Apple Claims That Industry's Fastest ...

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June 14, 2004 (Computerworld) -- ... workstation will ship next month when its dual 2.5-GHz G5 processor Power Mac hits the streets. Indeed, the box's specifications are impressive. The $2,999 Power Mac has half a megabyte of L2 cache, handles up to 8GB of RAM and pushes data in and
out of the G5s via a 1.25-GHz bus. All that makes for a blazingly fast machine. That's why it uses a closed-loop liquid coolant system to keep your desk from catching fire. Fans don't cut it. But fastest in the industry? IDC's Roger Kay advises that you "take all vendors' performance claims with a grain of salt." Still, he says, speed matters, particularly in markets where Apple is strong, such as publishing and video editing. Can the power-laden Power Mac boost Apple's dwindling market share? Probably not, observes Kay, "but you can say that its share loss can be stabilized."
Momentum Shifts to Notes ...
... as Exchange cools. That's the view of Steven Birchfield, president of Automation Centre LLC in Tucson, Ariz. His company adds workflow tools to both e-mail systems, and he's sensing a shift in IBM's favor. "Lotus Notes will gain a little bit of market share in 2005," Birchfield forecasts. He says that in the past nine months, he hasn't seen one company move from Notes to Exchange, a common phenomenon in recent years. But he has seen a handful move in the other direction. Birchfield recalls that Microsoft Corp. initially wooed top Notes developers and paid them millions of dollars to port their products to Exchange, which he gladly did. But unlike some, Birchfield didn't abandon Notes. That was a wise move, since IBM has apparently adopted Microsoft's approach and is bringing Exchange vendors to the platform. Birchfield's advice to new customers of his TrackerSuite for Lotus Notes and TrackerOffice for Exchange isn't to swap platforms, but to "leverage the skills and experience you already have in-house."

The new Apple G5 is hot to trot.

Digital Data Only Tip of Compliance ...
... iceberg. Auditors will want quick access to hard-copy documents, too. That's given a boost to longtime archiving vendor Cuadra Associates Inc. in Los Angeles. Since 1982, the company has been helping automate document management and retrieval. It also means that Cuadra has gone through a number of architectural shifts. And according to Executive Vice President Judy Wanger, the company is in the midst of another change - one not demanded by end users, but by IT departments that want to standardize on browser-based applications. Currently, Cuadra users can access information about a document from a browser, but you need a Windows client for data input. Browsers lack "the rich set of features Windows has," she says. For example, changing language character sets, a snap in Windows, is onerous in a browser. But Cuadra's engineers may have licked the whole problem, and the company hopes to show off the input-capable browser at its fall user conference. An early 2005 ship date is planned.
IT Staffers Make Mistakes ...

	Judy Wanger, Executive Vice President at Cuadra Associates Inc.

... all too often, it seems. They're probably the No. 1 reason for downtime in the data center. " 'Oops' is an important part of the downtime equation," says David Greene, vice president of marketing at Active Reasoning Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. He predicts that when Active Reasoning Change Management software ships by the end of this month, you'll be able to dramatically cut the "oops" factor. Not only can the tool detect any change to Linux, Unix and Windows machines and who did it, it can also prevent the change unless permission was explicitly granted. Only system superusers are exempt. (And you never flub up, do you?) If prevention seems extreme, you can get Active Reasoning Operations Monitoring, which can tell you who's making the most mistakes but won't stop them as they do so. And with Active Reasoning Compliance, you can show auditors which executives were mucking around with which reports while they thought no one was looking. Pricing starts at $70,000.
SOA Reaches Beyond Web ...
... services and includes databases, Active Server Pages and other apps not using Web services. So, if you want a true service-oriented architecture for your company, you might take a gander at Looking Glass 5.1, which ships this week from Actional Corp. in Mountain View, Calif. It can locate the source of mixed-service app problems, whether XML-based or not.

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