- St George’s College Addlestone
NetSuite is available now, while SugarCRM will be “in the near future,” according to BT.
SugarCRM is an open-source CRM (customer relationship management) offering available in on-premise and hosted forms. NetSuite sells an on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite.
NetSuite has been available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa since 2002, but the BT deal represents the company's first “strategic partnership” geared toward driving business in that region, according to a spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, one observer focused on SugarCRM's role in the pact.
“It's deals like this that can really take open source software to the masses,” noted 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett, in a blog postTuesday.
Another 451 Group analyst, China Martens, said via e-mail Tuesday that the deal is “an important validation for SugarCRM as it builds up a presence in Europe. Given BT's operations elsewhere in the world, particularly Asia and Africa, we wonder how the relationship may be extended over time.”
“On the other hand, this is still SMB– SugarCRM's core market– and the company does nurse enterprise ambitions,” she added. “The relationship with BT will definitely help SugarCRM get more notice in the U.K., but probably not from enterprises.”
BT plans to build out a broader set of business applications, saying it is looking at products from other vendors and will make additional announcements soon. Martens said she expects the telecom to form a pact with Salesforce.
Another industry observer echoed Martens, calling the agreement “a major validation for both SugarCRM and Netsuite,” but also cited its significance for BT.
The telecom “is in a period of surprisingly agile innovation,” said James Governor, a UK-based analyst with Redmonk. “It's trying a lot of things out and being prepared to fast fail….. Could BT break out as the first real net-savvy telco? That is, the first telco of the 21st century? Its beginning to look like it.”
BT could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
But new statistics released by Microsoft would indicate that not all users are clamoring to uninstall adware programs, even if they're flagged as somewhat suspicious by security software.
Microsoft's latest security data is particularly interesting because of the sheer number of machines that the company can electronically survey with one of its free security programs, the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT).
The MSRT is a low-end security tool that removes some of the most common classes of malicious software. The MSRT, which is an optional installation, scans machines once a month, and reports its findings back to Microsoft.
The software is on an astounding number of PCs: 450 million worldwide, according to Tim Rains, group product manager for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, which handles security issues. Rains made his presentation Tuesday at the Infosec security show in London.
Microsoft released data on Tuesday collected by the MSRT from July through December of 2007. The tool detected 129.5 million pieces of “potentially unwanted software,” the term for programs that may have been intentionally installed by people but have certain suspicious functions in the eyes of security professionals.
Those programs can include advertising software and other dodgy security programs that claim a computer is in poor health, among others.
But Microsoft's data has a surprise: Of 129.5 million potentially unwanted programs detected by the MSRT, only 71.7 million were removed by users.
“Our customers choose to run some of this stuff,” Rains said. “Some of them get some value from it. Some of them don't realize what they are doing. Some of them do. That's why we call them potentially unwanted. Some of them are legitimate companies with legitimate products. We don't want to make any value judgements on that.”
But obviously, Microsoft and other security companies do that by flagging the programs in order to alert their users. The latest statistics reveal that some of the most persistent questionable programs on the Internet from the last few years still have huge numbers of users.
“The most prevalent rogue security software detected in the second half of 2007 was Win32/Winfixer, with more than five times as many detections as any other single family [of potentially unwanted programs],” said Microsoft's latest Internet Security Threat Report, released on Tuesday.
Winfixer
Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said his company had “good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we have in our outlook.” He added that steps are being taken to expand AT&T's networks and range of products “to drive continued growth in wireless, broadband and IP-based services.”
Wireless Data Up 57 Percent
The company attributed the good news to several areas. Wireless revenue rose 18.3 percent, and revenue from wireless data — including Internet access, messaging and media bundles — jumped 57 percent. Wireless-data revenues are now about 21 percent of AT&T's total wireless-service revenues. Customers sent more than 620 million multimedia messages and 44 billion text messages, more than twice the volume in the same quarter last year.
The key to the revenue growth in wireless, AT&T said, was strong subscriber gains and a continued improvement in the average monthly revenue per subscriber (ARPU). The company noted that it has had seven consecutive quarters of growth in wireless ARPU, measured year-over-year.
The net gain in wireless subscribers was 104,000, nearly nine percent more than in the same quarter a year ago. Total average monthly subscriber churn was only 1.7 percent.
'Never Been More Promising'
Broadband revenues rose 13.2 percent, with nearly half a million broadband connections added in the quarter for a total of 14.6 million.
The company's U-verse TV service added 148,000 customers, making a total of 380,000 as it heads toward its goal of a million subscribers by the end of this year. U-verse is AT&T's next-generation IP-based video service.
Total enterprise revenues were up a modest 1.2 percent and enterprise service revenues were up 2.1 percent. Enterprise service includes Internet Protocol-based data services, such as managed Internet services, hosting and virtual private networks.
Stephenson said the future has “never been more promising.” He pointed to the company's transaction with Aloha Partners for additional bandwidth, and AT&T's successful bids in the recently completed FCC spectrum auction for 700-MHz bandwidth. This new spectrum, he said, “will provide a terrific foundation for new wireless and integrated services” as it advances the company's potential for long-term growth.
“Creators have to enjoy freedom of expression but at the same time it's an industry that impacts society,” EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding told a news conference.
Worldwide revenues from videogaming are expected to reach 30 billion euros ($47.5 billion) within two years, of which the 27-nation EU will account for about one-third, Reding said.
Public concerns that videogames can cause aggressive behavior have been heightened by school shootings such as that in Finland last November, and have led to several countries banning games such as “Manhunt 2,” Reding added.
The EU executive has powers to propose legislation, but decided to give the sector two years to come up with a code of conduct that has wider industry backing than the current one. The industry is also being asked to spend more on advertising its symbols denoting the age suitability of games.
“When children go out to play today they enter the world of joysticks. We are not quite sure where they go and there is real anxiety from parents,” EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said.
The industry's age classification system — Pan European Games Information (PEGI) — is sponsored by more than 200 industry members and used in 20 of the 27 EU states. There is also an online version but with far fewer industry backers.
The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association (ELSPA), a videogame industry lobby, said the PEGI age rating system was robust.
“Importantly, it protects children as games move increasingly online and therefore should be adopted by UK regulators. We look forward to discussing this at the forthcoming UK consultation,” ELSPA's director general Paul Jackson said.
The European Commission wants PEGI's age symbols to become familiar to the public but it accepts there is no conclusive evidence that violent videogames influence children's behavior.
“We want to work in this environment on a precautionary principle,” Kuneva said.
Last year a U.S. federal judge struck down a 2005 California state law barring the sale of violent videogames to minors as unconstitutional, adding there was no evidence such games were any more harmful than some television shows and movies.
Scenes of bloody killings were scaled back to allow Manhunt 2 to go on sale to U.S. players aged 17 years and older.
Making a game for adults only is seen as uncommercial as hardware makers such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo do not allow such content on their machines, which are popular with children.
(Editing by Catherine Evans)
But new statistics released by Microsoft would indicate that not all users are clamoring to uninstall adware programs, even if they're flagged as somewhat suspicious by security software.
Microsoft's latest security data is particularly interesting because of the sheer number of machines that the company can electronically survey with one of its free security programs, the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT).
The MSRT is a low-end security tool that removes some of the most common classes of malicious software. The MSRT, which is an optional installation, scans machines once a month, and reports its findings back to Microsoft.
The software is on an astounding number of PCs: 450 million worldwide, according to Tim Rains, group product manager for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, which handles security issues. Rains made his presentation Tuesday at the Infosec security show in London.
Microsoft released data on Tuesday collected by the MSRT from July through December of 2007. The tool detected 129.5 million pieces of “potentially unwanted software,” the term for programs that may have been intentionally installed by people but have certain suspicious functions in the eyes of security professionals.
Those programs can include advertising software and other dodgy security programs that claim a computer is in poor health, among others.
But Microsoft's data has a surprise: Of 129.5 million potentially unwanted programs detected by the MSRT, only 71.7 million were removed by users.
“Our customers choose to run some of this stuff,” Rains said. “Some of them get some value from it. Some of them don't realize what they are doing. Some of them do. That's why we call them potentially unwanted. Some of them are legitimate companies with legitimate products. We don't want to make any value judgements on that.”
But obviously, Microsoft and other security companies do that by flagging the programs in order to alert their users. The latest statistics reveal that some of the most persistent questionable programs on the Internet from the last few years still have huge numbers of users.
“The most prevalent rogue security software detected in the second half of 2007 was Win32/Winfixer, with more than five times as many detections as any other single family [of potentially unwanted programs],” said Microsoft's latest Internet Security Threat Report, released on Tuesday.
Winfixer often ends up installed on machines by exploiting vulnerabilities in the operating system or browser. Once on the machine, it displays persistent warnings that the machine is infected, and the user can pay around US$39.95 to fix the machine. It is extremely difficult to remove from a machine once it has been installed. The people who profit from Winfixer have been hard to track down.
The MSRT found close to 3.4 million instances of Winfixer running on machines, up more than 100 percent from the first half of 2007, the last time the company published statistics.
Of the top five malicious programs detected, two were Trojan downloaders, or small programs that can download other malicious programs onto a machine, and three adware programs.
Two of those adware programs, HotBar and ZangoSearchAssistant, are produced by Zango, an adware company in Bellevue, Washington. Zango was ordered by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in November to give up $3 million in ill-gotten gains from its adware operations, which at times used deceptive means to get people to install the software.
Microsoft said it detected 7.1 million instances of HotBar, and 4.9 million instances of the ZangoSearchAssisant.
NetSuite is available now, while SugarCRM will be “in the near future,” according to BT.
SugarCRM
“Home” had originally been scheduled for launch in late 2007 but was delayed until early 2008. Now Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. plans to open up an early version of the virtual universe in the second half of 2008.
“We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today,” said the head of Sony's game unit, Kazuo Hirai.
The delay is another setback to Sony, which has much riding on the PS3 but faces fierce competition from Microsoft's XBox 360 and Nintendo's Wii.
Sony has said previously that the free service would allow PS3 users to set up an apartment for life-like virtual characters, or avatars, who can invite friends over, share pictures and videos, and play online games.
Users can personalise their virtual home with furniture, art and other items and chat through audio or video links.
The service is seen as a cross between social community website MySpace and Linden Lab's Second Life, which allows “residents” to build homes, create vehicles, nightclubs and stores, and to communicate with instant messaging.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that Sony was preparing to launch a separate online video service for the PS3 as soon as the US summer, quoting unnamed studio executives familiar with the plan.
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