SOA Stumbles Simplicity Is Key, Our Research Finds P.27

Microsoft-Red Hat détente 14 | Symantec virtualizes desktops 15 | Indian IT copes 17 | Virtual servers need real backup 41 | Green, the Cisco way 47

THE BUSINESS VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Deploying unified communications isn’t easy or cheap. Here’s how companies are getting their money’s worth. p.21

informationweek.com

[Plus] SOA stumbles Simplicity is key, our research finds p.27

Copyright 2009 United Business Media LLC. Important Note: This PDF is provided solely as a reader service. It is not intended for reproduction or public distribution. For article reprints, e-prints and permissions please contact: PARS International Corp., 102 West 38th Street, Sixth Floor, New York, NY 10018; (212) 221-9595 A www.magreprints.com/quickquote.aspUnited Business Media Publication® CAN $5.95, US $4.95 COTHE BUSINESS VALUENTENTS OF TECHNOLOGY Feb.23, 2009 Issue 1,221 [QUICKTAKES]

14 Virtual Alliance Customer pressure brings Microsoft and Red Hat together

Call To Action Could the U.S. handle a “cyber-Katrina?”

15 Symantec Branches Out It’s taking on established players with desktop virtualization

High And Low SAP swoops in as cloud platform Coghead goes under

16 Key Chain Vendors come together to simplify 21 COVER STORY enterprise key management Tough Call A Shot At VMware Most companies start with a Citrix makes vital virtualization cost-cutting approach to unified software available for free communications. That’s smart— Mobile Meetings as long as they don’t stop there. Cisco uncouples conferencing from the confines of the office 18 17 India’s Slowdown Tech industry starts to re-evaluate itself

18 Financial Fixture Fiserv retools with new technology as the focus 16

informationweek.com Feb.23, 2009 1 [CONTENTS]

4 Links Research And Connect InformationWeek’s Analytics Reports, 10 video, events, and more Global CIO 27 By Bob Evans State Of SOA Why CIOs get no respect Trouble Ahead,Trouble Behind 12 CIO Profiles Even as many companies move forward Double Duty with service-oriented architecture, a Sunoco CIO’s top accomplishment: significant number are adjusting to a Bringing order to chaos simpler course, our survey finds 41 Tech Strategy Copy Shop 31 There’s no single best backup tool Dr. Dobb’s Report for virtual servers Multicore Technology Moving to multicore 42 Mixed Message development creates new Can-Spam hasn’t stopped unwanted management challenges e-mail, but companies keep trying

43 Call To Order 802.11v standard aims to quiet the chaos of wireless LANs 12 47 Practical Analysis By Art Wittmann Contacts & Feedback Cisco turns its back on open 6 Feedback standards with EnergyWise program 8 Editorial Contacts 48 46 Advertiser and Editorial Indexes Down To Business 46 Sales Contacts By Rob Preston The federal CTO must be knowledgeable and tenacious upcoming events: Interop Webinar Real-World NAC: Lessons From The Field Find out what worked and what didn’t in three case studies of NAC deployments. Register at: informationweek.com/1221/interop_webinar.htm

2 p.m. EST/11 a.m. PST, Feb. 26

2 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com Links Resources to Research, Connect, Comment POWER []InformationWeek Analytics Take a deep dive with these reports CUTS Windows 7 Beta Under The Microscope With an increase in the demand for data center re- Microsoft says its next operating system will be lighter and faster.We take a look at the beta, with mixed findings. sources comes the need to informationweek.com/alert/windows7 ensure sufficient, continu- ous power—37% of the 279 Consider This, Mr. President business tech pros we surveyed are concerned they’ll We asked more than two dozen industry leaders, from CEOs to private- and public-sector run out of available power. CIOs, what should be top of mind for Presi- How are they saving energy? dent Obama’s CTO. Their response: Think big and transformational. And get going now. 56% Consolidate IT informationweek.com/alert/fedcto equipment through virtualization or other efforts Get Ready For Disaster In this report, we zero in on the process of matching dis- 35% Rearrange IT equip- aster recovery products with an organization’s business ment for optimal cooling use continuity objectives. data-protection.informationweek.com 18% Use high-efficiency uninterruptible power supplies How To Plug Into The Cloud Tools for cloud computing are still in their infancy. Find FWritinde outsome mor infe ormain ourtion report, here frpleaseee for ato limitedfill this time: space: out how to maximize benefits while minimizing risks. informationweek.com/0000/page.htmdatacenter.informationweek.com informationweek.com/alert/cloud

Ne xt-Gen Enterprise Search []More InformationWeek The payoff for federated search systems is efficiency, Webcast: Security And Rich Internet Applications making them a perfect project for lean times. Join Black Hat director Jeff Moss and guests for a Webcast informationweek.com/analytic/search on security and RIAs, on Feb. 26. blackhat.com/html/webinars/ria.html [Take InformationWeek With You] Network With Your Peers At VoiceCon Facebook, iGoogle, And More Get the information you need on unified communica- Access our portfolio of social networking tools, including tions at VoiceCon Orlando, March 30 to April 2. Facebook applications and fan page, iGoogle widget, voicecon.com/orlando FriendFeed content,Twitter headlines, and RSS feeds. informationweek.com/take.jhtml Windows 7 Vs. Linux Just Add Water: Is the successor to Vista Microsoft’s last gasp, or Watch Hydrogen cells get power does open source Linux have a strong new rival? It Now [from the tap informationweek.com/1221/win7 TechWeb’s Fritz Attend The Leading Technology Event Nelson looks into Interop Las Vegas helps you understand technologies that Horizon’s tech- build your strategic advantage. It happens May 17-21. nology, which uses fuel cells and water int erop.com/lasvegas to charge devices of all sizes. Get Published informationweek.com/ Upload your white paper to the TechWeb Digital Library. video/hydrogen informationweek.com/digital_library

4 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com Write to us at feedback [email protected]

Why Windows Must Go on the x86 architecture. ment about Linux and various other Open Source The Intel x86 architecture and Win- free and open source software in- To neutralize the advantages of Linux dows didn’t become standards be- fringing Microsoft’s patents. and maintain its developer ecosystem, cause of technical superiority. They I’m starting a free and open source Microsoft must loosen its grip on Win- became de facto standards because of project to create an ODF-based office dows source code. —Charles Babcock a limited marketplace and economies suite specifically designed for memory- informationweek.com/1219/windows.htm of scale. That changes with the indus- restricted devices. I’ll be developing it on Linux. I don’t think I’ll ever bother I’ve been saying for some time that porting it to Windows. Ballmer’s daft Microsoft needs to embrace Linux patents threat is the reason why. particularly. I don’t think Windows it- There’s one way Microsoft would self will ever be open source, nor does reassure me that it won’t ever threaten it need to be, but I can definitely see me—and that is to release the major Windows as a Linux shell, following part of Windows’ source tree under Apple’s lead with Mac OS X on BSD. the GPL. —Wesley Parish,Techni- It’s the only way Microsoft can get cian/Technical Adviser out of the security pothole and simultaneously reduce development costs. Microsoft eventually will open source And by controlling its own version of many of its programs, but it won’t do WINE—which lets Unix variants run this until it’s far too late. Microsoft’s Windows apps—it could exercise a mind-set is mired in the proprietary measure of control for the years until model. It’s a Herculean task to reverse backward compatibility is no longer this for a large company, and a near- needed. But it would mean it would impossible task for a company that have to rethink its revenue stream. trialization of the non-Western world. has tasted monopoly power for as Despite some rough edges and a rel- With their cheaper labor and long as has Microsoft. atively sparse application universe, I’ve ground-up new production facilities, That Microsoft needs another de- found Ubuntu to be a pleasant place to non-Western countries are producing velopment model is obvious. It took work. That, more than OS X or others, the majority of computer components. five years to replace XP with Vista, is the competition. —Tim Sassoon, It won’t be long until they realize that and another 2.5 years (and counting) President, Sassoon Film Design instead of building an industry to feed to tweak the Vista code base into the Wintel machine, Chinese and In- something acceptable (i.e., Win 7). What Microsoft and other software dian engineers can put their talents to That means it will have taken nearly publishers should be worrying about work developing new processor archi- eight years to replace XP with an ac- isn’t Windows, open source, or exist- tectures that surpass the x86s. ceptable OS. Such astonishingly long ing applications, but their reliance on They could not only eat Microsoft’s development cycles aren’t sustain- the x86 architecture. There’s a limit to lunch, but that of Intel and AMD. IT able, even for a monopoly. And it how far you can go using raw in- has been one of the United States’ few won’t be able to continue to support creases in speed, memory, time slic- remaining competitive advantages; we its inefficiency by charging $300 for ing, and multithreading on a dumb should be more concerned about every copy of Windows as the current machine. All the significant advances maintaining it. —Paul Schmied depression worsens. —trentreviso have been due to increasingly complex software—software that has be- I can think of an excellent reason for Correction come so complex that it’s insecure Microsoft to open the source of Win- “About Your Federal CTO, Mr. Presi- from its creation to its replacement. dows: the threat of patents. dent” should have said Xerox CTO Processor virtualization can free the Steve Ballmer and the usual sus- Sophie Vandebroek is from Belgium world from a lockstep dependency pects a few years ago made a state- (informationweek.com/1220/cto.htm).

6 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

Print, Online, Newsletters, Events, Research

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8 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

globalCIO BOB EVANS

Why Do CIOs Get No Respect?

ow many times have you heard the value. How many CIOs have enabled C-level tired saw that CIOs need to get a seat peers to a) explain in straightforward terms Hat the table? Why is it the exception the business value the CIO has delivered to rather than the norm for CIOs to be on the ex- them? b) defend every capital expense in the ecutive committee? Why would CIO maga- CIO’s two-year strategic plan? and c) deliver a zine’s Web site claim that all CIOs are back- razor-sharp 15-minute summary to the board stabbers and “butt-kissers”? Why would a on the customer value that IT is creating? global executive search firm say that “few IT 4) Failure to attack the 80/20 ratio. For executives have the business qualifications or years, CEOs have been badgering CIOs to The profession mostly capitalist’s killer instinct for making money”? unlock precious IT budget dollars from Why would an IT consultancy tell CIOs, legacy systems and maintenance, but too has itself to blame, “Don’t talk ‘new technology’ with the CFO, talk many CIOs have stubbornly said the 80/20 the CFO’s own language”? Why would Fortune ratio is as immutable as the speed of light. with an unfortunate magazine’s Web site degrade CIOs as ignorant How can such CIOs be seen as anything but assist from some truly about business and strategy and poorly obstacles to change? B A L C dressed social misfits to boot? O I 5) Idiocy in the media’s por- L O clueless media types Why, indeed, do CIOs get so G trayal of CIOs. Last month, a little respect? writer for CIO magazine’s Web For the substantive issues site said this about CIOs: “But I above, there are a few primary think we all know that it takes A reasons. For the lightweight LOT more than ‘hard work’ to get ones—the asinine spoutings of clue- to the top in IT. It requires political less journalists—well, who knows? maneuvering, butt-kissing and kicking 1) CIOs’ failure to engage with cus- others when they’re down—to name just a tomers. Many CIOs have failed to stay ahead few of the stunts people have to pull to reach of the trend lines in their industries and even the highest levels of their organizations.” For- in their own companies and instead have tune’s site offered another portrayal every bit been overly concerned with internal issues. as demeaning and unfair: “There was a time If every other part of the organization is con- when the geeks who keep a company’s tech necting with customers, then is it a surprise systems running could get by without know- that IT is behind in its thinking, approaches, ing the finer details of corporate strategy. You language, and most of all its results? called the chief information officer when you 2) CEOs’ unwillingness to drive sub- needed a server upgrade, not a strategic plan.” stantive change. Industries face brutal chal- Yes, indeed: Why do CIOs get no respect? lenges, and most have been facing them for the last 10 or 20 years. Over that time, many Bob Evans is senior VP and director of CEOs made fancy speeches but ignored the InformationWeek’s Global CIO unit. For profound changes unleashed by technology more Global CIO perspectives, check out on their industries, customers, competitors, informationweek.com/blog/globalcio, or write and business models. Over and over, CIOs to Bob at [email protected]. A longer got caught in the middle. version of this column is at informationweek 3) CIOs’ failure to quantify business .com/1221/evans.htm.

10 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

Read other CIO Profiles at CIOprofiles informationweek.com/topexecs

Career Track aligned with your company’s culture How long at current company? and style. And don’t fall in love with Seven years the technology.

Career accomplishment I’m most The next big thing for my industry proud of: Bringing order to chaos. will be ... moving to the cloud—not At one company that I joined, the everything, probably not even a ma- IT activity was extremely frag- jority of our current in-house ser- mented. There were overlapping vices, but still a significant amount. systems and technologies, no one knew what “standard” meant, and View on offshore outsourcing: services were unreliable. After three Not a silver bullet, and not a substi- years, with great support and effort tute for good judgment or manage- by the IT management team, you ment. There are real benefits to off- wouldn’t recognize it as being the shore outsourcing, but you need to same place. work at it.

Most important career influencer: On The Job An early boss, a dour Scotsman, IT budget: $90 million taught me to keep grounded, be pragmatic, and never be satisfied PETER WHATNELL Size of IT team: 250 with your own performance (but in CIO, Sunoco, and President, a healthy way). And, most impor- Society for Information Top initiatives: Our two big tant, that if you encourage people, Management priorities are driven by the current support and guide them, then they College: North Staffordshire Polytech- recession: will amaze you—and themselves— nic (United Kingdom) with what they’re capable of. Dur- >> Technology-enabled business ing all of this, you should maintain Favorite sport: English Rugby Union process efficiency to wring out the a sense of humor. (That’s not easy Best book read recently: I’m reread- last cent of cost. Also, looking at for a dour Scotsman.) ing my John le Carré collection.I just procurement spending. finished Smiley’s People. Decision I wish I could do over: Smartphone of choice: BlackBerry >> Alternative IT service delivery At one company, we were looking at 8830 World Phone. Just spent a week models: Cloud services for e-mail a major legacy replacement project trying a BlackBerry Storm and hated it. and office apps; more use of the pub- and a number of the executives lic Internet to replace private circuits. Personal computer: Refurbished Dell didn’t want to “go to the trouble” of Latitude defining a business case, arguing How I measure IT effectiveness: that it was an obvious business If I weren’t a CIO, I’d be ... sane and In the current economic climate, the infrastructure investment. Against relaxed without a care in the world, short-term focus is very much on IT my better judgment, I was con- and have a home life. delivery cost and business process vinced to go along with that view. efficiency. Therefore, this year’s Of course, 10 months later, the measurement focus is all around the project was killed. benchmarked costs of IT services.

Vision Tech partners: We’re a Microsoft Advice for future CIOs: In 30 sec- shop, but we still have a significant onds, be able to describe how your mainframe footprint. Our infrastruc- company makes money. Make sure ture outsource partners are AT&T that your style and behaviors are Services, CompuCom, and Wipro.

12 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES] A FEW HARD QUESTIONS Who’s in charge if there’s VIRTUAL INTEROPERABILITY > a cyber-Katrina? Microsoft, Red Hat Put > Is the militarization of cyberspace the next step?

Their Differences Aside > Who fuses federal intelligence and industry irtualization makes Microsoft also plans to security expertise? V strange bedfellows, monitor and manage Red which explains how Mi- Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and crosoft and Red Hat have 5 from its System Center come together. Operations Manager 2007 “Maybe you’re wondering R2 by midyear, which COORDINATION IS KEY what took so long,” Micro- means IT administrators will soft’s virtualization general be able to manage applica- Cybersecurity Expert manager, Mike Neil, blogged tions across Windows and last week in explaining the Red Hat servers. Issues A Call For Action agreement to support each other’s virtualization tech- Try,Try Again he Obama administra- topic that has been “a little nologies. “That’s a fair ques- Microsoft had reached out Ttion must consider three taboo”: the militarization of tion given the number of to Red Hat seeking a issues as it formulates a strat- cyberspace. customers and partners that broader agreement, like the egy to counter a cyberattack: The administration is have been asking for this re- one it struck in 2006 with the deployment of cyber- conducting a 60-day review sult.” In the end, that de- Novell that includes intel- weapons to deter an attack, of the nation’s cybersecurity mand overcame their differ- lectual property and open who should be in charge of under Melissa Hathaway, ences, Neil explained. source licensing rights. But the nation’s response, and who helped craft former Most enterprise IT shops Microsoft was rebuffed by the role of the intelligence President George W. Bush’s run both Windows Server Red Hat executives, who ar- community, said expert Paul cyberdefense plan. and Red Hat’s Enterprise gued that interoperability Kurtz at Black Hat DC 2009. Kurtz said the key to Linux. IDC estimates that should only come through Kurtz, who worked on fighting cyberattacks is fus- 80% of virtualized servers industry standards. the Obama transition team ing government intelli- running as guest operating However, this isn’t the but isn’t part of the new ad- gence with information systems are either Windows first time Microsoft and Red ministration, had been men- from law enforcement and or Red Hat Linux. Hat have worked together. tioned as a front-runner for industry security experts. Under the agreement, Starting in 2006, Microsoft a possible cybersecurity czar Who should coordinate that Microsoft will run Red Hat supported Red Hat Linux on position. effort? He suggested a na- Enterprise Server as a guest its ill-fated Virtual Server, “Who is in charge of a cy- tional counterterrorism cen- in its Hyper-V hypervisor, and the companies have co- ber-Katrina?” asked Kurtz, ter for cyberspace, which while Red Hat will run operated on Web services. who served on homeland se- would facilitate the process Windows Server as a guest Two years ago, Red Hat curity councils for the Clin- but not replace security on its virtualization tech- joined Microsoft’s Interop ton and Bush administrations companies’ own research. nology, and both vendors Vendor Alliance, which pur- and is now a security consult- If the U.S. infrastructure will provide technical sup- sues interoperability be- ant with Good Harbor. “Is it were to be knocked offline, port toward those ends. tween Microsoft and third- the FCC? DHS? Commerce? Kurtz warned, there’s no The catch: Red Hat will party products. It’s unclear, The White House? No one structure in place to get it only support Windows on however, what if anything has an answer to that, and back online. “We need to Linux’s kernel-based virtual has come from Red Hat’s that’s pretty darn scary.” start moving.” machine, which won’t be participation there. As the new administration —Kelly Jackson Higgins, available in Red Hat Linux —J. Nicholas Hoover fleshes out its policies, Kurtz DarkReading.com until the next version. ([email protected]) says, it should consider a ([email protected])

14 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com [QUICKTAKES]

VIRTUALIZATION Symantec Starts With The Endpoint Platform Unplugs ymantec is making a more concerted cutter computing gear to employees. Rather, Spush into desktop virtualization, with a they’ll give employees a budget and let them Bad news for cloud computing: vision for virtualized user “workspaces” that pick a computer that meets their needs and Coghead—a venture-backed,on- looks bound to compete with established assume the virtualized desktop environment line application development plat- vendors in the market. will work with it. For now, though, that form—is closing,leaving cus- It’s not offering a new hypervisor. Instead, desktop had better not be an Apple Macin- tomers with a problem to solve. Symantec’s Endpoint Virtualization Suite, tosh. For at least the next 12 months, Work- Interesting news for cloud com- which is expected in April, will start by sim- space Streaming will only support Windows. puting:SAP is buying Coghead’s in- ply delivering a Windows desktop to a PC The suite’s second major component is tellectual property for internal use in a VMware virtual machine. One differen- Symantec Workspace Virtualization, which and hired its engineering team, tiator for the product is that it will virtualize manages end-user applications, whether marking the latest move in the one desktop application at a time. But even they’re running on a central server such as software company’s on-and-off in- more ambitious is a product due by mid- Citrix’s AppStream or Windows 2008 Termi- terest in the cloud.SAP says it has year, called Workspace Profiles, that aims to nal Server, or being streamed to end users. no plans to market the service. free employees from being tied to a particu- Coghead let customers develop lar machine and instead provide a portable Virtual Apps On Call and host database applications on- desktop workspace that appears the same Workspace Virtualization is an expanded line via a drag-and-drop interface. on a desktop PC, a mobile Linux-based net- version of a product acquired with Syman- The service continues through April, book, or a BlackBerry smartphone. tec’s purchase of Alteris. Unlike other desk- but it has stopped tech support.It Symantec has the advantage of a huge top virtualization schemes, Workspace Vir- recommends customers stop devel- footprint in computing through its antivirus tualization will let applications be virtual- opment and download their data. software, which should give it insight into ized one at a time as the end user taps them, While customers can download blending controlled user access and virtual- while still working together once they’re data,apps built on Coghead aren’t user flexibility. However, the Endpoint Vir- running. In some cases, the applications will as mobile. “Customers can take the be running on a central server; in others XML out that describes their appli- they’ll be working on the end users’ ma- cation,but the reality is that only Most of the interest chines, delivered off a central server. runs on Coghead,so customers will comes from Symantec’s The company’s strategy gets a lot more in- need to rewrite their app with existing security teresting if it delivers on Workspace Profiles something different,”says Coghead customers, says Coombs. later this year. It promises to save employees CEO Paul McNamara,a former Red mobile device configurations in a central di- Hat and IBM executive. tualization Suite, which pulls together sev- rectory, so a desktop can be downloaded to Coghead’s backing included eral products Symantec has acquired in a wireless device like a smartphone. $13.7 million since 2006 from El recent years, will compete with established The new offerings are all built around Dorado Ventures,American Capital virtual desktop infrastructures and product products that have been available, in some Strategies,Western Technology In- sets from the likes of VMware and Citrix. cases for years. Nevertheless, Symantec isn’t vestment,and SAP Ventures. There are two main pieces to Symantec’s one of the first companies people think of for SAP says it plans to use Coghead suite that will come out in April. Workspace virtualization. When it comes to virtualiza- only as an internal tool,and it didn’t Streaming takes a Windows application on a tion, “most of the conversation is driven by assume any of the startup’s customer central server and streams the application our existing security customers,” acknowl- relations.SAP last year cut back on code to users, where it runs on their ma- edges Doug Coombs, Symantec’s director of development of its own software-as- chines. The user environment may be virtu- product management. That sounds like a a-service ERP application,but lately alized or remain unvirtualized but, either good place to start. —Charles Babcock has touted cloud-based modules way, IT staff gains the benefit of centralized ([email protected]) that companies add to SAP on-prem- application administration. Symantec ac- ises ERP,as software plus services. quired the app-streaming capability in its GET A COPY For a link to this article, —J. Nicholas Hoover acquisition of AppStream and nSuite. send a text message to 88411 that reads: ([email protected]) [email protected]. The product is geared toward the day SMS rates apply. when companies no longer supply cookie-

Feb.23, 2009 15 [QUICKTAKES]

ENCRYPTION KEY MANAGEMENT New Standard Ready, Vendor Group Insists Crosby: A seeding tool group of vendors is try- potential standards, so [for Windows VMs Aing to break the en- there’s reason for skepticism. terprise key management But KMIP has group backing PRIVATE CLOUDS logjam by introducing a and is the “first specification standard to simplify imple- for enterprise key manage- With Free Offer, Citrix mentation and management ment that is ready for adop- of encryption technology tion,” the vendors say. It’s Goes After VMware across large enterprises. designed to complement ap- Brocade Systems, Hewlett- plication-specific standards itrix Systems has raised VMs, and decommission Packard, IBM, LSI, RSA, Sea- projects, the group says. Cthe stakes in its compe- them. They will work in gate Technology, and Thales “By defining a low-level tition with virtualization mar- connection with Microsoft’s (formerly nCipher) have cre- protocol that can be used to ket leader VMware. Citrix, a Virtual Machine Manager in ated the Key Management request and deliver keys be- close partner of Microsoft, will Systems Center. Interoperability Protocol, or tween any key manager and make its XenServer hypervi- “We’re using XenServer as KMIP, a single protocol for any encryption system, sor, previously priced at a seeding tool” to encourage communications between KMIP enables the industry $3,000 per server, available customers to build internal enterprise key management to have any encryption sys- for free. clouds, says Simon Crosby, services and encryption system communicate with any Two new Citrix service CTO of Citrix’s XenSource tems, the companies say. key management system,” packs for virtual machine unit. Those clouds will get Vendors and cryptogra- the group says. management will work with their automated operation phers have never been able The proposed standard Citrix’s XenServer and Mi- and management capabili- to agree on the best way to also has demand on its side. crosoft’s Hyper-V hypervi- ties from Citrix Essentials manage keys. So enterprise Key management is becom- sors, synchronizing the two for Hyper-V and XenServer, security managers are stuck ing increasingly important companies’ virtualization which will come in Enter- with the largely manual as more regulatory and in- lines. The Citrix Essentials prise and Platinum editions. process of managing keys dustry compliance guide- service packs, priced at That, in turn, “will allow separately for each vendor lines require encryption. $1,500 each, will manage every cloud to host Win- or product. —Tim Wilson, the spinning up of VMs dows virtual machines,” says Many single-vendor tech- DarkReading.com from reference “golden im- Crosby. —Charles Babcock nologies have been touted as ([email protected]) ages,” reassign resources to ([email protected])

FOLLOW-UP ference capabilities on Cisco Mobilizes Conferencing the Apple iPhone 3G, says it plans to expand Put “Cisco” and “collaboration”in the same apps on the go.The service is available on access to additional sentence, and you might think of the handsets with browsers that can display smartphones in the company’s proprietary (and stationary) JavaScript and have the graphical hard- coming months. $300,000 TelePresence videoconference ware to display the meeting. Hosts can send SMS system. But now Cisco is taking another Users will have most of the same con- invitations to any phone,and users can im- tack, bringing its WebEx Web-conferenc- ferencing abilities as they would with a mediately join the audio portion of a ing service to popular BlackBerry, Nokia, desktop client. They can view presenta- meeting in progress.There’s no cost to at- and Windows Mobile smartphones. tions, applications, and desktops with live tend a meeting beyond carrier voice and Cisco says smartphones are ready to annotations. Users can access WebEx to data charges, but users must have a host take conference calls to a new level: Mo- hear and see meetings via Wi-Fi, 3G data account on Cisco WebEx Meeting Center bile data networks and handsets have ma- networks, or Wi-Fi/EDGE. to schedule and host meetings. tured enough to handle enterprise-grade Cisco, which already offers WebEx con- —Marin Perez ([email protected])

Learn more about Cisco’s emerging collaboration strategy: informationweek.com/1170/cisco.htm

16 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com GLOBAL IT SERVICES NO STIMULUS FOR H-1B The $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus legislation makes it With Growth Cooling, India’s IT more complicated for banks that got federal bailout money to hire Industry Takes A Hard Look At Itself foreign workers on H-1B visas. For two years,the bill requires he mood at this year’s India Leadership enterprises, said Alok Kumar, senior VP of companies that received federal Forum, run by Indian IT industry or- IT at Indian conglomerate Reliance In- funds from the Troubled Asset T Recovery Program to meet extra ganization Nasscom, was grim yet deter- dustries. The big IT services companies requirements to hire H-1B work- mined, reflected in discussion sessions ti- must evolve different pricing models for In- ers,such as attesting that they’ve tled “Market Spiral: Bottoming Out?” and dian companies and demonstrate more flex- made “good faith”efforts to re- “Making The Most Of A Crisis.” ibility in operating policies. Rather than cruit U.S.workers for the jobs. India’s IT software and deal with the rigid prac- WINDOWS 7 TEA LEAVES services industry remains tices of most IT service In the latest sign that Windows 7 globally competitive in providers, “Reliance is may be complete sooner rather terms of quality and cost, now increasingly consid- than later,Microsoft has released and Nasscom predicts it ering and using open a trial version of software that will end the 2008-2009 source technologies,” will let users securely share files. Windows Live ID Sign-in Assis- fiscal year next month says Kumar. “If IT ser- tant 6.5 beta links users’Windows with 16% growth. For an vice providers keep at Live IDs with their Windows 7 industry hooked on 30% this path, their business user accounts,creating a connec- sales growth, though, is bound to come down tion between hard-drive resident no wonder even N.R. drastically in the Indian files and data stored online in Windows Live.Users can access Narayana Murthy, the market.” their own files across multiple usually restrained co- Outgoing Nasscom devices and give others access. founder and chairman of chairman Ganesh Nat- Infosys, dubbed this “the Murthy leads arajan said Indian com- ACER IN HAND mother of all recessions.” ethics reform panies are aware of this Is a smartphone your [ next computer? Every industry leader gap, and in fact need a Computer maker we spoke with at the event stressed the separate strategy not only for India, but also Acer thinks it could need to improve operational efficiency and for other emerging markets, including be and has intro- enter new markets. “You will never create a Brazil, China, and Russia. duced its first line of great company until you face a near-death smartphones,diving into a highly com- experience,” Cisco CEO John Chambers The Satyam Stain petitive global market.Acer’s told the crowd, relating how Cisco has The damage to “Brand India” left by the fi- Tempo,which will run Windows used downturns to increase market share. nancial fraud at IT software and service Mobile and be touch enabled,is Vineet Nayar, CEO of remote infrastructure provider Satyam hovered over the conference. the first of 10 smartphones Acer management leader HCL Technologies, In concrete terms, Nasscom announced a expects to launch this year.Acer acquired Taiwanese smart- spoke of “having to eat somebody else’s corporate governance and ethics committee, phone maker E-Ten last year. lunch” to gain sales. Infosys co-chairman to be chaired by Infosys’ Murthy. Satyam di- Nandan Nilekani pushed a strategy of rector Deepak Parekh told Dow Jones that a BROADBAND BOOSTERS helping clients get more from existing IT buyer for Satyam could emerge as soon as Alcatel-Lucent is leading a con- investments. this month, a move the industry would wel- sortium to establish an ecosystem of infrastructure,devices, The downturn should force Indian IT come as a chance to put the scandal of fabri- content,and applications for service providers to face up to some prob- cated revenue and profit behind it. mobile and fixed broadband lems. A major one is that they haven’t fo- With breakneck growth the last eight networks.The ng Connect Pro- cused much on the domestic IT market, years, the Indian tech industry hasn’t had gram would encompass LTE, which grew 9% in 2007 and 2006. With much time for introspection. While no one GPON,and other high-bandwidth networks,with the goal sales in more developed countries slowing, welcomes a slowdown, many are using it as of creating seamless broadband the domestic market is now looking more an opportunity to re-evaluate business mod- for phones,computers,cars,and

y attractive. els, practices, and markets. any broadband-based app. But Indian IT service companies have a —Srikanth R P, Network Computing India k Hillar ar

M poor understanding of the needs of Indian ([email protected])

Feb.23, 2009 17 [BEYONDTHENEWS]

EYE OF THE STORM Tech Tools Central To Fiserv Overhaul

iserv, a provider of technology- tocol, enabling based services and software to banks to offer cus- financial institutions, is re- tomers text mes- launching itself this week as an saging updates; Fintegrated, single-brand company, end- the Wireless Ac- Yabuki stands ready ing its status as a holding company. Its cess Protocol, let- [to help banks transform new strategy is heavily dependent on ting bank cus- several new tech products, but the tomers access their accounts via the ment tools, on a single screen. question now is whether beleaguered Internet; and the ability to download Fiserv will offer Mobile MoneySM and banks will have the focus and resources applications. Fiserv sees mobile access the integrated loan platform as software- to appreciate those innovations. as a way to draw consumers to online as-a-service options this year. Online Fiserv is merging 77 business units banking and cut operating banks’ costs. Advantage is being offered first as SaaS; a into two: Financial Institution Services, Last year, 2.11 billion banking transac- licensed version is due out this year. which includes credit processing as well tions were performed online, up from 1 On the social networking side, Fiserv as risk and performance management; billion in 2005, according to Aite has signed 28 credit unions for MyMoney, and Depository Institution Services, Group, a financial services research an application that lets consumers man- which encompasses account processing, firm. Aite predicts online transactions age their money from their Facebook ac- online banking, and bill payment. Over will hit 3.87 billion in 2012. counts. Fiserv is launching a MyMoney the last 25 years, Fiserv had acquired Among Fiserv’s other tech innova- version for banks later this month. 149 companies in banking, health care, tions is a software platform, rolled out insurance, and investment services. But in October, from which banks can Hard Times in 2006, new CEO Jeff Yabuki began manage different types of loans. It’s de- Fiserv’s restructuring comes at a pre- selling off businesses unrelated to finan- signed to let them update policies and carious time. With several banks hav- cial services. Fiserv cemented its indus- processes across loan offerings with lit- ing folded or been acquired, and more try presence with the $4.4 billion acqui- tle help from their IT departments. The failures possible, new IT investments sition of electronic-bill payment leader module for real estate loans is available may not be an industry priority. CheckFree in 2007. now; ones for consumer and commer- During last year’s tumultuous fourth Along the way, Fiserv has distin- cial loans are due this year. And in No- quarter, Fiserv’s revenue dropped 4% guished itself as a technology innovator, vember, Fiserv launched Online Ad- compared with the year-earlier quarter, as indicated by its No. 4 spot on the In- vantage, a service based on Microsoft’s to $1.1 billion. The company said banks formationWeek 500 last year. The cre- Silverlight technology that lets bank were using less of its offerings, as indi- ation of a Web services-based platform, customers view bills and accounts, as cated by lower home equity processing for example, has let its bank customers well as use personal money manage- and discretionary license revenue. connect their systems to Fiserv’s for data But Yabuki says that quarter was a exchange, using far less coding than typ- blip and says its new products will help ically required of integration projects. InformationWeek 500 its financial customers dig out of the cur- Fiserv now is betting big on online Apply Now For 2009 rent mess. “We began a journey in 2006 banking products. In September, it be- to transform how we do business, which Join the ranks of top tech innovators gan offering Mobile MoneySM, a mo- we believed would lead to transforma- Preregister for our annual list bile platform that lets banks’ customers tion in the marketplace,” he says. “I wish honoring the most innovative users sign up for online banking and bill pay- we could take credit for knowing how of technology. ment services using mobile devices and much financial services would need that integrates with banking systems. Mo- Preregister at: transformation.” —Mary Hayes Weier bile MoneySM supports the SMS pro- informationweek.com/500/prereg ([email protected])

18 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com [COVER STORY]

It’s tempting to look at unified communications feature by feature, based on cash savings. But if CIOs aren’t pushing for productivity gains, they’re leaving money onT the tableough. Call

By J. Nicholas Hoover

nstead of being greeted by a tions even further, putting features such guard, a visitor to Global Crossing’s re- as presence to new uses, embedding gional headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., is communications into the flow of every- directed to a computer kiosk, which day business activities, and developing prompts the visitor to enter an employee’s applications that automatically send rel- name. The kiosk opens a video window evant data directly to phones or the UC I on the employee’s computer, showing software on PCs. “A lot of companies are who’s in the lobby. Simultaneously, an in- saying we can save money from this,” stant message or an audio connection says Mike Fuqua, Global Crossing’s sen- opens up, and the employee can accept ior VP of global information systems. or reject the visitor by typing or speak- “But I don’t run into a lot of companies ing. If the visitor is accepted, the kiosk that are doing unified communications takes a picture and prints a temporary transformationally.” pass that lets the visitor into the building. Heck, most aren’t even calling it “uni- While technologies such as voice over fied communications.” And it’s a brave IP and chat are common at most compa- CIO, especially in this economy, who’ll nies, scores of early adopters are push- pitch UC as a sweeping strategy. Com- ing the concept of unified communica- panies usually don’t even start looking

informationweek.com Feb.23, 2009 21 [COVER STORY] UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

at UC until their circuit-switched PBX systems turn into a money pit of re- pairs and workarounds. That opens the door to VoIP and its immediate long-distance cost savings, and from there companies consider UC apps, usually piecemeal. A “very large customer” of Mi- crosoft’s Office Communications Server won’t even talk about the potential improvements in productivity or integration, or any of the new features in the newly released OCS 2007 R2, says Gurdeep Singh Pall, a Microsoft VP who manages the vendor’s UC product Schoenfelt’s philosophy: reach a line. “They just say, ‘My audioconfer- [human, not push a button encing system needs to be replaced,’ ” he says. “A lot of customers will ap- such as automatically notifying a qual- and 40% on the travel costs of the chief proach UC realistically in this way.” ity assurance staffer—by whatever operations officer’s staff by eliminating Customers often straddle their con- communications channel the staffer flights to and from meetings. ventional PBX systems and unified picks—if a factory line missed certain But Global Crossing wanted to get communications, maintaining two sys- performance measurements. With a employees responding more quickly to tems because there’s a “minor feature” change in CIOs, however, the project customer problems and increase cus- missing in the UC suite that some sub- was scrapped, though Whirlpool re- tomer satisfaction. As part of that ef- set of employees’ needs, Singh Pall tains its Avaya IP phones. fort, Fuqua’s team began looking at says. “It’s like when people said, ‘Oh, So unified communications isn’t go- how employees used communication some applications have to stay on ing to be swept in on some big trans- tools when responding, digging into mainframes for such and such a rea- formational agenda. That’s probably a data such as when, where, and how son,’ and then those apps became iso- good thing, since it forces attention on long employees were on the phone and lated,” he says. features most likely to be actually used in conference calls. In just a few years, unified commu- and business processes that would What Fuqua found was that Global nications will be deeply embedded benefit most. Nevertheless, even as UC Crossing was paying too much and into business activity, and companies must prove itself, feature by cash-sav- getting too little in return for a muddle will deploy UC that takes advantage of ing feature, CIOs should look for the of disparate collaboration technolo- high-speed wireless, standardized larger opportunities that are harder to gies, such as standalone audioconfer- video, and location-based services, measure, from better co-worker collab- encing, Web conferencing, videocon- predicts Forrester analyst Henry Dew- oration to better customer service. ferencing, and telephony, that could ing. But for now, 57% of companies be simplified by relying instead on a haven’t gotten past the pilot stage with First Step, Save Money unified communications platform like UC. Eighty-six percent say they can Global Crossing, an IP networking Microsoft’s OCS. make a good business case for UC, but carrier, closely tracks the cash savings It wasn’t just the cost that was trou- there’s some serious waffling going on: from using its UC services. For exam- bling. Since the tools didn’t have com- 55% admit there’s “confusion about the ple, the company’s chief operations offi- mon IP features like presence aware- value of UC” for their companies. cer holds weekly global staff meetings ness, employees often didn’t know the Whirlpool shows how subjective the of about 16 employees via OCS video- best way to reach colleagues when try- value can be. The company was build- conference. That setup is one piece of a ing to fix a problem, or even whom to ing a system that promised features UC deployment that saves an estimated call, and both customer service and $16,000 to $25,000 a week on confer- worker productivity suffered. When a GET A COPY For a link to this article, encing services; 30% on long distance service order was delayed because of send a text message to 88411 that reads: by making IP calls between offices and parts not coming in from a supplier, [email protected]. SMS rates apply. routing customer calls through local, customers were sometimes left for days VoIP-enabled Global Crossing offices; without sufficient explanation because

22 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com employees didn’t know whom to call. ence function that tells the customer DIG DEEPER When a company is looking at these which contacts are at their desks. kinds of big process improvements, it Global Crossing also is testing what Learn From The Experts VoiceCon,March 30 to can be a good time to bring UC in, says it calls M-Bots, or mobile bots. When April 2,brings the industry’s top executives and consultant Nick Lippis, because there engineers or salespeople want a piece your peers together to explore unified communi- tends to be a large budget attached to of pertinent information like recent cation,voice over IP,and converged networks. it, and “you can add something like UC sales to a customer or the status of a See the agenda and register at software because it adds more value to trouble ticket, they can use Office voicecon.com/orlando an investment you’re already making.” Communicator Mobile on a smart- Fuqua thinks that for UC to pay phone to message to a chat bot, which off, it must be integrated into the responds with a list of options on what Sagarsee spent eight months research- business applications people use kind of information to return. How- ing VoIP systems, opting for Avaya every day, which at Global Crossing ever, Fuqua recommends mobile UC based on redundancy, disaster recov- includes Microsoft Outlook and an apps be as simple as possible because ery, and features like extension to cel- application that tracks order work- of the limited power of mobile devices. lular, where an office phone and cell flows. Now, when employees log on phone might ring simultaneously. to the order workflow app, each step When Old Systems Break Brinks Hofer’s experiences hint at a di- shows the name of an employee who Few companies come to UC with chotomy in the UC marketplace: IBM can answer questions about it, with broad business goals like Global Cross- and Microsoft come at it mainly from an icon showing whether the em- ing did. Instead, most end up the way message and presence enablement, ployee is available for a chat. Largely intellectual property law firm Brinks while the conventional networking and through the use of this app internally, Hofer Gilson & Lione did—with an communications vendors—Avaya, Fuqua estimates Global Crossing can 18-year-old PBX that became increas- Cisco, Nortel, and others—come from fix problems, such as a mistake when ingly costly to fix and house. What’s the angle of IP telephony. changing a network design specifica- different about Brinks Hofer is in how VoIP’s the staring point for many UC tion, 15% to 25% faster. it has embraced UC since moving to efforts, and Brinks Hofer faced the By midyear, Global Crossing will VoIP, and in where the Chicago firm’s same initial problem any IP telephony give customers a similar view into headed by developing applications that needs to overcome: making sure qual- who’s available to solve a problem. Us- combine UC into software used for ity of service is sufficient for latency- ing OCS’s presence capabilities, a por- everyday operations. sensitive voice and video traffic. tal will let customers with service Brinks Hofer began by rolling out an Within its first six months, the firm’s problems log in to see contact informa- Avaya Communications Manager IP president, while traveling in Japan, was tion about whom to call and a pres- PBX in 2005. Brinks Hofer CIO Rod thrilled to take a live late-night call to

IMPACT ASSESSMENT UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS ᭹ BENEFIT ᭹ RISK

IT organization ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ | IT can deliver cash savings at a time ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ | The phone system can’t go down.IT companies need it.Also, unified communications is a needs to be aware of the interplay and overlap among platform for productivity gains.And don’t forget the technologies; integration among systems can be consumer tech wow factor. difficult.

Business ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ | Better connectedness by embedding ᭹᭹᭺᭺᭺ | There are other means to solving organization UC in business processes could improve productivity communication problems.UC may lack some phone and help break information silos. system features.

Business ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ | UC can lower costs like long-distance ᭹᭹᭺᭺᭺ | A strategic UC approach that’s poorly competitiveness bills.Furthermore, employees with better communi- executed risks raising costs and disrupting the cation tools may be more productive and offer better workforce without improving productivity. customer service.

Bottom line ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ Unified communications technologies can significantly cut communications costs and may ᭹᭹᭺᭺᭺ increase worker productivity, as long as businesses take care and time during deployment.

Feb.23, 2009 23 [COVER STORY] UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

his office number. Every CIO knows plication development, where UC such executive moments are critical to holds the most long-term potential. the continued support of a project. For example, Brinks Hofer soon will Brinks Hofer no longer bills clients begin requiring lawyers and other em- for the connection cost of many long- ployees to check out paper files when- distance and conference calls, and it’s ever they need them for work. It will saving $18,000 monthly, or about do so by combining the workflow ca- 75%, on long-distance costs, as the pabilities in the firm’s new accounting firm even routes calls from one office and docketing systems with OCS, us- through another office to clients local ing SharePoint to display the data on UC should be in the apps people use to that office. who’s using which files. So instead of every day,Global Crossing’s Fuqua says Once VoIP proved itself, Sagarsee a lawyer sending a firm-wide e-mail [ found it easier to get executive support asking who has a paper file checked Rob Schoenfelt. “Press a button, press a to include IP voice, Web, and videocon- out, the lawyer can not only see who button, press a button. With us, you ferencing. From there, OCS’s presence has it, but presence will tell if that per- see who’s there and you get a human capabilities seemed a natural next step. son is in and whether she’s reachable being. Agents say, ‘Well, that’s Ken, and by IM or phone. I can see Ken, and call him.’ ” The firm also is working with IT Celina’s experience also shows the Key PRODUCTS services company Onward Technolo- power of presence and chat to cut 6 AND THEIR gies to develop an online directory down on voice calls. The company put Vendors ROOTS that incorporates presence and click- $300 VoIP phones on each desk and [ to-call, so colleagues could see if a co- installed a Mitel 3300 IP PBX mostly 1. Avaya Its UC products have telephony worker is in before calling. The next to cut its long-distance bill, but its in- at their core. step would be to combine UC with stallation of Sametime instant messag- 2. Cisco Having led the IP telephony other workflow apps under developing reduced phone call volume by 40% drive, it’s trying to add UC onto networks. ment so that, for example, if there’s a on its own. “I can’t even remember the 3. IBM Lotus Sametime is growing question on a bill, someone in ac- last time I’ve received internal voice quickly beyond chat and presence. counting can trigger a call to the pri- mail,” says Schoenfelt. 4. Microsoft Office Communications Server keys off usability. mary lawyer billing that client. Celina plans to add click-to-call to its Sametime deployment sometime 5. Nortel Products integrate well with partners’. Bankruptcy will give CIOs pause. F eature-By-Feature Adoption soon, so agents and employees with IP 6. Siemens Its OpenScape suite is stan- Midwestern regional insurance com- phones will no longer have to even dial dards-based and promises scalability. pany Celina Insurance didn’t even have numbers to reach one another. Even e-mail in 1998, but by 2001 it had so, Schoenfelt expects people will con- presence-based Web chat via IBM Lo- tinue to send instant messages before Avaya’s Communications Manager and tus Sametime for independent insur- they make calls. Chat has become sec- softphones serve as the backbone of IP ance agents to communicate with ond nature at Celina. communications, but the firm uses Mi- Celina’s underwriters. Celina is on the Presence has, however, led to some crosoft for Web conferencing and other leading edge in exposing internal com- odd behavior on occasion, as employ- features, in part because a growing munications tools to partners while ees learn some new social norms. number of Brinks Hofer clients also are still taking a feature-by-feature ap- Schoenfelt says he has received mes- using OCS and they may someday in- proach to adopting UC. sages that say so and so isn’t at his tegrate systems in some way. However, Today, Celina gives its independent desk, and it’s 8:30 a.m., and he was interoperability among vendor products agents not just a company directory, supposed to be here by 8. Presence’s remains difficult, despite industry stan- but also a presence capability showing encroachment on privacy can be un- dards such as SIP for audio and SMPL which underwriters or other Celina nerving, but it’s manageable. Schoen- for messaging. Sagarsee says Brinks representatives are working. For a felt discusses it with a sense of mildly Hofer, in testing before rolling out to small insurance company with about bemused annoyance. employees, had difficulty optimizing 500 agents, it’s a differentiator from As with any new technology, keep- flow between the Avaya phone system competitors, which mostly have auto- ing employees in the loop about how and Microsoft OCS servers. mated phone systems for agents. to use UC is critical. Global Crossing The next leap for Brinks Hofer is ap- “Agents hate that,” says Celina CTO set up training sessions, sent tips to

24 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com employees, and created a chat called Cooke IT manager Warren Giesbrechd. Communicator, which is software analo- “Ask Amanda” with a dedicated IT But the biggest advantage now comes gous to Microsoft’s Office Communica- support employee. from building custom phone applica- tor UC client. The company spends tions, such as those that bring weather about $30,000 with telecom carriers for Data To Phones and market conditions straight to em- voice conferencing, and adding the IP Cooke Aquaculture, which raises ployee phones. Data on water tempera- audioconferencing will replace that with salmon and cod in the Northeastern ture and wind speeds at fisheries in a smaller software maintenance fee. The United States and in Canada, hasn’t in- Newfoundland and New Brunswick Cisco UPC client will open additional stalled even some fairly basic UC fea- used to come via a daily e-mail. Now the collaboration options such as presence tures on its IP phone system, such as company’s collecting that data every 30 and videoconferencing, Giesbrechd says. voice conferencing. Yet it’s ahead of the minutes, relaying it via a Cisco wireless But all that’s not going to happen for curve in application development, us- bridge and then Cisco CallManager to IP a year or two. For now, Cooke has big- ing its IP phone system for delivery of phones used by fishery managers and ger fish to fry: consolidating and virtu- real-time weather forecasts to fishery other executives. Another application alizing its data centers. “The case is managers. tracks salmon market prices and sends there, but it’s just a matter of timing as In 2006, Cooke replaced an analog updates to salespeople every Tuesday far as budgeting and priorities go,” says Centrex service from its telecom and Thursday, again pushing XML data Giesbrechd. provider with Cisco IP phones for its through Cisco CallManager to phones. While the biggest potential for UC 1,500 employees. Cost savings came Cooke’s next steps are to invest in will come with embedding communi- from reducing long-distance bills and MeetingPlace Express audioconferenc- cations into everyday operations and hosting voice mail internally, says ing and then Cisco Unified Personal using phones as a data-delivery plat-

IN OR OUT? Presence: Killer App That Could Be Better

CIO of a midsize manufacturer was complaining Presence is a core component in UC platforms,but it’s effec- about his employees being distracted by text mes- tiveness is stunted by limited interoperability among prod- sages, e-mails, and calls on their cell phones dur- ucts.The problem stems from one too many standards. The ing meetings. And we’re not just talking grum- Internet Engineering Task Force’s Simple protocol suite relies bling—heA was irate. on the Session Initiation Protocol to transport presence infor- So I told him about a demo I saw a year or two ago of Mi- mation,and it’s being adopted by many UC vendors,including crosoft’s Office Communications Server and Windows Mobile, Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, and Siemens. The Open Mobile Alliance, showing the ability to automatically route or suppress mes- an industry group of vendors and providers,leverages Simple sages based on status.That functionality was all tied into cal- to communicate presence to and from mobile devices. How- endaring. When you’re in a meeting, messages and calls are ever, a second presence protocol—XMPP,which is aimed at suppressed. The CIO jumped up: “I want that. I don’t care instant messaging—is also an IETF standards-track protocol, about the rest of it.I want that!” having grown out of the Jabber protocol. The two protocols This is the promise of presence as part of unified communica- don’t interoperate, so bridging them to share presence re- tions software,a capability that goes far beyond the status mes- quires gateways such as the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway. sages in IM software. Presence enables simple but effective au- Within a single product suite, presence generally works tomation, telling others if you’re available and how you can be well. Both Simple and XMPP can be extended so vendors can reached—via voice,IM,desktop or application sharing,or SMS. adapt them to their needs while still providing basic interop- Or it can automate message reception and notification. eration.But two products using the same protocol won’t nec- When coupled with calendaring,presence status can be auto- essarily integrate easily, since both protocols are extensible matically activated whether you’re in a meeting, on the road, by vendors and the extensions have to be interpreted. or on vacation. Unlike follow-me services that try different Basic interoperation is limited to showing whether a per- numbers to contact you, presence declares your state and son is available. The standards community must agree on how you can be communicated with, allowing the caller to common attributes beyond “available” and “not available” to choose the most appropriate methods you’ve allowed. ensure interoperation. —Mike Fratto ([email protected])

Feb.23, 2009 25 [COVER STORY] UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

form, that’s not easy to do today. Global makes good use of some OCS features which oil and gas companies use to an- Crossing had to rearchitect its systems out of the box, it’s only considering cus- alyze simulations in the early stages of into a service-oriented architecture, and tom development with the latest release developing new wells. Schlumberger it has worked directly with Microsoft of OCS, this month. “The core plumb- would like to integrate UC features developers to get its applications run- ing now exists” for providing PC-based into Petrel, so team members could use ning. Cooke Aquaculture leaned heav- communications that employees can presence information, conferencing, ily on a Cisco reseller, Bulletproof So- lutions, for its data-to-phone effort. One Cooke developer has learned a few Celina’s UC system lets agents see which tricks about creating apps for Cisco’s underwriters are available and call UC platform but would need outside expertise to do projects of the scale and them directly, CTO Schoenfelt says. complexity of Global Crossing’s. Cisco says it’s making it easier to de- customize, says Gregory Bryant, a for- and click-to-call to connect more eas- velop on top of its UC products— some mer IT manager who’s now VP of Intel’s ily. With major oil company customers of those products use REST and SOAP business client group and general man- such as Royal Dutch Shell rolling out frameworks for integration, while Cisco’s ager of the vendor’s digital office plat- UC, there’s likely demand. WebEx platform now has open APIs. Mi- form. Now that Microsoft and others But the Petrel-UC combo is stuck in crosoft introduced new APIs in the latest are making it easier to develop around proof-of-concept mode. The newest version of OCS. However, many cus- unified communications, look for version of Petrel runs on 64-bit Win- tomers lack in-house skills, and the skills third-party application developers to dows Vista, but there’s no 64-bit ver- employees used in telephony manage- build it into their products. sion of OCS just yet. Integration with ment don’t translate easily to UC. That’s what oil and gas services com- UC probably won’t be available until Intel is using Microsoft OCS to han- pany Schlumberger hopes to do, with the next release of Petrel—if at all. dle ad hoc meetings. Yet while Intel its highly specialized Petrel software, That said, IT service and software providers are seeing a growing interest DISCONNECT in combining UC with enterprise apps. Building messaging into workflows, so Don’t Trust Presence On Mobile Calls messages trigger automatically when an action’s needed, is largely an untapped resence technology can bring a lot of value to companies, but here’s a opportunity for all but the most sophis- weakness:You still can’t tie mobile workers into a presence system with ticated UC users. For example, IT ser- complete confidence that you’re always seeing them. vices company Engage built apps called Companies can extend a call to an employee’s mobile phone,and if an in- ConnectCare, CliniCare, and Client- Pcoming call is routed into the call server and then out to the cell phone, when that Care that have features aimed at letting person answers it will switch to “on-the-phone” status in their colleagues’ unified health care providers do tasks such as communications portals. automatically notify nursing supervi- But what if that mobile worker calls someone outside the company on a mo- sors via phone or chat if a nurse isn’t bile phone? The system can’t tell that the person is on the phone,and his presence there for a shift or patient appointment. status doesn’t change.The only way around that problem today,says Jeri Korkki of In this economy, UC’s growth hinges IBM Global Technology,is if mobile operators would convey on-hook/off-hook sta- on its hard cash savings. Still, companies tus to enterprise systems.Yeah,good luck working that out with the carriers. shouldn’t write off productivity gains, es- Another alternative,if the person’s mobile device has a UC client on it,would be pecially when staying nimble is as im- to set up the call server so it puts one leg of a call out to the user’s cell phone and portant as ever and as companies are the other leg to the person the user is trying to reach.Then the call server would forced to compete with fewer resources. know the mobile user’s status and could reflect it. Even if investments in UC go piece by If presence is the dial tone of the future, what if dial tone and busy signals piece, businesses could cut costs in the couldn’t be relied on to reflect the true status of a person on a call? What if you downturn and stand to benefit from pro- called someone and got a busy signal even though he was waiting for your call? ductivity gains once growth picks up. As presence becomes widespread,having accurate mobile presence will matter in the same way. —Eric Krapf, NoJitter.com ([email protected]) Write to J. Nicholas Hoover at [email protected].

26 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

[STATE OF SOA]

Is SOA on track for recovery, or has this technology been permanently derailed by the economic downturn?

By Roger Smith

eports of SOA’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, according to the 270 business technology professionals InformationWeek Analytics surveyed for this report on the state of service-oriented architecture. But that’s not to say there isn’t trouble in SOA-ville: Just 23% of respondents say that their organizations have deployed a SOA, and a mere 7% of these report that the resulting systems are available for external use. Twenty-nine percent are experimenting or in development, while 31% have no plans. Much-touted business benefits of SOA, such as increased flexibility and business agility, reduced costs, and improved time to market, weren’t major factors speeding increased adoption. The percentage of overall software reuse within organizations rose by just 7 points after initiating a SOA project, from 32% to 39%. SOA governance, tragically, is DOA. Still, enterprise IT groups rarely turn on a dime, and they don’t lightly aban- don technology investments and strategic decisions. When asked if their SOA projects have been successful in delivering a positive business impact, respondents overwhelmingly say results were as expected. Both positive and negative extremes (“more successful” and “less successful”) rate nearly identical low scores. One interpretation: It’s human nature to resist admitting mistakes, so these IT pros are reluctant to cede defeat. But our take—supported by survey results and discussions with a wide range of stakeholders—is that many compa- R nies are moving forward with SOA implementations, though a significant informationweek.com Feb.23, 2009 27 [STATE OF SOA]

number have decided to shift course and take the path of least resistance. In AT WHAT STAGE IS YOUR ORGANIZATION IN SOA ADOPTION? essence, that means building their SOAs on the Web, using Internet-delivered Not evaluating Deployed for external use or considering APIs, and swapping in more agile REST- by customers/partners 31% based Web services as a simpler alterna- 7% tive to heavyweight SOAP-based Web services where appropriate. In fact, when asked to indicate their past, pres- Deployed for internal use 13% by multiple departments ent, and estimated future use of SOAP- 17% Plan to evaluate in the next 24 months based Web services vs. REST-based Web 3% services, respondents show a marked Deployed for internal use 15% drop-off in use of SOAP, from 54% a in a single department 14% Currently experimenting year ago to a projected 42% in the next In development 18 months. The number primarily using or considering REST-based Web Data: InformationWeek Analytics State of SOA Survey of 270 business technology professionals services is predicted to grow by a pro- portional amount, from 14% to 24% over the same time frame. balanced approach is Ernest Mueller, REST as NI starts to expose services ex- The REST philosophy has simplicity whose company has experienced rapid ternally, thanks to what Mueller sees as going for it, and when resources get growth of its internalState all-SOAP of SOA SOA_chart_1REST’s better ease of use. tight, faster and easier usually wins. implementation. Mueller manages the However, the two styles can comple- Web systems team at National Instru- N ot Dead Yet ment each other; it doesn’t have to be a ments, a supplier of measurement and SOA success stories such as National case of one or the other. A REST-based automation products for engineers and Instruments’ notwithstanding, there’s a approach is a natural for data-oriented scientists. Two years ago, as part of a common industry perception that a applications that focus on simple data- business/technology alignment effort, critical mass of SOAP-based SOA ini- base look-up scenarios. Many apps fit Meuller and a multidiscipline Web ar- tiatives have failed to deliver their this model, especially on the Web. An- chitecture team identified two major promised benefits and have run out of other explanation for the increasing areas in which NI needed consistent, steam. In response, a range of pundits popularity of REST is the growing reusable systems. have weighed in on SOA’s future. number of rapid prototyping tools, “The first was application delivery on At one extreme of sensationalism, such as Ruby on Rails, that can be used the Web, for which we constructed a Burton Group’s Anne Thomas Manes to build these types of apps. reusable Java-based delivery platform for issued a blog post in January declaring, REST isn’t the best solution for all our applications to use,” Mueller says. “SOA Is Dead; Long Live Services,” and Web services, of course. Our advice: “The second was initially framed as followed up with an open invitation to Don’t be married to one method or the back-end access for our Web site to a wake. A less-dire November report other. To simplify your application de- transact with our ERP systems and other from Gartner found that a growing velopment process and make it more internal data and functionality reposito- number of organizations are delaying accessible to more people, first consider ries. After some research, we decided their SOA adoption plans, and the REST for straightforward operations. that a full SOA tier was the solution. We number of organizations with no plans Choose SOAP only when your require- had some internal Web services, but to adopt SOA has almost tripled, from ments demand it, as with applications wanted the additional functionality an 6% in 2007 to 16% in 2008. As dis- that require complex data retrieval op- ESB and BPEL engine would give us.” cussed earlier, the percentage of com- erations or network independence. Based on these needs, the team se- panies deferring SOA adoption re- Here SOAP is the more viable option. lected Oracle’s SOA Suite as its plat- corded by our survey was even larger. An example of an IT pro taking this form. Mueller says that while NI’s SOA “The biggest challenge is to show to project has been slow to define stan- the business the benefits of using SOA,” GET A COPY For a link to this article, dards and governance—a trend in our says Krishna Komanduri, a technical send a text message to 88411 that reads: poll—the company is happy overall director with brokerage firm Charles [email protected]. with its SOAP implementation inter- Schwab. “But, because of the current SMS rates apply. nally. However, the team is looking at economic situation, the business isn’t

28 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com enthusiastic about implementing new DIG DEEPER evangelists for their SOA efforts. technologies when it’s hard for them to However, the fact that National In- see and realize the benefits. In many Close Scrutiny Governance is the cornerstone of struments is actively considering both cases, [SOA] requires organizational big IT projects—including SOA.Get our report at: SOAP and REST Web services in its changes both in the business and tech- governance.informationweek.com SOA implementation is a strong indi- nology—which is very difficult.” See all our Analytics Reports at cator that there’s room for these new Part of the problem: The percentage informationweekanalytics.com initiatives and new architectural princi- of overall software reuse within or- ples that have value under the broader ganizations was only marginally service orientation umbrella. Whether higher after initiating SOA, with a ment products, enterprise service SOAs are implemented in REST, SOAP, 32% reuse rate cited before the SOA buses, SOA gateways, and hardware or a combination of both, we believe project versus 39% after. The key for acceleration devices for Web services. that a snowball effect will arise over the maximizing Web service reuse in an But SOA is about much more than de- coming years: As more Web services enterprise is good SOA governance. ploying new technology and building can be invoked, more applications will However, good governance is hard to service interfaces to existing applica- be written to invoke them. With the find in many IT shops, especially tions. It requires significant redesign of increased availability of Web services those with outdated incentive struc- an enterprise’s application portfolio as components, application designers will tures that encourage developers to well as transformation of the entire evolve from thinking about application write pages of code rather than reuse business. Because so much of SOA is architectures as monolithic, siloed soft- existing Web services components. actually about business practices—not ware efforts and move toward the ex- But far and away the major reason re- technology—in many cases there’s ploitation of configurable, component- spondents who aren’t evaluating or im- been a push back from units reluctant based SOAs. NI’s Mueller says some of this is hap- pening already; in fact, he became a vic- HOW SUCCESSFUL HAVE YOUR SOA PROJECTS BEEN? tim of his own success when the SOA Far more successful project team was forced to fight for than expected SOA not yet deployed for money and resources from other production applications 4% groups. Meuller explains that when his 34% More successful than expected Web architecture team started work on 9% the SOA project, it became clear that the demand at NI for SOA stretched way Far less successful 3% past the original audience. Immediately, than expected 9% internal groups that were working on Less successful 41% projects requiring heavy interoperabil- than expected ity came around and wanted in. As expected “After about six months of work, we went live in June 2008 with version Data: InformationWeek Analytics State of SOA Survey of 187 business technology 1.0 of our internal SOA system,” says professionals evaluating, testing, developing, or deploying SOA Mueller. “We’ve had to take a strong hand in metering uptake to maintain plementing SOA cite for not pursuing to change or to invest in an IT infra- stability.” the initiative is a lack of a viable busi- structure that may require multiple Mueller says there’s been friction ness case—43%State say it’s because of SOA_chart_6 SOA years to pay back the investment. over money and resources, since Web initiatives have developed a reputation Other hurdles identified in our sur- marketing paid for the SOA tier and for overpromising and underdelivering. vey by nonadopters: that a SOA ini- now it’s primarily being used by other We’re convinced that one of the tiative would increase rather than re- groups. “Who pays for it and supports main reasons for this is that when SOA duce IT costs and would amplify it long term is an unresolved question.” started out a few years ago, vendors rather than simplify complexity of the That doesn’t sound like a dying tech- sold the concept to CIOs and other IT environment (17% and 15%, re- nology to us. corporate decision makers as being spectively). Roughly the same per- about specific (and expensive) prod- centage say they’ve had difficulty en- Write to Roger Smith at ucts like Web services or SOA manage- listing executive supporters and [email protected].

Feb.23, 2009 29 [Feb. 23, 2009]

Multicore Development

he hardest part of tackling the emergence of multicore technology and parallel programming is figuring out what to do next. Assuming your office isn’t next door to the likes of parallel programming experts Herb Sutter or Tim Mattson, your best bet is best practices. TIn software development, these usually address issues such as selecting a life- cycle process, documenting requirements, scheduling code reviews, and performance testing. But best practices must be proved over time, and that can be the catch. When you’re dealing with quickly evolving technologies like multicore and parallelization, there may not be many best practices available. That’s not to say that there aren’t relevant ones out there. In Microsoft’s MSDN By Jonathan Erickson, Developer’s Library, you’ll find “Managed Threading Best Practices,” a set of Editor In Chief guidelines for developing multithreaded .Net applications, and the Parallel Pat- tern Library for native C++ development. Several years ago, Intel released “De- veloping Multithreaded Applications: A Platform Consistent Approach” in support of the its Hyper-Threading Technology. But best practices specifically for parallel programming or multicore architectures? They’re hard to come by. To fill this gap, a Multicore Association working group is compiling the “Multi- core Programming Practices Guide” to improve the consistency and understanding of multicore programming issues. It will cover programming languages (initially C/C++), programming models and APIs (Pthreads and the MCAPI message-passing API), and multicore architectures. It also will include analysis and design guidelines for optimizing parallel performance, power, footprint, and scalability. It’s fair to ask if documenting best practices at this point is worth the trouble. But the real question is whether it’s important for your software to do what it’s supposed to, and still come in on time and on budget. If the answer is “Yes,” then documenting best practices is important, and it’s gratifying that we’ll be seeing the “Multicore Programming Practices Guide” sooner rather than later.

Read all about software development at Dr. Dobb’s Portal: ddj.com informationweek.com Feb.23, 2009 31 D r. Dobb’s Report [MULTICORE DEVELOPMENT]

Perils Of Going Parallel Processes and teams, not just the code, must change

By Steve Apiki s multicore technology be- likely require high-level management comes commonplace, IT or- involvement. ganizations are faced with the task of getting the most Up-Front Decisions bangA from their buck. Particularly for The most fundamental choice in cre- applications developed in-house, the ating multicore-aware applications in- decision to reprogram for parallel exe- volves parallel abstraction. Parallelism cution goes well beyond using some may come from a set of loosely coupled new programming techniques. Going services, or it might come from threads parallel requires revising tried-and- in a single-process system. In between true processes and rethinking how these extremes, other parallel models project teams are built. may apply. Although the choice of par- For those involved in staffing and as- allel abstraction is a software design de- sembling project teams, managing cision, it becomes a strategic business multicore development may involve consideration because everything from finding and allocating people with staffing to server configuration rides on thread programming expertise, and where the line is drawn. they’re hard to find. Along with that, Low-level threading is hard—really deploying highly threaded applications hard—to get right, which is why it introduces systems concerns. All of makes sense to consider higher-level ab- these problems can be handled, but stractions. Moreover, some parallel mod- because the solutions may require els already have proved successful in crossing departmental lines, they’ll mainstream applications—Web services

IMPACT ASSESSMENT MULTICORE ᭹ BENEFIT ᭹ RISK

IT ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭹ | Delivers ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ | May entail organization increased speed and processing adjustments to every phase of the power while lowering power development cycle—from consumption. staffing to testing methodologies.

Business ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ | Lets companies ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ | Can be expensive organization get the most out of their software because parallel programming when it runs on new processors. developers are hard to find.

Business ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ | Software that ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ | Software relia- competitiveness scales to multicore environments bility becomes a concern because has increased throughput and existing methods of testing and faster response times. deployment don’t always work.

Bottom ᭹᭹᭹᭹᭺ Multicore is here to stay. It’s time to rethink how it line ᭹᭹᭹᭺᭺ affects development and capitalize on its potential.

34 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com Dr. Dobb’s Report[MULTICORE DEVELOPMENT]

communicating through SOAP or REST, cooperating apps such as application and database servers running on multiple virtual machines, and multiple independent processes running on a single machine and communicating through pipes. While each of these approaches sidesteps the complexity of threading, the trade-off is scalability. The most scalable designs are those that apply threading to data parallelism. Task-parallel applications scale less well, and there’s more overhead in applications composed of processes than in those built from lightweight threads. In general, the finer-grained the abstraction, the more scalable the application, and the trickier the coding. Large projects probably will include several modes of parallelism. In service-based applications, for example, se- lected services may be internally threaded. These may be services with high compute loads, or that include some natural data parallelism.

Managing Threading Expertise Building a team to do threaded software development poses a unique challenge for development managers. First, threading expertise is hard to come by. Second, the people with domain or legacy application knowledge are unlikely to also have deep threading experience. Building a successful team means finding or cultivating the right mix of expertise. Teams should include someone strong in parallel algo- rithm design. Parallelism should be thought of as a struc- tural aspect of application design, so it’s important to have strong parallel development skills in an architectural role. Along with the architect, you need application experts who can learn threading techniques. Testers also should be trained for multithreading, a procedure that runs independently from its main program when multiple procedures are run. In general, the team should be structured with strong parallel skills in a lead role, but with application and domain experience counting for more among other team members. A reason- able goal is a team with 80% of its expertise in the application domain and 20% in threading and parallelism. In migrating legacy code, a developer familiar with the project—ideally, the developer who originally wrote the code—should make the changes to introduce threading. Threading experts can provide guidance, but code familiarity is more important when determining how a module should be restructured. All teams, especially those in which threading experience is light, should consider threading libraries for development. Threading libraries, such as Intel’s Threading Building Blocks or OpenMP, can ease the transition by delivering thread-level scalability and performance while providing developers with a more abstract programming model. And libraries aren’t just a transitional tool; by insu- lating developers from thread scheduling considerations

36 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com D r. Dobb’s Report [MULTICORE DEVELOPMENT]

and the details of working with individ- CLR and Java 5 both offer thread pool ment cycle, from project planning to ual cores, they also provide a way to abstractions that can provide signifi- application tuning. move up to processors with more cores cant performance improvement. Intel, for instance, suggests a four- without changes to the application. step general process for parallel devel- Similarly, teams can take advantage Changes To Development Cycle opment: discover, expression, confi- of thread pool mechanisms built into Moving to multicore means adjust- dence, and optimization. development environments. The .Net ments to every phase of the develop- In the discover step, parallelism spe- cialists try to find the natural parallelism in the application, including determining the right level of abstraction. Other tasks in the discovery step include considering refactoring to exploit parallelism and considering tools that may be used for development. Next, expression involves the parallelism architect and app designers developing a design that uses the parallel modes discovered in the prior step. It’s important to work through thread coordination and conflicts in design. This phase includes actual implementation. The confidence step includes testing the application. Errors mean going back to discovery or expression. Multi- threaded development introduces testing requirements for correctness beyond the requirements of single- threaded implementations. For legacy conversions, the multithreaded version also must be tested for consistency with the single-threaded version. Optimization occurs after the application has met functionality requirements. Here, significant gains can be had by tuning locking, cache interac- tions, and the like. Low-level thread expertise is critical here. The development cycle for parallel applications is iterative, and teams may need to return more than once to earlier steps until they hit correctness and performance targets. Performance lim- itations found during optimization may require returning to the expression step to revise the implementation. The takeaway here is that parallelism must be considered in each stage of the development cycle. Adding parallelism too late in the process means a bolted- on threading implementation that usually fails to exploit all of the parallelism in the application. On the other hand,

38 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com a design left untuned leaves perform- gle core to multicore is a deep technolog- involving development, systems, and ance on the table. ical change that requires building effec- facilities teams in appropriate roles. tive development teams. Another chal- In Production lenge lies in reaching across IT groups to Steve Apiki is senior developer at Appro- Deploying several heavily threaded develop an integrated approach to paral- priate Solutions, a consulting firm that applications on a single server intro- lel software development and deploy- builds server-based software solutions. duces its own set of problems. As more ment. This requires coordinating and Write to us at [email protected]. applications get threaded, thread scheduling becomes increasingly important to overall system performance. Max Domeika, a senior staff software engineer at Intel, says thread scheduling should be considered outside of the scope of most application development projects. Domeika advises developers to focus on parallelism within the application, relying on the operating system or libraries to handle thread scheduling. For a large system with several processes and threads, the system architect and performance engineer should understand the impact of the cooperative processes on the shared hardware. “They will need to verify that their performance constraints can be met,” says Domeika.

Power Considerations Multicore processors promise reduced power consumption in the data center as well as scalable performance for parallel applications. Multicore servers can lower power and cooling costs relative to single-core servers by sharing supporting hardware among cores and by increasing the amount of computing power available at a given clock speed. But here, too, there’s a system design consideration that must rec- oncile the requirements of the data center manager with those of development. Maximizing performance per watt is a data center goal; minimizing system response time is a development goal. Negotiating between the two means balancing system throughput for optimal power performance and system latency for shortest response time. High- level management must play a hand in managing these goals. For management, the move from sin-

Feb.23, 2009 39 D r. Dobb’s Report

Q&A:Parallel Insight

arallelism and performance go hand-in-hand. But achieving maximum performance can be a balancing act, as Intel senior en- Pgineer James Reinders explains to Dr. Dobb’s editor in chief Jonathan Erickson.

Dr. Dobb’s: Sandia National Labs engineers say that adding cores to high-performance computers slows data-intensive apps. Your thoughts? Reinders: Good performance requires a characteristic we call “balance.” In order to get balance, supercomputers place a premium on things like memory and I/O bandwidth and low-latency communications. If a system is out of balance where computing isn’t the bot- tleneck, then adding more cores won’t help. In fact, because it’s likely to add more contention, it can slow things. Dr . Dobb’s: Microsoft’s Azure doesn’t support multicore applications. Is there a place in the cloud for parallelization? Reinders: Parallelism is very important to cloud computing. Azure’s initial implementation assumed we’ll have lots of cores over time and has a one-to-one correspondence of physical cores to VMs. This is because Azure’s future is more about doing many things in parallel rather than doing a few things, each being parallelized. In this model, a multithreaded program can still run on a single physical core and can still get parallelism when that core has hardware threading. My guess is that as we get many more cores, Azure would be tempted to let a single VM own multiple cores. My understanding is that that’s the main reason Microsoft started with the one-to-one correspondence of VMs and cores. That adds predictability to a system, and relies on a future where cores will be even more numerous.

40 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

techSTRATEGY Virtual Server Backup 2.0 Look for a tool that can roll with the changes as VMs and data move around

any organizations have virtualized their test, ups and is the only way to restore individual items from development, and low-duty-cycle appli- databases, such as message-level restores. cation servers, freeing up rack space and However, using an agent on each virtual server can cre- reducing the power and cooling load in the ate a substantial load on the host CPU and network con- Mdata center. Now, as these organizations get ready to nections, not to mention the cost and effort associated virtualize the servers that hold their most vital, high-traf- with installing and maintaining all those agents. Also, be- fic data, they’re wondering: “How do we back these cause the agent runs in the virtual machine, this tech- things up?” nique can’t back up VMs that are shut down. There are a couple of paths that lead to easy, reliable virtual server backups, from the obvious to the innova- Host-Level Backup tive. Administrators can conduct image backups that The other option is to back up virtual server hosts, make total system backups and restores fast and relatively and therefore guest VMs, through an agent installed in painless—but they must be repeated often to keep up the host’s operating system or the virtualization plat- with virtual system changes. The alternative, agent-based form’s service console. It makes sense: If you have 16 backups on each host, provides file cataloging and index- virtual servers running on each host, backing up the ing, direct backup and restore from tape, and individual hosts rather than the individual guests, that will be one- item restore from databases like Exchange—but requires sixteenth as many backup jobs to manage and one-six- significant system resources and careful management to teenth the number of agents to install and update. avoid agent sprawl. Most basic backup applications take a snapshot of the While weighing the pros and cons of each approach, logical drives that hold a VM’s virtual disk and configu- administrators also have to choose their server virtualization backup tools. Like server virtualization plat- VIRTUAL SERVER forms themselves, virtual machine backup software is The Short List BACKUP SOFTWARE evolving rapidly. Vendors are working to provide the ] VENDORS same level of consistency and granularity regardless of whether VMs are backed up via host agents, guest Agent On Agent/Backup Consolidated Guest OS Software Backup agents, or a centralized proxy like VMware’s Consoli- On Host dated Backup. Linux and Solaris file-level restores are also on the virtual menu. Atempo I I I Still, there’s no one best backup tool for virtual servers. BakBone I I I New software designed specifically for virtual systems CA I I I might be a good choice for backing up servers that need I I I full data restoration more than partial restores; tried-and- CommVault true workhorse tools may be better when data needs to be EMC I I I stored for more than a few days. IBM I I I The most obvious way to back up a virtualized server is PHD to install an agent for your existing system on each vir- Technologies I I I tual server and use the same procedures you use now. Symantec I I I Backing up virtual servers with locally installed agents has its advantages, not the least of which is familiarity. Using Veeam I I I local agents generally provides the most granular back- Vizioncore I I I

informationweek.com Feb.23, 2009 41 [techSTRATEGY]

to the host operating system. GET A COPY For a link to this article, Most organizations start by consoli- The VIRTUAL send a text message to 88411 that reads: Essentials BACKUP dating physical servers to virtual ones, [email protected]. [METHODS then use their hypervisor’s live-motion SMS rates apply. Pros Cons features to move servers as user de- Agent On Same backup High load mand varies. However, with host-level the snapshot file is created, esXpress Guest OS process as on host backup, admins must modify backup can compress and optionally encrypt physical server; many schedules to account for every move a the files, and save them to a VM file servers; high agents to backup/ maintain VM makes, or risk not backing up the system, FTP, SSH, or CIFS server restore migrated VM. In these cases, compa- across the network. granularity nies may need to install additional job PHD esXpress ranges from free to Agent/ Fewer agents High load on manager/scheduler software that can $1,995 per ESX host. The free edition Backup to maintain reduced keep track of hosts and the VMs on is limited to two simultaneous backups Software restore those hosts. Most virtual server backup at 13 Mbps each; other editions add On Host granularity vendors don’t provide this capability. features, performance, and more si- Consolidated Fast LAN- Reduced multaneous backups. Backup free backups, restore integration granularity; The Scramble Is On Veeam Backup and Vizioncore with existing requires During the past couple of years, a vRanger Pro both perform disk-to-disk backup apps scripting or wide range of software vendors has backups of VMware ESX servers, and software created backup apps that capitalize on both can ensure application-consistent VMware’s built-in snapshot capability, backups for Windows VMs. VRanger is ration files. Those snaps are then either directly or via proxies to run priced at $499 per ESX host processor backed up as files in the host. scheduled disk-to-disk backups of with volume discounts. A host operating system backs up VMs and their data. Like comparable products, Veeam the VMs and their virtual drives as a set For example, PHD Technologies es- Backup performs a full backup the first of files. However, VM volumes with di- Xpress and products like it create hot time it encounters a VM and incremen- rect mappings to SAN logical disks via image backups of virtual machines tal backups thereafter. It’s priced at iSCSI or Fibre Channel can’t be backed through virtual backup appliance $495 per ESX host processor. up this way because they’re not visible VMs on each VMware ESX host. Once —Howard Marks ([email protected]) New Tools Close Holes In Can-Spam

ince Congress passed the Con- passed, it was derided as the “You Can- senders; and third, build reputation trolling the Assault of Non- Spam Act” because, rather than out- systems for senders and domains. Solicited Pornography and Mar- lawing spam, it merely prohibited cer- keting Act—known as Can- tain deceptive practices, effectively Return To Sender SSpam—in 2003, the government has making all other spam legal. The act The Sender Policy Framework, an had a few small successes, including also pre-empted more stringent state open standard, aims to provide sender prosecutions of a handful of spammers and local laws. authentication. SPF, whichspecifies a and a drop in the amount of porno- More than five years after Can-Spam technical method to prevent sender-ad- graphic spam. But overall spam has in- was passed, anti-spam companies con- dress forgery, has gained steam in the creased, from about 60% of all e-mail in tinue to search for the right combina- last few years. 2003 to more than 90% of e-mail today. tion of technical measures that will rid Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) Perhaps the act’s most positive effect customers’ in-boxes of unwanted com- extends the concept of sender authenti- was the guidance it provided to com- mercial e-mail. Greg Shapiro, CTO cation beyond SPF, adding crypto- panies on how to send e-mail ads and and VP of messaging vendor Send- graphic signatures to outgoing e-mail. correspond with customers. But that mail, lists three such measures: First, Receiving servers verify that the mes- only goes so far in an industry domi- have Internet service providers block sage is legitimate by looking up the nated by fraudsters and criminals. outgoing port 25 and scan customers’ public key in DNS (see diagram, p. 43). In fact, even before the measure was outgoing e-mail; second, authenticate By proving that an e-mail is author-

42 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com 221_TechStrat_DIAGRAM ized to come from a particular domain, DKIM enables the use of more ad- Let Me See Your ID vanced reputation systems. Current systems track the reputation of IP addresses, deciding how to handle messages based on the sending IP’s track DNS Server record. Vendors are now working to 1 2 develop systems that track the reputation of the domain included in the “From” header, eliminating the inaccu- Signed Internet rate results that IP reputation provides Message Sending Mail Server Receiving Mail Server when mail is forwarded or companies 3 use shared-hosted mail servers. Reputation Domain reputation can even combat Server phishing, because look-alike domain names (substituting similar-looking 1) In a Domain Keys Identified Mail system, the sending mail server uses the private characters for letters in URLs of well- key for the company’s domain to sign the e-mail, placing the signature in the headers. 2) The receiving mail server requests DKIM public key from DNS to verify the signature. known companies) could receive poor 3) After message is authenticated, the sending domain is queried in a reputation reputation scores and have their e-mail database, providing a score based on past behavior. The mail server uses the score dropped in the bit bucket. to decide how to handle the message. The groundwork for these new technologies is in place, and more innova- neering Task Force is looking into some major e-mail hubs moving for- tions are on the way. Many anti-spam standardizing protocols for querying ward. For example, AOL this year will vendors have added sender-IP reputa- reputation databases, enabling interop- start using domain reputation to filter tion systems to their arsenals, for ex- erability. Reputation firms are develop- messages for domains that use DKIM. ample. In addition, the Internet Engi- ing techniques to score domains, with —Avi Baumstein ([email protected])

minimizing network disruptions. The 802.11v Moves WLAN benefits of 802.11v are particularly significant as enterprises move toward ubiquitous corporate wireless net- Control Down The Line works. The standard includes provi- nterprise wireless LANs today Alliance are working on 802.11v, a sions to smooth client transitions be- can be described as controlled standard that aims to calm that chaos tween access points, which will not chaos: The heat is on for com- by creating an interface that enables a only minimize congestion during panies to deploy and manage network to be managed and optimized busy times, but also boost perform- Ea growing fleet of untethered devices, all the way down to client devices, and ance of applications such as wireless so you never really know where, how, leverages existing infrastructure and voice over IP. and what kind of mobile users are go- WLAN standards to do it. 802.11v’s Real Time Location Ser- ing to connect to the corporate WLAN. The standard, expected to be final- vices (RTLS) technology accommo- Meanwhile, wireless network manage- ized in mid-2010, should be near top dates high-level wireless client track- ment abilities currently end at access of mind for network administrators ing. This enables a WLAN to redirect a points, leaving devices to fend for and CIOs alike because it can help client to another nearest access point if themselves. them get a grip on wireless usage, the one it’s on is overworked. RTLS In response, the IEEE and the Wi-Fi while potentially saving power and also provides for new location-based

Timeline Creation of IEEE Task Group to Draft 4.0 of standard define and draft 802.11v standard is developed 2005 2007 2008 2010

First draft of 802.11v Estimated completion emerges of 802.11v standard

Feb.23, 2009 43 [techSTRATEGY]

services and applications by letting when wireless clients are in range. DIG DEEPER network administrators compile net- Given that both the WLAN infra- work performance data from clients structure and client devices must sup- Power Up Your WLANWant to to amp up your themselves. Admins can see how well a port 802.11v to achieve its power-sav- 802.11 systems? Download this: WLAN is operating, and plan capacity ing and management benefits, it’s informationweek.com/1212/mesh.htm and upgrades accordingly. unlikely that products supporting See all our InformationWeek Reports at draft versions of the standard will ap- informationweekreports.com A Greener Net pear. The first offerings likely will 802.11v’s Wake-On-WLAN and come from vendors that provide both Wireless Network Management Sleep wireless infrastructure and mobile de- not backfill support for the standard Mode might “green up” wireless net- vices, such as Cisco or Motorola. into older products. So while 802.11v works as well. 802.11v stands to drasti- Furthermore, although 802.11v is can enhance the battery life and man- cally improve the battery life of mobile designed to complement standards agement of legacy devices, it may only devices and may also lower the energy such as 802.11b or 802.11g, it’s un- arrive in the next generation of mobile draw from access points. For example, clear whether vendors will offer soft- devices. —Michael Brandenburg an 802.11v-enabled smartphone could ware or firmware upgrades for existing lower power to its wireless radio when products. Infrastructure vendors likely Michael Brandenburg has 15 years’ it’s inactive, then power back up to take will add 802.11v to existing wireless experience as a developer, network a VoIP call or new e-mail. Likewise, in- controllers and access points as part of administrator, department manager, active access points could run on mini- ongoing maintenance, but laptop and and industry analyst. Write to us at mal power and switch to full power mobile device manufacturers might [email protected].

44 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com

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46 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com practicalAnalysis ART WITTMANN

EnergyWise Could Have Been A Whole Lot Wiser

here’s a constant tug of war in our in- agement, Verdiem for non-PoE device agents, dustry between the value of intellec- and Schneider Electric for HVAC manage- Ttual property to originating companies ment. So if you happen to be a Cisco, Schnei- and the potential of standards to either create der, SolarWinds, Verdiem shop—lucky you! or greatly accelerate the growth of whole new You may be able to save 20% or more on industries. You can pretty much pick your in- your power usage with EnergyWise. The rest dustry, and the creation of standards will be of us, not so much. an inflection point for broad acceptance and As I made these points on a conference greater overall economy and efficiency. call with Cisco, company officials countered Cisco continues its Certainly, TCP/IP and HTML are great ex- with a few points: This spec has been in de- amples of standards that changed our world. velopment for three years; Cisco has a sig- recent habit of Usually, companies get this. It’s pretty clear, nificant investment in it; and the goal is to for example, that society benefits when incorporate the technology into IOS for Cat- creating closed, there’s a limited range of out- alyst switches—no Catalysts, proprietary standards. lets into which you can plug no EnergyWise. The group appliances. But it’s not just at a makes freely available the This time it’s doing it level so mundane. When com- “northbound” specification patibility and cost stifled the that SolarWinds uses. And with EnergyWise. wireless communications mar- once the system is complete ket, clever vendors formed the early next year, Cisco will con- Wi-Fi Alliance and brought the sider standardizing in a body technology to the masses. like the International Telecom- Open standards are so impor- munication Union. tant that their mere existence The ITU is exactly the place has created some of the biggest for this specification, and it’s and most influential companies in our industry. where Cisco should have started. In the None is larger or owes more to open standards short run, we can reduce carbon emissions than Cisco. It’s this history that makes Cisco’s far more by conserving energy than by in- announcement of its EnergyWise initiative par- creasing use of renewable energy sources. If ticularly disappointing, at least so far. Cisco’s Cisco had taken the idea straight to the ITU goal with EnergyWise is commendable: Use three years ago, we’d probably have a road existing standards such as Power over Ether- map for universal EnergyWise compliance net to manage the power consumption of net- about now. But, hey, there was a buck to work-attached devices now, expanding to made, so Cisco decided not to go that route, other devices such as PCs by summer, and fi- and in a year we can start the ITU process nally achieving broad automation of building- from scratch, putting us four years behind level systems by early next year. where we could have been. The problem is that Cisco’s doing this work in conjunction with a relatively small group Art Wittmann is director of InformationWeek of partners rather than bringing the idea to a Analytics. Write to him at awittmann@ proper standards body in an early stage. Its techweb.com. Download our Green IT report at partners include SolarWinds for overall man- greenit.informationweek.com.

Feb.23, 2009 47 down toBusiness from the editor ROB PRESTON

What The Federal CTO Should (And Shouldn’t) Do

irst question out of the gate as President and the innovation environment.” Obama prepares to appoint a federal With all due respect to Chen, I get nerv- Fchief technology officer: Do we even ous whenever talk turns to frameworks and need one, given that CIOs and CTOs already environments. Yes, the CTO shouldn’t just abound across U.S. government agencies? focus on quick fixes or toil in “the bureau- The difference here is that this presidential cratic weeds,” as Intel’s Peter Cleveland cau- appointee will sit at or near the Cabinet level tions, but let’s also not create a position and thus would be positioned to drive “trans- whose charter is so grandiose or nebulous formational change, not incremental improve- that it becomes little more than a pulpit. Obama must pick ments,” says Norm Lorentz, who during the That means focusing on the government’s Bush administration served in a more limited technology and data architectures (cloud someone who knows capacity as CTO within the Office of Manage- computing, data center consolidation, Web ment and Budget. applications, data warehousing, etc.) and set- Washington,but not Obama must pick someone who knows his ting procurement, Web site presentation, and someone so grounded or her way around Washington, but not some- other operational standards across agencies. one so grounded in “government IT” that fresh Leave the “innovation” and U.S. competitive- in “government IT” thinking becomes impossible. He must lean ness master planning to a Commerce Depart- toward a practitioner, a multinational CIO or ment or other czar—or better still, for smart that fresh thinking someone with similar chops who understands entrepreneurs and captains of industry to fig- becomes impossible tech architecture, purchasing, deployment, ure out with only minimal government assis- management, systems integration—and peo- tance or interference. ple leadership—on a massive, visionary scale. I like the thinking of EMC CTO Jeff Nick: The fed CTO must be supremely knowl- The fed CTO can play the role that a private- edgeable and tenacious, of course, and his or sector CTO does for the board of directors, her responsibilities must be clearly defined. and that’s to help departments understand Denis O’Leary, former CIO of Chase, nails it: the technologies at their disposal and bring “Without the power to create change, this is a some consistency to how those technologies symbolic rather than sustentative event. are acquired and managed, rather than make There is a lot of road kill on well-intentioned all the tactical decisions. corporate types getting chewed up with the Finally, steer clear of setting industrial pol- governance processes of Washington.” icy. Ultimately, consumers must decide how The industry leaders we interviewed for much more investment is needed in green, last week’s cover package (informationweek broadband, and other areas, and which spe- .com/1220/preston.htm) tended to fall into cific underlying technologies are their future. two camps: those who see the federal CTO On this point I’m in violent agreement with as an inside-the-government change agent, Sybase’s Chen, who says: “We don’t want GET A COPY and those who want a leader of tech inno- anyone to dictate any one technology. ... That For a link to this vation more broadly. In the latter camp is actually will hurt rather than help.” article,send a text message to 88411 Sybase CEO John Chen, who fears the fed that reads:feb2305YourE-mail CTO will “jump into the technical stuff, un- Rob Preston is VP and editor in chief @YourDomain.com. der pressure of getting tangible, short-term of InformationWeek. Write to Rob at SMS rates apply. results, and miss the focus on frameworks [email protected].

48 Feb.23, 2009 informationweek.com