The big news from the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco this week has got to be the IBM partnership deals with Canonical, Red Hat and Novell. IBM has, quite plainly, gone on the offensive and stated that in combining its Open Collaboration Client Solution software suite (with Lotus Notes, Symphony and Sametime) with Ubuntu, Red Hat and Suse Linux distros it can convince its customers to make the move to a Microsoft-free desktop experience.

With Canonical already confirming that Lotus Symphony will be distributed via its Web services programme within a couple of weeks, the other players in this trio will most likely follow with similar announcements real soon.

Now, according to various online sources, the fourth largest maker of computers is looking to get involved. The Chinese-based company that acquired the IBM laptop business some years back, Lenovo, is apparently involved in ‘active discussions’ with regard to bringing out a series of systems with a Microsoft-free desktop running the Linux/Lotus combination.

Should Microsoft be worried? Well, truth be told, probably not. After all, IBM has been pushing the Microsoft-free desktop thing in Europe for some months already to no great effect as far as I can see. Why it should make any bigger an impact in the US is beyond my ken.

Throwing Lenovo into the mix could be interesting, but again I doubt that it will win too many converts. There is, to be fair, enough choice of Microsoft systems out there in the market and while the Linux market share continues to grow slowly, the emphasis is on slowly.

Just as Firefox has eaten away at the Internet Explorer userbase, so Linux will claw at the Windows market. But as with the web browsers, Microsoft will still be left with the lion’s share and then some. Convincing the business market to switch from a Microsoft desktop to a Linux one is going to be a lot harder, as their is already much more invested in both financial and cultural terms, than simply switching a web browser client.

Even allowing the for the credit crunch argument of businesses being strapped for cash so looking more favourably at the open source sector does not really hold water when push comes to shove. Buying new hardware does not save money, it costs money. Those businesses are far more likely, surely, simply not to upgrade and therefore not spend a budget they do not have.

The only possible chink in the stick with Microsoft argument comes with the number of enterprises which are not upgrading to Vista, leaving a slight possibility that they might look elsewhere when the time does come for new hardware…

IBM has built what could well be the largest ever dual booting Windows and Linux HPC blade system, comprising some 5376 Intel Xeon quad-core processors each of which is running at 2.5GHz and which will be able to reach a sustained 46 teraflops worth of processing power. Running Windows HPC Server 2008 (Beta) the high performance computing system has been built at the Umea University in Stockholm, Sweden and forms part of a resource used by a number of academic research groups.

In itself the system is sufficient enough of a powerhouse to lay claim to being one of the top 50 most powerful computers on the planet, which should be enough for any geek to get excited about. However, I suspect that the bit of the announcement that will get the most coverage will be that this one has been built around Linux and Windows rather than Linux alone. Heck, look at the statistics and it appears that around 85 percent of such HPC systems are running exclusively on Linux and Windows cannot even claim to scoop up the remaining 15 percent but instead sits somewhere around the 2 percent mark at the most (if you use the latest available Top 500 list as your metric anyway.)

This could all change when the latest Top 500 list is released later this week, Microsoft is certainly hoping to start making a bigger impression and has been investing heavily in the HPC market of late. I don’t think that the Linux fanboys have too much to worry about though, as it would take something of a seachange in the HPC world to shift even to the point where half the machines were dual-booting let alone Windows exclusive. I’m not sure I am even convinced by the argument that as people using Linux-powered high performance computers more often than not will be using Windows-powered desktops or laptops at home or outside of the research lab so there is a ready made market for the dual boot option.

According to IBM, or rather the straight out of a gangster movie sounding IBM X-Force to be precise, your web browser is under siege from organised crime gangs. The 2007 X-Force Security report details something of an expected rise in the sophistication of attacks, and an increase in the rate at which victims computers are being compromised. There is, X-Force says, a ‘complex and sophisticated criminal economy’ which has developed to capitalise on known web vulnerabilities, and underground brokers are now delivering the necessary tools to enable those who would screw you over to do just that and avoid detection by way of obfuscation or camouflage.

The report says that in 2006 only a small percentage of attackers employed camouflaging techniques. Compare and contrast with the first half of 2007 when some 80 percent of attacks did just that, and the 100% that were doing it by the end of the year. Using such by now commonplace techniques, the criminal element can all too easily infiltrate a system and compromise the data upon it. Don’t laugh this off as being just a problem for the home user either, X-Force quite rightly reminds us that when attackers invade an enterprise machine they can steal sensitive company information or use that compromised machine to gain access to other corporate assets behind the firewall.

“Never before have such aggressive measures been sustained by Internet attackers towards infection, propagation and security evasion. While computer security professionals can claim some victories, attackers are adapting their approaches and continuing to have an impact on users’ experiences,” said Kris Lamb, operations manager, X-Force Research and Development for IBM Internet Security Systems. “The Storm Worm provides a microcosm of the kinds of threats users faced in 2007. All in all, the exploits used to spread Storm Worm are a blend of the various threats tracked by X-Force, including spam, phishing and drive-by-downloads by way of Web browser exploitation.”

The X-Force report also reveals that:

• The number of critical computer security vulnerabilities disclosed increased by 28 percent, a substantial upswing from years past.
• The overall number of vulnerabilities reported for the year went down for the first time in 10 years.
• Out of all the vulnerabilities disclosed last year, only 50 percent can be corrected through vendor patches.
• Nearly 90 percent of 2007 disclosed vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable.

Think IBM and you think many things, but I somehow doubt you think video gaming developer. However, today I learned that IBM has become just that with the launch of Innov8, IBM’s totally free and totally serious new game. Free because it is aimed at university students and young professionals alike, it is marketed under an educational banner in other words. Serious because it is just that, designed to help its players develop a combination of business and IT skills. Specifically, those that bridge the gap in understanding between IT teams and business leaders in an organisation.

Think about it, serious games have been around for ages. What else would you call the flight simulators used to train military and commercial pilots alike? What else are the theatre of war simulators used by the military for that matter? According to The Apply Group, by 2012, between 100 and 135 of the Global Fortune 500 will have adopted gaming for learning, with the U.S., United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.

“The best kept secret in the world of computer and video games is the rise of a movement - now in the thousands - of gamers, universities and corporations dedicated to applying games to serious challenges such as education, training, medical treatment, or better government,” said David Rejeski, director of the Serious Games Initiative which is housed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. “IBM has established itself as a pioneer in serious gaming by enabling universities to educate students using the gaming medium they understand, enjoy and embrace.”

Innov8 is a 3D simulation, with the look and feel of a game but corresponding to non-game events or processes such as business operations, is aiming to become a successful method to develop new skills. Most MBA programmes are already heavily based on projects that reflect how individuals and teams need to interact in the real world. Innov8 takes that a step further by actually allowing students to step into a real, dynamic business environment. The game is based on advanced commercial gaming technologies and allows players to visualise how technology and related business strategies affect an organisation’s performance. Together, users can visualise business processes, identify bottlenecks, and explore ‘what if’ scenarios before the technology is deployed.

“IBM views serious gaming as a new and exciting way to develop the skills that are required as business and IT become more closely aligned,” said Sandy Carter, vice president, IBM SOA and WebSphere strategy, channels and marketing. “Innov8 was designed to address this specific skills shortage while also helping universities realise the benefits of using serious games as a powerful tool for teaching today’s students.”

Innov8 is now available through IBM’s Academic Initiative, a programme offering a wide range of technology education benefits to meet the goals of colleges and universities.

With a name like Enterprise 2.0, you kind of know that there are going to be the odd one or two surprises thrown up as announcements during such a ‘collaborative technologies’ conference. I wasn’t expecting, however, to hear that Lotus is not only alive and well but, and you might want to sit down at this point and put your coffee out of the way, actually innovating as well.

But there you have it, an announcement from IBM confirmed just that. IBM Lotus Connections is, apparently, the industry’s first integrated social software offering for business.

Well, actually it a suite of a handful of Web 2.0-alike components covering blogging, profile building, community creation and bookmarking. In other words the ability to bring relationship building into the enterprise in order to unlock the employee knowledge asset.

Did I really just say that?

Ok, so it might be a first in that it has integrated everything within one enterprise suite, but it’s hardly earth shattering stuff is it? Are there really any enterprises left who don’t already make use of some kind of blogging software, be it customer facing or internal, and most productively both, in order to share knowledge? Is there an enterprise that has somehow managed to be left behind by the bookmarking and tagging revolution, which is still trying to find folksonomy in a dog-eared 20 year old dictionary?

Social networking is not a new concept, in fact it’s starting to get a little long in the tooth, tired and predictable, boring even. Lotus is not dead, but putting wheels on the zimmer frame doesn’t make it any the more exciting…

My friends over at the IBM X-Force, the James Bond sounding research and development team that came along as part of the recent Internet Security Systems (ISS) acquisition have informed that they reckon we should be on the alert for a Microsoft Universal Plug and Play flaw to be exploited by the end of the week.

“Due to the ease of exploitation, we are taking this flaw very seriously” says Tom Cross, X-Force Researcher at IBM Internet Security Systems, continuing “however, since the UPnP service is not universally enabled in the corporate environment, it is unlikely that this flaw will result in a worm like Zotob.” The flaw in question allows a remote attacker to send a particular HTTP request to UPnP which will do the old buffer overflow trick and allow arbitrary code execution on the target system.

Of course, the point is that users of UPnP remain exposed unless and until patched, and we all know how slow many organisations are at rolling out such updates. If your security provider has not taken a pre-emptive approach to protecting its users, as IBM ISS has done, then you could be in trouble within a couple of days. My advice? Visit Microsoft and get patched now.

IBM has announced the creation of what it calls the world’s largest business Instant Messaging community, courtesy of new support for industry standards between business and consumer IM services. It is great news for anyone using IBM Lotus Sametime, AIM and Google Talk, and Yahoo! Messenger users will be able to join in the conversation in the coming weeks as well.

Not so great if you happen to be a user of MSN Messenger or Live Communication Server though, as IBM has not included Microsoft in its chat strategy.

From what I understand of the technical background this has not been done because of any technological stumbling block as integrated access between the clients is possible through the use of both industry standards for instant messaging - Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) standard and the Session Initiated Protocol (SIP/SIMPLE) standard. And there is certainly no reason to think that back office politics have come into play either as Microsoft and IBM would appear to be on good terms at the moment. Which leaves me wondering just what was the reasoning behind the odd omission. It has been suggested that it was a pure business decision, driven by the not needing the additional Microsoft support in order to reach critical mass when it comes to business IM users. Connecting the instant messaging communities this way brings IBM Lotus Sametime users into the radar of some 157 million instant messaging users worldwide after all. That is, as a matter of elimination, the most likely scenario but it remains a puzzling decision and one that leaves too many questions unanswered for my liking.

The ugly truth is, without those answers coming thick and fast, the decision will simply be seen as a snub and nothing else.

Which will be a shame, because despite my well publicized dislike from a security perspective of IM in the workplace, an IBM CEO study recently concluded that executives worldwide believe that in order to achieve effective growth they must communicate beyond corporate walls, and IM is seen as an increasingly effective way to do this. The announcement by IBM means that it becomes, as far as I am aware, the first major enterprise vendor to use standards to connect more than 70% of the worldwide IM user base through the Lotus Sametime Gateway which acts as an intermediary between Lotus Sametime and each public IM community. It does this by receiving instant messages, translating them into the proper protocol, and delivering them to recipients regardless of platform. Of course, IT administrators can take advantage of the policy management feature of the Lotus Sametime Gateway to provide customized access based on a user’s business need, and taking into account security issues. Something I approve of immensely…