December 2010 Archives

Demand for Windows 7 migration is so high that one service provider has had to build a special logistics hothouse to meet demand.
Application migration specialist Camwood built its state of the art logistics facility in Manchester as the surge of investment outside the capital has created a technology boom in the north. It chose Salford for its new facility, the Waters Edge location bringing it close to the new BBC HQ in that area. The BBC is at the vanguard of investment in the region, underpinning a boom in a previously run down area of Manchester that locals have dubbed 'Silicon Scally'. 
Camwood's move was a reaction to increasing market concern over the quality of off-shoring of application packaging and virtualisation. This has created renewed interest in high quality application engineering delivered on shore in the UK.
"Most customers insist on a UK facility now," said Camwood CEO Frank Foxall, "and they all demand the highest levels of security."
In a recent customer survey, all Camwood's customers asked for the flexibility of a local at off shore prices. "Contrary to popular belief, we found there were no significant savings to be made through offshoring, when you consider the impact on the quality of the finished applications."
The Manchester facility, which gives Camwood a better platform for selling in the north, is now fully functional one month after agreeing the location.
"This is great news for Salford and will create a number of high tech and high value roles," said Tim Newns, Deputy Chief Executive of Manchester's investment and development agency, MIDAS, "Camwood is an important new addition to Greater Manchester's well-established IT supply chain. It will be well served by the region's base of IT experts and local technology graduates."

Here's to Natalie Severino, the genius behind a new computer game that teaches users about security, without boring the pants off them.

You can win prizes too! 

You know how boring security people are? Constantly yammering away about their petty policies and urging you to waste your life on their stupid, unreadable door step sized handbooks.
You're never going to influence people like that, you fools!
Well, finally, a Titan has emerged from all these drones. Someone at Trend Micro has decided to use their wit and ingenuity to charm users into following them.
Well played Natalie Severino, Trend's consumer marketing guru, for the idea. Finally, someone in the security industry with a sense of humour.
 They've created a game that teaches you about security while you play. Titanium Power Up ia an online video game, with characters and challenges. And prizes too.
It's like Super Mario Brothers or Pitfall, only in this game the conflict and challenges are all security related. You have to battle with slow speeds, annoying pop ups and viruses and stuff. 
Better still, there are instant prizes to be won every day until December 31st.
You could win
A Toshiba - Qosmio Laptop / 18.4" Display / 6GB Memory / 500GB Hard Drive
A Bose - Companion 3 Series II Multimedia Speaker System (3-Piece)
A 27" Widescreen Flat-Panel LCD Monitor
Or One-year subscription for Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security

Keen historians will remember the story of the IBM executive who looked into the future and predicted that, one day, there would be as many as five mainframes in the world. One for each major city.

So it was with great excitement that we noticed a new set of predictions from the companies latest generation of visionaries. We were not disappointed.

Here's IBM's fifth annual "Next Five in Five," its view on five innovations that will change how people work, live and play over the next five years.

1. You'll Beam up your Friends in 3-D

With the rapid advancement in 3-D technology you'll soon be able to interact with your friends through 3-D holograms - in real time - from your phone. If the scriptwriters have not given you a name, be very careful. Nameless people always get killed on Star Trek, and I think this is where IBM got this prediction idea. 

2. Batteries will Breathe Air to Power our Devices

Batteries in electronic devices be smaller, lighter and last 10 times longer than they do today, says IBM. What about the air breathing bit? They don't say. 

3. Computers will help energise your city

Energy will be harnessed from computer heat then used to heat and cool buildings, says IBM's soothsayer division. This would be the same energy we pump into the data centre in the first place, to power the wretched thing.

4. You won't need to be a Scientist to Save the Planet

While you may not be a physicist, you are a walking sensor, and in five years, sensors in your phone, car, wallet and even your Tweets will collect data that give scientists a real-time picture of your environment. A whole class of "citizen scientists" will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research, says IBM.

A more likely outcome is that the technology will be used to bombard you with marketing messages,wherever you are. Even more personalised customer stalking. Great.  

5. Your commute will be personalised

Technology will take the guessing out of your travel plans, using predictive analytics with real-time travel route information to recommend better ways to get to your destination.
They've obviously never travelled on London Underground or South West Trains.

Well, good luck with that, IBM. Remember though. Technology has three phases of adoption. First it's used for porn. Then for oppressive marketing. Then it has a brief period of being a commodity, before they junk it and start a new cycle.  

Here's Garry Sidaway, who started as a software developer for the Euro Fighter and is now a security consultant with Integralis.

If the Euro Fighter doesn't work, we can blame Garry Sidaway. He told us that much over lunch recently. He developed low level code for the jets.

On a more serious note, Sidaway is anxious that we don't programme disastrous design flaws into virtualisation projects.

"Many organisations are trying to re-create their physical set up in their new virtual world, without ever stopping to think how they could redesign their infrastructure to be more efficient," says Sidaway.

Anti virus software is a case in point. There's absolutely no need to recreate the entire anti virus signature base for every virtual DT. It's bad enough that our PCs come grinding to a halt every time a virus scan has to reference a table of 50,000 known signatures. Imagine how mortifying it will be if our virtual resources were sucked into an even more ominous black.

And yet, that is eactly what many organisations will find themselves doing. Instead they could run virus checks much more efficiently in a re-engineered format. If they end up using virtualisation to exacerbate everything we have about IT security, that will damage the reputation of virtual technology. And of course, security.

And that would be even an more expensive waste than a Euro Fighter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Luke Adams, the new CRM practice director at dhc, a Microsoft Gold partner that's launching itself into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 201.
With a background in computer design, Luke Adams has been in this game for 20 odd years. Dhc is hoping Adams will bring a wide range of product and project experience. He's been involved everything from small business to massive enterprise installations for financial services, public sector, manufacturing, telecoms and media organisations.
Adams says dhc is helping companies to realise that CRM technology extend way beyond the contact centre. "It can have a positive impact on the performance of the entire end-to-end business process," says Adams.
Well good luck with that Luke! Many of us think CRM is about stalking customers with endless tea time phone calls generated by anonymous machines.
Director at dhc, Matt Garman adds: "Luke will be instrumental in developing our offering."
Adams was CRM Practice Director at Touchstone Group.

Here's Jeremy Harbour, a man who can't stop himself getting involved. You want to say to him: Leave it Jeremy, they're just not worth it!

Harbour has just launched a new trade association, The Business Recovery Forum (BRF), a not-for-profit association, built around an elite membership of experienced business turnaround specialists.

Calling in the BRF should not be a badge of shame! The BRF recognises that any well-established and efficiently run business can run into trouble.

When it does, the decline can be swift and painful. Many businesses fail every day and never realise their market potential. All because they had no access to the specialist expertise that could solve their problem. This is where the BRF comes in.

Harbour says the BRF can deliver one-to-one guidance and insight, in tandem with the skills and resources needed to get businesses back on track.

"When a BRF member agrees to help a business they are making a firm and lasting commitment," he says.

More importantly, they won't ask a business to pay upfront fees. Sometimes, the person who delivers the killer blow is the one who throws the life belt at you. 

Not this time, he promises. 

In a 20 year career, Harbour has started many businesses and has grown an organisation to 130 employees with £10m revenues. 

More recently he has also completed over 20 company acquisitions, mostly distressed, and many exits. His knowledge of insolvency and company law and gift for creative deal structures means he needs little or no funding and no bank leverage. 

Harbour has got his fingers in all kinds of sectors: health clubs, music schools, IT support, telecoms, training, business process outsourcing, cleaning, air conditioning & a cooking school. They should make a TV programme about him, not Alan Sugar! He's better looking too.

But hang on. Surely it takes more than refinancing to turn a business round. Or does it?
Does he do any coaching? Has your business been harboured?

Answers on the forum, below, please!

Here's a heartwarmng Xmas story about Cadburys chocolate, the UK subsidiary of Kraft.

Employees from Cadbury have somehow helped make dreams come true by bringing the Wishes Workshop to Westfield London.

As Britain battles mass obesity, The Wishes Workshop encourages welcomed families to dream up their 'perfect chocolatey treats'. Aided and abetted by Cadbury volunteers, the volunteers create a range of treats. Whatever money is raised at these workshops goes towards the corporation's donation to Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants special wishes for children suffering from life-threatening illness.

So volunteers raise money and Cadbury's puts its name on the cheque.

If that wasn't enough, Cadbury is also selling novelty Wishes milk chocolate stars, of which 10 per cent of the profits go to the charity. What happens to the other 90 per cent?

That is a really heartwarming story, and is likely to make people forget that parent company Kraft is saving millions by avoiding taxes (perfectly legally!) by relocating part of the Cadbury business to Switzerland.

Isn't globalisation, through agile enterprise technology systems, wonderful?

 

Frank Kenney, Ipswitch's VP of Global Strategy, says we're over reacting to the wikileaks security scares.

Okay we get it. WikiLeaks had the gumption to collect private cables sent to and from the United States State Department and actually publish them on a website accessible by anyone with Internet access.

But the United States State Department blaming USB thumb drives and/or WikiLeaks for their failure to properly mitigate the risks associated with sensitive communications between government officials and ambassadors is just ridiculous.

I remember shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks the country waged all-out war on white box vans and U-Haul trucks, because those might have been the means in which terrorists would conduct future attacks.

Creating an immediate policy that bans the use of USB thumb drives by United States government officials is not only overkill, but it also doesn't make sense and it won't work unless we also start banning iPhone's, blackberries, digital cameras, portable scanners, wristwatches, necklaces, belts, laptops, fax machines, e-mail and all the other ways that individuals are storing and moving information.

Here's an opportunity for our government to start to consider not just classifying data but generally making an effort to enforce policies around access and usage. Of the hundreds of thousands of tables that have been reportedly sent to Wikileaks, some news agencies are reporting over 3 million individuals have access.

Let's put that into perspective. If one of the world's largest financial institutions decided to give 3 million individuals access to Social Security numbers, bank accounts and credit card numbers that financial institution would be run out of business and subject to fines, penalties and the mundane congressional hearing. 

It just doesn't happen

Just like any company or institution that stores and shares data on its customers and/or constituents, the US government, specifically the US State Department needs to be held accountable for access control policies, the enforcement of those policies and visibility into both the access of and usage of sensitive information.

But clearly there is an issue of way too many ungoverned pipes connected to critical data stores and sources. Managed file transfer is certainly part of the answer. Consolidating all of those ungoverned pipes can help as well. A little content management and DLP may likely be valuable too. Or maybe just a good old reclassification and risk mitigation of sensitive data so that it isn't accessible by 3 million people.

Over the last 9 1/4 years we stopped a lot of white box vans but I've yet to see a security report or an intelligence report (provided by the news media, I am not one of the 3 million who have access to that type of information) that says we've significantly mitigated our risk of terror attacks because we don't allow white box vans.

Here's David Palmer-Stevens, who has headed off to the Middle East

DPS, as he's known to his friends, seems to be permanently abroad, in his capacity as SI manager for Panduit.

If you phone him for a quote about cleaning up the channel, he's in Vienna. Phone him the next day, to ask about bloodbaths in the channel, and he's in Croatia.

Today though, he's in Qatar. Why? "They are now planning the $132 billion that they'll need to spend before 2022."

He didn't waste any time did he?

More from this man soon.

Here's the Advent Vega, one of the many tablets which will be consumed this Xmas. Saucy little number isn't it? But what happens when everyone starts using these gadgets at work?

The Binatone HomeSurf 8 Touch Tablet with its exceptional viewing pleasure and stereos speakers is going to be a big seller this Xmas as it's only £180.
For the same price you can get an Android 2.1 too, such as the Disgo Tablet 6000. It's got Wi-Fi and Flash that make it a great tool for searching YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitter.

And a fantastic tool for undermining your company's security.
ViewSonic's new 10 incher with its whopping 16GB in storage and a gigabyte of memory will please a lot of people too. But not the security managers.
And let's not forget the flash enabled tablet the Advent Vega (£249.99) which has a Gigahertz of processing power. That's enough computing power to put a man on the moon! Its battery is so strong it can undermine your security for ten hours between charges!
We haven't seen this sort of threat to security since the PC became poularised. Speaking of which, Dell caters for 'on-the-go' entertainment (Dell's phrase) with a Streak, which is 5 inches of gorilla glass touchscreen giving you access to 100, 000 apps. The Samsung Galaxy is another device that will trouble the enterprise security manager too.
Mike Welbrock, Orange's head of data, says you can't crack down on people using these devices. He should know, if anyone. "It will be counter productive to stifle people at work. It helps if you send out automated reminders if they look like they are doing something inappropriate," he said. "you know the type of thing - are you sure you want to email that spreadsheet?" 
Nick Lowe, Check Point's head of sales, says security need to do more to communicate to staff about their responsibilities. "Secuirty is perceived as a blocking function. It should be seen an an enabler." 
David Ellis, Computerlinks' head of technology, says the consumerisation of technology is polarising the channel. "There are those who want to sell a black box and keep the whole issue of security a mystery. And there are those who concentrate on offering a service that caters for openness and workability," says Ellis. This new breed of security service provider is being created by the opportunities created by cloud computing.
"We're going to see a lot of consolidation in the security industry," says Bob Tarzey, principal analyst at Quocirca, "mobile management will be a key area." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's an artist's impression of what the end of the world could looklike, if cyber terrorists exploit the weaknesses of virtualisation

The world's IT infrastructure could be taken out by a three pronged attack on an insecure virtual framework, warns a new white paper by security experts ISACA.
"Virtualization: Benefits and Challenges" outlines how the forces of cyber evil could combine to attack a trio of weak points in virtualised environments. The paper predicts that three hacksmen of the apocalypse could attack the virtualisation structure, virtualisation features and exploit the lack of compliance and management.
In the doomsday scenario, hyperjacking and virtual machine (VM) jumping could be rife. Though hyperjacking is a theoretical attack scenario, it has earned significant attention because of the major damage that could be caused when the theoretical and virtual combine.
"When virtual meets theoretical, you'd better shut away your intangibles," said one terrified security manager.
In the nightmare to come even features like VM migration and virtual networking functions will not be safe. Meanwhile, plague and pestilence will rot away at the framework of compliance and management. The number and types of VM can easily get out of hand and we could witness VM sprawl. Dormant VMs will make it a challenge to get accurate results from vulnerability assessments, patching and auditing.
To combat these risks, ISACA called on security managers to harden their hypervisors, get physical with virtual segments and start using transport encryption - before it's too late.
 "Virtualisation has become a more common practice," said report author Ramsés Gallego. But they must consider the security risks and governance considerations.

Here's Tony Ballard, the digital law specialist at Harbottle & Lewis, tellig it like it is

A distorting tax regime will block competing operators and hand BT a monopoly on optical fibre, Tony Ballard, a digital media specialist at law firm Harbottle & Lewis, has warned.

Ballard fears the damage that a single monopolist could wreak on the fledgling broadband market in the UK.

The strategy document, Britain's Superfast Broadband Future, neutralises any good work - such as creating a regulatory and policy environment for the delivery of superfast broadband - by failing to deal with the tax distortion.

BT's business rates for optical fibre are calculated on the basis of its receipts and expenditure, while competitors are charged by the length of their fibres. This means BT pays so much less for new fibre that operators pay £750/km, while BT pays £19 per km.

"Smaller companies competing with BT carry an enormous handicap," says Ballard. With competitors priced out of providing, BT becomes the preferred bidder in a monopoly position. This cannot be healthy for a developing market.

The government's announcement seems to dismiss such concerns out of hand. It says that business rating of telecoms networks is a complex issue and often misunderstood by the industry and commentators.

"Actually, it is the government that has failed to understand that investment is unattractive if the playing field is tilted against you," argues Ballard. Funds will be invested elsewhere if the rules of the game are not even-handed.

 "The UK is the only country in the EU to tax optical fibre infrastructure," he says. 

An anonymous software company has created a security product that uses your voice as a biometric identifier.

The system could support the development of mobile and online commerce by preventing fraud. It has also broken new ground by creating the first world's first regulated mobile identity database. This will let any trader verify a customer's identity based on their unique biometric vocal pattern.

Unfortunately, the company has imposed reporting restrictions on both the name of the system and even its own name. The company sent out press releases peppered with Trade Mark™ and ® symbols, in order to prevent anyone using their name.

Some reporters were baffled by the process of putting out a press release while simultaneously demanding anonymity.

"They must be either stupid, conceited or possibly both," said one magazine editor.

"What a shocking waste of time," complained another.

Many reporters and editors said they were baffled why any company would want to put out publicity literature which contained ugly off putting symbols that made you want to stop reading.

"Just to round things off, those symbols imply that you can't name the companies either," complained another editor, "Brilliant. What were they thinking?"

Here's Robert Neave, who founded a company called nlyte to inform us all about IT footprints. (nlyte - enlight. Geddit?)

New research suggests that UK businesses blame consumers for Green IT ignorance, when most of them don't even know the environmental impact of their own data centre

Why is this announcement important? 
There is a lack of understanding of the carbon footprint of data which will cause businesses reputational damage in the form of government league tables, and hikes in costs if they don't learn how to measure, monitor and control their energy usage and corresponding carbon footprint in the data centre, he claims.

Everyone from the shareholder to the customer will be impacted if data centre costs rise from government levies and this is not taking into account the loss of business from reputational damage emanating from the public league tables, he argues. 

Businesses need a data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution to enable them to manage all their data centre assets, in real time, on a single visual interface to give them insight into energy usage, capacity and efficiency. With this information they can optimise resources and mitigate the risks of government legislation.

Managing data centre assets efficiently will prevent over provisioning and power outages, thereby benefitting bottom line profit, saving energy and minimising the chance of losing critical information, claims Neave

nlyte Software is a data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) modelling tool that enables measurement, and optimal usage of assets including cooling, space and power within the data centre.

What do they do?

 

US companies are expected to be the dominant purchasers of UK tech firms with Cloud related technologies expected to be the most attractive purchases - says a report

Deloitte's biannual survey of UK technology companies, launched today, reports that technology leaders are more optimistic about the outlook for M&A in the next year 12 months. Deloitte reports an increase in optimism from 53 per cent to 60 per cent in the last six month.

Interesting. Has Deloitte found a way to measure optimism? Surely that is a bigger announcement than merger and acquisition news.

The survey looks at technology M&A and capital market trends for 2010/11 and measures forward looking expectations.

Reality alert! When questioned by research companies, many interviewees offer the answers they think they're expected to give. Which means everyone says they're going to buy ATM or ASP services, but they never do.

So when the market reports from Durlacher (to use an example of a researcher that's gone out of business) predicts that The ASP Market is going to be worth £22 billion by the end of 2009, they end up being out by £22 billion. But nobody ever remembers old market predictions.

But woe betide any journalist who gets his facts wrong on the same scale!

Still, we're sure you all want to read Deloitte's predictions, so here they are:

Summary: Deloitte technology survey: the outlook for M&A continues to improve.

•         Optimism on M&A activity has improved and valuations are expected to increase
•         Companies providing cloud related technologies will command a premium
•         Increased auction competition will drive valuations
•         Increased private equity activity is expected to continue
•         The Government's ICT strategy is seen as creating new opportunities for nimble and innovative companies
•         US companies expected to remain the dominant purchasers of UK technology firms, with increased interest from India and China

Competitive auction market

There is an expectation that there will be a more competitive auction market, with increased private equity activity, particularly focused on companies serving SMEs. Only 26% of respondents thought distress driven deals were a driver of increased activity, compared to 40% six months ago. This suggests that the time for opportunistically picking up a target cheaply may have already passed.

Conor Cahill, technology corporate finance partner at Deloitte comments: "It is encouraging that M&A optimism has increased, even if some of the significant premiums paid on a number of well-publicised deals may lead to some prospective acquirers deciding to sit things out. Cash rich corporate acquirers continue to consolidate the market with an accelerated migration towards cloud related technologies."

Hot sectors where companies receive a premium valuation

UK technology leaders singled out four areas for premium valuations: virtualisation technologies, mobile applications, analytical/ diagnostic software and security software.

Conor Cahill adds: "Valuations are expected to increase in the next 12 months as auctions become more competitive. The favoured sectors that will attract a premium are those that support and embrace cloud based solutions, while diagnostic software is particularly important to understand changes in customer behaviour. Organisations will look to address the increased interest in cloud related technologies through their M&A strategy in order to accelerate capability in this area."

Overseas interest

The survey highlights the extent to which the UK technology M&A market will continue to be driven by overseas acquirers. UK technology leaders (90%) believe that US companies will remain the dominant overseas purchasers of UK technology companies. An increase in interest from Indian and Chinese companies is also anticipated in the next 12 months.

IPOs remain challenging

The outlook for UK technology IPOs continues to look challenging. Following a difficult 2010, few technology leaders believe that the next 12 months will prove a good time to float a UK technology company. In contrast to the positive results on M&A outlook and valuations, investor confidence for new listings remain fragile with particular sensitivity around pricing on new issues.

The balance of respondents anticipating an increase in investor appetite to support the flotation of UK technology companies dropped from 33% to 16%.

John Hammond, capital markets partner at Deloitte comments: "Well publicised details of eleventh hour valuation revisions and pulled flotations (across all sectors) have not been conducive to building management confidence in new listings. Nevertheless, a compelling growth strategy and good timing may allow some companies to buck this trend."

Finally, half of all respondents believe that the coalition Government's ICT strategy will have a positive impact on the UK technology industry.

While few of the major providers to Government will have welcomed the recent round of contract renegotiations, our respondents believe that the Government refocus may create opportunities. UK technology companies will need to be both nimble and innovative to capitalise on these.  

Security vendor ProofPoint, was due to make announcements about its Proofpoint Enterprise Protection and the Proofpoint Enterprise Privacy suites. 

Pretty uncontroversial, you might think. We're not allowed to tell you exactly what these announcements are, so we haven't. But we can tell you when they will be.

But no. Their PR people have just called and begged us not to mention that they're even making any statement.

More ominously still, they've postponed the big day of their earth shattering news.

Is everything alright at Proofpoint?

What are they so nervous about? How bad can it be?

We cannot wait for Wednesday. Hold onto your hats, it's going to be exciting.

Sometimes I think we'd be better off with the viruses.

Here's Jane Asher starring in John Osborne's iconic play, Look Back in Anger. Today, however, a very different John Osborne is equally passionate about a deal he's just signed with two top memory brands. (no pic of John Osborne available)

Computer 2000, the UK arm of Tech Data, now stocks memory products from Lexar Media so resellers, systems integrators and retailers can get access to Lexar and Crucial brands.

Lexar Media makes memory products for digital media and designs, manufactures and markets NAND flash and DRAM memory products under the Lexar and Crucial brands.

The agreement with Computer 2000 gives systems builders, retailers and integrators much better access to Lexar Media's range of DRAM memory upgrades, Solid State Drives (SSD), USB flash drives, and memory cards for cameras and mobile devices, says John Osborne, general manager of the PC components division at Computer 2000.

Sources say John Osborne is not an angry young man. "He's probably well pleased with this new memory deal," said one insider.    

Back by popular request, here's Gina our resident Problem Lady, to answer all your relationship questions

Dear Problem Lady:

My relationship has gone bad.

I'm a reseller working closely with the education sector. Boy, times are tough. Ms Brodie has suddenly gone all moody on me. She barely says a word and doesn't return my calls.

How can I make her love me? Is there a secret potion I can use to make her interested in me again?

Yours
Eddy Cation-Reseller

Dear Eddy,

These are difficult times for teachers. They need sensitivity. I don't think the teachers are any less enthusiastic about spending money. They're worried about their budgets. As ever, they want to be kitted out with something that draws admiring comments and doesn't make their bottom line look big.

Sadly, there is no magic love potion available. But Nuance does offer a heady concoction. The Nuance License Program for Education is one of the most seductive offerings on the market. 

It uses an irresistible combination of speech and imaging solutions that will have any teacher panting. Whisper any of these names to your clients and see what the reaction is: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11, Dragon Dictate for Mac, PaperPort, OmniPage and the Nuance PDF Converter. 

A trim bottom line is de rigeur in education circles this year. A Nuance PDF Enterprise - the most popular alternative to Adobe Acrobat - can be had for a bargain £3,495. Compare that to the £30,000 per year that a similar site license costs from a competitor.

If you can't trust the security companies, who can you trust?

Some security companies short-change customers by cutting short their anti-virus protection subscriptions without their customers knowing, we suspect. If only there was a report to back this up! 

Consumers have written to this column in their thousands, complaining that they suspect they are being misled over security.

It seems that those who upgrade their anti-virus protection through discounted offers from Symantec and AVG are in danger of being caught out. According to reports, discounted offers are sent via emails or appear as pop-up alerts on a user's PC, urging them to upgrade their existing anti-virus protection to a more powerful version - usually at a reduced price.

If someone signs up to the offer, the new subscription starts immediately and they can lose months off their existing anti-virus subscription.

Tomorrow, Which? Computing is to deliver a verdict on these allegations, the content of the report is currently under embargo.
Matt Bath, techology editor at Which? says good quality free security software is available, from sources like Microsoft Security Essentials and AVG Anti-Virus (free edition).
"[Some companies] are operating a confusing and arguably misleading anti-virus upgrade service," he says. "No one expects a discounted offer to cancel out the remaining time left on an existing subscription and we demand an end to this practice."

A full announcement is due tomorrow.

 

 

 

Scrooge-like Council CIOs will be visited by three ghosts this Xmas.

Here's your typical local council IT CIO, lying in bed at night, fretting about his budget.

This Xmas many tight fisted bosses could be visited by three ghosts. The ghost of reckless past, the ghost of reckless present and the spectre of jobless futures. 

But help is at hand. Derby City Council has found a great way to save money, without anyone getting hurt. They're making better use of their existing facilities by managing the allocation of rooms more efficiently, creating a hot desking culture and helping people work from home. They've created a better system of dealing with the clients - i.e. the general public - too.  

It was all the brainchild of consultancy BusinessSolve, which created a system (WorkSpace Manager) that was easy enough for end users to adopt for scheduling, changing their workspaces and managing resources.  

Now BusinessSolve is offering free trials of the system and looking for UK resellers who can demonstrate it and use it to offer services to private and public sector clients.

"This could cut operating costs dramatically," said one council officer. 

Perhaps in the drafty old council offices of Britain, the ghosts of recklessness past have finally been exorcised. 

Bernard Fenton, head of customer services at Derby City Council, thinks so. 

"We have selected the right scheduling system for our needs, as Workspace Manager is powerful, adaptable and agile," says Fenton.