25-10-2004 • VOLUME 7 • NUMBER 40 • £2.60
WWW.ITWEEK.CO.UK
20 ENTERPRISE JBoss 4.0 Java
app server shows its worth
32 CLIENT Are thin clients
better than PCs at work?
37 NETWORK SAN switches
speed to 4Gbit/s
CONTENTS
ENTERPRISEWEEK
IBM and BEA update app servers 19
Better controls for datacentres 19
SecurID for Windows reviewed 22
INTERNETWEEK
Microsoft Sender ID fights spam 25
Search tools for mid-sized firms 25
Team Page runs blogs for business 28
CLIENTWEEK
AMD boosts 64bit processor line 31
Security for older Microsoft apps 32
Office software moves to servers 35
NETWORKWEEK
Voice messages arrive as SMS text 38
Why network spending will grow 38
Orange’s 3G card put to the test 42
MANAGEMENTWEEK
Is the IT director’s role changing? 47
How Toshiba saved money on IT 48
BT defends IP upgrade plan
Martin Courtney
he viability of BT’s 21st Century
Network (21CN) plan has been
called into question by new research suggesting it will not run to schedule
and will fail to deliver anticipated savings.
The 21CN strategy will see BT migrating calls from the existing analogue network
to a new all-IP infrastructure, a move that
the firm expects will eventually cut operating costs by £1bn per year. It has said it will
begin the migration in 2006 and expects it
to be “substantially complete” by 2009.
Doubts about the validity of BT’s projections come from a survey of 125 telecoms
experts at the VON Europe conference in
June and at the Carriers World show in
London last month.
Though few doubt that IP networks will
take over, most predict it will take much
longer than BT suggests. Seventy percent
said the public switched telephone network
(PSTN) will eventually be completely replaced by a packet infrastructure that delivers end-to-end IP-based telephone calls. But
T
migrate to IP infrastructure quickly
to cut its own costs and provide a
platform for new IP services.
2006
But Shankar said upgrading
Mass migration
access to the network and procuronto new
2004
2009
ing the necessary hardware and
2005
2008
network
Trial
£1bn
Most of operational support systems will prove harder
migrations BT chooses
migration
from PSTN equipment
savings
than expected. “The contracts for
vendors
complete
the PSTN replacement are due to
be given out in 2005. But BT’s trials
will not finish by then, so BT will start
only 22 percent said that the transition
choosing which vendors to use without
would be complete within 10 years, while 29
knowing the outcome of the trials,” he said.
percent said it would definitely take longer.
Shankar said it was unclear how BT had
Joop Van Aard of Sonus Networks,
arrived at its figure of £1bn annual savings.
which commissioned the survey, said those
“These are fairly ballpark numbers and we
interviewed were engineering and opneed greater transparency as to how exacterations managers or carrier and service
ly that is going to happen,” he added.
provider executives familiar with the issues.
A BT spokeswoman said the carrier is
“It is quite pessimistic, and the converon course to start transferring trial cussion to IP may never be 100 percent,” he said.
tomer traffic from the PSTN and onto its
“Upgrading networks to packet switching
21CN next month. “Clearly this is a huge,
and then connecting to legacy infrastructure
complex programme to be carried out over
is challenging, but the carriers will get there.”
many years, but the work is on track.”
Bhawani Shankar of analyst Gartner
described the 21CN schedule as “aggressive”
VoIP, p8 www.btplc.com/innovation
but pointed out that it was essential for BT to
www.sonusnetworks.com
BT TIMETABLE FOR 21ST CENTURY NETWORK
Micro PC to
run big apps
Giants split on dual-core
OQO is shipping a miniature PC little larger
than a PDA.The OQO
Model 01 weighs about
Model 01 400g and has a 5in
has a 20GB colour screen, but runs
Windows XP and has
hard disk
built-in 802.11b wireless
capabilities.The display slides up to reveal a qwerty keypad. It costs $1,899
(£1,052) in the US, but the firm has
yet to announce UK shipping plans.
OQO Model 01, full story, p31
M
Martin Veitch
icrosoft’s decision last week not to
charge extra for programs running
on multi-core processors has caused a split
in the software industry, which will lead to
a re-evaluation of price/performance comparisons between vendors.
Expected next year, dual-core chips
from AMD and Intel will add more power
to volume systems by twinning execution
units on a single piece of silicon, but the
technology has divided firms that typically
charge for software per processor. IBM,
Oracle and SAP all charge for software per
core on current dual-core architectures
such as IBM Power 5, Sun UltraSparc and
HP PA-Risc systems.“Oracle has a view that
these CPUs are very clever and are effectively two CPUs on one piece of silicon,”
said Ronan Miles, chairman of the UK Oracle User Group (OUG).
The diverging strategies of software
vendors will alter the software pricing landscape.
Users of Microsoft SQL
Server will effectively gain
twice the CPU performance at no extra cost
Buckley: plan
allows choice
Firms mull
.eu domain
Firms are being pressed to decide
whether to register under the upcoming .eu domain, as the priority booking
scheme starts this week.
But many experts believe the addition of the .eu domain, which launches
next year, will simply impose an extra
administrative burden on companies
without generating any benefits.
Under the registration process,
trademark holders have first call on
relevant domains for two months.This
is followed by another two-month
period in which any individual or firm
based in the EU can apply. After this
registrations will be thrown open.
Willie Black, non-executive chairman of .uk registrar Nominet, said he
expected many firms would register
defensively.“You have to decide
whether to ensure no one else gets
your domain, or whether you want to
show you are a European company.”
Leader, p14 tinyurl.com/6wzj7
while Oracle 10g and IBM DB2 users would
pay a hefty premium for dual-core chips.
“Oracle and IBM have already made
their strategy from the [IBM Unix] AIX
world and they’re charging per core,” said
Mark Buckley, Microsoft licensing marketing manager. “They’re dictating the technology a customer can adopt.”
Vendors charging per-core may have to
sweeten terms or change their pricing
strategies. Sun earlier this year began charging for software based on the number of
employees that firms have, and Oracle chief
executive Larry Ellison has said that his
company might follow that model.
Novell said it is still pondering its dualcore pricing options for the release of Open
Enterprise Server in February.
Multi-core fees, p10 Leader, p14
NEWS INSIDE: OUTSOURCING Sainsbury’s, p4 • RFID Specs, p5 • GOOGLE Tools, p6 • VoIP deployment, p8 • PDAs Symbol, p10 • MICROSOFT Support, p13