Microsoft Exchange 2010 hits final beta

Microsoft Tuesday issued the final beta on Exchange Server 2010 along with the final beta of its security companion, Forefront for Exchange Sever 2010.

Slideshow: Sneek peaks at Exchange 2010 interface

The newest Exchange Server, which is 64-bit only, is expected to ship before year-end. 

The 2010 version of Exchange is being touted as a hybrid - equally at home as the foundation for a hosted e-mail service or a corporate messaging infrastructure.

Microsoft already hosts more than 5 million users on Exchange 2010 as part of its Live@Edu program.

Michael Atalla, group product manager for Exchange, announced the release on the Exchange Team blog and called out a number of new features: support on the 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2; support for in-place upgrades from the Exchange 2010 RC to the 2010 RTM; and co-existence with Exchange 2007 and 2003 servers.

The co-existence with Exchange 2007 will require Service Pack 2, which Atalla said would ship later this moth.

Microsoft has said previously that it has specially architected Exchange 2010 for high-availability and cross-domain integration using techniques such as pairing the server with Windows Server 2008 clustering technology and directory federation features.The company said that the ability to use Exchange as a hosting platform is now built into the product.

The Exchange beta includes a number of user and administrative features, including new archiving capabilities, but perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic is its online and on-premises split personality.

The company hopes that personality will make it easier for corporate users to straddle environments with some users on internal systems and others using hosted mailboxes from a service.

Features, such as Powershell support, will give administrators one set of tools for managing internal users, users on hosted platforms, and the infrastructure needed to bridge the gap between the two.

But creating the infrastructure and architecture involves more than just Exchange. Microsoft is relying on new clustering technology in Windows Server 2008, such as multi-subnet stretched clusters, and federated Active Directory technology to help bolster high-availability and integrated management.

Microsoft is also trying to beef up discovery and compliance features in Exchange with built-in e-mail archiving. But early beta testers have said the feature doesn't appear like it will be complete in Exchange 2010 and will likely take one Service Pack to hit full stride.

Network World Lab Alliance member Joel Snyder said in his Exchange 2010 review that corporate users should carefully assess the implications of the new server.

"The combination of clustering, replication and low-cost disk support means that reliability and scalability can be based on replicating small, inexpensive servers both within a data center and between data centers. E-mail managers thinking of deploying Exchange 2010 should step back and evaluate closely these new grid-style architectural approaches - and be sure that your Exchange team has adequate time to re-think and re-evaluate commonly held beliefs on how to build large Exchange networks."

Exchange 2010 is the first in a wave of new Office products set to ship this year and next. Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 are slated to ship in the first half of 2010.

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New initiative is looking for a few good cybersecurity pros

Amid concerns that the U.S. has a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, a new consortium of U.S. government and private organizations aims to identify students with strong computer skills and train them as cybersecurity guardians, warriors and "top guns."

The consortium - including the U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Air Force Association and the SANS Institute - on Monday announced a new initiative to identify, train and find jobs for students interested in cybersecurity.

The U.S. Cyber Challenge initiative will bring together three existing cybersecurity competitions for high school or college students and launch new in-person competitions, said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity training organization. In addition, the organizers of the U.S. Cyber Challenge plan to offer scholarships to promising students and hook them up with internships and jobs, Paller said.

The initiative is a response to a growing concern that the U.S. will not have enough cybersecurity professionals in coming years, participants in a kick-off event said. Some experts have said the U.S. has about 1,000 world-class cybersecurity experts when it needs 20 to 30 times that many, Paller said.

The U.S. Department of Defense trains just 80 cybersecurity professionals a year, noted James Lewis, director of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program.

The pipeline for cybersecurity professionals in the U.S. is "a trickle," said Richard Schaeffer Jr., director of information assurance at the U.S. National Security Agency. "It is a really, really, really, really tiny number."

Nations including China are actively recruiting and developing cybersecurity professionals, Paller added. Without training and development programs, the U.S. faces getting further and further behind, he said.

One of the goals of the initiative will be to promote cybersecurity careers as "cool," organizers said. Two of the existing competitions that will be part of the program, the Air Force Association's CyberPatriot Defense Competition and the SANS Institute's NetWars Capture the Flag Competition, use a video game format to draw students' interest.

"You can't find a kid today who doesn't know what 'Grand Theft Auto' is," said Sanford Schlitt, vice chairman of the board for aerospace education at the Air Force Association.

The association launched a limited version of its CyberPatriot Defense Competition in January. A second round of the competition, with registration closing in September, has attracted 270 high school teams from 44 states, plus Japan and South Korea, he said.

The NetWars competition, with high school and college students focused on attacking and defending computers, drew 80 competitors in its first round held in June, said James Shewmaker, founder of cybersecurity vendor Bluenotch and key developer of the game. The winner of the first round was able to find a vulnerability in the scoring system and give himself additional points, and organizers decided that was fair game, Shewmaker said.

While parts of the U.S. Cyber Challenge are still coming together, the organizers are getting offers of support from many groups, including Google and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Paller said. Companies and organizations can help in many ways, including helping to organize cybersecurity camps, he said.

The new initiative is the "best news story in cybersecurity," Paller said. "The Cyber Challenge is a step in the right direction."

EMC fine tunes its management software portfolio

EMC Wednesday introduced the fruit of many acquisitions, organic development and integration work with its Ionix IT management software and services portfolio, which the vendor says will help customers more easily control next-generation networks.

EMC Ionix consists of four IT management product sets: Service Discovery and Mapping; Service Management; Data Center Automation and Compliance; and IT operations Intelligence. The software and services in each category support automated discovery, model-based management, ITIL processes, integrated workflows, automation and root-cause analysis, according to EMC.

"Ionix is the result of a five-year strategy bringing together a range of products, with the Configuresoft product anchoring the suite with its data center automation technology," says Bob Quillin, senior director of marketing for EMC Ionix. "The integrations enable customers to manage across domains and monitor virtualization across all areas of IT, not treating it as a silo."

EMC Ionix incorporates technology recently acquired with Configuresoft and EMC products partly built on software from the vendor's Smarts, nLayers, Voyence and Infra acquisitions. Ionix also puts EMC's ControlCenter to work to manage performance and availability across network, storage, servers and applications as well as tracking end-to-end services. Part of the motivation to update its management suite now was the current need to manage virtual infrastructure alongside physical machines and the growing appeal of cloud computing, EMC says.

"Ionix is not just managing silos, but centralizing around management and using virtualization to drive management to the next level," Quillin says.

EMC's approach to incorporate virtualization technology into its management software could address a current pain point in enterprise IT management. Research firms such as IDC expect virtualization adoption to slow if enterprise IT customers aren't able to automate virtualization management and simplify the ongoing operations. Industry watchers say traditional management software products might not be built to adequately address more dynamic environments.

"HP and BMC are two leaders in the space for sure – but they built monolithic software to support monolithic physical infrastructures – and were built well before anyone even heard of virtualization, let alone the cloud," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, in a statement. "At every major disruption point, huge new market opportunities are created and the eventual winners tend to be the ones that are purpose-built for the new world order – not those who bolt-on functions to last year's model."

While Ionix would likely increase competition among EMC and management market leaders BMC, CA, HP and IBM, the vendor will still have to overcome challenges to be chosen as a primary management vendor. In an analysis of the management software market, Forrester Research commended EMC's progress and pointed out that more work needed to be done.

"EMC's recent acquisitions, such as nLayers and Voyence, have placed it as a leading configuration vendor, but broader management coverage is questionable. It has some great weapons in its arsenal with Smarts and now Infra, but it must accelerate its M&A expansion and internal development to capitalize on its assets and enter the elite class of anchors," reads the report "Managing the IT Management Software Portfolio," which was published prior to EMC's Configuresoft acquisition.

Updates, integrations and common platform support will be included in EMC Ionix products immediately.

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India bans import of mobile phones without identity codes

The Indian government has banned the import of mobile phones without an IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number, and has ordered operators to block calls from phones without an IMEI from next month..

The IMEI is a unique code that identifies a mobile device on a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) network, and is usually programmed into the phone by the manufacturer.

A notification earlier this week from the Indian government's Directorate General of Foreign Trade has prohibited the import of mobile handsets that do not have an IMEI, or have an IMEI consisting entirely of zeros.

A large number of mobile phones that are sold in India are either spurious or unbranded, often sold at low prices without bills or warranty. Terrorists have been found to use phones without IMEI, as they prevent identification, according to security agencies.

The spurious phones also represent a significant loss of revenue to mobile phone vendors who are targeting the country's booming mobile phone market.

The Indian government told the country's parliament in December that the Department of Telecommunications had directed cellular mobile service providers to make provisions for the authentication of mobile handsets with an IMEI number for GSM networks and Electronic Serial Number (ESN) for CDMA (code -division multiple access) networks.

In a letter to service providers in April, the Ministry of Communications & IT recognized that some of the users of phones without IMEI or zeros in place of the IMEI, were "genuine innocent subscribers". The ministry approved in that letter a proposal by the service providers for a Genuine IMEI Implant (GII) program that programs genuine IMEI on mobile handsets.

The GII program is being offered by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in association with Mobile Standard Alliance of India.

The last date for the software implants will be the end of this month. On that date the EIR (Equipment Identity Register) used by the operators will have to reject all calls made from a phone without an IMEI or with all zeros in place of a genuine IMEI, according to the letter from the ministry, a copy of which has been posted on the COAI web site.

Cisco CEO humbled by placement on Dow

BOSTON - Cisco Systems Inc. is proud to be joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday, but Cisco CEO John Chambers said that did not come without mixed feelings given the company was replacing General Motors.

"It's a tremendous honor ... [but] very humbling," he told a group of international reporters today at the Cisco Partner Summit here.

Chambers said he was "obviously very proud," but said he has "mixed emotions" about replacing GM on the list after the company filed bankruptcy this week. "GM is a great company, always a great customer, and a very very good partner," Chambers said, adding that everybody at Cisco knows somebody at GM. "It's an icon."

Still, Cisco's addition to the Dow, a market barometer, shows the importance of networking technology, Chambers said. "The network will play a huge rule as more than a pipe ... and be involved in areas of major economic growth. Hopefully we'll do a good job to make them proud."

HP-Microsoft: Rivalry is born

Chambers rarely comes across as a humble salesman of sophisticated networking gear, and actually did use much of his 40 minutes with news media to talk about the competition, including Hewlett Packard Co.

In May, HP announced a four-year partnership with Microsoft Corp. to provide unified communications products. Cisco executives at the Partner Summit said they would have preferred Microsoft picked Cisco.

"HP is a $110 billion competitor," Chambers said. "The last time we had competition like that was with Nortel, Alcatel and Lucent." In addition to unified communications, Cisco competes with HP in routing and switching.

Chambers said that Rob Lloyd, executive vice president of worldwide sales for Cisco, "will lead the charge against HP."

Lloyd told reporters today: "Microsoft has been saying for years that networking didn't matter, and suddenly they have a networking partner. They just picked the wrong partner."

Lloyd said that during the gathering of channel partners who resell Cisco products, he had heard many saying they are "indicating loyalty to Cisco" despite the HP-Microsoft partnership.

Video a 'game-changer'

Chambers and Lloyd emphasized the importance of video technology to Cisco, adding to comments made yesterday by the company's CTO, and earlier by other Cisco executives.

Video will make up 90% of all network traffic in two years, Chambers predicted, and will be a confirmation of Cisco's purchase Pure Digital Technology, Inc., the maker of the handheld Flip digital videocamera.

Chambers said the investment in Flip is not just about that device, but about the entire video architecture that involves taking easy-to-produce video and putting it on the Web or company-run video blogs, and also using it in addition to high-end telepresence systems and other collaboration tools.

He said that much of Cisco's advertising and branding effort in recent years, including product placements of Cisco telepresence gear in the TV series 24, revolves around the value of video technology to consumers, companies and the company.

"We see a tremendous desire to deploy consumer-type technologies but in an enterprise form-factor," Lloyd added.

Proctor and Gamble is deploying Flip cameras to its executives to use in video blogging, even as that company has invested heavily in telepresence, Chambers said. "Video is the way leaders communicate," he said.

To show his interest in video and the use of the Flip, Chambers pulled a Flip camera from his pocket and quickly panned the room of reporters. He said he used the video camera to communicate with his children.

"Cisco is a long way ahead in this technology," Chambers said.