UNITE 2008 Annual Technology Conference Call for Presentation Submissions Going on Now
The call for presentations for the UNITE 2008 Annual Technology Conference, to be held October 19-23, 2008, at the Caribe Royale Orlando in Orlando, FL, is going on now. Presentations are due by April 24, 2008 and can be submitted at the UNITE Web site.
The UNITE Web
site features UNITE Wish Lists to assist in developing an abstract;
Guidelines for Preparing an Abstract, including tips and hints on
preparing an abstract; a Lab Information Requirements Questionnaire
Form; and an Abstract Entry Form to submit a session abstract for
the UNITE Technology Conference.
Once an abstract is entered, it will be automatically submitted for consideration and any abstract selected by UNITE becomes a commitment to deliver the presentation, even if it is presented by another employee in an organization. For more details on submitting an abstract for the conference, go to the UNITE Web site.
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Attachmate Products Meet Critical Federal Standards
Attachmate Corp. has announced that it has validated multiple products as compliant with critical Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) standards. The FDCC, a mandate of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is a set of security configurations developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which cover Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows XP operating system software. FDCC-compliant products are those products compatible with the heightened security settings required on Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems deployed by U.S. government agencies.
The Attachmate products that have achieved compliance include: EXTRA! 9.0, Service Pack 1; Reflection X 2008; Reflection X 14.0.3; Reflection Suite for X 14.0.3; Reflection for IBM 2007; Reflection for IBM 14.0.3; Reflection for Unix and OpenVMS 14.0.3; and Reflection for HP 14.0.3.
Attachmate EXTRA! and Reflection are part of Attachmate’s terminal emulation and secure host access product family, which provides secure connections to any host from any desktop, inside or outside the firewall. Reflection Suite for X is Attachmate's multi-purpose PC X server and terminal emulation solution connecting Windows users to applications on Unix, OpenVMS, IBM, Unisys, and Linux systems.
“With enterprise relationships at the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Military Health Systems, the U.S. Postal Service and other federal agencies, we are committed to providing solutions that secure federal customers’ critical data,” said Tom Gdowik, director of federal sales at Attachmate, at the time of the announcement.
In addition to FDCC-compliant offerings, Attachmate also provides solutions that comply with Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, JITC PKI certification, Section 508 and other federal certifications. For more information, go here.
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Unisys Identifies Five Security Issues Likely to Emerge Across Multiple Industries in 2008
Unisys Corp. has announced its security predictions for 2008. According to Tim Kelleher, vice president, Enterprise Security, Unisys, many organizations only view security concerns “in the rear view mirror,” when they must scramble to find a solution to a security problem after it has happened. But in order to combat new threats and cater to the evolving needs of end-users, IT professionals and their organizations must treat security as a core business function, anticipating user demand, predicting future risks and developing workable solutions to potential security events.
Kelleher told 5 Minute Briefing data security is being affected by two evolving factors. “The threats out there are becoming much more sophisticated,” he said. Instead of hackers seeking fame, now, the motivation is financial. “It is organized crime – it is literally entire governments. Nations are funding attacks basically from the other side of the world and we are seeing it here in the U.S. Certainly, at the federal level, we are very aware of the level of attacks we are seeing at this point. That is a fundamental change. And it is not going to go away - there is too much money being made in cyber crime.”
Additionally, the proliferation of mobile devices, including PDAs and cell phones - which are evolving to facilitate banking and retail transactions - presents heightened concerns. “People are using all of this technology a lot more and it is creating new concerns about losing cell phones,” said Kelleher, observing that between 10,000 and 15,000 cell phones are left in taxicabs per major city on a monthly basis. Additionally, he noted, “People are using these devices more and more for work which means that there is more corporate-sensitive data” at risk if they are lost or stolen.
According to Unisys' predictions, protecting data on mobile end-point devices will demand more attention and become increasingly difficult. Additionally, the company predicts that banks, in particular, will face significant challenges in protecting consumers' data and financial assets as more clients turn to mobile devices to conduct transactions.
Unisys also predicts that organizations will seek continued convergence of physical and electronic (i.e., IT ) security measures for enhanced protection against espionage. Additionally, Unisys predicts that public and private sector entities will pay more attention paper and electronic records. “Many people would be surprised how often the wrong information ends up in the wrong hands because data is inappropriately shared, copied, printed or just forgotten on a portable drive or in a printer feed,” said Kelleher. Finally, Unisys predicts social networking sites will become increasingly vulnerable to privacy breaches.
Kelleher concludes that while the new year will bring opportunities to leverage the communication and collaboration capabilities of the Internet and Web-enabled applications, the challenge, as before, will be balancing freedom of information exchange while protecting information and people's identity and privacy. For more information, go here.
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Unisys Predicts CIOS will Increase use of Open Source Solutions to Modernize IT Environments
IT executives in large enterprises will increasingly utilize open source solutions in 2008 as part of their core IT infrastructure, from procurement processes through deployment of next-generation applications, according to Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager, Open Source Business, Unisys. As solutions include more open source content, from middleware to business applications, open source will become key in helping management respond to increasing pressure to align IT with business goals while spending less money and leveraging existing assets more effectively, Gold noted.
Gold foresees four key trends in 2008 relating to open source. First, he said, evaluation of open source solutions will become a standard part of the enterprise IT qualification and procurement process. Second, enterprises will extend and even modify their governance policies to include management of open source resources.
“The trend that we are going to see is not that new processes are going to be built around governance, and acquisition or procurement of open source, but rather that open source is now going to fall within their standard governance and procurement processes,” Gold told 5 Minute Briefing. While in the past, acquisition of open source had been treated as special one-off projects at organizations, Gold said Unisys has seen a growing awareness that now open source needs to be part of the standard acquisition process and “open source is increasingly becoming just like any other software component that they evaluate.”
Gold also predicts that business services currently offered by legacy applications will be retooled into flexible new “composite applications” based on open architectures such as SOA and open standards. Additionally, businesses will increase the speed with which they leverage open source in enterprise applications as well as in operational and business management functions.
“What has happened faster than even I expected is the rate at which open source is moving up the value chain,” said Gold. “The rate at which open source solutions are coming onto the scene that are up at the application level and the rate at which those are being consumed - or at least evaluated - by businesses is exceeding my expectation. Generally, I thought there would need to be more acceptance in the middleware stack, if you will, before the applications would be consumed, but it is happening so quickly,” Gold said. “And I think Sun's acquisition of MySQL for a billion dollars is further proof that this stuff is hot. This is the direction that things are going.”
But while the momentum for open source is strong, Gold cautioned, “some people think that open source is the be-all, end-all for everything, and it's not.” Every data center environment at large companies will be hybrid environments, he said. “It is going to be a hybrid world and it is going to continue to be a hybrid world and I think the integration of various components where they make sense for particular business needs is the real play with open source. Companies that understand that are the ones that are really going to maximize the value of their infrastructure with that.” For more information, go here.
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VMware Publicly Betas VMware Stage Manager
VMware has announced the public beta of VMware Stage Manager, a new management and automation product intended to streamline and accelerate the process of bringing new or modified applications and other IT services into production. "VMware Stage Manager adds to the power of the VMware platform by automating and streamlining the staging process for deploying new applications and updates," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware, at the time of the announcement. Building on the management capabilities of VMware Infrastructure, VMware Stage Manager automates management of complete, multi-tier application environments - including the servers, storage and networking systems that support them - as they move through various stages from integration to testing to staging and user acceptance before being released into production.
According to VMware, as new services or changes to existing IT services are being introduced, they often follow a sequence of stages to ensure they are successfully tested, approved and configured for deployment into production and IT typically maintains numerous dedicated "shadow instances" of the production environment to enable each of these stages. These systems are prone to "drift" out of sync with the production configuration, jeopardizing the successful execution of system changes and updates and increasing the risk of production downtime.
VMware Stage Manager is designed to help IT address these and other service transition challenges. VMware said that with this tool, it provides the ability to visualize, organize and streamline resources and processes across the service release lifecycle. For more information on VMware Stage Manager or to download the beta, go here.
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