Google Play store inundated with scam apps, Symantec says

The applications, which may contain just a link to a website, can be hard to assess using automated analysis

A steady stream of questionable applications is flowing daily into Google's Play store for Android devices, according to security vendor Symantec.

Over the last seven months, Symantec found more than 1,200 suspicious applications in the Play store. Google removes many shortly after they're published, but others stay in the store for a few days.

"Although they have short lives, the apps must provide ample profit for the scammers as they show no signs of halting their development of new ones," wrote Joji Hamada of Symantec.

The applications can be difficult to assess and employ a series of maneuvers and layers in order to attempt to rip off users.

Hamada wrote one application aims to get users to subscribe to an online adult video site at a cost of more than US$3,000 a year. The application's sole purpose is to launch a link to an adult website.

The website then asks the user to register in order to play videos. An email form is drafted, and the user is asked to hit send. The email, sent to the user, contains a link to another service on a different website.

This time, the user is prompted to enter a password. If that button is clicked, the phone is supplied with a number. When called, the number gives out a password. The person is then given registration details and told of a AY=315,000 ($3,200) annual fee that is due within three days.

Applications that launched only links "can be almost impossible for any system to confirm anything malicious," Hamada wrote.

"The manual steps required in this scam is another strategy used to keep the apps on the market as long as possible," Hamada wrote. "Human analysis may be the only way to discover these sorts of apps."

Apple closely examines applications submitted for its App Store, which has kept its marketplace relatively free of malware. Google also scans applications in the Play store. It also added a feature to the latest 4.3 version of the Android OS that scans any application for malicious code.

More than 100 applications similar to the adult videos one have been published on Google Play since the beginning of the month, Hamada wrote. Thirty applications from three developers are still in the market.

Symantec informs Google when it finds such applications, he wrote, but the scam applications flow into Play daily. Many of the applications float into some of the top keyword searches, apparently as the result of abuse of Play's search function.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Chief Digital Officer: Hot new tech title or flash in the pan?

Chief Digital Officer: Hot new tech title or flash in the pan?
Enterprises are tapping CDOs to monetize digital assets, but how will these new execs interact with IT? And will the hiring trend hold?

There's a new C-level executive -- the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) -- in the boardroom, charged with ensuring that companies' massive stores of digital content are being used effectively to connect with customers and drive revenue growth.

At first blush, an executive title that includes the word "digital" would seem to encroach on IT's territory. Not so, observers say -- but that doesn't mean tech leaders don't need to be prepared to work closely with a CDO somwhere down the line.

Gartner last year reported that the number of CDOs is rising steadily, predicting that by 2015, some 25% of companies will have one managing their digital goals, according to analyst Mark P. McDonald. (See also CDOs by the numbers.)

While media companies are at the forefront of this movement, McDonald says, all kinds of organizations are starting to see value in their digital assets and in how those assets can help grow revenue.

"I think everybody's asking themselves whether they need [a CDO] or should become one," McDonald enthuses. "Organizations are looking for some kind of innovation or growth, and digital technologies are providing the first source of technology-intensive growth that we've had in a decade."
What CDOs bring to the table

While the CIO and the CDO are both concerned with digital information, their responsibilities diverge sharply.

"The role of IT in the past has been to procure and secure IT equipment for the company, lock [data] up and bolt it down," says Jason Brown, the CDO for trade show and event management company George Little Management. "Whereas with digital content, you want to get it out to the world so the rest of the world can see it and access it. I don't care about Exchange servers, Web servers or any of that stuff," continues Brown, who was hired in September 2011 as George Little's first-ever CDO, reporting to the company's CEO. (Previously he worked as a vice president of digital media for what is now events and media company UBM Canon.)

"I'm interested in building products that can be monetized," he says. "Companies need to look at their products and see areas where they can make money digitally." (For details, see Digital assets defined.)

Organizations including Sears, Starbucks, Harvard University, the City of New York and many others have hired CDOs, says David Mathison, founder of the Chief Digital Officer Club, where current and would-be CDOs can find training, job opportunities and more. Their goal? To improve efforts in digital content promotion, a motive shared by CDOs from Forbes, Columbia University and elsewhere, who described to Computerworld how they go about helping their companies take advantage of their large digital resources.

"A lot of company leaders really don't understand digital very well," observes Calkins Media CDO Guy Tasaka, who has more than two decades of experience in advertising, strategy and planning, circulation and marketing for media and startup companies. Tasaka, who reports to his company's CEO, says chief digital officers "should have the future vision in mind and not be constrained by the technical or architectural limitations of the current company."

He elaborates, "CIOs and CTOs don't look at the core business. They look at the technology for technology's sake." As the CDO, Tasaka says, "My responsibility is public-facing technology, the mobiles, the online and everything that we are doing going forward. I won't do anything unless there is a revenue strategy and a sustainable revenue model. My job is to separate what will help Calkins strategically from what is just a shiny object that's cool."
Forbes Media: Building audience, increasing revenue

Michael Smith joined the Forbes Media Group 13 years ago and became its first CDO in 2010 when a new CEO came in and wanted to drive the importance of digital content. Smith, whose background was as a CTO, took on the task of looking at technologies inside the company and how they could be used to better promote its digital content, specifically to grow online readership at Forbes.com.

"As the CDO, I don't make technology decisions -- those are made throughout the organization," says Smith, who reports to the CEO and president of Forbes Media. "It's the CDO's job to support the adoption of these selections. The focus I have now is on revenue growth. It's far more of a business role."

By tracking new content management applications, online publishing systems and other digital innovations that can be used to create and deliver Forbes' digital content, Smith has been able to help grow the company's online audiences threefold since 2010, to more than 45 million unique users a month. "That's a dramatic increase in users," he says. "This stuff helps the company."

Columbia: Changing delivery of digital assets

At Columbia University in New York City, Sree Sreenivasan, a journalism and media professor at the school, also held the title of CDO beginning July 2012, reporting to the school's chief academic officer. His main responsibilities? To "address digital needs to be sure that the school is adjusting and morphing with all the changes that are happening" in the digital marketplace, he says.

Sreenivasan has been cataloguing and placing online two decades worth of media initiatives at Columbia (they used to send VCR tapes of classes to long-distance students in the late 1980s, he reports) and helping faculty, departments and schools learn more about online learning, along with social and digital media.
Sree Sreenivasan
Sree Sreenivasan. Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Education is changing. We need someone to be looking at [digital assets] centrally. That's my role.
Sree Sreenivasan, CDO

Columbia has offered online courses for more than a decade and distance learning since 1986, but those efforts typically have been decentralized inside the various schools, Sreenivasan explains. The goal today is to build a single site where all the online material -- from individual courses to entire programs of study -- can be easily found.

"Education is changing," said Sreenivasan. "We need someone to be looking at it centrally. That's my role. We are now trying new things."

One such initiative is a third-party site called Coursera, where people anywhere can sign up to take online courses for free from top educational institutions around the world.

"Coursera is an example of a different approach -- we want to use it to learn how to improve the experience of our in-person classes, as well as reach out to the world," says Sreenivasan. "Our first three classes had more than 100,000 signups, and we have several ideas on how to take this further to improve the experience of our on-campus students as well as those in hybrid programs."
Doe-Anderson: Leading through digital disruption

At Doe-Anderson, the fourth-oldest advertising agency in the U.S., Joe Pierce has been the CDO since October 2009, reporting to the company's chief creative officer. In his job, he oversees whatever the company's clients want to do that's digital, including websites, banner ads, mobile apps and online advertising buys.

"Almost anyone you meet in the land of brand/digital marketing has a horror story they can tell you about the website that never worked, the app no one downloaded, the banners no one clicked on, etc.," says Pierce. "Usually, these horror stories stem from the simple fact that there wasn't a geek in the room who had the experience, wisdom, gravitas, mojo, trust, whatever you want to call it to steer the team away from risk and to keep the focus on the win."

To Pierce, this gets to the heart of what the CDO is all about. "You're a Sherpa. It's your job to get your client, or organization, to the top of the digital mountain as quickly and safely as possible."

In making that journey, Pierce's IT background, as well as stints elsewhere as a CEO and COO, has come in handy, he says.

"You can't be a strategy guy unless you understand the technology that you have to implement to fulfill that strategy," says Pierce. "And you can't do business in the C-level suite now unless you've got that digital knowledge to talk business with a customer. Having someone in the room that has that experience can help. I call it being 'the nerd at the table.'"
Will the CDO title endure?

There's little doubt the nascent Chief Digital Officer role is in flux. This month, Sreenivasan is scheduled to leave Columbia to become the first-ever CDO at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he will report to the associate director for collections and administration. In his new job, Sreenivasan will explore new digital opportunities for the Met and lead its Digital Media Department, which is responsible for managing and producing digital content.

Smith too recently left Forbes, but not for another CDO title: He's now vice president of revenue platforms and operations at Hearst Magazines Digital Media, where he reports to the company's president and is responsible for aligning technology, content creation and advertising.
It's perfectly natural to create a C-level role when the technology is new, but ... you can be a digital company without having a CDO.
Mark McDonald, Gartner

Which leads to the question: will the CDO craze last, or is it simply an interim title useful in the short term for corporations undergoing digital transformation?

Sreenivasan says CDOs are new and needed today (and notes that Columbia plans to hire a replacement CDO to fill his position), but acknowledges that could certainly change in the future. "I imagine there was once a chief telephone officer at Columbia long ago, but that wasn't needed after people figured out how to use the phone. This job could go that way, that someday they won't need somebody with this title."

McDonald, the Gartner analyst, agrees. "It's perfectly natural to create a C-level role when the technology is new, but as the organization builds an understanding of that technology, it works its way back into core operations. You can be a digital company without having a CDO."

Nigel Fenwick, an analyst with Forrester Research, said he certainly sees the role of a digital content leader, but not necessarily the CDO title, sticking around for enterprises.

"There's a need to put your arms around your digital business, absolutely," says Fenwick. "I completely believe that that is going to be a strategy for businesses going forward. This is partly why the executive level sometimes has to shake things up a bit to get things where they need to get to. [The CDO title] is one way of doing it."

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Just like that, Android 4.3 is out, ahead of its release date

Yes, the latest Jelly Bean has gone public already, plus: the HTC One kind-of-mini, malware scares, and HP's supposed Android phone

In the same way that watched pots never boil, hotly anticipated Android versions often aren’t released when we think they should be. However, turn your back for a second and bang – suddenly Jelly Bean 4.3’s all over the Internet.

It was a somewhat odd way for the new software to make its debut – leaking quietly onto Google+ via a guy named Jeff Williams, who apparently bought a Nexus 4 running Android 4.3 on Craigslist from a Googler. (The comments on the post are worth a read.)

Android Police has further details on Jeff’s odyssey, which carried him from Google+ into an IRC chatroom on Freenode, where eager Android geeks talked him through the process of doing a system dump so that the software could be examined and passed around the Internet.

While Android 4.3 isn’t all that exciting in and of itself – Android Central says that most of the changes are on the back end – it’s nevertheless a pretty significant leak.

And it’s even more significant, besides, since Google “coincidentally” has chosen to schedule a major Android event for this Wednesday in San Francisco. It seems likely that this will be the official roll-out – though Google, as usual, isn’t letting anything definitive slip – for the new version of Jelly Bean, and could even see the company release the long-awaited Nexus 7 refresh. (The hardworking folks at Android Central come up big again, having apparently gotten their mitts on some pictures of the new tablet.)

* The HTC One mini became official on Thursday, keeping most of the features of the full-size variant while getting a little bit more compact. The usual tradeoffs are there – the screen isn’t as high-res and the internal hardware has been dialed back – but most of the functionality from the regular One is still present, including the new camera, speakers and, of course, the vaunted aluminum construction.

That’s all well and good, of course, but it’s also worth pointing out that the device isn’t actually that much smaller than the original One – according to CNET, it loses about a fifth of an inch from both its height and width. (The review also notes, however, that this still makes a substantial difference to how the One mini feels in the hand.)

A lot, of course, will depend on the One mini’s cost, which was not announced. At $100 on-contract and below, I feel like it makes for a fairly compelling bargain. Much more than that, however, and it’s tougher to see the value.

* Sigh. Just when you thought the stories about Android malware were over, here they are again: A recent study from Juniper Networks says that 92% of all mobile malware targets Android devices, as of March 2013. That’s up from less than 25% in 2010.

It’s not really much of a surprise, of course – Android has exploded in popularity since 2010, and the more loosely regulated app ecosystem (when compared to That Other Mobile Platform) has to be a tempting target for unscrupulous hackers.

Still, as long as you’re careful about what you allow to be installed on your Android device – hint: stick to the Play Store, for the most part – you’ll likely avoid most of the nasties out there.

The Android phone marketplace is crowded. Although I mostly discuss Samsung, HTC and Motorola in this piece, Sony and LG are making plays for greater market share, and there’s a host of companies like Huawei, ZTE and Pantech also doing business in Android phones.

Now, according to a report from PhoneArena, none other than HP is looking to grab off its own hunk of the Android smartphone market, citing an anonymously-sourced render of an essentially hypothetical HP Android phone.

Let that sink in for a minute: HP Android phone. Woof.

HP exec Yam Sin Yu points out PhoneArena did indeed say earlier this month that HP needs a presence in the mobile space, so the timing of the leak “is awfully fascinating.”

Personally, I would describe the timing as “highly suspicious” rather than “awfully fascinating,” and given the anonymous source, complete lack of pricing, feature and availability info, and general flimsiness of the rumor, I can officially declare myself “totally unconvinced.”

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Can your IP address give away your identity to hackers, stalkers and cybercrooks?

In today's world of hackers, stalkers and cybercriminals, not to mention government spy programs and commercial sites that collect information about you for advertising purposes, is there a way to surf the Web and keep your privacy intact? Or does that mere fact that you have an IP address mean that your identity is out there for the taking?

(7 ways to mask your Internet identity)
Turns out, there’s no easy answer to this question. (Watch the slideshow version.)

Legally, an IP address does not constitute personal identifiable information, according to two recent court cases.

In July 2009, in a case involving Microsoft, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that IP addresses do not constitute personal identifiable information (PII). And in a separate case in 2011, the Illinois Central District Court also ruled that an IP address does not — by itself — qualify as personal information that can accurately identify a specific Internet user.

Alan Webber, a research analyst at the Altimeter Group, agrees that "with the exception of law enforcement personnel who have other tools and methods to match IP addresses to a variety of sources (which provide additional information); at this time, an IP address, alone, cannot identify a specific person."

He adds, "However, when combined with other information, such as a user name, then yes, the IP address can reveal your identity."

Scott Crawford, managing research director at Enterprise Management Associates, explains that an IP address identifies a host on a specific network or subnet. That subnet may identify a set of logical addresses that can, in some cases, be associated with a physical location. For example, there could be an address range associated with ISP subscribers in a certain area.

Crawford emphasizes that when correlated to more specific information (such as address, browsing activity, or other data collected), during the course of online transactions; for example, the IP address can be associated with that activity or with a specific location. Although ISPs often assign addresses dynamically through protocols such as DHCP, it’s not uncommon for a single, physical location (such as a home) to retain the same IP address for a long period of time. "Once the specific personal data is linked to the IP address, the activity associated with that address can be correlated accordingly," adds Crawford.
It can be done

Andrew Lee, CEO of London Trust Media, Inc./PrivateInternetAccess.com (a VPN service that protects users' privacy and identity), says linking users to their IP address is not simple, but it can be done. Many email providers, some IRC networks, extreme tracking sites, poorly configured forums and design flaws in applications such as Skype and AOL (among others) have disclosed users' identities along with their IP addresses.

He adds that email providers have been known to leak IP addresses to advertisers, market researchers, and other such agencies and some emails (like those from mailing lists) are indexed by Google. "Thus, the IP becomes searchable," Lee says. "Programs such as skypegrab.info (now inactive), which reveals users' personal data are developed every day by programmers across the globe. Extreme tracking sites link IPs to Google searches and make them public. And business websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. — in addition to ad targeting companies — already have your personal info linked to your IP address in their databases. Anyone with access to those databases, including those with legitimate or illegitimate access (such as hackers), can obtain any and all of that information."

David Gorodyansky, CEO of AnchorFree's HotspotShield (an Internet security solution that includes anonymous browsing) agrees the IP address can be linked to a specific individual's name, address, and other personally identifiable information. According to Gorodyansky, hackers and malware programs attempt to compromise user identities by gaining access to their IP address and then tracking them on the web.

"An IP is like your digital address," Gorodyansky says. "It provides intel on the city and state of the ISP location, which can be linked back to a residential address if accessing a Wi-Fi hotspot from home. Based on the IP address, companies and hackers collect information about individuals without knowing specific details such as their name. Third party websites and hackers can collect this data and, for example, use it to identify your name and steal or resell your identity and/or track your web browsing habits."
Surfers, beware

John Kindervag, a security and risk analyst at Forrester, says that the IP address can be tracked, but with some limitations. The IP header should not have any personal information in it. The mapping of the IP address is performed at the ISP level and, since there is no real user information in the headers, the assumption is that since person A lives at the location where the IP address is assigned, then person A created the traffic.

"This is a flawed assumption," Kindervag says. "Person A's network could be compromised, especially if it's wireless, to hide the identity of an attacker. Attackers always spoof their IP address, sometimes by using someone else's network and sometimes by going through a proxy server located in some other country. The attacker could live next door, but make his/her traffic look like it came from Eastern Europe."

According to Andrew Lewman, executive director at the Tor Project (a free anonymity online service), lots of companies use GeoIP databases to determine where a potential or actual customer is located in the world and then directs the marketing pitches appropriately. "Criminals also use GeoIP databases to target geographic areas for various malware attacks (English vs. French vs. Spanish languages, donation scams based on localized events). Child molesters and kidnappers can also use the IP address to track where a potential victim is located and further convince the victim that they are local and friendly," Lewman says.

"The greatest danger here, in my opinion, is from malware such as toolbars and other downloaded utilities that can secretly and systematically collect information and interfere with communications," cautions Andrew Frank, research vice president at Gartner. "IT professionals should prioritize malware prevention and home users should enforce basic rules about not opening unknown email attachments, how to identify suspicious sites, and regular use of a virus protection service. IT professionals concerned about this should talk to their ISP about proxy services and other privacy protection methods that may be available. And last, concerned citizens should support common-sense privacy options that give them choice and control over tracking and targeting, but should recognize that illegal tracking is unlikely to be curtailed by any new privacy laws."

How to mask your IP address
In addition to caution regarding how much personal information you disclose on the Internet, you can further protect your privacy by hiding or masking your IP address. The easiest and most effective solutions are anonymous proxy servers or VPN software and services. An anonymous proxy server functions as a liaison between your home network or computer and the Internet. It requests information, on your behalf, using its own IP address instead of yours, so only the proxy's IP address is revealed instead of your home IP address.

VPN protection generally requires that you download a software product that works with the company’s VPN services, which bounce your connections around the globe through various distributed networks. These ‘virtual’ tunnels burrow through the Internet landscape creating a random path, which thwarts traffic analysis.

If you search for ‘proxy servers,’ ‘VPN services,’ or ‘hide my IP address,’ note that dozens of products are available; some free and some with fees. The Tor Project is a free “onion routing project” that was originally designed for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which provides multiple privacy services including IP protection. Fee-based VPN products include Private Internet Access, Hotspot Shield, Banana VPN, Black Logic, and Unblock Us. Free proxy services include Hide My Ass and Mega Proxy, and fee-based services include Proxy Solutions and AllAnonymity.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Memo from Steve Ballmer to Microsoft Employees: Let's go!

Memo from Steve Ballmer to Microsoft Employees: Let's go!
Microsoft high priority: enterprise information assurance

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced a reorganization of the company around four areas: operating systems; devices and studios; applications and services; and cloud and enterprise.

He says in a memo to all Microsoft Employees that the reshuffling will give priority to corporate custom

The sweeping changes will be phased in over the rest of 2013, keeping existing teams that are in charge of Windows 8.1, Xbox One, Windows Phone and other top-priority products firing on all cylinders until a smooth transition can be made, he says.

After the reorganization teams that span groups will be in charge of key technologies and services with each team headed by a champion who reports directly to Ballmer or to someone else who reports directly to Ballmer.

“We will also have outgrowths on those major initiatives that may involve only a single product group,” he says. “Certainly, succeeding with mobile devices, Windows, Office 365 and Azure will be foundational. Xbox and Bing will also be key future contributors to financial success.”

Here’s the full note Ballmer sent to employees to describe the reorganization:

From: Steve Ballmer

To: Microsoft - All Employees

Date: July 11, 2013, 6 a.m.

Subject: One Microsoft

Today, we are announcing a far-reaching realignment of the company that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world.

Today’s announcement will enable us to execute even better on our strategy to deliver a family of devices and services that best empower people for the activities they value most and the enterprise extensions and services that are most valuable to business.

This company has always had a big vision — to help people realize their full potential. In the earliest days, it was by putting a PC on every desk and in every home. We’ve come farther than we could have imagined. The impact we have collectively made on the world is undeniable, and I am inspired when talented new hires say they chose Microsoft because they want to change the world — that’s what we do today, and that’s what we’ll do tomorrow.

Sharpening Our Strategy
About a year ago, we embarked on a new strategy to realize our vision, opening the devices and services chapter for Microsoft. We made important strides — launching Windows 8 and Surface, moving to continuous product cycles, bringing a consistent user interface to PCs, tablets, phones
and Xbox — but we have much more to do.

Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most.

We will do this by leveraging our strengths. We have powered devices for many years through Windows PCs and Xbox. We have delivered high-value experiences through Office and other apps. And, we have enabled enterprise value through products like Windows Server and Exchange. The form of delivery shifts to a broader set of devices and services versus packaged software. The frontier of high-value scenarios we enable will march outward, but we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw.

This memo shows you how far we have developed our thinking on our strategy for high- value activities based on devices and services delivery.

Driving Our Success
It is also clear to me and our leadership that we must do an extraordinary job to succeed in this modern world. We have delivered many great products and had much success in market, but we all want more. That means better execution from product conceptualization and innovation right through to marketing and sales. It also means operational excellence in cloud services, datacenter operations, and manufacturing and supply chain that are essential in a devices and services world. To advance our strategy and execute more quickly, more efficiently, and with greater excellence we need to transform how we organize, how we plan and how we work.

Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the whole company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and working together with more collaboration and agility around our common goals.

This is a big undertaking. It touches nearly every piece of what we do and how we work. It changes our org structure, the way we collaborate, how we allocate resources, how we best empower our engineers and how we market.

One Strategy, One Microsoft
We are rallying behind a single strategy as one company — not a collection of divisional strategies. Although we will deliver multiple devices and services to execute and monetize the strategy, the single core strategy will drive us to set shared goals for everything we do. We will see our product line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maximum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute to the success of core offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA offer, Bing, Skype, Dynamics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company will contribute to activating high-value experiences for our customers.

We will reshape how we interact with our customers, developers and key innovation partners, delivering a more coherent message and family of product offerings. The evangelism and business development team will drive partners across our integrated strategy and its execution. Our marketing, advertising and all our customer interaction will be designed to reflect one company with integrated approaches to our consumer and business marketplaces.

How we organize our engineering efforts will also change to reflect this strategy. We will pull together disparate engineering efforts today into a coherent set of our high-value activities. This will enable us to deliver the most capability — and be most efficient in development and operations — with the greatest coherence to all our key customers. We will plan across the company, so we can better deliver compelling integrated devices and services for the high-value experiences and core technologies around which we organize. This new planning approach will look at both the short-term deliverables and long-term initiatives needed to meet the shipment cadences of both Microsoft and third-party devices and our services.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at examkingdom.com

EMC battles rogue backups

EMC is providing new controls that will allow its storage systems to handle backup, archiving and disaster recovery

With a new set of hardware and software releases, EMC is promising to simplify its customers' storage infrastructure by combining different types of operation into a single EMC system.

"We see this convergence of storage with modern systems, where you can think about backup, archiving and disaster recovery as an integrated process, rather than three separate processes," said David Goulden, president and chief operating officer of EMC.

On Wednesday, the company will unveil a new midrange tier of Data Domain storage systems, updates to its Avamar and NetWorker backup software, and an update to its Mozy data storage service. The updates are part of a new approach to storage EMC is developing, one it says will allow its customers to use their primary storage systems to execute backup, archiving and disaster recovery functions as well.

"You can't just keep backing up data the way you did before. You need more intelligence in the backup system," Goulden said. "Backup software is moving up a level, and is becoming more of a catalogue and journaling of all the things in the protection storage tier."

When it comes to storage, many organizations have what Goulden calls an "accidental architecture." Part of the problem stems from how organizations run their backup networks separately from their storage networks, Goulden said. The backup systems have their own policies about when they back up material and how quickly they provide a copy when the original is compromised.

Many program managers have opted to create their own backup systems, either in the cloud or using an additional on-premise system. As a result, many organizations have, in effect, rogue backup systems that can drive up IT costs and potentially create architectural complexity and security issues.

EMC's pitch is to integrate the backup and archiving functions within the storage infrastructure itself, rather than to run each as a stand-alone system, Goulden explained.

Most organizations have used EMC storage for their primary storage. The company is now working to provide controls for widely used third-party applications that would allow administrators to manage backups from directly within the applications themselves.

"We see that traditional backup industry transitioning. Backup is becoming a feature, not a product," Goulden said.

As part of this week's launch, EMC has introduced the Data Domain DD2500, DD4200, DD4500 and DD7200 systems. For this set of Data Domain releases, EMC has developed plug-ins for SAP HANA and Oracle Exadata systems that would offer administrators of these programs the option of backing them up to Data Domain. The company has also created integration points with archiving applications from OpenText, IBM and Dell.

While tape backups are often seen as a less expensive alternative to disks, Goulden argued that disk-based systems can bring a return on the additional investment. Data Domain systems, for instance, have deduplication technologies that can cut storage requirements by as much as 30 percent. An organization can also use the disk backups as the basis of a disaster recovery system, which would eliminate the cost of running a separate system for that functionality, Goulden said.

Overall, the new systems are four times as fast and 10 times as scalable as the midrange EMC platforms they replace, according to the company. A DD7200 system can serve up to 26 terabytes per hour using the company's DD Boost protocol. The system can store up to 428 terabytes, or 1.7 petabytes in a clustered configuration. These systems can support up to 540 data streams, a threefold increase from earlier iterations. Overall, they provide a 38 percent lower cost per gigabyte, EMC claims.

EMC has sold more than 36,000 Data Domain systems since its launch in 2003, the company said.

The new version of EMC's Avamar software product brings new backup capabilities to virtualized environments. A new feature in Avamar 7, VM Instant Access, allows a VMware-based virtual machine (VM) to be booted from an EMC Data Domain system in under two minutes. It also now offers a VMware vSphere client so that administrators can back up their VMs directly from the VMware management console. Avamar can also now back up Isilon network-attached storage (NAS) arrays.

The EMC NetWorker backup and recovery software has been updated as well. NetWorker can now deliver backups to Data Domain systems through Fibre Channel, cutting the time of backing up material by potentially as much as 50 percent. Restoring data can be made two-and-a-half times as fast with this setup as well. Version 8.1 comes with a new Wizard-style interface.

EMC acquired both Avamar and NetWorker technologies in separate company purchases: Avamar in 2006 and Legato in 2003. Over time, EMC will downplay the brand names and offer both products as components under the Data Protection Suite, Goulden said.

"The products will increasingly come together," he said. "No enterprise has only one app, so you need a suite of tools. So essentially what we are saying is, license this suite and as your needs change, you can use more of one piece than another."

EMC has also updated its Mozy storage backup service to make it easier for enterprises to use. The service now allows organizations to manage multiple accounts in storage pools. Rather than each account getting its own storage quota, an organization can pool all the accounts into one single quota, which means individual users won't have to spend as much time worrying about how much storage they've used. A new form of activation will allow users to sign on to the service without an authentication key, which EMC says could cut activation time considerably.

EMC will provide more details about the new products at a webcast launch to be held Wednesday.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Top open source network management tools

Zenoss Core edges Nagios Core, NetXMS and OpenNMS in four-product roundup

As networking continues to expand and diversify, encompassing a growing number of wired and wireless devices, the demand for network monitoring tools remains high. While feature-packed commercial products abound, the growing market for monitoring tools has also fueled robust offerings from the open source community.

We reviewed four popular open source products - Nagios Core 3.5, NetXMS 1.2.7, OpenNMS 1.10.9 and Zenoss Core 4.2. All four products are mature, have extensive monitoring capabilities similar to their enterprise-grade counterparts, and are currently updated with good community support.

The products offer event management, performance monitoring, alerting and reporting on network devices such as servers, routers, switches, printers, UPSs, websites, business applications and mobile devices. Monitoring can be as simple as a PING request to a single device to full-fledged management using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) or a native agent.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at examkingdom.com

Windows 8 Update: 256GB Surface Pro coming to U.S. for $1,199

Windows 8 Update: 256GB Surface Pro coming to U.S. for $1,199
Also: Buying Microsoft Surface in bulk, luring ISVs to rewrite established business apps for Windows 8

The 256GB Surface Pro tablet that has been selling in Japan for the past few weeks will be available in the U.S. in four to six days, according to a listing on the Web site of reseller CDW.

With a keyboard added the device acts as a full Windows 8 touchscreen laptop. With the keyboard detached it’s a tablet/notebook.
For $1,199 (plus either $119 or $129 for one of two keyboard options) it’s not an inexpensive option, but the beefed up storage over the previous 128GB top-of-line Surface could make it an attractive option to businesses considering a shift to Windows 8. The device would be best suited to workers who travel and have touch-centric applications they rely on, but also work with traditional Windows mouse-and-keyboard apps.

RELATED: Microsoft: Desperately wooing developers with new app features, gifts

OPTIMISM: Ballmer: Happiness is a Windows 8 device with a touchscreen

MORE: 10 factors that hobbled Windows 8 and what Windows 8.1 might do to fix them

The storage is in a solid state system, so there’s no hard drive.

According to The Next Web Microsoft says, “There will be limited availability of a 256GB version of Surface Pro in the U.S. exclusively through the commercial channel and the authorized Surface resellers.”

Buy in bulk

Microsoft is letting distributors, value added resellers and other resellers carry Surface devices to sell directly to their business customers so they don’t have to buy through Windows stores or stand on their heads to get special volume shipments through Microsoft itself.

Besides an easier purchase, what does that mean for business customers? An extended warranty, accidental damage coverage, asset tagging, custom imaging, kitting, onsite service and support, device recycling and data protection, according to the Surface Blog written by Cyril Belikoff, the director Surface marketing for Microsoft.

The first wave of resellers is CDW, CompuCom Systems, Inc., En Pointe Technologies, Insight Enterprises, Inc., SHI International Corp., Softchoice, Softmart, PC Connection, Inc., PCM, Inc. and Zones Inc., the blog says.

This is just the first phase, with the program being extended to other distributors and resellers in other countries over the next few months, Belikoff writes.

Rewriting apps for Windows 8

Microsoft has launched AppsForSurface, a program for ISVs that want to write key enterprise apps for Windows 8, according to Bellikoff’s blog.

So far the program has signed up AirStrip, Citrix, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Sage. That group indicates an interest in healthcare, small-business accounting and publishing as vertical markets Microsoft wants to woo.

Slots for participants are limited, but Bellikoff doesn’t say what the limit is.

100K apps available at Windows Store

Microsoft says it now has more than 100,000 Windows 8 applications for sale in the Windows Store. That’s a pretty fast ramp up, faster even than it took Apple to attract that number of iOS applications to its store.

But as the AppsForSurface effort shows, the 100,000 applications in the Windows store don’t have the mix Microsoft wants.

More popular than Vista

Windows 8 is now the third most used desktop operating system, behind only Windows 7 and Windows XP. It has surpassed Windows Vista and is within a few percentages of beating out all the OS X versions as measured by Web analytics firm Net Applications.
With 5.1% of Web traffic attributed to Windows 8, it is still considerably behind Windows 7, with 44.37%, and Windows XP, with 37.17%.

The combination of OS X 10, OS X 10.6 and OS X 10.7 accounts for 6.63%.

Windows 8 runs on Xbox One

At the Microsoft Build 2013 developers’ conference last week, Microsoft Vice President Steve Guggenheimer let drop that if they want to write games for Xbox One, developers can just write them for Windows 8.

Why? Because Xbox One includes a Windows 8 core as well as a gaming core. That should make for some creative Xbox One apps.

---

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com