The most recent articles from IT Week

Will XP's expiry breathe new life into Vista?

Daniel Robinson — 2008-07-11T15:33:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Friday 11 July 2008 at 15:33:00

Microsoft has cut off the supply of Windows XP, but enterprises are still unwilling to give it up

With the end of June came another ending; the cut-off date after which Microsoft

will no longer supply Windows XP to retail outlets or to PC vendors. It marks the beginning of the end for one of the longest-serving and probably most widely-adopted versions of Windows that the company has produced.

I believe that this is a monumental mistake on the part of the software giant, as there is clearly still a great deal of demand for Windows XP, whereas its successor is unloved and unwanted. Microsoft might believe that it can force customers to migrate to Vista by withdrawing the older platform, but this is a dangerous strategy that could backfire.

The problem with Vista is that it is the wrong product at the wrong time.

The economic outlook is not good, to say the least, and so the majority of organisations are looking at ways of reining in spending, not drawing up plans for a costly and complex migration to a new platform.

Unlike earlier transitions, there is a steep difference in the hardware needed to run Vista at an adequate level of performance, when compared with its predecessor.

This might be acceptable if Vista offered some tangible benefit that would give businesses a compelling reason to move, but it is difficult to think of a single area where Vista is better than XP.

Microsoft has tried to counter this with campaigns listing reasons for customers to migrate to its latest operating system, but quite frankly, I find most of these claims dubious. My experience of using Vista is that it takes longer to accomplish most tasks, simply because many functions are hidden away further down in the menu system than they are with XP.

It thus takes more mouse clicks to find and open Administrative Tools, for example. And yes, you can use Vista’s built-in search to find it, but is this the best Microsoft can come up with for a 21st century operating system? I thought we had left behind typing out commands when DOS was retired.

The situation businesses therefore face is that a Vista migration will cost them a

lot of money, and give little or no return on their investment. In fact, productivity

may even decline.

Small wonder, then, that enterprises are mostly avoiding it like the plague. In June, it was revealed that chip giant Intel has decided not to move its own employees to Vista, while IT services firm CapGemini told IT Week earlier this year that none of its enterprise customers has shown any interest in a Vista migration.

So what happens now? The supply of XP might have been cut off, but support will continue until at least 2014. Organisations with an enterprise software agreement will continue to use XP, as they have the downgrade rights to deploy this even on newly-bought systems. So these companies are likely to remain on XP for the foreseeable future.

Smaller businesses and consumers are likely to find that they have no choice but to accept Vista on new PCs, but the danger for Microsoft is that there are many attractive alternatives around these days. The take-up of Apple Mac systems is growing, and Linux is now as easy to use as Windows, as its popularity in mini laptops such as the Asus Eee PC has shown.

If Microsoft wants my advice, it should snap out of its corporate denial over Vista, and admit it has made an operating system that nobody wants. The fact is, XP is going to be the platform of choice until at least the launch of Windows 7, whether Microsoft likes it or not.

Microsoft to attack VMware from below

Dave Bailey — 2008-07-04T17:20:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Friday 4 July 2008 at 17:20:00

Uptake of the software giant’s Hyper-V hypervisor is expected to be strongest among smaller companies, where its affordability is most likely to give it an edge over more sophisticated rivals

With the release of its Hyper-V hypervisor, Microsoft finally has a server virtualisation product with which to rival the likes of VMware. But experts believe that Hyper-V is not yet ready for the enterprise market, and that Microsoft is likely to see greater success in small and mid-size companies, at least in the near future.

Formerly codenamed Viridian, Hyper-V is a thin software layer, sandwiched between the hardware and operating system, that can be used to virtualise both Windows and non-Microsoft operating systems. To deploy Hyper-V, firms need the 64bit version of the Datacenter, Enterprise or Standard edition of Windows Server 2008, and servers based on processors with Intel’s Virtualisation Technology or AMD-V, both of which provide hardware support for virtualisation. “Firms will be able to upgrade their Windows Server 2008 deployments with Hyper-V through Windows Update from 8 July,” said Bill Laing, general manager for the Windows Server Division. The code can also be downloaded through TechNet and the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN).

But while Microsoft’s virtualisation platform is now in place, a vital component needed to manage and control virtual servers is still missing. System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is only available as a beta release, having initially been unveiled at the end of April. Laing would not give an exact release date for the final version of SCVMM, but said it should be available in the next few months.

Neil Macehiter, research director of analyst firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton, advised firms against deploying Hyper-V in production environments at present. “Lack of SCVMM should not prevent them evaluating the technology, but firms should wait for the full release before production deployments,” he said. Macehiter added that Microsoft’s failure to co-ordinate the release of the two products was unfortunate “given that management is so critical to the effective exploitation of virtualisation technologies”.

Laing said that Microsoft’s ambition for Hyper-V is to make it easy and cost effective for Windows customers to use virtualisation. Feedback from customers suggests they find Hyper-V very easy to deploy, he added. “If you know how to set up and install Windows, and you know how to configure roles in Windows Server 2008, that’s about everything you need to know,” Laing explained.

Microsoft sees Hyper-V carving out a role in a range of areas, including server consolidation, business continuity and disaster recovery, testing and development, and datacentre and branch office management. However, the software giant faces a tough challenge entering the datacentre, where VMware is the current market leader.

While VMware expects to face competition from Microsoft’s virtualisation package, the firm pointed out that Hyper-V cannot match the capabilities of its own products. “Microsoft is only now delivering a hypervisor product, albeit one which is considerably pared down functionality-wise from that originally promised,” said Reza Malekzadeh, VMware’s European marketing director.

Hyper-V is missing features such as automatic virtual machine migration and the ability to balance workloads across entire server farms, but one factor in its favour is that it effectively comes for free with Windows Server 2008.

One firm looking to take advantage of this is car maker BMW, which plans to migrate a retail server platform that serves 3,500 dealerships worldwide from Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 to Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V over the coming few months, according to Laing.

Butler Group senior research analyst Roy Illsley agreed that Hyper-V lacks some of the more advanced features found in products from VMware, Citrix and Virtual Iron, but said that Microsoft may initially be looking at the small-to-medium business (SMB) sector as the main target for its hypervisor. “I believe that the link-up with Citrix demonstrates that Microsoft is going after the SMB sector with Hyper-V and leaving XenServer to compete in the enterprise market with VMware, at least while it works on making Hyper-V as technically capable as its rivals,” Illsley explained.

Citrix and Microsoft are working together to integrate support for the former’s XenServer, XenApp and XenDesktop virtualisation products into the latter’s system management platforms. Illsley added that VMware will struggle to compete with Hyper-V in the SMB market. “VMware is attempting to move into the SMB space with pricing bundles. But while it provides superior capabilities in its package, it lacks a clear understanding of the market, and how to deliver to the SMB sector,” he said.

Mobility options set to grow

Daniel Robinson — 2008-07-04T15:07:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Friday 4 July 2008 at 15:07:00

Moves to create a unified and royalty-free Symbian platform should result in a wider choice of handsets and applications

As Symbian celebrates its 10th anniversary, the company is set to be subsumed into handset giant Nokia. But the Symbian OS platform is to be given a new lease of life as royalty-free software available to any vendor that wants to use it, a move intended to see an even broader range of handsets become available for customers.

The shake-up of Symbian, announced on 24 June, will see Symbian OS combined with the three most common user interfaces for Symbian handsets Nokia’s S60, Sony Ericsson’s UIQ, and NTT Docomo’s Moap to create a unified handset platform that will be available royalty-free under the Eclipse Public License.

Control of the platform is to be handed to a non-profit organisation, the Symbian Foundation, which will be established in 2009. The first complete release of the unified platform is currently set for the first half of 2010.

However, before either of these launches can happen, Nokia plans to acquire all of the outstanding shares in Symbian, making it part of Nokia, after which it will contribute Symbian OS and its S60 software to the foundation.

Nokia executive vice president Kai Öistämö said the move will revolutionise the industry the way Symbian did when it was first formed.

“This will enable an ecosystem to deliver new, exciting devices and new services,” he said. As the first version will be compatible with the current Symbian OS 9 release, the new software will “provide critical mass like no other mobile platform”, he added.

The move towards open-source is a bold step that ought to encourage handset vendors to build a broader range of devices, which should ultimately lead

to greater choice for buyers.

“I think it will help adoption beyond the vendors that use Symbian already, if the licensing is sufficiently fair and open,” said Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum.

Some experts have portrayed the decision as a response to Google’s Linux-based Android platform. However, Leach said he believed Symbian was more influenced by the Limo Foundation, another open-source initiative using Linux.

“If you look at what they’ve announced, it is similar to what Limo has done. I think they were more worried by the quiet, steady progress that Limo has made rather than Google’s self-publicity,” he said. Many of the Limo members Motorola, NTT Docomo, Vodafone and Samsung are also involved in the Symbian Foundation, he pointed out.

Morgan Gillis, executive director of Limo, issued a statement welcoming the announcement, saying it is “a natural evolution… because the future of the handset OS is far more about governance than technology”.

However, Leach said that the move to unify Symbian is the most significant step. Although Symbian OS runs on six of every 10 smartphones sold, the various user interfaces and builds used by vendors have made it impossible to create a single executable that will run across all of them.

“It addresses the problem of how you roll out applications across all these different mobile devices. Fragmentation has been stifling development,” he added.

But platform unification will not mean that all Symbian handsets will be the same. Sony Ericsson chief technology officer Mats Lindoff said that vendors will be able to differentiate their products to target different markets.

“There are very different requirements between the low-cost talk-and-text models and high-end smartphones,” he said.

In particular, there will still be the ability to customise the user interface, because this is a key requirement for network operators. “The new platform will make it easier to customise the look and feel, but the underlying technology will be the same,” Lindoff explained.

One factor that has been holding back Symbian is the perception that it was controlled by Nokia. While the move to open source Symbian OS may allay this fear, Nokia’s pending ownership of Symbian is likely to put it in a powerful position to influence the platform’s direction, at least in the near future. “Nokia will gain from acquiring Symbian employees and knowledge base it will be a good investment,” said Öistämö.

However, while the Symbian platform faces growing competition in the enterprise market from RIM’s BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Nokia’s continued support means it is likely to remain the mainstay of business handsets in the near future.

Symbian might also gain a surprising convert after its platform becomes open source, according to Leach.

“RIM may decide it is in its best interest to move [BlackBerry to Symbian OS],” he said, but added this is unlikely to happen in the short term.

“Every handset vendor has to decide whether to build or buy the underlying platform, and I’m sure RIM is reviewing the situation all the time,” Leach said.

XP: The end is nigh

David Neal — 2008-06-30T12:27:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Monday 30 June 2008 at 12:27:00

OEM sales of XP are due to end today

Microsoft is due to stop shipping its XP operating system to computer manufacturers later today in the face of a lot of opposition.

Microsoft is finding it hard to increase uptake of Vista and many have seen its move to stop shipping XP as a kind of lure.

As of now, a petition to keep sales of XP alive has more than 210,000 digital signatures, but today’s deadline is looming. “Join the 210,161 people so far who have signed our online petition to demand that Microsoft not stop OEM and shrinkwrapped sales of Windows XP as planned on June 30, 2008, but instead keep it available indefinitely”, the blog urges.

Last week Microsoft sent out a letter to customers telling them that it would be extending critical support for Windows XP until 2014. “With the June 30, 2008 end of sales date for Windows XP approaching, many people have asked me if they will still be able to get support for Windows XP. The answer is an emphatic "yes, you will continue to be supported"," the letter explained.

Businesses too will continue to be supported, the letter said, offering them downgrades to the XP operating system, as will smaller PCs such as those by Asus and other budget systems, Microsoft confirmed.

Microsoft to acquire mobile services developer

Daniel Robinson — 2008-06-27T11:33:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Friday 27 June 2008 at 11:33:00

Purchase of MobiComp will extend the capabilities of Windows Mobile and Windows Live

Microsoft has announced plans to acquire a firm specialising in mobile data, particularly in providing phone users with mobile access to content. The move will extend the capabilities of Windows Mobile and Windows Live, Microsoft said.

MobiComp is a firm that pioneered technologies for the backup and restoration of mobile data to the cloud, as well as mobile posting of content to web sites such as Facebook. Microsoft has not disclosed terms of the planned takeover.

Todd Peters, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business, said the move would help extend the firm's mobile platform with innovative and seamless ways for users to stay connected.

“People expect their phones to deliver the best experiences from PCs and the web right to their pockets,” he said.

MobiComp already has services that can back up personal content stored on a phone, publish updates to online communities, and deliver content such as news and entertainment to phones.

While primarily aimed at consumers, such facilities might also be used to drive new business-focused services for users of Windows Mobile handsets. For example, its Active mTicker delivers subscribed information via a scrolling “ticker” that runs along the bottom of a phone screen when the device is in idle mode.

Updated – Unified Symbian platform to be open-source

Daniel Robinson — 2008-06-24T10:44:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Tuesday 24 June 2008 at 10:44:00

Newly formed body, the Symbian Foundation, will develop a common interface framework that handset makers can use royalty-free

Symbian's smartphone platform is to be unified and made available under an open-source licence via plans announced today by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Japanese telco NTT Docomo. The move is expected to deliver a broader variety of handsets and encourage developers to bring more Symbian-based applications to market.

The plans will see Symbian OS combined with the three most common user interfaces for Symbian handsets – Nokia's S60, Sony Ericsson's UIQ, and NTT Docomo's MOAP – to create a unified handset platform. It will be controlled by a non-profit organisation, the newly-formed Symbian Foundation, and unlike the current Symbian OS, will be available royalty-free to any handset maker that wishes to use it.

Nokia executive vice president Kai Öistämö said the move will revolutionise the industry the way Symbian did when it was formed 10 years ago.

"This will enable an ecosystem to deliver new exciting devices and new services," he said. As it will be compatible with the current Symbian OS 9, the new software will "provide critical mass like no other mobile platform", he added.

Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum, said the move is a positive step that will help to overcome the problem of fragmentation, whereby handsets from different vendors all have different builds, requiring developers to code separate versions of an application for each one.

"It addresses the problem of how you roll out applications across all these different mobile devices. Fragmentation has been stifling development," he said.

The roadmap is for the Symbian Foundation to launch in the first half of 2009, with the first complete new release scheduled for the first half of 2010.

However, the move still has to overcome regulatory hurdles, as Nokia plans to acquire all of the shares in Symbian that it does not yet own as part of the process. If this is given the go ahead, Symbian will become part of Nokia.

This may put Nokia in a position to drive development of Symbian, at least in the near future, but Öistämö said that while Nokia is the biggest contributor, the platform "will not be owned by any one single company".

Leach said he believed the move to open-source Symbian OS is partly a response to open-source rivals such as Google's Android and the Limo Foundation, but also to address the fact that the platform is perceived as too closely bound to Nokia.

"When Symbian started, the intention was to make it an industry standard. This hasn't happened, so they are taking the open-source route to shortcut difficulties in ownership," he said.

Users aren't buying it

Guy Kewney — 2008-06-19T12:07:00.000Z

Guy Kewney, IT Week, Thursday 19 June 2008 at 12:07:00

Much to Microsoft’s annoyance, IT leaders are increasingly resistant to its powers of persuasion

“Don’t buy Vista,” says the Microsoft advert, “unless you’re really, really serious about security.”

You won’t remember this advert, of course, because it never ran - not even five years ago, when Microsoft was, as it always seems to be, trying to wean users off an old operating system. And five years back, it was NT4 that people were being encouraged to move on from.

Back then, Microsoft favoured the stick rather than carrot: “No telephone support, updates, fixes or security patches will be issued and the only means of extended support will be via a private contract usually an expensive option forcing most buyers to seek an alternative system. Windows 98 will follow suit on 16 January next year and Windows NT Server 4.0 will lose support at the end of 2004,” wrote Martin Veitch at the time.

This year, Microsoft is trying to work out why - as one of the vendor’s executives put it - it is being forced to be its own biggest competitor by extending the life of Windows XP when, from the Redmond point of view, Vista is so much better. And as usual, senior execs are muttering about the ingratitude of users - particularly professional users and tech support types - and indignation is rife.

One internal blogger at Microsoft recently ranted about how hard it is to deliver the improved security that professional users are continually asking for, when those very same users always seem to begrudge having to learn about the new security features that Microsoft comes up with.

The good news is that this is probably the last time we’ll have to play out this little drama.

Vista, I’m sure, will eventually come to be a majority OS in the Microsoft stable, but “Son of Vista”, which is much closer to release than we realise, will struggle to force another round of upgrade payments out of corporate cheque-books. Not until Microsoft bows to the inevitable and adopts a com patible version of the industry standard of the coming decade - a Unix variant - will it find a way of carrying customers with it on upgrades.

And don’t tell me it can’t be done. Faced with no alternative, it simply has to be done.

Apple in rude health thanks to un-PC attitudes

Kelvyn Taylor — 2008-06-06T16:38:00.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, IT Week, Friday 6 June 2008 at 16:38:00

Apple’s first quarter results suggest Windows users are increasingly willing to try on the Mac for size

It’s been almost three years since I wrote a column welcoming Apple to the Intel fold and so far it seems to have been an extraordinarily happy marriage.

No, my predicted quad-core home media server hasn’t yet come to pass, but my dream of a Mac running full-speed Windows certainly has.

Boot Camp, the nifty utility that lets users install and run Windows XP or Vista natively from a separate partition on any Mac with OS X “Leopard”, is one of those simple but incredibly effective ideas that must have done its fair share to push some wavering buyers into choosing a Mac rather than a PC.

Or at least that’s what Apple’s resurgent sales figures for the first quarter of 2008 seem to indicate. Boosting sales by over 50 per cent year-on-year is a neat trick at any time, never mind when the world economy seems to be falling down around our ears.

I’m no Mac lover, although as our magazine production staff use Macs, I come into regular hands-on contact with the fabled OS X. And I’m afraid I detest it every time. But I really do have a soft spot for the Mac hardware, apart from the awful keyboards and mice that Apple seems to insist on for its desktop models.

A lot of my PC-wielding work colleagues are of the same mind. OK, we’re not particularly keen on the old-style iMacs we have in our office, and they’re certainly no less prone to crashing or dying than the PCs, but the overall package, particularly the notebooks, is something that you can’t help but admire. Pull out a Macbook Air - as one work colleague who just won one in a competition does with monotonous regularity - and you’ll have a crowd of PC users around you in seconds.

For years, this admiration from afar was where it ended. But now that the penny has finally dropped, and more and more PC users have realised that you can run Windows perfectly well, a Mac is now seen as a definite option for otherwise dyed-in-the-wool Windows users. For those who prefer both platforms on one screen, there are virtualisation tools such as Parallels Desktop, VMware’s Fusion or, more recently, Sun’s xVM VirtualBox, some of which let you run individual Windows applications in a desktop window rather than having to fire up a complete virtual machine.

In industries like publishing, where there’s usually a diverse desktop environment, it must certainly be tempting for IT managers to consider rationalising to a single hardware platform, even if there’s still the hassle of maintaining two operating systems.

The case must be even more compelling in smaller businesses with little or no

support infrastructure to worry about, and perhaps that is where a good chunk of Apple’s growthis actually coming from.

For those currently running pure Windows environments, it may not be quite as compelling an idea, especially for organisations whose support is all managed in-house. I’m sure there are some hidden problems lurking around the Windows-Mac combination, and I would certainly be interested to hear the experience of any readers who have gone down the PC-to-Mac route in their company.

Of course, Apple’s overall market share is still miniscule at a few per cent or so worldwide, and I’m certainly not predicting world domination. But corporate dissatisfaction with Vista and the unknown quantity that is Windows 7 could still play very nicely into the coffers of the residents of 1, Infinite Loop, Cupertino.

Windows 7 to get touch interface

Daniel Robinson — 2008-05-28T16:09:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 16:09:00

Microsoft showcases next version of Windows

Microsoft has demonstrated a touch-based user interface that will debut as part of Windows 7, the next version of its desktop operating system. The company said it believes that touch technology will become more mainstream in future along with deployments of touch-enabled PCs.

At the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference last week, Microsoft executives, including chairman, Bill Gates, and chief executive, Steve Ballmer showcased a multi-touch user interface that enables gesture-driven input and control of applications.

Not only will Windows 7 support touch-enabled hardware, but the user interface is designed to make touch a natural part of the user experience, even on the smallest laptops, according to Microsoft. The company said Microsoft it is working closely with hardware and software vendors to bring the best touch experience to Windows PCs.

Windows 7 itself is still officially due in 2010, three years after the official launch of Windows Vista, but Microsoft is keeping a tight lid on other features and capabilities that the platform may support.

Microsoft has confirmed that it would not introduce a new operating system kernel in Windows 7, instead basing it on technologies introduced in Vista, particularly subsystems such as graphics, audio, and storage.

VMware targets better virtualised application performance

Dave Bailey — 2008-05-28T15:21:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 15:21:00

B-hive acquisition to give VMware technology to better manage virtualised application problems

Virtualisation leader VMware looks set to target better application performance when software is running virtually, after it acquired privately held B-hive Networks for an undisclosed sum today.

VMware said that B-hive technology would be used to offer, "Proactive performance management and service level reporting for applications running within VMware virtual machines (VMs) - on both servers and desktops."

VMware's chief technology officer Stephen Herrod, said "if B-hive identifies degradation in application response time, it can remediate the problem by automatically instructing VMware Infrastructure to adjust the resources allocated to the application or provision an additional VM with an additional instance of the application."

B-hive chief executive officer Yoav Dembak said that he envisaged the tie-up with VMware giving greater visibility into application performance as firms depend more on virtual environments, to the extent that it should "make it possible to resolve a problem before it occurs."

B-hive’s flagship product, B-hive Conductor, "not only monitors end-user performance and issues service level reports, but can also proactively resolve application performance problems by automatically triggering actions such as dynamically allocating more resources, migrating the application to a different server, provisioning additional VMs, changing transaction routing, or system re-boots," the firm said.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008.

OLPC partners with Microsoft

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-05-16T11:37:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 16 May 2008 at 11:37:00

Microsoft Windows now available on the XO laptop

Microsoft Windows operating system will soon be available on One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptops.

OLPC aims to distribute a laptop to provide every child in the world access to knowledge. Previously only running Linux, the XO laptop will soon allow users to choose the best operating environment to suit their requirement.

“Windows support on the XO device means that our students and educators will now have access to more than computer-assisted learning experiences,” said Andres Gonzalez Diaz, governor of Colombian state Cundinamarca. “They will also develop marketable technology skills, which can lead to jobs and opportunities for our youth of today and the work force of tomorrow,” he added.

Trials of the XO running Windows are planned to begin this June. The new partnership with OLPC will add to Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential–Community Technology Skills Program. This is described on the Microsoft web as “a global effort that promotes workforce development and IT skills training programs in underserved communities”.

The partnership follows the breakdown of a relationship OLPC had with Intel. According to Intel, it had to drop its support for the OLPC initiative because OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte had demanded the end of Intel’s supply of the Classmate PC. But OLPC said the differences between the two organisations were that “we view the children as a mission; Intel views them as a market.”

Labs report: SP3 strengthens XP security

Dave Bailey — 2008-05-09T14:45:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Friday 9 May 2008 at 14:45:00

Service Pack 3 adds support for the Network Access Protection (NAP) mechanism in Windows Server 2008

Microsoft's SP3 update is likely to be the final service pack for Windows XP, and consists largely of previously released updates and hotfixes. However, it does include some enhancements, the most significant of which is client support for the Network Access Protection (NAP) mechanism implemented in Windows Server 2008 (WS 2008) our focus for this first look review. NAP is a policy enforcement mechanism to ensure systems connecting to a network comply with security requirements.

We tested SP3 by downloading it from Microsoft’s TechNet as a .ISO image, which we then burned to CD-ROM for deployment. The executable itself is 324MB in size, while deploying to systems took about 15 minutes and added about 400MB to XP’s image size. Tools and guidance for deployment have not fundamentally changed from Windows XP SP2, according to Microsoft, so system administrators are advised to follow these.

After deployment, we tested upgraded systems to see how NAP works. We set up our WS 2008 system for DHCP NAP enforcement by configuring it as a NAP health policy server and also a NAP enforcement server. Enforcement can also be applied to IPSec, 802.1X, and other VPN clients.

We then configured the Windows System Health Validator and defined a policy that determined whether or not to allow clients network access. The settings included options to disallow access if there were no firewall, anti-virus or anti-spyware tools deployed. We defined a policy blocking access to systems that did not have all updates installed. When clients failed to pass the system health check, a pop-up message informed the user their system needed remediation. This can be done manually, or automatically, if a remediation server has been set up.

Overall, we found it relatively easy to set up NAP protection with WS 2008 and XP SP3 clients, but firms with few IT staff may have difficulty deploying and maintaining the system.

Microsoft released to manufacturing (RTM) its Service Pack 3 (SP3) update for Windows XP on 22 April, and intended it to be generally available by 29 April. However, the update was delayed until last week owing to a compatibility issue reported by some early adopters between Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS), and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1.

The Network Installation Package for Windows XP Service Pack 3 can be found here.

Microsoft management suite adds non-Windows support

Daniel Robinson — 2008-04-30T16:21:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Wednesday 30 April 2008 at 16:21:00

Move could benefit firms struggling with a diverse range of operating systems and software

Microsoft has detailed plans to provide greater cross-platform support in its datacentre management tools, a move that looks set to benefit enterprise firms struggling with a diverse environment of operating systems and software.

At the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2008, the software giant unveiled a public beta of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which adds support for open standards and the ability to manage Linux servers. Also out in beta is System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, which enables firms to manage virtual infrastructure based on VMware's ESX Server as well as Microsoft's own technology.

Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server Business, said the firm was taking its knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address heterogeneous management needs, enabling businesses to drive greater efficiency and responsiveness.

The extensions to System Center Operations Manager include support for Web Services for Management (WS-Man) and what Microsoft terms "foundational cross-platform support" for HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sun's Solaris and Suse Linux. Microsoft partners will be able to extend this level of support with management packs, according to the firm.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 enables customers to deploy and configure virtual machines running under Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 or VMware ESX Server. It also integrates with System Center Operations Manager to provide a single console for both physical and virtual servers, Microsoft said.

Hyper-V, which is still currently in beta, is now expected to ship earlier than the 180-day timeframe that Microsoft set itself at the Windows Server 2008 launch in February.

A third beta release, System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors, enables Microsoft's suite to link with other management tools such as HP OpenView and IBM's Tivoli Enterprise Console.

HP updates SOA management software

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-04-30T14:42:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Wednesday 30 April 2008 at 14:42:00

Hewlett Packhard has upated its service orientated architecture management kit

Hewlett Packard has updated its service orientated architecture (SOA) management software in order to help organisations deploy the technology across the enterprise.

“We want to help organisations progress from small scale deployment to enterprise wide,” said Tim Hall, Software director of SOA product at HP.

HP has updated its testing products, introducing new versions of Service Test and Service Test Management, updates which should give more assurance to teams deploying SOA with new automatic governance capabilities.

One example given by Hall was that policy checks, such as checking that a service is not upgraded from pilot to production, can be now be automated.

Also with Service Test Management, users will be able to instantly report on the quality of a service and assess whether it should enter production phase with automatic alert capabilities.

HP has additionally enhanced its SOA management capabilities. A new version of its Business Availability Center (BAC) for SOA was announced, which is appropriate for staff involved in IT operations, Hall suggested, adding that it works as a framework to lower deployment risk.

An updated Diagnostics for SOA, which operates either as a standalone or through integration with BAC, is targeted at staff needing to perform root cause analysis. It allows users to drill down into the behaviour of the SOA services to identify and resolve problems before they affect customers.

While the updated SOA Policy Enforcer actively monitors services and enforces security and performance requirements, while also feeding performance management data into the Diagnostics for SOA for detailed analysis.

Hall said the new offerings are part of HP’s strategy to appeal to all organisations deploying SOA, whether they are in the initial phases piloting SOA projects, or have reached enterprise wide deployment.

Windows XP update may hit Vista sales

Daniel Robinson — 2008-04-28T00:15:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, IT Week, Monday 28 April 2008 at 00:15:00

Some users may see XP SP3 as the perfect stop-gap until Windows 7

Microsoft will make its Service Pack 3 (SP3) update for Windows XP available for download today. The move may convince some firms that XP is still viable enough to let them skip Vista and hold out for its successor instead.

XP SP3 can be downloaded from Microsoft’s web site today and will be pushed out to XP users via the Windows Automatic Update service later in the summer. The update includes all patches and fixes released since SP2 in 2004, but does not include Internet Explorer 7.

The update is likely to be deployed quickly in enterprises, according to experts, as it enables IT departments to ensure client systems are fully patched, without having to roll out a myriad of separate fixes.

It also brings extra security in the form of support for Network Access Protection (NAP), a technology introduced in Vista. NAP is a policy enforcement mechanism to ensure systems comply with security requirements.

SP3 may, however, convince some IT leaders that staying on XP is preferable to a potentially costly Vista migration.

“Vista take-up is very low, so the release of SP3 seems a strange move on Microsoft’s part: it’s almost like they’re trying to extend the life of XP,” said Butler Group analyst Roy Illsley.

This view was backed up by IT services firm Capgemini. Steve Sutton, vice president of its Technology Services division, said that Vista adoption is minimal among its enterprise customers. “No clients have been talking to me about Vista rollouts,” he said.

Enterprise buyers have been put off Vista by its steep hardware requirements compared with XP, plus reports of poor performance and stability issues from users.

The IT director of a UK charity told IT Week it planned to stay on XP “as long as possible. We simply cannot afford to change hardware just to implement Vista.”

Illsley said he believed Microsoft is well aware there are problems with Vista, and that as a result it will move quickly to introduce its successor, Windows 7.

However, Gartner’s Michael Silver warned that third-party suppliers may stop supporting XP before Microsoft so skipping Vista is a risk.