Storage software market sees signs of life, but no major recovery

The storage software market showed signs of rebounding in the second quarter, but is still falling short of the pace set last year. Within the storage software market, revenue for replication products grew 5% compared with the first quarter of this year, and data protection and recovery revenue was 3% higher than in the first quarter. Worldwide, storage software vendors raked in $2.8 billion in revenue in the quarter, down nearly 10% vs. the second quarter of 2008, according to an IDC report issued last week.\ However, some positive signs emerged. Revenue for device management and archiving software has also grown slightly since the beginning of 2009. "The storage software market is slowly starting to recover with positive growth over the first quarter of 2009," IDC analyst Michael Margossian said in a press release.

Globally, revenue for external disk storage systems was $4.1 billion in the second quarter, an 18% decline year-over-year. However, IDC cautioned that growth between the first and second quarters is typical, so the year-over-year comparisons are more significant. 9 data storage companies to watch   While last week's report covers storage software, IDC this month also reported that storage hardware sales continue to struggle. The network disk storage market declined 15% year-over-year. EMC led the storage software market with 22.4% of revenue in the second quarter, ahead of Symantec (18.5%), IBM (11.5%) and NetApp (8.5%). EMC also leads the external disk storage systems market with 21.5% of worldwide revenue. This was the third straight year enterprise storage systems revenue declined in the second quarter.

Microsoft pushes switchover deal for CRM Online

Microsoft is trying to steal away Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM on Demand customers with a new offer that will provide them with six months' access to its own CRM Online application at no charge if they sign a 12-month contract. That compares to $65 per month per user for Salesforce.com Professional. Microsoft charges US$44 per month per user for CRM Online Professional edition. Oracle CRM on Demand pricing starts at $70 per month per user.

Microsoft will consider expanding access to customers of other CRM products once it sees how well the program is received, Wilson said. Meanwhile, Microsoft's application is comparable from a feature standpoint and "already about 35 percent cheaper" than the competition, said Brad Wilson, general manager of Dynamics CRM. The six-month offer is valid through the end of this year. Six months is about how long it takes a customer to know for sure whether an application is right for their business, said Ray Wang, partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group. For one thing, a customer and Oracle or Salesforce.com may have a year-to-year deal, which might still be in effect when the six-month trial period expires, Wang said. But potential hurdles lie in the way of a smooth transition over to CRM Online, he added. While contract terms may allow the customer to cancel, they may not get a refund on the year's remaining fees, according to Wang. "Hopefully you'd be [signed up] month-to-month.

Microsoft on Monday also announced price cuts for its Business Productivity Online Suite. It's good to check and see where you are in that process." Overall, however, "users win" in price wars like this, Wang said. Other SaaS (software as a service) vendors, such as NetSuite, have made a steady stream of financial enticements in recent months too, as sales slowed during the global recession. It is also planning to roll out the software worldwide in the second half of 2010, he said. Salesforce.com has also quietly lowered monthly per-user fees for its two lowest-end editions, Contact Manager and Group Edition, to $5 and $25 respectively, down from $9 and $35. Meanwhile, Microsoft is announcing the CRM switch-over deal in conjunction with an update to CRM Online, Wilson said.

The service is now available in North America. No credit card information is required to sign up, although users need to provide an e-mail address. In the new release, Microsoft made signing up for CRM Online "super-simple," he said. They can then start a free trial with either Microsoft's Outlook client or a browser-based interface, Wilson said. A series of help tools provide information on setup and maintenance. Thirty-day trials include sample data so users can begin experimenting with the system.

Microsoft has also developed an improved data import wizard. In addition, mobile access is available at no additional charge for any phone with a HTML 4.0-compliant Web browser. "We specifically tried to engineer [the application] to make it really easy for people who don't have CRM systems," Wilson said.

China rules Microsoft violated intellectual property rights

A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems, state media said Tuesday. Microsoft plans to appeal the case, a company representative said in a statement. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court this week ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, state broadcaster CCTV said. The ruling comes as Barack Obama visits China for his first time as U.S. president.

A U.S. business association this week appealed to Obama for further efforts to protect intellectual property rights in China, where pirated copies of DVDs and computer software including Windows are widely sold on streets and in bazaars. The visit has brought renewed focus on tensions over piracy and the trade of high-tech products between the countries. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Microsoft agrees with the court that the key in the two cases is a dispute over the scope of licensing agreements, the Microsoft representative said. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property from Windows 98 to Windows XP. The court reportedly also ruled that Microsoft's use of a Chinese input system from Zhongyi did not violate any licensing agreements. But it disagrees with the ruling on the coverage of the agreements, which it believes also include its use of the fonts, the representative said.

Pirated versions of Windows 7 were on sale in one Beijing bazaar weeks before the software officially went on sale last month. Windows XP is the most widely used OS in Chinese offices and homes, but countless users run pirated copies. Microsoft offers Windows 7 in China for a lower price than in developed markets, and often labels its software "legal" to differentiate it from the pirated versions common in the country. Windows 7 Home Premium costs 699 yuan (US$103) in China, compared to $199.99 in the U.S.

PerfectForms: Nearly Perfect

One of the most common functions of a Web site is to gather data. Making the results look good is even harder. Building forms absorbs a huge amount of time and energy if you try to do it "old school" by which I mean getting out your Web content editor and wrangling HTML in an attempt to produce an effective form.

There are some editing tools, both online and desktop applications, that will help build HTML forms but to build a really good-looking, easy-to-use and "intelligent" forms you need to turn to a Flash-based solution. Launched as a beta in September '08 and fully released in December of that year, PerfectForms (PF) provides a graphical editor with which to build and modify your forms all delivered through either a hosted or in-house Web service. Today's focus, PerfectForms, does just that. Something that impresses me is that PF sees forms not just as forms but as workflows and integrates them with databases, Web services, text files, directory services, as well as other forms. PerfectForms offers a huge number of form components that range from the normal form elements such as labels and text fields to advanced features such as timers and CAPTCHA controls. This allows for complex, data-driven systems of forms to implement complex business processes.

PF also allows you to attach "behaviors" to form components so that, for example, mousing over an image can reveal a set of hidden fields. PF forms can be embedded in Web pages hosted on other servers and there's an optional lookup agent component to control access on an IP restriction basis so you can create a secure integration with in-house systems. When a form is completed or individual components or groups of components are used you can have a notification generated in the dashboard log and or by e-mail. PerfectForms also offers API access so that you can create new form instances (analogous to creating a database entry), populate form fields of an instance with data, update existing form fields in already submitted instances, delete a form instance, and read data from an existing form instance (i.e. read a database record). Another thing that impresses me about PerfectForms is that they "get" something that so many online utility services fail to get: That look and feel really matter. That's not to say the product is perfect yet – there are a few user interface issues that need to be resolved but even so, the current version of PerfectForms is still perhaps the most advanced product of its kind in the market. These are issues that profoundly affect how your product is perceived by users and both the forms that PerfectForms generates as well as the editor interface are great looking.

PerfectForms currently has more than 2,500 users including NASA, the Forestry Service, and most major banks. If you'd prefer to run PerfectForms on your own server (requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008, .Net 2.0 framework, IIS with ASP.net v2.0, MSSQL Server 2005 SP3 or MSSQL 2008, and an SMTP/IMAP service) the price is $600 per designer seat. Pricing for the hosted service is by "designer", that is, each person who manages and edits forms, at a very reasonable $30 per month per seat.

Microsoft denies blame for 'black screens of death'

Microsoft today denied that its November Windows updates are causing a widespread "black screen" lock-out of users' PCs. "Microsoft has investigated reports that its November security updates made changes to permissions in the registry that are resulting in system issues for some customers," Christopher Budd, Microsoft's security spokesman, said in an e-mail. "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports." The report Budd referred to stemmed from a blog post by U.K.-based security vendor Prevx last week that claimed recent Windows updates changed Access Control List (ACL) entries in the registry, preventing some installed software from running properly. Since that initial report, Prevx has called out a pair of updates, one in late November and the other from last July, as the cause of the black screen lock-out. "The conditions under which the actual black screen is triggered are spasmodic," admitted Dave Kennerley of Prevx's support team in an update to the original blog post of last week. "Some test systems always trigger the condition, others are less consistent. The result, said Prevx, is a black screen, sometimes dubbed "black screen of death" in an allusion to the "blue screen of death" that Windows puts up after a major system crash. The windows patches which seem common to the issue arising are & KB915597 and KB976098 ." Kennerley's use of the word "spasmodic" is a turn-about from his initial post of last Friday, which was headlined "Black Screen woes could affect millions on Windows 7, Vista and XP." Searches of Microsoft's support forums by Computerworld have found only one "black screen" thread with posts from last month.

Some outsiders were skeptical today of Prevx's contention that the black screen problem was due to the two updates Kennerley cited. Since yesterday, several additional users have reported that their PCs have been afflicted with a black screen. "Received a patch on Nov 24 or 25. Upon reboot the computer has a totally black screen," said a user identified only as "General Zod" in a message added to the thread around 2:30 p.m. ET today. "Not even the BIOS startup stuff appears." Kennerley also said that the flaw was in the WinLogon Shell registry entry for Explorer.exe, the name of Windows' file manager. "The entry exists perfectly in the registry but is unusable/inaccessible and is therefore ignored by the OS resulting in the desktop and task bar not being loaded," Kennerley added. Rafael Rivera, who writes the Within Windows blog - and most recently took Microsoft to task for lifting code from an open-source project for the company's Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT) - said his investigation pointed toward November's Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) update. But Microsoft was adamant that it was not at fault for any black screens. "We've conducted a comprehensive review of the November security updates, the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, and the non-security updates we released through Windows Update in November," Budd added. "That investigation has shown that none of these updates make any changes to the permissions in the registry. MSFT, which is upgraded and delivered to users automatically via Windows Update, detects and deletes malware that Microsoft has identified as pervasive and dangerous. "Those particular updates don't, gleaned from limited testing, touch the Shell registry entries," said Rivera in an interview conducted via instant messaging today. "I believe the only update that touched this part of the registry recently is the Malicious Software Removal Tool for November." Rivera pointed to one of MSRT's two malware detection updates last month as the most likely culprit. Thus, we don't believe the updates are related to the 'black screen' behavior described in these reports." Budd also said that Microsoft's technical support teams are "not seeing 'black screen' behavior as a broad customer issue."

IPhone, Wii game builder gets investment from VMware co-founder

VMware co-founder and former CEO Diane Greene has invested in a start-up in the video game industry and joined its board of directors. Top 10 must-have iPhone apps for gamersThe 10 Worst Video Game Systems of All TimeThe company's Series A investment round was led by Sequoia Capital and also included Greene and Atari CEO David Gardner. Greene, who was ousted from VMware by its owner EMC last year, is one of several investors putting $5.5 million into Unity Technologies, which makes a game platform for the Nintendo Wii, iPhone, PCs, Macs and Web browsers.

Greene and Sequoia partner Roelof Botha are joining Unity's board of directors. In 1998 Greene and her husband, Mendel Rosenblum, founded VMware, which launched the x86 server virtualization market and became one of the most influential companies in IT. Greene was fired in July 2008 and replaced with former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz. Unity makes a software development package with a 3D game engine. "The Unity platform is currently used in world class games such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online by Electronic Arts, the Quest for R2D2 by Lego and FusionFall by Cartoon Networks," the company says. "Earlier this year, Unity for iPhone was released and to date, more than 325 games are using the Unity engine to power their iPhone games, including Zombieville USA, one of the top 10 iPhone games measured by units sold." Unity's Web site shows a humorous side to the company, with statements such as "Fact: Unity is made of flying ninjas" and "All your phones are belong to us." Unity's CEO and co-founder is David Helgason, who previously worked with news and community integration, music distribution and consulting start-ups. Rosenblum, VMware's chief scientist, left the company shortly after Greene. Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

Greene also serves on the board of directors for the Intuit, a maker of business and financial management products, and is a member of the MIT Corporation, the college's governing body.

IBM smartphone software translates 11 languages

Researchers at IBM say they have created smart software that that translates text between English and 11 other languages including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Arabic. NetworkWorld Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring According to IBM the software, n.Fluent was developed from an internal IBM crowdsourcing project where Big Blue's nearly 400,000 employees in more than 170 countries, submit, update and continuously refine word translations. Hosted as an internal IBM service since August 2008, n.Fluent offers a secure real-time translation tool that translates text in web pages, electronic documents, Sametime instant message chats, and provides a BlackBerry mobile translation application.

Every time it's used, n.Fluent "learns" and improves its translation engine. IBM says its volunteers also work on DigiCapE and Agora, two other language-related crowdsourcing projects developed by IBM researchers. To date, the tool has been used by IBMers to translate more than 40 million words, IBM stated. n.Fluent is just one of many IBM language projects. These technologies let people to easily locate, transcribe, synchronize, tag, caption and share audio from a video file. IBM said the software is used internally for now but could make it into a product or service in the future. In 2007 IBM's India Research Laboratory developed speech recognition software for Hindi, one of the key languages in India.

Gartner called automated speech translation one of the grand challenges IT faces in the coming years. Some "rudimentary" automated speech translation systems have been created, but "the complexity extends further when translation and output is required to a target language that is understandable to a human," Gartner says. Natural language processing will be a key feature of computers after researchers resolve challenges related to speech synthesis and recognition, and machine translation. Language translation software is big business. The goal of GALE is to translate and distill foreign language material (television shows and newspapers) in near real-time, highlight salient information, and store the results in a searchable database - all with more than 90% accuracy by the end of the program. For example, researchers at BBN have taken in over $30 million from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency over the past few years to fill out the agency's Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program.

Through this process, GALE would help U.S. analysts recognize critical information in foreign languages quickly so they could act on it in a timely fashion.