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Jason Stamper's Blog: December 2005 Archives
My best - and last - blog of 2005?
December 23, 2005
So it's that time of year again when it feels like the only people still at work are shop assistants - bravely smiling on as the last-minute shoppers become ever-more frantic, soon using body-charges and rugby tackles on one another in place of the usual 'excuse me pleases' - and poor hacks like me who write for daily news services. Cue the sad fiddle music.
Well, since I'm still in the office (pretty much on my own, I don't mind telling you) I thought I might as well pen one last blog entry for 2005. I write this in the full and certain knowledge that the only thing likely to read it is one of those automated spider thingies that search engines use to cache and categorise the flotsam and jetsam of the interweb. But here it is.
Just how Stealthy is Self-Destructing StealthText?
December 15, 2005
There's a new text messaging service that promises that the messages you send automatically self-destruct, thereby stopping any secret (or indeed saucy) messages falling into the wrong hands - but anyone considering the service should check the fine print.
It's not exactly being held up as the answer to the need for ultra-secure, highly encrypted messaging, to be fair, so let's not take this too seriously. But the company is pitching the service at business people (as well as celebs), so it makes sense to know just what level of security it is going to give you, and where it could still leave your 'secret' messages vulnerable.
The inventor of StealthText - a British company called Staellium - says it will particularly appeal to celebrities and business executives, as it allows you to "send a text message safely in the knowledge that it will delete itself from the recipient’s mobile phone as soon as the person has read it – ultimately, allowing the sender control of their own information."
"Until now, mobile phone users have had to rely on recipients to delete sensitive text messages on their behalf," the company behind the new service explains, "although a number of high profile cases (Rebecca Loos), have shown that this cannot always be relied on. However, by simple [sic] keying in a code, StealthText users can rest assured that the message goes up in smoke, just like the famous tapes scenes in the Mission Impossible series."
But don't be fooled. StealthText does not necessarily guarantee that the family secret, illicit affair or confidential business data that you send via text is somehow completely safe from unwanted eyes.
The most obvious point is that although the text message you send will self-destruct after the recipient has read it, there's nothing to ensure that the person reading it was the intended recipient - if someone else picks up or borrows the recipient's phone, they could read your secret missive before it self-destructs.
The problem is that you don't need to be a StealthText subscriber to read a message that you have been sent via StealthText - so anyone could read a 'secret' message if the phone falls into the wrong hands, and that message has not already been read. Sure, once it's been read then the message will self-destruct, but the damage could already have been done, depending exactly what the message contains - "thnx again 4 last night", or "can't w8 2 c u again soon" might cause some embarrassment even if you don't know who the sender is.
Equally, if someone receives a StealthText and they are not already a StealthText subscriber, they can reply to your message using normal SMS (if they are a subscriber they can reply in StealthMode instead). Their standard SMS reply has no security on it of any kind, so if in the mean time your phone has fallen into the wrong hands, 'private' messages could again be compromised. For example, someone hits reply and types, "Me 2, u were gr8!"
Finally, there is the issue of your phone bill, if you receive one that is itemised. Each time you send a StealthText to a colleague, friend, B-list celeb or anyone else for that matter, a charge of 50 pence to the number 80880 will appear on your phone bill. That could raise eyebrows if someone else sees your bill, and if they happen to know the significance of a whole load of charges against 80880. Still, if they do confront you over them, perhaps you could try the defence, "How do you know that 80880 is a StealthText charge, hmmm?"
The company offering the service can be found at http://www.stealthtext.net. Just don't say you weren't warned. I might use the service if I was a celeb sending a raunchy text to a nanny who I knew for a fact lived alone, but I wouldn't use it for anything else - certainly not for seriously confidential business messages.
Will Palm Still Fly on Windows Mobile?
December 09, 2005
According to research and consulting company Strategy Analytics, the Palm Treo 650 smartphone from Palm is the highest-rated converged device in the United States. Guess what - it runs Palm OS. How will the devices fair when they run Windows Mobile next year?
Does Sonic's ESB Definition Stack Up?
December 06, 2005
Sonic Software, an operating company of Progress Software, published what it considers an "Architecture and Lifecycle Definition " of an enterprise service bus (ESB) yesterday, but anyone seeking a concise definition will be disappointed as Sonic's view of the technology is encapsulated in a 55-page white paper.
Is Self-Healing Here Already?
December 05, 2005
“The era of self-healing technology is here," said Alan Ganek, chief technology officer, IBM Tivoli Software and vice president, IBM Autonomic Computing - a man with one of the longest titles in the industry.
"These new products from IBM allow companies to spot and fix IT problems automatically - and behind the scenes," said Ganek, "so they can focus on strategic projects that are valuable to their business. We're opening new doors to reducing the complexity of technology."
It's not the first time that IBM has 'bigged-up' the idea of self-healing computing, indeed its whole Autonomic Computing initiative speaks to that goal. But this time there does seem to be more than just 'slideware' behind the announcement.
Tivoli System Automation is the umbrella term for the products, which include Tivoli Monitoring, Tivoli Composite Application Manager and Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms. Tivoli Monitoring is said to allow companies to manage online applications, such as email or bill paying systems, by proactively correcting IT service problems like 'hung' applications, and fixing the problem across a company's servers, operating systems and databases before it impacts users.
Tivoli Composite Application Manager speeds up access to information on the Net, IBM said, by predicting and fixing bottlenecks that crop up as dozens of different systems connect under a standards-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The self-healing software can locate where problems lie, identify the specific cause, and take steps to solve the problem before customers are affected.
Finally the Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms is claimed to be able to pinpoint the status of complex applications running on multiple platforms and operating systems, and then use policies to automatically bring them back online if the system fails because of a power outage or other cause.
While the products are all steps in the right direction, I wouldn't get too excited just yet. What these products are really enabling system administrators to do is set "if, then" contingency plans up. For instance, "If server A runs out of capacity, then fail over to server B".
This kind of 'self-healing' is only as good as the policies set by the administrator, and can only help if the infrastructure is designed in such a way that something can actively be done about the problem without user intervention. For instance, you can't fail over to another server if you don't have spare capacity. You can't automatically reboot unless you can afford a little downtime. And while IBM's self-healing software is said to automatically bring the entire application and database environment back online if an outage occurs, that is unlikely if the infrastructure involves a lot of third party applications and systems.
So while this latest attempt at self-healing is certainly a step in the right direction, users should be aware that in order for systems to heal themselves when something goes wrong, they are going to have to spend a little more time designing their infrastructure with resilience in mind in the first place. Which is, come to think of it, No Bad Thing. But it's not necessarily cheap, either, though you might be talking about lowering ongoing management burdens and costs while increasing up-front infrastructure set-up times and costs. Again this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does add a rather large caveat to the idea that self-healing systems are "here".
SteelTrace a Likely Acquisition Target?
December 02, 2005
It's not always easy to guess which companies might be bought and which will soldier on independently, but my current top pick as a likely takeover candidate is SteelTrace.
The company launched version 4.0 of its requirements capture and project definition tool yesterday, but the real news was just how well it seems to be doing. It said that it saw a 50% quarter on quarter jump in sales, and is seeing its average deal size steadily growing too - while sales were up 50% quarter on quarter, the number of projects were up just 25%.
SteelTrace has an attractive customer base to boot: key clients include ADP, Boeing, GE, Intel, LogicaCMG, National Australia Bank, Raytheon and Sprint.
All of the companies that SteelTrace integrates with could be suitors - and they are Compuware, Borland, IBM and Mercury Interactive. The most likely of those I believe to be Borland, as former CEO there Dale Fuller told me that requirements capture was high on its wish-list, and acquisitions are still very much part of the strategy.
Compuware may also look at the company, as there is integration already between SteelTrace and Compuware's OptimalJ and QACenter products. That said, SteelTrace also has integrations with Borland, Mercury Interactive and IBM Rational.
Mercury Interactive, though currently facing a few issues of its own (a stock options scandal that saw its top three executives shown the door, but that's another story) is a potential suitor as it has bundles of cash in the bank and told me only last week that acquisitions remain on the agenda.
Having said all of that, a company without pre-built integration into SteelTrace could buy the company and build one. In that scenario, I would suggest Telelogic is the most likely to swoop. Telelogic's going great guns, with particular expertise in modeling, especially enterprise architecture modeling thanks to its acquisition of Popkin. But I digress.
SteelTrace is firmly in the requirements management space, which is just one subset of what we now call the application development lifecycle, a discipline increasingly served by full application lifecycle management (ALM) suites. Since companies in ALM like Telelogic, Borland, CA, Compuware, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and BEA have all been acquiring in order to flesh out their suites, it's debatable how long a company in what has become a niche can remain independent.
But for the time being it is business as usual, and yesterday SteelTrace said that version 4.0 of its requirements capture and project definition tool brings "unprecedented project requirements capture and management capability to all IT project stakeholders".
The latest version is said to feature full baseline support with merge-forward and merge-back capability, advanced data querying and filtering of SteelTrace Projects, automatic generation of suspect links and change notification via email for review cycles.
The company said it is, "well placed to continue its rapid expansion, focusing on delivering business and IT alignment for companies around the world". It is venture capital funded, with investors including Trinity Venture Capital and netdecisions.
SteelTrace's proposition is that its software can help to capture the business requirements of a particular project, and enable constant collaboration between the business and IT throughout the project. It also automates documentation and test case generation, and taken together this is said to make it more likely for the project to be successful.
Bernadette Cullinan, SteelTrace CEO, said: "It is vital for all managers to ensure that IT investment is aligned with corporate goals and that it delivers real value. SteelTrace boosts the potential of corporate IT spend, reducing risk and improving project success rates."
Serena Gets Early Christmas Present
December 01, 2005
Change management software vendor Serena Software must think Christmas has come early, announcing that it has just been awarded a $45m contract.
Serena, which was just a couple of weeks back acquired and taken private by Silver Lake Partners, was awarded two Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs) totalling over $45m over a five-year period by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to help the agency manage its security initiatives. The agreement represents the potential for both $35m in change and configuration management services and over $9m in product license and maintenance revenue over the five-year period.
CBP is the unified border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, control and protection of the nation’s borders at and between the official ports of entry. Apparently the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) within CBP is a long-time customer of Serena ChangeMan Dimensions, which it uses to support many business-critical functions and ensure that its processes for governing change meet federal audit and compliance requirements.
On a typical day, the agency processes more than one million passengers and pedestrians, authorises nearly 65,000 cargo shipments and collects nearly $75m in revenue. Serena's CEO Mark Woodward was chuffed, as you would expect: "We’re pleased to continue our long-standing relationship with CBP and look forward to working with them closely on this project," he said, no doubt pouring himself another glass of champagne.
I wonder whether Silver Lake Partners, the investment house that bought Serena for $1.2bn in cash in mid-November, knew it was about to land such a lucrative deal.
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