Apple tablet won't be just an e-reader, argues analyst

Analysts split today in their take on recent reports that Apple's long-rumored tablet will stress the device's e-book capabilities, saying that the company's plan for the "iPod Touch on steroids" would depend on the price tag. It certainly will be an e-reader, that will be part of its ecosystem, but that won't be all it is." Gottheil, who six months ago touted the idea that Apple would deliver a tablet best described as an "iPod Touch on steroids," stuck to that reasoning today. "It will use the iPhone OS, or a modified version of it," Gottheil said, echoing something iLounge.com said it heard from a reliable source this week. Earlier this week, the popular gadget blog Gizmodo cited unnamed sources who claimed that Apple was in talks with several media companies, including the New York Times , to negotiate content deals for its unannounced-but-expected tablet. "[Apple isn't] just going for e-books and mags," Gizmodo's Brian Lam wrote Wednesday. "They're aiming to redefine print." Not so fast, said one analyst. "It's more than just an e-reader," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research who follows Apple's moves. "It's an application platform, it's a game and social gaming platform. The App Store, which Apple said this week had delivered its two billionth application, is crucial to the tablet's success, said Gottheil, which means that the device will be more than a one-trick pony. "Apple will market it as 'one more thing' nested inside 'one more thing'," Gottheil said, a move possible because of the App Store's broad library. "They'll [cast] it as able to do several increasing cool things." Gottheil's reasoning relies on the $800 price he expects Apple to slap on the tablet, a price tag much too high for a media reader-only device. "I don't think Apple has any particular interest in just creating another Kindle," he said, referring to Amazon's $489 Kindle DX . "Apple enjoys skimming the top of the market by making something hot and getting a nice margin out of it." Brian Marshall, a Wall Street analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, had a much different take, largely because of his price expectations. "I think $500 is the price," said Marshall today, adding that he agreed with Gizmodo that the tablet will focus on its e-reader capabilities. "I actually think that's how they'll promote it," he added. "They'll pitch [e-books] as a big segment, but they'll also say, 'We're gonna do this in color and much better than the Kindle'." Amazon's Kindle DX features a 9.7-inch grayscale display; according to reports out of Taiwan, component suppliers building parts for the expected Apple tablet are assembling 9.6-inch color, touch-enabled screens.

Most analysts have pegged the first half of 2010 for a tablet rollout, although some have proposed that Apple will craft a two-stage introduction, as it did with the iPhone in 2007, by announcing the hardware several months in advance of availability to give developers time to create applications or tweak existing iPhone programs for the larger device.

Virtualization: Tips for avoiding server overload

As virtualization stretches deeper into the enterprise to include mission-critical and resource-intensive applications, IT executives are learning that double-digit physical-to-virtual server ratios are things of the past. But when it comes to mission-critical and resource-intensive applications, that number tends to plummet to less than 15," says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) in Boulder, Colo. Virtualization vendors may still be touting the potential of putting 20, 50, or even 100 VMs (virtual machines) on a single physical machine, but IT managers and industry experts say those ratios are dangerous in production environments, causing performance problems or, worse, outages. "In test and development environments, companies could put upwards of 50 virtual machines on a single physical host.

In fact, EMA conducted a study in January 2009 of 153 organizations with more than 500 end users and found that on average they were achieving 6:1 consolidation rates for applications such as ERP, CRM, e-mail and database. That's because the consolidation rate affects just about every aspect of a virtualization project: budget, capacity and executive buy-in. "If you go into these virtualization projects with a false expectation, you're going to get in trouble," Mann says. The variance between the reality and the expectations, whether it's due to vendor hype or internal ROI issues, could spell trouble for IT teams. Indeed, overestimating P-to-V ratios can result in the need for more server hardware, power consumption, heating and cooling, and rack space - all of which cost money. Not a good thing, especially in this economy," says Charles King, president and principal analyst at consultancy Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif.

Worse yet, users could be impacted by poorly performing applications. "If a company thinks they're only going to need 10 servers at the end of a virtualization project and they actually need 15, it could have a significant impact on the overall cost of the consolidation and put them in the hole financially. Key apps will fight for server space So, why the disconnect between virtualization expectations and reality? Bob Gill, managing director of server research at consultancy TheInfoPro, agrees. "Early on, people were virtualizing systems that had a less than 5% utilization rate. King says up to this point, many companies have focused on virtualizing low-end, low-use, low I/O applications such as test, development, log, file and print servers. "When it comes to edge-of-network, non-mission-critical applications that don't require high availability, you can stack dozens on a single machine," he says. These were also the applications that, if they went down for an hour, no one got upset," he says.

Once you get into applications with higher utilization rates, greater security risks and increased performance and availability demands, consolidation ratios drop off considerably. "These applications will compete for bandwidth, memory, CPU and storage," King says. That's not the case when applying virtualization to mission-critical, resource-intensive applications; virtualization vendors have been slow to explain this reality to customers, some say. Even on machines with two quad-core processors, highly transactional applications that have been virtualized will experience network bottlenecks and performance hits as they vie for the same server's pool of resources. The best place to start: a capacity analysis, says Kris Jmaeff, information security systems specialist with Interior Health, one of five health authorities in British Columbia, Canada. Start with a capacity analysis To combat the problem, IT teams have to rework their thinking and dial back everyone's expectations.

Four years ago, the data center at Interior Health was growing at a rapid rate. Before starting down that path, Jmaeff first used VMware tools to conduct an in-depth capacity analysis that monitored server hardware utilization. (Similar tools are also available from CiRBA, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, PlateSpin and Vizioncore, among others.) Rather than looking at his environment in a piecemeal fashion by each piece of hardware, he instead considered everything as a pool of resources. "Capacity planning should . . . focus on the resources that a server can contribute to the virtual pool," Jmaeff says. There was a lot of demand to virtualize the 500-server production environment to support a host of services, including DNS, ActiveDirectory, Web servers, FTP and many production application and database servers. Already, the team has been able to consolidate 250 servers, 50% of the server farm, onto 12 physical hosts. Jmaeff uses a combination of VMware vCenter and IBM Director to monitor each VM for "telltale signs" of ratio imbalances such as spikes in RAM and CPU usage or performance degradation. "We've definitely had to bump applications around and adjust our conversion rates according to server resource demand to create a more balanced workload," he says.

While Jmaeff's overall data center average is 20:1, hosts that hold more demanding applications either require much lower ratios or demand that he balance out resource-intensive applications. If necessary, it's easy to clone servers and quickly spread the application load, he adds. "Because we did our homework with ratios of virtual servers by examining the load on CPU and memory and evaluated physical server workloads, we've been pleasantly surprised with our ratios," he says. But we found that with heavier-used applications, it's not the RAM, it's the I/O," says CTO Shaun Retain. Continuous monitoring is key At Network Data Center Host, a Web service provider in San Clemente, Calif., the IT team quickly learned that when it comes to virtualizing mission-critical applications, you have to consider more than just RAM. "We originally thought, based on available RAM, we could have 40 small customers share a physical server. The 40:1 ratio had to be pulled back to 20:1 at the greatest, he says.

In addition, NDC Host uses homegrown monitoring tools to ensure that ratios aren't blown by a spike in a single VM's traffic. To help with that effort, the team has written a control panel that allows their customers to log in and see how their virtual machine is handling reads, writes, disk space usage and other performance-affecting activity. Pund-IT's King says companies should also conduct rigorous testing on their virtualized mission-critical applications before and after deployment. "You have to make sure that in terms of memory and network bandwidth, each application is stable at all times. Testing will also help IT teams determine which virtual workloads will co-exist best on a physical host. "You have to make sure that a physical server isn't running multiple VMs with the same workload. For instance, if you know an application is harder hit during certain times of the year, you'll want to account for that in establishing your ratios," he says. Otherwise, if they're all Web servers, they will be contending for the same resources at the same time and that will hinder your consolidation ratio," says Nelson Ruest, co-author of "Virtualization: A Beginner's Guide" and founder of the Resolutions Enterprise consultancy in Victoria, British Columbia.

More virtualization-management tips Ruest also warns IT teams not to forget the spare resources that host servers need so they can not only support their own VMs, but accept the workload from a failing host. "If you're running all your servers at 80%, you won't be able to support that necessary redundancy," he says. Instead, IT staffers should make sure that workloads are heterogeneous and well-balanced based on peak usage times and resource demands. Most organizations will find they need to dedicate at least a month to the capacity planning and testing phases to determine the appropriate P-to-V server ratios for their environment, Ruest says. Rather than relying on vendor benchmarks, get real-world examples of whathas workedand what hasn't at organizations with your same profile. "You'll have a better chance at setting realistic expectations." Gittlen is a freelance technology writer in the greater Boston area who can be reached at sgittlen@verizon.net. Finally, EMA's Mann advises IT teams to seek out peers with similar application environments at large annual meetings like VMware's VMworld conference or Citrix's Synergy, or through local user groups. "Most attendees are more than willing to share information about their environment and experiences," he says.

Grassley seeks proof of jobs from H-1B applicants

WASHINGTON - One of the U.S. Senate's leading critics of the H-1B visa program, Sen. Grassley wants IT consulting companies that hire H-1B workers at third party client sites to prove that there is work waiting for them. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), is asking immigration officials to toughen their demands for evidence from companies hiring visa workers.

The timing of his request to the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS) is no accident or is Grassley's interest. In a statement accompanying the release of his letter to Mayorkas, Grassley said, that "Employers need to be held accountable so that foreign workers are not flooding the market, depressing wages, and taking jobs from qualified Americans. About a year ago, Grassley released a USCIS study that found either evidence of fraud or other violations in one-out-five H-1B visa petitions . His letter to USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas, released Tuesday, also comes just prior to the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1 and the release of 66,700 H-1B visas petitions, a number well short of the cap, applied for since April 1, the start of the annual petition process. Asking the right questions and requesting the necessary documents will go a long way in getting out the fraud in the H-1B program." Five months after USCIS completed its fraud study, federal officials arrested about a dozen people and charged with fraud. The U.S. recently expanded the case ; the company is fighting the charges in federal court.

One of the cases involved a New Jersey company, Visions System Group Inc. alleged to have set up shell offices in Grassley's home state. Grassley said in his letter that the USCIS should be asking, "companies up front for evidence that H-1B visa holders actually have a job awaiting them in the U.S.," and not end up being "benched," or unpaid until work is found. In response, a USCIS official said Mayorkas has received the letter and will respond for it. Grassley is also seeking information on the progress the USCIS has made on a number of other issues addressed in the fraud report, including job duties that differ from those described in the petition and failure to pay prevailing wages. Grassley's letter to tougher steps comes at the same time that some immigration attorneys have complained of stepped up enforcement efforts this year, especially with request for more evidence to support a petition. Richard Durbin (D-Ill), have introduced legislation that would toughen the rules on H-1B program, and impose a number of restrictions , especially on Indian firms and their ability to use large numbers of visa holders without hiring a proportional number of U.S. workers.

Grassley, along with U.S. Sen. The U.S. can issue up to 85,000 H-1B petitions under the cap, with 20,000 set aside for advance degree graduates of U.S. universities. IT employment is down generally, and with it, demand for the visa.

Nortel users should hope for best, prepare for worst

Users should chart the progress of Avaya's purchase of Nortel's enterprise assets carefully, so that they are spared any unpleasant product integration or rationalization surprises. Avaya last week also won court approval for the purchase. Product overlap, consolidation and subsequent support are the biggest issues facing Nortel enterprise customers on the heels of Avaya's $900 million purchase of that business.  Avaya last week emerged as the winning bidder for Nortel's enterprise business, beating out Siemens Enterprise Communications for the asset.

The rise and fall of Nortel Now comes the uneasy task of sifting through the product portfolio and eliminating redundancies - an ordeal that could leave Nortel - and even Avaya users - with a shortened lifespan on their investments. "Like an onion, there are lots of layers," says Nortel customer Bruce Meyer, director of network services at ProMedica Health Systems in Toledo, Ohio. "Let's see where they go from here." "There may be some surprises there," says Bob Hafner, an analyst with Gartner. "These are going to be two large companies coming together. These things never go without issues, problems or concerns." Significant overlap is expected in the IP telephony/unified communications portfolios of both companies - such as IP PBXs, handsets and call management software. It's not the easiest thing to do. Avaya is the leading revenue market-share vendor in enterprise telephony, according to Dell'Oro Group, while Nortel is No. 4. Little to no overlap will be found in routers, switches and other infrastructure products, where Nortel has a significant market share and installed base. We need a reliable infrastructure." "The biggest issue for users is, 'Show me the [product] road map,'" says Henry Dewing of Forrester Research. "They want to see hardcore product plans and how they are going to actually consolidate product lines." Avaya has pledged near term support for the Nortel enterprise products, including those serviced by Verizon, a Nortel reseller. Indeed, Meyer believes Nortel routers and switches will be less susceptible to discontinuation than the VoIP products, because Avaya has virtually no data products. "With Avaya, there's not a lot of strength in enterprise data," Meyer says. "[Avaya] will want to know that the infrastructure is good.

Verizon filed motions last week seeking assurances that Avaya would continue to support the Verizon accounts, which the carrier says include many federal law enforcement agencies.   "I'd be surprised if that issue doesn't work itself out," says IDC analyst Abner Germanow of the Verizon/Avaya scuttle. "I'd have a hard time believing they'd leave the U.S. government out to dry." Longtime users such as Meyer and Promedica would also like support assurances. To that end, Avaya kicked in $15 million for employee retention, on top of the $900 million purchase price for Nortel Enterprise Solutions. In addition to product direction, Meyer hopes the relationship his company has had with Nortel sales, service and support representatives remains intact. Nortel enterprise chief Joel Hackney said last week that Avaya could retain as much as 75% of Nortel's enterprise staff, though he would not say how many the unit employed. We're talking about lots of long-term relationships.

Published reports, however, stated that Avaya may only retain 60% or less of the Nortel enterprise workforce, a situation that troubles Meyer. "My concern is reduced staff," he says. "What are those reductions going to mean? Brand loyalty comes from post-sales support. IDC's Germanow is advising Nortel customers to accelerate any assessment or planning activities in light of the Avaya takeover. "They should figure out where their own needs lie and how to most effectively migrate," he says. "They should hold companies to their multi-vendor visions - that open means open." Meyer, for now, is holding fast and not contemplating any alternative vendor options in light of Avaya's takeover of Nortel's enterprise business. "This is still a wait-and-see scenario," he says. "How much of this will be a replay of Bay/Nortel?" he asks, referring to Nortel's 1998 acquisition of Bay Networks, which largely crippled the No. 2 player to Cisco in routers and switches. "This is going to be really interesting to watch." If those relationships change because of staffing changes, that would be a big deal." Gartner's Hafner agrees. "Customers need to pay attention to what's going on in the [merged] organization" to detect any potential distractions or turf battles or downsizings that may adversely affect them, he says.

Hacker leaks thousands of Hotmail passwords, says site

More than 10,000 usernames and passwords for Windows Live Hotmail accounts were leaked online late last week, according to a report by Neowin.net , which claimed that they were posted by an anonymous user on pastebin.com last Thursday. Neowin reported that it had seen part of the list. "Neowin has seen part of the list posted and can confirm the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe," said the site. "The list details over 10,000 accounts starting from A through to B, suggesting there could be additional lists." Hotmail usernames and passwords are often used for more than logging into Microsoft 's online e-mail service, however. The post has since been taken down.

Many people log onto a wide range of Microsoft's online properties - including the trial version of the company's Web-based Office applications , the Connect beta test site and the Skydrive online storage service - with their Hotmail passwords. Accounts with domains of @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com were included in the list. It was unknown how the usernames and passwords were obtained, but Neowin speculated that they were the result of either a hack of Hotmail or a massive phishing attack that had tricked users into divulging their log-on information. Microsoft representatives in the U.S. were not immediately able to confirm Neowin's account, or answer questions, including how the usernames and passwords were acquired. Last year, a Tennessee college student was accused of breaking into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.

The BBC , however, reported early Monday that Microsoft U.K. is aware of the report that account information had been available on the Web, and said it's "actively investigating the situation and will take appropriate steps as rapidly as possible." If Neowin's account is accurate, the Hotmail hack or phishing attack would be one of the largest suffered by a Web-based e-mail service. Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee at the time, lost control of her personal account when someone identified only as "rubico" reset her password after guessing answers to several security questions. Kernell's case is ongoing. David Kernell was charged with a single count of accessing a computer without authorization by a federal grand jury last October. Shortly after the Palin account hijack, Computerworld confirmed that the automated password-reset mechanisms used by Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Google 's Gmail could be abused by anyone who knew an account's username and could answer a single security question.