06.07.11
Posted in Antitrust, Courtroom, Mail, Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites at 3:17 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Customers continue to replace GroupWise and Techrights wonders what Attachmate will do about the WordPerfect case
Attachmate, a Microsoft partner, has bought Novell while leaving Mono out in the cold and letting Microsoft take the patents. The thing is, Attachmate has hardly said anything about GroupWise. A tricky situation for sure as the product keeps bleeding. EAT is the latest large user to dump it. From the news: “The chain rolled out the cloud-based Apps productivity suite seven months ago to help meet its goal of doubling the size of its business. It replaced a 10-year-old Novell GroupWise system.”
There is more about it here and here:
The migration involved a move away from Novell Groupwise.
Cesar Ramanauskas, systems engineer at EAT, says in a blog post, “In preparation for our goal of doubling in size, EAT migrated to Google Apps for Business, after more than a decade of using Novell GroupWise.”
Inaction from Attachmate cannot help much, can it? But the elephants in the room are actually SUSE, the SCO case, and the Microsoft case. Will Attachmate dump the case against its partner, Microsoft? We are not sure what might happen with the antitrust case because Attachmate never mentions it and the Microsoft booster portrays it as just a “headache” when he argues:
But Microsoft’s antitrust problems aren’t ending just yet. Another old case involving WordPerfect, the once widely used word prcoessor, has been resurrected by a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling overturning a previous judgment in favor of Microsoft and allowing the case being pursued by Novell to proceed. Novell, now owned by Attachmate, owned WordPerfect for a couple of years in the mid-1990s before selling it to current owner Corel.
Some of us think that Microsoft toys around with Skype and Nvidia simply because of loose/lenient oversight. █
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04.13.11
Posted in Mail, Microsoft, Windows at 4:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Assorted security news about the “biggest name and email address heist in US history” and beyond
A few days ago we wrote about the Epsilon fiasco, which is said to have affected Marks and Spencer customers, probably owing to the Windows machines getting cracked (as they so often do). What we didn’t know at the time is that this was the “biggest name and email address heist in US history”. To quote The Inquirer:
BIG US BANKS JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and US Bank are just three of the companies affected by a massive data breach at online marketing firm Epsilon.
These are just a few of the companies that do business with Epsilon, which said in a statement that its clients “were exposed by an unauthorised entry into Epsilon’s email system”.
Epsilon is a firm that sends billions of emails ads each year to people who register their interest at its customers’ websites or give their email addresses when shopping. At the moment it is unclear how many people have been affected, but Reuters claimed “it could be one of the biggest such data breaches in US history”.
According to another article:
What’s being described as a “massive” security breach at email marketing firm Epsilon has compromised the customer names and emails of some of the largest companies in the US, including seven of Fortune’s top 10 institutions, reports SecurityWeek.
Epsilon reportedly sends out 40 billion emails each year for more than 2,500 clients. SecurityWeek reports that clients of Epsilon affected by the infiltration include: TiVo, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, Capital One, Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Citi, Brookstone, McKinsey & Co., New York & Co, Kroger and Walgreens.
It says that “Epsilon reportedly sends out 40 billion emails each year for more than 2,500 clients.” Well, earlier today a marketing (spamming) agency called 2ndimpression sent on behalf of Thornley Groves a bunch of marketing junk to clients, myself included. It did this (sent unwanted mail) without permission from the recipients, requiring non-existent usernames to unsubscribe from this endless mess. These firms deserve no sympathy. Some of them are borderline criminal, but they probably know the law well enough to manoeuvre around prosecution. To them, it’s risk analysis and reward. Microsoft Florian uses similar tactics to shower journalists with quotes to embed in articles.
In other news, universities keep getting cracked and Windows users receive malware from cracked sites. “The fake software is called the Windows Stability Center,” says the MSBBC, but they do not say that it’s only a problem for Windows users, they just say “PC” or “computer”. █
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02.21.11
Posted in Mail, Novell, Ron Hovsepian at 8:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Ron Hovsepian says there is a plan for BrainShare 2011, but judging by previous years, it could still be a dead duck (called off)
THE ANNUAL event that is all about GroupWise is not being advertised this year (at least not yet), despite the fact that GroupWise is mentioned in some new pages [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] (although as a very secondary item, as even in news about Novell mail the impression is given that GroupWise no longer has any impact). Even if the GWAVA event vanishes with Novell’s sale (it is currently planned to take place in Torrance), the man who ruined Novell wants to assure clients that BrainShare is not dead yet and there is also a press release about it (BrainShare 2011 was mentioned here recently). A couple of years ago BrainShare was called off after it had been announced and bookings were made; so there is no guarantees that BrainShare 2011 will ever materialise. Besides, why should anyone attend given that AttachMSFT is likely to trash some of Novell’s products? BrainShare 2010 is likely to have been the last ever, but we shall see… █
Update: Richard Bliss sent us the following information by mail:
I attempted to leave a comment on your latest blog concerning Novell and GWAVACon but the site didn’t accept comments.
You state that there isn’t any information about GWAVACon 2011 and suggest that it will be cancelled. GWAVACon 2011 was held January 22-26 in Torrance California with a near record attendance.
GWAVACon Europe is already receiving registration for the first week in October during Oktoberfest. You should join us.
GWAVACon 2012 has already been announced for January in Torrance again.
The one is doubt is Novell’s.
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02.06.11
Posted in Google, Mail, Microsoft, Novell at 4:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As the company prepares for the official passage of assets to AttachMSFT [sic], its customers go elsewhere on the face of it
NOVELL is all about proprietary software, except for few areas like SUSE. So the demise of those non-free/libre products (proprietary software) is never bad news, no matter who gains at Novell’s expense. The company called GroupLink was recently mentioned in relation to GroupWise and some other new press releases/articles that mentioned GroupWise were appearing in places (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]), still offering no signs at all that anybody new is embracing GroupWise. It makes no sense given Novell’s situation as a company. In fact, quite a few companies seem to be escaping GroupWise based on the news. Here is one new story about GroupWise being replaced by Microsoft:
Excel spreadsheets for customer relationship management were replaced by Salesforce.com Inc.’s hosted CRM product in less than a year. Novell Inc.’s GroupWise collaboration software was replaced by Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which was integrated with SharePoint collaboration software within a year.
Lakewood City government is also pulling the plug on Novell:
For example, the city recently switched over from a Novell computer network server to a Microsoft one.
And another example from the news:
A t the retreat, board members were briefed on an anti-bullying program and plans to switch the division’s computers from a Novell operating system to one produced by Microsoft. The transition will be finished this summer and cost about $2 million, officials said.
Novell’s loss is not always Microsoft’s gain. Sometimes it is Google’s gain as this article from a few days ago helps show:
Novell will probably be shut off for a few days after the switch, and Bonvillain said students will not be able to send e-mails from the account after this point. It may show that an e-mail has been sent, but it will likely never be received.
Novell is being stripped off in all sorts of places. As for the NOVL stock, which has little lifetime left, it is staying stable based on the most recent financial news [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The deterioration of Novell’s market may simply be in line with expectations, which are tellingly not high. █
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02.02.11
Posted in Mail, Microsoft, VMware at 1:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
It was so much easier when Microsoft PR just blamed an unnamed third party…
Summary: KIN Data Service is dead; Now that Microsoft blames not an unnamed party but actually accuses — along with its boosters — the ‘client state’ Yahoo!, there is rejection of accountability
Vista Phony 7 [sic] is supposed to cancel, erase, or annul all memories of the disastrous KIN, which has got to be one of the least successful products to ever come out of Microsoft. “Microsoft Kills Disastrous KIN Phone’s Data Service” based on this article which Girts has just mailed us. It says:
…the ill-fated KIN project was neither well received nor hot selling.
Microsoft’s major booster Rafael Rivera was spinning another mobile disaster for Microsoft. It’s that “phantom data” glitch which Microsoft tried to blame Yahoo! for. Well, guess what? As usual, Microsoft’s blame games are far from trivial:
Later on Tuesday, Yahoo issued another statement, this time shifting some of the blame to Microsoft. “Yahoo! Mail is widely available on tens of millions of mobile phones, including those running on Apple iOS, Android, Nokia Symbian, and RIM,” Yahoo said in a statement to CNET. “The issue on the Windows Phones is specific to how Microsoft chose to implement IMAP for Yahoo! Mail and does not impact Yahoo! Mail on these other mobile devices.”
Let us remember that Yahoo! is partly run by former Microsoft executives and VMware is the same although now there are changes at the top (which is already occupied by several Microsoft veterans):
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, VMware said that Maritz is no longer president of the company, but rather just the chief executive officer. And now he has four co-presidents reporting to him. Carl Eschenbach, who was previously VMware’s executive vice president of worldwide field operations, is now co-president of customer operations. Richard McAniff, who used to be executive vice president of products and chief development officer, is co-president of products and chief development officer. Tod Nielsen, who came to VMware after a long stint at Microsoft like Maritz, was VMware’s chief operating officer, and he’s now co-resident of applications platform. Mark Peek, who was chief financial officer, is co-president of business operations and chief financial officer.
There are some other Microsoft executives in VMware’s management. What’s interesting is that Yahoo! does not just sit back while Microsoft passes blame. Things just don’t go Microsoft’s way nowadays. █
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01.31.11
Posted in Deception, Mail, Marketing, Novell at 3:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Coverage about Novell rooted in Novell
Summary: Poor material from Google News and Novell’s role in generating it
Lies about Red Hat and others were spread recently by the Novell-funded Lighthouse Research. Even though this was mentioned and perhaps debunked before, some sites carry on publishing the press release [1, 2]. How much is Novell paying for this? One item that was also mentioned before is this press release about Asian games (this press release is masquerading as an ‘article’, so compare to the original press release). How pathetic of Novell and the so-called ‘press’…
Here is a new article (not redressed press release which says: “We first saw this with Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) several years ago. When Windows came along, developers stopped writing for Novell.”
Novell does not quite know what to do now. It works in many different areas but masters none of those.
Dipto Chakravarty, VP of Engineering at Novell, talks about “Log Management in the Cloud” which is just a Fog Computing buzzwords-filled term for monitoring. Novell is also trying IDM, but apart from this recent partnership with Verizon, there is no evidence that Novell has made a dent. To quote: “It seems Verizon is one of the leaders in thinking about ID management as a differentiator, already partnering with Novell, for instance, to offer Novell’s identity management and application access controls for use as an on-demand service supplied from the Verizon cloud.”
Novell’s IDM is advertised here in an article that says:
Cooley’s identity and e-mail infrastructure, based on Novell GroupWise and supported by Novell’s eDirectory service, had worked well for internally-hosted services, supporting 3,500 students and 500 faculty and staff, said Greg Colegrove, director of IT operations at the law school. The problem, he explained, was that “we just could not respond quickly enough to the things we were asked for” in areas such as smartphone integration and other items touching on collaboration and mobility.
[...]
The solution was Novell Identity Manager, an IDM (identity-management) tool formerly known as DirXML.
The whole article seems more like an advertisement, not a case of reporting. IDC, which is paid by Novell, has its “analyst” Brett Waldman write for Novell PR. How improper. Other PR people advertise Pulse/Vibe, which they put out there with a press release that’s conveniently parroted by shoddy Web sites that don’t do investigative work, they just repeat Novell’s own claims:
Novell cited that more than 9,500 customers have purchased or renewed its lean and cost effective collaboration solutions in 2010, thereby generating increased return on investment.
There is a lot of very shallow repetition of the press release without any doubts expressed or an investigation taking place [1, 2, 3]. This is the type of ‘journalism’ people are exposed to these days. A word-to-word comparison helps reveal that the news is written by the companies covered (or their PR agents).
Here is a bunch of coverage about GroupWise. Almost all of it is just press releases, sometimes with slight tweaks on those, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. CompanionLink is still flooding the news feeds with such press releases that mention GroupWise, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Here is the rewritten press release from tmcnet.com, which is a site mostly composed from such press releases that it pretends to be news articles. If Internet news has real reporting outnumbered by press releases (by a factor of about 1:3), what does it say about new/digital media? Here is an example of a real article which mentions GroupWise by stating: “Students and faculty at the school automatically have an email address made for them through Novell’s GroupWise system upon registration.”
ZenWorks was covered by IDG [1, 2], but it was hardly covered at all this January. Microsoft/SCO booster Rob Enderle says that Novell will “broken up and sold in part.” Well, this time for a change he got something right. Novell is extremely vulnerable right not and it’s not just due to vulnerabilities in its products. All Novell has got left is marketing spin. █
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01.16.11
Posted in Google, Mail, Microsoft, Novell at 2:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another university is dumping GroupWise and some large clients move to Google (also moving away from Outlook/Exchange)
THIS is today’s last post about Novell, which is also the last Microsoft patent sellout to vanish anyway (Linspire, Xandros, and Turbolinux are out of the scene already).
Novell failed to grow its presence in the GNU/Linux space by signing a deal with Microsoft. Novell also continues to see its old business fade away. While Google drops Wave, which Novell tried to capitalise on using Pulse/Vibe, there is this announcement about Vibe OnPrem. Novell is hoping to sell GroupWise (proprietary) using free/open source code from Google, just as IBM uses some IM toys to sell Lotus. According to this Bomgar PR, “Novell Implements Collaborative Remote Support from Bomgar” (has anyone heard of it?).
Novell’s inability to provide real value in the mail and collaboration space (hardly any new clients are reported) may help Microsoft gain globally although some clients move to Google: “SOU switched to Google Apps because it is free for higher education institutions. Officials say it will save the university thousands of dollars every year. It will save the university about $2,500-a-year in energy costs, $18,000 in three years to not replace servers, and $35,000 annually for dropping their current contract with Novell GroupWise.”
Novell is still advertising GroupWise 8, possibly the last-ever release of the product. Here is another rush towards Google — this time a move away from Microsoft:
It is understood that Flight Centre’s 6000-plus employees will transition from Microsoft Outlook over to Google’s web-based Gmail system.
The US government too moves to Google [1, 2] as its tools improve [1, 2] and more clients fall into its proprietary software trap. Here is the latest update that we found about the LA migration:
Google also needs to add other functions to the e-mail service, such as auto-generation of confirmation receipts, especially for messages about legal matters such as subpoenas, McCarthy said. Without that feature, some employees had to retain access to the older Novell GroupWise e-mail system, he said.
Apart from the above, GroupWise hardly got mentioned in December, except perhaps in the context of Blackberry, Lepide migration tools [1, 2, 3], and CompanionLink’s sync [1, 2] that supports Novell GroupWise and Linux too. Well, Android form of Linux anyway [1, 2, 3, 4].
Novell’s decline is said to be global and according to IDG (more here), despite the WordPerfect case, Novell continues to depend on Microsoft, which is paying it for services (and maybe more compensation in the future).
The department is currently using a mixture of Windows and Novell technologies.
Novell is also mentioned in the article “Cloud Identity Trends in 2011″, this one about Softline (“virtualisation and Novell technologies” noted), and another one about AttachMSFT. That second one says:
Softline AG said Wednesday that it has taken over the profitable Norwegian IT service provider STOVER AS, a renowned specialist in identity management, security, virtualisation and Novell technologies with its head office in Oslo and a branch in Elverum.
Identity Manager has new vulnerabilities. Novell’s proprietary software gets rusty while management staff flees. █
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01.14.11
Posted in Mail, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 1:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: SPAM volume doubles because of “compromised Windows machines”, which makes it by far the biggest problem
DEBATING HypeOS and Android security is a little misguided because in both operating systems, in order for threat to materialise, the user is typically required to actually install rogue applications. Trend Micro oughtn’t ignore the elephant in the room, which is also what its business seems to depend on. According to this report [via], SPAM has just doubled again because of “compromised Windows machines.”
Spam volumes have returned to normal following a holiday lull that saw a drastic reduction of junk mail.
The Rustock botnet is out of hibernation and back in business, spewing copious volumes of useless junk mail courtesy of hundreds of thousands of compromised Windows machines.
Rustock (which specialises in spamvertising unlicensed pharmaceutical websites) is the biggest single source of global spam. Its return on 10 January resulted in the doubling (98 per cent increase) of global junk mail volumes over the course of just 24 hours, MessageLabs reports.
Some believe that one in two Windows PCs is a zombie PC. That is some stunning number. █
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