anti-virus and anti-spam filters, and company e-mail access via Outlook Web Access Light, Microsoft said. Those with a SharePoint subscription will have access to SharePoint portal and team sites and search functionality.

Users can subscribe to the "deskless" versions Exchange and SharePoint together or separately, Microsoft said.

Microsoft is also offering a productivity suite for $15 per month, which includes Exchange Online, Office SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online for instant messaging, and Office Live Meeting for videoconferencing.

Partners selling the services will get a 12 percent cut of the first-year contract and 6 percent of the ongoing subscription fee, in addition to their own fees for setup and support.

Eight Microsoft customers are currently participating in a beta of MOS, while another four customers – including Nokia – are using MOS for messaging and collaboration, according to Microsoft. U.S.-based companies can sign up for the beta at www.mosbeta.com. Partners such as Accenture and Unisys have become authorized resellers of the online services. Microsoft has set up a Quickstart for partners wanting to get on board, with information at www.quickstartonlineservices.com.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would offer a subscription-based version of Office by late July. A one-year subscription will cost $69.99, and each subscription can be activated on three home computers.

source:- http://www.pcmag.com/