By Chris Mellor
6th January 2009 18:10 GMT

Back in December 2007, a confident GlassHouse Technologies, sensing good prospects in its services and consulting area, filed for an IPO. In the spring of 2008, it entered a strategic partnership with Dell, made another acquisition - and then the recession happened.

The company has started firing people as it cuts costs and drives towards profitability in the words of Curtis Preston, one of the world's most influential bloggers about backup technologies and procedures. What is going on? GlassHouse Technologies was founded in 2001 by Mark Shirman and Richard Scannel to provide vendor-independent services and consulting. It has a storage heritage and has expanded into data protection, virtualisation, data centre services, and managed services.

Product sales were 44 per cent of revenue in 2004 but declined to almost zero in 2007, the company now being focussed entirely on services. It has grown through a sustained policy of acquiring focussed services companies with five bought by the end of 2006. Four more were bought in 2007, which collectively cost $30m in stock and cash: RapidApp of Chicago, Illinois, a server virtualization company; Data Center Moves International of London, UK, and its data centre services offerings; MBI Advanced Computer Systems Ltd of Israel; and Integrity Systems Inc of Israel.

The acquisitions bring in consulting staff and clients and also consulting and services intellectual property [IP], enabling the firm to grow faster than by hiring staff alone. The intended IPO, with a potential $100m target, was registered with the SEC in December 2007, but no prospectus was ever offered detailing the number of shares on offer and their price.

By Elizabeth Montalbano
January 6, 2009

Attendees of the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York Tuesday were reminded of the shortcomings of Windows Vista a day before Microsoft is expected to reveal the first beta for its follow-up, Windows 7.

Microsoft Investigative Consultant Michael Dunner asked attendees how many of them have used Vista as he gave a presentation on the security differences between that OS and Windows 7. When people in the audience raised their hands, Dunner then asked, "How many of you like it?" Only about half of those who acknowledged using Vista raised their hands.

Dunner also called Vista's User Account Control (UAC) feature "annoying" and one of its "biggest problems," to which one audience member responded, "Yes, it is annoying." Problems with UAC have been widely publicized and even spoofed by television commercials from competitor Apple. The feature was meant to improve the security of Vista by preventing users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a PC.

But because of how it was set up, it can prevent even authorized users from being able to access applications and features through a series of screen prompts that interrupt normal user workflow to ask for account privileges. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to unveil the Windows 7 beta during his keynote Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

By Nick Farrell
6 January 2009, 15:22

THE SPOT PRICE of DDR2 1Gb eTT chips has finally gone up after dropping down the loo for most of last year. According to DRAM Exchange the price has increased from the lowest 0.59 USD to recent 0.92 USD, a range of 56 per cent since mid December.

The price of DDR2 667 Mhz 1Gb chips also rallied from 0.58 USD to 0.78 USD with the range of 34 per cent. The reason for the sudden boom in prices is the fact that Taiwanese DRAM vendors slashed back on production and kept a large number of chips out of the shops. PSC cut back on capacity cut in September, Elpida, Promos, Nanya, and Inotera all followed, and managed to get the total worldwide production of DRAM down by about 20 per cent.

However all is not jam for the DRAM vendors. They still have those OEMS demanding ever cheaper products and the contract price has been sliding faster than a bucket of eels performing Torvell and Dean's greatest hits on ice. Most PC OEMs had already cut back on shipment targets downward and DRAM Exchange thinks it might be as grim as negative growth.

Bean counters think that more production cuts are likely. Taiwanese vendors such as PSC and Rexchip will delay their 50nm process schedule and only proceed with the 65nm switch to keep competitive. Nanya and Inotera will switch to Micron's stack technology, they may adopt the technology migrations with more steps such as taking 68nm first and later deciding the 50nm process depending on the market situation.

by Joe McKendrick
January 6th, 2009 @ 9:01 am

Say it isn’t so. Or, more aptly, say it isn’t SOA…. Anne Thomas Manes says that service oriented architecture — at least in the form we’ve known it — has finally hit the wall. It hasn’t been delivering ROI, and organizations need to move on to better and faster initiatives.

She says the current economic downturn has driven a stake through the heart of a methodology that was, in her opinion, already barely clinging to life. Anne posted the following “obituary” for service oriented architecture: “SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM, SaaS, Cloud Computing, and all other architectural approaches that depend on ’services.’”

I started this particular blog back in November of 2004, and have heard SOA declared dead over and over again through the ensuing years. (My favorite phrase — “SOA is DOA.”) Indeed, SOA has received more than its share of overblown hype, vendor over-promising and oversimplification, and market confusion. Are things any different now? Anne says companies have been fiddling with SOA for some time now, and to little or no avail. SOA “turned into a great failed experiment—at least for most organizations.

SOA was supposed to reduce costs and increase agility on a massive scale,” she explains. “Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits. After investing millions, IT systems are no better than before. In many organizations, things are worse: costs are higher, projects take longer, and systems are more fragile than ever.”

by Caroline McCarthy
January 6, 2009 9:54 AM PST

Social-media pioneer LiveJournal is the latest company to announce a round of layoffs, trimming down its employee head count in its San Francisco and Moscow offices. A statement from the company came after a rumor on gossip blog Gawker suggested that a shocking number of LiveJournal employees--20 out of 28--had been cut.

LiveJournal clarified that it was "about a dozen" cuts, amounting to about a fifth of the company. "LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers), legal, administration, and the customer service teams will remain in the United States," the release explained. "LiveJournal's global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office.

The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal." Yahoo veteran Matthew Berardo, who was hired as general manager of the service less than a year ago, was affected by the layoff. LiveJournal was founded nearly a decade ago by OpenID creator Brad Fitzpatrick, who sold the company to blog software firm Six Apart.

But that led to widespread reports of management difficulties, and late in 2007, Six Apart resold LiveJournal, phenomenally popular in Russia, to the Moscow-based software company SUP.

By Matthew Lasar
January 06, 2009 - 09:01AM CT

Comcast says that, as of December 31, it has turned over a new leaf, network management practices-wise. The new-and-hopefully-improved "protocol agnostic" system the company unveiled to the Federal Communications Commission in September is now in effect. "We have deployed the new technique throughout our network and turned off the P2P-specific technique everywhere in the network," Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice told Ars.

The company informed the FCC of the changes in a statement filed on Monday. "Comcast will continue to refine and optimize these congestion management practices to deliver the best possible broadband experience for our customers," company Vice President for Regulatory Affairs Kathryn A. Zachem promised the Commission. The announcement also discloses updated acceptable use rules for Comcast customers.

From A to B - Even before the FCC told Comcast to mend its network management practices, the company had pledged that it would take a different approach to the problem. As Ars has reported, a month after the FCC's Order sanctioning the company in August, Comcast outlined what and how the ISP would change. Its September 19 filing with the Commission described the old system in Appendix A, and the new one in Appendix B.

As Comcast put it, Plan B "will not manage congestion by focusing on the use of the specific protocols that place a disproportionate burden on network resources, or any other protocols." Instead, the emphasis will be on the traffic of consumers who "are using the most bandwidth at times when network congestion threatens to degrade subscribers' broadband experience and who are contributing disproportionately to such congestion at those points in time."

January 5, 2009

Las Vegas, Nevada - Sports icons, legendary musicians and television all-stars will come together at the 2009 International CES® to experience and promote the latest products and technologies in the consumer electronics industry. The 2009 International CES, the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow, runs January 8-11 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The celebrity appearances kick off on Wednesday, January 7, a day before the show floor officially opens, at the Billboard Digital Music Live! Conference Session in the LVCC, North Hall, N255. Soulja Boy Tell’Em has used the Internet to plot out one of the fastest rises to stardom in recent memory. Whether it’s recording disc tracks on YouTube or ranking in ringtone sales, Soulja Boy has his finger firmly placed on the pulse of today’s digital world. He will discuss his strategies with his manager and producer during his revealing presentation at 10:55 a.m. Then, at 3 p.m. Akon and Rio Caraeff will outline together how art meets commerce in the digital age.

NBC Universal will again be the Official Broadcast Partner of the International CES, broadcasting live from the show floor. They will be on hand with select NBC Universal broadcast and cable entities such as: The Today Show, the NBC Evening News with Brian Williams, Access Hollywood and CNBC’S Maria Bartiromo.

Sony Pictures Television (SPT) will also return to the 2009 International CES show floor, showcasing its wide variety of content across all platforms. In celebration of the 25th anniversary of Jeopardy!, SPT will film daily episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy! on a specially built set on the CES show floor. They will record 11 Jeopardy! episodes throughout CES, on a 16,000-square-foot stage that will become the new set for the game show, in front of an audience of 600. Dr. Oz, a frequent medical guest star on The Oprah Winfrey Show, will also appear in the SPT booth, promoting his new syndicated talk show.

By John Oates
6th January 2009 13:00 GMT

Logitech has withdrawn financial guidance for the year and will cut 15 per cent of staff. The French Swiss mouse firm said December sales had been bad all round, and it expected things to get worse in what it believes will be an extended downturn.

Gerald Quindlen, Logitech's president and CEO, said: “During the December quarter, the retail environment deteriorated significantly. We experienced varying degrees of weakness across all geographies and channels as our customers reduced inventory levels in the face of weaker consumer demand. "Moreover, we expect the economic environment to worsen in the coming months."

The company said it would detail how much the redundancies would cost when it announces its third quarter results on 20 January. It is acting to reduce other costs as well as cutting jobs. In October Logitech was predicting sales growth of six to eight per cent and a three to five per cent increase in operating income for fiscal 2009 ending March 31 - in the second quarter sales were $655m. The peripherals maker employs 7,000 people.

6 January 2009, 14:25

SANDISK HAS UNVEILED the next generation of Solid State Drives (SSDs) aimed at the phenomenally successful netbook market. Available in 8, 16, 32 and 64GB flavours, Sandisk's new pSSD drives feature SATA interfaces that allow them to be used as drop-in replacements for standard rotational HDDs.

According to Sandisk, the technology on which the Second Generation Modular SSDs is based uses a patented All Bit Line (ABL) architecture with advanced proprietary programming algorithms and multi-level data storage management schemes to yield MLC NAND flash memory chips that don't sacrifice performance or reliability. The new drives are currently being built in Japan by a partnership between Sandisk and Toshiba, and they should be out in the wild by February. No prices are available at time of writing, but Sandisk marketeers tell us that they will be 'aggressivley priced' whatever that means.

by David Morgenstern
January 5th, 2009 @ 5:42 pm

Behind the scenes at Macworld Expo, developers have mostly good things to say about OS X 10.6, called “Snow Leopard.” While details may emerge during Tuesday’s keynote presentation, the biggest question mark is the cost of the update.

One developer wondered about Snow Leopard’s marketing: “From a marketing point of view, if you call something ‘Leopard’ and the next version is ‘Snow Leopard,’ then that [latter version] has to be free. Maybe [Apple can charge] a slight bump, but not a $99 upgrade.” (All of the developers requested their discussion be without attribution.) Another developer agreed that Snow Leopard would be a “tough sell” as an update.

However, the cost question was important to developers’ plans and for customer support. “Will it be it free, or a $29 update? That answer will define on our end whether we can use any [new] APIs and how we will continue to support Leopard and Tiger.” A third developer at the table said that Apple’s framing of the Snow Leopard update may provide a clue.

Since 2001, Mac OS X has delivered more than a thousand innovative new features. With Snow Leopard, the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus. Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality.