FRAMINGHAM (12/02/2003) - Due to a reporting error, the name of Susan Larson [cq], vice president for global content team at SurfControl, was misspelled in the Network World story "Spammers stay one step ahead," posted on the wire Nov. 25.
Sprint announced last week that 2000 employees will be getting pink slips. The carrier says it's reducing its staff in an effort to lower the company's "total operating expenses by 5 % to 7 % over the next three years or more than $US1 billion annually." Sprint announced its plans to reduce costs in September. Jobs are being eliminated in nearly all departments, according to the carrier. The layoffs are also the result of the service provider's reorganisation. Sprint has been restructuring the company into two divisions that will address the consumer and business markets. Previously the company was divided into several divisions, including wireless, global markets and local services. Sprint says employees affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages based on length of service.
FRAMINGHAM (12/01/2003) - Jeff Clarke, the former Compaq Computer Corp. CFO who led the integration team overseeing the company's merger with Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), has resigned effective immediately from HP. Along with Webb McKinney, who also recently announced plans to retire, Clarke was in charge of orchestrating the integration of the largest acquisition in the technology industry's history. After the integration, Clarke assumed the role of executive vice president of global operations in charge of HP's supply chain operations. An HP spokesman said the company would not comment on reasons for Clarke's departure. A call to Clarke's office was greeted by an automated message informing callers the line had been disconnected, and an e-mail message was returned to sender. A number of HP executives have left the company in recent weeks, including the former head of Compaq's server division, Mary McDowell. Despite the departures, HP last week posted its best financial results since the merger with Compaq.
FRAMINGHAM (12/01/2003) - A report released last week from Dell'Oro Group Inc. shows that enterprise IP PBX line shipments in the third quarter reached 1.53 million, double that from the same quarter a year ago. Line shipments also grew by 23 percent over the previous quarter, the Dell'Oro report says. The market leader is Cisco Systems Inc., which saw its line shipments grow by 58 percent over the third quarter of last year. Nortel Networks Corp. was second in terms of line shipments, followed by Avaya Inc., Alcatel SA and Siemens AG. Avaya saw the second-best growth spurt in the market last quarter, increasing its shipments by 28 percent.
FRAMINGHAM (12/01/2003) - The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science last week awarded the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee US$4.5 million to design a high-speed network capable of operating at 10G to 40G bit/sec. That speed is about 200,000 to 800,000 times faster than the fastest dial-up connection of 56K bit/sec, according to a press release from the lab. The prototype system, dubbed Science UltraNet, would link ORNL with other research institutions that rely on supercomputers capable of trillions of calculations per second. The network would let the scientists quickly complete projects that require the transfer of large amounts of data. The three-year effort would let the three ORNL scientists in charge set up an experimental network linking the Oak Ridge lab to others in Atlanta, Chicago and California.
FRAMINGHAM (12/01/2003) - A set of new security vulnerabilities have been discovered in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer Web browser that used together could let hackers compromise user PCs, researchers warned last week. The five vulnerabilities have been reported in Internet Explorer 6.0, although other versions might have been affected, according to a bulletin released by security company Secunia. The scripting flaws could let hackers bypass security and compromise systems, giving them access to sensitive information and cross-site scripting, according to Secunia Ltd. Secunia has classified the vulnerabilities as "extremely critical" and is advising all Internet Explorer users to disable Active Scripting or "use another product." Microsoft has advised users to download its latest Internet Explorer cumulative patch, released Nov. 11, while it looks into the new vulnerabilities.
FRAMINGHAM (12/01/2003) - NetMeeting, once hyped as Microsoft Corp.'s answer to online conferencing, is being gradually phased out in favor of the company's newest real-time collaboration tool, according to company officials. Microsoft already has ceased development of the software. NetMeeting, first introduced in 1996, gives way to Office Live Meeting, a browser-based conferencing service that Microsoft acquired when it bought PlaceWare earlier this year. The service, and eventually a server based on the technology that will include applications sharing and whiteboarding, will be linked into other real-time collaboration tools from Microsoft such as Live Communications Server and with client applications that are part of Office.
FRAMINGHAM (11/26/2003) - Cafesoft LLC has shipped Cams Apache 2.0, which supports single sign-on security across Apache 2.0 Web servers. The software works with a farm of Apache servers or between Apache 2.0 and other Web and Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition-based servers. Cams works with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol v3-compliant directory servers and SQL databases. The software features role-based access control, centralized security policy administration and logging capabilities. Pricing starts at roughly US$3,000 per server.
FRAMINGHAM (11/13/2003) - Ending a back-and-forth legal scuffle that began more than three years ago, Cable and Wireless PLC and Akamai Technologies Inc. have announced that they are dropping the handful of patent infringement lawsuits that they have filed against each other. As part of their agreement, C&W has agreed to dismiss lawsuits it filed against Akamai in Boston, San Francisco and London saying Akamai's EdgeSuite services infringe on C&W's content delivery patents. For its part, Akamai agreed to dismiss several of the patent infringement lawsuits it filed against C&W. Neither company admitted liability or provided any compensation as part of the agreement. The two companies have been bickering over content delivery patents since 2000, when Akamai fired the initial volley claiming that Digital Island, which C&W later acquired, used Akamai-patented technology as part of its Footprint content delivery service. The recent agreement does not cover that case, in which a federal jury in Boston determined that C&W infringed on the Akamai patent.
FRAMINGHAM (11/07/2003) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against a company that allegedly exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows system to barrage users with pop-up ads using a feature intended for administrative alerts. The tactic involved the Windows Messenger Service, a software feature distinct from Microsoft's similarly named MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger instant-messaging applications. The Messenger Service is part of the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems that let network administrators send messages to users, such as notifications about the status of print jobs. The feature proved problematic as external parties figured out how to hijack the Messenger Service and use it to send unsolicited information such as ads to Internet-connected computers. The company targeted by the FTC, D Squared Solutions LLC, used Messenger Service to flash ads touting its pop-up blocking software, which it sold for US$25 to $30, according to the FTC's complaint. D Squared officials could not be reached for comment.
FRAMINGHAM (11/07/2003) - Network Appliance Inc. is buying privately held Spinnaker Networks Inc. for about US$300 million in an all-stock deal aimed at boosting Network Appliance's high-end storage products and get its "storage grid" architecture to market more quickly, executives from the companies said this week. Spinnaker develops enterprise-class network-attached storage products, with a family of NAS servers and a global distributed file system, Spin FS, on the market. Network Appliance provides storage network infrastructure wares. Network Appliance executives did not offer a time frame for when the storage grid architecture will be released, but pledged an update in the coming weeks.
FRAMINGHAM (11/07/2003) - Microsoft Corp. is dipping into its sizeable cash reserves to offer rewards of US$250,000 each to anyone who can help track down the authors of the SoBig and Blaster worms that wreaked havoc with Microsoft software and crippled many corporate networks. Two people have been arrested for unleashing variants of Blaster, but the original author remains at large. The bounties are part of a $5 million fund Microsoft has established to help law enforcement snare computer bad guys. The company got a show of support during a news conference this week from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and Interpol. Microsoft has spent millions of dollars over the past two years on its Trustworthy Computing initiative, which is designed to produce secure code, but security vulnerabilities have persisted in its software, including 47 this year. Now the company is committing millions of dollars to attack the problem from the other end of the spectrum - those who exploit those vulnerabilities.
FRAMINGHAM (11/07/2003) - E-mail software maker Sendmail Inc. is partnering with software company Cloudmark to provide integrated anti-spam features for companies using Sendmail e-mail products. Cloudmark's Authority enterprise anti-spam technology will be integrated with Sendmail message-transfer agents, giving Sendmail customers a plug-and-play, anti-spam technology. Sendmail, which also is available as open source software, is one of the most commonly used enterprise e-mail platforms. Cloudmark's products use a Microsoft Corp. Outlook anti-spam plug-in called SpamNet to maintain a distributed, 700,000-person, peer-to-peer anti-spam network. Sendmail's decision to partner with Cloudmark comes after a number of similar announcements by other enterprise messaging and e-mail security companies.
FRAMINGHAM (11/03/2003) - MCI last week appointed former U.S. Senator Warren Rudman as a senior adviser to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Michael Capellas and the company's board of directors. MCI says the former senator will focus on "ethics and corporate governance." Rudman will help the company complete and implement its "expanded corporate governance initiatives," according to MCI. This announcement comes on the heels of MCI's appointment of Nancy Higgins as executive vice president of ethics and business conduct and chief ethics officer just two weeks earlier.
FRAMINGHAM (11/03/2003) - The U.S. government and private industries need to encourage business innovation because the nation is in danger of losing its edge in technology and in other industries, IBM Corp. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Palmisano said last week. Palmisano announced a 12- to 18-month "National Innovation Initiative" through the Council on Competitiveness to study how the U.S. can continue to be a world leader in innovative technologies and other industries. He spoke during the council's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. While the U.S. has been "the envy of the world" for its past innovations, the nation needs a consensus on how to continue to encourage business innovation, he said. "If we're not careful, the [U.S.] will fall out of step with the new realities of innovation," Palmisano said. "If that happened, innovators will go someplace else. We need to crank up the energy, crank up the focus of innovation across many sectors of our economy."