Last week, I had the opportunity to meet Brian Chess, founder and chief scientist of Fortify Software. Brian is one of those golden people who started out with an idea (his phD thesis) about how to make software stronger, got wooed by Kleiner Perkins (the Tom Perkins firm that was the venture backer behind Google, Amazon, and in fact most of the big dot com names in the Silicone Valley), then started his company with a million in seed capital and office space in Kleiner Perkins' basement. You know the type.

Just a few years later, Fortify protects some of the world's top companies from today’s greatest security risk: the software applications that run their businesses.

ebizQ recently posted a white paper by Fortify, that contains valuable advice about what do if your Web services are under attack. I recommend it highly. Read it here.

Posted by elizabeth in security | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm kind of wondering here if we are entering another frightening dot com boom. This news last night was that the Corporate Executive Board has completed its purchase of ITtoolbox for $58.9 million. That's a lot of clams for a community of people who basically blog in order to interact professionally with others. Sort of like a Facebook for professionals, except with less security, less fun, and no transparency about other people's credentials or knowledge about whether they're being paid or not?

(James McGovern says that ITtoolbox is now worth all that was paid for it because of the strong community that was built on compensation for traffic. "...bloggers were rewarded for how much traffic they drove to the site. When I blogged on this platform, they use to reward me $200 to $400 a month. Maybe the compensation should have been a lot higher.")

This huge buy is followed by last week's purchase by Citrix of XenSource, an open source virtualization provider for half a billion dollars. You've got to be kidding me.

ebizQ's Dennis Byron had the following to say about Citrix/Xen:

$500 million? I fear the dot.com era is returning. The bet is on buzz, not reality. In betting on virtualization, investors are paying no attention to the effects of functional convergence that is always occuring in the IT market (e.g., web servers into app servers during the dot.com era, word processors into office suites before that, virtualization BACK into operating systems in the next few years), Developrs are going to be distracted by the buzz and some real good ideas are going to get left on the cutting room floor.

But I digress: ebizQ has its own little community of bloggers which is sort of like ITtoolbox, called ITGumbo, and now I'm wondering what THAT'S worth! That's where ebizQ found Open Source Unleashed blogger Alex Fletcher, an Open Source technology optimization analyst whose excellent posts are now syndicated on ebizQ. ITGumbo way more fun than ITtoolbox too, and it even has a weekly comic strip called Mumbo Gumbo, written by Leah Archibald.

Posted by elizabeth in Enterprise and Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stuff just hasn't been right the last few days with my very favorite social networking tool, Facebook. The recent growth of Facebook's application tools combined with talk of either an IPO or takeover bid from one of the 800-pound Internet gorillas have put pressure on the Facebook team and there is a palpable air of unease. Not to mention that two of my applications, including Trakzor and Scrabulous, have not been displaying notifications properly! P.S. Hey, Facebook, I love what you've done with Scrabulous! It's, well... Scrabulous!

But I doubt my personal solipsistic concern with notifications has anything to do with the top Facebook issue this week, though, which is that, reportedly, portions of the site’s code were leaked via a blog, and it is unknown whether these exposed codes could have compromised personal user information. It has raised an alarm around the web-savvy world about the security of social networking sites.

Joshua Block, VP of North American Operations for Cyberoam, "the leading provider of identity-based UTM solutions," recently sent around some commentary addressing where additional security concerns may lie:

“The issues surrounding consumer privacy raise the need for education on safe practices when it comes to Web 2.0 and social networking applications. But what’s more is that cross-scripting attacks and cross-site request forgeries are raising new vulnerabilities. Since Web 2.0 enables users to upload content, these sites can be left open to malicious content upload, leaving innocent visitors vulnerable to targeted attacks.”

However, this may all be a tempest in a teapot. Brandee Barker from Facebook has left a comment on a TechCrunch article about this:

“A small fraction of the code that displays Facebook web pages was exposed to a small number of users due to a single misconfigured web server that was fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. Because the code that was released only powers the Facebook user interface, it offers no useful insight into the inner workings of Facebook. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.”

Hopefully, all will be better soon. Facebook is not something anyone wants compromised, as almost everyone I know has become somewhat dependent on it to a certain extent.

Posted by elizabeth in Enterprise and Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, I am extraordinarily pleased to welcome two new writers to the ebizQ blogosphere, Alex Fletcher and Krissi Danielsson.

Alex Fletcher, author of the enormously popular Open Source Unleashed blog over at ebizQ's sister site, IT Gumbo, joins us today in syndication in our main ebizQ blog box, and you can also find him in our Open Source tab, working alongside veteran ebizQ senior open source software analyst Dennis Byron.

In his non-blogging life, Alex is lead analyst over at Entiva Group, a research and analyst firm which specializes exclusively on the open source software industry. Alex's main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate approaches to governance, strategy and policy surrounding use of open source software as a competitive differentiator within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder.

I am also thrilled to welcome ebizQ contributor Krissi Danielsson, who is taking over the SaaS Week blog from Prakash Kannoth, and she will be expanding the SaaS topic for ebizQ, as well as contributing to our editorial lineup of features. Like Alex's, Krissi's blog will also be syndicated in our center main blog box on ebizQ and you can bookmark her right now at SaaS Week.

Krissi is a podcast producer with ebizQ and this week joins us as contributor to ebizQ's SaaS Week. Krissi started following the IT market while working as an assistant editor with TechTarget, where she spent four years covering a variety of technology areas, from Web services to enterprise Linux. As a freelance writer, she has also written for sites such as TechSpend, ComputerBits, and the iParenting network. Krissi is the author/co-author of four nonfiction books.

Welcome Alex and Krissi! I hope your association with ebizQ will be long and successful.

Posted by elizabeth in ebizQ | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The M&A team at IBM sure are earning their keep this year!

Today, IBM announced the acquisition of privately held Softech for its Information on Demand business.

IBM reportedly will integrate Princeton Softech’s product offerings into IBM’s Software Group as part of its Information Management Software division.

From the release:

This acquisition furthers IBM's cross-company Information on Demand business initiative by enabling customers to address their escalating information management challenges and improve database performance by segregating historical data from current data and storing it securely and cost-effectively. Princeton Softech’s test data management solutions also help customers protect data privacy and contain costs by creating realistic, right-sized test databases where sensitive data can be masked and protected. The combination of IBM and Princeton Softech will help customers reduce operational costs while avoiding performance degradation and effectively managing their compliance requirements.

The desire by businesses to access, manage and deliver information more efficiently is driving rapid change in the information technology marketplace. Companies grappling with government mandates and business demands are striving to capture and integrate information in a more seamless, real-time fashion across their enterprises. IBM's Information on Demand approach combines industry-specific expertise with advanced software, open standards and storage technology -- integrated via a services oriented architecture -- to manage, secure and deliver information as a service to solve business challenges.

Posted by elizabeth in M&A | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

ebizQ's venerable VP, Beth Gold-Bernstein, recently reviewed John Wiley and Sons' SOA for Dummies book, part of the 'Dummies' book series.

While Beth made sure to note that she thought the book had many attributes, the primary one being its readability, she said the book has some inaccuracies in it that she'd like to see corrected in the next edition.

For example, in the SOA architecture diagram they have a service broker connecting to an enterprise service bus. This confused me, because what is an ESB if not a broker? It routes messages to services based on content, polices, and rules. It is functionally equivalent to a message broker, and some vendors renamed their message broker an ESB. In fact, some vendors claim the ESB is a pattern, not a technology, and claim a number offerings that are functionally equivalent. But the essential function an ESB provides is brokering requests and responses between services.

The Wiley folks agreed to take a look at Beth's suggestions for the next edition, so if you have any comments about other inaccuracies to correct, write a comment on Beth's blog.

Regardless, before you buy the book on Amazon, I would recommend taking a look at Beth's review and her followup review of the other reviews.

Posted by elizabeth in SOA and Web Services | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't have a whole lot to say about this acquisition of Proforma by Metastorm today, except that I tried to ask a question during the media call and the conference line must have been broken, because no one asked any questions and they ended the call pretty quickly. It was either that or they were ignoring me (and everyone else who was probably trying to ask questions).

The key point, made by Metastorm's CEO Bob Farrell, is that the new Metastorm Enterprise will "uniquely address the three critical challenges facing organizations today," which are:

Understanding the underlying dynamics of the organization, collaborating to ensure the pieces fit together, and creating agility within the context of overall enterprise strategy and architecture;

Mapping out an end state that maximizes the effectiveness of key business processes, intertwined with other enterprise assets, to achieve strategic objectives;

Executing optimized, effective business processes with cross-functional transparency and the flexibility to adapt and implement new ideas quickly.

I would agree with those points. That is in line with the editorial perspective of ebizQ.

Posted by elizabeth in BPM • M&A | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)