07-06-2004 • VOLUME 7 • NUMBER 22 • £2.60
WWW.ITWEEK.CO.UK
16 ENTERPRISE Apple 64bit
G5 server packs a punch
29 CLIENT Micro laptop
swallows DVD drive
33 NETWORK More firms
pick up on IP telephony
CONTENTS
ENTERPRISEWEEK
Email archiving kit for data laws 15
Better user ID management tools 15
Microsoft Windows versus Linux 16
INTERNETWEEK
Yahoo plug-in to combat spyware 19
Marketing and search technology 19
CLIENTWEEK
AMD boosts 64bit processor line 29
Pocket hard disk helps backup 29
Tablet PC platform gains appeal 30
NETWORKWEEK
Ethernet kit makes WAN flexible 33
BT’s Bluephone shows promise 34
How to control wireless LANs 37
MANAGEMENTWEEK
Kit to control security policies 39
New laws will justify IT upgrades 39
How to spot good outsourcers 40
BT satellite goes further
Daniel Thomas
B
T has launched a new two-way satellite
broadband service for other providers
to sell on to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and home users in rural areas.
The service offers 512kbit/s download
and 128kbit/s upload speeds and is already
available to businesses through BT Retail.
Other operators will provide services soon,
said John Wing, head of satellite broadband
at BT’s Broadcast Services (BTBS) unit.
BT will offer other operators a managed
service, including installation and customer
Ofcom plans
porn warning
Ofcom is inviting firms and internet
users to comment on its plan to promote use of new media and to label
content so that inappropriate material
can be easily identified and filtered.
A new consultation document
suggests content should be tagged by
ISPs, to prevent accidental access to
“adult” material, for example.This
could help IT managers prevent staff
from accessing such material by making it easier to identify and block.
Ofcom said it is likely to work with
content providers and hardware and
software makers to raise awareness of
content tagging and the availability of filtering tools. The consultation document says,“Our research will help
[vendors] to focus clearly on the needs
of the users and produce tools that are
effective and easy to use.” Ofcom
wants responses by early August, and
can be contacted at the address below.
Leader, p12 Comment, p20
medialiteracy@ofcom.org.uk
www.ofcom.org.uk
support. There are two options: Satellite
Broadband 500 Lite and Satellite Broadband 500 Plus. The Lite service is aimed at
home workers needing web and email access, and will cost operators £50 per month
per user, with kit from £699
and standard installation
costing £250. The Plus service, suitable for LAN use,
will cost providers at least
£86 per month per user. It is
Fogg: service suits
apps like email
expected that business users will pay over
£1,000 for equipment and installation.
“It is aimed at SMEs and home offices in
areas where there is no ADSL,” said Wing.
But Ian Fogg of analyst firm Jupiter Research
said satellite should be a last resort for business broadband.“Because the link goes up to
the satellite and then back down, it is not
good for activities such as browsing or voice
over IP,” Fogg said. “It is good, however, for
large downloads and sending a lot of data
downstream for things like email.”
According to research by Ofcom, the
number of UK broadband users reached
almost four million last month, with over
40,000 new connections each week.
BT, C&W and DSL services, p10
Notes gets
more mobile
A new product promises users
of BlackBerry handhelds uninterrupted access to remote
applications. Lan 2 Lan’s
.Roam for Lotus Domino
caches data for any Notes
or Domino application on Cache
the device and makes the
will keep
user experience closer to data local
that of the Notes client on a
laptop. It costs £350 + VAT per user.
Full story, p4 PDAs grow, p8
Sun aims to cut Unix costs
prietary processors based on the Sparc
architecture. These chips can run the same
software, but use two different sets of hardun last week took steps to cut the cost
ware. The deal will merge the vendors’ Unix
of its products and to further its
product lines so that by 2006 each will marefforts to become a more flexible IT
ket the same Unix hardware running Solall-rounder. It unveiled plans to unite its
aris, giving buyers two independent sources
Sparc server lines with Fujitsu’s, and said it
of software-compatible Unix servers.
will make its Solaris operating system open
The resulting server family, codenamed
source. The firm is also revamping hardware
Advanced Product Line
and software lines with
(APL), will replace today’s
flexible pricing tariffs.
Sun Fire and Fujitsu SieUnder their deal, Sun A BRIGHTER OUTLOOK?
mens
Primepower lines.
and Fujitsu Siemens ComSun and Fujitsu unite server lines
“Now, our customers
puters (FSC) will jointly
Solaris OS to go open source
can have their cake and eat
produce new server lines
Flexible product licence tariffs
it too,” said Joseph Reger,
that will redefine the servIdentity management tools
FSC chief technology offier landscape.
cer.“Software vendors will
This development was
have a single platform to
welcomed by analysts, who
certify their products against, and customers
said it should lead to cheaper Unix servers.
have two hardware suppliers to negotiate
Andy Butler of analyst firm Gartner said,
with. Looking to the future, for high-end
“This is a net positive move for Sun, FSC and
systems we will use FSC chips, and for lowtheir clients, and provides increased barend systems we will use Sun chips.”
gaining power for IT buyers, particularly
UltraSparc V, expected in 2006, will
against Sun.” Discounted prices are likely as
have a feature called Chip Multithreading
Sun and FSC seek to prevent rivals such as
(CMT), and eight processor cores on each
HP from luring customers away, he added.
chip. CMT enables each core to run four
Currently both Sun and FSC make pro-
Roger Howorth and Martin Veitch
S
threads simultaneously, giving 32 simultaneous threads per chip. Reger said this feature will greatly improve the performance
of low-end servers that typically run multiple simultaneous threads.
FSC’s Sparc64 chip is designed with
high-end features to help increase server
uptime and improve throughput for supercomputer-style workloads.
Sun president Jonathan Schwartz added
that Solaris will be made open source,
although he stopped short of giving details
or a date for the change. Any such move
could result in a rapid shift of developers to
the Unix operating system, which is noted
for scalability and robustness.
However, the Solaris announcement
could harm Sun’s recent efforts to sell Linux
servers. “Sun’s Linux enthusiasm is waning
fast and it feels compelled to promote Solaris on x86,” Gartner’s Butler said.
Sun is also forging ahead with plans for
flexible hardware and software pricing with
subscription-based tariffs for storage and
developer hardware and software. It has also
updated Solaris with a new Dynamic File
System and identity management abilities.
Sun, pp6, 15 Fujitsu, p8 Leader, p12
INSIDE: HOSTED SYSTEMS As demand for hosted apps increases, what are the benefits and how can firms get the best deals? pp23-27