The increasing adoption of virtualization technologies has left hardware manufacturers in something of a bind: while it's clearly an aggressively expanding trend which they would like to jump on the bandwagon with, by its nature it is a trend which obviates much of the need for their wares. With processing capacities of modern computers far outstripping even the poorly written and bloated software we run on them, virtualization is allowing one machine to serve for two or more in many scenarios. That has the prospect, at least, of halving the market for servers.

HP has decided to embrace the possibility that, if they may sell fewer machines, at least they can sell high-end machines with the horsepower and features that virtual machines need. They've also decided to aggressively pursue the services and software business, a move demonstrated by their recent acquisition of services giant EDS. So instead of hiding their head in the sand, the company has gone on the attack, pointing out that while 86% of technology decision makers have implemented virtualization projects, less than a third think of the projects as business tools.

With today's press blitz, HP is suggesting that by using their hardware and their services and tools, IT departments can better leverage virtualization technologies. Announcing new virtualization-specific functions in their service management software, and pointing out both optimized server hardware and thin-client hardware, the company touts its offerings to help business overcome the hurdles identified in a commissioned study to successfully implementing virtualization as a business advantage instead of just a technology gimmick.

I think HP is on the mark in its efforts, but they are just marketing efforts at the end of the day; virtualization is relatively new and untested as a business tool, and the rates of adoption their study identifies aren't surprising at this stage of the game. As businesses feel their way into the technology, they'll start using it more to their advantage, as they have with every other major technology that has come down the pipe.

That's basically the reaction of the blogosphere today reacting to Google's announcement that they have developed and will be releasing (in beta form, keeping to Google tradition) a new, freshly-designed, purpose-built Internet browser application called "Chrome."

The application is supposed to be available today, but the download site has been redirected back to the Google homepage at this point, quite possibly as a reaction to the sheer volume of interest, and there's no clear word on when exactly it will be back. Bizarrely, the introduction of the product comes by way of a web-based comic book, which is up and available for your reading pleasure while you wait.

Reactions veer from what, another browser? to this is the coolest thing in the history of the world.

More measured analysis comes from Larry Dignan at ZDNet, who basically tells CxOs not to get their panties in a bunch, and Nick Carr, who (I think correctly) evaluates the move in terms of addressing a significant roadblock to Google's expansion as an application and search provider.

My own take is that this is a great move for Google to make right now, and a positive step in the development of true cross-platform SaaS delivery. Browsers today, as many have pointed out, simply weren't designed to be doing the sorts of things that Web 2.0 and SaaS initiatives are asking of them. Internet Explorer, after all, started as a quick and dirty no-frills response to Netscape, turning into something that was just good enough to kill it off with the bundling advantage, and most people suffered with it until Firefox came along out of the ashes of Netscape... a much better browser which nonetheless represented only incremental improvement on the basic concept.

Chrome, at least so far as I can glean from the comic book, reinvents browsing from the ground up, with today's web environment and demands in mind. While Dignan is quite correct that one should wait a bit before jumping on the Chrome bandwagon (this is true of any newly released product, of course, especially on in beta) I think the implications are important for CIOs to evaluate in terms of their planning. As Carr points out, this is less about Chrome itself as it is about Google's attempt to push other browsers in the market to expand their capabilities to make browsing faster, safer, and more reliable. All these things are to the company's benefit in the philosophical war it is waging with traditional desktop-based application providers, and as one of those providers also happens to be the manufacturer of the world's most widespread browser, innovation in that direction was not likely to be forthcoming without a sharp jab. Chrome is that jab, and it's going to have effects well beyond its adopters.

I never really thought so, and from my own briefing with Persystent Technologies I didn't get the impression that was the solution they were peddling, but that seems to be what Sam Diaz takes away from their pitch.

Persystent is a relatively new player in the desktop management and imaging market, and they most decidedly aren't working with dumb terminals... their solution is for PCs (and possibly Mac's in the near future), not dumb terminals, which by their very nature don't need to be imaged. In fact, that can be seen as one of their advantages. But Sam isn't wrong; you can turn a PC into something approximating a dumb terminal with Persystent and other management systems if you are so inclined (at twice the up front costs not to mention ongoing licensing for the extra software to turn your smart PC into something dumb). The question is, if that's the appeal of imaging, why aren't you using dumb terminals in the first place and saving both time and money.

The whole concept seems a bit like buying a Hummer and then taking the time and money to turn it into a fuel-efficient hybrid. You could have just bought a Prius to start with, more cheaply and easily.

The answer (or part of the answer, at least) is that people aren't really interested in imaging and desktop management to create dumb terminals. They need smart clients, but they need to address the inevitable issues that come from such power and flexibility on the desktop. But the other part of the answer is that many IT managers and CIOs, like Sam, don't stop to consider that when you get to a point where buying software that locks your desktops down into something approximating a thin-client configuration, you maybe should start considering just buying thin clients in the first place. There are some things they can't do that smart clients can, and many organizations need such things, of course. But if you start looking at it from the other angle, and figuring out what it would cost to make a thin-client act like a thick one, you may find that's a cheaper solution than making all your thick clients look like thin ones.

You have to consider the source, but it probably shouldn't surprise anyone who has been in the industry very long that a substantial portion of IT staff would plan to walk out the door with sensitive company information if laid off.

The study, commissioned by password vault software maker Cyber-Ark, exposes and perhaps exaggerates what has been an open secret in IT circles almost since the dawn of the profession: relatively low-level, disrespected, unrecognized IT staff have their companies by the balls. While no one is irreplaceable, it turns out that there are quite a few who can make themselves downright unpleasant should they be replaced.

Of course this is exactly the sort of finding you would expect from a study conducted by a company like Cyber-Ark, and I don't believe that the specifics should be taken any more seriously than any of those virus studies sponsored by McAfee. Although such incidents, should they occur, are certain to be hushed up, you don't hear about them every week, and if approaching 90% of laid-off IT staff were walking out with such information, you would be. But I've seen a few people let go in my time, and there have certainly been those who, to a greater or lesser degree, decided to let acrimony interfere with judgement and attempt to disappear with company equipment or information, or disrupt what was left behind. In some cases, it was difficult to tell if the disruption was intentional or simply a result of incompetence, but from the point of view of the business, it makes little difference.

This being the case, it is still surprising that so many organizations which put time and effort into securing their perimeter do so little to ensure that their internal systems are secure from their own technical staff. The threat is both greater and more real than that from external sources.

Internal security is harder to accomplish, however, and especially with regard to technical staff. By nature, the roles of IT staff require access, and there is no way to both allow them to administer systems (or secure them from others) without allowing them sufficient access to either walk off with important information or cause considerable disruption. Because it's hard, and because it's off the radar of many corporate officers, little is done to address it. On some occasions I've heard concerns over the matter dismissed out of hand simply because it was assumed that no solution could be had.

There are solutions, though, they simply aren't easy. You can't lock out your admins, but what you can do is put systems in place to conduct rigorous logging and auditing, and to require mutual reliance between staff for access to sensitive information. Compartmentalization is also an old standby which can dramatically reduce expose to internal threats. All these things require considerable planning and consideration, but as with all security efforts, they must be judged against the exposure... and the exposure is usually considerable.

No, it's not a tech conference, and has nothing at all to do with your average CIO, but hey, get out and live a little. I am!

Penny Arcade Expo. Get your gamer on.

That is the interesting assertion that Nicholas Petreley makes in this article at CIO Magazine, but I am hard pressed to see the argument for it even after reading through it twice.

Petreley starts with a disclaimer: he likes Ballmer, so sue him. That's fine (although he does spend a substantial portion of the piece talking about just how, and how much, he likes him), there's no reason you can't conduct a practical analysis of a business under the leadership you like. But when he goes on with the meat of the argument, I start to get the feeling that it really all is just an artfully constructed way of saying, "Steve, gosh, I like you."

The argument itself comes down to the assertions that:

• Microsoft is threatened in the server market by Unix and Linux
• SOA might be a good way to address that threat
• .Net is a solid core foundation for SOA software
• With a little polish, this foundation could provide a clean interface with open standards
• Ballmer is more open-minded than Gate and more willing to champion such an interface

Let's say I don't squabble with the first four assertions (although there is plenty there a reasonable person could disagree with) and we just look at the last, the Ballmer is more open-minded than Gates. It's possible that this is true; I am not personally in a position to know any more on the matter than anyone else outside of Microsoft. But from what you can see from outside the company, and glean from staff over a few beers, is that Gates has always been the visionary, and Ballmer the get-it-done marketing and organization guy. I don't see how, with Gates' track record, you can really call him a more-of-the-same kind of guy. He has pivoted the company, dramatically, on more than one occasion, and it may be that only he could do so. Petreley calls him "...blinded by his single vision of crushing all competition and locking customers into a Microsoft world" and that may be so, but it was that vision that gave him the drive to make exactly the sort of short-term compromises that Petreley is calling for in order to serve that long-term goal. The switch from CD-ROM based multi-media to supporting the Internet for media distribution didn't serve to lock anyone in to Microsoft-supplied content (and that was the original vision: lock-in, just as Petreley says) but Gates did it, because he had to.

If Microsoft had to open standards up to make the company a player in the SOA market, Gates would do it. Ballmer may be more pragmatic, but sometimes pragmatism can take greatness and make it mundane. If you make practical decisions on a conventional scale, sometimes you miss the grand opportunities on a larger scale. Ballmer, as yet, hasn't done anything yet to convince me that he will run the company otherwise, despite the sordid mess of the Yahoo acquisition, which I suppose some people would describe as "visionary." And while the moment was inevitable that Bill would step down from such an active role at Microsoft, and Steve just happens to be the guy who has to fill most of his shoes, I don't buy that Bill's departure shakes off any constraints from the company's trajectory toward success... if anything, it encumbers it in ways that probably aren't even entirely clear yet.