News and Analysis to 4th September 2003
News in summary
Hardware
q
Good news in server market
Software
q
Open source on the attack
q
Microsoft rivals up the pressure
q
Microsoft applications security alert
q
LogicaCMG looking good
Services
q
BPO on the increase
News in Detail
Flat servers
After nine months of loss making, the server marketplace
appears to be on the upturn with server manufacturers reporting flat revenue
figures, according to IDC. The criticality of servers to business suggests (if
you have an optimistic predisposition) that the IT industry is coming out of
recession.
Open source DOS?
Unix vendor SCO Group, which is raising its profile by
threatening anyone who is running Linux with legal action (for using its code),
has now had a taster of what the open source community has in its armoury. One
disgruntled member has made SCO’s website unavailable through launching a
sustained denial of service (DoS) attack. Eric Raymond, president of the Open
Source Initiative, confirmed that the perpetrator was indeed a member of the
open source community, but that his actions were not condoned. We could be
seeing the emergence of a more hard line breakaway group. The open source
community needs to remain squeaky clean if it wants to be relevant post SCO’s
legal foray.
BPO – The new outsourcing
BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) is a service whereby the
vendor takes over the management and delivery of one or more business processes
and the underlying IT infrastructure. In a world where cost management and core
competencies are high on the agenda, BPO is a concept that will resonate with
the economic decision makers (ie the Board) in big organisations. The likes of
IBM, Accenture and CGEY are all focused on making this a principal revenue
stream. Possibly this is going too far. Whilst HR and Finance may not be core
competencies for many organisations, the flair with which they recruit and
retain staff or the skill in which their cash is managed, will be replaced by
organisations who offer to do it as cheaply (and thus as adequately) as
possible.
MS rivals step up pressure
Confidence in Microsoft’s software took a further knock with
the outbreak of the Blaster and Sobig viruses. In the US the Computer and
Communications Industry Association (CCIA), of which Oracle and Sun Microsystems
are members, sent a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security urging it
to reconsider its recent decision to award Microsoft a major IT contract to
supply desktop software for 140,000 seats. They cited the failure of Air
Canada’s passenger check-in system and an intrusion of the Navy-Marine
intranet. They also attributed the disabling of the safety monitoring system of
a nuclear power plant to the Slammer worm. Presumably Microsoft’s rivals are
planning to unveil a complete desktop computing environment that will give
users a choice in such matters.
Office door left open
eEye Digital Security has identified a ‘hole’ that can
enable attackers to execute hostile code from within a range of Microsoft
applications. The weakness stems from Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA) programming language, which is used to add functionality to Microsoft
applications. Microsoft has issued a patch to solve this problem.
Market responds to LogicaCMG’s orders
On December 30th 2002, in response to a
challenging SMS/MMS software market Logica and CMG were spliced. Six months in,
the merged company appears to be exceeding expectations. The order book has
grown substantially taking market share from 16% to 25%. In response
LogicaCMG’s share price jumped almost 20%. Since the merger the share price has
trebled. This is a promising sign for both the IT and Telecoms sector as
LogicaCMG is seen as a (UK at least) Tech Sector bellwether.
