With apologies to The Eagles:

Cisco stood in the doorway; I heard the marketing yell
And I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell

Now that Cisco Systems has landed with both feet firmly in the server business with the launch of its Project California ‘Unified Computing System’ the big question is will it rock the competition?

Certainly the whole point is to try and top the data centre charts with a mix of networking and virtualisation beats that Cisco hopes will worry the likes of old rockers IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Talk by Cisco CEO of “25 percent or more of the data centre market” might, however, be a little premature.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with the UCS concept, which brings together both Ethernet networks and Fibre Channel storage with a single 10 Gbit/s FCoE link and so reduces cards and cabling while embedding a VMWare co-developed virtualisation module for server hopping fun in the switch.

Tim Stammers, a senior analyst at Ovum, reckons that Cisco’s move could “signal a milestone in the convergence of computing and networking.” According to Stammers businesses will want to buy their unified management systems from one supplier rather than stitching it together from multiple sources, which puts Cisco in a strong position. “Alongside the servers” Stammers explains “Cisco is also promising networking gear that it says will simplify connections to racks of virtualised blade servers.” Which could, in effect, mean Cisco server blades in the Nexus switch, eliminating complex I/O protocols between server application and network transport layers.

The small matter of competition is also something that Cisco might not need ne as worried about as some, generally speaking the competition itself it has to be said, are claiming. After all,
Cisco is already in competition with HP and IBM on the networking front. While HP has a small share of the high-end data centre networking market (Procurve switches) and IBM partners with Juniper, Cisco pretty much owns the data centre network side of things. “That” Stammers insists “highlights Cisco’s huge strength in a coming unified market.”

Of course, the question remains as to whether a networking giant such as Cisco can become a systems management player? But then again, on the flipside, server and systems suppliers need to become networking management specialists in order to survive in this new space.

There will be an avenue of opportunity as the Cisco market stalls, waiting for industry standards ratification for the FCoE protocol, but that is expected to close by the start of the summer. Which happily coincides with the scheduled release dates for the new Cisco blade server family of course.

As The Eagles sang: “They gathered for the feast, They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can’t kill the beast.” Which just might sum up the problems IBM and HP face in dealing with Cisco over the coming year.

How many new technology ideas did you come up with last year? IBM has just shattered the record for the number of US patents in a single year with more than 4000 of them.

Apparently, IBM has broken the record for the number of US patents granted in a year with 4186 during the course of 2008. This marks the 16th year on the trot that IBM has dominated the US patents process. What is kind of impressive, I guess, are how those numbers stack up against other big players in the tech game. The IBM patents count is just about triple that of HP and, remarkably, more than those granted to Accenture, Apple, EMC, Google, HP, Microsoft and Oracle added together!

The closest competitor was Samsung, with an impressive 3515 patents. Microsoft managed 2030, Intel 1776, Sony 1485 and HP 1424.

But IBM is not stopping there, as it has also announced that it intends to apply the same intellectual property leadership in order to drive both innovation and economic growth by increase the number of technical inventions published annually by 50 percent to more than 3000. That is, to publish these openly instead of going through the patent process, so they will be freely available to anyone else.

IBM has also revealed that it intends to contribute the advanced statistical and analytical capabilities of IBM Research to a collaborative project in order to develop an “empirical measure of patent quality.” Or put another way, make patents work better by enabling better quality measurement and comparison of issued patents and applications.

“IBM’s leadership in the strategic use of intellectual property is based on balancing proprietary and open innovation,” said Dr. John E. Kelly III, IBM senior vice president and director of IBM Research. “Our goal is helping stimulate innovation as public investments in large infrastructure projects are being planned to boost global economies. We also anticipate that adding additional transparency to the patent system will help tackle the continuing patent quality crisis, which is impeding inventors, entrepreneurs and companies of all sizes.”

As long as none of them were for issuing virtual badges like a recent Amazon one, or even worse the Microsoft patent for Page Up Page Down.

That’s what IBM says with the announcement of a Linux-based, security-rich desktop solution that has been developed along with Virtual Bridges and Canonical. The concept is simple enough: save money by ‘amplifying’ Lotus collaboration software and Ubuntu to a larger user base, and do it using the power of virtualisation.

Running open standards-based email, word processing, spreadsheets, unified communication, social networking and other software to any laptop, browser, or mobile device from a virtual desktop login on a Linux-based server configuration (excuse me while I come up for breath) the virtual desktop solution looks for all intents and purposes like any traditional one. However, with many virtual Linux desktops hosted on a server, looks can be deceptive.

What this solution provides is the Virtual Enterprise Desktop Environment, also known as VERDE, from Virtual Bridges. That comes with the Canonical staple Ubuntu and IBM throw in the Open Collaboration Client Solution software based on IBM Lotus Symphony, IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus applications.

“When we look back several years from now, I think we’ll see this time as an inflection point when the economic climate pushed the virtual Linux desktop from theory to practice,” said Inna Kuznetsova, director, IBM Linux Strategy. “The financial pressures on organisations are staggering and the management of PCs is unwieldy. Today’s virtual desktop is delivering superior collaborative software, an innovative delivery method, and an open-source operating system that is demanding clients’ consideration.”

Maybe. All this comes just as the server market has taken a tumble and is looking at its worse in terms of revenues since 2005. This caused by the credit crunch and a cut back in IT spending in Western Europe. Saving money is important under such circumstances, so how do the cost savings add up as far as the new IBM venture is concerned then?

Well, there is the licensing to start with, and IBM reckon this amounts to a “cost avoidance” of

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

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.

IBM has announced the creation of what it calls the world