Microsoft’s Turf, Oracle Vs. IBM, CyberGuard Acquired, RSS Reports, Sun DRM and Skype as a PBX
Microsoft Defends Its Turf, Diplomatically - linuxinsider
Piece “Microsoft has been criticized, of course, for its competitive tactics. It has settled many of the lawsuits stemming from a U.S. antitrust case and is still negotiating the terms of European antitrust penalties. Thus far, Microsoft has awakened to new threats in time to defend its turf.”
Oracle/IBM battle beyond the database - javaworld
Piece “No longer satisfied with its role as the corporate database leader, Oracle has been building out its middleware portfolio through R&D and acquisitions and is increasingly going head-to-head with IBM.
“For years, the database has been an extremely vigorous competition between DB2 and Oracle database,” says Joshua Greenbaum, principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. “The heat has gotten more intense because middleware has been added to the mix.”
Others, including SAP and Microsoft, also see opportunity as corporate data centers move to environments where data and systems are shared and reused in so-called service-oriented architectures. Middleware—such as application servers, business integration software, and data management systems based on open standards and Web services—provides the foundation for this new IT environment.”
Secure Computing to acquire CyberGuard - arnnet
Piece “Secure Computing announced it had reached an agreement to acquire CyberGuard for approximately US$295 million in a cash and stock transaction, with the merger expected to be completed in the November timeframe following the regulatory approval process.
In acquiring its rival in the firewall and content-filtering arena, Secure Computing expects to see revenue escalate from about US$110 million per year to US$200 million, said Mike Gallagher, senior vice president of product development. While specific product and staff consolidation plans have not been laid out, Secure Computing sees some re-alignments that could result in possible product change and layoffs. “
IBM’s New Linux Strategy Pushes Solution Sets - eweek
Piece “After six months and some 300 customer engagements, trying out a new sales and services approach that concentrates on industry-specific solution sets, IBM has decided to realign its global Linux-related sales and marketing teams around this model.
The Linux teams are now concentrating on selling and marketing 17 solution sets that address IT and customer business problems, rather than focusing on selling specific products. The shift recognizes the growing demand from IBM customers that the company transform enterprise operations to become more responsive, “real time” and on demand, Scott Handy, the vice president for worldwide Linux at IBM in Somers, N.Y., told eWEEK. “
Microsoft demos RSS features in IE 7 - pcworld.idg
Piece “Whether the content streams are eventually called RSS ,Web feeds or some other name, a key design goal of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 is to let users easily subscribe to blogs and websites via Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
Attendees at the Blog Business Summit in San Francisco last week got a sneak peek of this functionality in IE 7 running on Windows Vista.
The new version of the browser will include support for RSS, a technology that alerts users to new content posted to blogs and websites. The goal is to make subscription activities more mainstream by allowing users to add an RSS feed as easily as creating a Web page bookmark.
To subscribe to an RSS feed in IE 7, a user simply clicks on a subscribe button in a toolbar that runs across the top of the browser. Users can then see a preview of the feed and add it to a list of favourites. “
New Forrester reports on RSS for marketers released - blogs.forrester.com/charleneli
Piece “One point that’s sure to catch attention is the number of people using RSS — our Technographics survey of 68,000 North American households showed that only 2% of all online households were “using RSS”. Now here’s the caveat — that doesn’t include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don’t realize it. Young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS — 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS.
The second report has detailed best practices on how marketers can create effective RSS feeds for marketing purposes. There are four steps I outline: 1) Determine what content to distribute via RSS; 2) Build the feeds; 3) Market the feeds; and 4) Measure the feeds — and their impact. “
Updated Google has new tools, user monitoring - boston
Piece “Google Desktop 2, available today as a public beta test, is the company’s latest volley against Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. as all three race to expand their presence on PC desktops.
The Google offering includes several twists. Beyond providing search results, it monitors the user’s behavior and presents relevant information in a resizable and moveable vertical window called the Sidebar.
One module aggregates e-mail messages from a variety of accounts, including Google’s Gmail service or the user’s Internet provider. Others display stock prices, personalized news headlines, weather reports, and what’s popular on the Web.
Another module pulls Really Simple Syndication feeds from websites that have been visited and offer that service. Unlike other feed aggregators, the user need not take any action for a feed to be added.”
Sun has plan for digital rights - boston
Piece “Sun Microsystems Inc., weighing in on the fractious issue of protecting copyrighted digital content, yesterday unveiled a project it calls the Open Media Commons initiative that’s designed to create an open-source, royalty-free digital-rights management standard.
The issue of digital-rights management, or DRM, has spurred a number of plans to protect content, ranging from standards for mobile phones, digital music players, CDs, DVDs and other media, available from InterTrust, Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Sony Corp. and others.
Sun is now throwing its hat in the ring. Its chief operating officer, Jonathan Schwartz, argues that the growing number of rival DRM standards that are incompatible with one another could stifle innovation and economic growth.”
Microsoft offers RFID system for postal services - infoworld
Piece “Microsoft is marketing an RFID (radio frequency identification device) package for postal services at a stamp exhibition in Taiwan, hoping to woo the government’s post office and potentially forge a new line of business for the software maker. The technology Microsoft has on offer here allows a postal service, the package sender, and the receiver to view exactly where the package is at all times. It also notifies a receiver when the package will arrive and alerts senders via MSN Messenger or a mobile phone SMS (Short Message Service) after it has been signed for at its destination.”
E-commerce sales up 26% in Q2 2005 - blogs.zdnet
Piece “Online retail sales were up 26% in Q2 2005 from Q2 2004, reaching $21.1 bln, the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce reported. Total retail sales for Q2 2005 were estimated at $940.8 bln, an increase of 8.4% from Q2 2004.”
Skype as the Next Generation PBX - gigaom
Piece “Skype goes beyond the traditional PBX features with its support for IM and ability to share contact information with other applications. These features are exactly the selling points of the newest software based PBX systems. The IM thing especially, as it ties into something called “presence.” Guest Post by Jesse Kopelman
Let’s clear one thing up, right off the bat. I’m not here to tell you how much Skype is worth. That’s not the point, anyway. The point is that, if you are looking at things from the angle of what kind of margin can one make selling generic voice services by the minute, the world has passed you by. The per-minute price for voice is not going to stop going down. This is why there has been so much consolidation in both the fixed and mobile telephone business recently. The only way to grow the business is to keep adding customers and even this will become a losing game eventually. If you are using VoIP to set yourself up as a new player in the telephone business, you’ve come to the party way too late. The most you can hope for is to cut into the profits of the existing players enough to force them to buy you out.”
