News and analysis to 28^th September 2007

EU 1 Microsoft 0

The European Court of First Instance upheld an earlier EU antitrust ruling against Microsoft. Commissioner Neelie Kroes feels that having 95% dominance on the desktop is a tad too high. The European Committee for Interoperable Systems, which counts IBM and Sun amongst its members will be jumping for joy. This should be an uncomfortable outcome for other hi-tech companies that enjoy positions of dominance. Intel comes to mind in the chip market and Apple in the digital music space. Funnily enough so does IBM in the mainframe space.

 

IBM attacks Microsoft’s Office

We are not talking IBM’s board jacking a fleet of Hummers and ram raiding the software giant’s head quarters. Though the impact could well be a lot worse. IBM is preparing to launch a free alternative to MS Office suite called Lotus Symphony. Given that a substantial percentage of Microsoft’s revenues come from MS Office this will be a blow.  We are starting to see the re-emergence of the desktop productivity tools market. Google and Zoho are also offering free Office-like applications. Such Darwinian market-driven initiatives are more likely to be successful in counteracting dominating behaviour than regulatory intervention.

 

SCOing SCOing…

Industry nuisance SCO Group, whose sole business model appeared to be suing companies that had a favourable disposition to Linux AND were not Microsoft, is coming to the end of its existence, now that it has lost a major case against IBM. A Nasdaq delisting is on the horizon followed by oblivion.

Dell joins the Dark Side

Dell’s behaviour of late has been a little erratic. With founder Michael Dell back at the helm urgent action was needed. It transpires that Dell is set to build a computer to be used by University College London to process complex analytical problems including simulations of dark matter, the invisible stuff that accounts for a large percentage of the weight of the universe. Once built it will have the power of 2,700 desktops, weigh 21 metric tonnes, have seven kilometres of cabling and suck in 19,000 litres of air per second. It is not clear whether UCL bought this via Dell’s web site of through its recently acquired distributor Wal-Mart.

 

The computer says No

According to Knowledge Solutions a lack of IT skills is costing UK contact centres billions and damaging customer service. With 25% staff churn, training new recruits is a constant drain on resources and a major contributor to the £2.53bn ($5.08bn) industry price tag for training and support.

 

Open Source – A risky business

The UK Public Sector is not exploiting the cost savings associated with open source software according to Shadow Minister for the UK Treasury David Gauke. He pointed out that only 6% of servers at the Treasury used open source software. He claims that fear, uncertainty and doubt contribute to this risk aversion. (I wonder who has been sowing those seeds?) The UK government spends £12.4bn on IT. Open source could put a dent in that. There will surely come a time when failure to use open source will be seen as an act of poor governance and poor government.

 

EDS offers workers early retirement

Like the other major Western service providers, EDS is looking to build its off shore capacity. As part of this redistribution of its work force it is offering about 12,000 staff in the US early retirement. The offer expires on the 30^th October; so work-shy graduates need to get their job applications into EDS immediately.

 

Gone phishing

According to security firm Cloudmark there is a thriving ecosystem in existence. Phishing is a moneymaking technique that tricks victims into revealing their security details such as bank account username and password by using email and look-alike websites. Apparently in the phishing black market one can buy commercial-style support licences and even outsource your phishing requirements. Thus it is possible to launch your own phishing campaign despite having no technical knowledge. It’s surely just a matter of time before the bottom-end ‘get rich quick’ publishers reissue their books with an added phishing chapter.

 

Department of Homeland Insecurity

The FBI is investigating IT services provider Unisys over security breaches stemming from Chinese websites. Unisys was awarded a $1bn contract to build, secure and manage the IT infrastructure of the US Department of Homeland Security.  Apparently Unisys had purchased the requisite network intrusion detection devices but only a subset of them had been installed. Unisys denies the allegations. Worst case the Unisys legal team can always argue that it was doing its bit to cut down on electricity consumption and thereby helping the US government with its carbon footprint aspirations.

 

Ade McCormack