Industry News

EnerNOC, one of the best-known demand-response companies in the field, has been gobbling up competing and complementary companies to expand its reach, hoping to bring down the costs of its programs enough to cater to smaller businesses. Now it has acquired Boulder, Colo.-based SmallFoot to do just that.

EnerNOC is one of several companies, including CPower and Comverge, that redistributes energy loads on electrical grids when peak demand is climbing dangerously high. Brownouts and outages occur when demand exceeds supply, leading to millions in maintenance costs for utilities, and lost revenue for their commercial customers. Not only does EnerNOC prevent this from happening, it also gives utilities financial kickbacks for reducing their energy consumption during peak periods.

Before the deal, SmallFoot was tackling a very small part of this process. It makes wireless communication systems that sense when demand is getting too high and automates reductions in energy to maintain grid health for small businesses.

Focusing primarily on big-box retailers and major corporate interests, EnerNOC hasn’t had that much success with small businesses. They make up about 25 percent of its client base, even though 90 percent of all businesses are categorized as small. The purchase of SmallFoot provides an inroad into that portion of the market. It will bring new clients into EnerNOC’s fold as well as the technology to run demand-response programs on a smaller, less expensive scale.

SmallFoot is EnerNOC’s third acquisition in the last year. In 2009, it bought enterprise carbon management software maker eQuilibrium Solutions as well as building-efficiency monitoring company Cogent Energy for $3 million in stock. The financial terms of the recent deal haven’t been disclosed.

This is the second big announcement out of EnerNOC in as many weeks. It also recently landed a big deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to provide demand-response services to the utility’s commercial and institutional customers. PG&E will also use the data gathered by EnerNOC’s system to get a better sense of how its customers use energy — and how they waste it.

These commercial and institutional customers will have to opt in to the demand-response programs; they aren’t being deployed automatically. In exchange, these companies will save money they would otherwise have spent on expensive peak power and will receive energy use analytics and reporting software free for one year.

Tags: demand response

Companies: Enernoc, SmallFoot

They're not mini-laptops. Tablets are handheld devices with touch screens ranging in size from five to 10 inches. Also called "slates" by PC makers, they include touch interfaces that allow users to surf the Web, play games, view movies and read e-books. One celebrated example is Apple's iPad, which was announced in January and goes on sale this month. Makers expected to start shipping devices later this year include Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

They fill a gap. The rapid growth of mobile Internet and touch screens has created a new class of computing devices for consumers, says Phil McKinney, Hewlett-Packard's CTO. Tablets enable mobile access to online content like newspapers, movies and games. Apple CEO Steve Jobs surfed the Internet and watched a movie on the iPad while sitting on a couch at that tablet's unveiling. He said the iPad is meant to fill the void between the iPhone and the MacBook laptop.

They're Best for fun. Tablets have drawbacks compared to laptops (no keyboard, limited software support), but they work well as entertainment devices and e-book readers. Tablet users need to hang up their PC reliance, says Vira Chen, assistant product manager at Micro-Star International, a Taiwan-based PC maker. A lot of trial and error goes into perfecting these devices, and the most innovative company will win, Chen says.

They Travel Well. The device is mostly for casual use, but tablets could find some business uses. David Milman, CEO of computer repair firm Rescuecom, says that tablets could replace laptops for presentations and working on planes. "Certainly getting through security would be easier with an iPad than with a 4-pound laptop and all of its accessories," Milman says. But tablets could break if subjected to rigorous use, so they need to be designed to be more rugged.

Business uses are limited. Analysts say tablets will suit niche markets, like workers recording field data. But there are obstacles too, says Steve Rausch, director of information services at Gibson General Hospital in Princeton, Ind. "I know our doctors would love the iPad if it could run our software. It's light, comfortable, and something they're used to since they have iPhones," he says. Right now the iPad only runs applications from Apple's App Store.

Read more about technology topics in CIO's Technology Topics Drilldown.

Comedian Al Franken is now the freshman U.S. Senator from Minnesota, but there are still millions of Saturday Night Live fans who recall his Stuart Smalley character sitting in front of a mirror for his Daily Affirmation. ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!")

In his gentle satire of self-help practices, Stuart was actually doing something I wish more CIOs would consider: He was changing the conversation with himself. He was shifting his story into a more positive mind-set.

I recently heard Johnson & Johnson CIO LaVerne Council make a similar point about the story IT tells and how it must change. "It's so hard not to be defensive in IT," this charismatic CIO told hundreds of fellow executives at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders conference. (Computerworld is a sister publication of CIO.) She noted how negative and self-defeating IT's self-image has become. "We should speak highly of what we do," she said. "In changing how the business thinks of IT, we change how we think of ourselves."

In the past four years, this change-oriented CIO has recharged and reunited a sprawling global IT staff of 4,000 at the $62 billion healthcare products giant. She can back up her story about a now-thriving IT-business collaboration with financial results that show that J&J's IT organization will generate $350 million in business reinvestment dollars this year alone.

In nearly every industry, there is potential to change the IT story and drop that tired struggle for alignment (IT's Scarlet A). The new story should be all about accelerating business by leveraging IT for competitive advantage.changes made for so copy would fit

To see one such story, look to Senior Editor Kim S. Nash's piece about Nasdaq OMX and its CIO, Anna Ewing ("Pressure Cooker," Page 29). The world's biggest financial exchange may be just the place to watch the development of the future CIO: "An executive who can manage the relentless pressure to perfect IT operations," as Nash writes, "and who also has a killer instinct for making money."

As the exchange builds its global business, selling software and IT services to other financial organizations, Ewing has to make technology a source of real profits. She has to think like a CEO would about customers, costs and making money. She sees herself and her organization as full partners in growing Nasdaq OMX's business units.

Earning a seat at the table? That's the old story. For CIOs who are good enough, smart enough-and, doggone it, likeable, too-there's a better story to tell.

Read more about technology topics in CIO's Technology Topics Drilldown.

U.S. lawmakers plan to start implementing parts of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's new national broadband plan soon by introducing legislation to pay for a nationwide wireless broadband network for public safety agencies, one lawmaker said Thursday.

Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he will introduce legislation that would implement the FCC's recommendations for a nationwide wireless broadband network for public safety agencies such as police and fire departments. Waxman has already asked his staff to begin drafting the legislation although the broadband plan has been out for just nine days, he said during a subcommittee hearing.

"Significant funding" will be necessary for the nationwide network, and the committee will need support from both Democrats and Republicans to move forward, Waxman said.

The broadband plan recommends that Congress allocate US$12 billion to $16 billion over the next 10 years to build and maintain a nationwide network, although some people in the wireless industry have suggested those estimates are too low.

Waxman noted that there's a "strong disagreement" about what to do with the so-called D block of the 700MHz spectrum that was originally envisioned by the FCC for shared commercial/public safety service. Several public safety groups have asked the FCC to turn over the D block to them after it failed to sell in an auction that ended in early 2008.

But Congress and the FCC can keep the costs of building a nationwide public safety network down by moving quickly and funding it at the same time mobile carriers are rolling out 4G networks, said Julius Genachowski, the FCC's chairman. "To move forward on this now, while commercial 4G networks are being built out, is the least expensive way to make sure that we build a public safety network," he said. "If we wait, the price will only go up."

Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat and chairman of the committee's technology and Internet subcommittee, told FCC members that he supports the broadband plan's proposal asking Congress to pay for the public safety network. Boucher suggested that the FCC auction off the so-called D block of the 700MHz spectrum, freed up when television stations moved to all-digital broadcasts last June, and use the money to help fund equipment and expenses for the nationwide network.

The broadband plan's proposal to sell off the D block is "on the right track," Boucher said.

"It's essential that when they converge from different localities upon the scene of a disaster, that fire, police and rescue be able to communicate one with the other," Boucher said. "We're 10 years beyond 9/11, and that capability does not exist on a nationwide basis."

Public safety officials and U.S. lawmakers have been calling for a nationwide mobile broadband network since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., during which the multiple public safety agencies responding to the attacks couldn't communicate with each other.

Congress, in late 2005, passed legislation requiring U.S. TV stations to move to all-digital broadcasts and abandon analog spectrum between channels 52 and 69. Much of the cleared spectrum, in the 700MHz band, was sold in auctions that ended in March 2008, but the D block failed to sell.

Boucher, however, questioned recommendations in the broadband plan that would require the winner of the D block and other portions of the 700MHz spectrum to share their spectrum with public safety agencies when it's needed.

The goal wouldn't be to put "onerous" conditions on spectrum holders but to allow a nationwide network to finally be put in place, Genachowski said.

Which IT projects placed on the backburner will get the go-ahead from CIOs as the economy recovers? Software and hardware upgrades are most likely, followed by virtualization, Web site design, internal collaboration, cloud computing and social media, says RHI

IT departments may soon get the green light on previously delayed software or hardware upgrades, according to a recent survey by IT staffing and recruitment firm Robert Half Technology, a division of Robert Half International Co.

The survey, based on interviews with 270 CIOs across Canada at companies with 100 or more employees, asked executives which IT projects placed on hold in 2009 due to economic restraints they are planning to implement post-recession. Allowed to give multiple responses, CIOs were provided with seven answers to choose from.

The most popular category was software or hardware upgrades, with 30 per cent of CIOs indicating plans to implement these types of projects. Virtualization followed at 16 per cent, and Web site design ranked third at 11 per cent.

Internal collaboration tools took the fourth slot at seven per cent. Cloud computing and company-branded social media sites tied for fifth with five per cent each. The "other" category was selected by one per cent of the CIOs surveyed.

The resurgence of postponed IT projects signals good news for out-of-work IT professionals, according to Igor Abramovitch, director of technology services at Robert Half Technology in Toronto. "As IT projects get back to the forefront from the backburner, that means that budgets are slowly coming back and that also means that staffing levels hopefully will have to rise as well," he said.

Abramovitch said upcoming software and hardware upgrades will likely affect IT departments in terms of technical support, network infrastructure and software application support. Business analyst and project manager positions may also be affected in terms of managing the implementations and upgrades, he said.

"As individual companies come out of what they consider a recessionary period and start demonstrating continued revenue and improved profitability, some of the pressure on some companies is going to reduce and you are going to see some restoration of employment," said Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd.

But a large upswing in hiring is unlikely, according to Woyzbun. "We are in a situation where organizations have really optimized the use of their existing staffing, so we would be actually very surprised if these initiatives that are re-awakened create any significant amount of additional employment," he said.

Woyzbun said it's not surprising that CIOs are bringing software and hardware upgrades back to the table. "One of the easiest ways for companies to cut back on their expenses was in fact on some of the capital projects, so they would defer upgrading their servers or their storage if they were under financial duress ... they still at some point are going to have to upgrade," he said.

More interesting is that the three lower-level items on the list -- collaboration tools, cloud computing, and social media -- are the ones that are getting a lot of hype and publicity, he said.

"The fact that they don't even hit the radar here is indicative that some of the newer technologies really aren't all that exciting to CIOs as they move into 2010. It's kind of the tried-and-true stuff that is probably more important," he said.

But Abramovitch said he wasn't surprised that cloud computing and social media ranked in the bottom half of the list. "A lot of companies are starting to get their feet wet in that area, but in this survey we are talking about shelved projects from 2009 ... cloud computing and social media, I think, definitely would be on the radar for late 2010 and 2011," he said.

Info-Tech is starting to see significant interest in re-thinking the data centre (either moving to a more efficient location or contracting out through a co-location) and basic legacy applications like ERP, said Woyzbun. "I'm not suggesting necessarily that there is going to be immediate expenditure ... but those are two areas where we are starting to see some discussion," he said.

A separate report recently released by Robert Half, the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index, found that 50 per cent of 270 Canadian CIOs surveyed are confident their companies will invest in IT projects (new and postponed) in the second quarter of 2010.

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What, exactly, is the difference between e-discovery laws in Canada and the U.S.? Two lawyers highlight the basics for those of us who don't work in the legal department.

E-discovery has been a hot topic ever since changes made to the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure broadened the scope of electronic evidence back in 2006.

But Canadian IT departments shouldn't lose sleep over e-discovery nightmares taking place in the U.S., according to one lawyer with experience practising on both sides of the border.

"The sky is not falling, No. 1," said Stephen Maddex, associate in the Commercial Litigation Group at Lang Michener LLP in Ottawa, who is a member of the bar in Ontario and Texas.

"No. 2, organization is key," he said. "The more businesses do get organized, the simpler it all becomes."

Broadly speaking, there are two major differences between general Canadian practice and the U.S. federal rules, said Maddex.

One is the scope of discovery. "In the U.S., you can ask for pretty much anything, which is why e-mail has become such an important problem there," he said. But Canadians "don't have that same problem because the scope is narrower."

For example, in the U.S., a company may be asked to file through its entire database and produce everything it has, which could be billions of e-mail messages, he said. "The cost to go through that and figure out what you need and what you don't need to provide is extremely expensive," he said.

Second is the duty to disclose. "In the U.S., parties have the right to compel the other side to produce whatever they ask for, whereas here in Canada, by and large, litigants have an affirmative duty to search their own records for themselves and produce what they think is relevant," he said.

Canadian businesses and individuals are required to keep certain records, but this is governed by specific legal requirements like tax laws, he said. "Other than that, you have no real obligation to keep anything," he said.

A dispute between Air Canada and WestJet Airlines back in 2006 was described as the largest case of corporate espionage in Canadian history, said Maddex. Thousands of e-mail messages were exchanged, but that "would be like afternoon tea" in the States, he said.

The difference between e-discovery laws in Canada and the U.S. is "kind of like the difference between Canadian English and British English," said Maddex. "The rules are so totally different that it is often not fully appreciated here."

Thomas Sutton, a litigation partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Toronto, takes a different spin. "I always see the fact that the onus is on the parties themselves ... makes it harder," he said.

"In Ontario, parties have an obligation to disclose all documents that are relevant to issues in the action without being asked by the other side. My understanding (of the U.S. federal rules) is that the opposing parties often make a document request and then you produce in response to those requests," he said.

E-discovery laws in Canada and the U.S. "are fundamentally the same," said Sutton. "The same principles apply, but they have to take into account the slight variances in our procedure."

"I'm an advocate of, wherever possible, speak to counsel early and find out what they want rather than guess what they want; whereas if you just base it on what is relevant to the action, you could be searching and searching for things and producing things that you think are relevant that the other side doesn't even care about," he said.

The Sedona Canada Principles Addressing Electronic Discovery, developed by the Sedona Canada Working Group, are a good starting point for IT managers seeking a basic understanding of e-discovery laws, said Sutton.

The principles were developed in Canada in part to build upon the lessons learned in the United States, he said. "It was clear there was a growing need for comparable principals here in Canada," he said.

"They needed to be adjusted to take into account the unique aspects of Canadian litigation and more specifically, the unique aspects of Quebec litigation," he said.

The Sedona Canada Principles aren't laws per se, "but that can happen," said Sutton. What the courts often do is make reference to these principles when making decisions in relation to the preservation, production or use of electronic evidence in the hearings, he said.

Once the court makes reference to it, they give it "judicial blessing," he said. "It becomes law in the sense that a judge has relied upon them and decided them as authoritative and therefore to be considered and referred to," he said.

Recent amendments made to the Rules of Civil procedure in Ontario in January 2010 did incorporate one of the principles, said Sutton. "That's a first in Canada and that's an important development," he said.

So in a sense, the principles are something that Ontario, counsel and the court must take into consideration when faced with electronic evidence issues, he said. "They have narrowed the scope of disclosure and introduced this idea of a discovery plan, which is the Sedona Principle of meet and confer," he said.

"The rule amendments are meant to encourage parties to talk up front so that you can manage electronic evidence," said Sutton.

Theoretically, before the parties even start to look for electronic evidence, counsel is encouraged to sit down and answer questions such as what they are looking for, what they need, in what format, and what database platform will be used, he said.

Many new amendments that have come into effect in Ontario and British Columbia look to U.S. authorities and think they can generally apply here, but "they really can't, because it is so completely different," said Maddex.

"I think there is a general perception in Ontario that Ontario has become similar to the U.S., but it hasn't," he said.

Still, e-discovery is a developing area of law, most of the guidance available comes from the States, and Canadian lawyers and judges thinking about the topic are looking at U.S. precedents, he said.

"U.S. authorities aren't relevant except that people here who are in positions of authority believe they are ... so in a way, you do have to understand U.S. precedents to be knowledgeable, because it is on the table, but it is being misused," he said.

What the U.S. federal rules changed wasn't necessarily what people were responsible for demonstrating, but that IT had to get involved as part of the discovery process, said George Goodall, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd.

You can "squirm around various element of legality," but the legal issue for IT is relatively similar in Canada the U.S., said Goodall. "At the end of the day, if there is evidence that needs to be produced and you have access to it and you don't produce it, that is contempt," he said.

While Canadian IT departments don't have as much experience with e-discovery, they do have good tools to choose from because of what has happened in the U.S., said Dave Pearson, senior research analyst at IDC Canada.

"Canada isn't as tight in terms of compliance and e-discovery as the U.S. is, but it is certainly something that is slowly building in Canada," he said.

E-discovery lawsuits have been heating up in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, said Patrick Eitenbichler, director of worldwide product marketing, information management, software at Hewlett-Packard Co.

But "any company that does business with an organization in the U.S. will fall under the same e-discovery regulations, and since there is a lot of trade between Canada and the U.S., e-discovery is important for Canadian companies as well," he said.

The key is to set a policy and then follow it, said Eitenbichler.

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Minister Heather Klimchuk of Service Alberta explains what the contract means for government and public service employees. The goal to provide centralized IT desktop management services to all 24 ministries across the province.

Edmonton-based IT services provider Acrodex Inc. has landed a seven-year contract valued at over $70 million with the Government of Alberta to provide centralized desktop management services for public service employees at all 24 ministries across the province.

The contract is aligned with Alberta's "one government" approach (also referred to as the "one enterprise" approach) mandated by Premier Ed Stelmach when he took office in 2007 and spearheaded by Heather Klimchuk, Minister of Service Alberta.

Part of this particular contract deals with all of the IT support for desktop computers across the government, said Klimchuk. This is "a win for government" and "a win for employees too," she said. "It's a really efficient way of doing business."

"There are 24 government ministries, so with Service Alberta being responsible for the IT within government and supporting other departments, it is really important that we have a consistent approach, that people know what is expected and that all the departments are on the same playing field," she said.

It's also about "communicating better between departments, because of the cross-ministry initiatives that we are all involved in," Klimchuk said.

Previously, the ministries arranged their own technology support by hiring staff or contract services, she said. "I guess you could say it was a bit of a piecemeal approach," she said.

"It's going to reduce complexity, duplication, and also reduce the varied standards that are in some departments, so it means that everyone is on the same page and it's a level playing field for all, which means again, that employees will be able to do their work easier," she said.

"Being the Minister responsible for procurement, it's really important to me that doing business with government we have a very open and transparent process when projects are tendered and it's about getting the best value for the taxpayer's dollar," said Klimchuk.

Roughly two-thirds of Alberta's ministries are ready to transition to the new architecture, but the goal is to have all 24 on board, said Cameron Traynor, communications director for Service Alberta.

The statement of work that came with the agreement is broken into 20 high-level categories, said John Abrahamson, senior partnership executive at Acrodex. Roughly 2,000 activities and responsibilities are outlined between Acrodex and the government in terms of who does what, he said.

Acrodex has two main roles: centralized services (desktop management) and distributed services (worksite management). "The more interesting work for us is the centralized services, and in that one of the fundamental things is image management," said Abrahamson, who is overseeing the Service Alberta account.

Another part of the agreement is transformation services, he said. "We will look at different aspects of improvement in a couple of ways -- improvement to their technology environment and improvement to our service," he said.

Acrodex has proposed the government look at thin-client architecture, a utility computing model and moving to a structured replacement program, said Abrahamson. "They've declared they are going to look at product standardization, both on hardware and software," he said.

"We are rolling out to the ministries as they come on board to the Service Alberta program," said Doug Johnson, manager of marketing and communications at Acrodex.

Step 1 is standardizing the ministrieson the Service Alberta architecture. In Step 2, "we pick them up once they are in that standardized environment," said Abrahamson.

The centralized services went live in February and the distributed services will start in April, May and June.

Roughly 50 Acrodex employees have been dedicated to the Service Alberta account, which "will grow over time as the other half of the ministries come on," said Abrahamson.

Acrodex's experience is largely with the private sector, but the company did have a contract with one department in the province a couple years ago, which provided a basis for understanding the environment and the transition they were planning, he said.

Abrahamson said the standardized service will bring benefits to public service employees, such as high availability of their desktops and quick responses to anything that breaks. "There should be productivity gains within the public service from the support structure," he said.

As the government proceeds with its improvement agenda on standardizing hardware and software, this will drive a lot of cost efficiencies for the government as a whole, he said.

Russ Conwath, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd., said the contract speaks to "good things" in general. "One, they've hired a Canadian company to outsource their IT desktop management services, which I think most of us should be very, very happy about," he said.

"The second thing that makes me pleased is that the Alberta government has seen fit to sort of rationalize their needs in terms of IT, and in particular, IT desktop management services," he said.

Conwath sees Alberta taking a "holistic approach" to a shared services model. This gives the government the best deal in terms of cost and a single, consistent service provider, he said.

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The Montreal vendor recently upgraded its SaaS-based mobile policy management platform. Version 5.1 provides real time statistics on 3G data usage and tracks 3G devices using Qualcomm's Gobi technology. How this fits into the up-and-coming mobile device management space.

Montreal-based mobile policy management (MPM) vendor Trellia Networks Inc. recently launched an upgraded version of its hosted platform for automating and centralizing the enforcement of corporate mobile access policies.

Trellia launched the platform roughly two-and-a-half years ago as an on-premise solution, and released version 5.0, its first SaaS model, in October 2009. Key features new to version 5.1 are 3G data plan management, 3G asset management and stand-alone reporting.

The MPM platform allows enterprises to see what their users are doing with respect to connectivity (LAN, WiFi and 3G) and detect if there are any problems related to cost, security and end usage policies, said Raffi Tchakmakjian, vice-president of product management at Trellia.

Once the policies are set, they are distributed centrally, automated and enforced on the devices, he said. "The platform itself will make sure that the users are connected to the networks according to those policies that were distributed after the assessment period," he said.

3G data plan management provides a "new level of visibility," such as which users are approaching their data threshold, which have already crossed the threshold and other statistics that allow enterprises to select the right data plans for their users, he said. 3G asset management allows IT departments to track exactly where the devices are and who they are with, he said.

Tchakmakjian said deployments of the MPM platform typically start at 1,000 users.

Granular policies, visibility and support for any type of network service are what differentiate Trellia from the competition, according to Tchakmakjian. "The granularity is much higher with our product versus our competitors and we don't have any services we force the enterprise to attach to," he said.

"We enable the enterprise to pick and choose the services from different carriers, different WiFi providers, different networking technologies," he said. This includes support for cable or DSL modems in homes and 3G providers like Rogers, Bell and Telus in Canada and Sprint or Verizon in the U.S., he said. "It is global, as well, so it supports all of the carriers around the world," he said.

Mark Tauschek, research director at Info-Tech Research Group Ltd., doesn't see a significant difference between Trellia's version 5.1 feature set and other products on the market. "Looking at what we have here, there is not a huge differentiation ... but it certainly keeps them competitive," he said.

3G data plan management isn't a market-changing feature, but it is relatively new in terms of knowing in real time where you are at from a usage perspective, he said. "That's certainly a nice feature to have" because going over your voice or data plan can get "kind of pricey," he said.

3G asset management is also "a nice-to-have" feature, but it relies on Qualcomm Inc.'s chipsets, he said. "If you have settled on mobile devices that have the Qualcomm Gobi functionality, then that's a nice feature," said Tauschek.

But knowing where users are at any given time raises privacy issues, he said. "While it has some value, if employees know that they can be tracked in that respect. Depending on the type of role they are in, that might be a contentious issue," he said.

Info-Tech will be covering mobile management in greater detail over the next couple months, said Tauschek. "There are a lot of new and up-and-coming entrants in the mobile management space," he said.

Trellia version 5.1 taps into an unsaturated market, according to Craig Mathias, principal at Ashland, Mass.-based wireless advisory firm Farpoint Group. "Ultimately, this is the kind of tool that most larger enterprises are going to want to have," he said.

"This is a very new area of management and when you talk about all that's required in managing a mobile workforce, this is just one piece of it ... It is going to become much more important over time because workforces are becoming more mobile," he said.

Trellia has "put a stake in the ground" in the policy management space, said Mathias. "There are a whole range of mobile device management products and oftentimes products of this class are lumped into that general category, and that's all about provisioning and integrity management and security," he said.

"Trellia really is more on the mobile policy management end of the world, which is more about how people use products and manage cost, and even there, it's a fairly complex space. It's not well-established, and there are a lot of companies out there who need these kinds of capabilities," he said.

3G data plan management is a good example of managing to control costs, he said. "First of all, you can correct behaviours that might not be in concert with corporate objectives, and secondly, you have access to a whole range of information that can help you in negotiating with your carriers," he said.

Mathias doesn't take issue with the asset tracking. "They aren't tracking you to watch everything you are doing. They want to know where the device is in case it gets lost ... I don't think this is a big deal," he said.

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Dell has completely overhauled its cloud computing strategy, offering a range of turnkey solutions for cloud providers and announcing three new partners including Canonical, the Ubuntu company. The move, which Dell hinted at last month, will offer its customers the same class of services that its cloud customers have enjoyed said Dell.

The company is also set to offer a new range of servers, designed to be deployed in customers' own data centres or in cloud computing deployments, as well as a new set of storage products.

Dell said that the new turnkey solutions would "take the guesswork" out of cloud deployment and would offer a web platform as a service (PaaS) product. Dell said that it would work with cloud computing provider Joyent to deliver the service, while the new partnerships with Aster and Greenplum are to exploit demand in data analytics and data warehousing.

The company was launching a new range of servers, described by the company as hyperscale products to cope with large high-density data deployments. The three new servers: the PowerEdge C1100 for cluster environments; the C2100 for cloud computing deployment and the C6100 for cloud and cluster shared infrastructures.

Dell was stressing the flexibility of its approach, wanting to strike a balance between cloud and on-premises servers. It's important to give customers the choice, said Andy Rhodes, Dell's marketing director for its data centre division. "What we want to launch are solutions that are open, capable and affordable and we want to fit all three criteria, but it's hard to strike the balance: what is open, isn't always capable."

Rhodes said that partners were an essential part of the Dell strategy, " They''re going to be essential. For example, the Joyent offering that we're making public today."

He said that Dell was stressing the importance of open systems. "We've seen a pendulum swing between proprietary systems and open software in the past 40 years, There are some signs that some vendors are hoping to trap customers with proprietary solutions. But, he stressed that this didn't mean that Dell was going down an open source route. "Open doesn't mean that we don't own our own intellectual property,"he said.

The company is also expanding on its previously released Lifecycle Controller, its embedded systems management product. According to Paul Prince, Dell's enterprise division CTO, the company will also be offering a new range of badged EMC products, as well as launching a new product, the Dell Object Storage Solution offering customers the ability to access billions of files, from archiving to the cloud.

Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced almost no immediate help for the IT industry in his Budget today.

Funding for 20,000 higher education training places in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects and more support for small businesses and entrepreneurs, were among the few positive announcements for the industry.

System integrators and outsourcers can also expect to pick up work as the government proceeds with its plans to cut and reorganise back office operations and to move thousands of civil service jobs out of London. The Chancellor used the budget to reiterate his commitment to universal domestic broadband funded by a levy on fixed line telephones.

The funding for higher education places was instantly seized upon by David Cameron, Conservative party leader, who stated that it was originally a Tory proposal, of 10,000 places, and that it had been called "elitist" by Labour at the time. He called for an election in order to "put Labour out of its misery".

The Chancellor instead insisted it was "vital" to bolster the economy by helping growing industries in the UK, including technology. There will be help for the UK computer games industry "similar to that provided to the film sector", the Chancellor said, as well as investment in science sectors.

Darling announced a £2.5 billion (US$3.7 billion) package for small businesses as well as to "promote innovation and invest in national infrastructure", and promised a cut in business rates for a year from October. There will be a £2 million tax threshold for entrepreneurs.

Infrastructure UK, an office created at the Pre-Budget Report last year, will publish a strategy document today detailing a new public investment bank controlling £2 billion in equity, to invest in green transport and sustainable energy.

The Chancellor reiterated that the 50 pence broadband tax will support the rollout of broadband to rural areas. The ongoing investments in 'Digital Britain' will support "thousands of businesses" and create "hundreds of thousands of new jobs", he said.

The government has said it wants to bolster the technology industries, long cited by Labour as growth engines for the economy. The steps add to measures announced earlier this week for a £30 million web science institute, and an initiative to create shared services centres with commercial organisations.

A new space centre is also being created, with £40 million public investment, to further bolster the industry.

But no further details were announced on plans to cut £11 billion from public sector spending, including slashing £4 billion from back office and IT costs by 2012 to 2013, other than a statement by Darling that this would "go ahead as planned". Some £600 million is expected to be cut from the floundering NHS National Programme for IT, but whether this will be realised in practice remains unclear.

Aside from IT, the Budget promised the abolition of stamp duty for first time buyers, continued taxing of heavy bank bonuses, and sticking to a one percentage point rise in National Insurance. The Chancellor said public sector net borrowing will hit £167 billion this year.

According to Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager at Nuance Communications Inc., "The average consumer types about 25 to 30 words per minute." For those people -- and for those for whom carpal tunnel or other disabling factors prevent efficient typing -- being able to talk to your computer sounds like a good idea.

Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 software offers an alternative to the speech recognition feature that comes with Windows Vista and Windows 7. (The company also offers MacSpeech Dictate, which it acquired in February, for Mac OS X users.)

Dragon currently comes in a five editions: Standard ($100), Preferred ($199), Professional ($900), and specialized versions for Legal ($1,200) and Medical ($1,600). The Preferred Wireless edition ($300) includes Plantronics' Calisto Bluetooth headset, while Preferred Mobile ($250) includes a Phillips digital voice recorder.

The various editions are supersets of the Standard package, meaning they all include dictation and voice-control capabilities. The Preferred edition adds shortcuts and the ability to translate from a handheld recorder, while the Professional version adds network administration, the ability to combine commands, and better integration with applications.

For this review, I tested Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Professional Version 10.1. But most users could make do with the significantly less expensive Standard or Preferred editions.

All editions of Dragon include a headset. On its Web site, Nuance refers to it as "a high-quality noise-canceling headset," but given that it's included in the $99 Standard edition, I was skeptical about how "high-quality" the headset could be. But it seemed to carry my voice input adequately.

I tested Dragon NaturallySpeaking on a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge notebook with an Intel 1.30-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7300 CPU and 4GB of RAM, running Windows 7 Professional (64-bit).

Calibration

Dragon NaturallySpeaking installs quickly and easily.

Before you begin using the software, you have to calibrate it to help it work with your voice and speaking style. You start with short tasks to confirm good microphone placement and volume settings. Next, you select your accent (such as "Inland Northern U.S.," "British-accented" or "Spanish-accented English"). There are short passages you can read to help the application adjust to your voice, and different vocabulary types you can choose from, such as "General" (U.S. English), "Commands-Only" (for control but not dictating) and "Teens."

Dragon can also improve its recognition accuracy by data-mining your e-mail and contents of your My Documents folder, which helps Dragon build its list of words and phrases you use, including things like the names of people you e-mail.

Wrestling with the Dragon

When you start it up, Dragon presents a small floating toolbar. Once the microphone is active, you can dictate text, control Dragon (including telling it to "go to sleep" and "wake up") and control applications. Dragon can work with several applications, including Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Word, Outlook and Excel.

I tried Dragon with samples from a variety of texts, including Green Eggs and Ham, Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, An Outline of Science and Computerworld's own About Computerworld page.

As you speak, Dragon displays what it believes you've said in a little pop-up window, modifying the contents if subsequent words make it change its mind about what you've already said. It then drops the text into DragonPad (a customized version of NotePad) or into a field in the current application.

You can also give commands. Dragon has a predefined set of command words and phrases, and you can also create your own. For example, saying "Cap" capitalizes the first letter of the next word, "Open paren" starts a parenthetical clause, and "Scratch that" deletes the previous word. Dragon also has commands to navigate around the screen, select text and more. There are keyboard overrides to force or avoid something being interpreted as a command.

I found it a bit difficult to use (and remember) Dragon's voice-actuated commands -- and to get the hang of Dragon's pacing. I spent around 10 hours with Dragon NaturallySpeaking -- enough to verify that the software does, as claimed, enable you to perform voice entry and editing of text and voice command of Windows and applications. But I'm far from proficient and productive in it. The documentation acknowledges, "We've found that it can take some users about 4-6 weeks of regular use to reach the highest levels of accuracy with Dragon."

Aside from the technical challenges of converting analog sound to text, there's the human aspect. You've got to train yourself to speak in a clear, evenly paced fashion that's oriented toward phrases and sentences (Dragon can be set to autopunctuate). You've got to learn and remember the commands -- and have them at the tip of your tongue. It's easy to become frustrated -- for example, when you make a mistake and blurt out "Oops," instead of saying, "Scratch that." You then have to delete several words -- and "Scratch that" won't work if Dragon doesn't interpret it as a command.

Why? Because timing is important. Dragon is sensitive to micropauses in trying to decide whether what you said was literal text or an attention-getting command. You also need to learn to speak in medium-long phrases, since Dragon's recognition engine is trying to guess words in part by context, e.g., to determine if you meant "to," "too" or "two."

In my own trials, Dragon's recognition of my dictation and commands (or, arguably, my mastery of Dragon) ranged from fair to poor. Many words and sentences came out near-perfect; many were nowhere near what I was saying. Forcing literal text with the Shift key worked sometimes but not all the time; in particular, successfully entering the words "new paragraph" involved practice and luck.

Bottom line

Something to keep in mind: Windows Vista and Windows 7 include speech recognition (and it's available for XP, although you may need to find and install it). You won't get as many features as Dragon NaturallySpeaking offers, but since Nuance doesn't offer a free-trial version (although there is a 30-day money-back guarantee), you may want to start there.

In addition, the company offers a lot of bundled and online resources; if you're committed, you may also want to consider working with one of its partners for help with installation, customization and training.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 does turn speech into text, lets you voice-control the dictating process, and works with other apps, such as Firefox and Windows. But expect a long learning curve. For me, typing is still faster -- but I'm going to keep practicing, and also continue exploring more of the features and options. And, of course, I have the option of typing. People who, for whatever reason, can't type are likely to find the hours needed to properly master Dragon NaturallySpeaking are well worth the effort."

Daniel P. Dern is a freelance technology writer based in Newton Center, Mass. His Web site is www.dern.com and his technology blog is TryingTechnology.com.

Google is giving location a prominent place in its upcoming search redesign: Your whereabouts may be displayed right underneath the search bar.

Not only that, the left-hand sidebar (which has been in the beta test for a long time, but hasn’t been fully released) gets a touch-up. The heavy bars are gone and the icons are cleaner and brighter in color, compared to redesign screenshots that were floating around last month (see below).

Google spokesperson Nate Tyler says the changes are part of an experiment. The company has been tinkering with different icons and displays for months, so it’s hard to say with certainty what will ultimately come through the redesign.

“At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on Google sites all over the world,” Tyler said. There’s more information on how the company runs these experiments here.

Google has factored location into search results for awhile without explicitly telling the user that the company knows their whereabouts. It recently launched ‘Nearby’ search in February, returning results from local venues overlaid on top of a map.

Other companies also use your IP address to send you location-specific content. Facebook has long served location-sensitive advertising on its website while Twitter recently launched a feature letting users geotag where they are directly from the site.

Old Redesign:

Tags: redesign, search

Companies: Google

Open source is no longer considered the wild underdog, but it will need more new companies making money off the trend, the one-time CEO of MySQL stressed Wednesday at the EclipseCon 2010 conference.

Panelists from the software industry pondered the future of open source during a late-afternoon session at the Santa Clara, Calif. conference. Panelist Marten Mickos, who was the longtime CEO of open source database vendor MySQL, emphasized that there has been a shortage of new companies making lots of money off of open source. Instead, established commercially based companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle are underwriting open source along with open source foundations like the Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation, and Mozilla.

[ Yesterday, InfoWorld's Paul Krill reported that Oracle officials at EclipseCon emphasized a need to keep Java interesting. ]

"Hopefully, there will be great, great startups as well who will make millions and billions of dollars but that's actually where we haven't really reached victory yet. We have had a handful of great financial successes in open source [such as] Red Hat, JBoss, MySQL, XenSource," said Mickos. "But it isn't enough."

Mickos recently became CEO of open source cloud technology startup Eucalyptus. MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 and is now Oracle property, given Oracle's absorption of Sun in January. MySQL, Mickos said, was able to produce a lot of GPL code for the open source movement because "there were revenues all the time." Even so, Mickos said some criticized the company for its dual licensing plan, which had the company offering its software via open source but also selling subscriptions that featured support services.

Also emphasizing a need for revenues to underwrite open source was  panelist Justin Erenkrantz, president of the Apache Software Foundation.

"There needs to be kind of a spot in the ecosystem for commercial companies to make money so that developers can contribute and that they can have living wages" Erenkrantz said. It will be both open source communities such as Eclipse and venture capital-backed startups ensuring the future of open source, said Erenkrantz.

Offering a different perspective on the future of open source, analyst Stephen O'Grady, of RedMonk, stressed decentralized development and an infrastructure to support that.

"To me, the future looks a lot more like GitHub," for collaborating on software projects, he said. GitHub is based on the Git software version control system.

O'Grady also stressed the potential of data in the open source, in which information can be aggregated and analyzed.

"To me, the most obvious untapped revenue opportunity for open source is data," O'Grady said.

Despite assertions by some that open source cannot innovate and just commoditizes markets, O'Grady said open source has enabled innovation in areas such as cloud computing. But it can be an aggressive commoditizer, he acknowledged.

This story, "Former MySQL CEO: More successful open source startups needed ," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com.

Read more about open source in InfoWorld's Open Source Channel.

The CanSecWest security conference is going on this week in Vancouver. Part of the CanSecWest conference is the annual Pwn2Own contest where security researchers show off their hacking expertise and compete to exploit and compromise fully-patched systems--a challenge the security researchers seem to overcome with surprising ease year after year.

Two security researchers succeeded in exploiting a fully-updated iPhone 3GS in a matter of seconds--the first time the iPhone 2.0 has been hacked . Charlie Miller, famous for compromising a fully-patched Macbook the past two years, succeeded once again in hacking the Macbook to take the Pwn2Own prize. Another researcher bypassed Microsoft security controls like ASLR and DEP to compromise a 64-bit Windows 7 system.

There are two lessons for businesses to learn about security here, right off the bat. First, using Apple hardware and software is not an adequate defense, in and of itself. Despite the common perception that the Mac OS X operating system is just inherently more secure than Windows, the reality is that the primary reason Macs aren't attacked and compromised more often is that the platform with 92 percent market share promises malware developers a significantly higher return on investment than the platform with 5 percent market share.

Ironically, while there are admittedly no real malware threats circulating in the wild for the Mac OS X platform, the perception of inherent security makes Mac users more vulnerable in other ways. Many Mac users are so sure that the platform is impervious that they are oblivious to security concerns at all. Unfortunately for them, phishing attacks and identity theft are a function of social engineering more than security technology, and the lack of awareness makes Mac users more gullible.

The second lesson from Pwn2Own is that the browser is the new Achilles heel of security regardless of the hardware or software platform. The iPhone hack leveraged an unknown vulnerability in the Safari mobile Web browser. The Macbook attack by Charlie Miller also went through the Safari Web browser to get to the operating system. And, the 64-bit Windows 7 compromise relied on an exploit of Internet Explorer 8.

Contrary to the mantra to abandon Internet Explorer for "more secure" Web browsers, though, a recent study actually showed Internet Explorer 8 to perform significantly better than other browsers in defending against socially-engineered attacks. The operating system platform the browser is running on also has a significant impact on the security of the browser.

The number one lesson to take away from the Pwn2Own contest, though, isn't about which platform is more secure, or which browser was hacked the fastest. The important lesson to learn is that all platforms and browsers are vulnerable to an attacker with sufficient dedication and resources.

There is a common misperception that the targets of the Operation Aurora attacks earlier this year in China could have avoided being exploited and compromised had they just used a Web browser other than Internet Explorer.

This perception assumes that the attackers discovered a security hole in Internet Explorer, developed an exploit for it, and then sought out targets that use Internet Explorer as the default Web browser to attack and compromise. This logic seems reasonable because it fits--more or less--with the traditional model for malware attacks.

However, a targeted attack takes the opposite approach. A targeted attack identifies a target, researches what operating system, applications, and Web browser are used by the target, and then examines those products to find security vulnerabilities and develops exploits specifically aimed at compromising that specific target.

Using Mac OS X instead of Windows 7, or using Google Chrome instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer will not prevent a dedicated attacker from mounting a targeted attack.

I am not suggesting that you give up and simply abandon security. However, I am stressing that you not view anything as a security "silver bullet". It's not about choosing the right operating system, or the right Web browser, or even the right city.

Regardless of those choices, awareness and common sense are still the deciding factors in remaining secure. The Pwn2Own exploits against the iPhone and the Macbook both relied on luring the user to a malicious Web page to execute the attack. If users are aware of security risks, and have the common sense not to click on unknown or shady links, attacks such as these would not succeed.

Maybe Apple should go ahead and approve that Opera Mini Web browser for the iPhone so users have another, possibly more secure option than Safari, though. Just in case.

Tony Bradley is co-author of Unified Communications for Dummies. He tweets as @Tony_BradleyPCW. You can follow him on his Facebook page, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com.

With a little more than a week to go before the iPad hits the pavement (figuratively speaking, of course), more details continue to surface about content providers prepping their material for consumption on the device.

The Wall Street Journal, one of the chosen few whose developers have been granted access to a pre-release version of the iPad, has reported (citing "a person familiar with the matter") that it will charge iPad users $18 per month for a subscription to the paper. That price hardly compares favorably with its existing offers, which allow customers to subscribe to both the print and online version of the newspaper for about $12 per month. Combined with the indefinite source of the report, it could mean that the iPad pricing is not yet finalized--though if not even the Journal knows what the Journal will be charging, who does?

But, if real, that price difference could be the result of a number of potential factors: perhaps the iPad version of the Journal will sport some exclusive features that are not available anywhere else; or, the final pricing model may include special offers and different subscription options (such as an annual subscription for an even lower rate); or maybe Rupert Murdoch has simply decided that iPad users will be willing to pay a premium to get his publication's content on their brand new devices. As one of the few major publications to successfully charge for its online content, it seems possible that the Journal might just pull that off.

The Journal article also reports that, while the fate of periodicals on the iPad (or, indeed, in general) is anything but certain, early indications are that advertisers are lining up to snatch premium positions in some of the best-known publications. Time magazine has allegedly sold individual ad spots in its first eight iPad issues for $200,000 each to industry giants as Unilever, Toyota, and Fidelity Investments.

The social news site Digg has finally released a homegrown iPhone application, which gives iPhone users a faster and more elegant alternative to the Digg mobile website.

The app is free (but ad-supported), and offers up many of the features you’d expect: You can view all of the stories throughout the site’s many categories, and vote them up or down from within the app. You can also view and vote on comments, search the site, save stories to read later, and share stories via Twitter and Facebook.

Digg has succeeded in building a better overall experience than its mobile web version, but the app doesn’t offer up much in the way of surprises. You can’t contribute comments, for example. And despite its simplicity, the app is still somewhat unstable — it crashed on me several times while testing it.

The site still has a lot to learn from its social news competitor Reddit, whose iPhone app iReddit has been out for more than a year, and also allows users to make comments. Digg’s app is prettier, but ultimately less functional since you can’t contribute to the discussion for any stories. Reddit also offers a free version of its app with ads, and an ad-free premium version for $0.99.

Given that this is Digg’s first foray into mobile apps, it still has a chance to fix the commenting deficiency and instability issues over time. Digg has also recently confirmed that it’s working on an Android version of the app.

Tags: iPhone, mobile app

Companies: digg

Despite a rosy outlook early on, biofuels have hit a wall. Too expensive and unwieldy to scale, most projects have stalled in the demonstration stage, unable to make the leap to market. Several of the companies that make them, however, have discovered a lucrative loophole: green chemical manufacturing.

Going a step further, Genomatica, a company that scuttled biofuel ambitions in favor of full-time chemical production, has just raised $15 million in a third round of funding (PDF) to make the industrial chemical business at large more sustainable. It says this financing should be enough to build its own demonstration plant before breaking into full-scale commercial production.

Much like LS9, Synthetic Genomics, and Codexis — companies pursuing biofuel strategies in addition to chemicals — Genomatica’s core business is the microbe it engineered to convert sustainable feedstocks (corn, switchgrass, sugar cane, biomass) into fuels and chemicals. The company, which uses sugar as its primary feedstock, says its strain of e.coli has reached a level of efficiency and speed that makes production of green products cost competitive with petroleum.

Genomatica’s number one product, 1,4-butanediol (BDO), is incredibly versatile — a key ingredient in durable polymers used in clothing, cars and electronics, as well as solvents. The global BDO market, which hit 1.25 million tons last year, represents a $4 billion opportunity, the company says. Until now, all of this BDO has been produced using petroleum. It’s a ripe area for change.

In addition to pushing its sustainably-derived BDO to market, the company wants to expand its portfolio of chemical offerings. It plans to partner with other big chemical manufacturers to change how they’re doing business as well, probably by licensing its microbial technology at a high price.

Its new demonstration plant is expected to come online next year, pumping out 1 ton of BDO a day. It hasn’t chosen a location yet, but estimates that the facility will create between 30 and 40 new jobs.

With green chemicals fetching much higher prices than fuels, investors are going to start shifting their attention, analysts predict. Codexis has also seen a lot of success with its emphasis on the chemical market. While it still has an interest in fuel production, the revenue and profile its achieved with its chemical offerings gave it the boost it needed to file for a $100 million IPO.

Genomatica’s recent round of funding was provided by TPG Biotech, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Alloy Ventures, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Based in San Diego, the startup has raised upwards of $35 million in the last three years.

[Image via Genomatica]

Tags: biofuels

Companies: Alloy Ventures, Codexis, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Genomatica, Ls9, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Synthetic Genomics, TPG Biotech

The recent passing of Apple director Jerome York has left a hole in the company's board of directors, but it's also revealed that the group is not quite the unified front that it's often thought to be.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal , York was unhappy with the way that Apple CEO Steve Jobs handled his health problems last year. In a 2009 interview with the Journal--comments from which weren't published until this week--York said Jobs should have publicly announced his health issues when he backed out of appearing at Macworld Expo, less than a month prior to his taking a leave of absence.

He also said that he came close to resigning when given full details about Jobs's health.

Mr. York said the concealment "disgusted" him, adding that the only reason he didn't quit at the time was because he wanted to avoid the uproar that would have occurred once he disclosed his reason. "Frankly, I wish I had resigned then," he said.

With York gone, Apple's board has only five directors aside from Jobs: J. Crew Chairman and CEO Mickey Drexler, Intuit chairman Bill Campbell (a former Apple executive), Genentech Chairman Arthur Levinson, Avon Chairman and CEO Andrea Jung (recently appointed co-lead director, along with Levinson), and former vice president Al Gore. Google CEO Eric Schmidt was a member of the board until he stepped down in August 2009, over concerns about increased competition between the two companies.

Some critics have complained that Apple's board doesn't often oppose Jobs, citing examples such as Jobs's health situation and the 2006 controversy over options backdating, in which an internal probe at Apple found some irregularities in stock options granted in the late '90s. Jobs was cleared of any wrongdoing by both an independent investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Apple may or may not choose to fill York's seat on Apple's board. The company's by-laws require a minimum of five directors, and Apple didn't replace Schmidt when he departed. However, the company will need a director to take York's position on Apple's three-person audit committee, which he headed. The rules also state that at least one member of that committee must have a background in finance or accounting; York had been that person, and neither of the other two members--Levinson or Campbell--would seem to fulfill the requirements.

If Apple does decide to appoint a new board member, the selection would be an important one: would it be a safe choice unlikely to rock the boat, or a more independent voice to counter Jobs's strong-willed influence?

Insurance giant Zurich has promised to encrypt and closely monitor the movement of customer data, after losing the details of 641,000 customers on a backup tape over a year and a half ago.

It will also instruct any contractors to follow the same security undertakings. The new announcements are part of an undertaking the company has signed with the Information Commissioner.

The data lost included that of 51,000 UK customers -- in some cases including their names, contact details and bank information -- as well as Zurich's entire south African customer base of 550,000 clients. The tape was lost in South Africa, in transit to a secure storage unit, in August 2008. Zurich said it had only become aware of the loss a year later.

When it realised the loss, in October last year, Zurich apologised to customers, as well as informing the Financial Services Authority. It hired accountants KPMG to investigate.

Annette Court, chief executive of general insurance for Europe and Zurich Financial Services, said the loss was "unacceptable" and that the company takes security "very seriously", adding: "We are putting a great deal of investment into strengthening our internal processes to ensure that incidents of this nature do not happen again in the future."

The company has insisted there was "no evidence" that any details had been compromised.