The Nation’s IT Newsweekly
Feeding Domino 5.0
Lotus plans to enlarge the Domino
server by fortifying it with Web
development and HTTP support,
to be introduced in Version 5.0 and
subsequent releases. PAGE 3
New Channels for Cable
Analog modem makers are hooking
up to the hot communication tech-
nologies: DSL and cable. Motorola
and 3Com are readying devices;
Hayes may follow suit. PAGE 6
Security Takes the Stage at N+I
Over a dozen security vendors will
converge on NetWorld+Interop in
Atlanta this week, showcasing desk-
top IPSec, a hybrid firewall, attack
detection and other wares. PAGE 10
Bad Drives Crash HP Servers
HP warns that some NetServers
are crashing because of a buggy
Quantum hard drive that not only
has firmware flaws but also gives
off a gassy discharge. PAGE 14
MCI Pits NT vs. Solaris
MCI WorldCom will hold an internal
technical “bake-off” between So-
laris and MCIS for Windows NT as
the final step in choosing an OS for
its Internet dial service. PAGE 16
Fighting Cancer on the Web
Oncologists go online in a new
extranet that matches cancer
patients with clinical studies. By
speeding the process of applying
for trials, AOR SecureNet is helping
to save lives. PAGE 33
Privacy: Key to the E-Store
American Express knows that shop-
pers don’t leave their home page
without it: assurance that customer
data stays private. Many top e-com-
merce companies are implement-
ing privacy policies. PAGE 85
Case convenes
today. PAGE 8
USPS BEMIS BF965C FSM-1000 APPROVED AUTOMATABLE POLYWRAP
N E W S P A P E R
P E R I O D I C A LS
$3.95
October 19, 1998 • Volume 15, Number 42 • www.pcweek.com
Cover Story: Trying to untangle all the wireless data-access
options? PC Week Labs helps you choose by evaluating
the networks, devices and applications. PAGE 105
Caterpillar LAN Hack: Microsoft Pushes
A Lesson in Security VBA Tools for ERP
BY JIM KERSTETTER in relied on an outdated adminis-
or two weeks in september, trator’s account that was never
F hackers rummaged undetect-
ed through heavy-equipment
maker Caterpillar Inc.’s network.
deleted and poor password pro-
tection—both fundamental ele-
ments of network security. Call it
If you thought such an intrusion a case study in Security 101.
was possible only through the use
of sophisticated security software,
think again. The Caterpillar break-
Debates over proper encryp-
tion strengths and the benefits of
different types of firewalls mean
little if administrators fail to pay
attention to the fundamentals.
“Security is a process. It’s not
an event. It’s not a single audit or
security scan. It’s an ongoing ac-
tivity,” said Ted Julian, an analyst
at Forrester Research Inc., in Cam-
bridge, Mass. “You can stack se-
curity technology a mile high, but
if you have users doing stupid
things, that’s not going to matter.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 R
Customization with Visual Basic could
cut costs; SAP and Baan are targeted
BY ANTONE GONSALVES IN DENVER
n a major effort to expand
I its presence in the enterprise
arena, Microsoft Corp. is nego-
tiating licensing deals with major
ERP vendors to include VBA with
their respective products.
Microsoft is in discussions
with enterprise resource planning
developers Baan Co. and SAP
AG, according to Microsoft offi-
cials. Such deals could dramati-
cally lower the cost of modifying
ERP software, because develop-
ers would be able to build APIs
that make ERP data available to
Windows developers. Those Win-
Cisco Faces
Price Fight
At High End
BY PAULA MUSICH
et another competitor this
Y
week will take a swipe at a
networking Goliath, Cisco
Systems Inc., with a low-cost, high-
end router accelerator.
FlowWise Networks Inc. will
introduce a new, low-cost router
accelerator module that slips
into Cisco 7000 series router slots.
The FlowWise move adds to the
groundswell of lower-cost Layer
3 alternatives that is beginning to
shake Cisco’s well-entrenched
core user base.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 R
dows users could then manipulate
that data with Visual Basic for Ap-
plications.
Mike May, vice president of IT
at Teknion Furniture Systems,
in Toronto, said his company
spent $1 million for modifications
when it first bought Baan soft-
ware in 1993. “Every company
has to do something unique to
make the ERP application meet
their needs,” May said.
Corporations often have to hire
ERP specialists for as much as
$250 an hour to modify the ERP
software typically using propri-
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 R
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E W S 3

JOHN DODGE: THIS PC WEEK productivity applications, tools, games, is a company that makes big bets and ex-

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, and new media products. Imagine the fierce ecutes upon them over a series of years.
competition between these franchises, It’s not impossible that it would consider
whose origins would have been steeped something dramatic to achieve goals as well
But Sometimes It’s for the Best in brilliant market execution.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds, although
as to blunt the Department of Justice’s case.
Furthermore, such a concentration of
I haven’t figured out how the separate wealth at Microsoft equates to financially
s it just the microsoft pr machine at work again,

I or is the company really serious about excising soft-

ware bugs? Steve, I am a customer. Listen to me.
I frequently use three major Microsoft products:
operating system company would be any- unmotivated workers. There’s nothing
thing other than a monopoly. Regardless, quite as motivating as struggling to meet
it would be less able to freely
sidle up to other product
groups for potential monop-
SPLITTING MICROSOFT

Internet Explorer, Windows 98 and Word (I recently
threw in the towel on my DOS word processor and
joined the rest of the hapless human race).
They all crash a lot. Windows 98 seems
less stable than its predecessor. Just as of-
ten as not, it wants to install in safe mode,
indicating something isn’t right. The in-
stallation was nightmarish.
Microsoft’s relaxed schedule for in-
troducing new versions is another prob-
lem. Yes, better to ship clean than early,
but wouldn’t it be nice if there were
competitive pressure on Microsoft to ship
clean and fast? Microsoft can’t continue
to chalk up missed shipping deadlines to
just wanting to get it right. The refrain
rings hollow.
Microsoft has sent signals that Win-
INTO SEPARATE
the monthly mortgage pay-
ment. That fear means better
software. Complacency must
oly tying. Individual compa- COMPANIES COULD be a constant danger.
nies would actually have to What’s surprising is that
strike deals that make finan- SPEED IT TOWARD this is the “first time” quality
dows NT 5.0 could arrive toward the end cial sense, regardless of who ITS QUALITY GOALS. and customer contact have
of the first quarter of next year, but with the partner was. gotten the attention of the
100 show-stopper bugs in Beta 2, it’s Breaking up the company would be at- company’s top officers, according to a Mi-
hard to imagine the company shipping it tractive for everyone concerned. crosoft official quoted in Mike Moeller’s
any time soon. All the better if Microsoft did it volun- Page 8 story. Is this simply the boss read-
The final beta is due next month, and tarily. Look what happened with the Stan- ing a few angry customer letters and re-
word has it that June is the current target dard Oil trust. Within a few years, com- acting? Or will Steve Ballmer’s actions
date for the general release. panies broken out of the trust were result in sweeping and fundamental
Splitting Microsoft into separate com- bigger and more prosperous than the orig- change in the way Microsoft develops and
panies could speed it toward some of its inal. Same with the breakup of AT&T in releases software?
quality goals. Imagine the results if Mi- the ’80s. If it’s the latter, sometimes it takes a big-
crosoft faced external pressures to per- I haven’t asked Microsoft executives ger jolt than lip service, audits and other
form, which it doesn’t, despite its claims what they think of this idea, but it is my mere symbols of change. c
to the contrary. Imagine the wealth cre- impression that they reject it out of hand.
ated by IPOs for separate companies for I have few illusions that the process would Bug-free in Redmond. Can it happen?
operating systems and related products, be easy, painless or predictable. Microsoft Write me at john_dodge@zd.com.

Fattening Domino for Web

BY CHRISTY WALKER IN PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. RNext will enable developers to tive Directory has to supply us.”
otus development corp. last more easily take advantage of In the near term, Lotus, an IBM

L week outlined an extensive

plan to make its Domino serv-
er a more open Web application
Domino’s security and directory
as services. They will also include
a single public-key infrastructure,
subsidiary, announced last week
that it will integrate RealNetworks
Inc.’s RealSystems G2 audio and
platform. electronic commerce advance- video technology with Notes 5.0
At the company’s Lotus De- ments such as Secure Electronic and Domino 5.0 by year’s end.
veloper’s Conference here, offi- Transaction integration, and sup-
cials announced a plan to extend port for Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Front-page news
NetWorld+Interop kicks off in Atlanta this week, and Domino with support for addi- Java Server Pages. Lotus also announced support for
tional Web development tools, Domino RNext will further Microsoft’s FrontPage Web de-
PC Week editors, analysts and reporters will be HTTP engines, multimedia ap- leverage Microsoft technology velopment tool. The Domino De-
there to bring up-to-the-minute coverage of all the plications, development languages via support for Active Server sign Components for Microsoft
and Microsoft Corp. technology. Pages, Collaborative Data Ob- FrontPage, due as a free Web
news. From product introductions to technology up- The added support will mani- jects and ActiveX Data Objects. download early next year, will
dates to keynote addresses, PC Week will provide the fest itself in Lotus’ Domino 5.0 It will also make use of features provide developers with more
server and Notes 5.0 client for in Windows NT 5.0’s Active choices when building Domino-
total view of the world of networking, both current groupware, each due by year’s Directory and Microsoft’s Trans- based Web applications.
and future. end, and in a subsequent release action Server, according to Lo- In addition, Lotus is looking to
dubbed Domino RNext, accord- tus officials. support other development tools,
DOJ vs. Microsoft PC WEEK IN ACROBAT FORMAT ing to officials of the Cambridge, Lockheed Martin Idaho Tech- including NetObjects Inc.’s Team
Mass., company. No ship date has nologies Co., where Notes runs Fusion and Microsoft’s Visual
The oft-delayed, long-awaited Miss an issue of PC Week? The
been set for Domino RNext. on 5,500 clients, is considering us- InterDev and FrontPage 2000, in
trial between the Justice De- magazine is available in Acro-
Lotus intends to add to Domi- ing Active Directory, said Tom Domino RNext.
partment and Microsoft is due to bat format from our Web site’s no RNext support for HTTP Smith, project manager at the “This would facilitate another
get under way this week, and Downloads page (www.zdnet. stacks from Apache and Netscape Idaho Falls, Idaho, company. world for developers to reach into
teams of writers will be on site, com/pcweek/downloads/). Communications Corp. “We have initiated a directory the Domino development envi-
both inside and outside the court- Search our archives for all Lotus also plans to add support services project and will look at ronment ... and allow us to hire
room, to furnish coverage and the top stories, reviews and for Microsoft’s Internet Informa- that heavily,” said Smith. “To- non-Notes developers,” said Notes
commentary. columns. tion Server HTTP engine in Ver- day we run [Novell Inc.’s Novell user Jean-Pierre Ducondi, chief
sion 5.0 of Domino, officials said. Directory Services] and Domino, technology officer at MFJ Inter-
Features planned for Domino and we’re interested in what Ac- national Inc., in New York. c
PC Week (ISSN 0740-1604) is published weekly, except for a combined issue at year end and one additional issue in June, by ZD Inc. 1 Park Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. GST registration number for ZD Inc. is 14049 6720 RT. Single-copy price including first-class postage: $6.00. One-year subscription rates: U.S.
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 PC WEEK
6 N E W S OCTOBER 19, 1998

dem and a cable modem for telecom- nologies aren’t necessarily ready

Analog Modems on Rocks muters and branch offices that sup-

Vendors rewrite road maps to include DSL/cable products
BY JOHN G. SPOONER
hrinking profit margins and
port up to 16 PCs and tout security
features such as virtual private net-
work capabilities, officials said.
The company is also working
on deals with five top PC mak-
ers, each of which in November
access methods to drive cable routers, modems and USB (Uni- will begin announcing plans to ship
and digital subscriber line usage. versal Serial Bus) modems and internal PCI-based cable modems
for widespread corporate adoption.
Analysts say a build-out of net-
work infrastructure—a responsi-
bility of the carriers—isn’t hap-
pening fast enough to provide users
with a viable alternative to modems.
Two-way cable, for example, is
now available in about 20 percent
of the United States, while DSL

S user demand for increasingly

faster throughput are forcing
analog modem vendors to start
developing products for the next
hot communication technologies:
cable and DSL.
Motorola Inc. and 3Com Corp.
are planning big retail cable mo-
dem pushes for early next year
and are at work on additional ca-
ble devices based on the Data
Over Cable Systems Interoper-
ability Specification standard, due
in the first quarter.
To be sure, 56K-bps V.90 ana-
log modem connections are still
the cheapest and easiest way to re-
motely access corporate data and
the Internet. But massive price cuts
and flat sales will combine with
user demand for higher-bandwidth
These forces will also cause a will offer next spring a sub-$300
shakeout within a year that will cable modem and network inter-
leave only two or three modem face card bundle.
in PCs, 3Com officials said.
Motorola, which abandoned
the analog modem market earli-
will be available in only about 20
metropolitan areas by year’s end.
For this and reasons such as
vendors standing out of the ex- Later in the year, 3Com will in- er this year, has sold nearly 500,000 international support and ubiq-
isting seven or eight, Lisa Pelgrim, troduce an even cheaper USB mo- cable modems to date and is con- uity of service, some users are hap-
an analyst at Data- ducting West Coast trials for py to stick with analog modems.
quest Inc., in San Jose, telecommuters to access corpo- “There’s a whole mess of infra-
Calif., estimated. The analog modem’s shrinking returns rate networks, said company of- structure that needs to be built
“Modem makers ficials in Arlington Heights, Ill. first,” said Mark Margevicius,
are really going to have 80 Other vendors that have hit tur- desktop engineering manager at
a tough time [in 1999] 70 bulence in the industry, such as Key Services Corp., in Cleveland.
because there’s not a 60 Worldwide stalwart modem maker Hayes “56K ... still fits [our] need.”
shipments
clear upgrade path 50 Corp., are hot on the trail of a “We looked at [DSL and ca-
(in millions)
for [users],” Pelgrim 40 Revenues new product lineup. Hayes, of Nor- ble] five or six months ago for [re-
said. “The whole mar- 30 (in $ billions) cross, Ga., which earlier this month mote offices]. But we ended up go-
ket is suffering.” 20 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy ing with 56K leased lines,” said Jim
Modem giant 3Com 10
* protection for the second time due Nathlich, a technical analyst at
is betting on DSL and 0 to poor modem sales, last week in- Chevron Corp. in San Francisco.
cable. The Santa Clara, 1996 1997 1998** 1999** 2000** troduced new DSL modems. “Availability is an issue. Modems
*Due to price pressure, Dataquest warns vendors might not reach this number.
Calif., company offers **Projected Although vendors are embrac- are going to be the lowest common
Source: Dataquest Inc.
asymmetric DSL ing cable and DSL, those tech- denominator for a long time.” c

D I G E S T

NETWORKING
Jumbo Frames square up support
Microsoft at NetWorld+Interop this week
will join IBM and switch maker Alteon Net-
works in reiterating support for the Jum-
bo Frames capability in Windows NT.
Jumbo Frames reduces CPU utilization
and speeds transmission of IP packets by
increasing the size of the packet frame to
up to 9KB. Alteon officials claim that, with
Jumbo Frames, CPU utilization is cut in
half and TCP throughput is increased by
two-thirds. Alteon and Microsoft are writ-
ing Jumbo Frames drivers for NT 5.0.
Compaq, which also supports Jumbo
Frames, has licensed Alteon’s Jumbo
Frame-enabled adapter card for use with
Alpha servers.
Also at the Atlanta show, Fortress Technol-
ogies will introduce higher-speed encryption
hardware; Nexabit and Hitachi will announce
the first 16-channel OC-192 router interface
capable of connecting directly to dense wave-
length division multiplexing equipment; Gan-
dalf will release XpressConnect, a multipro-
tocol router; startup NBX will ship its NBX
100 voice-over-data phone system that runs
over the same Category 5 10BaseT Ether-
net wire used for corporate LANs; and
Lantronix will introduce thin servers.
INTERNET
USWeb weaves superstructure
USWeb last week unveiled its USWeb
Electronic Services Initiative, a “commer-
cial Internet superstructure” that comprises
two data centers—one in Santa Clara,
Calif., the other in Herndon, Va.—which
will host and maintain Internet-based appli-
cations for customers.
The service, billed as “application ag-
nostic,” will offer infrastructure services
such as e-mail, calendaring and videocon-
ferencing; transaction processing; supply
chain automation and banking links; sales
force automation; call center management;
help desk support; and integration with
legacy applications.
US Web last week announced its third-
quarter earnings, surprising analysts. The
company earned $835,000, or 2 cents per
share, on sales of $34 million; analysts had
expected a loss of 2 cents per share.
Novell deepens caching lineup
Novell is now beta testing the third version
of its BorderManager FastCache software.
Version 3.0, expected to ship by year’s
end, will offer bulk downloading of con-
tent, single sign-on security and a prefetch
capability that retrieves additional content
from a server before a browser makes re-
quests beyond the initial page. Pricing has
not been set.
Novell also this week will announce a
deal with SkyCache to use its satellite broad-
cast service to feed content to FastCache
2.1 and FastCache 3.0 customers for an
additional monthly fee.
MESSAGING
GTE dives into managed services
GTE this week will jump into e-mail and
Web form management with a new service,
designed to help reduce response times and
promote customer service on the Web.
The inResponse service grabs e-mail
messages and Web forms coming to cor-
porate Web sites; automatically sends no-
tification messages; and then routes the
messages to the appropriate users, tracks
them and reports on the message trails.
The Java application runs on Solaris and
Windows NT, integrates with Oracle 7.3 or
greater, and costs $59,950 for an unlimit-
ed number of users.
In addition, GTE this week will intro-
duce at N+I two new managed data service
offerings: SiteWatch, a managed cus-
tomer premises equipment offering for en-
terprise LANs and WANs, and Frame-
Watch, a managed connectivity transport
offering for other carriers.
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Microsoft ally gains Unix brand
Three years ago, Microsoft invested in Soft-
way Systems, a Unix-to-Windows NT port-
ing tool vendor, and commissioned Soft-
way to redo the beleaguered Posix subsystem
that’s been part of NT since its inception.
Last week, Softway announced the fruit
of that effort: Its Interix product, formerly
known as OpenNT, which runs on top of
NT Server 4.0, has earned the Unix 95 brand
from The Open Group. The Interix sub-
system replaces the NT Posix subsystem.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Symantec last week reached an agreement to
acquire Quarterdeck for $65 million. n Intel has
taken a 6 percent stake, worth $500 million,
in memory maker Micron Technology. n Philips
confirmed this week that it won’t produce
a Velo PDA based on Microsoft’s Handheld
PC Professional Edition platform but will
instead focus on its palm-size Nino, which
began shipping in June. N Oracle will roll out
this week Version 4.2 of its Internet Mes-
saging software for enterprise environments
and service providers and its new Unified
Messaging application for accessing e-mail,
voice mail and fax over the Internet using
a single mailbox. n Compaq announced last
week a $699 Presario PC based on Cyrix’s
M II chip. n A new study from Zona Re-
search indicates that Netscape’s Navigator
now resides on 60 percent of corporate desk-
tops, widening its lead over Microsoft’s In-
ternet Explorer in the business market.
n Remedy next week will ship the Remedy
Link for Palm Computing Platform 1.0, an
initiative to link its help desk software to
several handheld devices. c

8 N E W S
Microsoft, DOJ Hit the Courts
Trial is only the latest milestone on Microsoft’s long and winding legal road
BY MICHAEL MOELLER
fter more than two years of
A trying the case in the court of
public opinion, the govern-
ment is set to take its antitrust case
against Microsoft Corp. to court.
Barring a last-minute settle-
ment, which is now highly un-
likely, the battle that pits the Red-
mond, Wash., software company
against the U.S. Department of
Justice and 20 states commences
today in the courtroom of U.S.
District Judge Thomas Penfield
Jackson.
Over the coming weeks, each
side is due to call a dozen witnesses.
The DOJ is counting on testimo-
ny from Netscape Communica-
tions Corp. CEO Jim Barksdale
and Sun Microsystems Inc. fellow
James Gosling, among others, to
prove its claims.
For its defense, Microsoft is
turning to key employees such as
Paul Maritz, group vice presi-
dent of platforms and applications,
and Joachim Kempin, senior
vice president of the OEM divi-
sion at Microsoft.
The DOJ, which is scheduled
to go first, faces a series of chal-
lenges, including entering as ev-
idence all or most of its 1,229 ex-
hibits. The exhibits include
internal Microsoft e-mails and
Quality on the Line at Microsoft
Company to conduct audits of product development teams
BY MICHAEL MOELLER
icrosoft corp.,
M in an unprece-
dented move of
self-examination, has
launched a company-
wide internal audit of
its product develop-
ment process in an
effort to deliver more
reliable software. Ballmer: Angry over flaws. and letting product
Microsoft’s mis-
sion—which includes a series of
intense customer meetings—is Microsoft’s biggest product
to better understand how cus- launches—Windows 98 and Vis-
tomers use its software and to ual Studio 6.0—had serious flaws
develop quality assurance proce- for which service packs have been
dures for improving its products. developed and are due soon. A
Reports of the initiative fol- Windows 98 Service Pack goes into
lowed a serious tongue-lashing beta this month and will be avail-
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
CEO Michael Dell appeared be-
fore the Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee to testify on competition in
the software industry.
Throughout the spring, rumors
swirled that a second suit would
be filed by the DOJ and state at-
torneys general that would block
the release of Windows 98.
hundreds of pages of deposi- per-processor basis. and spent more than a year inves- The threat to Microsoft’s bot-
tions collected during the DOJ’s Microsoft’s legal woes were tigating. Last year, the DOJ acted tom line was tremendous. The
investigation. sparked again in August 1996,
“The DOJ has to get past the when Netscape sent a letter to the
colorful language used in the DOJ. In the letter, Gary Reback,
on its findings and filed a suit
against Microsoft that claimed
the company had willfully violat-
company launched campaigns—
including a New York pep rally—
to convince the world that harm
e-mails and prove that these were then outside counsel for the Moun- ed the 1995 consent decree. would come to the global econo-
specific business plans,” said Rich tain View, Calif., browser devel- The suit cited Section IV E 1 of my if Windows 98 were blocked
Gray, antitrust and intellectual oper, asked the agency to look into the decree, which it claims pro- or delayed.
property partner at Bergeson, Microsoft’s practice of withhold- hibited Microsoft from bundling On the morning of May 16, the
Eliopoulos, Grady & Gray LLP, ing APIs, creating exclusive OEM products and forcing the use of one day the lawsuit was expected to
based in San Jose, Calif. contracts, and bundling technolo- as a condition of the purchase of be filed, the DOJ agreed to hold
The trial, expected to last gies and products into its Windows another—specifically Microsoft’s its suit, and Microsoft agreed to
from four to six weeks, is the cul- operating system. practice of requiring computer delay shipment of the operating
mination of two years of govern- The DOJ bought into the claims OEMs to purchase Internet Ex- system for four days so the two par-
ment investigations, pub- plorer with Windows 95. ties could negotiate through the
lic relations ploys and Backed by evidence such as a weekend. Talks broke down, and
preliminary courtroom letter in which Microsoft threat- on May 18, Microsoft shipped Win-
skirmishes.
Trail of the trial ened to revoke Compaq Com- dows 98. The DOJ, along with 20
OCT. 20, 1997
Microsoft has been un- puter Corp.’s Windows 95 license states, filed its Sherman Antitrust
der legal scrutiny since DOJ files lawsuit against Microsoft charg- if it removed Internet Explorer, Act suit.
ing contempt of 1995 consent decree
1991, when the Federal the DOJ scored a victory in De- The DOJ’s case received a
DEC. 11, 1997
Trade Commission be- cember 1997 when Jackson issued major blow the following month,
gan looking at the com- U.S. District Court issues preliminary a preliminary injunction against however, when the U.S. Court of
pany’s potential mon- injunction against Microsoft; Microsoft. Appeals sided with Microsoft and
Microsoft appeals
opoly in the operating In it, Jackson ordered the com- overturned the lower court’s
MAY 18, 1998
system business. pany to offer computer makers a preliminary injunction.
In 1993, after dead- DOJ and 20 states file suit against version of Windows 95 without a In the following months, the
locking over a vote on Microsoft for violations of Sherman browser. Four days later, Micro- DOJ expanded its case to focus
Antitrust Act parts 1 and 2
how to move forward, the soft appealed. instead on Microsoft’s overall
JUNE 23, 1998
DOJ and the European business practices. The DOJ has
Commission weighed in. U.S. Court of Appeals overturns Scrutiny intensifies expanded its investigations into
preliminary injunction ruling in the
The result, in 1994, was a 1995 consent decree
The spotlight on Microsoft inten- Java, Microsoft’s dealings with
consent decree, agreed to OCT. 19, 1998
sified on March 3, when Micro- Apple Computer Inc. and Intel
by Microsoft, that limited soft CEO Bill Gates, Sun CEO Corp., and Microsoft’s integra-
DOJ and 20 states scheduled to face off
the company’s ability to against Microsoft in antitrust trial Scott McNealy, Netscape’s Barks- tion of the browser into the op-
license its software on a dale and Dell Computer Corp. erating system. c
teams have lost touch with their software, so a move like this is a
customers. “They don’t know what
[customers] are using their appli-
cations for, the problems they are
facing or the issues that are of in-
terest” to them, the source said.
good one.”
The initiative was launched dur-
ing the summer, DeVaan said, but
Ballmer’s comments at the meet-
ing kicked it into high gear.
“In the past, [Microsoft] has not On the customer front, Micro-
seemed interested in what we’re soft will spend the next two months
that Microsoft’s pres- able early next year, officials said. doing with their software, unlike sending product managers to cus-
ident, Steve Ballmer, A similar pack for Visual Studio Sun [Microsystems Inc.] or Unisys tomer sites to discover how cus-
gave the company’s
product teams at an
annual meeting last
is due this month.
“This is the first time something
like this has gotten the attention of
[Corp.],” said Bob Reeder, vice
president of information and com-
munications services for Alaska
tomers are using Microsoft soft-
ware and the issues they’re facing.
The feedback the managers get
month. Ballmer, pro- the highest level of executives,” said Airlines, in Seattle. “We are de- will be used to help steer Micro-
moted to president in Jon DeVaan, vice president of desk- pendent on them to deliver clean soft’s internal product develop-
July, took the teams top applications at ment efforts.
to task for ignoring Microsoft, in Red- DeVaan said there is a tenta-
customer concerns mond, Wash. De- Microsoft moves to improve products tive plan for a series of meetings
Vaan heads the un- among the heads of teams for such
R Launching internal review process
quality slip. named project. “We products as Office, Visual Studio,
During the past year, two of weren’t really in a R Working to improve customer relations Exchange and Windows NT.
rut, but we were un- R Creating an internal audit of how product “We will look at our design ef-
even in areas,” he teams design, build, test and deliver products fort and try to find the best prac-
said. R Will identify best practices and incorporate tices used throughout the com-
Not everyone them into all product areas pany,” he said.
agrees. A source R Working to improve integration between dif- Microsoft has not determined a
close to Microsoft ferent applications and their various versions timetable for the project, but he ex-
said many product pects it to take several months. c
 PC WEEK
10 N E T W O R L D + I N T E R O P OCTOBER 19, 1998

Security a Top 3Com Aims to Upset Status Quo

Priority at N+I T
Enhanced CoreBuilder 9000 could lure Cisco, Bay clientele
BY PAULA MUSICH supports a mix of Layer 2 and Lay- IPX traffic. The module also
his week 3com corp. willroll er 3 switching, with routing at provides AppleTalk routing and
out a packet-switching ver- speeds approaching 56M bps. supports virtual LANs based on
sion of the CoreBuilder 9000, Some 3Com users said the IEEE standard 802.1p and 802.1Q
BY JIM KERSTETTER tering and stateful inspection. which promises users a low-cost, CoreBuilder 9000 is just the tick- protocols, officials said.
all it the networking show With proxy filtering, a proxy high-port-density upgrade for col- et. “Right now we have a lot of Whether Bay and Cisco users

C that doubles as a security

show.
At NetWorld+Interop this
week in Atlanta, more than a
dozen security vendors, including
RedCreek Communications Inc.,
Fortress Technologies Inc. and
Network Associates Inc., will
demonstrate software and hard-
ware designed to simplify securi-
ty implementations and lower
costs.
RedCreek, of Newark, Calif.,
will unveil the Ravlin IPSec (IP
Security) network interface card
for Windows NT 4.0. The new im-
plementation allows users to en-
crypt messages with the IPSec (IP
Security) protocol directly on
server sits outside the network and
filters IP packets before they are
allowed to enter.
Stateful inspection also exam-
ines each packet. But as the fire-
wall learns which packets are good
and which are bad, it allows
those it recognizes to be safe to
pass through the network more
quickly.
Network Associates claims that
proxy servers are safer than oth-
er kinds of firewalls and that
switching between the two types
of firewall protection is the best
solution. Adaptive Firewall will
be available by the end of the year,
officials said.
Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard
Co., of Palo Alto, Calif., will
demonstrate at the show
Version 3.1 of its Virtual
Vault operating system se-
lapsed backbone networks.
3Com is also hoping to woo
users of Cisco Systems Inc. and
Bay Networks Inc. equipment,
which handles the lion’s share of
large collapsed backbone router
networks.
3Com’s CoreBuilder 9000,
which will debut at NetWorld+In-
terop in Atlanta, is a high-density
modular chassis switch capable of
supporting 560G bps, although the
initial switching fabric will support
48G bps, with higher-speed fabrics
planned for next year. The 9000
has 14 slots that support as many
as 126 Gigabit Ethernet or 504 Fast
Ethernet ports. Redundant com-
ponents, including power supply,
switching fabric and management
modules, are available. The 9000
devices to manage, so I’m really
interested in high-density gigabit
ports,” said beta tester Kurtis Lin-
demann, network specialist at the
Fisher College of Business at Ohio
State University, in Columbus.
“We plan to replace our [Super-
Stack II] 9300s and our [Core-
Builder] 3500s with the 9000s. Log-
ically and logistically, it’s easier to
manage.”
The CoreBuilder 9000 will pro-
vide Layer 3 switching through a
module based on technology bor-
rowed from the CoreBuilder 3500,
including the 3Com FIRE (Flex-
ible Intelligent Routing Engine)
application-specific integrated cir-
cuit chip sets. This will enable it
to support so-called wire-speed
routing of IP, IP Multicast, and
will be attracted to the switch re-
mains to be seen, one analyst said.
“The 9000 has impressive specs,
but the challenge is they need to
unseat the incumbents,” said Bren-
dan Hannigan, an analyst at For-
rester Research Inc., in Cambridge,
Mass.
The CoreBuilder 9000 chassis
and switching fabric, to which
port modules must be added, is
priced at $35,800. A 20-port
100BaseTX module, a 10-port
100BaseFX module and two two-
port Gigabit Ethernet modules
are priced from $3,950 to $9,950
each. Due in December are a
$9,000 36-port 100BaseTX mod-
ule and $14,950 100BaseTX or
$19,950 100BaseFX Layer 3
switching modules. c

NT Networking Gets Endorsements

curity software.
The upgrade works with
Netscape Communications
Corp.’s Enterprise Server
3.5, supports additional HP
servers and delivers 128- Microsoft’s MCSP participants say yea, cite SME support
bit encryption.
NetFortress delivers 70M-bps throughput.
HP will also demonstrate BY SCOTT BERINATO for MCSP resellers that include they are now. Basically, the few-
NT 4.0 desktops and create VPNs integration of Virtual Vault with he windows nt platform will combinations of 3Com networking er platforms to learn, the better.”
(virtual private networks) between its Authorization Server 3.1, which
users within a company or over is used to define user access into
the Internet. networks.
T get a vote of confidence from
the networking community
this week at NetWorld+Interop.
hardware, NT Server, NT RAS (re-
mote access server) and NT rout-
ing within a month, sources said.
NT’s networking, bolstered
heavily in the NT 4 Option Pack
released earlier this year, includes
“They have a small window IBM Global Services, of Som- Microsoft Corp., of Redmond, Other possible MCSP partici- remote access and roaming for the
here for this,” said a beta tester ers, N.Y., will announce that it is Wash., this week at the Atlanta pants include Compaq Computer client, RAS, virtual private net-
at a cable modem company who using RealSecure 4.0 from Inter- show is expected to add 3Com Corp., which already offers NT re- work security, and routing.
requested anonymity. “But we’ve net Security Systems Inc. to de- Corp. and Fore Systems Inc. to mote access on its servers, and Fore “The [original routing code] in
got a need for this until [NT] 5.0 tect network attacks for its secu- the list of technology providers par- Systems Inc., which recently ac- Windows NT was woefully inade-
comes out.” rity customers. It will be offered ticipating in its Advantage program quired Berkeley Networks Inc., quate,” said Frank Dzubeck, an an-
NT will not support IPSec on through IBM’s Internet Emer- for its MCSP (Microsoft Certified sources said. Berkeley makes a alyst at Washington-based Com-
its own until its 5.0 release some- gency Response Service. Solutions Provider) members. MC- high-end NT-based routing switch. munications Network Architects.
time next year. Atlanta-based ISS, in turn, SPs get substantial discounts on Such networking enhancements “With the serious performance
Fortress Technologies will dis- will demonstrate RealSecure 4.0 hardware, software and services may ease administration in far- enhancements we’re hearing about,
play another VPN technology at and announce Version 5.4 of In- from Advantage providers. flung branch offices, many of which there will be a question if you need
the show, the NetFortress VPN- ternet Scanner. Due by the end of MCSPs will gain training in con- use proprietary edge routers such a black box called a router.”
100. The product promises to de- the year, Version 5.4 will include figuration and management of as 3Com’s OfficeConnect or Cis- NT will gain further enhance-
liver 70M-bps throughput for new methods for detecting router members’ networking gear. Also, co Systems Inc.’s 2600 series. By ments for its 5.0 version, including
VPNs, according to officials at the and switch vulnerabilities, com- sales tools such as 3Com’s small employing NT, users have one less quality-of-service support for net-
Tampa, Fla., company. The Net- pany officials said. business networking calculator platform to configure and manage work-aware applications, support
Fortress VPN-100 will be avail- Information Research Engi- will be made available to the MC- and can easily integrate the ad- for high-bandwidth and mixed-me-
able in January for $45,995. neering Inc. and Clover Tech- SPs. Those resellers can then sell dresses of networking devices into dia environments, and overall im-
On the firewall front, Net- nologies Inc. will be demon- bundles of NT Server and net- NT’s Active Directory. proved code. In addition, routing
work Associates plans to unveil a strating secure videoconferencing working gear to so-called SMEs, “I’m not saying it’s a huge en- will be improved so that branch
new “hybrid” firewall, called over the Internet using IRE’s or small and medium enterpris- terprise solution,” said David Wes- office communications devices
Adaptive Proxy, according to of- VPN technology. IRE’s SafeNet/ es. The goal is to make it cheap- selmann, an NT developer at First can run on standard NT.
ficials of the Santa Clara, Calif., LAN VPN Encryptors will be er and easier to manage LANs for American Corp., in Anaheim, The networking enhancements
company. The firewall allows a used to encrypt and authenticate the branch office or SME. Calif. “But the networking fea- for NT 5.0 will be available in the
user to switch between two types audio and video traffic over the 3Com, of Santa Clara, Calif., will tures in NT will make things a lot Beta 3 release of NT (see related
of firewall protection: proxy fil- Internet. c announce SME product bundles easier in the branch office than story, Page 20).c

14
Drives Bug NetServers Vendors Vie With Intel
HP warns that buggy Quantum drives can crash its servers
BY CARMEN NOBEL
ewlett-packard co. is warn-
H ing users about a buggy hard
drive that can cause the com-
pany’s NetServers to crash.
In a memo sent to NetServer
customers late last month, HP said
hardware and firmware prob-
lems found in Quantum Corp.’s
Viking 4.2GB D3583C hard
drive—which comes installed on
HP’s entry-level NetServer—can
cause the Windows NT-based
servers to crash.
The drives in question have a
data code of 7157-7244 and were
manufactured between June 5 and
Oct. 1, 1997, according to the memo.
HP claims two problems are caus-
ing the crashes: a bug in the firmware
and a high concentration of mal-
imine, a sealer used in the drives,
which results in the emission of a
white powder that corrupts the data.
The firmware bug, according
to HP and Quantum officials,
can cause the drives to fail during
Dell, IBM Tune New Servers for ISPs
BY CARMEN NOBEL
ell computer corp. and ibm
D are readying servers designed
for ISPs and companies look-
ing to run their own Web sites.
Dell plans to roll out next month
the PowerEdge 6350 server, which
includes faster chips in a smaller
footprint, according to sources.
IBM, meanwhile, is building sup-
port for additional Web server
software into its AS/400 line, as
well as other enhancements.
Dell’s rack-mount PowerEdge
6350 is expected to come with two
or four Intel Corp. 400MHz Xeon
processors, sources said. The serv-
er will be about 7 inches high, let-
ing users stack 10 servers—or up
to 40 CPUs—in the rack, they said.
Dell officials in Round Rock,
Texas, declined to comment on
the server.
“ISPs [Internet service pro-
viders] and telcos are key targets
for this [kind of server],” said Amir
Ahari, an analyst at Internation-
al Data Corp., in Framingham,
Mass. “It’s geared for folks who
need a lot of horsepower in [a
small] space.”
For its part, IBM is adding sev-
eral Internet-friendly features to
error recovery mode. As a result,
the server will fail when the drive
is recovering an error and receives
instructions to reallocate data to
a different location.
Quantum officials in Milpitas,
Calif., however, said the company
has received no reports of similar
problems with the same drives on
other vendors’ servers. In fact, they
said, the firmware bug is caused
by a “handshake problem” between
the drive and the RAID con-
troller in the HP NetServers. HP
is testing a firmware fix and will no-
tify customers when it is ready.
HP also said the high concen-
tration of malimine causes the drives
to release a gas that transforms into
white powder. The powder settles
on the drive, causing hard-media
errors, excessive error recovery and
failure in 8 percent to 12 percent of
the hard drives, HP officials claimed.
The Palo Alto, Calif., compa-
ny is offering to send a new drive
to concerned customers.
the AS/400 line and its proprietary
OS/400 operating system, said com-
pany officials in Rochester, Minn.
By year’s end, the AS/400 will
support Netscape Communica-
tions Corp.’s Enterprise Server
Web server, officials said. In ad-
dition, support for the Apache
Web server is in beta and should
be available by early next year.
The AS/400 supports IBM’s
HTTP Server.
Integrating the Netscape and
Apache Web servers will enable
Serving ISPs
Dell’s new PowerEdge 6350
R Thin form factor allows up to
10 servers in a rack
R Equipped with up to 400MHz
Xeon processors
Coming to IBM’s AS/400
R Operating system support
for Netscape Enterprise
Server and Apache Web
server
R Operating system support
for SafeMail e-mail security
program
R Higher concentration of inte-
grated PC servers in the
server
N E W S
Quantum was aware only of the
firmware problem, which caused
just a 2 percent to 3 percent failure
rate, officials said, adding that it is
normal for drives to emit gases.
“HP has always been a pretty
methodical company, and they let
their customers know about any
potential failure,” said Jim Porter,
an analyst at Disk/Trend Inc., in
Mountain View, Calif. “I’ve not
heard of any epidemic of failure.
... This sounds like an occasional
kind of failure.”
Quantum officials last week said
the company shipped to HP about
30,000 of the drives that were man-
ufactured during the June-to-
October period. But HP officials
would not specify how many of
these drives actually were used in
the NetServers or which NetServ-
er models may be affected.
More information about the
firmware availability will be post-
ed at www.hp.com/netserver/
servsup. c
organizations using AS/400s to de-
ploy multiple servers that can com-
municate and synchronize with
each other, said Bob Cancilla, di-
rector of systems planning and ad-
ministration at Republic Indem-
nity Co. of America, in Encino,
Calif. Cancilla, who oversees the
company’s eight AS/400s, said the
Netscape support will also pro-
vide additional server-side facili-
ties such as JavaScript.
“The IBM HTTP Server is for
stand-alone environments, and
Netscape is an enterprise solu-
tion,” Cancilla said. “Big corpo-
rations with a lot of machines
will benefit from Netscape.”
Support for multiple Web
servers will better enable ISPs us-
ing AS/400s to run multiple Web
sites for multiple customers.
IBM also will add in the next
version of OS/400, due next year,
support for SafeMail, which can
support multiple mail domains,
IBM officials said.
In addition, IBM plans to ex-
pand the number of PC server
boards that fit into a single AS/400
and expand the number of inte-
grated PC servers that fit onto a
single board, officials said. c
At X86 Feeding Frenzy
BY LISA DICARLO IN SAN JOSE, CALIF.
D
espite intel corp.’s seeming-
ly insurmountable lead in the
X86 processor world, a record
number of rivals are busy laying
out X86 road maps of their own.
At the Microprocessor Forum
here last week, five processor man-
ufacturers—Intel, Advanced Micro
Devices Inc., National Semicon-
ductor Inc.’s Cyrix subsidiary, Cen-
taur Technology Inc. and newcomer
Rise Technology—unfurled their
18-month X86 product plans.
The surging interest in X86 can
be attributed to several factors,
not the least of which is that the
multibillion-dollar microproces-
The expanding X86 field
VENDOR PRODUCT
Intel 3-D Katmai New
Instructions
AMD K7 chip
K6-3, with 256KB
of L2 cache
Cyrix M3
Jalapeno, a new core
that runs at 600MHz and
has 256KB of L2 cache
Centaur WinChip 3
Rise
WinChip 4, a new core
that runs at up to 500MHz
mP6
sor business offers huge profits
for chip makers, even those with
single-digit market share.
One reason is that the number
and types of devices requiring X86
CPUs continue to grow. Devices
ripe for such chips include every-
thing from Windows-based ter-
minals and network computers to
set-top boxes and handheld PCs.
“These are options we didn’t
have two years ago,” said Todd
Hicks, desktop supervisor at Erie
Insurance Group, in Erie, Pa.,
which is considering Windows ter-
minals, some of which use Cyrix
chips. “These companies have built
a track record. Before, it would
have been an automatic ‘no,’ but
now it isn’t that way.”
At the forum, Intel, of Santa
Clara, Calif., revealed more tech-
nical details about its forthcoming
Katmai New Instructions, a set of
70 three-dimensional instructions
to be embedded into the Tanner
and Katmai processors in the first
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
quarter. Those chips, designed for
servers/workstations and perfor-
mance desktops, respectively, will
be released in 500MHz versions.
AMD’s seventh-generation
processor, the K7, is due in the
first half of 1999 and is based on
a 200MHz Alpha bus licensed
from Digital Equipment Corp.
The architecture will support from
512KB to 8MB of backside Lev-
el 2 cache. The bus can theoreti-
cally be pushed to 400MHz, said
AMD officials in Sunnyvale, Calif.
More importantly, however,
AMD plans to drop its general rule
about pricing its processors 25 per-
cent below comparable Intel chips,
said Dana Krelle,
vice president of
marketing in the
company’s Compu-
DUE tation Products
Group.
Q1 ’99 in Cyrix, mean-
500MHz Tanner, while, unveiled fur-
Katmai chips ther details about its
1H ’99 M3 and Jalapeno
products. The M3
Q1 ’99
integrates an ad-
Q4 ’99 vanced 3-D graph-
2H ’99
ics controller and
has a reduced mem-
ory latency subsys-
Q1 ’99
Q4 ’99
2H ’98
tem. Cyrix, of Rich-
ardson, Texas, will
ship samples in the
fourth quarter of
next year, officials said.
The Jalapeno, an entirely new
core, is expected to run at 600MHz
and has more accurate branch pre-
diction and two floating-point units.
For its part, Rise’s mP6, due this
quarter, supports AMD’s Super 7
infrastructure and 100MHz bus
and has 16KB of on-chip L1 cache.
Officials of the Santa Clara com-
pany said that the mP6 is well-
suited for portables because of its
low power consumption.
Centaur, the Austin, Texas,
microprocessor subsidiary of In-
tegrated Device Technology Inc.,
announced the WinChip 3, due in
the first quarter. It will have 128KB
of on-chip L1 cache and will run
at 266MHz and 300MHz.
The WinChip 4, with a brand-
new core, is slated for late 1999 pro-
duction and should reach 500MHz.
A second version of the chip, due
in the first half of 2000, will run as
fast as 700MHz and will be built on
a 0.18-micron process. c
 PC WEEK
16 N E W S OCTOBER 19, 1998

NT, Solaris Showdown

MCI WorldCom to hold OS ‘bake-off’ for new Net service
BY JOHN RENDLEMAN
ci worldcom inc. is in the
Com service will include e-mail, Web
hosting, MCI WorldCom’s Web-
“We will be giving Sun [Micro-
systems Inc.] a shot at providing the
Va., which has been working with However, MCI WorldCom’s
Hewlett-Packard Co. since De- interest in NT stems in large part
cember on server hardware running from a relationship MCI had with
Unix to meet PSINet’s requirements. Microsoft prior to its merger with
For ISPs, “the problem with us- WorldCom. The multimillion-
ing NT is these servers are typical- dollar deal called for MCI to stan-
ly scattered throughout the network, dardize all its internal IT operations
and NT is very difficult to manage on Microsoft software and distrib-
remotely,” Watson said. Plus, “NT ute Internet Explorer to customers.
is generally less reliable than Unix, Still, other sources suggest that
and it’s much easier to scale Unix MCI WorldCom only stands to gain

M final stages of a lengthy eval-

uation process to choose be-
tween Windows NT 4.0 and So-
laris for a forthcoming dial Internet
and Web hosting service.
The fact that NT is a viable
contender in this process weak-
ens the conventional wisdom that
the operating system is not scal-
able enough for large-scale enter-
prise networking applications.
With a self-imposed, tentative
deadline of Nov. 1, MCI World-
Com will pick one of the two op-
erating systems for a new com-
mercial Internet dial service. The
service will replace the internet-
MCI services sold to Cable &
Wireless plc as part of MCI Com-
munications Corp.’s merger with
WorldCom Inc., said sources close
to the Jackson, Miss., company.
The forthcoming MCI World-
based Interact network monitoring
and management, and its own in-
ternal messaging platform, they said.
MCI WorldCom is evaluating NT
4.0 but would likely base its planned
services on “gold beta” versions of
NT 5.0, sources said. Some addi-
tional hardware capabilities from
Sequent Computer Systems Inc. and
some features of MCIS (Microsoft
Commercial Internet System) 2.0,
with a few elements of MCIS 3.0,
will also be included, they said.
An MCI WorldCom spokesman
last week confirmed the company
is testing both platforms but declined
to comment on plans for the service.
As a final method for choos-
ing between the two, MCI World-
Com will conduct a technical
“bake-off,” pitting Solaris for ISPs
against MCIS and NT, according
to an MCI WorldCom memo.
e-mail system for not only mass mar-
kets but the enterprise as a whole,”
the memo said. “This will be a bake-
off with Microsoft [Corp.], with the
winner getting all of the business.”
MCI WorldCom’s evaluation
of both Solaris and the MCIS 2.0
software on NT 4.0 could engen-
der greater willingness among en-
terprise managers to consider NT
as the platform for mission-criti-
cal networking applications.
If MCI WorldCom chooses
MCIS on NT, the move would be
a significant departure from the prac-
tices of most large ISPs (Internet
service providers), which almost uni-
versally base their services on Unix.
“Sun pretty much owns the Inter-
net marketplace today,” said John
Watson, director of business devel-
opment for application and Web
hosting at PSINet Inc., in Herndon,
than it is to scale NT.” from having two vendors bidding
In addition, NT-based systems for its business, no matter which plat-
are hard to compartmentalize form the company chooses based
for an individual customer’s data on its technical evaluation. c
and applications, Watson
said, which poses securi-
ty problems for an ISP. Pick a platform
Security issues steered Windows NT vs. Solaris as ISP platform
one Web hosting cus-
tomer away from NT. Web hosting
The New York Mercan- NT: Supports CGI (Common Gateway
Interface), Active Server Pages, Allaire
tile Exchange had a choice Corp.’s Cold Fusion
of Unix or NT for its fi- Solaris: Supports CGI, runs Cold Fusion in
nancial information Web emulation mode
page, said Todd Berkun, E-mail
electronic dissemination as- NT: MCIS Mail supports tens of thousands
sociate and Webmaster. It of users on a server
chose Unix because NT Solaris: Sun Internet Mail Server
supports up to 1 million mailboxes
couldn’t handle the secu-
on a server
rity and password features
needed, even though “NT Usenet
NT: MCIS includes News and Chat services
was very close in terms of Solaris: Features an integrated News Server
what we needed.”

Sun Seeks JES/Jini Synergy Software Smooths Path to

BY SCOT PETERSEN year’s end. JMS services should enterprise architecture. To fill in
espite opinion to the con- be available in JES by the first quar- the gaps, Sun plans to develop vari-
Building OLAP Applications
D trary, the ultimate battle- ter, said Jonathan Schwartz, di- ations on each server to meet spe-
ground for Java won’t be the rector of enterprise products for cific needs, Schwartz said.
virtual machine or even the brows- Sun, in Palo Alto, Calif. With widely distributed enter-
BY JOHN S. MCCRIGHT
yperion solutions inc. is
metadata to enable the user to drill
down into the data, not just in
er. More likely, it’s going to be the
office Coke machine.
For JES to work, Schwartz said, prises bursting the seams of typi-
users and developers will have to cal client/server applications, users
Sun Microsystems Inc., with its re-envision the client/server par- are turning their attention to hand-
H planning to ship this week a
new tool that enables users
to more easily link multidimen-
the cube, but also in the richer data
in the relational data store.
Hyperion, of Sunnyvale, Calif.,
newly launched JES (Java Em- adigm. “Client/server doesn’t held and remote devices. sional OLAP cubes with relational has joined with several partners
bedded Server) and Jini tech- make sense anymore,” Schwartz “These small servers and servlets databases. to knit the various parts of the sys-
nologies, and Microsoft Corp., with said. “Data is propagated each makes sense because they allow us The Hyperion Integration Serv- tem together. Informatica Corp.
embedded Windows CE and Win- way. Everything is a node [on a to integrate with the enterprise and er is designed to make online an- and Sagent Technology Inc. pro-
dows NT, are both working on ways network].” use distributed solutions that tran- alytical processing applications vided the data extraction, trans-
to add computing and network- Schwartz added that JES, along scend the limitations of smart easier to build, manage and inte- formation and loading.
ing power to handheld and remote with the high-end Web applica- phones, for instance,” said Graham grate with relational data stored Initially, Integration Server will
devices—even vending machines. tion server acquired with NetDy- Poor, co-founder of Bonita Soft- in a variety of data warehouses draw information directly from
Sun will add more ammunition namics Inc. this year, are the cor- ware, of Raleigh, N.C. and packaged applications, offi- packaged applications and deci-
to its embedded strategy this fall nerstones on each end of Sun’s However, some developers who cials said. sion-support tools from I2, Claris
as it works to connect the are enthusiastic about To perform these tasks, the soft- and Comshare Inc. It will also draw
benefits of JES and Jini, embedded systems are ware creates a metadata catalog information from SAP AG and
a technology that offi- still cautious about related to the information in any Oracle Corp. applications indi-
cials say will allow dis- Java’s place there. “Java relational model, such as a data rectly with the help of tools from
connected devices to eas- will not be viable until warehouse or a packaged appli- Acta Technology Inc. and Aris
ily share data. there are mass-pro- cation from I2 Technologies Inc. Corp., Hyperion officials said.
Sun is working to add duced chips and hard or Claris Corp., according to “It’s a very clever idea,” said
Jini and messaging ser- coding for embedded Hyperion officials. The software Michael Schiff, an analyst at Cur-
vices—via the JMS (Java platforms,” said Dave then stores the metadata in a sin- rent Analysis Inc., in Sterling, Va.
Message Service) API— Rensin, chief technical gle place. “Populating the data warehouse
to the embedded server, officer at Riverbed In conjunction with Hyperion’s is the hardest part, and they made
which requires only Technologies, a Falls Essbase OLAP server, a user can it a lot easier to do this.”
HTTP as a data trans- Church, Va., develop- build an OLAP application that Pricing for Integration Server
port mechanism. er of applications for includes a multidimensional cube will be $20,000 for one OLAP
Sun plans demonstra- small devices such as filled with summary informa- server. It runs on Windows NT,
tions of JES and Jini by Java Embedded Server requires only HTTP to transport data. PalmPilots. c tion. Integration Server uses the Solaris and AIX. c
 PC WEEK
18 N E W S OCTOBER 19, 1998

Voice, Data for ATM

Nortel to unfurl data networking blueprint at N+I show
Hackers Bulldoze Caterpillar
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 do is run that database program
Last month, the hacker or group against the password query until
of hackers (the number is un- the right combination is found.
known) that broke into Caterpil- The FBI, security specialists
lar rummaged through servers and from PricewaterhouseCoopers and
BY JOHN RENDLEMAN to corporate customers of those “We will be adding packet workstations at six of the Peoria, an internal security team are in-
or the first time since its local circuits by allowing inte- networking capabilities to what Ill., company’s sites. vestigating the Caterpillar attacks.

F $9.1 billion merger, Nortel Net-

works this week will unveil its
strategy for data networking.
The company will underscore
its plans with the debut of new
telecommunications
equipment that inte-
grates voice and data
traffic on ATM (asynchronous
gration of voice and data traffic,
according to company officials in
Dallas.
The Passport 8780 and 4740,
due in January, will be demon-
strated for the first
time this week at Net-
World+Interop in
Atlanta and will highlight the strat-
traditionally has been TDM [time
division multiplexing]-based gear
with different speeds and differ-
ent data interfaces,” said Greg
Merritt, vice president of carrier
packet networks at Nortel Net-
works. In addition, the company
will continue to develop its IP Con-
nect voice-over-IP products and
The hacker used an outdated Investigators had not, as of last
administrator’s account and a dial- week, pinpointed where the attack
up server to gain access to servers came from or from whom, sources
that had weak—or
easily deciphered—
passwords or no Checklist for corporate security
passwords at all, ac-
R Do all servers have passwords?
cording to internal
Caterpillar memos. R Are those passwords hard to guess?

transfer mode) networks.
The forthcoming equipment con-
sists of the Passport 8780 Packet
Voice Gateway, for providers’ COs
(central offices), combined with the
Passport 4740 Multiservice Cus-
tomer Premises Equipment switch,
said officials at Nortel Networks,
which was formed when Northern
Telecom Ltd. bought Bay Networks
Inc. earlier this year.
The new CO switches are in-
tended for long-distance carriers
and Competitive Local Exchange
Carriers that offer services to busi-
ness customers over private-line
T-1 circuits. The switches are
designed to reduce the expense
egy for unifying voice and data
networking that top Nortel Net-
works officials plan to outline.
Under the banner of Unified
Networks, Nortel CEO John Roth
and President David House will
discuss in a keynote speech how
Nortel Networks will tie togeth-
er Northern Telecom’s tradition-
al strengths in optical-based net-
working with Bay’s lines of packet
data networking products.
Advancing beyond the T-1
speeds of these voice/data switches,
Nortel Networks will, over time,
stretch its product lines to encom-
pass both lower and higher speeds
as well as additional interfaces.
1-Meg Modem.
That strategy strikes a chord
among users. “They’re convert-
ing everything into packets,
whether it’s frame relay, IP or
ATM, and putting it across the
backbone so [we] need less total
circuit capacity and can share the
bandwidth across all of our ap-
plications,” said Walter Czerniak,
director of computing and tele-
communications at Northern
Illinois University, in DeKalb.
The Passport 8780 costs between
$150,000 and $400,000 per switch,
or about $175 per voice channel.
The Passport 4740 ranges from
$6,500 to $12,000 per T-1 site. c
David to Cisco’s Goliath in high-
It’s unlikely the R Are passwords frequently changed?
hacker would have R Are all old accounts deactivated?
been able to gain R Do remote users have to present
access to the net- some sort of authentication?
work had managers R Is access limited only to the servers
thought to disable users need to get the job done?
the account, accord- R Do you frequently monitor the network
ing to the memos. for unauthorized activity?
The company
also failed to make sure that all the said. In addition, Caterpillar has
servers had tough-to-crack pass- not discovered any information
words. It’s unclear how the hack- that was destroyed or copied.
er obtained the account informa- A Caterpillar spokeswoman de-
tion, according to the memos. clined to discuss any particular in-
However, most hackers use stances of network break-ins but
freeware that contains databases said hackers have tried to break
of likely passwords such as dates into the network from time to time.
and names. All hackers have to This time, the intruder spent a
total of 24 hours on the company’s
network over a period of two
Inc. Symposium/ITxpo in Orlan- weeks. During that time, several

Price Fight
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
“The changes I’m seeing, with
Layer 3 switching making signif-
icant inroads, will play into the
cost I’m willing to pay,” said Cis-
co customer Dennis Lander, group
manager of network support at
Woods Hole Oceanographic In-
stitute, in Woods Hole, Mass.
“In the last year, [Cisco has] got-
ten more viable for some of the
tighter budgets, but you bet we
want them to be even more rea-
sonable.”
The FlowWise RA7000 mod-
ule has been tested with Cisco 7000
and 7500 routers. In the high-end
router market, Cisco enjoys an
80 percent market share and com-
mands a high premium for its of-
ferings. The $7,950 RA7000 off-
loads local IP routing from the
7000 series routers by automati-
cally learning the location of oth-
er routers and the media access
control addresses of local nodes
communicating with each other,
according to sources close to Flow-
Wise, of San Jose, Calif.
Cisco’s answer to customers hit-
ting the performance limit on their
7000 series routers? Either add
Fast Ethernet modules or put a end campus routing, the cumula- do, Fla., saying that the added val- workstations and servers were
Cisco 8500 series switch in front tive effects of competition from ue of Cisco’s high-level service accessed and altered. In addition,
of the router. But neither alter- Layer 3 switching startups as well and support will keep customers the hacker was able to access root
native is cheap. as from established players could coming back for more. “I think privileges on several Unix servers
“I didn’t want to go out and be starting to affect customers’ will- you will see people moved to a because of the password problems.
spend $12,000 for Fast Ethernet ingness to spend more. According preferred vendor,” Chambers Log files and system clocks were
boards to put on the backbone,” to International Data Corp., Cis- said. “They’re looking at total cost changed to camouflage the intru-
said an RA7000 beta tester, who co’s products cost from 25 percent of ownership, not just the [pur- sion, and investigators believe pass-
asked not to be named. “It’s much to 100 percent more than com- chase] transaction.” word files were copied so the hack-
peting products. Cisco customers admit that the er could return in the future.
“Customers are evaluating San Jose company’s products op- The hacker even installed vul-
The numbers don’t lie alternative architectures—if erate as advertised and that its ser- nerability detection software on
Performance upgrade costs for Cisco 7000 for no other reason than to vice and support merit a premi- the network to probe for more
series routers keep [Cisco] in check,” said um—especially in the backbone. security holes. The same sort of
PRODUCT CAPACITY PRICE Esmeralda Silva, an analyst But how much of a premium is software is commonly used by se-
with IDC, in Framingham, increasingly a sticking point for curity administrators to find vul-
FlowWise RA7000 8 ports $7,950* Mass. Silva estimates that a customers. And vendors such as nerabilities in their own networks.
Cisco Layer 3 switch costs be- FlowWise, which will deliver its The hacker was able to probe
Cisco Single Fast
Ethernet 1 port $12,000* tween $2,000 and $4,000 per RA7000 module in December, are most of Caterpillar’s network, and
port, while competitive offer- adding fuel to that debate. investigators expected to find more
Cisco Catalyst 8500 8 ports $40,250** ings from other top-tier play- Indeed, this debate comes in holes, according to the memos. But
ers cost about $600 per port. the wake of user complaints about they believe that administrators
* Actual customer quote **Infonetics Research pricing service
“I have heard complaints Cisco from another front: its lack spotted the activities before a plan
more economical going with [the about pricing—in particular the of support for Novell Inc.’s No- to steal data could be carried out.
FlowWise] solution. And the tech- Catalyst 8500,” said Dave Pass- vell Directory Services (see PC All this was accomplished with-
nology they’re using in it is able more, an analyst at NetReference Week, Oct. 12, Page 1). Cisco has out an attempt to break through
to handle a lot more traffic. If I Inc., a Sterling, Va., consultancy. agreed to work solely with Mi- a firewall, without flying below an
were to flood Fast Ethernet ports “Cisco has to really abuse peo- crosoft Corp.’s Active Directory intrusion detection system and
using the Cisco card, it kills the ple’s pocketbooks before they’ll and to support other directories without breaking through a com-
CPU performance.” want to shift, but for some peo- through the Lightweight Direc- pany’s encryption. Why? Because
ple, maybe they’re getting there.” tory Access Protocol standard. c an old account, without any ap-
Watching the bottom line Cisco CEO John Chambers de- parent strong authentication
Although few observers believe fended the company’s high mar- Additional reporting by Scott mechanisms such as tokens or dig-
that FlowWise is likely to play gins at last week’s Gartner Group Berinato ital certificates, was left open. c
 PC WEEK
20 N E W S OCTOBER 19, 1998

Microsoft Beats Visual C++ Suits Up for COM+

NT 5.0’s Drum T
BY ANTONE GONSALVES
o help pave the way for
COM+ development when
Windows NT 5.0 ships, Mi-
crosoft Corp. plans to simplify
things for C++ developers by in-
But without firm release date for the OS, troducing a new syntax with the
tool.
users are finding the message falls flat The new syntax will allow users
to generate Component Object
BY MICHAEL MOELLER, some software vendors, develop- Model+ infrastructure code at
MARY JO FOLEY, SM@RTRESELLER, ers and customers. compile time and thereby enable
AND SCOTT BERINATO IN DENVER For example, the 60,000 NT 5.0 them to focus more on business
icrosoft corp. beat the applications Microsoft touted is logic. The tool upgrade will be part
tax a keyword, called interface,
that enables the compiler to gen-
erate the IDL, said officials at
the company’s Professional De-
velopers Conference in Denver
last week.
The Redmond, Wash., com-
pany also will add a new attribute,
called co-class, that enables the
compiler to generate COM+-spe-
What’s in store
crosoft compiler forever, it’s OK,”
said one developer, who request-
ed anonymity. “If you ever want
to switch compilers, then the code
is not going to be portable.”
Microsoft officials said they will
attempt to get third-party tool
makers to license the syntax for
their C++ tools.
Also at the PDC, Microsoft
officials said COM+ Explorer,
an administration tool used to mi-
grate COM components over to
the COM+ component model,

M Windows NT 5.0 drum hard not a count of NT 5.0-optimized

last week, but the noise fell or even NT 5.0-logo-bearing ap-
on deaf ears, as many potential plications, acknowledged Craig
of a new version of Visual Stu-
dio, code-named Rainier, that will
ship about 60 days after the final
Advanced tool sets are key to
COM+ deployment

R COM+ Explorer ships in Beta

would ship in Beta 3 of NT 5.0
next month.
The tool enables a developer
users seemed to be in no hurry to Beilinson, Windows client mar- release of NT 5.0, scheduled for 3 of NT 5.0, scheduled in to take a COM component writ-
November
deploy the massive upgrade. keting product manager. mid-1999. ten in Visual Studio 6.0; import it
Unable to give users what In reality, that number includes Users were pleased by the en- R Next version of Visual Studio, into the COM+ Explorer; and use
code-named Rainier, ships 60
they were really looking for—a both NT 5.0 logo-bearing appli- hancements planned for Visual days after the final release of property pages to choose the need-
release date for the forthcoming cations and existing Windows and C++, which will reduce the need NT 5.0, scheduled for the mid- ed services, such as load balanc-
operating system—Microsoft of- NT applications that are simply for developers to write the IDL dle of next year ing, security and transactions.
ficials at the company’s Profes- backward-compatible and don’t (Interface Definition Language) In the case of transactions, if
sional Developers Conference take advantage of new NT 5.0 that maps classes to COM+ com- cific infrastructure code, inde- the COM component was not al-
here used the podium to pump up technologies, such as Windows In- ponents. pendent of the IDL, that defines ready mapped to Microsoft Trans-
interest with claims that 60,000 ap- staller, Active Directory and Win- “It will make development eas- component properties. action Service, the developer
plications will be ready for NT 5.0 dows Management Interface. ier,” said Ian Wildman, a devel- While acknowledging that the would have to write the code him-
when it ships next year. At the PDC, nearly half of the oper for Wang Global, in London. changes will make development self or herself.
“[A release date] is all I was exhibiting software vendors sport- “You can forget about some of faster, some developers said code Microsoft also handed out at
looking for. I am not going to pin ed signs announcing that their ap- the tedious stuff that you always containing the new syntax could the PDC a copy of the Windows
plications were “running have to do and focus on specifics only be compiled in a Microsoft Installer for NT 4.0 and 5.0. In-
on NT 5.0.” But many of of the applications, such as the compiler, tying the developer to staller is a service for managing
Microsoft hawking NT 5.0 merits these vendors acknowl- business logic.” the company’s technology. the repair, installation and unin-
R Creating logo program for workstation-
edged that only bits of Microsoft will add to C++ syn- “If you’re married to the Mi- stallation of applications. c
and server-based applications their applications cur-
R Promising 60,000 NT 5.0-based apps
rently work on NT 5.0.

VBA for ERP

when new OS ships next year “The only thing some of technology at PeopleSoft. “We ERP vendors have licensed VBA,
R Readying upgrade of Visual Studio for
of these vendors have have no plans to go ahead and li- all of them offer some means of
creating NT 5.0 applications running on NT 5.0 are cense that.” integrating Microsoft products.
their PowerPoint slide Bergquist added that the Pleas- The VBA talks, however, are the
them down but ... hey, just give presentations,” said one software L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 anton, Calif., company supplies a latest sign that Microsoft wants to
me some idea on when it will be vendor who requested anonymi- etary fourth-generation languages COM interface to allow Microsoft cozy up to ERP developers.
coming out, so I can prioritize ty. “But if you could claim to have such as SAP’s ABAP/4. Even for developers to write for PeopleSoft At its BaanWorld user confer-
my life,” said a systems adminis- anything ready for NT 5.0, Mi- those companies with specialists but said that the company did not ence in The Hague, Netherlands,
trator at a major Midwest insur- crosoft gave you a $1,500 kickback on staff, the process is time-con- want to go so far as to replace last week, Baan announced a
ance provider. on your booth cost if you displayed suming and costly. PeopleCode with VBA. broad licensing agreement to bun-
Microsoft officials defended the [NT 5.0] sign.” VBA is an integrated devel- Although Microsoft was forth- dle its business software with Mi-
their reticence, claiming they Other PDC vendors acknowl- opment environment that pro- coming about its discussions, offi- crosoft’s SQL Server, Exchange
haven’t finalized a date for the re- edged they had received $1,500 vides many of the features avail- cials from SAP and Baan declined Server and Site Server (see story,
lease of Beta 3, let alone the final regardless of whether or not able in Microsoft’s stand-alone to comment about their dealings Page 68). Baan officials said in
version. “I can’t even give you a their full applications worked on development tool, Visual Basic. with the Redmond, Wash., soft- April that the Menlo Park, Calif.,
date for when we’ll know the date NT 5.0. Software vendors must expose ware company. And Button gave company would support Micro-
for releasing NT 5.0 Beta 3,” said But despite Microsoft’s best their products’ APIs as COM no timetable for any agreements. soft’s COM and Distributed
NT Group Product Manager Mike efforts, some attendees main- (Component Object Model) ob- Many ISVs have licensed VBA, COM.
Nash. tained they won’t deploy NT 5.0 jects for Windows programmers including Corel Corp., which an- Last year, Microsoft and Peo-
Away from the public spot- for at least 18 months after its to write to the software. nounced an agreement last week. pleSoft announced an agree-
light, sources said the Red- release. While Baan and SAP are in dis- And although none of the major ment to market the Microsoft
mond, Wash., company began in- “It’s interesting technology, but cussions with Microsoft, People- BackOffice family of
ternally circulating Nov. 20 as the from my standpoint in my indus- Soft Inc. has rejected Microsoft’s products as the platform
release date for NT 5.0 Beta 3. try, in reality users won’t accept overtures, Tom Button, director VBA benefits for ERP of choice of PeopleSoft
Other sources said June is now it for a few years,” said David Wes- of marketing for Microsoft’s de- Select. And last month,
veloper division, said last week R Reduce cost of modifying ERP software
the likely ship date for the final selmann, an NT developer at First SAP announced it would
product. American Corp., in Anaheim, during the company’s Professional to meet users’ unique needs provide through its Busi-
Developers Conference here. R Increase speed of modifying ERP
Microsoft officials declined to Calif. “Nothing will be written to ness APIs integration
comment on both dates. NT 5.0 for a while. In my case, it “We looked at [VBA] in the software with components built
R Easier and less expensive to use VB
But release dates aren’t the only will be a couple of years after its past and feel that our language, with Visual Studio 6.0. c
thing concerning users. Microsoft’s release. Most companies will want PeopleCode, accomplishes every- developers vs. ERP specialists
claims about developer support to be finished with Y2K before thing that VBA does,” said R Integration with Microsoft applications, Additional reporting by
for NT 5.0 are suspect as well, say they think about NT 5.0.” c Richard Bergquist, vice president which are more familiar to end users Lloyd Gray
 PC WEEK
24 N E W S OCTOBER 19, 1998

Faster Backup in Works Mission for Oracle8i:

HP to unveil Intelligent Storage Server, FC 1010D system
BY CARMEN NOBEL
Doing More With Less
ewlett-packard co. is ready- BY JOHN S. MCCRIGHT amount of unplanned downtime.

H ing new storage products that

will enable enterprise cus-
tomers to back up multiple servers
quickly.
The company will roll out this
week its new Intelligent Storage
Server and the FC 1010D High
Availability Storage System, both
of which provide Fibre Channel
connections to the network for
faster backup of devices as far as
six miles away.
The Intelligent Storage Serv-
er connects a LAN to a backup
server via Fibre Channel and en-
ables DLT (digital linear tape)
libraries to back up multiple
servers. HP has tested the hard-
ware with enterprise resource
planning software from Oracle
Corp. and SAP AG and with
backup management software,
such as HP’s OpenView Omni-
Back and Veritas Software Corp.’s
NetBackup, HP officials said.
For its part, the FC 1010D
High Availability Storage Sys-
tem can hold 10 disks of up to
18GB each. The device supports
RAID Levels 0 and 1 and in-
cludes hot-swappable fans and
HP’s beefed-up Enterprise Storage Solutions
ADDITIONS TO THE PRODUCT LINE CAPABILITY
HP Intelligent Storage Server Enables multiple systems on a LAN to
share libraries
Fibre Channel 1010D High Supports up to 10 disks and RAID Levels 0
Availability Storage System and 1; includes hot-swappable fans
and power supplies
Fibre Channel Hub Manager Monitors systems, enables/disables
ports; will eventually monitor perfor-
mance
Additional DLT features Support DLT on Windows NT and DLT
library sharing across multiple servers
Utility automation Provides downloadable backup scripts
power supplies. The system also work to do to make its products
includes integrated software attractive for SANs (storage
monitoring tools. Both the In- area networks).
telligent Storage Server and the “They have some backup stuff
FC 1010D are due Dec. 1. that’s kind of cute, but that’s about
Additionally, HP is adding sup- it,” said Tom Lahive, an analyst
port for Windows NT to its digi- at Dataquest Inc.’s, Lowell, Mass.,
tal linear tape libraries. Previously, office. “When they start doing stuff
it supported only Unix. A new for the SAN, then it’s going to be
boot feature will enable compa- more exciting.”
nies to store data and rebuild sys- The Intelligent Storage Server
tems using only the DLT drive currently works on LANs; future
with no need for Digital Data Stor- versions will be able to run inde-
age, officials said. pendently on SANs, although not
Despite the rollout, HP still has for at least a year, officials said. c
O
racle corp. is endeavoring
to make good on its promise
to help corporations support
more users with fewer servers
through new scalability and high-
availability features for its Ora-
cle8i database and Oracle8i Par-
allel Server.
Specifically, the Redwood
Shores, Calif., company last week
added new clustering, data re-
covery, maintenance and man-
agement technology to the Ora-
cle8i database and Parallel Server
add-on.
The Cache Fusion clustering
architecture in Oracle8i Parallel
Server uses high-speed intercon-
nects to speed up query response
times. In addition, the software’s
new capability to pass data directly
from one node to the other with-
out going through a server im-
proves application scalability,
according to company officials.
The Fast Start technology that
is being introduced in Oracle8i im-
proves data availability by pro-
viding database application
failover, speeding recovery after
a system failure, and reducing the
In testing of a worst-case sce-
nario failure, Oracle officials
said they were able to get an Or-
acle8i database up and running
in 17 seconds, while a similarly af-
flicted Oracle8 database took 15
minutes, they said.
A key feature in the database
upgrade that reduces downtime
is Online Reorganization. The fea-
ture lets administrators do day-
to-day maintenance, such as
changing partitions or updating
indexes, without taking down
the server.
One look
Single System View, another new
feature debuting in Oracle8i,
makes an entire cluster of servers
appear as a single system to the
administrator.
Oracle8i and Oracle8i Parallel
Server will be unveiled at Oracle
OpenWorld next month. Pricing
was not announced.
Also last week, Oracle began
shipping Oracle Migration Work-
bench, which converts data from
Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server to
Oracle8. c

Sniffer, Analyzer Smell Suite Easy Web Access for Small Firms
Network Associates links DSS/RMON
BY PAULA MUSICH
network associates inc. this
week will introduce new versions
of its Portable Sniffer and DSS
protocol analysis tools and a new
reporting application that pulls the
two together.
As a part of its Total Network
Visibility initiative,
Network Associates
added an RMON (re-
mote monitoring) 2 probe to Dis-
tributed Sniffer System, combining
for the first time expert analysis
for troubleshooting and concurrent
RMON 2 network monitoring.
The combination, DSS/RMON
Pro 2.0, available now and priced
at $40 to $50 per desktop plus
$2,925 per hardware probe, pro-
vides monitoring and expert analy-
sis of application traffic to pin-
point problems between servers;
applications; and Ethernet, Token-
Ring, Fast Ethernet, WAN and
High-Speed Serial Interface net-
works,said officials in Santa Clara,
Calif.
The updated $12,995 Sniffer
Pro ’98 portable analysis suite uses
Windows’ multitasking func-
tions to simultaneously manage
LANs and WANs. Version 2.0,
also available now,
monitors response
times and diagnoses
problems from NetWare 5.0 and
Windows NT 4.0 servers as well
as those running SQL Server.
The NT-based Network Infor-
mant Web-based reporting tool
draws on data from Sniffer and the
new RMON 2 probe to provide re-
porting on a variety of measure-
ments. Network Informant will ship
by year’s end; it costs $20 per desk-
top. All three tools will debut at
NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta.
Network Associates is at (408)
988-3832 or www.nai.com. c
BY BRIAN HANNON Idaho, company. more than $10,000.
xtended systems inc. is IAS supports virtual private IAS helped Carrollton Utili-
E readying a hardware/software network technology and Micro-
solution that offers nearly soft’s Point-to-Point Tunneling
all the components that small Protocol for secure access to LANs
ties, a city-owned utility in Car-
rollton, Ky., gain online access.
The utility could not afford to
companies need to move install the Internet and individ-
into cyberspace. ual e-mail accounts for its 10
Extended Systems employees.
plans to ship at the end of “We’re able to put more peo-
the month the ExtendNet ple on it, and we don’t have to pay
IAS (Internet Access for each user for e-mail,” said
Server) Version 2.2, a Office Manager Sandy Ray. “This
solution that comprises way, we’re able to access it through
a Web server, e-mail in the one dial-up connection at
the form of Microsoft one flat rate each month.”
Corp.’s Outlook Express, IAS also adds new logging and
a caching proxy server, reporting functionality. All In-
and a firewall that per- ternet and FTP activity is logged
forms packet filtering and so that systems administrators
inspection. can produce reports on use of the
In addition, IAS in- IAS 2.2 can support 30 to 40 simultaneous users. Internet by an individual or by a
cludes a Hayes Corp.-brand mo- through the Internet. group.
dem that can deal with 30 to 40 Extended Systems is targeting The server system supports var-
simultaneous users and a Web the $2,395 IAS at businesses ious clients including Windows,
authoring tool, called Home Page with as many as 100 employees. Macintosh, DOS-based TCP/IP
Lite from FileMaker Inc., ac- Sold separately, products with applications and Unix with
cording to officials at the Boise, such functions could be priced at TCP/IP support. c

28
Dueling Directories? Taking Color Printing
Pricing to a New Low
Novell tries to beat Microsoft to punch with NDS for NT 2.0
BY MARY JO FOLEY, SM@RTRESELLER, IN DENVER
f microsoft corp. thought no-
I vell Inc. was going to keep a low
profile last week at Microsoft’s
Professional Developer Confer-
ence here—the first time the net-
work operating system veteran
has exhibited—it should have
thought again.
Novell officials distributed
shrink-wrapped copies of Net-
Ware 5.0 to Windows developers
attending the show. Novell also
hawked CDs containing the lat-
est beta build of NDS for Win-
dows NT 2.0, Novell’s port of its
Novell Directory Services that
runs natively on NT.
Not to be outdone, Microsoft
announced Active Directory de-
ployment guidelines for devel-
opers and third-party support for
the directory from ERP (enter-
prise resource planning) vendors.
Novell in early September
shipped the first beta release of
NDS for NT, a product some had
been calling “NDS on NT” earlier
in the year.
Novell to Wed NDS, Linux New Mac OS Speeds Web Searches
BY MARY JO FOLEY, SM@RTRESELLER
novell inc. is planning to offi-
cially unveil before the end of
the month its plan to deliver a
native port of NDS on Linux.
Novell, of Provo, Utah, and
Caldera Inc. are working jointly on
the Novell Directory Services proj-
ect, which will result in technology
that goes beyond the NetWare
for Linux product that Caldera
released in July, according to Ran-
som Love, president and CEO of
Caldera, of Orem, Utah.
“The current NetWare for Lin-
ux port is based on NCPS [Novell
Cross-Platform Services], not the
NDS that’s part of NetWare 5.0,”
Love said. “The new [NDS for Lin-
ux] product would be based on the
latest and greatest technology, so
it will include integrated IP.”
The NDS for Linux product will
represent the culmination of an
agreement signed in 1996 that
called for Caldera to license No-
vell’s network services for inte-
gration with Caldera’s Linux.
Pricing, availability and distri-
bution details have yet to be fi-
Novell expects to ship the final
NDS for NT 2.0 within a matter
of weeks, according to officials of
the Provo, Utah, company, fol-
lowing in-house testing and final
beta feedback. The beta version
Novell distributed at the PDC last
week was Gold Release 5.
“All we care is that we get this
out there and beat Microsoft to
the directory punch,” said a com-
pany representative in the No-
vell booth on the PDC show floor.
For its part, Microsoft is unde-
niably late with its next-genera-
tion Active Directory, slated to
ship with NT 5.0 sometime next
year. But it isn’t idle.
At the PDC, Microsoft unveiled
a set of Active Directory deploy-
ment guidelines for developers
and ISVs, distributing them in hard
copy and posting them to the
MSDN Web site. Baan Co. and
SAP AG demonstrated versions
of their ERP applications that are
integrated with Active Directory.
“We want customers to be able
to come out with Active Directory-
nalized, Love said, but “hypo-
thetically speaking, we’d be like-
ly to use the Novell [reseller] chan-
nel to distribute the product.”
Nevertheless, Novell officials
downplayed the company’s rela-
tionship with Caldera. “We still
have no contract with Caldera for
NDS on Linux,” said Michael
Simpson, director of marketing
at Novell. “There is still no guar-
antee any announcement will hap-
pen. But we want to make sure
NDS is available everywhere.”
However, sources said that
some of the staff currently work-
ing on NDS ports to AIX and So-
laris are the ones involved in the
NDS for Linux work.
In addition to including TCP/IP,
the version of NDS included in
NetWare 5.0 also contains a No-
vell WAN traffic manager and Cat-
alog Services, as well as Domain
Name System/Dynamic Host Con-
figuration Protocol services.
Novell allies Oracle Corp. and
Netscape Communications Corp.
have been touting the benefits of
Linux for months. c
N E W S
enabled applications as close to
ship [of NT 5.0] as possible,” said
Peter Houston, Windows NT
Server product manager.
According to officials at Micro-
soft, in Redmond, Wash., appli-
cations should take advantage of
at least one of the following tech-
nologies to be considered “Active
Directory-enabled”:
• Service publication, which en-
ables clients to find servers auto-
matically by way of the directory.
As a result, static configuration files
for maintaining point-to-point re-
lationships are no longer required.
• Group policy, which lets ap-
plications be “smart” by taking
advantage of administrator-set
policy settings.
• Object extensions, which pro-
vide developers with extensions
to objects already referenced in
the directory, such as user, ma-
chine and/or printer objects.
• Class store, which gives de-
velopers access to the repository
of pointers to Microsoft Installer
objects. c
BY SIMONE KAPLAN
mid the applause of the
A faithful and the newly devot-
ed, Apple Computer Inc.
last week rolled out the latest ver-
sion of its Mac OS.
The Cupertino, Calif., company
also announced its fourth con-
secutive profitable quarter and its
Mac OS 8.5 includes Apple’s new search engine, Sherlock. nounced at the
first profitable year since 1995.
“Apple grew faster than the in- color management utility, is now
dustry this quarter for the first time embedded in the operating sys-
in nearly five years,” said Steve tem, rather than in individual ap-
Jobs, Apple’s interim CEO, dur- plications, enabling all applica-
ing the product announcement.
Jobs introduced Mac OS 8.5,
BY SIMONE KAPLAN
T
ektronix inc. last week broke
the $2,000 price barrier in color
laser printing with the release
of its new Phaser printer.
The Phaser line, which com-
prises three laser and one solid-
ink printer, runs the gamut from
a color-upgradable monochrome
unit to an 11-by-17-inch color laser
printer.
But key to the family is the
$1,995 Phaser 740. The network-
ready workgroup color laser fea-
tures up to 256MB of memory,
optional automatic duplexing and
copier capabilities. It prints at 16
ppm (pages per minute) in black
and white and 5 ppm in color.
The machine is indicative of the
continuing trend to lower the cost
of color computing and make it
accessible to more users.
“Color laser printing won’t re-
place monochrome anytime
soon,” said Keith Waryas, an an-
alyst at International Data Corp.,
in Framingham, Mass. “But I do
code-named Allegro, an operat-
ing system upgrade that features,
among other enhancements, Sher-
lock, Apple’s new search engine.
Sherlock simultaneously ex-
plores several Web search engines
and lets users save a live Web search
to a local file for later use. Users
will be able to log on to Sherlock
from an Apple Web
site, which will be
opened soon.
Another Mac OS
8.5 feature speeds
up the copying of
large files, a proce-
dure used often in
the design and pub-
lishing industry, one
of Apple’s largest
user bases.
Jobs also an-
launch that ColorSync, Apple’s
tions to take advantage of it.
The operating system upgrade
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
see that the lower prices will bring
a higher adoption rate.”
The Phaser 740L is a color-ca-
pable laser workgroup printer. It
prints at 16 ppm in black and white
and 5 ppm in color. While the
740L, priced at $1,495, ships as a
black-and-white printer, users can
The Phaser line starts at under $2,000.
purchase the $550 Color Kit to up-
grade to color printing.
On the high end is the Phaser
780, an 11-by-17-inch color laser
printer priced at $4,995.
The $2,495 Phaser 840, mean-
while, is a solid-ink color printer
with copier capabilities. The 840
prints at 6 ppm in standard color
and 10 ppm in Fast Color. c
is available for $99 for new users
and $19 for those who bought a
Mac in the last 30 days and all iMac
purchasers.
On the financial front, Apple
posted a $106 million profit on
sales of $1.6 billion for its fiscal
fourth quarter, ended Sept. 25.
The company’s earnings for 1998
exceeded $300 million.
Much of Apple’s renewed fi-
nancial success has been attrib-
uted to Jobs’ reinstatement of sorts
as CEO and profits from the iMac,
officials said.
Jobs also announced that Ap-
ple sold 278,000 of the consumer
iMac desktops in the first six weeks
of the computer’s availability. The
iMac is helping Apple win new
converts, according to Jobs. “Over
40 percent of iMac customers are
new for iMac computers and
new for Macintosh,” he said.
In an about-face, Jobs said that
Apple will be adding retailer Best
Buy Co. Inc. to its consumer
channel Nov. 8. In February, Ap-
ple said it would work exclusively
with CompUSA. c

D I G E S T
WEB DEVELOPMENT
G2 authoring puts on SMIL
Digital Renaissance is leveraging the
functionality of SMIL and RealNetworks
Inc.’s forthcoming G2 multimedia author-
ing technology to offer a new streaming
media creation environment.
The Toronto company’s TAG (Tem-
poral Annotation Generator) Production
Suite is scheduled to ship next month for
Windows and the Macintosh. Prices have
not yet been released.
The suite includes TAG Editor 2.0, which
uses RealSystem G2 to create RealText,
RealPix, RealVideo and RealAudio. Users
can add effects to Web applications such
as hot spots, captions, marquees, scrolling
news and ticker tapes.
Using the TAG SMIL Editor, a suite
component that enables authoring with
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Lan-
guage, users can then link media elements
in a single presentation. SMIL is an Ex-
tensible Markup Language-compliant
syntax.
Digital Renaissance can be reached at
(416) 535-4222 or www.digital-ren.com.
UWI consolidates forms creation
UWI.Com this month unveiled a pair of
products that employ Extensible Forms
Description Language, the company’s forms
syntax based on XML, which enables users
to develop Web forms that store tem-
plate, data and internal logic in one file.
InternetForms Designer 1.1.1 enables
creation of Web forms through drag and
drop. InternetForms Viewer 4.0.4 enables
viewing, filling out and submission of Ex-
tensible Markup Language-based forms in
Netscape Communications Corp. and Mi-
crosoft Corp. browsers.
Pricing for the Designer starts at $1,495
per license, while the InternetForms API
starts at $1,995, both with volume discounts.
UWI.Com, of Victoria, British Colum-
bia, is at (888) 517-2675 or www.uwi.com.
Microsof t r eleases new Ag
Microsoft Corp. is attempting to improve
application interaction with an upgrade to
its Agent technology.
Microsoft Agent 2.0 became available
for free download last week on the Red-
mond, Wash., company’s Web site at www.
microsoft.com/msagent.
Agent technology enables users to place
interactive, animated characters in appli-
cations and Web pages to “humanize” in-
teraction with a computer.
The agent will also be integrated into the
forthcoming Office 2000. Microsoft can also
be reached at (800) 426-9400. c
CodeWarrior Professional vanquishes other code compilers in PC Week Labs’ tests PAGE 44 R
PC WEEK OCTOBER 19, 1998
Web Joins War on Cancer
Case Study: Oncology physicians’ network enlists an extranet in the battle
BY ESTHER SHEIN
early everyone is directly affect-
N ed by cancer: Either an individual or
a family member is likely to suffer the
illness. For men, the odds of developing
cancer are 1 in 2; for women, the odds are
1 in 3.
But IT is helping to even the odds. Case
in point: the introduction this month of AOR
SecureNet, an extranet system that can match
a patient with clinical cancer studies in real
time and send out an e-mail notification to
the patient’s doctor if a match is found.
“Cancer is about choices, and the more
choices you have to battle cancer, the bet-
ter your chances,” said Bill McKeon, vice
president at American Oncology Resources
Inc., an oncology physician’s management
network in Houston. AOR designed the
system in conjunction with Tvisions Inc., a
Web development company in Cambridge,
Mass. “At the end of the day, what cancer
patients hope and pray for is that they are
aware of, and have been presented with,
every possible option,” McKeon said.
Clinical trials are significant because they
may be the last option for a patient who does
not respond to traditional therapy, McKeon
said. “Clinical trials that have new agents
might be more effective than what you’re
VeriSign Raises Digital Certificate Bar
BY JIM KERSTETTER
erisign inc. is upping the ante in the
V digital certificate vendor wars. VeriSign
officials last week unveiled the 4.0
version of OnSite, a combination of soft-
ware and services that allow corporations
to control their digital certificates while
ent
VeriSign manages the back end.
The new release includes a distributed
key management and recovery feature so
administrators will have an easier time
recovering lost data, improved adminis-
tration, and new integration tools for
enterprise and virtual private network ap-
plications. It also boasts real-time authen-
tication of certificates and real-time checks
against certificate revocation lists, said
VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos.
Users see a growing importance for ap-
plication integration as they roll out ac-
cess to enterprise resource planning ap-
plications to their business partners.
PAGE 33
doing now. So you have two options: Ei-
ther find another therapy that will beat that
breast cancer Stage 2, or you die,” he said.
This year alone, the pharmaceutical in-
dustry will introduce approximately 234 new
drugs to treat cancer—more drugs than at
any time in the last 10 years. Without search-
able databases, however, the method for
finding patients who might be appropriate
AOR’s McKeon: System helps set up cancer trials.
“Right now, certificates to [work with]
applications is virtually unknown,” said
John Jordan, IT security development team
leader at Texas Instruments Inc., in Plano,
Texas. “And we have ... programmers
who need to use certificates to make busi-
ness decisions such as rights access.”
Jordan said VeriSign’s new, automated
certificate revocation feature will eliminate
another PKI (public-key infrastructure)
problem: sorting out what is and what is
not a valid certificate.
OnSite 4.0 is available now starting at
$5,000 for a PKI pilot project. The Appli-
cation Integration Toolkit and Auto-Ad-
ministration and Directory modules start
at $10,000 each. The OnSite Key Manag-
er and Recovery Services will be available
by the end of the year.
Products aside, it may be the customer
and integration partner announcements
that have the wider implication for VeriSign,
for a clinical trial of a new drug is based on
such factors as physicians’ memory, how
well-read they are, their clinical interest and
the level of staff dedicated to research.
Relying on the paper-based method for
applying for trials entails a greater danger
of getting closed out from the limited num-
ber of eligible positions by the time the
forms have been submitted and processed,
McKeon said.
“It’s a very labor-intensive process, and
that’s why a lot of doctors don’t engage in
research—because it’s costly and time-con-
suming,” he said. With SecureNet, when
matches are found, doctors can secure pa-
tients’ approval and enroll them online.
Extranet explosion
AOR SecureNet is an example of what For-
rester Research Inc. calls peer or joint
venture extranets: when partnerships are
formed among industry players to serve the
common good.
“We generally think of extranets as
part of the business process, but they’re
also showing up in these more humanitar-
ian areas,” says Steven Bell, an analyst at
Forrester, in Cambridge, Mass. “The im-
pact will be tremendous on cancer research.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 37 R
in Mountain View, Calif.
VeriSign is locked in a tight duel for the
fledgling PKI market with Entrust Tech-
nologies Inc., of Richardson, Texas. Over
the past month, the companies have trad-
ed competing analyst reports over which
PKI system is easier and costs less to im-
plement.
They’ve also traded shots over which
company has the biggest customer base—
a key to a market that is worried about the
interoperability of the X.509 certificates
that are at the heart of PKIs. With the On-
Site 4.0 announcement, VeriSign is an-
nouncing integration deals with Cisco
Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intuit
Inc., JetForm Corp., Lotus Development
Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Micro-
soft Corp., Netscape Communications Corp.
and Network Associates Inc.
VeriSign is at (650) 961-7500 or www.
verisign.com. c

36 I N T R A N E T S & E - C O M M E R C E
MARK L. VAN NAME & BILL CATCHINGS: LOOKING FORWARD
E-Commerce Exposé
Reveals Secret Plans
n preparation for this week’s networld+
I
Interop trade show, we unleashed our secret
team of elite crackers on the marketing data-
bases of the industry’s biggest electronic com-
merce players. Here are some of the plans they
uncovered.
One of the first sites we hit was beta test- perfume squirts in the face that make real-
ing the next generation of shopping carts. life mall shopping so exciting.
These three-dimensional audio carts let Online cosmetics sites will take advan-
you hear shoppers scrambling for a sale in tage of the attention SML will bring them
the next aisle, so you can rush over to join and add even more realism to the online
them. The wheels squeak as you go, and shopping experience. Cameras attached to
for the complete experience you can even PCs will feed your image to software
choose the crying baby option. makeover agents, so in mere moments you’ll
Not content with mere sound enhance- be able to see how good you could look if
ments, a leading Internet upstart is cham- you’d buy their products.
pioning the new SML (Sensory Markup Another company is hoping to steer the
Language) and a host of cheap PC add- online stock trading bandwagon into the le-
ons that will work with SML’s new senso- gal service arena. Its new LAW (Legal
ry tags. The first product will be a PC- Advice Writer) will let you file for divorce,
attached atomizer, so as you browse the sue for whiplash or start a class-action law-
online malls, you’ll get those occasional suit against your favorite poorly perform-
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
ing stock. Fill in a few fields, and LAW will well you’re doing. Make a bundle selling
send your documents to the appropriate short, and you’ll see ads for Caribbean va-
parties. Later enhancements will tap state cations. Lose big, and alcohol and pain-re-
traffic accident databases and hospital med- lief vendors will entreat you to try their wares.
ical records so that the software can alert
you to every possible opportunity to sue.
If you want to take your financial activ-
ities completely out of the physical realm,
A different extension of online stock a new multilevel marketing company (read:
trading is coming in the form of FAAs (Fi- pyramid scheme) will let you trade entire-
nancial Advisor Avatars). These 3-D char- ly in “Web rights.” Web rights are levels
acters will help novices get into of privilege that purchasers can
the stock game. You’ll be able
AS YOU BROWSE THE
use for access to the company’s
to pick from a wide variety of ONLINE MALLS, YOU’LL Web site and to earn more Web
FAA appearances and philos- GET AN OCCASIONAL rights. New members pay mon-
ophies. Conservative? One ey to earlier members in return
early FAA is a mother figure PERFUME SQUIRT for the right to sell Web rights.
who constantly chastises you IN THE FACE. In the boldest move of all,
to save more. Want to roll the our crackers were able to tap
dice on a down-and-out stock? A Jersey into the hush-hush Web plans of Presi-
huckster will whisper his encouragement. dent Clinton’s legal defense fund. In an
If you want to track how such changes aggressive effort to both raise funds and
are affecting your net worth, a prominent clear the president’s reputation, the fund
portal will be offering the new Java-based is planning to open a fee-based Web site
Your Personal Net Worth meter. Cough up that will provide round-the-clock access
a few pages of intimate financial details, and to Web cams installed in every hallway in
this site will give you access to a Java ap- the White House. For $9.95 a month, you
plet that will show you your worth instan- can keep an eye on every intern in the place.
taneously. Watch during the day as your Matt Drudge has already signed up. c
stocks rise and fall, electronic deposits hit
your account, and credit card bills roll in. Mark L. Van Name and Bill Catchings can
Advertisers on the site will have access be reached at mark_van_name@zd.com
to this data, and their ads will reflect how and bill_catchings@zd.com.
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 I N T R A N E T S
Oncology Online
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33
It’s nice to see technology helping people.”
Similar patient/trial matching pro-
grams can be found on the American
Cancer Society’s Web site (www.cancer.
org), the site of the National Cancer Insti-
tute (cancertrials.nci.nih.gov)—a branch
of the National Institutes of Health—and
Center Watch Clinical Trials Listing Ser-
vice (centerwatch.com). AOR SecureNet
differs from these sites because it is avail-
able only to oncology practices within the
AOR network. In addition, rather than
requiring a doctor or nurse to continuously
search for the latest trials, it stores patient
information in a database and sends out
notification of treatment matches as they
are found.
McKeon formulated the idea for a sys-
tem that would scan patient information
and match it with new clinical trials. He
began looking for a technical partner in
January and chose Tvisions because of the
company’s background in building secure
Web sites for companies in the financial in-
dustry, he said.
AOR SecureNet captures patient infor-
& E - C O M M E R C E
mation, including name, date of birth, site
of the cancer and the stage of the cancer—
on a scale of 1 through 4, with 4 being the
worst—in a Microsoft SQL Server database.
“As soon as a [doctor or nurse] hits the
submit button, the patient’s profile is run
against every open trial in the network,”
McKeon said. For example, once infor-
mation is submitted about a breast cancer
Stage 2 patient, SecureNet will scan the
database, and as soon as it finds a match
between a patient and a clinical trial, an
e-mail notification is sent to the patient’s
doctor. Even if physicians are not logged
on to their e-mail, they will receive an
alert in Windows 95, McKeon said.
The first AOR oncology practice began
using the extranet in May, but many of the
practices needed to have their systems up-
graded in order to participate, McKeon said.
AOR has 340 oncologists and more than
1,400 nurses in 18 states, and all practices
have now been standardized on Pentium II-
based Compaq computers running Windows
95 and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4.0.
The immediate results have so far been
very positive. The first day a practice in
Tulsa, Okla., had the system installed, it re-
ceived seven trial matches correlating
with a variety of cancers, McKeon said.
The site was designed in a three-tier cli-
37
ent/server architecture, with the browser as McKeon said AOR officials haven’t
the client; the application tier (which stores
the business logic and rules for authentica-
tion) in the middle on the Web server; and
decided whether to sell the technology to
other oncology practices, since the system
is still in its early stages. “We may look at
the database, which stores all the patient in- this down the road,” he said.
formation, as the third tier, said Ziv Yaar, a For more information about AOR, point
software engineer at Tvisions, in Cambridge. to www.aori.com. c
CASE FILE
Organization: American Oncology Resources Inc.
Headquarters: Houston
The need: To more efficiently match cancer patients with clinical trials.
The solution: AOR SecureNet, an extranet that scans patient information for matches
with clinical studies, then sends e-mail to the physician when a match is found.
Staffing: The site was developed by Tvisions Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., and is maintained
by two full-time Tvisions employees.
Status report: Available to 340 doctors and 1,400 nurses at AOR practices in 18 states.
TOOLBOX
The basics: The site was developed with Active Server Pages created in Microsoft Visual
InterDev. Microsoft J++ was used to build COM objects. The Active Server Pages
generate HTML based on input received from the user. AOR SecureNet is accessed
via Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0.
The servers: Microsoft Site Server 3.0 handles the security, membership and personal-
ization features, and Microsoft Search Server was used for creating search capabili-
ties. Microsoft Exchange is used for e-mail and collaborative features, including a cal-
endar for posting events, and news or discussion groups. Everything resides on
Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0, running on a Windows NT server.
The hardware: Two Micron Technology Inc. NetFrame servers, each with a 300MHz
Pentium II processor, 256MB of RAM and 4GB of mirrored disk storage.

40
IBM Empowering Web Server Administration
BY ANTONE GONSALVES AND BRIAN HANNON
bm is aiming to improve application con-
I trol and functionality with new Web serv-
er and streaming media releases.
IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., will release at
I N T R A N E T S
the end of the month the eNetwork On-
Demand Server, a Web application man-
agement environment.
Integration with Tivoli Systems Inc. man-
agement tools provides the eNetwork On-
& E - C O M M E R C E
Demand Server with an environment for
real-time monitoring, administration and
deployment of Web applications. The serv-
er also works with management software
from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Candle
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Corp. and has a preference engine that
can customize application deployment and
management options to specific users or
groups of users. Officials did not disclose
pricing but said it will carry a per-user
cost.
The eNetwork On-Demand Server en-
ables easy delivery and deployment of Java
components, providing the opportunity to
move to a universal desktop, according to
Jim Mason, president of Cape Cod Bay
Systems, a custom application consul-
tancy and IBM business partner in Ply-
mouth, Mass.
“It’s kind of like a hammer in your tool
kit to me,” Mason said, noting that the serv-
er works in conjunction with IBM’s Web-
Sphere application server, application stu-
dio, and performance pack and the Java
Host On Demand. “It sort of all fits to-
gether as pieces in a network frame-
work.”
IBM can be reached at (800) 426-3333
or www.ibm.com. Sun, of Mountain View,
Calif., can be reached at (800) 821-4643 or
www.sun.com. c
Java Gleams in
GemStone Server
BY ANTONE GONSALVES
gemstone systems inc.’s latest version
of its Web application server will support
EJB 1.0 and provide transaction support
through an all-Java OTM.
GemStone/J 2.0 will ship in December
and will be demonstrated at the SIGS Con-
ference for Java Development, in San Jose,
Calif., this week.
The GemStone object transaction
monitor is accessed through the Java Trans-
action Service interface defined in the En-
terprise JavaBean specification. The OTM
implements CORBA (Common Object
Request Broker Architecture) 2.3 for com-
munications with CORBA clients through
IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol). The
server also supports Java’s Remote Method
Invocation over IIOP.
The server, which targets EJB develop-
ment, includes GemStone’s new Service
Activator technology for load balancing
and managing pools of Java Virtual Ma-
chines added to the server for scalability.
GemStone/J supports all the major third-
party Java independent development en-
vironments and ships with a console for ses-
sion management.
The Beaverton, Ore., company has added
a Persistent Cache to the product that en-
ables an application to temporarily store
data for access by multiple users. The cache
also can be used in Web applications that
use shopping carts.
The new server implements the security
architecture defined in the Java Develop-
ment Kit 1.2. GemStone/J 2.0 will sell for a
starting price of $4,995 per developer.
GemStone is at (503) 533-3000 or www.
gemstone.com. c
 PC WEEK
44 I N T R A N E T S & E - C O M M E R C E OCTOBER 19, 1998

CodeWarrior a Real Trooper

PC WEEK LABS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

CodeWarrior Professional
Version 4
Developers who are more concerned about
function than form will appreciate the abili-
Review: Metrowerks’ upgrade adds new coding weapons to its arsenal USABILITY B ty to write in C, C++,
CAPABILITY B Pascal or Java and
BY PETER COFFEE, PC WEEK LABS for example, we could automatically dragging its icon onto the desktop (as in PERFORMANCE A to craft code for
INTEROPERABILITY A Windows or Macin-
odewarrior professional 4 offers hide, minimize or close any nondebugging many competing environments, such as

C versatile software developers a much- windows when we started a debugging ses- Symantec Corp.’s). Other cosmetic glitches
improved array of world-class weapons. sion. CodeWarrior retains its distinctive included captions in dialog boxes that could
For those who want to deliver applica- look and feel, with many operations con- not be fully read because they did not fit
MANAGEABILITY B
tosh systems using
Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior Professional 4.

Superior C++ code speed; smooth

tions to many fronts at once, Metrowerks trolled by icons that we found handy rather the available space, and a third-party edi-
multitasking of tools; flexible and conve-
Corp.’s CodeWarrior Professional 4 has all than cluttered. tor option that did not add externally
nient environment.
the tools required to build well-crafted code Developers employing CodeWarrior on opened files to CodeWarrior’s list of re-
Several cosmetic glitches; lacks visual
for Windows or Macintosh users cent items.
tools for GUI construction; awkward in-
with X86, PowerPC and even On the plus side, pop-up
stallation options.
680X0 machines. The $424 pack- right-button menus—which
age provides an arsenal of high- were absent in the first Win- Metrowerks Corp., Austin, Texas
quality compilers for C, C++, dows release—sped access (800) 377-5416; www.metrowerks.com
Scoring methodology: www.pcweek.com/reviews/meth.html
Java and Pascal, using an inte- in Version 4 to many useful
grated environment that stood options during editing and
up to PC Week Labs’ live-fire debugging. Mapping of keys tions individually that would logically come
tests. could easily be changed, as a set. For example, “CC++ for X86” is
Leaving earlier CodeWarrior for example, to change the an option under “Language Packages,”
versions in the dust, the latest Redo key from the default whereas “C and C++ Libraries” is a com-
version of the Metrowerks C++ Ctrl-Shift-Z to the more pletely separate option under “Win32-X86
compiler produced code that shot standard Ctrl-Y (which Support Libraries.”
past Microsoft Corp.’s Visual CodeWarrior initially as- It’s a matter of perspective: CodeWar-
C++ 6.0 with a 30 percent edge signs to the View As com- rior is designed for the developer who thinks
in Tak benchmark throughput. mand, which controls the of Windows applications as a subset of pos-
This sets a new high score in our format of displayed data sible C++ projects, rather than thinking of
tests of compilers for C++, FOR- Multilanguage development for multiple desktop platforms gets smoother during debugging). C++ as being mainly a way of writing Win-
TRAN, Ada, Pascal and several and faster in Version 4 of Metrowerks’ CodeWarrior Professional. When setting up the dows applications. And the product’s name
other languages. Metrowerks tools, we found is CodeWarrior, not “GUIWarrior”: There
We were also pleased to note Version Windows 95 or Windows NT can choose the automatic installer to be seriously op- are other tools that are far better suited to
4’s up-to-date position on the rapidly evolv- between two overall arrangements: a mul- timistic about required disk space. We sug- visual construction of graphical applica-
ing front of the C++ language. Metrowerks tiple-window layout that is at home on either gest freeing about 100MB more than the tions.
tracks the emerging language standard with Macintosh or Windows systems or a Mul- installer says will be needed for a given set Additional tools for the Palm Com-
advanced features such as partial special- tiple Document Interface with a top-level of installation options in order to ensure a puting platform are currently available
ization of templates, which allows a pro- parent window. successful outcome. to extend Version 4. Not reviewed here,
grammer to define a hierarchy of increas- Installation options are structured by but of likely interest to multiplatform de-
ingly specific patterns of operation on Some areas shine more than others category of tool, rather than by type of de- velopers, are the Linux tools that Metro-
different types of data. However, Metrowerks still has some pol- velopment project. A developer who wants werks plans to add to the CodeWarrior
ishing to do. For example, we got confus- (for example) only Windows C++ devel- Professional package in next spring’s Ver-
Finding the faults ing results when we tried to open a file by opment facilities will have to choose op- sion 5. c
Although we admired CodeWarrior’s at-
tention to such issues, we also knew where
to look for weak spots in CodeWarrior’s to the channels using the Save to the Web
productivity—we found many shortcom-
ings in last year’s release of the first Win-
dows-hosted version of Metrowerks’ tools.
Rio 3.1 Pushes Into Corporate Space client, which integrates with Windows ap-
plications such as Internet Explorer and
Microsoft Corp.’s Word. In Rio 3.1, we
(PC Week Labs chose not to review that FROM PC WEEK LABS With several new the Web client and increased server sup- were able to perform these tasks from a
early release because it offered no com- features that improve its usability and port. Prices for Rio start at $9,500 for the standard HTML interface within a brows-
pelling advantage for Windows-based de- accessibility, DataChannel Corp.’s latest Windows NT server and $14,500 for the er, which saved us from having to down-
velopment.) Rio upgrade, Version 3.1, makes the in- Unix-based server. load any special client software (see
Specifically, Metrowerks initially failed formation push system more attractive to In Rio 3.0, users could create content screen).
to support Windows interface conventions corporate intranets. channels and publish files and Web pages A new ActiveX control that increases
and did not deliver expected levels of multi- Although it’s only an incremen- the publishing capabilities within
tasking performance during time-consum- tal upgrade, PC Week Labs found Internet Explorer 4.01 has also
ing operations such as compiling large proj- several major improvements in Data- been added. This control adds Save
ects. Channel’s latest application, which to the Web capabilities as an IE
Version 4 does a far better job of shipped last month, but by far the 4.0 Explorer bar.
meeting Windows programmers’ needs biggest improvement is the exten- DataChannel has included new
and expectations. We found the Version sion of publishing capabilities to the kits to help companies integrate
4 tools responsive and flexible while work- Web browser. In the previous ver- Rio 3.1 with the Microsoft Index
ing with multiple projects in more than sion, users could only publish con- Server, Lotus Notes and Active
one language at a time (see screen, above). tent to a channel using the Windows- Server Pages.
Editing operations were unaffected by based Save to the Web client. DataChannel, of Bellevue,
compilation or other machine-intensive Rio 3.1 also includes improved Wash., can be reached at (425) 462-
tasks. channel search capabilities, better 1999 or www.datachannel.com.
The environment provided a wealth of Windows integration for its Save to —Jim Rapoza
options for different window behaviors—

D I G E S T
NOTEBOOKS
NEC puts Saturn into orbit
NEC Computer Systems Division this week
will launch Saturn, a low-cost notebook PC.
NEC’s Saturn will come with a choice
of various Intel Corp. processors and
screens.
A model with a 233MHz Pentium Proces-
sor with MMX Technology, a 12.1-inch TFT
(thin-film transistor) display, 32MB of
RAM, a 2.1GB hard drive, a 24-speed
CD-ROM drive and a 56K-bps modem will
start at $1,799. A model that uses a 233MHz
Pentium II and a 13.3-inch TFT display will
start at $2,299.
NEC, in Mountain View, Calif., can be
reached at (888) 863-2669 or www.
necnow.com.
TinyNote weighs in at 3.6 pounds
Mag Portable Technologies Inc. is betting
big on its new TinyNote mininotebook PC.
The TinyNote, which ships this week,
weighs 3.6 pounds and is 10.9 inches by 7
inches by 1.4 inches. It combines an 8-
inch single-scan dis-
play and a 200MHz
Media GX processor
from Cyrix Corp.
Users can custom-
configure the note-
book’s system
memory and
hard drive
size. A base model configured with 32MB
of RAM and a 2GB hard drive will start at
$999. Mag Portable Technologies, in San-
ta Ana, Calif., can be reached at (800) 533-
7515 or www.magportables.com.
HANDHELD COMPUTERS
3Com, Compaq slash prices
3Com Corp. has cut prices on two Palm-
Pilots after ceasing production on a third.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company re-
duced the price of its Palm III, introduced
in April, by $30 to $369. The company also
dropped the price of the PalmPilot Pro-
fessional Edition by $50 to $249. It dis-
continued the PalmPilot Personal Edi-
tion, priced at $199. The device is similar
to the PalmPilot Professional but at 512KB
has half as much memory.
Compaq Computer Corp. cut prices on
its C-Series of handheld PCs based on Win-
dows CE 2.0. The company reduced its
C-Series 2010c and 2015c models with col-
or displays by $100 to $699. The C-Series
810 was reduced from $499 to $425.
3Com is at (800) 638-3266 or www.
palmpilot.3com.com. Compaq, of Hous-
ton, is at (800) 888-5925 or www.compaq.
com. c
450MHz Xeon gives IBM, HP workstations more power for the price, PC Week Labs finds PAGE 60 R
PC WEEK OCTOBER 19, 1998
Channel Giant Gains Clout
Inacom’s acquisition of Vanstar will create $7 billion megadistributor
BY ANNE KNOWLES
he wave of stratification that has
T hit PC OEMs is now crashing into the
computer channel.
Inacom Corp. and Vanstar Corp. recently
announced plans to merge to form a $7
billion systems integrator that Inacom claims
will be the industry’s largest supplier of
PC products from Compaq Computer
Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM.
The resulting reseller may provide an
antidote to the direct market juggernaut
led by Dell Computer Corp.—but only if
it can deliver the same advantages.
“We’re taking a harder look at direct [ven-
dors],” said Chuck Clabots, CIO at United
Behavioral Healthcare, a division of Unit-
ed HealthCare, in Minnetonka, Minn.
Clabots is hoping to further reduce PC
costs through the application imaging and
custom configuration services provided
by OEMs like Dell. “If [Inacom-Vanstar]
could accomplish that, that would certain-
CE-Based Units Still Don’t Measure Up
Review: ‘Jupiter’ prototypes of PC Professional are versatile but not vital
BY HERB BETHONEY, PC WEEK LABS
he first devices to use microsoft
T Corp.’s latest Windows CE operating
system, called the Handheld PC Pro-
fessional Edition, won’t take the place of
a notebook PC but might do as well as a
mininotebook for those whose computing
needs are modest.
The two prototype handheld PCs
that PC Week Labs evalu-
ated, scheduled to ship
next month, are Hewlett-
Packard Co.’s Jornada 820
H/PC and Vadem Co.’s
Clio, which both have an es-
timated street price of $999.
The Handheld PC Profes-
sional Edition, code-named
Jupiter, includes support for DOC
and XLS file extensions, and POP3 and
IMAP4 e-mail protocols.
In this edition, Microsoft has also im-
proved Pocket Internet Explorer and
added Pocket Access. Although the op-
erating system still does not step up in
class, it’s a worthwhile upgrade for users
PAGE 49
ly make them competitive,” he said.
It is also likely, through sheer size and
volume, to garner more respect from
computer makers and corporate computer
buyers alike.
Inacom-Vanstar vital stats
R $7 billion in revenues, about $800 mil-
lion from services
R 12,000 employees, including 7,300 ser-
vice personnel
R Bill Fairfield, CEO and president; David
Guenthner, executive vice president
and CFO
“Size does matter here,” said Marilyn
Truglio, an analyst with Gartner Group
Inc., in Stamford, Conn. “Overall, it is
positive. But in the short term it is going
to be disruptive. Customers on both sides
can expect deterioration in services [since]
there will be a level of distraction as
of Windows CE handheld PCs.
We found that neither Handheld PC
Professional device provides enough func-
tionality to move into the notebook are-
na. And mininotebooks that run Windows
95 and can be purchased for as little as
$1,000 make a cost-effective, attractive,
lightweight alternative to notebooks that
can be purchased for about the same price.
Jornada’s traditional
footprint (left)
contrasts with
Clio’s swivel-
screen design.
An MIS department would do best to
limit the purchase of Handheld PC Pro-
fessional Edition-class devices to employ-
ees who need one only for personal infor-
mation management. Those who need the
features of a notebook computer while on
they pull it all together.”
The stock swap deal, in which each
Vanstar share will be exchanged for a 0.64
share of Inacom, was valued at $480 mil-
lion when it was announced two weeks ago.
Inacom would also assume $120 million in
Vanstar debt, about $195 million in Vanstar
preferred shares and possibly more than
$200 million in additional charges associ-
ated with the acquisition. The total cost will
exceed $1 billion.
Atlanta-based Vanstar was reportedly
considering offers from a handful of suit-
ors, including Computer Associates In-
ternational Inc., Comdisco Inc. and En-
tex Information Services Inc., as well as
Inacom.
The deal is expected to be finalized by
the first quarter of next year after regulatory
and shareholder approval.
Inacom, in Omaha, Neb., is at (402)
392-2700 or www.inacom.com. Vanstar is
at (770) 522-4700 or www.vanstar.com. c
the road will find this new class of CE-based
devices anemic and unable to run all of their
applications.
Screens are looking better
The Jornada and the Clio each have
256-color VGA screens and almost full-
size keyboards. These features make the
devices better choices than previous hand-
held PCs, which have smaller screens
and keyboards.
The Clio’s display measures
about 9.38 inches diagonally—
1.25 inches larger than the Jor-
nada’s screen, which spans 8.13
inches diagonally.
We found the Jornada’s
display brighter than the
Clio’s. The outdoors bright-
ness setting on the Jornada screen
also made it easy to read outside, unlike
the Clio’s screen, which was too dim for
outdoor use.
The new devices each weigh about 3.2
pounds with an AC adapter. Their trim
CONTINUED ON PAGE 54 R
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 D E S K T O P & M O B I L E 53

PETER COFFEE: PC AT WORK 6x86 makes it faster on load-intensive code

than a simple comparison of cache size might
The Industry’s New Motto: Demo and Die suggest. And so on.
Speaking of shipping products when
t mit’s media lab, the oft-repeated Microsoft’s Windows CE is spurring new to achieve low power consumption, portable they’re ready, my latest book is now on

A dictum is “demo or die.” In other

realms, experts can disagree for
years or even decades, but computing and
demand for several non-X86 lines.
This variety complicates buyers’ decisions,
because these chips can’t be compared by
systems limit cache memory capacities: This
seriously handicaps X86 code, with its fre-
quent loads from memory due to small reg-
sale: “Peter Coffee Teaches PCs,” from
Que, bears ISBN #0789717034. I hope it
will help answer many of the PC questions
communications are different: We can fil- simple measures such as clock rate. Pressed ister sets. Dual-ported cache on the Cyrix that come your way. c
ter attempts to engage our attention by
demanding to see an idea in action.
But the Media Lab mantra seems to be
taking an unwelcome
turn in the commercial
world of PCs and their
software. Lately, our
industry’s motto seems
to be “demo and die,”
since our days are be-
coming rife with high-
profile demos of high-tech babies that
weren’t quite ready for public baptism.
Last month, Intel CEO Craig Barrett end-
ed a major multimedia demo with a system
crash; earlier this year, Microsoft’s Bill Gates
made the evening news all over the coun-
try when he crashed Windows 98 before a
capacity crowd at Comdex/Spring.
We’re OK with press-tour pratfalls. We
want to see new products as soon as we
can to get a sense of what they’ll be able
to do when they’re ready to ship, but I said
ready: We’d like to think that this word still
means something.
Increasingly, though, it seems as if cus-
tomers don’t just want to know about tech-
nologies well in advance. Aggressive IT
adopters want to put new tools to work as
soon as the vendor will allow—quite a switch
from the 1980s attitude of “prove to me
that it’s ready.”
When I look at the costs of staying abreast
of all these technical initiatives, and at the
added cost of bridging from transitional
technologies to final shipping versions, I’m
reminded of one U.S. president’s compar-
ison of Congress to a newborn infant: “an
enormous appetite at one end, and no sense
of responsibility at the other.” That’s not
the image that anyone wants for even a
deliberately bleeding-edge IT organization.
An enormous list of IT innovations cer-
tainly burst forth at last week’s Micro-
processor Forum in San Jose, where I was
relieved to see a decisive departure from
last year’s premature coronation of Intel’s
IA-64. This year’s forum was a celebration
of genuine competition, with Alpha-based
chips and meaningful X86 extensions all of-
fering attractive software opportunities.
I’m relieved to see renewed support for
alternative processor platforms from a wide
range of development tools. On Page 44,
I review the latest release of Metrowerks’
CodeWarrior Professional tool kit for C,
C++, Java and Pascal on X86, PowerPC
and 680X0 systems: Its compilers include
optimizations for AMD’s instruction sets
as well as various Pentium-family chips.
Microsoft still has Alpha processor sup-
port in the newly released Visual C++ 6.0;

What do you want from the chips in your

next IT appliance? Tell me at peter_coffee
@zd.com.

54
CE-Based Units
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 49
weight and superior battery life—about 10
hours—are a welcome relief from heavier
and more energy-hungry full-size notebooks.
Clio uses a “tri-fold”design (see photo,
Page 49), which allows its 640-by-480-
pixel screen to be folded flat and face-up
against the keyboard so that the unit can
be used as a tablet. The Clio includes Para-
graph Inc.’s Calligrapher 3.0 handwriting
recognition software, which provides the
best recognition we’ve seen to date in a
handheld PC.
However, the unit’s CompactFlash slot
is located in the battery compartment, mak-
ing it awkward, if not impossible, to add
third-party devices, such as pager cards, to
that slot. Nor is there a VGA-out port on
the Clio, which makes the device difficult
to use with an external monitor.
Jornada has a more traditional sub-
notebook form factor and includes a track
pad for easy cursor navigation but lacks
handwriting recognition capabilities. The
PC Card slots are readily accessible on both
the Jornada and the Clio.
Both handheld PCs come with built-in
D E S K T O P
56K-bps modems, which proved conve-
nient for e-mail and Internet access. The
Jornada’s wizard for setting up communi-
cation links between a PC, an Internet ser-
vice provider and an e-mail account are a
big help.
Vadem’s device relies on Windows CE’s
unnecessarily difficult procedure for com-
munication setup, and we weren’t always
able to establish a connection to synchro-
nize data between the Clio and a PC.
Access database included
In addition to the usual Pocket versions of
Microsoft’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Out-
look and Internet Explorer that Windows
CE includes, Microsoft has added a pock-
et version of its Access database to Ver-
sion 1.1 of the CE operating system. We
easily created a Pocket Access database
and synchronized it with an Access 97 data-
base on a desktop PC.
Web pages display text and graphics bet-
ter now that Pocket Internet Explorer sup-
ports HTML 3.2 and JavaScript.
Both handheld PCs distinguish them-
selves by providing additional software.
The Clio includes Vadem’s useful View-
Finder application. Saving users the time
it takes to cycle between the most fre-
quently used PIM (personal information
& M O B I L E
Jornada 820 H/PC Prototype
PC WEEK LABS EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES
HP’s Jornada 820 H/PC is better suited for
mobile users who want the convenience of a
PIM organizer and access to their e-mail and
the Internet than earlier Windows CE-based
handheld PCs were. However, the device,
based on Microsoft’s new Handheld PC Pro-
fessional Edition specification, won’t take the
place of a notebook PC, and a mininotebook
can be purchased for about the same amount
of money.
Good battery life; bright screen out-
doors; built-in 56K-bps modem; VGA and
USB ports; easy to synchronize with PC.
Lacks handwriting recognition software;
has small screen, considering the size of
the unit.
Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif.
(800) 443-1254; www.hp.com/handheld
Scoring methodology: www.pcweek.com/reviews/meth.html
manager) applications, ViewFinder uses
four window panes to display all PIM in-
formation at once.
The Jornada ships with several HP util-
ities that make it easy to back up data,
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Clio Prototype
Like HP’s Jornada 820 H/PC, Vadem’s Clio
handheld PC is a good choice for mobile work-
ers who want a lightweight device with long
battery life for keeping up on e-mail and using
the Internet. The Clio’s lack of a VGA port, how-
ever, limits its appeal for those who need to
give presentations, and the CE-based device
falls short of notebooks and mininotebooks
for handling most computing tasks.
Good battery life; large screen that
swivels, allowing the unit to be used as a
tablet; good handwriting recognition soft-
ware; built-in 56K-bps modem.
No VGA-out port; CompactFlash port
is difficult to access; screen is dim out-
doors.
Vadem Co., San Jose, Calif.
(408) 467-2100; www.vadem.com
view appointments and adjust the unit’s
system settings. The Jornada also includes
a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port so that
users can take advantage of the latest
USB devices. c
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Compaq to Shift Alpha Work
IBM, Samsung could
unseat Intel as chip’s
primary manufacturer
BY LISA DICARLO
ver the next few quarters, intel corp.
O will have less and less to do with pro-
ducing one of the biggest threats to its
processor monarchy, the Alpha chip.
That’s because Compaq Computer Corp.,
which now owns the Alpha, is looking to
IBM Microelectronics and Samsung Elec-
tronics Co. Ltd. to be the principal manu-
facturers of the 64-bit processors.
“We’re talking quite seriously about
IBM and others being our primary suppli-
ers,” said Jesse Lipcon, senior vice president
of the high-performance server division at
Compaq, in Maynard, Mass., and a former
Digital Equipment Corp. executive.
“Samsung is being much more aggres-
sive than Intel [in trying to be] our primary
D E S K T O P
supplier. ... Samsung’s 0.18-micron road map
looks more impressive than Intel’s,” Lip-
con said. “We are also quite attracted to
[IBM’s manufacturing] process road map.”
For its part, Samsung has always been
a big promoter of the Alpha. It estab-
lished Alpha Processor Inc., dedicated to
Alpha sales and marketing. In Febru-
ary, Samsung licensed the Alpha design
from Digital.
Analysts said the size and scope of IBM’s
and Samsung’s manufacturing mean that
they could produce the Alpha profitably,
something that always eluded Digital.
In August, Intel said that it would con-
tinue to fulfill its legal obligation to build
Alphas but said that ultimately it’s up to
Compaq to decide where to buy chips.
“How can [Intel] build them if we don’t
order them?” Lipcon said. “We’re not un-
der obligation to buy chips from Intel.”
Although there are a few small compa-
nies building Alpha-based systems, Intel
sells Alphas exclusively to Compaq.
& M O B I L E
In addition, Lipcon pointed out the
awkward situation in which Intel finds it-
self—supplying its largest X86 customer,
Compaq, with processors that pose po-
tentially the biggest threat to Intel’s Pen-
An Alpha primer
Today
R Owned by Compaq
R Manufactured primarily by Intel;
Samsung is secondary supplier
R Platform sales and marketing handled
by Alpha Processor Inc.
R Compaq only volume systems provider
Possibly tomorrow
R Manufactured primarily by Samsung
and IBM; Intel to be used as a backup
R AMD licenses Alpha design and builds
Alpha clones
R Compaq one of several high-profile
Alpha systems manufacturers
55
tium family on the high end.
How Intel came to build Alphas in the
first place is a tangled web of events.
After suing each other for patent in-
fringement, Intel and Digital (which was
not then owned by Compaq) agreed to
settle. Part of the deal called for Intel to
buy Digital’s fabrication facility in Hud-
son, Mass., and to manufacture the Alpha
for Digital for a period of about seven years.
The Federal Trade Commission, concerned
that Intel could undermine the viability of
the Alpha, said Digital must license the Alpha
design to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. or
another third party and certify IBM or some
other company to manufacture the Alpha.
Compaq and AMD have a memo of un-
derstanding under which AMD will license
the Alpha design to build Alpha clones, of-
ficials of both companies said. However,
they have not closed the deal. Compaq’s
Lipcon said he doesn’t know the cause of
the delay. Sources said IBM, in Austin, Texas,
and Compaq will announce a foundry deal
for the Alpha by year’s end.
Compaq, of Houston, can be reached at
(800) 345-1518 or www.compaq.com. IBM
Microelectronics, in Fishkill, N.Y., can be
reached at (800) 426-3333 or www.ibm.com.
Samsung, in Ridgefield Park, N.J., is at
(800) 726-7864 or www.sosimple.com. c
 PC WEEK
60 D E S K T O P & M O B I L E OCTOBER 19, 1998

Xeon Gives Workstations an Edge

Review: Slim gains in 3-D graphics speed may make 450MHz chip worth price BY MICHAEL CATON, PC WEEK LABS
ower-hungry workstation users will like even the small

P
PC WEEK LABS EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES
performance increase Intel Corp.’s 450MHz Pentium II Xeon
processor brings to Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Kayak XW and IBM’s
Kayak XW IntelliStation Z Pro
IntelliStation Z Pro workstations—especially in light of the Hewlett-Packard’s Visualize fx6 graphics IBM’s IntelliStation Z Pro delivers good per-
subsystem gives the Kayak XW a considerable formance for 3-D applications and is priced ap-
fact that the systems released this month sell for roughly the USABILITY B performance advan- propriately for the per-
USABILITY B
same price as their 400MHz Xeon-based predecessors. CAPABILITY B tage over other CAPABILITY B formance it delivers.
PERFORMANCE A 450MHz Pentium II PERFORMANCE B The remote manage-
PC Week Labs’ benchmark tests of the Kayak XW and the Intelli- INTEROPERABILITY C Xeon-based worksta- INTEROPERABILITY B ment features of the
MANAGEABILITY B MANAGEABILITY C
Station Z Pro showed modest gains where Works Corp.’s SolidWorks 98, AutoDesk tions. The Kayak XW 450MHz Xeon-based
it matters—in three-dimensional applica- Inc.’s 3D Studio Max R2 and Advanced Vi- system has several nice management features workstation, which include DMI support, will
tions that require both processor and graph- sual Systems Inc.’s AVS/Express 3.4—we but, like IBM’s IntelliStation Z Pro workstation, help save some support costs, but any ser-
ics performance. The graphics subsystem saw improvements of up to 8 percent with has a case design that makes accessing vice or upgrades will be expensive because of
in the HP system allowed the Kayak to de- the faster processor (see benchmark chart). components for service or upgrade difficult. the cramped, difficult-to-access case design.
liver better performance than the IBM Excellent performance; DMI support Good performance; good remote man-
workstation in our 3-D application tests. Subsystem makes the difference and integrated diagnostic tool will help IS agement features; flexible configuration
In the more mundane world of spreadsheets For the head-to-head tests, the systems were staff manage the system remotely. options.
and word processors, the clock speed boost configured with 256MB of memory and a Accessing system components is dif- Case design makes servicing or up-
from 400MHz to 450MHz on the Pentium 9.1GB hard drive. The Kayak XW had an ficult and time-consuming; sparse room grading the system difficult; expandability
II Xeon processor did not improve the over- edge due to its Visualize fx6 graphics sub- for expansion considering the size of the is not commensurate with the size of the
all performance of either system. system. The graphics adapter’s geometry system chassis. system.
As for price, both systems come at a rel- and texture processors, as well as its 18MB
ative premium. The Kayak XW we tested frame buffer and 32MB of texture memo- Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif. IBM, Somers, N.Y.
(800) 426-7255; www.ibm.com/products
(800) 322-4772; www.hp.com/kayak
has an estimated street price of $10,198; ry, gave the Kayak XW a 122 percent per-
Scoring methodology: www.pcweek.com/reviews/meth.html
interestingly, HP sells a comparably con- formance lead over IBM’s Z Pro in the
figured system with a 400MHz processor AVS/Express 3.4 data visualization test.
for the same price. IBM’s IntelliStation Z In the SolidWorks mechanical CAD however, were less impressive than the price system designs will make in-the-field ser-
Pro has an estimated reseller price of $9,490. benchmark tests, the performance gains increase; we only saw speed improve by vice difficult and time-consuming.
IBM doesn’t offer a 400MHz Pentium from HP’s Visualize board were a modest 20 percent in one of the 3D Studio Max In addition to support for DMI and Wake
II Xeon-based IntelliStation Z Pro but does 12 percent over the IBM workstation. The tests, Benchmark3. on LAN, the Kayak XW includes a front-
offer a reasonable facsimile in the 400MHz SolidWorks benchmark test was developed The Kayak XW can also support a sec- panel LCD for viewing some diagnostic
Xeon-based IntelliStation M Pro. With one by the Application Performance Charac- ond processor. Before investing in a sec- system information, including system er-
less expansion slot and drive bay, the M terization group within Standard Perfor- ond processor for either system, however, ror messages and BIOS version numbers,
Pro’s estimated reseller price is $535 less mance Evaluation Corp. The test runs Solid- buyers will need to look closely at whether which should help staffs diagnose problems
than the Z Pro’s price. Works 98 code and represents typical their applications are multithreaded and over the phone. The IntelliStation has the
As with the 400MHz Xeon processor, end-user operations. It uses solid models, if the typical tasks users perform will capability to report errors to a console even
the 450MHz version has a 512KB cache including a model with 276,000 polygons, make use of multithreading. The systems if the system is off and also has a radio-
that runs at processor clock speed. Inte- and can be downloaded from SPEC’s also support an optional RAID con- based identification tag for asset tracking.
grating the high-speed cache on the chip Web site at www.spec.org/gpc/apc. troller, which can boost performance Each system is considerably bigger than
significantly increases the cost of making The Z Pro’s graphics subsystem, Inter- through disk striping, but neither system its predecessor, resembling the older, full-
the chip. Despite Intel’s considerable in- graph Corp.’s Intense 3D Pro 3400GA, al- came with this option. tower PC designs. Although this would seem
vestment, performance improvements may lowed the IBM system to keep pace with to make the systems more expandable, each
be as slight as the increase in system price. the Kayak XW in the 3D Studio Max dig- Tough to get inside has only three free drive bays, two free PCI
In tests using the Business Winstone 98 ital content creation tests because of its IS staff at management consoles and help slots and one free PCI/ISA slot.
benchmark, which consists of business ap- geometry accelerator and 16MB of texture desks will like these workstations, but the Furthermore, accessing any of these
plications, including spreadsheets and word memory. staff with the screwdrivers will hate them. components, as well as the memory slot or
processors, we saw no improvement in per- We installed a second processor in the Both systems support the basics of remote the second processor slot, was brutal. In
formance from the faster processor. How- Z Pro, which would boost its estimated re- management, DMI (Desktop Management fact, buying more memory, disk drives or a
ever, in some specific applications—Solid- seller price to $11,185. Performance gains, Interface) 2.0 and Wake on LAN, but their second processor with the system will prob-
ably save money in the long run—
adding these components later will
450MHz Xeon processor provides few gains over 400MHz Xeon in HP, IBM workstations simply cost too much in techni-
cian time and user downtime. c
In PC Week Labs’ tests, HP’s Fx6 graphics card gives Kayak XU system an edge in some applications.
Longer bar indicates better performance. For PC Week Labs’ Sept. 28 re-
SolidWorks 98
High-end Business AVS/Express** 3D Studio Max 3D Studio Max 3D Studio Max SPEC/GPC view of a server based on
Winstone 98* Winstone 98* Benchmark1*** Benchmark3*** Benchmark7*** benchmark**** 450MHz Pentium II Xeon
KP Kayak XW processors, go to www.zdnet.
with 450MHz Pentium II Xeon processor 42.2 37.1 26.9 36.4 23.3 30.4 2.7
com/pcweek/stories/news/
KP Kayak XW
with 400MHz Pentium II Xeon processor
43.4 37.3 26.7 35.0 22.4 28.1 2.5 0,4153,355064,00.html. For the
IBM IntelliStation Z Pro
July 20 review of one of the first
45.9 36.7 12.1 33.9 23.3 30.4 2.4 workstations to use the 400MHz
with 450MHz Pentium II Xeon processor
Pentium II Xeon chip, point to
*High-end Winstone 98 and Business Winstone 98 are parts of the Winstone 98 application. ***This test uses AutoDesk’s 3D Studio Max R2.
**This test uses a run-time version of Advanced Visual Systems’ AVS/Express 3.4. ****This test uses SPEC’s SolidWorks 98 benchmark, available at www.spec.org/gpc.
www.zdnet.com/pcweek/
reviews/0720/20dell.html.

D I G E S T
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Browsing for corporate info
KnowledgeLink Interactive Inc. rolled out
at Internet World this month its new Per-
Savant knowledge management software
for the enterprise.
PerSavant, which runs on Windows
NT, enables users to browse and search
for corporate, online and news service in-
formation from one browsing interface.
PerSavant ranks, filters, consolidates and
publishes the information in HTML form.
The application is aimed at large orga-
nizations and comes with specific wizards
for particular markets, including the aero-
space, telecommunications, energy and
pharmaceutical industries.
By year’s end, KnowledgeLink will roll
out KDK (KnowledgeDevelopmentKit)
to edit PerSavant’s incorporated wizards,
letting administrators change the user in-
terface and export information to other ap-
plications, such as Microsoft Corp.’s Power-
Point presentation software.
Pricing for PerSavant starts at $5,000,
plus $200 annually per user. Officials de-
clined to disclose pricing information for
KDK. KnowledgeLink, of Linthicum, Md.,
is at (800) 231-8219 or www.k-link.com.
SERVERS
DG announces server guarantee
Data General Corp. last week announced
a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for its Win-
dows NT servers, including the AV 3650,
AV 3700 and AV 8600.
Such a guarantee translates to slightly
less than 9 hours of downtime per year,
according to officials at the Westboro, Mass.,
company.
The move is similar to a 99.9 percent
uptime guarantee made by rival Hewlett-
Packard Co. last month.
Data General also announced several
new service and support programs for its
NT customers. Data General can be reached
at (800) 328-2436 or www.dg.com.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Microsoft Corp.and Level 8 Systems Inc.announced
last week at the Microsoft Professional De-
veloper’s Conference in Denver a joint
agreement in which Microsoft will license
Level 8’s FalconMQ Bridge for use with its
Message Queue Server messaging mid-
dleware. n VeriSign Inc. and JetForm Corp. an-
nounced last week a partnership to inte-
grate VeriSign’s OnSite digital certificate
technology with JetForm’s FormsFlow 99
Web-based enterprise workflow software.
The move, which will crystallize next month,
will ensure that information included in
FormsFlow is secure and private along net-
works. c
What will happen to data on Feb. 29, 2000? PC Week Labs looks for answers PAGE 76 R
PC WEEK OCTOBER 19, 1998
eMedia Makes Paper Passé
Optika’s tool melds document processes into one Web-based application
BY CHRISTY WALKER
ptika imaging systems inc. is ship-
O ping new software that merges imag-
ing, document management, workflow
and COLD capabilities into a single Web-
based product.
The eMedia 1.0 data collection soft-
ware enables corporations to move from
paper-based to electronic business trans-
actions by integrating workflow and imag-
ing capabilities, said officials of the Colo-
rado Springs, Colo., company.
The software comprises a
Web browser client layer; a
middle-tier service layer for in-
formation and request bro-
kering; and an application
service layer that works over
TCP/IP and houses storage,
print and fax capabilities.
In addition, users can scan
and index paper documents, re-
trieve electronic documents and
view them in more than 250 file
formats, and check in and check
out documents.
eMedia 1.0 combines imaging, doc-
ument management and workflow.
F760 Has More in Store for NT Networks
Review: Specialized file
server sets new storage
standard—for a price
BY PANKAJ CHOWDHRY, PC WEEK LABS
ize matters to network appliance
S Inc.’s F760 Filer. The file server offers
up to a terabyte of storage and packs
every advanced feature possible on a file
server.
PC Week Labs’ tests showed the F760
offers clients excellent throughput, while
features such as per-user disk quotas and
real-time data-mirroring capability also give
administrators reasons to smile.
In fact, the only major complaint we have
about the F760, which shipped last month
priced at $166,000, is that its advanced fea-
tures could be easier to use. To enforce user
quotas, for example, we couldn’t use Win-
dows NT’s user manager or file manager.
PAGE 65
The Computer Output to Laser Disk fea-
ture supports the creation and storage of large
volumes of reports into optical storage—in-
cluding jukeboxes and optical drives—and
Windows NT-supported CD drives.
Clear Channel Communications Inc., an
early user of eMedia, will use the COLD
feature in eMedia 1.0 to decentralize its ac-
counting processes while keeping a consol-
idated set of books in a central location, said
David Wilson, vice president controller at
We were instead relegated to a tedious com-
mand-line interface. Quotas can be en-
forced on a per-group basis, but again,
tighter NT integration would have helped.
The F760 can act only as a file server. It
can’t run applications.
Put to the test
The F760’s performance sur-
passes anything we’ve seen, best-
ing any general-purpose com-
The F760 Filer flies in tests
Using RAID 4, file server fares well on NetBench benchmark
puter’s throughput. We tested
the F760 in an NT-only environ-
ment (it also supports Sun Mi-
Throughput (M bps)
crosystems Inc.’s Network File
System) with 100 Pentium clients
connected via Fast Ethernet into
four Extreme Networks Inc.’s
Summit 48 switches.
Using the Summit 48s, we also
got a chance to test the F760’s
Gigabit Ethernet support. After
cascading all of the switches to-
the San Antonio company.
“Instead of electronically logging on to
our accounting system, we will generate
COLD [files] ... and the units can dynam-
ically retrieve daily reports,” Wilson said.
“It’s not real time, but a [user] could ac-
cess dynamic information as current as yes-
terday’s processing.”
The software also sports graphical work-
flow functionality and enables corporations
to manage and automate transaction-based
business processes. The workflow integra-
tion will help corporations interact with
their partners in an extranet-based envi-
ronment and thus shorten transaction
cycle times, officials said. eMedia 1.0 sup-
ports ActiveX controls and Component
Object Model objects, integrates with SQL-
compliant servers, and runs on Windows
NT. Users require an HTML 3.2- and
JavaScript 1.1-supported Web browser to
access the software.
eMedia has been jointly developed since
1996 with Home Depot Inc., which needed
to streamline the flux of paper coming in
from its business partners.
Pricing for Version 1.0 starts at $150 per
user. Optika is at (719) 548-9800 or www.
optika.com. c
gether, we ran a fiber link into the F760, pro-
viding a gigabit uplink. The F760 uses Alteon
Networks Inc.’s AceNIC NIC (network inter-
face card) and taps some of the card’s ad-
vanced features, such as TCP check-sum
offloading. As yet, no rival products we’ve
CONTINUED ON PAGE 68 R
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72
Number of clients

68
Baan Aims to Streamline ERP Informix Eyes
Enterprise Software Agreement bundles Baan, Microsoft apps for set price
BY LLOYD GRAY
n an effort to make its products more
I accessible and easy to install, Baan Co.
last week unloaded a series of initiatives
including tighter integration with Micro-
soft Corp. back-end software and IBM
servers.
At its BaanWorld user conference in The
Hague, Netherlands, the company an-
nounced a broad licensing agreement to
bundle its business software with Micro-
soft’s SQL Server, Exchange Server and
Site Server. Baan also introduced an agree-
ment with IBM, which calls for the forma-
tion of configuration centers for building
Baan-equipped IBM servers and support-
ing Baan deployments.
The Baan Enterprise Software Agree-
ment integrates into bundles the compa-
ny’s Baan FrontOffice Systems Sales and
Configurator, BaanERP, Baan Supply
Chain Solutions, Baan Corporate Office
Solution, and BaanDEM with Micro-
soft’s SQL Server, Exchange and Site Serv-
er. Pricing for the packages starts at $99
per desktop per month for companies pur-
chasing more than 5,000 desktop licenses.
F760 Filer
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 65
seen can take advantage of TCP offloading.
We would like to see support for other
AceNIC features such as Jumbo Frames,
which would allow quicker network backups.
Nevertheless, Network Appliances has
also done its homework in this area, pro-
viding a built-in SCSI port for tape drives.
The inclusion of SCSI is important because
the F760 we tested was equipped with a
Fibre Channel interconnect as well as
Fibre Channel disks.
Although it could benefit from a real
GUI-based administration tool, many ca-
pabilities are built into the F760’s com-
mand-line interface. We were surprised to
find the capacity to support opportunistic
locking based on directory. This means that
applications that demand no locking, such
as databases, can run on the same server
as opportunistic locking-friendly applica-
tions, such as file sharing, and it’s some-
thing we haven’t seen anywhere else.
To configure directory-based oppor-
tunistic locking, we first had to build a q-
tree—the F760’s equivalent of group-
ing—which allows directories with similar
attributes, such as security, to be managed
together. This was neither enjoyable nor
easy, but the result provided easy admin-
istration of our shared directories.
The F760 is built to slip effortlessly into
an NT network. We assigned an IP address
to the Gigabit NIC in the F760 and point-
E N T E R P R I S E
“It’s clearly part of an ongoing trend to
shrink-wrap ERP [enterprise resource plan-
ning] software, and that’s a pretty good deal
for customers because it lowers the cost of
entry and ownership,” said Joshua Green-
baum, president of Enterprise Application
Consulting, in Berkeley, Calif.
The IBM Baan Implementation Factory
comprises three business centers around the
world that utilize IBM industry templates
and best practices to help speed up the de-
ployment of Baan software. A North Amer-
ican facility will open in the first quarter of
next year, followed by one in Europe in the
second quarter.
In addition, IBM, of Armonk, N.Y.,
and Baan announced the general avail-
ability of BaanERP running on IBM’s S/390
and AS/400E servers.
The myriad announcements came as Baan,
which has dual headquarters in Reston, Va.,
and Putten, Netherlands, said it anticipates
disappointing third-quarter earnings. Instead
of the 15 cents per share gain expected by
Wall Street analysts, Baan expects a loss of
13 to 16 cents per share on sales of $190 mil-
lion to $195 million, officials said.
ed it to our domain controller. The F760
then received all of its authentication from
the Primary Domain Controller. This makes
adding storage to a network much easier
than it normally is. For example, we added
storage to a volume without taking it offline.
As a bonus, our clients were none the wis-
er, assuming the F760 was just another NT
server with lots of storage.
Mirroring in real time
The F760 can implement real-time mir-
roring using Tandem Computers Inc.’s
ServerNet technology. The F760 uses
32MB for a nonvolatile RAM-based write
cache. When coupled with another F760,
this memory is abstracted using a cache-
coherent Non-Uniform Memory Access
architecture with ServerNet as the inter-
connect. This configuration has the ad-
vantage of a zero-performance-loss real-
time mirror, and both F760s are active,
allowing the benefits of multiple servers
in the network.
By using ServerNet, Network Appliance
avoids many of the complexities found in
competing solutions such as Auspex Inc.’s
ServerGuard, which uses a LAN-based sys-
tem with virtual media access control ad-
dresses.
The F760 uses a 600MHz Alpha chip as
its main CPU with a 128M-bps memory path
to 1GB of RAM that is used exclusively
for a read cache. Its operating system (which
fits on two disks) is proprietary and is called
WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout).
WAFL enables the file system to write data
to any unused portion of the disk, regard-
S Y S T E M S
Other announcements made at Baan-
World included the following:
• General availability of BaanConnec-
tor 98.3, which links Baan FrontOffice
and other Baan software.
• Availability of the Baan FrontOffice
suite in nine additional languages. It was
previously available only in English or
French.
• Availability of the beta version of Baan
Enterprise Decision Manager, a new de-
cision management application that was
developed using best-in-class components
such as Microsoft’s SQL Server 7.0 online
analytical processing extension.
• Release of more than 200 Business Ob-
ject Interfaces and associated middleware
and development tools.
• The beta release of BaanAutomation,
an application that enables developers to
integrate BaanERP with other software.
• Euro Scan, an application that analyzes
a company’s euro capability and makes rec-
ommendations on what action should be
taken to correct or avoid problems.
Baan can be reached at (800) 644-4634
or www.baan.com. c
less of the data’s original position. The old
blocks are then marked as free.
Traditional file systems force the write
head to return to the original data point to
overwrite it. The WAFL system allows the
cache to be flushed to disk without extra
head-seek time, which enables faster re-
sponse times.
With this newest release, Network Ap-
pliance also addresses a major concern—
backing up huge file systems. By imple-
menting the Network Data Management
Protocol, the company’s products can in-
teroperate with third-party backup appli-
cations such as Veritas Software Corp.’s
NetBackup. c
PC WEEK LABS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
F760 Filer
Network Appliance’s F760 Filer sets a new
standard for file servers in NT networks. By
USABILITY B integrating into a do-
CAPABILITY A main infrastructure,
PERFORMANCE A it eases administra-
INTEROPERABILITY A tion, while offering
MANAGEABILITY C
advanced features
such as per-user disk quotas. Its speed as a
file server can’t be matched by general-
purpose computers.
Very fast; highly redundant architec-
ture; supports multiple network types.
Kludgy configuration; expensive.
Network Appliance Inc., San Jose, Calif.
(800) 443-3453; www.networkappliance.com
Scoring methodology: www.pcweek.com/reviews/meth.html
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Warehousing
BY MARK HAMMOND
sers of informix software inc.’s oltp
U database could get stronger data ware-
housing capabilities as the result of the
company’s purchase of Red Brick Sys-
tems Inc.
The $35 million deal, announced early this
month and expected to close by year’s end,
will likely result in new decision-support
and data movement capabilities for users of
Informix’s Dynamic Server database, al-
though integrating products from the two
companies may not be easy, observers said.
“The plus is they [Red Brick] have
strong data warehousing; the negative is
trying to pull together the different prod-
ucts,” said Judy Davis, an analyst at Data-
base Associates International Inc., in Mar-
ion, Mass.
Some integration promised
Informix officials promised some sort of
integration between the two companies’
products but would not elaborate on
whether Informix intends to blend the
pair into a single database.
The companies’ flagship products, In-
formix’s Dynamic Server and Red Brick
Warehouse, will continue to be offered and
supported separately for the time being,
said officials at Informix, of Menlo Park, Calif.
Red Brick Warehouse is based on a star
schema model ideal for decision-support
data warehousing and is not suited for high-
end OLTP (online transaction processing),
which has been the strength of Informix
Dynamic Server.
One Red Brick product, a data move-
ment tool called Formation 1.3, eventually
will be integrated into Informix’s Decision
Frontier decision-support suite, although
no time frame has been set, officials said.
Also in the suite will be similar extraction,
transformation and loading software from
Ardent Software Inc.
Other Red Brick products as well will
be blended into Decision Frontier, which
includes Dynamic Server with parallel
and decision-support options, the Informix
MetaCube ROLAP (relational online an-
alytical processing) engine; and the Crys-
tal Info front-end OLAP tool from Seagate
Software Inc., officials said.
Liberty Mutual Group, which has both
Dynamic Server and Red Brick Warehouse
deployed in Portsmouth, N.H., stands to
benefit from the deal, said Jay McLaugh-
lin, a Liberty project manager.
“We think this potentially has the abil-
ity to be a great mix for us,” McLaugh-
lin said. “This can give us the best of
both products.”
Data warehousing pioneer Red Brick,
of Los Gatos, Calif., lost $10 million in the
first half of this year. c

72
Microsoft Zeros In on CE, SQL Server
I
recently spent two days in redmond,
Wash., talking tech with Microsoft execs
and about 20 of PC Week’s Corporate
Partners who wanted to make sure that the
software developer was going to deliver the
E N T E R P R I S E
JOHN TASCHEK: WIDE ANGLE
architecture and framework to meet their
needs for the next few years.
Sure, Microsoft discussed strategies for
Windows NT, SiteServer, service and sup-
port, and development, and how the com-
PC WEEK
S Y S T E M S OCTOBER 19, 1998
all wanted to talk about
Windows CE.
Specifically, they
wanted to know more
pany was no longer a product company (it’s about Jupiter—the
now a platform company). larger-format version
But at the end of the day, these people, of CE, which Microsoft
who run the IT departments for large banks, introduced this month.
grocery chains and educational institutions, I guess I didn’t understand the gravity
of the announcement. We should take Win-
dows CE devices for what they are—un-
manageable, largely unusable but over-
whelmingly cool devices. Sooner or later,
though, we’ll have to come to terms with
Windows CE devices outselling all other
versions of Windows.
Jupiter devices are cheaper and lighter
and will be just as fast as full-fledged Win-
dows devices. They also have instant
boot-time and have the benefits of a real-
time operating system with an interface.
With this new version of CE, there will
also be a version of Access called Pocket
Access, obviously Microsoft’s answer to
Oracle’s and Sybase’s CE announcements.
Oracle and Sybase will make a better data-
base than Pocket Access. But, unlike Ora-
cle and Sybase, the CE device is an end-
user product. So, in essence, Microsoft is
asking users whether they want a DBMS en-
gine in a handheld or a front-end data ac-
cess tool that also happens to be a database.
REVVING UP A NEW ENGINE
On the Windows classic front, Microsoft
announced the MS Database Engine, which
will be included in Access 2000. The MSDE
is actually a miniversion of SQL Server.
Microsoft says that when developing you
won’t be able to tell the difference between
the MSDE and Jet, the current database
engine.
In addition, MSDE gives you a highly us-
able feature—you can upgrade your app to
SQL Server without changing it. What this
really means is that Access is becoming less
a database and more a development tool.
But don’t get too excited. Microsoft an-
nounced it would once again change the
file format in Access 2000. This time, Micro-
soft says the change is to handle Unicode
bytes necessary to support multiple lan-
guages. All I can ask is, Why didn’t Mi-
crosoft think about this before?
Meanwhile, SQL Server 7.0, which will
be released at Comdex, was the most im-
pressive showing during the two-day ses-
sion; they even had the developers them-
selves answer questions. The upgrade is
close to being a true enterprise database,
though one that’s still in its early stages.
The only thing working against it is that
many people don’t think Microsoft can pro-
duce an enterprise-level package.
But just for a moment, remove Micro-
soft from the equation. I saw the develop-
ers, and they come from Informix, Tandem
and Digital Equipment, to name a few. Cou-
ple that with the core Sybase database, and
you’ll quickly realize that SQL Server is
the sum of these developers. c
CE or SQL: Which one interests you? John
Taschek can be reached at john_taschek@
zd.com.

76
Y2K-Proofing Your Databases
Tech Analysis: Leap day poses problem
at turn of century, PC Week Labs finds
BY TIMOTHY DYCK FOR PC WEEK LABS
Y
ear 2000 projects are giving
businesses the “opportunity”
to rethink and redesign their
business-critical systems,
whether they like it or not.
Databases and the data they hold are
central to this process. Unfortunately, it’s
harder to assess Y2K risk and test Y2K
compliance in databases than in other vul-
nerable components (such as hardware or
operating systems) that have fewer possi-
ble inputs and outputs and whose errors
are more obvious.
For example, it is easy to overlook the
absence of one day’s orders (say, those for
Feb. 29, 2000—the year 2000 is a leap
year) from a monthly rollup statement.
Moreover, a database system relies on
the underlying hardware and operating sys-
tems for correct date and time information.
It can be hard to determine whether the
database is the source or the victim of a
year 2000 error until a good deal of Y2K
testing has already been done.
It’s a standard disclaimer on vendor Web
sites that a package is Y2K-ready only when
it’s operated and administered correctly
and “provided that all products (for ex-
ample, hardware, software and firmware)
used with the product properly exchange
accurate date data with it,” as IBM states.
PC Week Labs’ database Y2K analysis high-
lights the importance of such warnings.
Any large organization is also likely to
have several database servers that rely on
each other for various tasks, such as user
authentication, distributed transactions
or data distribution.
Database data replication, for example,
is a common way to distribute financial in-
formation from headquarters to all branch
offices, but it’s likely to involve many servers
in several different time zones, possibly
running on different hardware and using
different operating systems.
The good news is that relational data-
base systems, which are the most common
database architecture today, gained promi-
nence only in the 1980s, when storage
wasn’t so tight that years had to be stored
as two-digit values. As a result, all the re-
lational database systems now used store
dates using four-digit years.
As extra security, the Entry Level
SQL-92 standard specifies that years must
be stored using four-digit values. All the
big database players—IBM, Oracle Corp.,
Sybase Inc., Microsoft Corp., Informix Soft-
ware Inc. and Computer Associates Inter-
national Inc.—have Entry Level SQL-92-
compliant products, and have since the early
years of this decade.
As a result, any organization that has been
E N T E R P R I S E
using the SQL date data type
(also sometimes called date-
time) is automatically stor-
ing all year information us-
ing four digits.
By comparison, fixing
COBOL applications (which
didn’t have the same kind of standards that
the SQL world developed) is a much hard-
er problem. It would be sadly ironic if organ-
izations found that their COBOL develop-
ment costs have been contained in the
short run by postponing migration to rela-
tional database platforms.
A particularly thorny problem is facing
those using character or numeric fields,
instead of real date fields, to store date
and time information (as is common in old-
er AS/400 applications). Should this be
the case, those poor database managers
should be canceling their 1999 holiday plans
now—significant table design and SQL
recoding is ahead.
Operational issues — server
administration and configuration
tools, for example (where we found
that problems handling the year
2000 leap day are still common)—
are going to be more trouble to han-
dle. Unlike most century years, the
year 2000 is a 400-year multiple and
is therefore an exception to the nor-
mal “century exception.”
Whether they like it or not, busi-
nesses will need to do some up-
grading of their server software
to address these sorts of problems,
plus other vendor-specific prob-
lems, including the following.
Oracle7 and Oracle8
Oracle states that all versions of
Oracle7 and Oracle8 are Y2K-
ready.
However, the default date for-
mat Oracle7 and Oracle8 use is to
interpret all two-digit dates as dates
from the 20th century. This is sure
to catch the unwary by surprise.
For example, when we queried
the last day of 01-Feb-00 in Ora-
cle8 Version 8.0.4 using Oracle’s
LAST_DAY function, we got “28-
feb-00” in return—correct for Feb.
28, 1900.
Both products provide a display
mask (the letters “RR,” rather than
“YY”) for data entry that provides
a sliding window for two-digit years,
Top screen: By default, Oracle treats two-digit years as 20th century
which will handle dates from 1950 dates. Selecting the last day of “01-feb-00” returns Feb. 28, which is
to 2049. correct for February 1900, not February 2000. Using a four-digit date
When we reconfigured the works correctly, and changing Oracle’s default two-digit date inter-
NLS_DATE_FORMAT para- pretation also produces the correct result. Bottom screen: To Micro-
meter for Oracle to use “DD-MM- soft SQL Server 6.5’s task manager, Feb. 29, 2000, doesn’t exist.
S Y S T E M S
RR,” the year 00 was treat-
ed as the year 2000 instead
(see top screen).
We strongly recom-
mend that companies us-
ing Oracle make this
change in their Oracle ini-
tialization file or force all
dates to be entered using
four digits.
To be Y2K-ready, Ora-
cle’s management console
Enterprise Manager must be Version 1.4
or later, and Oracle Lite must be Version
2.5 or later. (Versions 2.0 through 2.3
shipped in 1996, so there are sure to be
some of those still around.)
Versions of Oracle Express that are 5.0
or later are Y2K-compliant.
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft identifies a number of minor op-
erational problems with its SQL Server
database.
Leap day is again a problem: SQL Serv-
er’s Enterprise Manager didn’t allow us to
schedule jobs on Feb. 29, 2000—the day
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
didn’t exist in its date spin control (see
bottom screen).
In addition, database backups will not
perform a date check correctly after Jan.
1, 2000, and will overwrite old backup me-
dia without the normal “Do you really want
to do this?” warning.
According to Microsoft officials, these
problems will be addressed with SQL Serv-
er Service Pack 5, which is expected to be
out before the end of the year.
SQL Server automatically adjusts two-
digit years when they are entered to han-
dle the change to the new millennium: Any
figure less than 50 is treated as being in the
21st century; any figure greater than 50 is
considered part of this century.
Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
and SQL Server
Adaptive Server Enterprise 11.5.1 is the
first fully Y2K-compliant release of that
product.
Version 11.5 has most of Sybase’s year
2000 fixes but still has a few bugs that pre-
vent log analysis and session playback for
dates in the year 2000 and later.
Sybase SQL Server, the prede-
cessor to Adaptive Server Enter-
prise, must be at Release 11.0.3.2
to be Y2K-certified. This release
included fixes for tape backup
problems similar to those that also
affect Microsoft SQL Server.
As of its year 2000 releases, both
Sybase databases interpret two-
digit dates of less than 50 as being
dates in the 21st century.
The workgroup database SQL
Anywhere needs to be at Version
5.5.02 (which was released in
mid-1997) or later to be year 2000-
compliant.
IBM DB2
DB2 2.1 and later versions for Unix
and Windows NT (including DB2
Universal Database 5.x) are cer-
tified by IBM as Y2K-ready. DB2
2.1 shipped in 1996.
On the mainframe, DB2 for
MVS/ESA needs to be at Ver-
sion 3 or later (with some service
upgrades). Version 5 contains all
the required fixes already.
In the data warehousing space,
Visual Warehouse 2.1 or later is
also Y2K-ready.
For more information on DB2
for the AS/400 and DB2 on MVS
or OS/390, visit IBM’s product
software readiness database at
wwwyr2k.raleigh.ibm.com. (We
frequently found it too busy to ser-
vice our requests, however.) c
Contributing Editor Timothy
Dyck can be contacted at tim@
journalist.com.
 PC WEEK
78 E D I T O R I A L & O P I N I O N OCTOBER 19, 1998

SAN Castles Readers react to the mainframe’s long shadow, the

illion-dollar technology acquisitions are almost com- use and misuse of customer data, the one-upping
B monplace these days, but when Veritas Software spent $1.6 bil-
of Windows, and the weight of computing fabrics.
lion this month to buy Seagate’s storage unit, you might have
asked, Is storage really that important? The answer is yes, for one
reason: SANs. This technology, which has its roots in the main-
frame, is making its way to PC servers and workstations, and it
promises to give users the best of both worlds: fast, large-capacity,
heterogeneous and distributed storage, at a time when each of
these characteristics is becoming essential to enterprise computing.
As more data, information and transactions go online, the role
What’s Old Is New Again
Regarding “Is IT Moving Back customer privacy. • How do we get the hundreds
played by storage and storage management grows. Storage area Into the Glass House?”(Oct. 5, In Stan Gibson’s column on of PCs and minicomputers to co-
Page 95): The tide has turned back Page 86 (“The Ups and Downs operate? No one to date has done
networks are the result. In theory, they let users eliminate islands toward centralization because of of Life in an Economic Down- it yet.
of storage dedicated to single servers and create a network of data, the reasons why centralized com- turn”), he labels as “neat” Chase Even if everyone decides to
tied together by Fibre Channel connections, that can be shared by puters made sense back in the Manhattan’s marketing use of a cooperate, Microsoft won’t. This
’60s—better leverage of technical “vast amount of detailed data messes with its revenue big time.
multiple computers with different operating systems. SANs can
specializations, better version con- about customers’ ATM transac- Robert Pollard
make more data available to more users more quickly than ever. trol, fewer points of administra- tions.” A senior vice president at Via Internet
And SANs seem to have an edge over a rival, network-attached tion, etc. Chase is quoted as saying that this
storage, which requires each storage node Directories offer managers of is “making us lots of money.” I believe that the core of the op-
SANS CAN MAKE
centralized networks a consistent, However, in an article about erating system should be a fully re-
to run its own operating system. global view of network resources EarthLink’s massive customer ser- lational database that can organize
MORE DATA
Which brings us back to the Veritas and user accounts while still al- vice database project (“Software all system, hardware, files and file
AVAILABLE TO
acquisition. It may raise eyebrows now, but lowing decentralized administra- Tightens EarthLink’s Bonds,” systems, data, etc. A relational
MORE USERS
it could earn dividends for the company tion of directory content—user Page 91), that company indicates database operating system, should
MORE QUICKLY
accounts and group memberships. that it has no plans to use this also be hardware-independent and
and for users down the road. Seagate Directories will help deliver that customer data for marketing nearly never require a restart or
THAN EVER. brings a Windows NT focus to Veritas, consistent, reliable repository of purposes and that the CEO is the use of Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
which supports most Unix platforms. SAN systems also need a solid security information (identities, “against using member informa- Then, notions such as Device
ACL groups, PKI certificates) tion for anything other than try- Manager in Windows 98 would be
management component—another of Seagate’s strong suits. SANs
across the whole environment and ing to improve our service.” nothing more than a simple query
are gaining support in other quarters as well. EMC and StorageTek, make it available on the large cen- Ken Field of the operating system. Finally,
along with Fibre Channel providers, are behind the technology. tral servers, too. Cambridge, Mass. the famous—or infamous—Win-
There are a few missing ingredients. Users and vendors need a Web servers are the CICS trans- dows GUI could be relegated to
action servers of yesterday. HTTP being the “sponsor” or the “man-
vocal, independent group to negotiate differences and promote the provides the SNA transport, with Windows slayer? ager” of our pet Windows apps.
technology. Microsoft needs to bring SAN support to NT. NT won’t caching servers providing the in- In regard to John Taschek’s col- Not only am I ready for a rela-
support SANs until Version 6, at the earliest, which is at least two network performance enhance- umn “Will Oracle8i Database Kill tional database operating system,
years away, although some Veritas storage management software is ments that [IBM] 3745 [servers] Windows?” (Sept. 21, Page 60), but I suspect that Oracle8i could
used to. SSL and TLS offer secure I use all three major operating sys- breathe new life into thin clients.
making its way into NT 5.0. Finally, vendors should pay attention to sessions, à la VTAM, to specific tem platforms (NT, Mac, Solaris). Forrest Barbee
the security threats to widely distributed data stores. applications. The browser and Java I am also an Oracle developer. I Via Internet
Veritas has seen the future of storage, and it is SANs. We’re provide extended user interfaces like [Oracle CEO Larry] Ellison’s
and even some field edits idea, but there are some other
inclined to agree. c
and validations such as numer- items to pay close attention to: Ironing out fabric
ic/text/graphic fields on [IBM] • Will this be an Oracle exclu- The Von Schwebers’ article on
3270s. sive with the DOJ riding them all “Computing’s Next Wave” (Oct.

Wireless on Hold And directories are making the

whole system—the centralized file
and transaction processors, [IBM]
hen we think about wireless data services, it’s difficult
W to resist fantasizing about lounging on a tropical beach
3270 distributed departmental
servers, and individual worksta-
tions—manageable in ways never
while using e-mail to conduct important business.
thought of before. Novell’s ZEN-
As our PC Week Labs Shoot-Out report this week makes
works and Microsoft’s Zero Ad-
clear, however, it’s not time to cancel the lease on your office and ministration Kit work hand-in-hand
stock up on suntan oil. While the elements of wireless data ser- to tame the chaos while preserving
vices—networks, PDAs and other mobile devices, and software— personalization and customiza-
tion of workspaces, application ac-
have all made progress, there are still too many gaps. Perfor- cess and workstation inventory.
mance and geographic coverage of the major wireless networks Ed Reed, chief architect
still come up short. And too much of the work of integrating the Novell Directory Services
various interdependent pieces necessary for end-to-end wireless
data services is still left to IT departments. Divergent views
The potential of wireless data services is still compelling. Ser- It was very interesting to note in
the Sept. 28 issue two very di-
vice providers, however, must continue to improve the reach and
vergent perspectives on the issue
speed of wireless networks, and they need to do a better job of in-
of data warehousing/mining of
tegrating wireless network services, software and mobile devices. c customer data vs. concerns about
the way, or will it be foundation
technology that every database
product can build on?
5, Page 19) was fascinating, but I
must agree with John Taschek’s
reality check (Computing Fabrics
• Unless Java or something else
takes the place of a file system,
you have to have a file system to
Still Have Some Holes, PC Week
Labs Finds, Oct. 5, Page 19). Com-
puting fabric is still a ways away,
put all of the Oracle products on; but it’s interesting that even the
then we have come full circle with description of the concept (nodes,
the “replace the file system—need cells, fluid system, etc.) moves us
a file system” dilemma. closer to the ultimate computer—
• What about speed of the un- the human brain.
derlying mechanism? It can’t be Mark Dougherty
Java at this point. Dayton Area Board of Realtors
DROP US A LINE
PC Week welcomes your comments. Please send them to Letters to the Editor, 10
Presidents Landing, Medford, MA 02155 or fax to (781) 393-3795. You also can
reach us via the Internet at pcweek@zd.com. All letters must include name,
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Moad, Rob O’Regan, Scot Petersen and John Taschek.
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 E D I T O R I A L & O P I N I O N
BILL MACHRONE: UP PERISCOPE
Electronic Books a Horror
Story? Readers Think So
ho’d have thought that such a seemingly
W
innocuous topic as “Electronic Books: The
First Chapter” (Sept. 28, Page 71) would raise
such a fuss among PC Week readers? All I wanted to
do was tip readers off to the coming products, their ca-
pabilities and the ways they might be marketed.
But I probably should have called the col- a Borders or Barnes & Noble is a reminder
umn “Electronic Books: Threat or Menace?” that there is more knowledge and imagi-
Many of the objections to electronic nation out there than can be absorbed in
books were, as you might expect, a blend several lifetimes.
of the aesthetic and the practical. Books Who would give up any of that for frag-
are portable random-access devices, with ile, expensive readers? Not I. But I’d pay
infinite battery life and excellent text-to- $3 or $4 for a disposable adventure novel,
background contrast. one that I’m sure I’d never read again.
They’re not particularly susceptible to Ditto many other popular genre books. I
shock, vibration or other environmental could also make a case for any low-volume,
hazards. They can be customized by the frequently updated text.
user in various ways, including dog-earing Reader Jason McMahon would like to
pages, underlining and writing in the mar- “buy subscriptions to ‘books’ that are up-
gins. Their covers are an excellent point- dated annually, such as tax books. I buy
of-sale marketing medium. They can be one this year and, after filling out the forms,
collected, coveted, bought, sold, given as it is thrown away. It would be nice to have
presents or simply thrown away. The tac- it ‘refreshed’ and current.”
tile, visual and olfactory pleasures of open- Although I got a couple of letters from
ing a hardcover book for the first time are school board members about the potential
undeniable. Simply strolling the aisles in economies of electronic textbooks, others
JIM LOUDERBACK: MIND THE GAP
Untethered Rex Won’t
Go the Way of the Dinosaur
ast week, we talked about a new portable
L
e-mail system from JVC that could change where
and when we do e-mail. This week’s mobile hero
will also change how we compute on the go.
When Franklin Electronic Publishers released the
first Rex organizer, the reaction was subdued. The
form factor—the size of two credit cards old fast. But then I started using the data-
stacked together—was revolutionary. So entry capabilities for more-common tasks,
were the screen and the ability to get so such as changing phone numbers and adding
much into such a little package. appointments.
The Rex was based on software from Those functions are far easier, especially
Starfish, including PC links to its popular adding an appointment.The interface
PIM, Sidekick. The built-in TrueSync tech- prompts you through the entire process; you
nology made it easy to enter data on your don’t have to use the key at all. In addition,
PC and transfer it to the device. But the the Rex Pro delivers great connectivity to
tiny Rex suffered from a fatal flaw. It was Microsoft Outlook, Symantec Act, Lotus
impossible to enter data into the device Organizer and Sidekick. I just wish it con-
when using it on the go. nected to Ziff-Davis’ standard: Notes.
Well, the new Rex Pro has changed all The Rex Pro also includes much more in-
that. Via the addition of one button to the ternal memory—512KB—than its prede-
face of the unit, you can now add or change cessor, which means you can add as many as
address, calendar, Notepad and to-do entries. 6,000 appointments, addresses and the like.
At first, I thought the data-entry function All these enhancements make the $230
was kludgy. You’ve got to use that new key Rex Pro a viable alternative to a standard
to move sequentially through the alphabet PDA. If you use a PDA just to carry around
when entering a new contact, and that gets your schedule and contacts, you could save
81
expressed serious doubts about the life
span of a reader in a grade-schooler’s
hands. That aside, the lack of color screens
would pretty much eliminate the first gen-
eration from consideration as textbook play-
ers. It would be wonderful, though, to un-
burden our kids from the 40-pound loads in
their backpacks.
Although most distribution plans I’ve
heard of include redownloading of books
you’ve already purchased, readers mistrust
the notion and wonder how long your “right”
will last. Others dislike the vendors’ ability
to profile your reading tastes and consider
this an invasion of privacy. Computer in-
dustry columnist Brett Glass summed up the
idea in a word: “chilling.” I suppose it is chill-
ing, but privacy is pretty much a thing of the
past anyway if you participate in the digital
age and credit card economy.
Finally, some readers expressed fear
that e-books with graphics and anima-
tion would lead to artists’ conceptions that
steal your imagination’s ability to create
characters and scenes in your head. They
expressed a concern about lowering liter-
ature to comic-book level and, worst of
all, the potential for embedded adver-
tisements and product placements.
We’ll doubtless get some of this bad with
the inarguable good of e-books, but the fu-
ture is up to you. Vote with your wallet. c
Bill Machrone is vice president of tech-
nology for Ziff-Davis. He can be reached
at bill_machrone@zd.com.
weight with the Rex Pro. It reaches the
holy grail of portability: You forget
you’re carrying it around.
Even more exciting, though, is where this
technology is headed. Starfish recently sold
out to Motorola, so expect TrueSync and
the small-screen interface to show up on a
wide range of portable devices in the future.
As much as I like the new Rex Pro, I’m
even more excited about having its tech-
nology integrated into pagers, cellular
phones, GPS receivers and microwave
ovens. Imagine being able to put a full-
featured PDA into your cell phone with-
out adding significant bulk or weight or
losing battery life.
Another mobile breakthrough: the new
Port Universal AC adapter (www.port.
com). It’s small, light and as flat as a CD case.
Universal is a misnomer, but it does sup-
port almost every IBM, Compaq and
Toshiba notebook out there. I hooked it up
to my IBM ThinkPad 600, and it worked just
fine, although I still need a tip on how to
charge it up when the computer is asleep. It
comes with plugs that allow it to work in
Canada, the United States and Japan, and
you can get plugs for the United Kingdom,
Europe, Australia and New Zealand. At
$120, it’s more expensive than most re-
placements but also much more versatile. c
Jim Louderback is the editorial director of
ZDTV and a contributing editor to PC
Week. He can be contacted at jim_
louderback@zd.com.
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UNDER LOCK AND KEY
Best practices to cope
with your e-customers’
concerns about privacy
BY JEFF MOAD
ow serious is american express
H
Co. about guarding the private in-
formation it collects from elec-
tronic commerce customers and
other visitors to its Web site? It
would probably be easier to break
into a vault at Fort Knox than to
get AmEx to part with the ZIP
code of an online customer.
Although AmEx was one of the first in
the financial services industry to disclose
its policies for protecting customer pri-
vacy—it first did so in 1974—the company
recently completed a huge, yearlong ef-
fort to revamp its privacy policy to fit the
e-commerce era. Forty top AmEx officials,
including IT executives, came up with a
high-level set of privacy principles for the
entire company, specific privacy practices
for each AmEx business, a code of behav-
ior for all employees and a rigorous audit-
ing process.
“We take protection of our customers’
privacy very seriously,” says Peggy Haney,
vice president for consumer affairs at
AmEx, in Washington.
These days, lots of companies are get-
ting serious about locking up private in-
formation collected from e-commerce cus-
tomers, or at least letting customers know
how information about them will be used.
Anxious to attract and keep online clien-
Supersites: Paving the Way to Web Synergy
Companies are consolidating Web efforts to save money, ease management
BY LAURA B. SMITH
t’s often said that the internet has
I been embraced faster than any medium
in history—and not just by consumers.
The real zealots have been corporate Web-
masters. A year ago at IBM, for example,
executives counted no fewer than 1,000 Web
sites, devoted to different products and ge-
ographic regions around the globe. Deter-
mining that this decentralized environ-
Brett Arquette sniffs at the overripe software in your IT department PAGE 96 R
PC WEEK OCTOBER 19
Peggy Haney, AmEx vice president for consumer affairs, rigorously guards customer privacy.
tele and to head off government regula-
tors, more and more companies with
e-commerce sites are scrambling to devise,
implement and enforce comprehensive pri-
vacy policies.
They’re quickly discovering, however,
ment couldn’t stand up to its e-commerce
goals, IBM officials decided to make a change
and rein in the company’s cyberculture.
“When we looked forward to what the
Internet was becoming—with commerce,
procurement and customer support—it de-
manded a new way of looking at the
Web,” says Dick Anderson, general man-
ager of IBM Enterprise Web Management,
in White Plains, N.Y.
, 1 9 9P A 8G E 85
e-commerce companies such as AmEx, J.C.
Penney Co. and Sabre Group Inc. from
putting together new teams and processes
and evaluating new technologies that can
keep them a step ahead of e-customers’
quickly changing expectations on privacy.
“Eighteen months ago, you rarely heard
clients asking what to do about privacy,”
says Anne Wallace, manager of financial
services consulting at KPMG Peat Mar-
wick LLP, in Washington, which has helped
financial services companies plan e-com-
merce strategies. “Today it’s often one of
the first things they want to talk about.”
Private parts
One reason why savvy companies with
e-commerce sites are so concerned about
PHOTO: MARTIN H. SIMON/SABA; PHOTO COLLAGE: ROMAN CEBULSKI
security is that their customers are. A re-
cent survey by polling company Louis Har-
ris and Associates Inc. and privacy expert
Alan Westin of Columbia University
showed that 86 percent of Internet users
are concerned about how companies use
information collected from them on the
Web. On average, the survey said, users
are two to three times more willing to pro-
vide personal information to Web sites that
disclose their online information gathering
and dissemination practices.
Although most consumers today live in
a world where private information is col-
lected all the time—by supermarkets with
that developing a privacy policy that every- frequent-shopper cards or telemarketers
one in the enterprise supports and that fits conducting brand preference surveys—
with the company’s e-commerce strategy many consumers have suddenly become
and its historical practices takes more sensitive about online collection and use
than just posting a boilerplate statement of private information. One reason, says
on a Web site. But that’s not stopping top CONTINUED ON PAGE 86 R
Webmasters may have designed. They’re
setting policies and standards, much as early
mainframe shops did, to reduce costs and
better manage rampant Web development.
Yet, unlike the mainframe days, enterprise
Web committees aren’t managing use of the
Web so much as the technology behind it.
They’re identifying common core functions
With breadth and speed, the Web is mov- for electronic business and providing those
ing from a tactical opportunity into a strate- services so business units don’t have to rein-
gic role for businesses. Realizing its eco-
nomic potential, companies such as IBM,
Gartner Group Inc. and Warner/Chap-
vent the wheel. It goes beyond HTML or even
e-commerce. These companies are develop-
ing a uniform approach to e-customer care.
pell Music Inc., among others, are consol- Consolidating Web services is “an ab-
idating their Web efforts and forming en- solutely central trend that’s been going on
terprisewide Web service departments to for about a year now,” says Kathy Biro,
weave a similar look and feel through president of Strategic Interactive Group,
screens that dozens—or hundreds—of CONTINUED ON PAGE 91 R
 PC WEEK
86 S T R A T E G I E S OCTOBER 19, 1998

Lock and Key EU’s Directive Will laws, no such arrangement has yet been an-
nounced.
attempting to negotiate an agreement with
the EU that could provide a so-called safe

L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 85

Apply Global Pressure “The EU directive could have a huge im-
pact on U.S. companies, particularly multina-
harbor for U.S. companies operating in Eu-
rope, at least temporarily. Under the pro-
Harry Fenick, an analyst and vice presi-
dent at Zona Research Inc., in Redwood To Protect E-Privacy tionals,” says Susan Scott, executive direc-
tor of Truste, a company based in Palo Alto,
posed agreement, U.S. e-commerce com-
panies and other businesses might be
City, Calif., is that consumers believe in- U.S. companies that still haven’t gotten seri- Calif., that certifies the privacy practices of allowed to continue collecting personal in-
formation about their online behavior is ous about protecting the privacy of their e-commerce sites. formation if they declare that they provide
being collected without their knowledge electronic commerce customers may soon Among other things, the EU directive says adequate privacy protections, receive
with, for example, cookies placed in have no choice but to do so, particularly if that member states must pass laws that re- some form of certification, or enter into
browsers. Also, says Fenick, Web users see they do business in Europe. That’s because quire that, before their personal information contracts with European partners and affili-
immediate evidence of the use of personal the European Union is about to require that is transferred outside of Europe, customers ates whereby they will agree to privacy au-
information. all of its 15 member states adopt tough new must give unambiguous consent. Companies dits and cooperate with European data pro-
“The next click I do on a site will pro- privacy laws that could make it illegal for collecting personal information must also tection authorities. (The DOC proposal is
duce a different page than the next click many companies to transmit personal infor- provide individuals with access to the infor- available at www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/
you do, because more and more sites are mation about European customers to the mation and the ability to correct it. Compa- privacy/6_5_fedreg.htm.)
personalized, using private information,” United States. nies collecting and transferring information Although European countries are not re-
Fenick says. The laws, dictated by the EU’s Data Pro- would also have to demonstrate the accu- quired to pass laws conforming to the EU di-
The threat of government regulation is tection Directive, passed in 1995, are sched- racy of the information. rective until later this month, four—Greece,
also pushing e-commerce companies to get uled to be adopted by all member states by In addition to influencing personal informa- Italy, Sweden and England—already have. Of
serious about locking up private customer Oct. 24. The laws would apply stringent new tion collected by e-commerce sites, the laws those, observers say, Sweden and Italy are
information. Next week, for example, mem- privacy requirements, not just on informa- would also affect information companies col- already moving rapidly to test their new pri-
bers of the European Union are sched- tion collected from e-commerce sites, but lect about employees. The directive says that vacy laws in court.
uled to implement restrictive privacy reg- also on private information about employ- states may prohibit any processing or disclo- “We don’t expect widespread [enforce-
ulations dictated by the EU’s Data ees. Although the Department of Commerce sure of certain sensitive information such as ment] action before the first of the year,”
Protection Directive. Among other things, is attempting to come to an agreement with race/ethnicity, political opinion, religion or says Scott Blackmer, a partner with the
the directive requires companies to get spe- the EU that could make it easier for U.S. sexual preference. Washington-based international law firm
cific approval from each customer before companies to comply with the new privacy The Commerce Department is reportedly Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering. —J.M.
collecting or using private information and
prohibits companies from transmitting pri-
vate customer information outside Europe sites even notify users of their privacy prac- mation that it collected from membership the opportunity to ask P&G to delete pri-
if they don’t follow the EU rules. (See sto- tices, the Federal Trade Commission has applications, a contradiction of its stated vate information, but it doesn’t make
ry, right.) begun to push for legislation governing on- policy. promises about when or how that will
Although the Clinton administration is line privacy practices and prosecution of In response to such cases and the specter happen.
attempting to negotiate a compromise, sites that fail to live up to their published of privacy legislation, 50 companies in the Another e-commerce privacy issue wrin-
the directive, if implemented and enforced, privacy policies. In August, for example, summer formed the Online Privacy Al- kle is the relationship between online part-
could keep multinational companies from the FTC fined portal-site operator Geo- liance. Led by America Online Inc., Mi- ners. Even if a company has airtight pri-
doing e-commerce business in Europe if Cities Corp. for misleading online customers crosoft Corp., Netscape Communications vacy policies in place, partners that appear
they don’t have strong, enforceable priva- by “not telling the truth about how it was Corp., Time Warner Inc. and others, the on its site or link to it may not. That may
cy policies and practices. using their personal information,” accord- group is charged with convincing Congress not sit well with privacy-conscious online
U.S. regulators also are forcing e-com- ing to Jodie Bernstein, director of the FTC’s and consumers that large e-commerce com- customers.
merce companies to get serious about pri- Bureau of Consumer Protection, in Wash- panies can regulate themselves and de- Large e-commerce companies are re-
vacy. After issuing a report in June show- ington. Specifically, GeoCities was accused velop effective privacy policies and pro- sponding by requiring all online partners
ing that only 14 percent of commercial Web of disclosing to third parties private infor- cedures. to create comprehensive privacy policies
of their own. The Sabre Group, which op-
Policy potholes erates the Sabre airline computer reserva-
Seven steps to an online privacy policy Many companies are discovering, howev- tion system, has long had a detailed privacy
er, that creating an online privacy policy is policy that, among other things, prohibits
These are the core elements that a comprehensive online privacy policy should address: not that simple. As the GeoCities case Sabre from selling private customer infor-
shows, companies must be prepared to live mation to third parties. The company now
R Notification. Visitors to your Web site should at least be told what information about
them is being collected and how it will be used. Other things to consider telling online up to their publicly stated policies or face requires the same promise from partners
customers: potential recipients of information, whether visitors are required to provide legal action. If, for example, a company such as travel agents that link into its
information and, if they choose not to, what the consequences will be. offers e-commerce customers the chance Travelocity Web site, says Sabre CEO
to opt out of having private information Michael Durham, in Dallas.
R Choice and consent. Online customers should be given the option to control what
information is collected and how it is used. There are two ways to do this. The first about them collected, the company needs Developing an e-commerce privacy pol-
is to allow customers to specifically permit the collection of information about them. to have the internal process in place to sup- icy also requires companies to think long
This is known as “opt in.” The second is to allow them to say they don’t want informa- port that option. and hard about their fundamental online
tion about them collected or used in certain ways. This is called “opt out.” That’s been a challenge for consumer business goals. The fact is, experts say,
R Access/participation. Allow online customers to see what information packaged-goods giant Procter & e-commerce is so new that most compa-
has been collected and to correct inaccurate records. Correcting Gamble. Before posting a pri- nies don’t know exactly how they’ll be able
errors should be simple and straightforward. vacy policy on its Web site ear- to make money at it. Selling customer in-
lier this year, executives at the formation—or sharing it with partners—
R Data accuracy, security. The policy should spell out the steps that will
be taken to ensure both the quality and security of data collected. Cincinnati company decided they may turn out to be a major source of rev-
wanted to give customers the chance enue for some sites.
R Employee behavior. The policy should be specific about what’s to opt out and even have existing “There are a whole bunch of reasons
expected from employees to protect private information about private information deleted from [why] you’d want to collect and use per-
online customers.
P&G’s records. But Associate Me- sonal information,” says Randy Hancock,
R Enforcement. What steps will be taken to ensure that the poli- dia Director Buddy Tucker says senior vice president at e-commerce con-
cy is being followed? Companies such as American Express P&G hasn’t yet worked out how it sulting company Mainspring Communi-
regularly audit for compliance. Others use independent certifica- will go about erasing private informa- cations Inc., in Cambridge, Mass. “Com-
tion from Truste.
tion about individual customers on a panies need to think about the trade-offs
R Behavior of e-commerce partners. Policy should spell out what’s expected case-by-case basis. involved in agreeing not to collect, use or
from companies that have a presence on your site or that link to your site.
“That could be expensive,” says Tuck- distribute private information.”
Source: PC Week reporting
er. So P&G’s current policy gives customers CONTINUED ON PAGE 94 R
 PC WEEK
88 S T R A T E G I E S OCTOBER 19, 1998

Have Skills, Will Travel

job security and for-
going company-paid
training and bene-
fits, in many cases.
“There are pros
BY AILEEN CROWLEY AND STEPHANIE NEIL sultants News, a newsletter published by and cons on both
teve nigro would rather write a Kennedy Information, in Fitzwilliam, N.H. sides of this career

PHOTO: STEVE KOLL

mainframe program than play po-
litical games. That’s why Nigro opt-
ed to take his COBOL and legacy
programming expertise on the road
last year, trading his place on the cor-
porate ladder for the life of a year 2000 gun-
for-hire at IBM Global Services, in Som-
ers, N.Y. Nigro says he hasn’t looked back
since his career change.
“This is a completely different career
choice, and at first I did have some appre-
hension, but right now this is a good place
to be,” says Nigro, who is a project man-
ager for IBM’s Y2K services group.
Nigro, along with a growing number of
his peers, is taking a pass on the tradition-
al IT career path by becoming a technical
nomad. The number of IT consultants is
expected to grow by 18 percent each year
through the year 2000, according to Con-
Rather than making a career with one com-
pany—and having to master the subtleties
of business strategy and management in a
corporate environment—this group is bas-
ing its livelihood on selling nuts-and-bolts
technical expertise one project at a time.
The career choice can be especially re-
warding for IT professionals with skills that
are currently in high demand—for exam-
ple, Y2K, ERP (enterprise resource plan-
ning), electronic commerce and security.
With companies earmarking those tech-
nologies as critical to the business, spe-
cialists can command premium salaries and
be assured of a constant stream of work.
Despite these obvious benefits, IT career
experts agree that this choice isn’t for every-
one. Professionals opting for this route have
to be prepared to deal with issues related to
working in a transient role—for example,
trend,” says Dudley
Brown, managing
partner for the ex-
ecutive search com-
pany BridgeGate
LLC, in Irvine, Calif. “[IT professionals]
have to be focused on what they want to
make this work.”
Declaration of independence
For Nigro, the benefits of becoming a tech
transient are basic: more challenges, less
political intrigue and increased earnings.
Rather than having to constantly be
thinking about internal politics and the
pecking order of the corporate IT organi-
zation, he says he can concentrate on the
job at hand. Nigro also got an 18 percent
pay hike over his last corporate position—
Y2K project manager with Avon Prod-
ucts Inc., in Rye, N.Y. “The money is not
so secure. “I just feel One of many workers
better about my- who are becoming IT
self vs. being in a lay- nomads, Steve Nigro
off condition, which took to the road as a
was an emotional Y2K contractor.
strain,” he explains.
MacDonald works with several differ-
ent agencies that help him find jobs. As an
independent contractor, there is a down-
side: MacDonald receives no benefits, no
vacation time and no retirement package.
The upside, however, is more money in
his pocket, since the agency doesn’t take a
big cut, and a better tax break based on his
ability to write off work-related costs.
MacDonald savors his independence. “I

JOB SCAN
the only reason to make this move, but it would say the reason the majority of us do
Director, Business Technology is an important factor,” says Nigro, who is contract work is that we know what we are
also on track to make an additional 20 there for, the client knows what we’re there
percent in bonuses this year. for, and there is no internal strife,” he
DESCRIPTION: Provides intelli- lated discipline. An IT focus is John MacDonald has also been seeing says.
gence to the IT organization re- preferred. Background should green since he became an independent con- It’s not just legacy skills in demand among
garding business trends while also include at least 10 years tractor. MacDonald, who has 28 years of contractors. Cutting-edge capabilities such
Before accepting a managing expectations of the of practical technology expe- mainframe programming experience, de- as Web design, e-commerce develop-
new position, job business units with regard to rience. cided to pack in corporate life after he was ment, ERP and security are also needed.
seekers need to in- the realities of IT. Primary re- PECKING ORDER: Reports to the laid off from Boston-based Shawmut Bank’s As a result, IBM’s Nigro is already
vestigate the poten- sponsibility is to define business CIO (or equivalent) in a peer- IT department around the time it was ac- planning to take advantage of training op-
tial employer thor- processes and identify enabling level relationship with the heads quired by Fleet Bank in 1996. “I decided portunities that will help prepare him for
oughly. One way to do technologies based on cus- of the various areas of IT; may to be a contractor because at least then I his next career move after the year 2000
that is through vari- tomer requirements. have a dual reporting relation- know when a project will end,” MacDon- projects are put to bed. Nigro has identi-
ous resources on the SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE: Strong ship with executive manage- ald says. fied e-commerce project management as
Web, according to Ray technical knowledge and abili- ment and has regular contact He is scheduled to vacate his latest post his next big opportunity. And as an em-
Schreyer, the direc- ty to express complex tech- with top management of busi- at a large financial institution in Boston at ployee of IBM, he can get the technical
tor of recruiting at nical concepts in terms that ness units, corporate execu- the end of December. And even though training he needs to succeed in this area.
Little and Associates business managers can un- tives and IT personnel on spe- he doesn’t know what his next job will be, “As long as I have the skills, they will
Architects Inc., in derstand. Other strengths cific projects. or even when he’ll get it, he has never felt find me an assignment,” Nigro says. c
Charlotte, N.C. One include superior project man- OUTSIDE CONTACT: Vendors, con-
resource that agement, leadership and or- sultants and contractors.
Schreyer recom- ganizational skills. CURRENT MARKET DEMAND: High On The Web
mends is the EXPERIENCE: Graduate degree across all industries; the great- www.hightechcareers.com High In Print
Vault Reports in business or management; est demand is in companies that Technology Careers Magazine is an The Business of
(www.vaultreports. bachelor’s degree in comput- are implementing enterprise online resource geared toward tech- Consulting—The
com), where, for the er science, engineering or re- projects requiring coordination nical professionals. It includes arti- Basics and Be-
small fee of $4.95, across multiple cles on high-technology growth yond, by Elaine
job seekers can re- BASE SALARY RANGE BY REGION* business units. areas, career opportunities and Biech. Dishes up
quest profiles on LOW MEDIUM HIGH CAREER PATH: Posi- career management advice. practical advice
over 700 leading New York $126,521 161,006 194,843 tion offers growth www.careermag.com The Career for professionals
companies, including Los Angeles 101,217 128,805 155,874 potential for busi- Magazine Web site is designed to already in the consulting business and
financial and employ- Baltimore 88,424 112,525 136,174 ness unit senior help individuals start the networking those looking to get started. Jossey-
ment statistics along Kansas City, Mo. 76,756 97,677 118,205 management jobs process to land a job. It includes a Bass/Pfeiffer, ISBN 0-78769-4021-6,
with interviews and *Across all industries with bonus range between 15 percent to 30 and for senior IT job opening database, résumé bank, $39.95 hardcover with disk containing
percent of base.
surveys of employees Source: Cromwell Foote Partners LLC
positions, includ- employer profiles, products, and business forms.
and insiders at the ing CIO. services and career forums.
companies.
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Supersites Consolidate Web Work
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 85
a media services provider in Boston. “It’s
growing out of the discoveries that if you
pursue things with no master plan archi-
tecturally or from a customer viewpoint,”
you’re going to waste a lot of money and
lose business, Biro says.
What’s in a name?
As any good idea will, centralized Web ef-
forts have taken on a catchy name: super-
sites. There really isn’t one definition of a
supersite. Some organizations, rather than
thinking about separate intranets, extranets
and public Web sites, are merging the
planning, deployment and operations of
their sites. Others are simply consolidating
multiple front ends. The common denom-
inator is the ability to serve different groups
of people—employees, customers and busi-
ness partners—from the same site.
The name “supersite” was coined by
USWeb Corp., an ISP (Internet services
provider) in Santa Clara, Calif. USWeb
didn’t trademark the term because it
thought the concept would catch on faster
if it were in the public domain. And catch
on it has. More than 50 percent of USWeb’s
clients are currently building supersites,
and the rest are thinking about it, accord-
ing to Toby Corey, USWeb’s president.
Along with the name, USWeb came up
with a supersite architecture, which in-
cludes security (authentication, encryp-
tion, digital signatures and so on), a di-
rectory-based access control list—to
determine user privileges—and manage-
ment services. Other ISPs, including SIG
and Infragence Inc., in San Francisco, have
developed their own methodologies for
creating supersites.
The business reasons for creating su-
persites are straightforward. For one, a su-
persite serves the customer. People don’t
want to go to different places on the
Web, especially within one company. The
more separate a company’s information
is, the greater the chance that customers
will get lost trying to find it and give up,
leading to lost business.
Every lost opportunity to give people
the information they need means not just
losing their business but also their future
stream of business. “It’s the valet concept,”
says Drew Seath, an analyst at Gartner
Group, in Stamford, Conn. “Customers
need somebody to figure out what they
want and hand it to them.”
Eliminating redundancies is another ben-
efit. At some point, the chief financial of-
ficer will be getting a lot of requests for
seemingly redundant resources. Pockets of
expertise will have emerged all over the
place. It’s cheap and easy to design a Web
site, but total cost of ownership is another
story. Instead of developing intranet, ex-
tranet, Internet and e-commerce sites, a su-
persite is easier to manage.
Still, creating a supersite can be a painful
process, especially for a large, distributed
organization such as IBM. When it began
S T R A T E G I E S 91
The new architecture is helping IBM learn chronizing databases of subscriber IDs that
more about its customers and create value
for them. The company built in a measure-
ment tool that surveys visitors and discov-
control access to its documents. First, Gart-
ner integrated the databases and matched
IDs to determine whether people were reg-
the consolidation a year ago, IBM was us- ered that most people search on the same istered on different sites; then the com-
ing 12 different commerce engines and had 200 to 250 keywords: ThinkPad, Java, IBM pany created an online tool for people to
170 content providers. This federation of Global Services, financing and so on. They put their own IDs together. To accomplish
sites resulted in an “inconsistent level of mined the metric, developing a keyword this, Gartner combined an Oracle Corp.
performance and high costs,” says Rory search on top of AltaVista that presents in- database and its own code, Seath says. There
Read, director of IBM Web enablement, formation more quickly. Such demographic was plenty of customization.
also in White Plains. measurements would have been impossible
IBM chose to start at the infrastructure if they were spread across 1,000 sites. Starting from scratch
level, rehosting its sites onto seven major “IBM’s efforts in this area dwarf the scale The lucky companies are the ones that have
Global Services Delivery Centers, physically of anyone else,” says Biro, of SIG, which hung back and are launching their first Web
located near major back-end mainframes worked with IBM from its supersite be- initiatives as supersites. Warner/Chap-
in Japan; Australia; Portsmouth, England; ginnings. pell, a major music distributor in Los An-
Chicago; Raleigh, N.C.; Boulder, Colo.; Gartner Group, by comparison, consol- geles, went live with its supersite (www.
and Southbury, Conn. The physical prox- idated nine intranet sites and seven exter- warnerchappell.com) two months ago. “We
imity of the Web sites to these back-end nal Web sites into two supersites: one in- tried to do it smart,” says Steve Scott, di-
systems allows IBM to deliver information ternal and one on the Web. The company rector of new media.
to customers around the globe at the high- chose to keep the supersites separate be- Warner/Chappell set out to capture with
est performance and lowest network costs. cause the information needs of their users one presentation several different audi-
Now, the Enterprise Web Management are so different, Seath says. Gartner also ences: business-to-business partners that
group is working to deliver common ap- chose not to host the supersite itself—a license its music for use in movies, com-
plications such as registration, commerce, smart decision, since 24-by-7 system up- mercials and so on; retail customers look-
technical support and credit card process- time is not one of Gartner Group’s core ing to buy sheet music or instructional
ing to run across the seven delivery cen- competencies. The site (www.gartner.com) videos; and employees who use promo-
ters. “We’re trying to build an infrastruc- is hosted by Qwest Communications In- tional material about Warner/Chappell’s
ture that allows the [divisional managers] ternational Inc., of Denver, an upstart ri- songs to help sell the catalog.
to build applications on a set of tools,” val to MCI Communications Corp., AT&T Before the Web site went live, much of
Anderson says. “They don’t need to Corp. and Sprint Corp. this promotional information—the dates
worry about where to put the sites or about Where Gartner excels is in providing in- of recordings, their histories in entertain-
things like security.” formation; combining its sites involved syn- ment and so forth—was located in three-
ring binders. So along with creating a
database architecture and synchronizing
Best practices for building a supersite it with its legacy systems, Warner/Chappell
was creating a lot of content.
R Use an outsourced service provider. Forming a team to create a
supersite can be a minefield in itself, what with the egos involved. An
Ultimately, the company decided the
outside services organization such as USWeb or SIG can be a relation- promotional material was as valuable to
ship broker among departments. Building the site isn’t trivial, either, and business partners and retail customers as
outsourcers can relieve some of the burden for IT organizations that are it was to its internal sales force. The su-
already resource-constrained. persite architecture allowed the company
R Find the balance between centralized services and divisional flexibility. to offer that information to anyone visit-
Most companies have an inherent distrust of corporate initiatives ing the site.
because there’s no value added by divisional managers. The goal
of centralized Web services should be to provide divisional man- Creating supersites is becoming a busi-
agers with application development tools that can leverage ness mandate, says USWeb’s Corey. “It
core utilities to better serve their customers. doesn’t make sense to do anything less at
R Watch your speed. Centralized services often create cost effi- this point,” he claims. But this isn’t just a
ciencies, but they’re usually slow to implement. Develop a fast one-time technology development. It’s an
way to update standards and practices. examination of how the Web can be lever-
R Don’t take things lightly. Moving quickly doesn’t mean glossing over aged over time.
details. Formalize the plan: Have each department align their That elevation of the technology—away
Internet goals; then work out the architecture, deciding when certain
pieces will be built, when they will be integrated and how that will occur.
from Webmasters tossing up individual sites
toward a centralized strategy—is matched
R Prioritize and focus. Most companies could spend all their time exploring ideas.
Instead, put a project management system in place and decide at weekly meetings
by higher development costs. While it’s dif-
which ideas to explore. ficult to put a price on the various super-
R Formalize a process for moving from one step to the next. Without this, you could get to
site efforts out there, USWeb’s customers
a point where a designer is going nuts on something a developer isn’t anywhere near generally pay between $250,000 and $5 mil-
ready to build. Everybody needs to know what everyone else is doing. lion for a full e-business strategy. Compa-
R Build management services into the architecture. Many of these revolve around nies such as NBC Corp., which has a long-
telecommunications: determining how quickly data can get from point A to point B, term contract with USWeb, pay closer to
router services and diagnostic utilities. It’s also important to build in monitors that $10 million.
make sure that critical components such as Common Gateway Interface scripts and Fortunately, the payback is tangible and
ActiveX controls load properly and continue running.
happens sooner than you might think. All
R Use demographic measurements to create value for the customer. A centralized architec- of USWeb’s engagements include a ro-
ture enables companies to gain statistics about what visitors are looking for. IBM found,
for example, that visitors typically searched for the same 200 to 250 keywords: bust return-on-investment model with click-
ThinkPad, Java, IBM Global Services, financing, etc. IBM decided to present that infor- through expectations, impressions and
mation more prominently and developed a keyword search on top of AltaVista. response rates. “I’ve seen paybacks from
R Remember that service counts. Put a lot of money into customer-access sites. one month to a year,” Corey says.
Make them easy to navigate, and enable customers to complete a purchase online. Adds Anderson of IBM, “We found it very
R Treat e-commerce as a profit center. Smart companies no longer justify losing money easy to justify all of the investments.” c
on e-commerce with greater brand awareness. Time Warner Inc., for example, recently
announced it would shift its focus from being a portal with Pathfinder to selling music, Laura B. Smith is a free-lance writer liv-
books and videos directly.
Source: PC Week reporting
ing in Swampscott, Mass. She can be
reached at lauras@shore.net.

94
Lock and Key
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 86
Many companies are being conservative
about disclosing privacy policies. Office-
Depot.com, the e-commerce retail sub-
sidiary of the Office Depot office prod-
S T R A T E G I E S
ucts supplier, for example, has decided
not to sell customer information to third
parties. But the 9-month-old site’s online
privacy policy reserves the right to do so.
So far, OfficeDepot.com’s online privacy
statement is a bare-bones disclaimer that
retains the San Francisco company’s right
to “reproduce, use, disclose and distribute”
customer information.
Such basic notifications are the first
step in developing comprehensive online
privacy. Some online privacy notification
statements, on the other hand, are very
detailed. Microsoft’s statement, for exam-
ple (register.microsoft.com/regwiz/
inclue/privacy.htm), tells visitors not just
whether Microsoft will share personal in-
formation with other sites (yes), but also
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
what it will do with personal information.
AmEx, which says it may share your e-mail
address with affiliates, also lets e-commerce
customers see the principles that guide
all privacy practices at AmEx (www.
americanexpress.com/corp/consumerinfo/
principles.shtml).
Companies with more comprehensive
e-commerce privacy policies go well be-
yond notification. Key elements can include
giving online customers the ability to opt
out of having information about them col-
lected, used or disseminated, or giving them
a chance to see and, if necessary, correct
information. Here Microsoft is again among
the more advanced sites, offering online
customers Web access, in effect, to Micro-
soft’s file of customer information. Micro-
soft calls it the Personal Information Cen-
ter. Users can view and edit their personal
information from Microsoft’s Web site.
Ironically, however, they can only do so af-
ter registering and providing the Redmond,
Wash., company with—yes—more per-
sonal information.
Policy enforcement
Officials at AmEx and e-commerce lead-
ers such as J.C. Penney also say it’s im-
portant to have specific mechanisms for
both ensuring the quality and accuracy of
personal customer information and en-
forcing their online privacy policy.
Companies such as AmEx are also
putting resources into monitoring and en-
forcing their e-commerce privacy policies.
Each year, AmEx requires managers to
sign a code of conduct agreement that, in
addition to barring them from activities
such as insider trading, binds them to the
company’s privacy policies. AmEx also has
a team that regularly audits each business
unit for adherence to the privacy policies.
Another option for e-commerce com-
panies is taking advantage of a growing
number of external groups such as Truste
and BBBOnLine that will monitor and cer-
tify adherence to privacy policies. (See PC
Week, Sept. 21, Page 77.)
Perhaps the most important element of
a comprehensive e-commerce privacy pol-
icy, say e-commerce executives, is an in-
ternal committee assigned to continuously
evaluate and update the policy. With reg-
ulation looming in the United States and
overseas and consumer awareness of pri-
vacy issues on the rise, experts predict
privacy best-practice standards will change
often. If the EU directive is widely applied
and enforced, for example, Mainspring’s
Hancock says e-commerce companies
might need to offer consumers the chance
to opt in—or specifically approve collec-
tion of personal information—as well as
opt out.
“As online consumers get more educated
and government wields a bigger stick, com-
panies will have to move quickly to stay
on the right side of the e-commerce privacy
issue,” Hancock says.
To be effective, such standing privacy
policy committees should include repre-
sentatives from across the enterprise. That’s
because customer information is usually
CONTINUED ON PAGE 96 R
 PC WEEK
96 S T R A T E G I E S OCTOBER 19, 1998

BRETT ARQUETTE: CORNER OFFICE

Or could it be the force of the never-end- sold. The new parent company killed the

Check IT Goods ing stream of product upgrades? Your soft- application with a single pen stroke. The main-
ware is stale, and you’re in the IT refrigera- frame the division purchased two years ear-
tor, and you’re throwing out all the old stuff. lier was grossly underpowered, and the war-
For Freshness Dates Let’s see what’s moldy today. ... Word pro- ranty had expired. The 486 PCs it had
cessing stinks and has to go. ... Virus protec- purchased were still sitting in boxes in stor-
ach morning, when you walk through the tion is more than 3 months old. ... Pee-ew! age and were hopelessly out of date. The en-

E computer room, do you notice an odor? You

should, because everything you have in your
shop is rotting like a trash can full of fish heads on an
The e-mail client has already been upgraded tire investment perished on the vine. The PCs
three times this year, but No. 4 has just come were all donated to nonprofit organizations.
out. Better stuff the old one in
the garbage disposal.
How do you handle a per-
ASSUME THERE

August afternoon.
Every day, your hardware and software are deteri-
orating, and there’s nothing you can do
about it. Each time that disk drive rotates
another 360 degrees or that monitor burns
the screen for another hour, the money me-
ter is running. Hardware or software isn’t
the problem. Time is the culprit. And un-
less you can harness it, manage it or stop it
altogether, time will cost you big money.
If you believe the new system you just
installed will be around for a long while,
think again. There are many forces that can
change your environment overnight. One
you may not see coming is technological
advancement. Your database might be great
today, but tomorrow your competitor may
have a new trend-analyzing database that
generates fuzzy logic micro agents that re-
motely collect and deliver information from
the Internet. The lure of a sharper business
edge may entice your company to dump rel-
atively new technology, even though you
were perfectly happy with it. Sure, it cost $2
million, took six months to install and lasted
two years. But now it’s rotten.
Another force: A new CEO may not like
the equipment or software you’re running
because he or she is a Brand X type of per-
son. CEOs such as this think all problems
can be solved by simply dumping Brand Y
and switching to Brand X.
IS A LIMITED
The best way to defuse the
TCO time bomb is to deploy
technology as fast as possible.
ishable IT investment? Deploy. LIFE EXPECTANCY If it’s time to order upgrades
Deploy. Deploy. For the best or install new PCs, make sure
FOR EVERY
return on investment, get new the resources are available to
software or hardware deployed COMPONENT. train the target users and in-
ASAP. Every day it sits on the stall the items as soon as they
computer room floor, being tested or not arrive. If a new application is being writ-
in production, its value is dropping like that ten or purchased, wait to acquire the hard-
of a used toothbrush. Assume there is a lim- ware until the application is ready for pro-
ited life expectancy for every component. duction. Never stick your head into a
Some may last months. Some may last years. guillotine of projects that take longer than
Squeeze out every ounce of productivity six months or a year to develop.
before they become obsolete. Instead, keep your nose to the wind.
Even before equipment is purchased, time Smell anything? c
is costing your company money. Here’s an
example: A corporate division planned a two- Brett Arquette is state CIO for the 9th Ju-
year rollout of a major application, but by dicial Circuit Court, Orange and Osceola
the time the division was ready to install it, counties, in Florida. You can e-mail him
the vendor that wrote the application was at barq@iag.net.

Lock and Key

Unisys Is Now at Your Service L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 94
generated and managed by more than one
business unit or function at most compa-
CEO Weinbach directs the company’s refocusing from hardware to services nies. At J.C. Penney, for example, the pri-
vacy policy includes representatives from
BY JOHN MADDEN company outsourced its PC business to products and services—especially when its the credit, insurance and telemarketing
n the past year, unisys corp. has made Hewlett-Packard Co. and concentrated on competitors were expanding. “I think that businesses in addition to the e-commerce

I a U-turn from being a hardware suppli-

er to becoming a services company, and
the company’s leader thinks IT managers
have taken notice.
President and CEO Larry Weinbach, in
his first year at the helm, has shifted the
focus of the Blue Bell, Pa., company from
hardware to services, outsourcing and sys-
tems integration. The result is a company
that is on the mend after a dismal down-
turn in the early 1990s. Although the com-
pany still sells mainframe products, two-
thirds of its business is now services. “No
customer cares about a piece of hardware.
What they care about is a solution,”
Weinbach says.
When he took over in September 1997,
the company was saddled with more than
$2 billion in debt, and employee morale
was low, the result of massive cost-cutting.
Most damaging was that, as part of its prod-
uct offerings, “they gave away the services,”
Weinbach says.
“This was a company that was looking
in the rear-view mirror, and everything
they did was analyzing what went wrong
in the last quarter,” he says. “They got
into the services with a hardware men-
tality.”
Weinbach says he focused the com-
pany’s internal mission on three targets:
customers, employees and reputation. The
improving its services areas as well as cus- hurt them a lot,” Buxton says. “But now
tomer relations. Unisys already has man- they’re positioned differently in the mar-
aged to reach its goal of erasing $1 billion ket.” Koppers recently signed Unisys for
group.
It’s also important for IT to be on
board. So far, technology has not been a
in debt by the year 2000. year 2000 remediation work on its main- key tool in protecting e-commerce privacy,
Joe Clabby, an analyst at Aberdeen frames. despite the efforts of vendors such as Fire-
Group Inc., in Boston, says Unisys two years Clabby says the company has demon- fly Communications Inc., which offers Pass-
ago was “a write-off candi- strated its commitment to ser- port, a tool that stores personal informa-
date” with a bleak future. “It vices by beefing up personnel; tion about user preferences in the browser
was mispositioned as an in- of 33,000 employees, 15,000 and lets users control how it is used. Still,
formation management in- are related to services. “That’s new products are on the way. RealNetworks
tegrator rather than as a fo- a pretty impressive ratio, and Inc., for example, recently announced a so-
cused solutions provider. I think it shows you where they called privacy proxy server that can pro-
They fixed all that,” Clabby think their money is coming tect personal customer information from
says. from,” he says. “We were the prying eyes of advertisers on an
Unisys is now concen- down on them two years ago, e-commerce site. As more such products
trating on several key mar- but their future looks awfully come online, they may very well play an
kets: financial services, gov- bright.” important role in enabling new online pri-
ernment, transportation and Weinbach says services will vacy policies.
communications. In addition, Weinbach is services-oriented. become even more important Ultimately, e-commerce company offi-
the company is providing services for to hardware vendors in the next few years cials say, the reason to put time and
Windows NT environments, year 2000 com- as customers continue to ask for them money into developing and implementing
pliance, outsourcing and electronic com- and the market continues to grow. a comprehensive e-commerce policy is
merce. To succeed, the company needs to Weinbach predicts the company will not just to be a good online citizen. As on-
have a global presence, Clabby says, and have $10 billion in annual sales by the year line consumers and regulators become more
is hiring more employees in Europe. And 2001, without any acquisitions. However, concerned about privacy, a company’s per-
its reputation among customers is chang- he does not rule out acquisitions that are formance in keeping customer information
ing—for the better. Jim Buxton, MIS di- complementary to Unisys’ current services under lock and key will become a com-
rector for Koppers Industries Inc., says offerings. c petitive advantage—or disadvantage.
the Pittsburgh-based metal manufacturer “The companies that put in the right pri-
and construction company, a long-time For a Q&A with Unisys CEO Larry Wein- vacy policies and procedures will be the
Unisys mainframe customer, has been frus- bach, go to PC Week Online at www. ones that are successful,” Mainspring’s Han-
trated by the company’s lack of growth in pcweek.com/101598.html. cock says. c
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
RESEARCH
Study: Financial systems lag
Even in today’s fast-paced technology en-
vironment, many leading North American
financial institutions still have outdated in-
formation systems—some more than 20
years old, according to a new study by Com-
puter Sciences Corp., of El Segundo, Calif.
Several factors have kept banks lagging
behind other industries in updating and in-
tegrating core financial systems, including
cost, mergers and acquisitions, and per-
ceived risk, according to the report, titled
“Financial Management Technology—Re-
search Findings on Banking Issues & Ap-
plications.” Findings were based on Inter-
views last spring with IT executives at 100
North American financial institutions.
The study fo-
cuses on con-
cerns about the
age, integra-
tion, complex-
ity and under-
lying architecture of institutions’ financial
and management systems.
Among the study’s findings:
• In large financial institutions, the gen-
eral ledger system has been in use for an
average of 13 years. Nearly 45 percent of
respondents indicated their general
ledger system was more than 15 years old;
more than one-fifth indicated the system
was more than 20 years old.
• The general ledger is the most dramatic
example of aging financial accounting sys-
tems, with a mainframe architecture design
dating back some 15 to 20 years. The av-
erage age of all financial accounting sys-
tems is 8.4 years.
• Integration of financial systems remains
the top priority for most executives, since
it is lacking in core financial systems, such
as procurement, accounts payable, fixed
assets, general ledger and corporate con-
solidation.
• Procurement systems are the least like-
ly to be fully integrated with the general
ledger. Some 85 percent of large financial
institutions say they are using a unique
system for procurement, and nearly 30 per-
cent of respondents are relying on custom,
in-house developed solutions.
• The complex environment raises IT
risk management and staffing concerns.
The accelerated pace of mergers and ac-
quisitions and the resulting systems con-
CALENDAR
OCT. 26-27
The Law Firm Chief Information Officers Institute Learn
tactics for technology management; how to
leverage the Internet for marketing, research
and billing; and how cost-cutting technologies
can raise your company to new levels of client
service. At the Institute, in Chicago. Call (800)
869-4302 to register.
OCT. 26-28
TeleCon XVIII Conference on Teleconferencing and Inter-
active Multimedia Communications Information about
S T R A T E G I E S
D I G E S T
Offshore bargains
The United States is the middle of the pack when it comes to the costs of developing and supporting
software, according to research from Cutter Consortium, in Arlington, Mass. Here is a look at how
major players in this market stack up in both software development and support costs:
Switzerland
Germany
Japan
Denmark
United States
France
England
Israel
Canada
Ireland
Greece
India
0 $5 $10
solidations and conversions have stretched
the limits of even the most stable and ex-
perienced staffs today.
• Lack of an overall strategy for enter-
prise financial systems may impact the suc-
cess of a company’s strategic imperatives.
For more information on the study, point
to www.csc.com.
Skills gap takes toll in U.S.
Executives at three out of four companies
say they have an unmet need for skilled IT
workers, and this gap is affecting their abil-
ity to stay competitive, according to the
recent findings of a poll by IT placement
firm New Boston Systems Inc., of Woburn,
Mass. Eighty-five percent of officials queried
at high-tech companies believe closing the
skills gap would have a direct, positive im-
pact on sales. One in 10 say closing the gap
would double sales, and one in four say it
would increase sales by 50 percent or more,
according to the survey. The executives cite
rapidly changing technology and the need
to increase productivity as key factors
contributing to the skills gap.
High-tech respondents say the skills most
lacking are foreign language (50 percent),
technical (19 percent) and problem solv-
ing (18 percent). Three hundred top man-
agers were polled nationally in the high-
tech, manufacturing, financial and
management consulting industries.
video, audio and data conferencing using a va-
riety of telecommunication and networking tech-
nologies. At the Anaheim Convention Center,
Anaheim, Calif. Call (800) 829-3400, or point to
www.abctelecon.com.
OCT. 28-30
Winning Strategies for Retaining IT Employees Find
out how to stay competitive in a tight job mar-
ket by reducing IT employee turnover. At the
Hotel Nikko, San Francisco. Call (800) 882-
8684.
101
Development
Support
$15 $20 $25 $30
Source: Cutter Consortium
SERVICES
Companies plan solutions center
Large corporations are getting back to the
basics, adhering to the age-old axiom, “The
customer is always right.” But the bigger
the business, the harder it is to personal-
ize service.
Companies looking for new ways to in-
teract with customers through technology
can get help from The Centric Group—a
collaboration of six customer relationship
management vendors, including Ernst &
Young LLP, Lucent Technologies Inc.,
Siebel Systems Inc., Genesys Telecom-
munications Laboratories Inc., Smart Tech-
nologies Inc. and Staffware Corp.
These vendors, under the umbrella of
The Centric Group, will open the doors
to a new Customer Solutions Center in
Chicago at the end of the year. The cen-
ter will be a place that company execu-
tives can go to learn about new technolo-
gies and end-to-end solutions that will help
grow and manage outside customer rela-
tionships.
The center will open in December and
will be located at O’Hare International
Center. The Centric Group can be reached
at www.centricgroup.com.
TRAINING
Free tips for trainers
Quick Training Tips, a weekly free e-mail-
based training newsletter, celebrated its
second anniversary last month. The
newsletter, which aims to help computer
trainers stay up to date with training strate-
gies, boasts a subscription list of over
10,000 trainers from large organizations
such as Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin
Corp., A.G. Edwards and Kimberly-Clark
Corp.
To learn more about Quick Training Tips
or to subscribe to the paper newsletter, The
Microcomputer Trainer Newsletter, which
costs $265 for 12 issues, call the Secaucus,
N.J., publisher at (201) 330-8923. c

BY MICHAEL SURKAN, PC WEEK LABS
ireless data connections can no
W longer be passed off as a highly spe-
cialized tool for vertical applications—
in this incredibly competitive business land-
scape, being at a loss for up-to-the-minute
information can mean being at a loss for
business. But a PC Week Shoot-Out eval-
uation of wireless technology shows that ar-
riving at a solution is no easy task, because
integration still leaves a lot to be desired.
PC Week Labs analysts and PC Week
Corporate Partners recently worked with
Elliott Masie, president of The Masie Cen-
ter, and the center’s TechLearn Collabo-
rative, a group of about 40 corporations
and government agencies, to come up
with criteria that would allow us to mea-
sure the vendors’ solutions against real-
world wireless needs. The TechLearn
Collaborative’s Project Hand is dedicated
to facilitating personal digital assistant and
wireless technology.
Wireless network, application and de-
vice vendors, which partnered in various
and sundry ways (immediately cluing us in
as to the difficulty in making wireless-ac-
cess decisions), came to our Foster City,
Calif., lab, where we put their wares to the
test. (A glossary on Page 115 filters the al-
phabet soup of wireless acronyms.)
We found that increased support for In-
ternet standards, inviting pricing schemes
and vast improvements to handheld de-
vices have made wireless strategies more
PC Week Corporate Partner provides ‘from the trenches’ wireless advice PAGE 109 R
P C W E E K OCTOBER 19, 1998 PA G E 1 0 5
WIRELESS DATA-ACCESS SOLUTIONS
IT managers must carefully weigh business needs
when sifting through wireless data-access options
practical and compelling than ever. How-
ever, deciding on a solution is difficult,
especially because some of the factors
are totally out of IT managers’ hands.
For example, you may decide that 3Com
Corp.’s PalmPilot is your device of choice,
but if a city critical to your business is cov-
ered only by BellSouth Corp.’s Intelligent
Equipment Counts, but Provider Is the Key
BY MICHAEL SURKAN, PC WEEK LABS
endors from all wireless walks
V teamed up to make this PC Week Shoot-
Out a reality, but because the wireless
network serves as the crux of the decisions
that need to be made when implementing
a wireless access solution, our evaluation fo-
cused on these services and branched out
to devices and applications from there.
Three of the networks we evaluated—
American Mobile Satellite Corp.’s Ardis,
AT&T Corp.’s CDPD (Cellular Digital Pack-
et Data) and BellSouth Corp.’s Intelligent
Wireless Network—provided coverage near-
ly nationwide.
Wireless Network, you’re out of luck: In-
telligent Wireless Network supports only
Windows CE-based devices and devices with
PC Cards and wireless modems. (Note:
Our testing was performed before Micro-
soft Corp.’s recent Jupiter announcement.)
In fact, at the core of any wireless solu-
tion is the wireless data network, and this
Of these, Intelligent Wireless Network had
the most consistent performance in tests
and covers the widest area. However, unlike
the others, BellSouth does not provide fixed-
rate pricing. Ardis also covers most of the
country, has fixed-rate pricing and offers
the best pricing scheme of any of the net-
works. Both the BellSouth and Ardis net-
works work only with Windows CE and
PC Card wireless modem devices.
CDPD performed well in tests and works
with the widest array of devices, including
smart phones. CDPD is a good all-around
choice for any company looking to imple-
ment wireless access for its mobile work force.
is where we focused our evaluation.
Most decisions, including the device
used to access data, the battery life as-
sociated with the device and the appli-
cations supported, hinge on the network
(see evaluation, below). We examined
the three major wireless networks: Bell-
South’s Intelligent Wireless Network,
American Mobile Satellite Corp.’s Ardis
network, and CDPD (Cellular Digital
Packet Data) from AT&T Corp. and oth-
er vendors. We also looked at Metricom
CONTINUED ON PAGE 107 R
We also evaluated Metricom Inc.’s Rico-
chet, which covers only limited areas of the
country but provides substantially better ac-
cess speeds than the others. We recommend
Ricochet, which does not support Palm hand-
helds or smart phones, only for the most
performance-conscious sites located in areas
the other networks don’t cover.
American Mobile Satellite Corp.’s Ardis
Ardis claims to cover about 95 percent of
American business centers (which is not the
same thing as 95 percent of the country). The
experiences of our well-traveled Corporate
CONTINUED ON PAGE 109 R
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K : P C W E E K S H O O T - O U T 107

(with the exception of the faster Ricochet).

Experts Size Up Wireless Connections
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 105
Inc.’s Ricochet, which is available only in
select markets.
All the major wireless data network
providers have evolved to become Inter-
net providers of a sort, offering the mobile
work force access from anywhere in the
country to e-mail and information located
on corporate Web sites.
Well, not quite anywhere, as was pointed
out by PC Week Corporate Partners Judy
Brown and Fran Rabuck.
Brown, in her role as emerging-tech-
nology analyst for the Wisconsin Techni-
cal College System, has been hard-pressed
to find a wireless data service that covers
more than a smidgen of her state. Rabuck,
president of Rabuck Associates, in Philadel-
phia, has a much better selection in his
hometown of Philadelphia, but he’s run
into numerous situations where his wire-
less modems couldn’t access a network.
The CDPD, BellSouth (previously
known as RAM) and Ardis systems
have a lot in common: They offer rela-
tively similar throughput (mostly 19.2K
bps) and close-to-nationwide coverage.
The differences among them are signifi-
cant, however. The BellSouth network has
the widest coverage—including even a few
parts of Wisconsin—but is also the only
service to stick with the per-usage pricing
scheme, charging by the packet. In contrast,
both CDPD and Ardis have extremely at-
tractive flat-rate pricing models that could
mean huge savings for companies with many
users on the road.
Ricochet has the fastest connect rates—
in the 28.8K-bps range—but its pres-
ence is limited to three metropolitan cen-
ters (Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area
Companies can
choose from several
portable platforms.
Clockwise from up-
per left: a PalmPilot
with Minstrel wire-
less modem, a Palm
III with Ericsson
smart phone, a Ca-
sio Windows CE de-
vice and Motorola
wireless PC Card
modem, and a Sam-
sung smart phone.
and Washington), severely hampering its
utility to most companies. However, it of-
fers intriguing possibilities as an Inter-
net access alternative on desktop PCs.
There’s no doubt that stepping into the
world of wireless data communications re-
quires trade-offs: The very desire to be un-
encumbered by wires and still access cor-
porate data requires that people be en-
cumbered by bulky devices. On its own, a
PalmPilot is small, but when a wireless Min-
strel modem from Novatel Wireless Inc. is
added, the size and weight nearly triple,
mostly because of the modem batteries.
The second big trade-off comes in per-
formance. Even though most of the wire-
less networks have the potential to operate
at 19.2K bps in most areas, we saw perfor-
mance that was considerably slower and
more in keeping with what people should
expect—on the order of 8K bps to 10K bps
We also found that, even in areas with
good coverage, all three of the national
wireless services had problems working in-
doors and required moving the devices close
to windows for good connections.
Ricochet worked the best at all locations
in our building.
Decisions also have to be made about
which devices will access the wireless net-
work and what software best suits a com-
pany’s needs.
There are several e-mail and Web brows-
er software packages available for Palm-
Pilot and Windows CE-based handhelds.
Applications such as AvantGo Inc.’s
namesake software, which extend enter-
prise Web applications to wireless de-
vices, allow for data formatting and im-
prove the speed of user access. Most Web
sites we tried to access without AvantGo
were hard to see on the small LCD displays
of the handhelds we tested and were ter-
ribly slow to download.
However, few Web sites are equipped
with this type of software, which is expen-
sive to install and maintain (AvantGo costs
$30,000 per Web server, for example).
Implementing wireless data access for
remote employees requires a significant
commitment of IT resources.
Direct connections with Lotus Develop-
ment Corp.’s Notes, for example, require
setting up special gateways. Lotus’ Domino
synchronizes wireless e-mail activities with
user mailboxes. The gateway works at the
IP level, so it supports any wireless network,
but it can work with only one at a time.
All of the wireless networks we
CONTINUED ON PAGE 111 R

Wireless networks are at center of corporate mobile data-access decisions CDPD

60%
The breadth and depth of devices and applications a company Coverage*
can exploit hinge on networks: Ricochet and CDPD stand out in
E-mail Corporate data Internet
the areas of performance and breadth of support, respectively,
while Ardis and BellSouth have the widest coverage areas.
PC Card wireless modem Windows CE

Ardis BellSouth Ricochet

80% 85% 1%
Coverage* Coverage* Coverage*

PC Card wireless modem Windows CE PC Card wireless modem Windows CE PC Card wireless modem Windows CE

Palm devices SmartPhone

COVERAGE American Mobile Sat-

B COVERAGE BBellSouth’s Intelligent COVERAGE Metricom’s Ricochet cov-
D
.........................
......................... .........................
Wireless Network ers limited areas of the COVERAGE C CDPD provides good
APPLICATIONS C
ellite’s Ardis covers APPLICATIONS B APPLICATIONS B .........................
provides consistent country (Seattle, San Fran-
.......................... performance and
most of the country
.......................... .......................... APPLICATIONS B
DEVICES C DEVICES Cperformance and
DEVICES C
cisco and Washington) but .......................... works with the widest
and offers fixed-rate
.......................... .......................... ..........................
covers the widest ar- COST provides substantially bet-
B
DEVICES A array of devices, in-
COST pricing, but it only
B COST C
..........................
..........................
.......................... ..........................
ea of any of the net- ter access speeds than COST B cluding smart phones
works with Windows PERFORMANCE B ..........................
PERFORMANCE C PERFORMANCE C
works we evaluated. the other three networks. and Palm handhelds
CE-based devices or PERFORMANCE C
BellSouth’s lack of fixed-rate pricing is a big Ricochet, which does not support Palm handhelds and is a good choice
modems. It does offer the lowest pricing
scheme of any of the networks, but not by drawback, however. You can pay for just what or smart phones, might be a good option for PC for companies looking to implement wireless
much. you need, but that solution gets pricey fast. Internet access instead of a second phone line. data access for mobile work forces.

Coverage: The area of the United States the network covers and the strength of its signal indoors. Applications: The breadth of applications the network supports and the ease with which it
allows access to the data. Devices: The variety of hardware (such as modems) and hardware platforms (such as handhelds) the network works with. Cost: The cost of network services
over time and the pricing model used. Performance: The speed and consistency of network connections.
*Coverage-area percentages are approximate and represent the total U.S. geographic area covered by the network (as opposed to percentage of major business centers covered, for example).
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K :
Wireless Capability Rides on Providers
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 105
Partners bears out the network’s claim.
Ardis is slightly behind the BellSouth
network in upgrading national service to
19.2K bps. In many places, the best rate
possible is 9.6K bps.
Ardis has a flat-rate pricing scheme, in-
troduced earlier this year. At $49.95 per
month for unlimited access and an e-mail
account, Ardis is the cheapest of the three
wide-coverage wireless services.
Users subscribe to Ardis through third
parties; and in our tests we worked with
Ikon Office Solutions Inc., which also pro-
vided an Internet e-mail account.
Web browsing is not an option with Ar-
dis, but companies can build their own cus-
tom data access systems and tie them into
the wireless network through Ikon via X.25
or Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol VPN
(virtual private network) connections. Like
most of the other wireless e-mail offer-
ings, Ikon doesn’t handle attachments
and limits messages to 32KB in size.
The only manufacturer of Ardis modems
is Motorola Inc. (which used to own the en-
tire network). PM100D PCMCIA Type 2
cards sell for $500. The PCMCIA card is the
same size as the BellSouth network modems
and carries its own 9-volt battery to pre-
vent a power drain on portable devices.
We tested two Windows CE PCs (from
Casio Inc. and LG Electronics U.S.A.
Inc.) with the PM100D. The signal
strength of the Ardis network was weak
from inside our lab, but throughput im-
proved to about 11K bps as we ap-
proached the windows.
There is no inherent security or en-
cryption over the Ardis network.
CDPD
Unlike all the other wireless data networks,
CDPD is actually run by two different
providers, depending on the region of the
country. AT&T covers the largest areas, with
Bell Atlantic Corp. primarily on the East-
ern Seaboard. GTE Corp. and Ameritech
Corp. also provide CDPD service.
Both firms work closely with one an-
other and even have a joint marketing
arrangement that allows a single $65 month-
ly fee for coverage nationwide. For ser-
vice within just the AT&T area, the price
is $55.
Included with basic service is an e-mail
account, which we were able to access from
a variety of CDPD devices, including lap-
tops and Windows CE machines. A $400
AirCard PCMCIA modem, available from
Sierra Wireless Inc., works in most lap-
tops and handhelds.
For Web browsing, we used the AT&T
PocketNet service (included in the $65-per-
month package), which allows handheld
devices to more efficiently format Web data
on small LCD screens.
We also tried the AirCard modem from
a Compaq Computer Corp. notebook run-
ning Windows 95 and found that, al-
though it worked as an analog modem re-
P C W E E K
placement, basic Internet activities such
as Web browsing with Internet Explorer
were extremely slow compared with stan-
dard analog modems.
There is no other nationwide wireless
service that supports as many end-user
devices as CDPD.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Mit-
subishi Corp. make specialized devices that
combine a standard analog cellular phone
with the CDPD service. Although it was te-
dious to view messages on such a small
LCD screen, we were actually able to ac-
cess e-mail on a Samsung cellular phone.
These devices will only prove practical for
companies that need to provide field oper-
ators with a simple way of responding “yes”
or “no” to simple messages.
CDPD is also the only data service with
modems that support 3Com Corp.’s Palm
handhelds. We were quite impressed with
the $400 Minstrel from Novatel Wireless
Inc., which acted as a cradle for the Palm-
Pilot and let us both access e-mail and
browse Web sites.
CDPD coverage is in third place with
slightly less coverage than Ardis (which has
slightly less coverage than BellSouth’s In-
telligent Wireless Network).
Companies that decide on CDPD will
appreciate the built-in RC4 encryption
across the entire CDPD network as well
as the option to allow direct leased-line con-
nections to corporate networks.
BellSouth Intelligent Wireless Network
(formerly known as RAM)
With the greatest national coverage—al-
beit by a small margin—BellSouth is in an
enviable spot as a national wireless provider.
However, its per-usage pricing scheme
makes the service the least attractive
overall. Some firms may appreciate the pay-
as-you-go pricing structure, but with prices
ranging from $9 for 50K-bps to $109 for
1.2M-bps transmissions, BellSouth’s net-
work can get very costly very quickly.
We tested the BellSouth service on a
Hewlett-Packard Co. 200LX handheld and
found it handled e-mail and basic Web
browsing fairly well.
Only one Type 2 PCMCIA modem is avail-
able for the BellSouth network (from Re-
search In Motion Ltd., which is resold by
3Com under the Megahertz brand). These
PCMCIA cards work in Windows CE hand-
held units and laptops. A few other compa-
nies, including Ericsson Inc., manufacture
modems for the service, but they are typi-
cally integrated directly into custom data en-
try devices.
For Internet access, BellSouth recom-
mends subscribers work with its partner,
GoAmerica Communications Corp., which
provides software for Windows CE devices.
PC Week’s Corporate Partners have
found that the BellSouth network provides
the best overall national coverage and the
best average throughput.
BellSouth plans on broadening the use
CONTINUED ON PAGE 111 R
S H O O T - O U T 109
From the Trenches BY FRANCIS RABUCK, PC WEEK CORPORATE PARTNER
It’s time to give serious attention to what’s happening in the wire-
less technology space; here are a few practical things to consider.
Set a policy—any policy.If you want to ignore portables, then state
that no such devices are supported or paid for in your organiza-
tion. Then close your eyes, click your heels and pray they go
away. The best road to take, however, is to jointly develop poli-
cies with the first employees who start using these devices. You
may need to be open-minded because these items are very personal. A smart phone
might work for a sales group, but 3Com Corp.’s PalmPilot might be more appropriate
for executives. Be sure to include the company’s position on e-mail, who owns the de-
vices and the data, backup policies, reimbursement for consumables, and security.
Don’t ignore education. These devices are personal tools and generally easy to use, but
how much company time are people spending now in learn-on-your-own mode? One
slow battery switch, one wrong synchronization, and you’ll have a very unhappy user.
Consider collecting your organization’s shelfware—manuals, documentation, policies
and procedures—and porting it to PDAs (personal digital assistants). Tools from
Aportis Technologies Corp. and Teal Electronics Corp. make it possible to create
hypertext documents for the PalmPilot a reality; and tools such as Blue Sky Soft-
ware Corp.’s RoboHelp work with Windows CE devices.
New one-rate digital personal communications services options from AT&T Corp.,
Bell Atlantic Corp., Sprint Corp. and smaller players should change the way you
think about mobile phones. Digital phones themselves are now more intelligent
and charger-friendly—eight days of standby and 3 hours of talk time are the norm.
Integrated paging and Short Message Service capabilities could easily eliminate
the need for paging devices. But the real story here is pricing plans: Fixed prices
for mega-minutes and no long-distance or roaming charges should make you re-
consider everything from your company’s pagers to its calling cards—even your in-
house voice-mail system.
When using a phone device for input, look for products with intelligence, such as TEGIS
T9, the only sane way to input data from a phone keypad. In fact, these intelligent prod-
ucts may even function better than handwriting recognition techniques on a PDA.
It may be time to consider alternatives to traditional paging vendors. Two-way pag-
ing devices and wireless vendors’ fixed nationwide pricing for unlimited messages
are options that are becoming hard to ignore. Even better are some of the new dig-
ital phones that allow short messages of 150 to 250 characters. Or look to combine
a paging device, such as the Synapse pager, with the PalmPilot.
Don’t assume that a pure Windows solution is best.The Windows user interface may be
too fat and confusing for personal devices, and there are more development tools
available right now for the PalmPilot than for Microsoft Corp.’s CE platform.
Do some serious planning for the integration of these devices with your e-mail infrastruc-
ture. Do you really want to have another e-mail address for your wireless device? So-
lutions such as Lotus Development Corp.’s Pager Gateway and Wireless Domino Ac-
cess are just the first of many middleware servers that will function as intelligent
agents to condense, filter, summarize and alert smaller communications devices.
Monitor the development of standards such as Wireless Application Protocol and
BlueTooth (see story, Page 112). Real products based on these standards are ex-
pected in the second half of next year.
Before picking wireless vendors, understand their limitations.Consider factors such
as the availability of communication devices that match your PDA of choice with
your wireless vendor. Consider the battery life on these devices. If you’re looking
to do custom development or build applications, consider the tools available. Last
but definitely not least, consider costs. I expect all the wireless players to quickly
migrate to all-you-can-eat fixed-rate plans.
Plan for the next phase. Plan for the long-term cost issues related to these devices, and
consider these questions: How can you set up an initial load of programs and data?
How can you synchronize these devices with need-to-know subsets of enterprise resource
planning information? How can you seamlessly integrate your current e-mail system
with wireless solutions? How can new front-end data collection procedures be developed?
Now do something. Cut out this article, give it to your boss and take a leadership posi-
tion. Or if you are the boss—make it happen. And let me know your best strategies for
the practices for the mobile and wireless world at frabuck@zdnetmail.com. c
Francis Rabuck, a PC Week Corporate Partner, is a consultant specializing in
Internet/Domino and mobile technologies.
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K :
Wireless Service
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 109
of its network by also marketing it as a high-
tech paging service for two-way communi-
cations. New, and very compact, pagers from
Research in Motion Ltd. show that this may
prove to be the best use for the system.
Metricom’s Ricochet
Rather than targeting low-speed wireless data
access across the country, Ricochet targets a
handful of metropolitan centers with high-
speed data access.
Instead of the paltry 19.2K-bps through-
put delivered by most wireless services,
Ricochet delivered a steady 28.8K bps in our
tests. It was hard to tell we were even using
a wireless network on our PCs. We also found
the Ricochet signal strength to be the
strongest of all the services we worked with—
we could get connections from everywhere
we tried in the building.
Only Washington, Seattle and the San
Francisco Bay area are covered by Rico-
chet. There are about 11 airports with cov-
erage, and more cities are planned.
Don’t hold your breath, however. For a
Ricochet network to work, it requires trans-
P C W E E K
mission repeaters every quarter-mile. Typi-
cally, this means contracting with cities to put
antennas on virtually every light pole in town.
The Ricochet service is not a good choice
for most road warriors, but it may be a
good option for Internet access on sta-
tionary PCs instead of paying for a sec-
ond phone line.
In fact, Ricochet gives a tantalizing glimpse
of what the future of wireless represents as
it eventually supplants the direct wire con-
nections that we primarily rely on today.
The Ricochet modem, which costs
$349, has a serial cable that attached to both
our laptop and desktop PCs and includes
drivers for both the Macintosh and Win-
dows operating systems. There is no sup-
port for handheld devices.
For a $30 monthly fee, Ricochet users
get unlimited Internet access and an e-mail
account. This certainly beats paying an
additional Internet service provider charge
on top of the monthly phone line bill.
Like CDPD and the BellSouth Intelligent
Wireless Network, Ricochet has corporate
access packages, which allow companies to
establish direct leased-line or VPN connec-
tions into their networks and assign internal
IP addresses to Ricochet modems.
Basic 42-bit encryption is standard for
all Ricochet transmissions. c
S H O O T - O U T 111
but the largest of companies to contract
Wireless Future with multiple wireless data providers. Most
companies will have to pick a single net-
work and stick with it, even though some of
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 107 the competing offerings may be better for a
examined offer intranet services that en- few users in specific regions of the country.
able corporate customers to obtain dedi- As if all this weren’t confusing enough,
cated leased-line connections to the wire- CDPD, BellSouth and Ardis all require
less network provider. This allows remote that customers select service providers for
users to be assigned standard corporate the Internet features they need, such as
IP addresses and to access data resources e-mail and Web access.
protected behind firewalls. The next few years are likely to bring
However, this requirement for expensive more advances in wireless data access (see
dedicated lines makes it impractical for any story, Page 115). Personal communications
service vendors are slated
to add data options to
their voice products,
and Ricochet has ambi-
tious plans to roll out
faster (128K-bps) wire-
less networks in more
cities, giving telephone
companies that provide
direct-dial analog lines a
run for their money.
Wireless access is not
easy, but the demand for
it will only grow, push-
ing vendors to provide
better solutions to re-
Shoot-Out judges examined all manner of wireless wares. main in the game. c

112 N E T W E E K :
WAP Standard to the Rescue
Tech Analysis: New protocol will boost wireless devices’ power and speed
BY HERB BETHONEY, PC WEEK LABS
he wireless application protocol
T will make wireless networks and de-
vices faster, easier to use and more
efficient. In fact, vendors are already us-
ing the markup language portion of
WAP to create more robust microbrowsers
for handhelds, making them much more
useful as Internet access devices.
Exactly when WAP will become a stan-
dard is anyone’s guess, but with the back-
ing of more than 60 vendors, including
AT&T Corp., BellSouth Wireless Data L.P.
and IBM, ratification is almost certain and
will most likely come next year.
Developed by the WAP Forum, which
was founded by Ericsson Inc., Motorola
Inc., Nokia Corp. and Unwired Planet Inc.,
WAP is an architecture for mobile com-
puting that works with all wireless network
technologies, including Global System for
Mobile Communications, Cellular Digital
P C W E E K
Packet Data, Time Division Multiple Ac-
cess and Code Division Multiple Access.
Unlike most applications, the programs
that use WAP will be scalable across a va-
riety of transport options and device
types.
Although wireless APIs are available
from various software vendors, most are
aimed at vertical markets and specialized
applications. In contrast, WAP allows de-
velopers to adapt network technology al-
ready in use to the requirements of hand-
held devices.
WAP offers potential economies of
scale that will encourage manufacturers
of cellular phones and other wireless de-
vices to invest in developing compatible
products as well as new and diverse ser-
vice offerings designed to attract new sub-
scribers. As a result, corporate users will
benefit from more choices in mobile com-
munications applications, a variety of
S H O O T - O U T
advanced services and more stable In-
ternet access.
A programming spec of their own
Most technology developed for the In-
ternet relies on desktop PCs, servers, wired
data networks and moderate to high band-
width, but handheld devices are con-
strained by their power and size limita-
tions. Mobile devices have less computing
power, smaller displays, different input
methods and power consumption re-
straints, so they need a programming spec-
ification that lets developers use mobile
device resources more efficiently. Wire-
less networks also have limitations, in-
cluding narrower bandwidth, longer wait
time, less availability of service and less
stable connections.
The WAP architecture deals with these
limitations by adding a gateway be-
tween the mobile client and the server
designed to encode and decode content
configured for mobile devices. The gate-
way also defines a set of standard com-
ponents that enable communication be-
tween mobile devices and network
servers. These components will allow de-
Specs for a Wireless World
BY HERB BETHONEY, PC WEEK LABS
efore an organization can decide
B what wireless services or handheld de-
vices it will employ to help increase
productivity among its employees, a set of
criteria and specifications tailored to the or-
ganization is required. Masie Center Inc., a
consulting organization focused on technol-
ogy and training for large corporations, col-
laborated with PC Week Labs analysts and
PC Week Corporate Partners to develop a
specification for our wireless Shoot-Out.
Elliott Masie, president of Masie Cen-
ter, of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., drew on the
expertise of its TechLearn Collaborative,
a consortium of about 40 corporations
and government agencies, to provide PC
Week Labs with a set of guidelines detail-
ing the requirements for effectively
equipping a mobile sales force with a
wireless access solution.
“A sales force is the face of an organi-
zation and needs to be in possession of the
latest information about their products and
their customer base,” Masie said.
The members of the TechLearn Col-
laborative want to allow their mobile work-
ers to operate in a connected environment
regardless of location, access to telephone
lines or the current task.
A major goal of mobile workers is to be
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
velopers to create applications that
work across all wireless networks, re-
gardless of provider.
Another benefit of WAP is that it’s
based on existing Internet standards.
For example, the Wireless Markup Lan-
guage specification portion of WAP is
based on the HDML (Handheld Device
Markup Language) specification and is
an XML (Extensible Markup Language)-
based language. Microbrowser technol-
ogy based on WAP allows each hand-
held device to decide how to best display
information received from a server.
Because a microbrowser uses only a small
amount of a handheld’s computing re-
sources, even the most basic device can be
equipped with a microbrowser.
Although most service providers will
use a Web server and a WAP proxy
server to deliver content via a wireless
network to handheld devices, cellular tele-
phone service providers can use a Wire-
less Telephony Application server to com-
municate directly with WAP clients. For
example, a telephone service could pro-
vide special features, such as voice en-
cryption, to a group of customers.
The WAP architecture also allows de-
velopers to add scripting, graphics and an-
imation to the text in their applications.
Various input devices such as touch
screens, full keyboards and soft keyboards
are also supported, enabling handheld de-
vices such as 3Com Corp.’s PalmPilot and
Windows CE devices to take advantage
of richer content. c
in the field at clients’ sites and to interact
with prospects as much as possible. “A field
force needs to receive and send e-mail and
messages, have access to corporate data-
bases for product information, enter trans-
actions and receive product training at will
to be fully effective,” Masie said.
The TechLearn Collaborative provid-
ed some specific requirements that a mo-
bile solution should satisfy, such as allow-
ing a sales force to easily interact with
corporate computing resources regardless
of time, location or task. In addition, a wire-
less handheld device should be conve-
nient enough for a mobile worker to use
to retrieve the latest information just pri-
or to visiting a client.
Another part of any wireless solution is
access to real-time information, such as
stock quotes or changing corporate data.
Field workers with wireless network-
ing capabilities will eventually have most
of the computing capabilities of their wired
colleagues. According to Masie, “As wire-
less solutions become more prevalent and
their advantages become more appar-
ent, organizations will judge their return
on investment based on the higher per-
centage of time mobile workers spent in
the field rather than completing paper-
work in the office.” c
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K :
Wireless Has Bright Future
Tech Analysis: Next generation promises graphical apps, global access
BY HERB BETHONEY, PC WEEK LABS
t looks like the third try will be the
I charm. With the first generation of wire-
less networks (AMPS) behind us, and the
second generation (CDMA, TDMA and Per-
sonal Communications Service) coming on
strong, it’s time to look to the future:
UMTS.
Although the Universal Mobile Telecom-
munications System is not expected to be
implemented at least until 2005, it will bring
wireless networking where it needs to
be—144K bps and globally standard-
ized—to revolutionize the way business is
transacted.
Mobile data communications is now en-
tering a rapid growth phase in which a new
generation of applications based on ini-
tiatives such as the Wireless Application
Protocol (see story, Page 112) will con-
veniently link mobile users to the Inter-
net and corporate databases for electronic
commerce, delivery of multimedia con-
tent and interactive sales support func-
tions.
Like Every Evolving
Technology, Wireless
Has Its Own Language
AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service):
The analog cellular phone standard for the
United States. Operates on the 800MHz band.
Ardis: Owned by American Mobile Satellite
Corp., Ardis is the largest nationwide wireless
packet data network provider. Ardis provides
data only but, unlike CDPD, does not overlay
the data onto AMPS. Supports IP and connec-
tions up to 19.2K bps.
AT&T Wireless Services: AT&T’s Wireless IP
service uses CDPD architecture (created by
AT&T), supports IP and allows connections of
up to 19.2K bps. The company’s PocketNet
service delivers information to AMPS/CDPD-
capable cellular phones and CDPD modem-
equipped handheld devices.
Bell Atlantic Mobile: Second largest wire-
less service provider in the United States.
Its AirBridge data service uses CDPD archi-
tecture, supports IP and allows connections
up to 19.2K bps.
BellSouth Wireless Data: Formerly RAM
Mobile Data, BellSouth Wireless Data is a
subsidiary of BellSouth Corp. Uses Mobitex
packet data architecture, supports IP and
covers approximately 85 percent of urban
areas in the United States. Allows connec-
tions of 19.2K bps.
CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data): De-
veloped by AT&T, CDPD is a packet data
P C W E E K
However, there’s still much work to be
done. To deliver all the services and con-
tent enjoyed by desktop users to mobile users,
application developers need to create effi-
cient wireless applications and wireless ser-
vice providers need to make higher band-
width capacity available to their users.
Fortunately, two new technologies now
reaching the implementation stage—
HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched
Data) and GPRS (General Packet Radio
Services)—promise to dramatically increase
mobile network bandwidths. Experts ex-
pect 64K-bps wireless speeds in the next
couple of years.
But it’s UMTS that should put an end
to the global political wrangling over stan-
dards and increase bandwidth enough to
eliminate—or at least blur—the lines be-
tween fixed and wireless networks.
The three largest wireless markets in the
world—the United States, Europe and
Japan—currently have three different wire-
less standards for digital cellular phones.
But in late January, nine of the leading in-
protocol for transmitting and receiving digi-
tal data over the AMPS analog network. It
supports IP and operates on the 800MHz
band.
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access): De-
veloped by Qualcomm Inc., CDMA is a digital
network technology that breaks data up into
small packets using a single radio channel.
Each phone is assigned a unique code,
which distinguishes its transmissions from
other calls over the same channel. Operates
in the 800MHz and 1,900MHz bands.
GPRS (General Packet Radio Service):
GPRS is a packet-switched data technology,
which is being developed for GSM networks.
Supports IP and will support third-genera-
tion networks, which will combine digital
voice and data. Initial speeds for GPRS will
be up to 115K bps. It is expected to be imple-
mented in 1999 or 2000.
GSM (Global System for Mobile communi-
cations): A digital voice or data cellular net-
work used throughout the world. Connec-
tion rate is up to 9.6K bps. The European
version of GSM operates at the 900MHz and
1,800MHz frequencies. The North American
version of GSM, called GSM 1900, operates
at the 1,900MHz frequency.
HDML (Handheld Device Markup Language):
A markup language optimized for wireless de-
vices, especially those with small displays.
The WML portion of WAP is in the process
of superseding HDML.
Metricom Inc.: Metricom’s data service,
Ricochet, is a packet data network operat-
ing in the 902MHz-to-928MHz band. Service
S H O O T - O U T
ternational telecommunications manu-
facturers, including Ericsson Inc., Motorola
Inc., Nokia Corp., Northern Telecom Ltd.,
Siemens Corp. and Sony Corp. of Ameri-
ca, announced that they will jointly pro-
mote UMTS.
The UMTS standard would allow a cel-
lular phone to use one phone number,
whether it’s being used in Singapore or
Boston. Users will also have access to mo-
Three generations of wireless networks
Yesterday: AMPS (Advanced Mobile
Phone Service)
Today: TDMA (Time Division Multiple
Access), CDMA (Code Division
Multiple Access) and PCS (Per-
sonal Communications Services),
followed by HSCSD (High Speed
Circuit Switched Data) and GPRS
(General Packet Radio Services)
Tomorrow: UMTS (Uni-
versal Mobile Telecom-
munications System)
is currently available only in San Francisco,
Washington, Seattle and select corporate
and educational campuses and airports. Al-
lows connections of 28.8K bps.
PCS (Personal Communications Services):
A catchall term referring to one of three
competing digital cellular technologies for
two-way, digital voice, messaging and data
services. PCS can refer to either the GSM
1900, CDMA IS-95 or TDMA IS-136 protocols,
which operate only in the 1,900MHz band.
SMS (Short Message Service): Available
on GSM networks, the SMS protocol allows
users to send and receive short alphanu-
meric messages. It is designed to work with
pagers and digital phones.
TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access):
TDMA is a digital network technology that
cuts each call into time slices rather than
coded packets to allow multiple calls to use
the same radio channel. Operates in the
800MHz and 1,900MHz bands.
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol): WAP
specifies Internet content and advanced tele-
phony services access on digital cellular
phones and other wireless devices. The WAP
1.0 specification describes a microbrowser
architecture that specifies a complete stack
of content transfer protocols, an application
framework, and content formats. (See story,
Page 112.)
WML (Wireless Markup Language): An Ex-
tensible Markup Language-based markup
language for wireless devices, including cel-
lular phones, pagers and other handheld de-
vices. c
115
bile videoconferencing wherever they are
and will be able to browse the Internet at
144K bps.
UMTS includes wideband (up to 2M-
bps) local-loop specifications to the fixed
network, making it a very scalable system,
and these higher transmission speeds will
make the delivery of wireless multimedia
applications possible.
UMTS is also backward-compatible with
most devices. It is designed to support cir-
cuit-switched services, such as AMPS (Ad-
vanced Mobile Phone Service); packet-
switched services, such as Cellular Digital
Packet Data; and a variety of mixed-me-
dia traffic types.
Although CDMA (Code Division
Multiple Access) and TDMA (Time Di-
vision Multiple Access) digital technolo-
gy can be, and are, overlayed onto
AMPS, the GSM (Global System
for Mobile Communications) wire-
less standard is where the future of
digital wireless growth lies.
Long a wireless network standard
in Europe, Africa and parts of Asia,
GSM is now available in the United
States, hosting Personal Communi-
cations Services technology on the
1,900MHz frequency. Over the next
couple of years, HSCSD and GPRS
enhancements will be used to facili-
tate a host of future applications on
the GSM wireless network. c
Wireless Vendors
The following vendors provided products
and services for the PC Week Shoot-Out
on wireless data-access solutions:
• 3Com Corp.
www.palm.com
• AT&T Wireless Services Inc.
www.attws.com/nohost/data/da.html
• American Mobile Satellite Corp.
www.ardis.com
• AvantGo Inc.
www.avantgo.com
• BellSouth Wireless Data
www.bellsouth.com/html/atbiz.
shtml#wireless
• Casio Inc.
www.casio.com/hpc/
• Ericsson Inc.
www.ericsson.se/wireless/
• Ikon Office Solutions
www.ikon.com
• Metricom Inc.
www.ricochet.net/netoverview.html
• Microsoft Corp.
www.microsoft.com
• Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc.
www.mitsubishi.com
• Motorola Inc.
www.mot.com
• Nokia Corp.
www.nokia.com/products/cellular_
data/index.html
• Novatel Inc.
www.novatelwireless.com/index2.html
• Samsung Electronics Corp. Ltd.
samsungelectronics.com
 PC WEEK
118 N E T W E E K OCTOBER 19, 1998

1 4

Windows
NT 5.0 Beta 2
Microsoft Corp.

IntelliMirror
Deployment
Lacks Cohesion
The directory management tool provides a
nonintuitive view of the Active Directory.
1 We chose an application
NT 5.0’s IntelliMirror allows
on a predefined share.
administrators to add, repair and
upgrade applications without user 2
intervention. The first step in using
IntelliMirror is to assign an applica-
tion to a group or OU (organization- 5
al unit) within the Active Directory.
Here, we chose our Foster City OU.
2
The next step was to create the
requisite group policy object for the
OU using the group policy editor.

3
Once the policy was created, we
used the group policy manager to
deploy a package.

4 We created a group
We had to copy all the files neces- policy for our organization.
sary for installation of the applica-
tion to a folder to which all clients In the advanced deployment settings, we
had access. Microsoft does not could assign, publish or disable the application.
include any utilities for creating
packages, leaving this to third-
party developers or its own 3
Systems Management Server.
6
5
Before deployment, we had the
opportunity to set advanced
options, such as whether the
application should be assigned or
published. Administrators have
the option of forcing an applica-
tion onto a desktop or allowing
users to request the application
from the directory. When an appli-
cation is assigned, all entry points
to the application, such as desk-
top icons and menu shortcuts,
are automatically added in the
appropriate places.
To deploy the application, we We could also define whether the new
6 had to create a package. application would upgrade an installed application.
The last step was to define
whether or not our new applica-
tion would upgrade an installed
application and if that upgrade “Developing applications with IntelliMirror, while not overly complex,
would be forced at the next
log-on or at the user’s leisure.
is not as easy as with Microsoft’s own Systems Management Server or
competitors such as Intel’s LANDesk. We hope that Microsoft provides
a more cohesive system in the final version.” —Pankaj Chowdhry
Senior Technical Analyst, PC Week Labs
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K 121

MICHAEL SURKAN: NETWORTHY Postel may well be a respected Internet

pioneer, but I wonder who appointed him
Back-Room Deals Decide Internet Future to lead the Internet into the 21st century?
Perhaps this is what the White House

A
s i predicted in this column sev- istrator of the DNS, has been negotiating ing their weight behind the IANA pro- had in mind in the first place. Since the con-
eral months ago, the process for es- with IANA, but IANA has rejected its pro- posals. sensus process has fallen apart, our en-
tablishing a new infrastructure and posals. Rumor has it that representatives What’s most bizarre about this devel- lightened technocrats can now make what-
organization for governing Internet domain of the European Union and several large opment is that the IANA is composed of ever decisions they see fit with little
management and addresses has broken down. computer industry organizations are throw- just a single individual, John Postel. argument. c
It was easy to foresee. The process be-
gan to unravel when the White House gen-
erated a white paper
that didn’t specify the
process through which
countless interested
parties could reach an
agreement.
What did the U.S.
government expect
when it failed to give instructions on how
the DNS infrastructure should be modi-
fied? Apparently, our leaders expected that
the interested parties would talk among
themselves and somehow reach an agree-
ment. But with so much at stake for ISPs,
software companies and users, this was ob-
viously unrealistic.
Not that some people didn’t make a
valiant attempt to reach an agreement.
An impromptu organization, called the In-
ternational Forum on the White Paper,
scheduled a series of meetings around the
world. Nearly all the important Internet
players attended. More surprisingly, they
actually came up with agreements on a num-
ber of issues and ratified a list of consen-
sus points.
To a cynic like myself, this was an amaz-
ing accomplishment. But my initial doubts
were finally substantiated when the final
IFWP meeting, to be held in Boston last
month, collapsed after the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority decided it no longer
wanted anything to do with the IFWP.
In blatant disregard for nearly every-
thing the IFWP had decided, the IANA
unilaterally issued its own proposal on the
future of the Internet.

THE IANA STANDS ALONE

I have not heard an explanation of why
the IANA felt the need to go on its own.
However, the IANA’s proposals differ
markedly from the IFWP’s in how the
board of governors for the new Internet
authority should be selected and in whether
the Internet community will have any say
in how decisions are made. The IANA
documents leave the selection process
vague.
Inexplicably, it is the IANA proposal
(with possible modifications) that Internet
bureaucrats now seem to be favoring most,
according to people I’ve spoken with who
ought to know.
The entire process of charting the Inter-
net’s future has become a series of secret
conversations in back rooms and hotel bars,
where a handful of power brokers are de-
termining what the future will bring.
Network Solutions, the current admin-

Who do you think should decide the In-

ternet’s future? Contact me at michael_
surkan@zd.com.

124
PKI Partnership Promises Simpler Security
V
endors and security wonks have
long discussed the concept of a pub-
lic trust network that would certify
companies acting as their own certificate
authorities.
N E T W E E K
NET VALUE: JAMIE LEWIS
This network would enable e-commerce
programs, e-mail clients and other applica-
tions to authenticate users and create trust,
even when two companies transacting busi-
ness aren’t acquainted with each other. Such
a network has been possible in theory for a
long time, but until now, nobody has tried
to make one work in the real world. However,
the recent strategic partnership forged by
Netscape and VeriSign may change that.
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
The relationship has
two basic thrusts. First,
the two companies will
more tightly integrate
their PKI (public-key
infrastructure) products
so Netscape’s browser
and server products
work more effectively with VeriSign’s On-
Site PKI solution. For example, since Net-
scape’s browser and servers rely on certifi-
cates, customers could use OnSite to deploy
certificates for use with those products.
Netscape and VeriSign also plan to de-
ploy common PKI services this year and
complete their implementation by early next
year. The services include certificate revo-
cation, key recovery, integrated directory
support and real-time certificate checking.
CHAIN OF TRUST
Second, and perhaps more important, com-
panies that use Netscape Certificate Server
to set up their own CA (certificate authori-
ty) will be able to pay VeriSign to certify their
CA, establishing a chain of trust through the
public VTN (VeriSign Trust Network).
Users at other companies that also trust
VeriSign can then receive signed or en-
crypted e-mail validating the certificates
through VeriSign, which will certify the
trustworthiness of the CA that created them.
VeriSign will charge an annual fee to cer-
tify a CA, allowing companies that estab-
lish their own CAs using Netscape Certifi-
cate Server to participate in the VTN.
For example, let’s say Acme Inc. sets up
its own CA using Netscape Certificate Serv-
er and issues certificates for secure messag-
ing. If an Acme employee uses an S/MIME
client to send a digitally signed e-mail mes-
sage to a user working at another company,
the recipient has no way to validate the
trustworthiness of the signature and the
sender’s certificate, especially if he or she has
never heard of Acme. However, under the
relationship formed by Netscape and
VeriSign, VeriSign could certify Acme’s CA.
VeriSign’s certificate and public key come
with most S/MIME-compliant clients, in-
cluding Microsoft’s Outlook Express and
Netscape’s Messenger, so the recipient’s
e-mail client would be able to verify that
VeriSign trusts Acme’s CA. If Second Co.
also trusts VeriSign, its users can trust the
CAs that VeriSign certifies, including
Acme’s. If it no longer trusts Acme’s CA,
VeriSign will notify the world through the
revocation information provided on VTN.
PKI is an immature technology that needs
work. VeriSign needs to form similar part-
nerships with other vendors, for example,
and the IETF needs to finalize PKI standards.
But this partnership and others like it are an
encouraging sign that vendors will start col-
laborating to create a working PKI.
Only when vendors unite to bring PKI
out of the realm of the theoretically possi-
ble and into the world of the implementable
will PKI fulfill its promise. c
Jamie Lewis is president of The Burton
Group, a research company specializing
in emerging network computer technolo-
gies. He can be reached at jlewis@tbg.com.
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K 127

Downsizing Modems
Wireless modems are shrinking but adding features for mobile use
BY KRISTINA B. SULLIVAN “We are seeing an interest in wire- tion and traffic condition monitoring.
ireless modems are being used less Internet access that is evident by the “The biggest use of our modems is for

W for everything from Internet ac- success of Bell Atlantic [Corp.’s] Inter-
cess to data acquisition monitor- net access program,” he said. Bell At-
ing. But no matter what the applica- lantic offers unlimited wireless Inter-
oil and gas [industries]. A number of
oil companies put a modem in the mid-
dle of an oil field and collect data from
tion is, users are united in their demand net access using CDPD, including e-mail modems on all of the pumps around
for higher speeds, smaller sizes and in- services, for $54.95 a month. it,” he said. Similarly, in the city of San
creased communication functions. Suppliers of radio frequency-based Antonio, 78 wireless modems collect
To meet the demand, vendors are modems are concentrating on bringing data on traffic conditions, which is col-
adding features and increasing speeds higher speeds to wireless networking. lected and posted on the Internet.
while shrinking device sizes. Sierra “The biggest thing that’s happening in Another wireless modem supplier,
Wireless Inc. last week introduced a this business is that we are going to get GRE America Inc., is readying a 2M-
single, Type II PC higher speeds—in bps version of its Gina radio modem.
Card version of its the 256K-bps Based on spread-spectrum radio fre-
AirCard CDPD range—so we can quency, the new PC Card modems will
(Cellular Digital handle IP traffic be available by the end of this year.
Packet Data) wire- and put a higher Gina radio modems currently offer
less data modem. level of software data rates ranging from 300 bps to 64K
The new AirCard management in bps. Top applications include industri-
CE “is designed for the modem to al automation, video surveillance and
Windows CE and monitor traffic,” utility monitoring, said Jack Capuzelo,
fully inserts inside a Sierra’s AirCard (left) fits in a Type II slot. said Haitim Za- director of sales for GRE America, in
Type II slot. The only protrusion is a ghloul, president and CEO of Wi-LAN Belmont, Calif. “When the modem is
small, retractable antenna,” said An- Inc., maker of the Hopper FD Wire- placed inside a case, it can be used in-
drew Harries, vice president of mar- less Modem, in Calgary, Alberta. doors or outdoors,” Capuzelo said.
keting for Sierra Wireless, in Rich- The Hopper FD Wireless Modem Xetron Corp. is also boosting data
mond, British Columbia. The earlier can support data transfer rates of transfer rates while reducing the size of
version was a two-card model. 38.4K bps, but by April of next year, that its radio frequency wireless modems.
The AirCard CE includes a sleep will increase to 256K bps—twice ISDN The new 2.4GHz Hornet wireless mo-
mode option that sets the modem to speeds. “We want to take it to 256K bps, dem will offer throughput of 200K bps
automatically check for new messages which is the maximum that an RS232 when it ships late in the first quarter of
for one second following 59 seconds port can handle,” Zaghloul said. next year, said Larry Ochs, product man-
of sleep mode. “It is optimized for ef- Top uses of the Hopper FD Wire- ager for Xetron, a subsidiary of Northrup
ficiency above all,” Harries said. less Modem include field data acquisi- CONTINUED ON PAGE 128 R

The Battle for Fiber Connectors

Tech Analysis: New devices are smaller, but there’s no standard
BY MICHAEL SURKAN, PC WEEK LABS space required for the large, fiber SC From a network implementer’s per-
s if network managers don’t al- adapters and transceivers. spective, the differences among the

A ready have enough trouble choos-

ing among products with com-
peting standards, they are soon going
to have another problem to face: in-
compatible fiber-optic connectors.
Most fiber-optic cable manufac-
turers recently announced the move
to a more compact single connector,
instead of the current SC standard
with dual fiber feeds. These an-
nouncements were welcomed by de-
vice manufacturers such as switch and
router vendors, which eagerly await
the new fiber connectors and their
higher densities.
Equipped with the new slim con-
nectors, switch vendors are finding
they can double the number of ports
on their devices. Previously, the num-
ber of ports had been limited by the
Unfortunately, the appearance of
no fewer than five competing high-
density fiber-optic adapter standards
has made the issue of selecting which
one to use a problem for both device
manufacturers and IT managers.
Current fiber dual- or single-mode
cabling systems will work with the new
connectors, but technicians will need
to install adapters depending on which
port type has been implemented on
the devices to which the adapter must
connect.
Most of the switch and router ven-
dors PC Week Labs has spoken with
were considering only three of the hand-
ful of available connectors: Lucent
Technologies Inc.’s LC, 3M Corp.’s VF-
45 and AMP Inc.’s MT-RJ, each of
which uses its own standard.
products are relatively minor. Some
are manufactured with injection mold-
ing and others with ceramic parts, for
instance. The products are so similar
that the only issue involved in choos-
ing a connector standard is compati-
bility. IS managers will have to care-
fully consider which connectors are
on the devices they purchase and do
their best to stay consistent.
Each of these connector types re-
quires different installation techniques
and specialized tools for fiber cutting
and attachment. Nevertheless, net-
work technicians will appreciate that
the process in all cases is far simpler
and less time-consuming than the cur-
rent SC connector technology. To vary-
ing degrees, all the systems try to elim-
CONTINUED ON PAGE 128 R

128
Wireless Modems
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 127
Grumman Corp., in Cincinnati. The Hornet,
including its antenna, will measure a mere 1
inch by 1.5 inches, Ochs said.
Applications for the Hornet include
N E T W E E K
handheld devices such as portable scanners
and printers. It will be designed for short-
range links of up to 100 feet. “One appli-
cation would be a mobile worker who has
a scanning device and a printer worn on a
belt. This would provide communication
between the peripherals,” Ochs said.
Internet service provider and wireless mo-
dem developer Metricom Inc. is also in-
creasing the speed of its radio frequency-
based modems. The company is running a
beta network with 80 wireless modems pro-
viding throughput of 128K bps. “We’re still
in development with licensed spectrum to get
to the next speeds,” said Bill White, product
manager for Metricom, in Los Gatos, Calif.
The test network is running outside a lab near
San Francisco. (See PC Week Labs Wireless
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Data Access Solutions Shoot-Out, Page 105.)
Metricom offers users access to the Internet
via its Ricochet wireless modem at 14.4K bps
and 28.8K bps. “Our modems are used by
real estate agents, corporate professionals
and field service engineers for doing e-mail,
intranet and Internet access,” White said.
The wireless network includes the San
Francisco Bay area, Washington, Seattle and
11 major airports. People traveling on fer-
ries, trains and buses in the San Francisco
area are among the company’s users. The
wireless modems are priced from $150, and
unlimited Internet access is $29.95 a month.
Metricom also expects to shrink its Rico-
chet modems and integrate them with lap-
top and Windows CE devices. “Ricochet is
getting smaller and smaller, so pretty soon it
will be embedded in devices,” White said.
Freewave Technologies Inc. already
provides wireless communications at 115K
bps with its Model DGR 115 spread-spec-
trum radio frequency modem. “People use
this modem for Internet access because of
its speed,” said Steve Wulchin, president of
Freewave Technologies, in Boulder, Colo.
“It is capable of 115K bps at a distance of 20
miles with a clear line of sight.”
Most of the applications for the Model
DGR 115 are related to the GPS (Global
Positioning System). “People use these
radio modems to download data off of a
GPS receiver,” Wulchin said. One unique
application has the wireless modems
strapped to Indy race car engines to trans-
mit performance data, he said. c
Contributing Editor Kristina Sullivan can
be reached at kristina_sullivan@zd.com.
Fiber Connection
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 127
inate the need for polishing connecting
points in the field.
About the only area in which all of the
connector vendors have concurred is a
multisource agreement reached during a
collective forum. The agreement ensures
that all transceivers are the same size for
each connector. This doesn’t mean that
transceivers will interoperate with one an-
other but does make it easy for device man-
ufacturers to switch supported cable con-
nectors on their circuit boards without entire
redesigns.
A few vendors, such as Bay Networks
Inc., Cabletron Systems Inc., Hewlett-
Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc., have
already announced support for the AMP
MT-RJ connectors. That consensus will put
pressure on those advancing competing
standards to line up their own adherents.
Unfortunately, the Institute of Electri-
cal and Electronics Engineers and the
Telecommunications Industry Association
don’t seem to be anywhere close to reach-
ing a compromise solution on standards. As
a result, in some cases it may make the most
sense to simply decline to purchase a giv-
en vendor’s switch if it uses a fiber connector
differing from the corporate standard. c
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K 131

(going to Microsoft’s Web site, hunting

Enterprise Shaman Conjures Desktop Updates
Review: Server hexes tory information, transmitting and receiv-
ing the update report from Shaman’s knowl-
the hassle of tracking edge base, and downloading the free
patch and installing it on our desktop took
down free upgrades about 20 minutes.
Subsequent updates to the same machine
took only about 5 minutes because the agent
was already installed and the inventory in-
formation was mostly up to date.
Performing this process the standard way
for the file, downloading and running the
update) took about 25 minutes. But we had
an advantage because we knew, via Shaman,
the name of the file we were looking for.
What differentiates Enterprise Shaman
from products such as Microsoft’s SMS is
the preparation work done by Shaman’s
CONTINUED ON PAGE 138 R

BY CAMERON STURDEVANT, PC WEEK LABS

t first glance, a software distribu-

A tion package designed solely for dis-

tributing free updates to desktops
across an intranet seems odd. But PC Week
Labs found that Shaman Corp.’s Enter-
prise Shaman 3.0 can eliminate a ton of
hassles for network administrators strug-
gling to keep desktop users updated.
By harvesting free updates from manu-
facturers’ Web and FTP sites and prepack-
aging them for distribution, Enterprise
Shaman solves one of the biggest problems
faced by IT when it comes to keeping desk-
top software up to date: the time spent
digging around for free updates for the huge
variety of applications found on a corpo-
rate network.
In tests, Enterprise Shaman’s desktop
agents, which now support Windows NT,
Windows 98, Windows 95 and Macintosh
desktops, were easy to deploy and used less
than 2 percent of network bandwidth to
transmit inventory information.
Even shops with another software dis-
tribution system in place should consider
Enterprise Shaman because it lets admin-
istrators update desktops with a minimal
amount of effort. This is a far cry from
painfully complex software distribution
products such as Microsoft Corp.’s SMS
(Systems Management Server) or Hewlett-
Packard Co.’s Desktop Administrator, both
of which use delicate packaging procedures
that tend to break down at the slightest
deviation in desktop configurations.
However, at $13,500 plus $125 per
desktop, Enterprise Shaman is almost three
times as expensive as either SMS or Desk-
top Administrator. It runs only on Win-
dows NT.
Microsoft’s Intellimirror, which is sched-
uled to be included in Windows NT 5.0,
specifies packaging standards to make soft-
ware easier to install, update and repair,
so it has the potential to make Enterprise
Shaman obsolete. However, Intellimirror
is not yet shipping, and it works only on
NT.

Asset management overlap

Our biggest lament is that Enterprise
Shaman, which ships this week, cannot share
hardware and software inventory with other
distribution products, meaning there will
always be overlap with other asset man-
agement products being used. Also, Win-
dows 3.11 desktops are left out in the cold,
since Shaman has no plans to develop an
agent for that platform.
We installed Microsoft Word 97 on a
desktop running Windows 95, knowing that
a converter for Word 95 files was available.
The entire process of installing Shaman
Scout (the desktop agent), getting inven-
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K 133

AT&T Reaches AppScout Tracks Responses

Out and Touches NetScout tool to deepen application performance view via ART MIB
Voice Over IP BY PAULA MUSICH
ith a new version of appscout man-
Real-time data is accessible through a Web
browser.
by not enough bandwidth, central server
and application configuration, or capacity

Lays ‘multibillion-dollar W ager, NetScout Systems Inc. this week

will heed IT’s call for a greater un-
derstanding of how applications
bet’ on the technology perform across enterprise net-
works.
BY JOHN RENDLEMAN The RMON probe vendor, which had
t&t corp. has staked out its commit- already begun to venture into the appli-
AppScout adds visibility to networked
applications as a whole—not just applica-
tion response monitoring, said
Steven Shalita, director of prod-
uct marketing at NetScout, in
Westford, Mass. “AppScout is focused on
providing detailed, multidimensional views
issues caused by a local PC configura-
tion,” Thomas said. “Most of our users per-
ceive it as a network problem. We spend
a lot of time ensuring it’s not the network
and trying to help find out what it is.”
In addition to SAP R/3, AppScout pro-
vides visibility into IP and HTTP applica-

A ment to next-generation voice services

with a series of initiatives designed to
boost the acceptance of digital voice-
over-IP.
The efforts, part of what AT&T CEO
Michael Armstrong called a “multibillion-
dollar bet” on the technology, comprise a
multipart plan to freely distribute IP tele-
phony software development kits, and to
establish two IP telephony research labo-
ratories and a global clearinghouse service
for the exchange of IP telephony traffic, and
embark on two new business-focused
trials of IP telephony services.
With an anticipated rise in IP telepho-
cation performance monitoring space with
its industrywide efforts to establish an
ART MIB (Application Response Time
Management Information Base), will re-
lease at NetWorld+Interop the new
AppScout application monitoring pro-
gram for measuring response times expe-
rienced by users.
The program, which runs on Windows
NT and Solaris, gathers ART MIB data
from its own probes equipped with the soft-
ware agent option. The ART MIB has been
proposed as an extension to RMON 2.
on specific applications, such as SAP [AG]
traffic, and, in the future, PeopleSoft [Inc.]
and custom applications,” Shalita said.
The disconnect that exists between un-
derstanding network performance and ap-
plications performance is the biggest drain
on IT resources, so AppScout is “solving the
right problem,” said beta tester Dennis
Thomas, manager of enterprise network ser-
vices at Tektronix Inc., in Beaverton, Ore.
“Slow response means things aren’t bro-
ken, but they aren’t performing according
to the client’s expectation. It could be caused
tions.
The AppScout server includes a Web
server, which allows any Java-based brows-
er to access data, as well as a poller, which
gathers data from NetScout probes. The
server is priced at $12,500, including 10 ART
MIB licenses. Advanced analysis modules
cost $5,000 for SAP R/3 applications and
$6,000 for custom applications; planned
modules for Microsoft Corp., PeopleSoft
and Baan Co. applications will cost $5,000.
NetScout can be reached at (800) 357-
7666 or www.netscout.com. c

BellSouth Takes Care of Business Users

ny use and the backing of the technology
from well-known telecommunications
providers such as AT&T, “the good news
for consumers and businesses is that ... rates
will come down,” Armstrong said earlier
this month at Internet World in New York. Telco leverages EDS alliance to target data services, managed offerings
“We will do for IP what we’ve been doing
for years for the telephone—we will make BY JOHN RENDLEMAN tions at BellSouth, in Atlanta. managed services, local broadband access
it safe, reliable and secure.” ith an eye on the burgeoning cor- On top of bolstering its managed data so- services, local networking services, and

Global trial
AT&T will be the first major company to
begin trials of a global voice-over-IP VPN
(virtual private networking) service when
it begins in the next few months a six-city
test of the technology within the company’s
own networks and another market trial with-
in the same time frame with an undis-
closed major financial services company.
With the free development kits available
now for AT&T’s Click2Dial and Chat’nTalk
IP telephony platforms to software and Web
site developers, AT&T officials believe they
will help spur new ways to use the services
and drive customer interest.
In addition, AT&T this month is offer-
ing a promotional price cut on calls made
using Click2Dial or Chat’nTalk, officials
said. Regularly 15 cents a minute for each
participant, Click2Dial will be priced at 10
cents a minute this month. Chat’nTalk
will be 15 cents a minute during October,
down from 25 cents a minute, and the 50-
cent call setup fee will be waived during the
promotion. Both services will require users
to have two telephone lines to run voice
and data until AT&T developers solve the
problem of poor call quality when both
transmissions are carried on a single line;
a date for a fix has not been announced.
AT&T, of Basking Ridge, N.J., is (800)
345-0995 or www.att.com. c
W porate data market, BellSouth Corp. lutions for midsize companies, BellSouth Internet services. BellSouth is also target-
last week introduced several new is targeting large corporate customers ing out-of-region, national and global net-
managed data service operations and an- through the formation of BellSouth Busi- working services through co-marketing
nounced the formation of a new internal ness, an umbrella organization within the agreements with other providers where re-
unit focused on businesses. company that comprises its BellSouth Busi- quired, officials said.
The new managed offerings, which con- ness Systems, BellSouth MNS and Bell- BellSouth is also adding more IP capa-
sist of Managed Groupware, Managed E- South Communications Systems units, of- bilities to its network, such as new IP ac-
Sales/E-Purchase, a LAN Management set ficials said. The new organization is part of cess services and the integration of IP and
of services and an enhanced Help Desk ser- the company’s goal of increasing its annu- ATM switching within its backbone. The
vice, will be offered through the company’s al revenues from data services to $5 billion Regional Bell Operating Company is also
MNS (Managed Network Solu- constructing regional data centers
tions) Alliance with Electronic Data within its network that will be in-
Systems Corp., of Plano, Texas. Open for business terconnected when regulations per-
Although pricing for the new mit with fiber-optic network and
BellSouth’s MNS Alliance with EDS will yield a variety of new and
managed service options has yet enhanced managed services:
Synchronous Optical Network
to be finalized, a preliminary es- rings and dense wave division mul-
timate of rates for the E-Sales/ OFFERING SERVICES/APPLICATIONS AVAILABILITY tiplexing systems, said Robert
E-Purchase option is a $20,000 set- Capell, senior vice president of ad-
up fee for establishing a 1,000-item Managed Groupware Lotus Notes, Q1 1999 vanced data networks at BellSouth.
online catalog plus ongoing fees Microsoft Exchange In addition, BellSouth has re-
of about 5 percent of online rev- Managed E-Sales/ Web hosting, catalog December 1998 cently upped its commitment to de-
enues, officials said. E-Purchase creation ploying fiber networks closer to
In early summer, the MNS Al- subscribers’ locations, officials said.
LAN Management Remote management, November 1998
liance introduced its first set of That ongoing effort, which is cur-
problem resolution
managed network services, in- rently targeted at installing fiber to
cluding a Managed Router offer- Enhanced Help Desk End-user support November 1998 80,000 new subscriber sites a year,
ing, LAN Monitoring Services and will increase by 200,000 sites a year
an Applications Help Desk option. a year by 2002, said William Reddersen, beginning next year, after which BellSouth
These new managed services expand group president of value-added services at will endeavor to install fiber directly to a
on the alliance’s commitment to target the BellSouth. total of 280,000 subscriber locations a year,
currently underserved midsize business With data revenues increasing at a rate officials said.
market, according to Donna Lee, senior of 40 percent a year, BellSouth has con- BellSouth can be reached at (800) 277-
vice president of managed network solu- centrated its efforts on professional and 7792 or www.mns-alliance.com. c

136
Fax Over IP Seeks Its Niche
Technology lacks corporate implementation push, but vendors are hopeful
BY SIMONE KAPLAN
ith all the hype from both service
W providers and application vendors
surrounding the ability to send fax-
es over IP networks, users may believe the
technology is ripe for implementation. But
it appears corporate adoption is still far
from a mainstream trend.
Pointing to myriad products and services,
consensus among software and service
providers is that fax over IP is booming. On
the provider front, GTE Internetworking,
Bell Atlantic Corp. and AT&T Corp. are the
most recent supporters to add fax over IP to
service lists, joining UUNet WorldCom, Bell-
South Corp. and US West Inc. in jumping
aboard the fax-over-IP bandwagon.
But despite selling points such as dras-
tically reduced fax charges, applicability
in international markets and ease of use,
the service has yet to find a niche among
U.S. users, due in part to internal corpo-
MANAGEMENT
Analyzing streaming media traffic
Marketwave Corp. is shipping a Web traf-
fic analysis tool for streaming media.
The $495 streaming media plug-in for
Marketwave’s Hit List site-analysis tools
product line, which includes the $6,995
Hit List Enterprise 4.0 program, reports on
the number of streams requested, visitor
wait time, visitor connection speed, con-
current user and stream numbers, and the
most popular streaming pages.
The initial release of the plug-in supports
only Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media
Technologies. Support for RealNetworks
Inc.’s streaming media format will be added
after the final release of RealSystem G2,
which is due by year’s end.
Seattle-based Marketwave is at (800)
521-8176 or www.marketwave.com.
ROUTERS
Ramp integrates fax routing
Ramp Networks Inc. in January will launch
the WebRamp 300FX, an integrated router
and IP fax unit for small businesses.
The WebRamp FX can send documents
to a stand-alone fax machine, to a PC as
an Internet e-mail document or to anoth-
er stand-alone machine over a LAN. When
a destination number is entered into the
machine, WebRamp checks its address
book for an IP match. If there is a match,
it sends the document over the Internet. If
not, it sends the document as a regular fax.
Also built into the $1,499 WebRamp FX
is an expandable four-port hub; two inter-
nal 56K-bps modems; support for one ex-
ternal analog or ISDN modem; and Ramp
N E T W E E K
rate cultural issues and questions about net-
work reliability.
“We’re looking at steady, long-term
growth over the next 10 years,” said Maury
Kauffman, managing partner of the Kauff-
man Group, in Cherry Hill, N.J. “[Fax over
IP] is catching on, but it won’t explode be-
cause things with fax take longer. There
isn’t one person at a Fortune 500 compa-
ny that monitors faxing, so no one has
started to look at it very closely.”
Peter Davidson, an analyst at Interna-
tional Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.,
agrees. The service appeals to corporations
looking to distribute information in devel-
oping countries and in areas where e-mail
and PCs have not been adopted, Davidson
said. “Fax over IP is a business that is hap-
pening overseas but isn’t really happening
in the [United States] because there’s so
much telecom competition and there aren’t
enough rate savings to drive it,” he said.
D I G E
Networks’ EasyStart software, a Windows-
based program that automatically checks
a user’s TCP/IP and LAN connections be-
fore sending faxes.
Ramp Networks, of Santa Clara, Calif.,
is at (888) 726-7638 or www.rampnet.com.
Edge device big on port support
Redstone Communications Inc. is ready-
ing a high-port-density IP edge router that
is capable of supporting up to 4,000 frac-
tional T-1 ports or 1,000 T-1 ports in a sin-
gle device.
The RX Internet Edge Router, set to
ship early next year, is designed to handle
the smaller IP pack-
ets typical of In-
ternet traffic. It uses
ASICs to route
those smaller pack-
ets at wire speeds.
The seven- and 14-
port router models,
which start at $49,950,
use a RISC-based processor
to handle prestandards-based pro-
tocols; support frame relay, ATM and
Synchronous Optical Network links; connect
to core backbones at either OC-3 or OC-12
speeds; and support a variety of routing pro-
tocols.
Redstone, based in Westford, Mass., can
be contacted at (978) 692-1999 or www.
redstonecom.com.
FAX
3Com bundles Comfax software
3Com Corp. is bundling Comfax Inc.’s In-
ternet fax software and service with its U.S.
“There’s a lot of reliability and installed-
base issues, and there are major questions
about who’s going to sell this.”
Even some Regional Bell Operating Com-
panies and Internet service providers are
looking to other companies to handle their
fax-over-IP services. Boston-based FaxNet
Corp., maker of IP fax applications and other
fax services, has signed contracts with Bell
Atlantic, US West, BellSouth and MediaOne
Inc. to provide products, marketing support,
customer services and billing services.
GTE Internetworking’s DestinationFax ser-
vice, which the Cambridge, Mass., compa-
ny plans to roll out before year’s end, will
use NetCentric Corp.’s FaxStorm Internet
fax servers and technology.
Despite these services, users appear to
be adopting the technology not as an ex-
ternal service but as an internal replace-
ment for server-based faxing.
“We like the customization capability
S T
Robotics cable modems.
The bundle includes Comfax’s software
and a free trial subscription to Comfax’s
IP-fax service on 3Com’s Cable Connec-
tions CD. The free IP-fax software from
Comfax enables users to send and receive
faxes from their desktops via the New
York company’s network of global fax
servers. Users can send faxes over the In-
ternet anywhere in the United States for 10
cents per minute.
3Com, of Santa Clara, Calif., is at (408)
326-5000 or www.3com.com. Comfax is at
(888) 926-6329 or www.comfax.com.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
UUNet delivers SONET service
UUNet WorldCom, the Internet services
division of MCI WorldCom Inc., is offering
its ATM POS service at 155M bps in Chica-
go, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco,
Seattle and Washington.
In conjunction with the $182,000-per-
month Packet-Over-Synchronous Optical
Network ATM offering, UUNet World-
Com introduced its “shadow” POS pro-
gram, at $20,000 a month, as backup pro-
tection for customers’ primary high-speed
circuits.
UUNet WorldCom, of Fairfax, Va.,
can be reached at (703) 206-5600 or
www.usa.uu.net.
AT&T revs OC-12 services
AT&T Corp. by the end of this month will
make OC-12 services available in 45 U.S.
cities and will provide OC-3 services on its
SONET-based fiber-optic network in 150
metropolitan areas.
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
and the cost,” said Bill Heck, a consultant
at Meinrad L.P., in Newton, Mass., who
uses FaxNet’s IP applications. “As to where
fax over IP is going, it will probably be
faster, easier and cheaper. You want what
you had this year, only faster and cheaper,
and that’s usually what happens.”
Surprisingly, the prominence of e-mail on
the desktop is one of the lesser factors dim-
ming the allure of fax over IP. According to
a study conducted by The Gallup Organi-
zation Inc. for Pitney Bowes Inc., 66 percent
of Fortune 500 employees prefer faxing doc-
uments over other forms of messaging; 10
percent said they prefer e-mail.
In fact, the line between e-mail and fax is
blurring. Biscom Inc. this month received a
patent for technology that will let users send
e-mail and faxes from a common interface
over the Internet. “E-mail and fax are really
beginning to converge,” said Chris Macken-
zie, a vice president at Biscom, in Billerica,
Mass. Because both can be done from the
desktop, “from an end-user standpoint, it
really doesn’t matter which one you use.”
But don’t look for that old fax machine
to disappear completely.
“I don’t think the stand-alone fax ma-
chine is going away,” the Kauffman Group’s
Kauffman said. “The two technologies
are not mutually exclusive.” c
AT&T this year has spent $300 million
deploying additional Synchronous Optical
Network systems, increasing its overall net-
work capacity by more than 40 percent over
what was originally planned. By year’s end,
AT&T expects to upgrade 87 percent of
its route miles with SONET capabilities.
AT&T, of Basking Ridge, N.J., can be
reached at (800) 248-3632 or www.att.com.
Ameritech deepens data services
In a deal to bolster its managed data ser-
vices organization, Chicago-based Ameri-
tech Corp. last week acquired network in-
tegrator Clover Technologies Inc.
The purchase of Clover Technologies
and its planned operation by Ameritech
as a separate subsidiary will increase
Ameritech’s managed data presence in the
eight cities where Clover operates and
strengthen Ameritech’s LAN management
services.
The move will also double the number
of Ameritech technicians certified for equip-
ment from vendors such as Bay Networks
Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. and will give
Ameritech additional expertise in provid-
ing end-to-end networking solutions such
as data and video integration, LAN design,
installation and maintenance, and inside
cabling installation.
Clover is based in Wixom, Mich., and
has offices in Chicago; Dallas; Tulsa, Okla.;
Dayton, Ohio; and Tallahassee, Tampa and
Naples, Fla. Specific financial terms of the
deal were not disclosed.
Ameritech can be reached at (800) 832-
6328 or www.ameritech.com. Clover can
be contacted at (248) 449-4700 or www.
clover.com. c

138
Shaman Aids Outdated Desktops
L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 131
staff. The company routinely searches Web
and FTP sites to find, annotate and pack-
age the free updates that are cataloged for
more than 50,000 titles in its knowledge
N E T W E E K
base. Thus, managers are relieved of the
finicky package preparation required by
most software distribution packages.
Of course, even with all the research
done by Shaman, IT managers must still
test updates to make sure they solve more
problems than they introduce.
Enterprise Shaman allowed us to di-
vide our desktop systems into groups so we
could make test updates available to se-
lect users before rolling out the updates to
all users.
Although not new in this version, En-
terprise Shaman’s e-mail notification and
PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998
Web page generation for individual users
are a significant part of the product’s charm.
Rather than using “push” to distribute up-
dates, users simply aim their browser (ei-
ther Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4.x or
Netscape Communications Corp.’s Navi-
gator 4.x) at the Web page automatically
generated by Enterprise Shaman to down-
load available updates.
As with other software distribution and
inventory products, Enterprise Shaman
keeps a history of software adds, changes
and deletions for each desktop being
monitored by a Shaman Scout. This infor-
mation is also available on a Web page,
which makes it easy for help desk staffers
to get the latest configuration information.
During tests, we loaded it on a Dell Com-
puter Corp. OptiPlex GX Pro 200MHz sys-
tem with 128MB of RAM running Win-
dows NT. While this was enough
horsepower for the 75-node test network,
Shaman recommends at least a 300MHz
Pentium II system.
Because the Shaman Scouts are pro-
grammed to use only a fraction of network
bandwidth, even 30 simultaneous invento-
ry requests generated less than 1 percent
network utilization rates. The trade-off
was that in some cases getting information
on updates took up to half an hour.
Enterprise Shaman includes a scheduler
that allows all tasks to be conducted dur-
ing off-peak hours, which worked well for
us. Most other software distribution prod-
ucts have a scheduling capability, but
Shaman’s is significantly easier to set up.
Even the most anti-tutorial desktop ad-
ministrator will be pleased with the initial
setup tutorial included in Enterprise
Shaman. Each step required to configure
Enterprise Shaman was clearly explained
as we were entering the configuration in-
formation required to connect us to
Shaman’s knowledge base. c
PC WEEK LABS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Enterprise Shaman 3.0
Keeping Windows and Macintosh desktop ap-
plications up to date is a breeze with Enter-
USABILITY A prise Shaman, which
CAPABILITY B searches FTP sites
PERFORMANCE B and the Web for up-
INTEROPERABILITY C dates and packages
MANAGEABILITY B
them for distribution.
Desktop agents keep track of inventory and
facilitate downloading appropriate updates
as they become available. However, Enter-
prise Shaman is expensive compared with
software distribution packages such as Micro-
soft’s SMS, and it cannot share inventory
data with other management systems.
Distribution packages are robust; sup-
ports Windows 95/98/NT and Macintosh;
agents use little bandwidth.
Can’t share inventory data with other
management systems; doesn’t distribute
software other than free updates; not
available for Windows 3.11 desktops; ex-
pensive; runs only on Windows NT.
Shaman Corp., San Francisco
(415) 241-9952; www.shamancorp.com.
Scoring methodology: www.pcweek.com/reviews/meth.html
 PC WEEK
OCTOBER 19, 1998 N E T W E E K 141

Compared with the more consumer-

DSL Equipment Paving Road to Business Entree
BY JOHN RENDLEMAN
ith a growing roster of service
the technical difficulties associated with
ADSL (asymmetrical DSL) services and
That early gap, however, has closed as
most other major DSL vendors—such as
friendly ADSL services, expected to be sup-
ported by 60 percent of local providers and
46 percent of national ISPs, business-
oriented SDSL services will be offered by
35 percent of local carriers and 38 percent

W provider deals, a major DSL vendor

is laying the groundwork for high-
speed digital subscriber line services for
are better suited to business applications
because they offer high-speed bidirec-
tional connections.
PulseCom Communications Inc., Cisco Sys-
tems Inc. and Diamond Lane Communi-
cations Inc.—have added SDSL support.
of national ISPs, Howard estimated.
Copper Mountain is at (650) 858-8500
or www.coppermountain.com. c
businesses.
Copper Mountain Networks Inc. last
week announced that its DSL concentra-
tors have been installed in 54 points of pres-
ence in UUNet WorldCom’s network to
operate UUNet’s Preferred Access 768
dedicated SDSL (symmetric DSL) service.
In addition, competitive local services
provider Rhythms NetConnections Inc. is
deploying 170 CopperEdge Multi-Speed
DSL concentrators as part of its national
rollout of DSL services. By the end of the
year, Rhythms, of Englewood, Colo., will
have installed more than 300 Copper Moun-
tain concentrators to support its DSL ser-
vice, now available in metropolitan San
Diego and San Francisco and planned for
30 additional U.S. cities by the end of 2000,
officials said.
The two deals, and other such agree-
ments with service providers NorthPoint
Communications Inc., InterAccess Co. and
ICG Communications Inc., put Copper
Mountain on track to supply at least 1,000
CopperEdge concentrators to providers,
thereby bringing services to a total of 20
U.S. cities this year, said Copper Mountain
officials in Palo Alto, Calif.

Bargain bandwidth
The growing availability of commercial
DSL services means businesses will be able
to get the same bandwidth as that offered
by other services but at a fraction of the
price, Copper Mountain officials said.
At San Francisco-based NorthPoint
Communications, which this week will in-
troduce a two-way 1.544M-bps SDSL ser-
vice using Copper Mountain equipment, a
1.544M-bps circuit will be priced at $250
per month wholesale, compared with the
$350-to-$600-per-month cost of a private-
line circuit operating at the same speed,
NorthPoint officials said.
For business users looking to adopt DSL
services, such deals mean “deployment is
happening much more quickly than peo-
ple had really expected,” said Diana Hel-
frich, vice president of marketing commu-
nications at Copper Mountain.
That bullish perspective is somewhat
overstated, with rollouts being held back
primarily because providers are waiting for
the technology to mature, said Greg How-
ard, an analyst at Infonetics Research
Inc., in San Jose, Calif.
“All indications are that the majority of
[competitive local service providers’ and
national ISPs’ (Internet service providers’)]
plans were to deploy DSL services in 1999,”
Howard said. Most providers will debut
services in the latter half of next year.
According to research from Dataquest
Inc., Copper Mountain was the first
equipment vendor to market with SDSL
access concentrators, which solve many of

142
Visio Modeler Sashays
Through Design Tasks
Enterprise 5.0 graphical designer due next month
BY ERICA SCHROEDER
isio corp. is readying a revamped and
V
expanded version of its graphical de-
sign tool that can model a wide vari-
ety of complex and tedious enterprise ad-
ministration and development tasks.
Visio Enterprise 5.0, due next month,
beefs up not only its existing enterprise net-
work diagramming tools but also the abil-
ity to model databases, including those from
IBM, Oracle Corp., Informix Software Inc.
and Microsoft Corp.
The $995 software can model in rela-
tional, IDEF1X and other notations and
can be used for both maintenance and up-
dates of existing DBMSes, as well as mi-
gration between DBMSes.
Visio Enterprise can import models via
the Microsoft Data Warehousing Frame-
work and can also read and write Plat-
inum Technology Inc.’s ERwin and Visio’s
own InfoModeler models, as well as Visio
Professional 5.0 database diagrams, ac-
cording to officials of the Seattle-based
company.
For designing and documenting physi-
cal, logical and wide-area networks, Visio
OS/2 Warp Powers E-Business
IBM’s beta server will support SMP, security
BY ERICA SCHROEDER
bm is equipping the next version of its
I OS/2 Warp Server with new features de-
signed to help customers better imple-
ment electronic commerce.
OS/2 Warp Server For e-business, which
will be released into beta testing this
week, will include in its base software pack-
age 40-bit encryption to meet U.S. export
laws; a separate add-on for U.S. custom-
ers will provide strong encryption at 56-
bit and 128-bit Triple Data Encryption Stan-
dard levels, according to IBM officials in
Austin, Texas.
The operating system, which was code-
named Aurora, will be tested by 200 for-
mal beta customers, who will get support
and bug fixes from IBM, and by between
2,000 and 3,000 testers, who will provide
informal feedback to IBM.
The base OS/2 Warp Server, which will
ship early next year, will include SMP sup-
port for four-way servers; support for eight-
way servers may also be included, officials
said. In addition, the software will support
year 2000 compliance and the euro cur-
PC WEEK
N E T W E E K OCTOBER 19, 1998
N O S F I L E S , PA T C H E S A N D F I X E S
NetWare News
Network administrators may be interested in obtaining the latest patches for the
Windows NT ZENworks client, Version 4.3 for NT. For more information, go to
support.novell.com/cgi-bin/search/tidfinder.cgi?2943043.
NETWARE DOWNLOADS
Listed are the latest files downloaded from Novell Inc.’s FTP server as of Oct 13. Go to
support.novell.com/cgi-bin/top20bin.cgi.
DATE POSTED FILE NAME DESCRIPTION SIZE
Enterprise provides tools for identifying 09/30/98 clients.txt Novell client software 40KB
the equipment connected to an enter-
09/28/98 95250p1.exe Patches for Windows 95 V2.5 644KB
prise network, documenting it and pro-
viding tools for keeping that information 09/10/98 ds411l.exe NDS for IntranetWare update 3MB
up to date. 09/09/98 cfgrd6.exe NetWare Config Reader 2.66 2.3MB
The network tools include SNMP-based
09/01/98 tbox7.exe Tools for NetWare Server V1.09d 56KB
automatic network documentation via
Visio’s Layer 3 AutoDiscovery technolo- 08/31/98 nt411p1.exe IntranetWare NT client updates 1MB
gy, which starts with one “seed” router to
08/21/98 highutl1.exe Troubleshooting High Utilization for NetWare 4 1.1MB
discover and map the logical connectivity
of a network. 08/06/98 bmsp2d.exe BorderManager Support Pack V.2D 761KB
The software also includes a 14,000-item
Visio Network Equipment library and sup-
port for Microsoft’s forthcoming Active
Windows NT Server News
Microsoft Corp. technical support has released details on an issue in which appli-
Directory and Novell Inc.’s NDS, as well
cations that use the IStorage and IStream classes (or other classes derived from
as the capability to automatically gener-
them) to save data in the form of OLE Structured Storage may generate corrupt-
ate NDS trees.
ed data files when the size of the output file exceeds some threshold. To resolve
For software engineering, Visio Enter-
this problem, users can obtain a fix that is not fully regression-tested by contacting
prise provides support for the Universal
Microsoft technical support or wait for the next Windows NT service pack. More
Modeling Language 1.2 standard, includ-
information is available at support.microsoft.com. Article ID: Q193558.
ing a reverse-engineered version of Mi-
crosoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic code. WINDOWS NT SERVER DOWNLOADS
The software also includes integration with Listed are some of the latest support files for Windows NT as of Oct. 13. To obtain any
other development tools through Micro- of the files listed below, go to support.microsoft.com.
soft Repository.
Visio can be reached at (800) 248-4746 DATE POSTED DESCRIPTION SIZE
or www.visio.com. c
10/01/98 CD-ROM drive may be unable to read UDF-formatted disk.
Article ID: Q193551 6.6KB
09/25/98
09/18/98
Information on configuring Windows 95 to dial in to an RAS/RRAS
server. Article ID: Q178729
Information on common causes of STOP messages 0x00000077 and
0x0000007A. Article ID: Q130801
9KB
7KB
09/11/98 Information on disabling Dynamic DNS registration. Article ID: Q178148 7KB
rency. Also on tap are a new Journaled File 09/08/98 Information on requesting an IP address with NT RAS or Windows 95
System and Logical Volume Manage- dial-up networking. Article ID: Q138925 6KB
ment for managing files on the server.
OS/2 Warp Server will also include new
server management capabilities for ad-
09/01/98 Information on enabling cluster logging in Microsoft Cluster Server 6KB
ministrating Windows NT 4.0 servers with-
in an OS/2 domain, as well as support for OS/2 Warp Server News
Intelligent Input/Output architecture. New drivers were recently posted to the Device Driver Pak On-Line. Now avail-
While IBM currently supports LDAP able is updated support for several mice and trackballs, including those from Logi-
(Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) tech Inc., Microsoft and IBM. Go to service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/
on OS/2 clients, no plan for LDAP support index.htm for more information.
has been announced for the server. OS/2 WARP SERVER DOWNLOADS
The software, for which pricing has not Listed are the latest drivers posted to the OS/2 Device Driver Pak On-Line as of Oct.
been set, will ship bundled with WebSphere 13. Go to service.software.ibm.com/os2ddpak/html/index.htm.
Application Server 1.1.
In related news, IBM announced last DATE POSTED COMPANY/PRODUCT NAME DESCRIPTION
week that Workspace on Demand Release
2.0 will be generally available at month’s 10/01/98 SyQuest EZ135 135MB SCSI External Drive Storage support
end. The Workspace on Demand manager
09/25/98 Dell’s Inspiron 3200 PCMCIA PCMCIA socket services
with a single client license will cost $999.
Additional licenses will cost $249. 09/11/98 Avatar AR-2170NI Storage support
IBM will also release by the middle of
next year a free upgrade to manage 32-bit 09/11/98 Iomega Zip ATA Drive Removable disks
Windows clients.
IBM can be reached at (800) 426-3333 09/11/98 IBM ThinkPad 365X 2625-2J9 Mobile system
or www.ibm.com. c
 PC WEEK
166 OCTOBER 19, 1998

SPENCER F. KATT: RUMOR CENTRAL

Don’t Touch That Dial—It’s Time for the Mr. Bill Show
he furball’s been busy warming up

T
W H AT I F OT H E R CA R TO O N I ST S D I D S P E N C E R ? © Ziff-Davis

his La-Z-Boy lounger and hunting

D ilbert creator Scott Adams R ich Tennant of “The 5th Wave”
down some chips and dip. No, not to could easily handle El Gato ... might see Spence this way ...
celebrate the new NBA season, which has
been delayed by the so-called Larry Bird ex-
ception, but to follow the Microsoft anti-
trust trial, which is starting, finally, and will
be reported by Court TV. The Power
Meower is hoping to see another famous
power forward—the Redmondian Gi-
ants’ Bill Gates—since his videotaped
deposition is among the 1,229—yes,
1,229—exhibits the DOJ is submitting.
The Katt prefers even Court TV to
romance novels, but Le Chat can’t
wait to get his paws on “The Hard-Hearted Man,” a lusty
new page turner published by Silhouette Romance and
penned by Melanie Craft. Why would a hard-hearted cynic See ya
like Yours Truly care about harebrained leading man Ross in the funny
papers!
Bradford, the novelette’s title character? Because, a Tabby
tipster said, Bradford is none other than our lovable Larry
Ellison in disguise. The book is reportedly a roman à clef of
sorts by Ellison’s current paramour, Ms. Craft.
The romance author isn’t the only one putting Larry
in the hot seat. El Gato has heard that Oracle Prez Ray
Lane is interviewing for the open CEO spot at Electronic tions; trademark consultant Thomson & Thomson; and Compaq support is reportedly talking out of both sides
Data Systems. So the Furball headed to Plano, Texas, Verio, a multiservice ISP based in Colorado, are all mak- of its mouth. One Tabby tipster went to the Digital Web
and, making like a tumbleweed, rolled over to a watering ing goo-goo eyes at NetNames, the tipster said. site in search of a firmware update to his RAID con-
hole favored by EDSers; there he heard that Ray might Nobody was ogling Microsoft’s SQL Server 7.0 Beta 3 troller. He found free updates for later versions of the
have the right stuff to be an “eagle.” At deadline, how- at a recent Palo Alto SIG meeting. To kick off the inau- firmware, but when he called tech support, he was told
ever, Ray was still sitting on the fence sidesaddle and had gural meeting, a Microsoft product manager raffled off a that an upgrade for his older version would cost him 500
yet to tell his boss which way he was leaning. series of prizes, including T-shirts, techie toys and a copy smackeroos. When he asked why the older one cost mon-
It appears that the widely scattered gaggle of compa- of the database’s latest beta. Winners were allowed to ey, a technician told him, “[Digital] charges for firmware
nies offering Internet domain name registration and ser- reach into a bin and grab whatever trinket they wanted. updates.” When he rephrased his query and asked why
vices is ready for some consolidation. According to one When the game was over, guess what was left, un- the newer ones were free, the support guy replied, “Com-
friend of the Feline, NetNames, a London-based pro- claimed and unwanted, at the bottom of the barrel? paq does not charge for firmware updates.”
vider of international domain services, is the latest acqui- SQL Server 7.0 Beta 3, according to a Katt confidant. Finally, the most-annoying-spam-of-the-week award
sition target. Domain name market leader Network Solu- No matter; Mr. Bill (Gates, that is) has more important goes to AccountMate, which sent a 700KB, unintelli-
things on his mind. He’s trying his hand at authoring once gible message to a list of 4,000 several times. El Gato
Have a tip? Contact Rumor Central by phone at (781) again—this time focusing on the nebulous subject of “dig- sure hopes that the DOJ’s 1,229 exhibits are more en-
393-3700 or via e-mail at spencer_katt@zd.com. ital nervous systems.” The book is due out in the spring. lightening reading. p

ERIC LUNDQUIST: THE LAST WORD It’s interesting that Bill Gates said sim-
plicity is Microsoft’s top priority these days.
Ellison Delivered ITxpo’s Best Keynote Bill might want to rethink this one; the eas-
iest way to increase simplicity is to decrease
as the y2k experience foreshadowed last

W
week when the lights dimmed in the exhibi-
tion hall at Gartner Group’s ITxpo in Or-
lando? If so, my advice is to keep plenty of ice on
hand to keep the drinks cold while waiting to see if
the electricity will indeed return.
The power-down gave the 10,000 IT ex- network computer but said he was right
ecutives in the hall time to critique Larry on in championing browser-based corpo-
Ellison’s keynote, delivered earlier that rate computing.
day, and guess about what Bill Gates and His call for moving simplicity toward
Lew Platt would talk about the next day. the user and moving from complexity to
Here is my recap. fewer, more robust servers makes a lot of
My nod for the best keynote (although sense. It makes even more sense when you
it was more of a question-and-answer realize that the $500 NC at the end of the
session than a speech) goes to Larry Elli- wire will—today at least—turn out to be
son. During the keynote and in an inter- a PC.
view following, a less shrill, more nimble Larry’s discussion of the big, smart
Larry did a mea culpa for misnaming the server accessed by anything running a
browser and Bill Gates’ recent ruminations
on the megaserver are sounding more and
more alike.
Lew Platt is having a tougher time mov-
ing Hewlett-Packard to simplicity—espe-
cially in its channel strategy. HP, along with
Compaq and other channel-driven com-
panies, is struggling to satisfy both dealers
and customers that want to buy direct.
One Gartner analyst suggested that HP
could be losing up to 10 percent of addi-
tional computer sales to potential cus-
tomers unable—or unwilling—to be di-
verted into the channel every time they
want to go direct.
Lew’s top priority is eliminating com-
placency at HP. If he can find a way to keep
the channel happy and the direct customers
ordering from HP, Lew will be a sure
thing for this year’s high-tech MVP.
functionality.
But at the end of that road you’ve got
one really simple product that does just
one thing really well. Sounds more like a
pencil sharpener than a PC. These com-
puters are complex, but so is the world. I
doubt people will continually opt for few
choices in simpler machines, which is the
latest mantra.
Gates’ most uncomfortable moment was
when he was asked to cite examples of Mi-
crosoft’s innovations. His list—including
developing an operating system distinct
from the hardware, building Windows NT
from scratch and adding transactions to the
operating system—drew a silent response
from the audience. c
Comments? Contact Eric Lundquist at
eric_lundquist@zd.com.