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However, the proprietary OS does have its place within the enterprise. Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner described Solaris as ideal for big, fast servers that manipulate high-transactional, high-data processes requiring a high level of reliability and scalability "That'...

"You went with [Sun Microsystems'] Solaris for the OS, put Oracle on top of Solaris for the database, used EMC for storage, and Cisco for routers," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times Since then, this architecture formula has become outmoded for ...

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld that with new products such as Oracle's 10g, Sun's N1 offerings and similar work from IBM, the grid concept is "definitely catching on." While Gardner differentiated between the SETI@home and climate grid experiments ...

The Virginia Tech project comes less than a month after Los Alamos National Laboratory announced deals for Linux supercomputing clusters. The latest announcement highlights the departure from monolithic mainframe supercomputing to less expensive, grid-like configurations, Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld...

If you think of Linux' lifespan in human terms, with the average human being living to about age 80, Linux is the software equivalent of a 12-year-old, Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times, adding that SCO's lawsuit is an indication of the operating system's growing pains...

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld that SCO's code revelations are simply part of a public-relations campaign that mirrors the software company's legal campaign, which might take years to resolve Gardner said SCO is showing enough code to pique the int...

"This is much more complex and truly is a system rather than [just separate] applications," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld. "It raises the bar of competition. This is a triad of tools, platform and client that's virtually unrivaled in the industry."

The Los Alamos deal also highlights a supercomputing movement toward Linux in favor of more expensive, monolithic supercomputers that traditionally have dominated high-end computing, Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld. "The change in philosophy in sup...

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times that Microsoft's Internet Explorer giveaway marked one of the only times the company has taken such a step. Even then, he noted, the decision likely was made because IE was not generating any revenue With XP, t...

"It's certainly messy," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld. "It's down to the 'he said she said,' with a lot of big numbers being thrown around and very capable, high-profile lawyers involved." ...

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told TechNewsWorld that Sun's movement on Linux -- which earlier this week included integration of the open-source Gnome desktop interface in the latest Solaris update - still leaves the choice of open source versus Solaris to software vendors, developers and users...

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner said he views the move as an olive branch to the open-source community, which in the past has experienced Sun's "provincial stance" on interfaces "They've taken overdue steps to become a real partner to Linux and open source instead of ...

In addition, Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner said, Macromedia has made Flash the de facto standard development environment for adding rich media and animated media presentations to Web sites. "It's nearly ubiquitous on the client end, and its rich interaction is appe...

"[The executives at Microsoft] don't have a choice," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times. "If they discover a problem and don't issue a patch right away, and someone later finds out that they knew but didn't attempt to fix it, they could face serious liability issues."

In essence, the system's great flexibility may itself be a problem. "The documentation lays out best practices, but the reality is these things can be so complex it's almost like a system that can't be managed," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times. "And that's where vulnerabilities crop up." ...

Publisher 2003: A new design application for creating marketingcommunications FrontPage and InfoPath combine what Microsoft describes as "the world'sfirst" graphical XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations)editor. XSLT acts a bridge between an XML database on the back end anduser-input features on the front end. Hitting the Right Note Much of the analyst buzz surrounding Microsoft Office System is focused onOneNote. Though it might seem like a small add-on, rather like Notepad isattached to Windows, this program points to a new paradigm of front-endcomputing. "OneNote has been developed to address tablet computing," Rob Enderle,research fellow at Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times. "It fits thetablet metaphor and enables users to categorize, search for and find theirthoughts better than with pen and paper." Unchanging Market Share Meanwhile, although Sun's announcement coincided with Microsoft's, Yankee Group senior analyst Laura DiDio said Microsoft's key competitor is not StarOffice. "StarOffice will have appeal for the SOHO [small office and home office] market, but the overall market share won't change appreciably," she told the E-Commerce Times. Microsoft's marketshare of the office productivity field is at least 90 percent. "Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself," DiDio added. "With the economicdownturn and the quality of Microsoft's earlier products, the challenge willbe to get customers, even those who would absolutely love to migrate, up andrunning. Customers simply might not have the cash." DiDio predicted a 15 to 20 percent adoption rate during the first year, andshe emphasized that the fate of Windows Server 2003 will play a part in Office System's penetration curve. Enterprises still using Windows NT 4 on the back endmight see Server 2003 as a compelling upgrade opportunity, and they could scoopup Office System at the same time to realize the full potential of a more unified system. New Paradigms While the commercial fate of Office System remains to be determined, thereis universal agreement that Microsoft is aiming high with this product. "This is a pretty important and substantial release," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times, "because it really changes the file structure and the ability of files to be shared. Given the wide adoption of XML in this product, Microsoft has given its software developers the opportunity to use Office applications as front ends in a way they didn't have access to before." Giga's Enderle noted that Office System is the first version of Office thathas gone through the advanced security testing adopted by Microsoft nearlytwo years ago. "Substantial work has been done on Outlook," he said. "It is more reliable and less susceptible to network problems." Backward Compatibility However, though network integration and streamlined information flow are positive developments, a question of compatibility exists. Microsoft is including server elements in its Office System beta 2 distribution -- but those elements will not be included in the final product, and enterprises will have to purchase them separately if they want a full upgrade of the front and back ends. Microsoft Office System is backwardcompatible with previous servers, however. "The server upgrades are required to achieve the system's full potential,but [Office System] is, by itself, a vastly improved product," Enderle noted.

"All of these vendors are fighting mightily in this market right now. There's no runaway leader," Aberdeen Group research director Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times. "It's rapidly changing and consolidating. And as a customer, you can get some attractive deals because [the portal companies] are all fighting over market share."

Aberdeen Group research director Dana Gardner concurred, invoking a Spy-vs.-Spy scenario in which Microsoft battles hackers, staying barely a step ahead. He also told the E-Commerce Times that Outlook-related security issues have not been as severe lately as in the past And wi...