Ruthless Software Patents are Evil

The tech world has recently seen remarkable number of instances driven by patent litigations, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to decelerate innovation. The problem with it is that most Patents are held with people/companies that have never actually materialized any of it. The patent system  should instead concentrate on rewarding patents to those innovators who create the most useful applications from ideas, for the good of the society.

Google is taking a step here to lighten things up, both in the best interest of the company’s products and for its partners. Google has bought all of Nortel‘s remaining patents and applications for $900 Million for a total of 6,000 patents covering wired, wireless and digital communications technologies. Google would get patents for wireless, 4G, data networking, optical, voice, semiconductors and other telecom areas.

What would Google Do with Telecom patents? Google would use these patents to innovate in its own products like Android, Chrome and let anyone in the Open Source community play with all of it. In other words, these patents will now be owned by everyone, thereby not restricting in sort of innovation, which could have been stuck for years.

Google adds:

Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it’s the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners.

O yeah! Openness, the way to go. But what would Google do with the non-related Telecom patents? Build another Gigabit fibre ISP? We would have to wait for that.

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The real fight is ON between Apple and Google. No brand has left any chance and that is why we’ve seen a numerous number of lawsuits from a number of manufacturers/OEMs within last 2 years. Microsoft sues Motorola for Android, Apple sues HTC over android, gets sued by Nokia, which is counter-sued and bla bla.

Here is a demographic of Who is suing Whom in Telecom/Mobile Industry:

image credit: informationisbeautiful

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On a more serious note, How does Google make money from Android – an Open Source smartphone OS. It costs nothing to phone manufacturers and is freely available to modify, hack, & redistribute.

The first obvious earning source appears to be the Google ads. Building the fastest smartphone web browser increases the chances of using web for searches on your phone, and the searches are made more often than a user did before. With millions of users worldwide and assuming even 1 search per user per day, Google  can make enough money to  feed it’s engineers for sustaining Android for years to come. But is that all? No, not really.

Recently, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt announced that  Android will soon have the capacity to feed Google $10 Billion yearly in revenue. And back in Nov 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Google’s give-it-away Android strategy was a sure-fire money loser.

Here are some possible sources of income at this point of Time, and Possible sources of Income in the Future

• MarketPlace: Google charges $25 for signups as developers, then keeping a share of paid app’s price. Going by stats, and now the release of Market to 29 new countries, this could grow from several Million$ to a multi-billion dollar deal within a year.
• AdMob: The ads revenue is not just driven by webpage ads but also in-app ads. 50% of the free apps in the Android Marketplace are ad-supported and can fetch Billions of PageViews, every single day. Eventually, Eric believes,ads delivered via mobile devices will bring Google more revenue than ads delivered via PCs. After all, Selling 200,000 devices per day is a huge number. All in all, a significant earning for Google today and multi-billionaire tomorrow.
• Saving on iPhone: Every year, Google pays Apple 10s of 100s of Million Dollars to keep the Google search the primary choice on iOS devices. With growth of Androids, (users choosing Android over iOS) Google endsup paying way less to Apple, since the deal is per iOS device sold. Don’t get it wrong, this number is huge enough to run Android operations inside Google.
• Paid services: Its something that wont happen with every android user, but it happened with me. Being too much dependent on Integrated Google services: Gmail, picasa, docs, on desktop & mobile, I ended up actually upgrading my account to a 40gb paid service. Auto-syncing camera shots to picasa is just one of the reasons.

If Google had been evil, they would have looked into many other modes of earning like analyzing user’s phone using analytics, stealing and selling user’s data but luckily they are not. The mantra for the company is still intact, that’s why we love Google, Hate Facebook.

Android is the future, NewsWeek rightly calls this evolution the “Android Invasion“, so many industry evangelists cant be wrong.

Google has given the biggest number in the industry by acquiring 23 companies, 3/4th of which are venture financed or angel-backed. On the other side of the road, Twitter, still hasn’t figured out a sustainable revenue model, made three acquisitions related to social media and analytics. IBM absorbed much of the enterprise software market and bit on the Hardware side as well.

Microsoft’s silence in 2010 has a solid reason –the biggest acquisition failure of Yahoo! As per CBInsights, the Microsoft is losing out on the top start-up technologies, although, there’s no doubt on how comfortably Microsoft can acquire nearly any (and every) start-up, but they are just not doing it, at least not publicly.

Facebook: Surprisingly, Facebook has jumped ahead of many of the tech companies Cisco, Oracle, etc. Of course, many of Facebook’s acquisitions are of the small tuck-in variety recruiting talent or interesting capabilities for the social networking giant.

HP: Unlike Facebook with it’s smaller acquisitions, HP has been making larger acquisition deals (4 x $1+ billion) with the aim to push technology, products and services to a new level.

Cisco: Cisco which has record of making large number of acquisitions had been slow this year with only 4 mergers.

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The business proposition is easy: The dying Motorola’s business would prove out to be profitable for Nokia Siemens, as they now achieve #3 spot in Top wireless network vendors in the United States and hence expand business propositions with Motorola’s existing customers.

The acquisition gives  Nokia Siemens 7,500 employees plus solid relationships with Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and China Mobile.

In the press release from NSN, Rajeev (CEO) said “Motorola’s current customers will continue to get world-class support for their installed base and a clear path for transitioning to next generation technologies while employees will join an industry leader with global scale and reach. Nokia Siemens Networks will see the benefits of a deal that is expected to enhance profitability and cash-flow and to have significant upside potential.”

But at the end of the day, ROI of the  acquisition will depend on how successfully the operations of the two companies are merged  and how well they streamline the development, manufacturing, distribution, bringing overall efficiency.

The acquisition is also aimed to build a stronger infrastructure for 4G/LTE wireless networks being setup all around US.

Most of the industry leading Telecom operators, like Verizon, believe that this is good move for the betterment of wireless industry.

Motorola intends to build a separate entity called  ”Motorola Mobility” out of its cellphone division which has got some industry appreciation after the launch of Android smartphones starting with Droid and then Droid X, but that plan has been postponed due to heavy losses in that unit.

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Thanks to the popularity of Tablets, all eyes are now on Chrome OS Tablet and Android Tablet.  Knowing the fact that Google is already building one under the hood, several other companies are betting on the concept.

Cisco is trying to step ahead into another direction by creating first Android Tablet for Business users. As per the official statement from Cisco, Tablet would be called Cius and would provide portable collaboration and serve as a great communication device, will arrive in the market around Q1 2011.

The Cius (“see us”), aimed solely at business users, will provide best experience for Cisco’s business applications such as WebEx, Video conferencing (TelePresence) and VoIP services for Realtime collaboration on the move.

Cius Tablet Specs

Cius would be a  7″ WSVGA touchscreen, weighing 1.15lbs, would have a smaller form factor than the iPad.

The tablet comes equipped with a 720p HD front-facing camera for video conferencing, as well as a 5MP rear-facing camera that can stream VGA-quality video.

• Screen:  1024×600 7″ LED backlit
• Camera: Front – 720p video/ 2MP stills , Rear – 5MP stills, VGA video
• Connectivity: 802.11a/b/g/n flavors of WiFi, bluetooth, Micro USB
• Network: 3G (UTMS or EV-DO; it could be both) and Future 4G support
• Accessories: Optional HD audio stations that adds telephone handset, speakerphone, DisplayPort, USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet
• Battery: Removable 8 hours battery life

Cius Tablet Services

In keeping with its business focus, the Cius includes built-in support for Cisco’s collaboration applications, including Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, Cisco WebEx Connect, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Cisco Presence, and interoperability with Cisco TelePresence. It would also enable connecting to your corporate IT infrastructure remotely using Cisco AnyConnect VPN, and can be managed by IT support staff using Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Cisco also plans to release a custom SDK so that Android developers can include support for Cisco’s Collaboration APIs.

No word on pricing but  Cisco plans to roll out corporate customer trials in the Q3 of this year, with wide availability beginning in the Q1 2011, stay tuned.

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It was all cold and deepened relationship. And today the same-thing has taken a 180 degree turn as Google proves out to be successful with it’s mobile operating system, Android. Things started taking a turn when Google acquired a startup called Android and started developing their own mobile OS. It was then visioned to be a Microsoft killer, kicking Microsoft’s Windows Mobile out from the market. But sooner and later Google improved the Android OS and revealed Motorola Droid, which was touted to be ‘iPhone Killer’. Things warmed up at Apple and Google’s continuous attempts to capture mobile market let Apple board directors to decide that they are better of without Eric Schimdt as he no longer is considered a partner for the company.

In the last six months, Apple and Google have fought over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications.  This month, Apple sued HTC, the biggest manufacturer for Google’s Android operating system, contending that HTC had violated iPhone patents. The step is largely considered to be personally on the Google’s Android than HTC, due to obvious reasons. Admob, the company Apple had been considering for acquiring to drive it’s mobile advertising went into hands of Google.

Google’s promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world. While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, Google’s approach is more open and partners a lot of firms under the OHA.

At the heart of the dispute, Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. He feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket. At a All-hands meeting to internal employees, Steve said “We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,”  “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.” Jobs even commented that “Don’t be evil is Bullshit”

However, Apple declined to comment for this article. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, have openly expressed admiration for Mr. Jobs, and Google says it isn’t at war with its former ally. “Apple is a valued partner, and we have great respect for everything they have done for technology for more than 30 years,”. Schmidt concurred. “I continue to believe, as many do, that Steve Jobs is the best C.E.O. in the world today, and I admire Apple and Steve enormously,”.

Despite what looks from outside, industry experts predict that it’s going to get uglier. David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied the tech industry for decades. He says “To beat Apple, Google is going to have to be very aggressive. If they are successful, it will put price pressure on Apple and the iPhone.”. Another expert said  “It’s World War III. Amazing animosity is motivating two of the most powerful people in the industry,” he says. “This is emotional. This is the biggest ego battle in history. It’s incendiary.” THE fight features two Valley veterans whose styles couldn’t be more different.

Despite what they feel individually, there are few instances where their business needs each other. e.g. Google pays Apple millions of dollars annually to make its search engine the default on Apple’s Web browser, on the iPhone and soon, perhaps, on the iPad. (Though there were rumors of iPhone switching to Bing, that looks unusual). On the other front, Google employees work and develop product on Apple’s platform: Mac. It’s not hard to see that 90% of the employees carry a MacBook instead of a PC.

The war is on and its almost impossible that anyone would fall. On one side Steve Jobs will continue to vision his company to be a leader in Mobile space, Google will leave no chance either. For the end-user it’s all choice and Openness that they working independently or together will bring. The Latter will bring peace.

[via NYTimes]

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Pingdom, the Internet tech monitoring company, has compiled a timeline of events/acquisitions, facts, figures that sum-up almost every big Google has done, over the years. They have covered Google’s Indexed pages, Search usage stats, Google’s Revenues form advertising and other products, services.

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AmberPoint is a new solution for providing oversight across development and operational environments. Featuring a discovery-driven approach, it automates most of the manual effort typically associated with cataloging the application environment and ensures policy compliance across the lifecycle. AmberPoint Governance System solves the inflexibility and effort that typically hinder enterprise governance initiatives.

AmberPoint’s software will be embedded into Oracle’s Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) offerings. The current offerings falls under Oracle Middleware 11g suite which  includes Oracle SOA Suite, Weblogic Suite, WebCenter, Identity management, Fusion Middleware.

Oracle says that the addition of AmberPoint’s software will help customers diagnose and manage the performance of business applications, provide monitoring for application performance, a good step towards SOA governance.

Oracle is already the market leader in SOA, this acquisition intends to raise the bar higher. Or may be Oracle is packing-up bags for serious Cloud Computing.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs quoted:

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company. The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

So what made Apple achieve this? Their Innovation that lead to operation at huge margins.

Apple sold 3.36 million Macintosh computers, a 33% increase year-over-year. In addition, apple sold 8.7 million iPhones, double that of last year, and up 1.3 million units from Q4. On top of that, despite issuing guidance last quarter that gross margin would be down for the quarter, it rose 3 percentage points year-over-year to 40.9 percent.

Sales claim 21 million iPods, which makes upto 70% of US MP3 player market.

But the BEST is yet to come. As Steve Jobs claims that Tablet is the best thing he has ever worked on. January 27th Tablet event is scheduled, and we will be tweeting live of what is coming.

Truly, Steve jobs, the CEO of Decade is changing the face of industry in hard economic times.

We write about Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Gadgets, IT/Business @taranfx on Twitter.

Today’s share Value costs $550, so in all they will get $5.5 billion+. As a result,  their voting control will drop from 59 percent today to 48 percent.

From the official filing:

Larry and Sergey currently hold approximately 57.7 million shares of Class B common stock, which represents approximately 18% of Google’s outstanding capital stock and approximately 59% of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock. Under the terms of these Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, and as a part of a five year diversification plan, Larry and Sergey each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares. If Larry and Sergey complete all the planned sales under these Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, they would continue to collectively own approximately 47.7 million shares, which would represent approximately 15% of Google’s outstanding capital stock and approximately 48% of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock (assuming no other sales and conversions of Google capital stock occur).

No, this is not what you are thinking. This is not loss of interest in the competitiveness of the company. The idea is to empower the newer innovators who are ready to invest and take Google to new heights.

As an outcome of this move, they would continue to be the largest shareholders, but would not be able to control the outcome of any shareholder vote as they do today. The current filing gives them flexibility of changing numbers (decreasing) out of not losing control over votes.

This is kind of practice everyone follows in the industry. Bill Gates and Salesforce CEO also sold stock of the companies they founded under similar plans. By following the plan of selling at regular intervals, they get to cash out and diversify their holdings without scaring the  investors.

Twitter has encouraged and helped so many businesses grow. Who can forget that dell made millions of dollars by just promotions on Twitter. Thankfully, the good news is here, Twitter has developed new features that will enable Business users to collaborate better than before. The new features are available to few of the business already and it would open out to the rest of the world as soon as it becomes more mature.

The first thing that we’ve come across is the Contributor’s Feature

The Contributor’s feature, as per Twitter is “one of several in development; some of them will be visible to regular users and some of them will not.”

That tiny glimpse wasn’t good enough, so we dug a little deeper and found that Starbucks is one of the brands in the hand-selected bunch. Brad Nelson, who tweets on behalf of the mega coffee retailer, has the inside scoop on Twitter Contributors, and he sent a few screenshots our way that highlight how the feature works, what it looks like and even demonstrate additional features we can expect in the immediate future.

As Mashable reports, a regular user sees the following when an account with the new feature tweets from the web:

However, Administrators of multi-user accounts will now see a more powerful concept: a toolbar that makes for easy toggling between accounts:

As you can see above, contributors now have 2 levels: Enhanced Access and Partial Access. Enhanced Access will give contributors the ability to view the account dashboard.

This may look trivial, but we expect possibility of  including advanced analytics and stats around Twitter activities to grow business better. Here’s a Video from NBC which discuses this:

The moment of joy was expressed by AMD CEO Dirk Meyer. He  said the settlement leads both companies will bring a  “new era”  in the chip industry.

The two companies also sealed a five-year cross license deal and said they would give up any claims of breach from their previous license agreement.

“While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development,” AMD and Intel said in a joint statement.

Under the terms of the settlement, Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion. Also:

• AMD and Intel both get patent rights in a cross-licensing pact;
• Intel will give up any patent claims against AMD;
• Intel will agree to adhere to business practice provisions;
• And AMD drops all pending litigation against Intel.

Today marks the beginning of a new era… one that confirms that the game has changed for AMD. It is an important milestone for us, for our customers, our partners, and most important – for consumers and businesses worldwide. In addition, it represents the culmination many years of litigation and regulatory engagement. And we are optimistic that it will usher a new era for our industry.

We look forward to healthy competition with the mutual respect one would expect between world-class competitors.

It remains to be seen if this settlement marks a new chip era, but the “healthy competition” Meyer refers to will determine AMD’s fate.

Shares of AMD jumped 23 per cent to $6.55 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon. Intel shares were halted. Intel now expects spending in the quarter to be $4.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion.

So the “new Era” is about to begin where chip manufacturers respect the competition? What do you think?

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Larry Ellison took the stage during the keynote, kick-started by clarifying the common questions- Hardware Business Strategies: Sun SPARC and Open source strategies: Solaris, MySQL, Java. As known earlier, all of them will continue to innovate and evolve, better than what we have seen in the past.

“We are not selling the hardware business,” he said. “No part of the hardware business are we selling.”

So, all the myths created by IBM , also known as, “Sunset” are totally phased-out. Sunset had been telling Sun’s customers that Oracle is going to get out of the hardware business and therefore customers should start moving to IBM.

Then started something that grabbed attention: Oracle hit hard on it’s Rival, IBM.

He played some of the IBM’s ads ( a bold  move), before ripping them apart in the dark. Ellison quoted that IBM deploys more servers in data centers than necessary, their servers are Power Hogs (though IBM talks alot about being energy-friendly), and Sun-Oracle combination does a better on the benchmark as compared to IBM, already.

Ellison revealed a new benchmark that reports that Sun-Oracle server configuration:

• Uses 8x less hardware than IBM.
• Runs 26% faster than IBM. (on lesser Hardware)
• Consumes 4x less energy than IBM.
• Record-breaking 7.7 million tpmC at $2.34/tpmC.
• 16x better response time than IBM — 1.22 seconds for IBM and 0.08 for Sun-Oracle

Of course, these benchmarks can be biased for a platform, making the Rival look ugly. But his next statement removed any such allegations. Ellison said that he is so confident about this benchmark that he’s launching a New Program under which Oracle will pay it’s Customers $10 Million, if a Sun-Oracle configuration fails to be least 2x as fast as a comparable IBM solution. Looks promising!

Oracle continued to Hit on IBM with the eco-friendly Green Tech “smarter world” campaign — Pointing things out, he said,

“I don’t know what building a smarter world means. We’re going to focus on building smarter computers … Sun’s processor is called SPARC … IBM’s processor is called Power. Now we know why!”

In addition to all that, other Key Take-away Ellison quotes were:

“There are limits to how far you can go if you just do software.” … “We will integrate Hardware and software better” … ”That’s our goal, to tackle problems that are even Bigger”.

“Whatever you think of Apple, I think they’ve done a great job of tackling the hardware problem while tackling the software problem.”

“Solaris is the number one enterprise operating system in the world.” and “We will continue to invest, innovate.”

“We’re going to spend more, not less, on MySQL… We’re going to increase our rate of contribution.” So the question Will Oracle kill MySQL ? is phased out.

Watch the highlights of the Keynote:

What about Java?

Then came the person who could tell us the future of Java, none other than Father of Java: James Gosling. He had one liner that left everyone in a deep trust for the Future of Java and JavaFX.

“I have never worked in a Software company before, So it will be an adventure”

Left everyone amazed and in joy.

Related: Why choose JavaFX. How to Code [Tutorial];  JavaFX Benchmark

Do let us know what you think about the move. Follow us on Twitter, join Facebook page, subscribe to RSS for updates.

After Adamo, this is second trendy Notebook series from Dell, designed for business users. It is as slim as the Adamo (0.57-inch) but weighs (4.5 pounds), a bit more.

Z series is supposed to attract Pro Business users which like to have it as a status symbol. It’s beautiful, among the most beautiful Dell has ever designed.

Dell Latitude Z features a large 16-inch 1600 x 900  HD display that runs on Core 2 Duo. It has some distinct features from what other business laptops have seen.

It features a  multi-touch trackpad that supports iPhone-, MacBook Pro-type gestures: Pinch and zoom. Other attraction points are: new kind of touchscreen, wireless charging, SSD support (upto 250GB) and promising security features.

TouchScreen: This is a new kind, a new concept. Instead of having a  touchscreen display, the Latitude Z has touch functionality built along the frame of the notebook display.  Sliding your fingers vertically along the frame pops up a tool bar that lets you choose common applications like email, photos, and camera.

Wireless Inductive Charging:

The most anticipated feature is its optional ($200) inductive wireless recharging stand, which charges the laptop without a wired connection.

Image Credits: Wired

There are a few inductive charging stands out there, most of them third-party devices for phones, media players, and other small gadgets. But the Dell Latitude Z is the first mainstream notebook to come with the ability built in.

The  idea behind the stand is that you can drop the notebook on the stand, pull out a keyboard and work with the notebook while it charges. According to Dell, it should take 2 to 3 hours to fully charge a depleted machine, depending on the battery.

he lack of a power cord leading from the notebook to the stand might look good in a corporate office, but won’t make much difference in the long run. And of course, the Dell Latitude Z also comes with a more traditional power cord.

Business Features:

Z comes with lots of promising features that will force business users to crave for it.

More than a Camera: A 2 megapixel camera goes beyond the traditional webcam function. It can create contacts when you hold your business card in front of the camera and can then save in Microsoft Outlook contacts.  It can do some basic scanning too, hold a sheet of paper in front of the camera and  you can save it as a PDF.

The camera is also powered by software to do effective face-recognition. When turned ON,  it can detect when you step away from the computer and it will automatically lock the machine.

Other security features include a fingerprint reader and contact less smart card reader. It enables you to lock the notebook just by waving your office badge over it. Sounds cool.

Another interesting business addition to the laptop is new hardware that supports a ‘Latitude On’ mode. The mode promises instant start-up and offers ALWAYS ON connection to email, internet, contacts and calendar through a separate instant OS, which is Dell proprietary. Of course, you don’t have access to other apps. This scaled-down OS offers a benefit of extended battery life of up to 12 hours, says Dell.

Steve Belt, VP of business client engineering at Dell, said:

“We wanted to create something that would be the best of both worlds,” says Belt. “The Latitude On mode is fast and gives users gobs of battery life.”

For security reasons it doesn’t share data with the main OS, but it can hook up to Exchange and handle basic browsing tasks. In addition to its quick-booting properties, the light OS is driven by low-power ARM chipset.

Verdict:

Z series looks promising for Pro Business users by offering them unique security, Instant Email on the go features. It’s really a pretty tight design from Dell, and oozes quality.

What’s bit odd is the EdgeTouch sensor, specially for executives, who really don’t use such fancy stuff, right? The keyboard is one of the best laptop keyboards one would find, a smooth experience. The other thing that will keep some users is the hefty price tag of $2000. And if they opt for complete wireless charging package, it costs $200 additional.  I guess the crave will reside with status-aware Business professionals.

Latitude Z style

Two power buttons: One Regular other one for Latitude on Quick access.

]]> http://geeknizer.com/review-dell-latitude-z-features-beauty-craves-business-users-costs-2k/feed/ 4 http://geeknizer.com/windows-7-for-the-enterprise-vs-vista-xp-the-complete-guide/ http://geeknizer.com/windows-7-for-the-enterprise-vs-vista-xp-the-complete-guide/#comments Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:17:15 +0000 Tarandeep Singh http://geeknizer.com/blog/?p=1994 Read more »]]> Well, It’s been almost a year since I first dated Windows 7. From Beta1 to RCs and RTM, I have seen windows 7 evolving. And unlike Vista, I’ve seen it improving day-by-day to the point where I had it declared on my walls, “I’m in love”.

The Love was first expressed by deep down Review of Windows 7 vs. XP, Vista

Being fascinated by the OS, I’ve decided to write a series blogs on Why Windows 7, and this one is Part 1. So in this one, I`ll discuss why Enterprise and business should consider Upgrading XP, Vista to Windows 7.

Before we start, I would anticipate I’ve been using Snow Leopard as well. Though it’s a neatly polished OS, it still isn’t as Enterprise friendly as Windows.

Journey to Multicore

Today, most of the business PCs and Laptops are Multicore (at least Dual core). Windows XP came into being when dual core was not even commercialized, as a result, the OS natively had poor support for multicore CPU. The Result: Poor performance. Though Kernel Patches tried to fix the loss, but it never fixed the problem from the ground. Vista tried to leverage multicore but became “Platform Independent”- No Matter what hardware you give it, it runs like crap.

The power of Multicore processors have been taken in almost all the possible places. Even during Startup, shutdown, Hibernate/resume.

I`ll discuss more about the kind of Optimizations in upcoming posts.

RAM Optimizations:

This is the first improvement one would notice over Vista. On a cold boot, Windows Vista could eat up more than GB of RAM just to satisfy it’s own greedy needs. Windows 7 remarkably reduced the usage and provided actual user to fill up the RAM with their applications. Of course, Win 7 uses almost 40% more RAM than XP, But, I believe that’s acceptable. XP came more than 6 years ago. during this time frame, the RAM has gone-up by 300% on a typical PC.

The RAM optimizations play important role during Multi-tasking. Windows 7 tries it’s best to re-use memory. e.g. when there are multiple windows opened (with Aero enabled) it uses the same  memory to store info about multiple windows having identical characteristics. In Windows Vista,  this was poorly implemented and in XP the need was never felt.

Improvements for Remote Access:

Most Enterprise and business employees do a frequent remote access to company’s resources. This often needs slow and expensive VPN concentrators. Windows 7 has few new features that can change the trend.

DirectAccess: Windows 7 provides this network technology that enables the user to seamlessly access corporate network resources when on the Internet, without having to create a VPN connection.
BranchCache: Windows 7 offers an alternative to alleviate the problems of slow connectivity, delivering increased network responsiveness of applications and giving users in remote offices an experience more like working in the head office. When BranchCache is enabled, a copy of data accessed from an intranet web site or a file server is cached locally within a branch office.

(Both of the above features need windows 2008 Server)

Security:

Windows 7 is much more secure than Windows XP. The basic proof is: connect it to internet, download software software and use it for a week. Count the no. of viruses vs. XP and Vista. Windows 7 is much lesser prone to vulnerabilities found naked in XP, Vista. Thanks to Better Windows Firewall, defender, the need of 3rd party aniti-virus, firewalls is less-felt.

Other Security features for enterprise include:

• BitLocker: protect data on PCs and removable drives, with manageability to enforce encryption and backup of recovery keys.

• AppLocker: Flexible, easy-to-use mechanism that enables IT professionals to specify exactly what is allowed to run on user desktops. It restricts unauthorized software while allowing applications, installation programs, and scripts that users need.

Virtualization: Virtualization is becoming the core part of almost every Enterprise. Thought he solutions like VirtualIron, VMware, VSphere, VirtualBox,etc are fair enough, still a native Virtualization is needed.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) optimizations delivers desktop functionality in Windows 7 using virtual machines hosted on servers—a solution known as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VDI enables users to access their desktops remotely as well as the ability to reuse virtual machine (VHD) images to boot a physical PC. Windows 7 provides for better user experience in VDI scenarios, with better graphics, audio and local device support.

Compatibility

Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7′s robust compatibility with the majority of corporate applications makes it a sure winner in the enterprise.

Vista’s weakness in this critical area killed its prospects in the enterprise. “Vista was pretty much off the table [because of compatibility issues]. Windows 7 doesn’t have that buzz,”

Convergent conducted a series of tests with the Microsoft Application Compatibility Framework and the five applications passed with a 100 percent hit rate. The systems integrator also did a test with another client, a law firm, which often experience compatibility issues because of the number of plug-ins and add-ons used in legal circles. They were pleasantly surprised with the results.

“It just works better out of the box for application compatibility. We tested 147 applications and the return was 100 percent compatibility. Vista had a 20 to 30 percent incompatibility rate for the line of business stuff.”

Upgrading: with SCCM – System center Configuration Manager

So if you made your mind to upgrade, how to do it seamlessly? SCCM is the solution. It will enable seamless OS Upgrades during night.

The Technology is based on Intel’s vPro which lets software understand the power state of the device. On a remote request, it can wake up a PC (including Laptops) to have OS Upgrades. Wake-up on LAN is an old technology but it was not-routable. The new vPro enables it over TCP/IP, making it possible to do a enterprise wide (with multiple subnets) upgrades with a click of a button during night times. and when it’s done, PC can be shutdown again.

There’s a lot more that SCCM is capable of doing.

We would like to hear from you. Do let us know of your experiences with Windows 7. Follow us on Twitter , or Subscribe to RSS for further articles on Why Windows 7.

Motorola is into Do or Die situation. With most of the departments already declared bankrupt and business shutdowns, Motorola stands ont he edge trying it’s last Hope:

After the roundup of layoffs, Motorola has finally laid down a plan- A Plan that could save the Company and the Brand. It’s unveiling Android devices, designed to turn around the company.

Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola, has had to revamp the company’s mobile portfolio. The biggest bet by Jha: Become the biggest supporter of the Android operating system.

For Motorola, the future of the handset unit rides on the Google’s Android OS. For Google, a wave of Android devices are about to hit the market. Motorola-Google could be the duo that gives Apple’s iPhone a run. So far, no one has reached upto iPhone’s level.

Jha delivered the keynote at GigaOm’s Mobilize conference. It’s available here via a LiveBlog.

And what do we get? A new Mobile CLIQ (via Gearlog)

Originally codenamed Morrison, the Cliq will be exclusively available on T-Mobile, Motorola has deemed the Cliq the “first phone with social skills.” The Cliq is aimed at the T-Mobile texting-enthusiatic crowd who came to the network for handsets like the Sidekick.

The phone features 3G connectivity, a 5-MP camera with 24 FPS video, and the “best-in-class HTML browser.” The device will be available internationally on a number of carriers including Orange, America Movil, and Telefonica.

The device is powered by Motorola’s Android skin, MotoBlur. The OS promises to sync together information across a plethora of social networks and other online services. MotoBlur features a number of “live widgets,” such as Social Status, which lets users update statuses across sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.

More via Gizmodo
Software

Motoblur logs into all your different networks and accounts, from mail to Twitter to Facebook to anything in between, serving you the content in a single feed, on the phone’s front page. Widgets pop up on the main screen, allowing you to respond to messages and updates with one click. It will be included in future Motorola Android-based smartphones. Here’s a summary of features:

• Customizable home screen with Happenings, Status and Messaging widgets deliver status posts and more
• Customizable RSS news widgets keeps you up to date
• Messaging with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Direct Messaging
• Address book synchs personal and work contacts, and connected social networks
• Caller ID shows caller’s name, number, status and profile pic
• Photosharing in MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa, Facebook

And if your cellphone gets stolen, you can automatically restore everything in a new phone—while remotely wiping all the information from the missing one.

Hardware

The 320×480-pixel 3.1-inch screen Motorola Cliq has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard with a D-pad. You know, for games. It also has a 5 megapixel camera, with autofocus and 24 and 30 frames per second video recording. They have included a 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as the usual 3G connectivity, and the obligatory integrated GPS with turn-by-turn directions.

Surprisingly, however, it doesn’t seem to have Wi-Fi connectivity. On the wireless department, apart from the 3G, it only has 2.0+EDR stereo Bluetooth. Bad, Motorola, bad! That’s not the only uh-oh point: It comes only with a 2GB MicroSD card as its only form of storage. Of course, you can always expand it to 32GB on your own. Maybe this will make it cheaper than the competition, but we don’t know yet, as pricing has not been disclosed yet.

It may not have Wi-Fi or internal storage, but it will come in two colors for the holiday season, winter white and titanium. Internationally, it will be called the Dext, or, as Motorola will surely put it, “MOTODEXT!!!!!”

Further Plans

Later, Jha is also likely to talk up Motorola’s Android devices at a Deutsche Bank conference Sept. 14.

As per Piper Jaffray analyst :

Our checks indicate two different Android smartphones will launch in the near future. We anticipate one model will launch for T-Mobile with a separate form factor launching for Verizon. Finally, we believe another unique product will launch for AT&T in Q110, and we anticipate this model could sell to several global carriers, including the Chinese market in time for Chinese New Year.

Device design to go along with Android will matter for Motorola, but another key theme is marketing.

Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry writes:

Contacts have seen the new Motorola Android Phone, and all feel the phone is extremely well designed, and probably may be a winner. Contacts tell us that it is slimmer than iPhone, capacitive touch screen seems more precise than iPhone and feels faster than iPhone. The native processing of code on Motorola is much faster than anything out there.

The Challenge

Motorola has to market the device correctly. Chowdhry guesses that Motorola will spend as much as $70 million on marketing. A year from now, Motorola will either be busy restoring its status as a mobile handset leader or just another company that files on chapter 11.

The deals like this, brings new hopes for the customers and areas where Mobile usage isn’t as dense as US, Japan, China.

Today, as per the latest press release, Orange and T-Mobile, will join hands in a new joint venture, this fall.

At the moment, they are 3rd and 4th largest Telecom providers in UK. The merger will create the largest mobile company in the United Kingdom, with a subscriber base of more than 28.4 million which builds up roughly 37% of the market.

Currently the largest UK operator with a 27% share is Telefonica’s O2, which is the exclusive iPhone carrier. At the  second place with 25% of the British market is Vodafone, the company which jointly owns a 48% stake of Verizon Wireless.

The merger of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK would be like Sprint and T-Mobile merging in the United States, breaking up the market into thirds.

The deal, which is due to be signed November, comes on the heels of poor financial results from T-Mobile and lackluster sales from Orange, and the reasons behind it are quite obvious: saving money. Despite the huge initial cost of the merger, the two companies expect to save, over time, up to 5.7 billion dollars. Part of these savings will probably reflect on the combined staff of the two companies: Orange’s 12,500 and T-Mobile’s 6,500 employees, although a spokeswoman said that it’s too early to talk about the impact on the workforce, but we can expect cuts.

As far as branding goes, both brands will remain separate in the first 18 months after the deal is completed. Orange chief executive Tom Alexander will lead the new company, while T-Mobile’s UK boss Richard Moat will become the COO.

Though both Vodafone and O2 were recently reported to have made bids on T-Mobile, a mutual interest was shared between executives at Orange and T-Mobile. Orange’s CEO Tom Alexander, for example, came to the company in 2007 from T-Mobile-owned MVNO Virgin Mobile. Alexander will become the CEO of the joint Venture, and T-Mobile’s CEO Richard Moat will take over as COO.

For the first 18 months of the joint venture, both brands will remain separate. T-Mobile this morning said that period will be used to “review branding alternatives” for the new company.

sources: betanews, Mashable ]]> http://geeknizer.com/orange-and-t-mobile-join-hands-to-become-uks-biggest-telecom-provider/feed/ 0 http://geeknizer.com/ceo-bartz-brings-trouble-to-yahoo-investors-2million-shares-cashed-out/ http://geeknizer.com/ceo-bartz-brings-trouble-to-yahoo-investors-2million-shares-cashed-out/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:24:13 +0000 Tarandeep Singh http://geeknizer.com/blog/?p=1852 Read more »]]> Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz has not bought harmony to the company. Many Yahoo investors are losing interest and hopes over the brand which was once a word that meant Joy and excitement.

Her credibility has been in question since a while. Investors were amazed when she quoted Yahoo was never a search company.

As per the  Guardian news

According to regulatory filings, Bartz has made two major stock sales in the past nine months – more than $830,000 (£500,000) in March and a further $1.14m in June.

While executives are entitled to sell the options that they had been given, he said that Bartz was sending the wrong message by exercising so many of her stock options so soon after joining the company.

“Two million already cashed out for Bartz is too much, too soon, doesn’t really fit with her ‘I didn’t need this job as I was retired’ image she portrays” says an investor.

She is entitled with a monthly salary of $1m and her max annual bonus goes upto $4m. In return to the company, she ain’t doing anything positive.

Bartz is not the only one in the selling race. Other high-level executives have sold shares including Mike Callahan, Yahoo’s general counsel, selling approximately $1.35 million worth of stock options.

In an internal memo, Bartz said

“We are the largest media property on the internet. So get out of the sugar low – we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate and let’s focus on the competition.”

In its latest financial results, the company said that revenue for the past three months was down 13% from the same period last year to $1.5billion, while profit rose slightly to $141m.

Bartz’s influence appears to have had little impact on the company’s bottom line so far, however, with her biggest achievement being the agreement earlier this summer to hand over control of Yahoo’s search engine business to Microsoft. Though investor’s reacted negatively to that business deal, we are still not sure where Yahoo is heading.

The buyers will pay eBay $1.9 billion in cash, which includes a loan from eBay of $125 million, for 65 percent of the company. EBay will retain 35 percent equity investment in Skype, which is on track to take in more than $600 million in revenue this year.

The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion, higher than many analysts had expected for the calling service. Many analysts thought eBay grossly overpaid when it acquired Skype in 2005 for $2.1 billion.
This deal comes during a very public battle between eBay and the founders of Skype, who are threatening to cut off one of the key peer-to-peer technologies that power and have expressed interest in rebuying their company. It’s even possible they are also part of the sale – we just don’t know yet.

In addition, the buyer group also includes Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm headed by the former Netscape co-founder, Marc Andreessen; Index Ventures, a London-based venture capital firm that was an early investor in Skype; and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

“This is a great deal, unlocking both immediate and long-term value for eBay and tremendous potential for Skype,” John J. Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We’ve acted decisively on a deal that delivers a high valuation, gives us significant cash up front and lets us retain a meaningful minority stake with talented partners.”

“Skype is a strong stand-alone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses,” Mr. Donahoe added. “As a separate company, we believe that Skype will have the focus required to compete effectively in online voice and video communications and accelerate its growth momentum.”

History & Facts

eBay acquired Skype in 2005 in a deal that has come to be viewed as one of the most awkward technology pairings of the decade. Meg Whitman (CEO then) led the charge to acquire Skype for $2.1 billion plus bonus incentives for Skype’s shareholders that later increased the price past $3 billion.

Ms. Whitman paid a hefty premium to outbid Google, which she viewed at the time as invading eBay’s core businesses of e-commerce and payments. But Google’s forays into those areas, like the Google Checkout service, have met with less success than once forecast.

As part of the deal, Ms. Whitman also allowed Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, to maintain ownership of the core peer-to-peer technology behind the Skype service. The founders invested that ownership into a separate company, called Joltid, which is now battling eBay in a British court over rights to make changes to that technology.

At the time, Ms. Whitman said the deal with worth it because Skype’s calling capabilities could be woven into the eBay marketplace, allowing buyers and sellers to facilitate their purchases. But those synergies never materialized and in 2007, eBay wrote down $1.4 million of the acquisition.

Ms. Whitman, who left eBay last year, is now a Republican candidate for the governor of California.

“The purchase was a serious mistake by Meg Whitman. It was an attempt to buy growth which investors saw through instantly,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. But, Mr. Lindsay said, the new deal surpassed his expectations for what Skype could generate in the initial public offering that eBay had once planned for 2010. “I think investors will be really happy with this.”

Although eBay has said it was planning an initial public offering for the Skype division in 2010, it has been talking to various companies and investment groups interested in buying the service. Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis approached private equity firms earlier this year in hopes of making a bid for their old firm but did not meet eBay’s price.

Last month, eBay also negotiated with Google over buying Skype, according to a person briefed on those discussions. But Google ultimately walked away from a potential deal, fearing that continued litigation could leave it vulnerable to huge damages.

Google also worried that owning Skype might alienate wireless carriers, who offer their customers phones running Google’s Android software, the person said.

After falling precipitously the last few years, eBay’s shares have jumped 53 percent this year on strength in its PayPal payments business and positive changes in its core auctions business, including improved usability of the site and more “buy it now” auctions.

In early trading on Tuesday, eBay’s shares were up about 1.4 percent, to $2.45.

Watch the video -

How far can one company go just to beat it’s (stronger) competitor? Hold Weekly meetings?

It turns out Microsoft has been holding weekly “Screw Google” meetings, trying to figure out how to throw roadblocks in front of Google as they continue to dominate the search arena. It’s easy for me to say, but doesn’t it anymake a lot more sense to spend millions of dollars making something that’s actually better than Google rather than simply trying to make them look bad? Why?

The Fact – Microsoft Secretly Fears Google even after Bing

I wonder how long it will take before the “Screw Microsoft” meetings commence? Probably Never. It probably won’t happen because Microsoft is doing a good enough job themselves, and I like to think Google is smart enough to know money is much better spent elsewhere.

It’s likely Microsoft is grasping at straws as Bing’s market share has only increased a very small amount — even after their massive marke ting campaign and Microsoft, Yahoo Search and Advertising Deal. In addition to that, Google is stepping on Microsoft’s toes with two of their own operating systems (Android and Chrome OS), Google Chrome internet browser, Google Docs, Gmail and their own Enterprise efforts.

“Microsoft is at the center of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,” said a source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. “The effort is designed make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.”

The meetings have occurred as frequently as once a week, sources with knowledge of the meetings say.

Microsoft employs several D.C.-based public relations firms, including Law Media Group, a secretive outfit founded by former Democratic operative Julian Epstein, and the Glover Park Group, which the software giant retains for issues related to “public policy and governmental affairs,” according to Microsoft’s website. LMG declined to discuss its work for Microsoft; GPG says it had never been involved with any “screw Google” meetings.

“Law Media Group has several people who work full-time on Google-bashing. Everybody knows Microsoft is trying to throw roadblocks at Google and knock them off their game. Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they’re having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace.”

“This is textbook Microsoft,” the source adds. “Microsoft has got some of the best, highest-priced lobbyists that money can buy in Washington.”

The meetings have been led by Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s chief lobbyist in D.C. Ginny Terzano, Microsoft’s Washington spokesperson, acknowledged that Google has come up in Microsoft meetings with “lawmakers, regulators, and our own consultants.” But of Humphries’s alleged “screw Google” meetings, she says, “This is absurd. While Google is a healthy competitor, Fred is focused on advancing policies that benefit our partners and consumers, and not running meetings of the type you describe. Your sources are badly misinformed, and your information is wrong.”

“As you would expect, Microsoft and Fred are working to educate policymakers and regulators about the benefits of the Microsoft/Yahoo deal,” Terzano says. “When you talk about the Microsoft/Yahoo deal, of course Google is going to come up.”

A source with knowledge of the matter called Terzano’s statement a “non-denial denial,” saying, “This is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that they are indeed having ‘screw Google’ meetings.”

It’s time for Microsoft to stop wasting their money worrying about Google, and start breaking their own trails. Microsoft does have some diamonds in their rough though — one example is their development tools, frameworks and platforms. This includes WPF, Silverlight and Microsoft Surface — and in my opinion, Microsoft needs to invest more heavily in those technologies.

“Open source hardware from Bug Labs is helping our company expand in mobile communications software. Now we plan to build solutions for various industries before they come to us. We are shifting the approach.”

To start the initiative, the consulting giant has teamed up with Bug Labs, a New York Hardware startup, to offer hardware and software packages unique to each customer. For Accenture the payoff is in getting these buyers to subscribe to its new software platform, AMOS, or Accenture Mobility Operated Services. As for Bug Labs, its wager is that Accenture will open doors to big companies that will put in multiple orders for its snap-together computerized gear.

The BugLabs manufactures  modular, open source system for building devices. They have lots of offerings for Business.

“Imagine being able to ramp from prototype to production faster and more affordably than ever before. With BUG, businesses take advantage of a complete, integrated device development environment, enabling them to produce a proof-of-concept with a rich ecosystem of hardware, software and web services.”

The advantage for would-be customers is that the hardware can be tailored to fit an individual company. A shipping company might be able to buy a regular GPS unit at an electronics store, but what if it needs the device to have a 3G connection to send information over a cellular network? What if it also needs that device to have an accelerometer, so the company can track accidents?

Deviation from Convention

Accenture is deviating from it’s conventional practices. In-order to achieve this, Accenture’s AMOS software will be the underlying system that will take care of  processing information taken from Bug’s devices. Take the example of Fleet management – If a shipping company uses the fleet-tracking device, for example, it could log onto the AMOS Web site that will produce mapped routes, accident reports, vehicle histories, and other calculations. Other industries can create devices unique to their own specs with components such as wireless Internet, a motion detector, a digital camera, or USB plugs.

The move is a break from Accenture’s conventional business model. Before, the $25.3 billion company typically waited for clients to come to its consultants with problems. Now it’s pitching products and services to any and all who might need them. “This is different for us,” says Andrew Zimmerman, managing director of Accenture’s New Business group. “Hardware was a little bit of an afterthought before. Now we’re being proactive.”

In another radical depature, Accenture’s new venture does not charge clients a consultant fee. The cost for AMOS is transaction-based, with billing based entirely on volume of use.

The system is plug-and-play. A base module runs open source Linux software, on which a business application can be written in as little as two days. Modules range in price from $69 to $450 for individual customers, but Bug typically sells bundles of hardware with support services to companies, depending on volume and support provided.

Bug Labs & the Big Players

Bug Labs was founded only two years ago. The 15-employee company won’t disclose revenue or profits, but it recently raised $16 million in venture capital and is already doing business with Pitney Bowes, Sun Microsystems, Orange, Antenna Software, and Human Rights Watch. Accenture came across the company several times researching trivergence—that is, a networked device that has its controls and data located somewhere else on the network.

Accenture has a five-person team that is pitching the service to potential users with presentations and research findings, and giving hands-on demos at its innovation centers in Murray Hill, N.J., and Rome. Also—and this is where Accenture’s contacts and credibility come in handy—its individual consultants, most of whom work with the world’s largest 2,000 companies, are selling AMOS to clients and networking for new ones.

So far, after six months on the market, Accenture has created devices and software applications in health care, transportation, utilities, and security. Thirteen clients have signed up for AMOS, either in pilot projects or throughout their business, including Poste Italiane and Fiat.

The highest scorers had aggressive growth in Wi-Fi coverage and traffic, and a big drop in network downtime — What does this mean?  A more stable network on which users increasingly rely, These best-in-class enterprises are holistic in approaching what they conceive of as a strategic enterprise asset.

These enterprises no longer see a Wi-Fi network as a convenience that’s casually overlaid on the wireline infrastructure, and managed on an ad hoc basis. Instead, the  best-in-class companies adopted an array of proactive tactics, technologies and procedures to achieve big gains in performance and security, creating a reliable network with optimal throughput. The tactics included:

• Boosting Wi-Fi capacity by several possible means.
• Consistently enforcing wireless security policies.
• Identifying and prioritizing business-critical wireless traffic.

These tactics had specific benefits for users, according to respondents in this top group, which comprised 20% of the 143 enterprises surveyed by Aberdeen earlier this year. The user benefits identified by the best-in-class group included: easier access from more locations to enterprise data, improved productivity, a jump in customer satisfaction, faster decision making and greater collaboration.

The report called ”Wireless LAN 2009″ was based on an extensive Web-based survey combined with in-depth follow-up phone interviews with a subset of respondents.

Generally, the top performers also were much more likely to have centralized Wi-Fi management, a wireless intrusion detection/prevention system, bandwidth limitations and priorities for applications and users, and spectrum analyzers for continuously designing and configuring the network.

Each of these systems or products was itself part of a comprehensive scheme for each broader area. For the best-in-class shops, RF spectrum analyzers go hand in hand with procedures and schedules to make use of them, along with site survey software to map fluctuations, identify trouble spots and plan infrastructure changes. Intrusion-blocking systems were more likely for this group to be part of regular site assessments of security vulnerabilities, IT staff security training and certification, and security awareness education for users.

These interrelated, proactive measures enable the best-in-class companies to achieve dramatic improvements, especially compared with companies that take a more fragmentary, ad hoc approach, according to Borg.

Aberdeen’s research blends two methodologies. One framework identifies problems, pressures and pain points, and then carries through to identify a series of steps and resources needed to relieve the pain. A second framework uses an array of performance indicators to sift respondents into one of three groups: best-in-class (the top 20%), industry average (the next 50%) and laggards (the bottom 30%).

“Wireless LAN 2009″ found plenty of Wi-Fi pain. The top concern, cited by 52% of all respondents, was the drop in wireless performance as usage grows and triggers Wi-Fi scaling issues. Just over half of these said this drop was due to bandwidth-hungry video applications and voice; the rest said is was to due to the overall increase in traffic.

37% cited corporate pressure to increase employee productivity as the No. 2 pain point, which Aberdeen attributes in part to the current financial crisis, and to a desire to bring to fruition the claimed benefits of enterprise mobility

The No. 3 issue was the risk of Wi-Fi security breaches, cited by 31% of respondents.

The study found dramatic differences among the three groups in deploying Wi-Fi networks. In the past year, the top scorers saw wireless traffic soar by 229%, compared with 114% for the average group, and just 11% for the laggards. During the same period, uptime or network availability increased by 121% for the top group, compared with 44% for the average, and just 6% for laggards. Finally, the percentage of all company facilities covered by wireless increased by 201% for the top group, by 60% for the average and 12% for laggards.

More specifically, the best in class increased their Wi-Fi coverage for their entire organization by 15%. For the average, it was 12%, and for laggards, 6%. The frequency of dropped connections decreased by 15% for the top group, by 8% for the average and actually increased by 9% for the laggards.

By their own estimation, the “quality of end-user experience” improved by 14% for the top group, 9% for the average and 6% for the laggards. The frequency of failed wireless security breaches rose by 10% for the best in class, and by 3% for the average and 2% for the laggards.

How do the best in class achieve these results?

By a variety of policies, procedures and products, including the most basic technology building blocks for WLANs. There seems to be a kind of cumulative effect of all of these elements working together: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Keeping in mind that technology best practices are only one part of this picture, the table below shows what IT shops are investing in, as identified by Aberdeen. The numbers represent the percentage of each group making a given technology investment. As the percentages show, the top performers — the best in class — are more likely (sometimes far more likely) to invest in these tools. But as other Aberdeen data make clear, they also are more likely to use processes, organization changes and knowledge sharing that leverage these tools.

Besides technologies and products, Aberdeen lists best practices in other areas as well, all of which reinforce each other. For example, intrusion protection and user authentication go hand-in-hand with:

• Knowledge sharing via a centralized storehouse of WLAN data (a key enabler for many of the best practices).
• Processes to perform site-wide security vulnerability assessments (68% of best in class do this, compared with 59% for average and 54% for laggards).
• Organizational changes such as IT security training and certification (64% of top scorers, 43% of average and 42% of laggards) and ongoing security awareness training for users (68% of the top, 36% of the average and 30% of laggards).

The best-in-class companies know how their networks are performing and how healthy they are: 55% have RF spectrum analysis procedures (compared with 35% of average and 30% of laggards; 41% have tools for developing custom performance reports (compared with 22% of average and just 12% of laggards).

The high scorers are much more likely to save, analyze and share this data, using it as the basis of continued network improvements and sustained performance optimization, as part of a centralized approach in network management. In the top group, 41% make use of and share a central repository of WLAN data, 32% document the best practices derived from Wi-Fi pilots, and the same percentage run cost-benefit analyses of bandwidth upgrades to “ascertain the true business benefits and make an informed business decision” to guide the upgrade investments.

Finally, 55% of best in class have trained help desk staff for Wi-Fi support, but only 29% of average scorers do, and just 18% of laggards do. That lack of expertise means it can take much longer to resolve problems of any size, with attendant increases in network downtime and in lost employee productivity or customer satisfaction.

“I was surprised to see that the performance improvements [for best in class] were so great,” Borg says. “They had significantly less [WLAN] downtime, which also bears on the WLAN cost and total cost of ownership.”

These best-in-class behaviors and practices have still another benefit. The more of these that are applied, the fewer problems they had. Fewer network problems mean lower support costs, more satisfied users, more pervasive and more reliable wireless access, improved productivity and so on.

Borg says these results contribute to the growing adoption of Wi-Fi-enabled mobility, which is no longer limited to a small group of executives and specialized groups working in the field. “Mobility is here to stay, despite the economic downturn,” Borg says. Aberdeen’s studies found that enterprise spending on Wi-Fi networks, from March 2008 to March 2009 increased by just over 27%, in the teeth of a massive and continuing economic contraction.

Migrating to high-performance 802.11n Wi-Fi is seen as a way to address the concerns for higher speed, higher throughput and greater coverage, as documented in our October 2008 Clear Choice Test. Almost 80% of the best in class, 75% of the average group and nearly 60% of the laggards either have some 11n access points deployed or are planning to do so.

But he cautions that just replacing existing wireless gear with 11n won’t enable enterprises to realize the full benefit, unless it’s part of deliberate, systematic and concerted efforts to make related changes in procedures, in organization, tools and knowledge sharing.

Look at what you have, and begin to optimize it….It’s never too late to start this.

The news of Separation of Apple and Google came out full of surprises for most – since their visions were colliding, going hand-in-hand further didn’t make sense as per Google CEO-Eric Schmidt.

Due to certain constraints, Schmidt was unable to talk about his steps but now he has taken steps to come out the white stage and talk about where Google is headed. Eric & other top executives talks about next 5 – 10 years to the future.

New possibilities and Opportunities?

Best of both the worlds, a strategic blend of Both.

It’s obvious that the highest growth is in our core business as we get better and better at targeted ads, and those ads become more valuable. Our whole theory about advertising is that an advertisement that’s not targeted—just a random ad that you just walk by—is a waste of somebody’s money because you’re not going to buy. It wasn’t relevant to you.

Plans for Expansions in Mobile
Today, there are around mobiles 4x the no. of PCs. This is a big market. The rough number of PCs is around 800 million; mobile phones is on the order of 3 billion.

Whats more evident is, the growth rate of mobile phones is much higher than that of PCs. As per an estimate, 600 million mobile phones are Internet-capable. And that is the group that Google really cares about because those run powerful browsers. This was all kicked off by the iPhone. The iPhone sort of showed what you can do with a very powerful browser. Now there are many new kinds of devices with powerful browsers where you can have very high-quality ads, new applications, and, of course, the phone.

Business strategy, Mobile Partnerships, etc
Google is partnering with telecommunications partners. It works mostly in this way – Google shares in the revenue for the ads that are displayed on the consumer’s phones. Advertiser pays Google, and then they share it with the handset and mobile operator. Going further, it becomes more important that the telecom operators have enough capital to continue the build-outs of the so-called 3G and 4G networks.

Challenges
The phones are not fast, the networks are not as capable, the ad formats are not standardized. But on the other hand it’s very, very important to solve those problems because a phone is very personal. And so if we know a fair amount about a person, with their permission we can target a useful ad—you know, “It’s Eric. You had a hamburger yesterday, do you want pizza today? There’s a pizza store on the right.” That kind of ad is likely worth a lot of money to an advertiser because it will generate a sale. People could use advice as to what to eat and where the food is—and of course you can turn it off. So the important thing here is advertising that has value to the person is advertising that is a valuable business. That’s the business we’re in.

Android Strategy
Eric says

Android is many things. First, it’s an operating system for a mobile phone. It’s particularly powerful because of the way it was built. The software is free, you can extend it, you’re not locked into any applications vendor or any network. What we like about Android is its perfect expression of openness. A next generation of [Android-based] phones will be coming out in the fall. They won’t necessarily displace other [phones] because they’re also doing well. But we will have a significant bet in mobile phones. So from our perspective it looks like Android is going to be a success.

Legal Matters & Government Scrutiny

Google is now the subject of intense government scrutiny, just as Microsoft once was.
As far as the investigations, Google has very good answers. And what’s happening is people are comparing Google to other companies, in particular Microsoft, even though their behavior, principles, practices are quite different.

Eric had been in discussion with various government regulators. But he has deliberately not slowed down the kind of consumer changes he thinks are important to make the world a better place. And he would never want to slow that down because of fear, if you will. Still, Google is much more sensitive.

We spend a lot more time thinking about how will we communicate, what will be the knee-jerk reactions, what will be the sophisticated reactions, how will people perceive what we’re doing. Because we understand the rules are different for us.

ALL SAID AND DONE

Evidently, everything in Google’s visions converge and diverge to the mobile market. Google feels there’s still alot is to be done and We agree.