Monthly Archives: August 2010

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Cisco settles antitrust suit over software updates

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Cisco settles antitrust suit over software updates
has settled a 2008 lawsuit in which independent network maintenance company Multiven charged that Cisco forced customers to buy its SMARTnet service plan in order to get bug fixes and software updates.

Multiven agreed to drop its claims against Cisco, and Cisco dropped countersuits against Multiven, network expertise platform Pingsta, and Pingsta founder Peter Alfred-Adekeye. The terms of the settlement were sealed. Each party will pay its own legal costs, according to an order filed July 28. Multiven announced the settlement on Monday Microsoft MCTS Training.
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Cisco vs. Juniper
Multiven provides technical support, maintenance and consulting services for networks from multiple vendors. It sued Cisco in December 2008, charging that the dominant network equipment vendor did not make necessary software updates and bug fixes for its products available to third parties. Instead, Cisco made those updates available only to customers of its SMARTnet service, preventing third parties from servicing Cisco equipment, Multiven alleged. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Jose.

Pingsta is a collaborative platform designed to let users procure network expertise on a pay-per-use basis from experts who work at will.

Cisco was not immediately available for comment. In December 2008, in response to the suit, the company said its customers were not required to buy Cisco’s services and that thousands of partner companies offered service programs, including bug fixes, for Cisco gear or Microsoft MCITP Certification.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Microsoft releases Azure cloud platform appliance

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Microsoft releases Azure cloud platform appliance
With the help of hardware partners, Microsoft MCTS Training has released a version of its Windows Azure cloud platform as an appliance, the company said on Monday during the kickoff of its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) being held this week in Washington D.C.

Microsoft has run a version of its Windows Azure as a service since February, and the company has claimed the service has been used by 10,000 customers. The company is now offering the platform software, packaged with a set of servers.
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In a blog posting, Microsoft server and tools corporate vice president Robert Wahbe, explained that the appliance would provide a means for organizations to run a cloud service, either internally or for their own customers.

“Using it, service providers, governments and large enterprises who would consider buying, say, 1000 servers at a time, will be able to get the control they need,” Wahbe said.

“What we are talking about is a specific locked-down piece of hardware that can represent hundreds of thousands of servers,” said Amy Barzdukas, senior director of product management, in an interview with the IDG News Service. “Like an appliance, it is standardized and turn-key, so customers can deploy the Windows Azure in their data centers.”

Barzdukas said an appliance can be useful for organizations that wish to run their software both internally and on external Azure services, adding that the workload can be easily moved between multiple Azure locations. “It provides scale of the platform, but with the added benefit of control of the location,” she said.

According to Barzdukas, Dell, Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard will each sell a “limited production release” of the appliance, as well as offer an Azure service for their customers. eBay intends to use the appliance for internal operations. A broader release is expected by later this year.

The Azure appliance will have all the functionality with Microsoft’s own Azure service, Barzdukas said.

Microsoft plans to post a new promotional Web page devoted to the offering on Monday. Bob Muglia, Microsoft senior vice president of the server and tools business, is also expected to talk about the appliance at WPC.

In addition to the release of the Azure appliance, Microsoft MCITP Certification also announced that it has shipped the release candidate of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self Service Portal, which is a Windows Server virtualization tool pack, and has released both the beta of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Video previews Microsoft Office 2011 plans

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Video previews Microsoft Office 2011 plans

Microsoft has started rolling out more details about Office 2011, the upcoming upgrade of its productivity suite. On Wednesday, the company posted a brief video on its Mac Mojo blog showing off a few of the suite’s new features.

The video–which combines images of the software and interviews with Microsoft MCTS Training developers–highlights three main features: The revamped database and threaded Conversation view in Outlook (which will replace Entourage as Office’s e-mail client); and a new template gallery.
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Changes in Outlook

Microsoft reps say that the database underlying Entourage 2008–which stored your e-mail messages, calendar entries, and contacts in one huge file–was a “pain point” for customers. Among the reasons for the pain: If you made the tiniest change to that database file–by receiving an e-mail message, say, or adding a new phone number–then Time Machine would think it had to back up the whole thing.

In the video, the company sings the virtues of Outlook 2011’s new database structure, in which messages, appointments, and contacts will be contained in discrete files. That should make for smaller and faster backups; it should also make it easier to find Outlook items with Spotlight.

The video also previews that Conversation view, which will enable you to see all the messages in a single thread at the same time, no matter which folder they’re in. You could get something similar in Entourage, but only with much fiddling; it’s now the default view. (You can, of course, opt for the old unthreaded view if you wish.)

Template Gallery

The video also highlights Office 2011’s new template gallery, which is much more elaborate than the Project Gallery in Office 2008.

Instead of showing you low-res thumbnails of templates and themes, the new gallery gives you rich, high-def previews. If a template has multiple pages (the first page might be formatted one way, subsequent pages another), you can preview all of them before you start work. You can also customize the template’s color scheme and font; in PowerPoint, you can set the orientation (Landscape or Portrait).

The template gallery also includes a link to Microsoft’s online template library (which the company says contains thousands of templates, from professional designers as well as regular Office users). The searchable gallery is organized by categories and sports a recent documents list, with links to documents you’ve worked on today, yesterday, or in the past week or month.

Finally, the video offers a glimpse of the previously announced Ribbon, which replaces Office 2008’s Elements Gallery. Like that gallery, the ribbon provides quick access to commonly used tools. Unlike that gallery, you can completely collapse the Ribbon, to reclaim screen space.

Microsoft MCITP Certification hasn’t announced a firm release date for Office 2011 yet, only that it plans to ship some time in the last quarter of 2010. The company hasn’t publicly announced prices, either. But it does plan to release more of these teaser videos in the weeks and months ahead.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

IBM snaps up Storwize

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IBM snaps up Storwize
After much anticipation, IBM on Thursday announced its intent to acquire data compression vendor Storwize. Storwize, based in Marlborough, Mass., provides data compression in real-time that can reduce primary data by as much as 80%, according to company claims. The company has been successful in engaging customers such as Shopzill and Sumitomo Mitsuie Construction. Its compression technology can be used on files, VMDK golden images and structured database data without compromising performance Microsoft MCTS Training.

M&As in the IT industry for 2010

IBM will combine Storwize’s technology with its ProtecTIER deduplication appliances, its XIV disk storage and its Scale-Out NAS, as well as incorporate its functionality with IBM System Storage Easy Tier software. The software-based Storwize appliance works with heterogeneous storage from EMC, HP and NetApp.

The deal leaves one vendor, Permabit, in the independent compression business since Dell acquired Ocarina Networks last week. Permabit’s Abireo technology is OEM-focused.

Also in news last week included that Geminare launched Cloud Storage Assurance 2.0, a cloud storage replication product targeted at SMBs. Cloud Storage Assurance 2.0 now offers secure data backup and auditability through its Cloud Recovery Server Replication service. Auditability is done through authentication of data using a key identifier for each file. Cloud Assurance also allow archiving of file data automatically and provides a RESTful-base API kit that lets vendors write custom queries and integrate their document management and eDiscovery applications with Cloud Assurance Microsoft MCITP Certification.

Geminare sells Cloud Assurance through a network of service providers, MSPs and VARs. It runs Cloud Assurance on the Amazon S3, Atmos Partners or Iron Mountain Archive Service clouds.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized

Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole

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Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole
Microsoft MCTS Training on Tuesday will release a rare out-of-band patch to fix the highly dangerous zero-day vulnerability  that has caused multiple researchers to issuing warnings earlier this month. The patch will be for all supported versions of Windows and will require a restart.

As I previously wrote about, the exploit is a whopper on all levels. It comes into the enterprise via hidden files on USB sticks or via shared network files. It requires no user interaction to infect the system (simply viewing the icon is enough to trigger it). It propagates itself. It loads as a rootkit infection. It affects all Windows operating systems, even full-patched Windows 7 systems. It seems to target extremely sensitive information — researchers say it seems to have been made for espionage. If all that weren’t scary enough, a researcher has already published proof-of-concept code.

The attack exploits a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft Windows. Although many anti-virus software makers claimed that they were able to update their wares to detect the rootkit, security experts remained highly concerned about the hole, as did Microsoft MCITP Certification. In a blog post today, Christopher Budd, Sr. Security Response Communications Manager at Microsoft, explained, “we’re able to confirm that, in the past few days, we’ve seen an increase in attempts to exploit the vulnerability.”

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Microsoft slates IE9 beta for September

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Microsoft slates IE9 beta for September
MIcrosoft will ship a beta of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in September, a company executive said today.

If the timeline is accurate, the IE9 beta release will come a month later than earlier speculation, which had settled on August, a pick based in large part on PowerPoint slides purportedly from a Microsoft MCTS Training presentation that focused on Windows 8 , the next iteration of the company’s OS.
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Today, Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, said that IE9 would reach beta this fall. “We’re really excited about IE9, which will be beta and coming out in September,” said Turner during the company’s annual day-long presentation to Wall Street analysts.

Turner also boasted of Internet Explorer’s recent turnaround, claiming that it had gained usage share the last two months.

According to Web analytics company Net Applications, IE did increase its global share by a record six-tenths of a percentage point during June. However, Net Applications had IE losing, not gaining, ground worldwide in May.

As of June 30, IE accounted for an estimated 60.3% of all browsers used during the month.

Since March, when the company debuted a rough-around-the-edges IE9 developer preview, the company has updated the bare-bones browser twice, most recently in late June .

After Turner’s announcement of a September beta for IE9, Microsoft declined to answer additional questions, including when during the month users could expect the more stable preview, or whether the beta would be open to everyone, as the developer previews have been.

“We do not have any additional specifics to share at this time about when Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be available,” a company spokeswoman said.

Microsoft has also refused to name a release schedule for the final build of IE9. Most pundits now believe Microsoft won’t wrap up the browser until 2011.

That will be the case if Microsoft MCITP Certification mimics the timeline it used for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), which reached the beta milestone in March 2008 but didn’t ship until March 2009 .

Using IE8’s schedule as a guide, users can expect to see the final version of IE9 in September 2011.

IE9 will run on Windows Vista and Windows 7 , but not on Windows XP, the nearly-nine-year-old operating system that still accounts for 68% of all versions of Windows still in use.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Windows 7

Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole

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Microsoft to issue patch for dangerous USB rootkit hole
Microsoft on Tuesday will release a rare out-of-band patch to fix the highly dangerous zero-day vulnerability  that has caused multiple researchers to issuing warnings earlier this month. The patch will be for all supported versions of Windows and will require a restart.

As I previously wrote about, the exploit is a whopper on all levels. It comes into the enterprise via hidden files on USB sticks or via shared network files. It requires no user interaction to infect the system (simply viewing the icon is enough to trigger it). It propagates itself. It loads as a rootkit infection. It affects all Windows operating systems, even full-patched Windows 7 systems. It seems to target extremely sensitive information — researchers say it seems to have been made for espionage. If all that weren’t scary enough, a researcher has already published proof-of-concept code.

The attack exploits a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft MCTS Training Windows. Although many anti-virus software makers claimed that they were able to update their wares to detect the rootkit, security experts remained highly concerned about the hole, as did Microsoft. In a blog post today, Christopher Budd, Sr. Security Response Communications Manager at Microsoft, explained, “we’re able to confirm that, in the past few days, we’ve seen an increase in attempts to exploit the vulnerability.”

Microsoft MCITP Certification will also hold a special edition of the bulletin release webcast on Monday, August 2, 2010 at 1:00 PM PDT. If you are interested in attending the webcast, click here to sign up.

Other articles Network World has published that discusses the attacks include: