15-11-2004 • VOLUME 7 • NUMBER 43 • £2.60
WWW.ITWEEK.CO.UK
18 ENTERPRISE Why IT staff
like VMotion virtualisation
30 CLIENT PalmOne
gets emails moving
35 NETWORK Will Santa
spread 3G joy this Xmas?
CONTENTS
ENTERPRISEWEEK
Will Solaris 10 mix with Linux? 17
Supercomputing kit on show
17
Microsoft woos Lotus developers 17
INTERNETWEEK
Why use hosted CRM systems? 24
FatWire Content Server review 27
CLIENTWEEK
IPass speeds up laptop patching 29
Tri-band chip to roam WLANs 29
Do smartphones do too much? 30
NETWORKWEEK
WLAN switches enforce security 33
DNA 2.0 aids PC management 36
Bluetooth group reveals roadmap 36
MANAGEMENTWEEK
Standards and take-up for RFID 39
Courts get tough on spammers 40
How to manage IT outsourcing 40
Acrobat 7.0
guards PDFs
Adobe will today announce Acrobat
7.0 and a new product, Livecycle Policy Server, to control Acrobat file
access. Both are due in December.
Acrobat 7.0 brings
new workflow capabilities. Staff can use the
free Adobe Reader to
submit feedback to a
document author, who
can then choose which
changes to apply.
Livecycle Policy
Tools will
protect files Server lets staff control access to Acrobat
7.0 documents. Mark Wheeler, Acrobat and security marketing manager
for Europe, said,“You can distribute a
document that can only be read by
some individuals, and then you can
control whether they can print or
copy the contents.” Access rights can
be revoked after a document has been
sent, he added.
www.tinyurl.com/3pet
Rules trigger IT overhaul
Mark Street
irms need a unified strategy to comply with new corporate governance
rules including the US SarbanesOxley (SOX) Act, a key part of which comes
into effect today, if they want to ensure efficiency and keep down costs, say experts.
SOX will be followed next year by the
Operating and Financial Review (OFR),
which obliges listed UK firms to produce
an analysis of risks in their annual reports.
And the UK’s Freedom of Information Act
will come into effect in January, forcing local
authorities and government departments to
carry out data searches in a speedy way.
Firms will have to allocate resources to
comply with the new rules, so IT directors
should use this as an opportunity to develop best practices and build a framework
that can meet a wide range of reporting
needs, said Shaun Fothergill, security strategist for software giant Computer Associates.
Eddie Short, head of business intelligence and information management at consultancy Capgemini, said the SOX rules on
internal controls would affect many UK
F
Giants widen searches
David Neal
M
icrosoft last week launched the final
beta of its MSN search service, which
it said would offer more relevant results
than its rivals. Meanwhile, Google announced it had increased the number of web
pages it indexes to eight billion.
The developments could improve the
productivity of staff searching the web.
MSN’s new facility indexes about five billion
pages, which it promises to re-index every
week to ensure relevancy and availability.
In a move that could ease the task of
searching corporate documents, Microsoft
is also working on a desktop tool that can
search users’ hard drives. It is due later this
year in test form, and follows the release of
Google’s Desktop Search beta last month.
Google also said it would offer POP3
access to its Gmail message
service from desktops
and mobile clients. The
firm is also reported to
be developing its own
browser, which would rival Microsoft’s Internet
Whittingham:
relevant results
the SOX rules. “Many US
firms with close links to
THE FRUIT OF COMPLIANCE
companies are concerned
US companies, heightabout unearthing skeleening the need for better How do global firms think
compliance will help business?
tons in their European
data management.
Accurate
cupboards,” he said.
“Sarbanes-Oxley is a
61%
reporting
Meanwhile the Eurosavage piece of legislation
Better risk
56%
pean Commission is devthat is designed to crack management
eloping its own equivalent
down on fraud so firms
Better IT
50%
of SOX. It has already subneed to ensure they have management
mitted four key revisions
a single version of the Source: Mercury Interactive
to the European Union’s
truth in their database
accounting directives to enhance financial
and data repositories,” said Short. “Most
reporting in member states.
organisations have data cleansing and qualComputer Associates’ Fothergill said,
ity issues, which could make it hard for them
“Rather than setting up separate committo prove they have not acted fraudulently.”
tees for each act of compliance, companies
Tight integration of legacy apps could
should construct a model that gives them a
help firms to deliver a real-time view of
common control environment.”
their enterprise for auditing, Short added.
Committees should include input from
“There is also the issue of accurate recordbusiness, finance and IT staff, said Fothergill.
keeping,” he emphasised. “It will not be
He added that they should refer to best pracenough to store key data, as firms will have
tices such as Itil, BS7799, and the US risk
to provide an audit trail to prove that the
framework Coso, which forms the basis of
data is genuine and unchanged.”
SOX.“It helps to have a graphical user interCraig Olson, vice-president of marketface like a console that can demonstrate
ing at IT risk management firm Zantaz, said
compliance on a daily basis,” he added.
US-listed firms are worried about the ability of European subsidiaries to comply with
How SOX law affects UK companies, p39
Explorer (IE) and Mozilla’s Firefox browser,
which shipped in 1.0 form last week. The recent discovery of further flaws in IE, together
with Firefox’s growing popularity, suggest a
Google browser would find a ready market.
Matt Whittingham, head of information services at MSN UK, said it had taken
into account customers’ opinions while
developing its search engine, and had designed it to emphasise the most relevant
results. “People do not want to have to look
through 20,000 results,” he added.
Microsoft said the service will also
return queries as direct answers, as opposed
to a series of links – in a way similar to that
of Ask.com’s Smart Answers service.
IE flaws, pp5, 23 Firefox snaps at IE, p23
http://beta.search.msn.co.uk
Storage app
eases control
Storage firm Network Appliance will
today ship version 7 of its DataOn Tap
operating system. The new software
adds virtualisation tools to increase
storage utilisation and ease management. New FlexVols flexible volume
support could help firms get more
value from NetApp kit. FlexVols allows
up to 90 percent of available storage to
be used, compared with up to 40 percent in most studies, said the firm.
NetApp FAS270 storage review, p20
www.tinyurl.com/625b2
NEWS INSIDE: BT Plan, p4 • 3G Service, p4 • SPYWARE Defence, p6 • CRM Host, p6 • DATACENTRE Control, p6 • E-SALES Boom, p10 • WIRELESS Kit, p10