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September 06, 2004 (Computerworld) -- ... wee hours of the morning to prevent a data disaster. Good advice, especially when it comes from the CEO of a Web hosting company who thinks your mission-critical online operations are at risk if you use offshore services or even U.S.-based ones that
clock out after sunset. "Go visit your hosting company at 3:00 in the morning and see if someone answers the door," suggests Mitch Gervis, the top executive at Dallas-based NeoSpire Inc. "Do it before you have a disaster." If your Web site delivers critical business functions 24 hours a day, the last place you want it is someplace whose systems administrators are all asleep in their beds at night, says Gervis, whose company hosts sites for Lowes Cineplex Theatres Inc., United Way of America, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and other users. Gervis argues that all the sophisticated remote diagnostic and management tools in the world can't supplant a smart human on the premises. He adds that users shouldn't just demand that data be backed up and restored for free, which he says NeoSpire does. They actually should request backups to verify that the hosting company's procedures work. NeoSpire does five to 10 data restores a week at the request of users, for example. And being a Southerner steeped in the region's tradition of hospitality, Gervis invites you to drop by his data center -- anytime.
Protect Your IP From Offshore ...
... developers who slip open-source code into your applications. It's not that Indian, Chinese or other programmers based outside the U.S. have malicious undermining of your intellectual property in mind, says Sridhar Balaji, CEO of SourceSentry Inc. in Houston. It's just that it's so easy to do. "Oftentimes, developers just grab something on the Web and put it in their code," Balaji says. His company has run scans of applications and discovered open-source elements. Inserting open-source code could upset your licensing plans, particularly if you intend to distribute your software but keep the source code proprietary. SourceSentry offers its BizCentury Methodology templates for ensuring that your offshore team follows strict security, privacy and best-practices procedures that go beyond standards such as BS 7799 . Balaji claims that there are thousands of start-up outsourcing companies in India alone, most of which need better controls. So choose wisely.

Sridhar Balaji, CEO of SourceSentry Inc.

Paying for Middleware Is Soon ...
... to be a distant memory. That's if Marc Fleury gets his way. He's the CEO of Atlanta-based JBoss Group Inc., which offers an eponymous open-source application server that competes with BEA Systems Inc.'s WebLogic, IBM's WebSphere and other commercial products. "Everything is game in middleware infrastructure," he says. Such as? Portals, workflow tools, connectors, messaging technology and more. He claims that JBoss will soon supply open-source tools across the entire middleware spectrum. What happens then? "The market can't sustain both open-source and proprietary technologies," Fleury says. And you can guess which one he thinks will win. Some venture capitalists obviously agree. They just poured $10 million into JBoss, something that wouldn't have happened a few years ago. Fleury recalls that when he presented the same ideas to a venture capitalist in 2000, he was told it was "not just a bad business plan -- it was a horrible one." He now laughs at the memory -- all the way to the bank.
JBoss, Tomcat, MySQL, Eclipse, Ant ...
... and 95 other open-source technologies can be automatically installed, configured, integrated and maintained by BlueGlue from OpenLogic Inc. in Highlands Ranch, Colo. The GUI-based tool is sold for $399 per system as a subscription service. It needs to be installed on each machine, but the company says a new version due in the first quarter of 2005 will be able to be deployed across multiple machines from a single console. The top 100 open-source tools are fully evaluated to ensure complete integration, and tested updates are supplied to users through the service, OpenLogic says.

Marc Fleury, CEO of JBoss Group Inc.

Software Seeks to Stop Spyware at ...
... the source by certifying that Web sites and downloads are free of the insidious programs. Rick Carlson, president of Aluria Software LLC in Lake Mary, Fla., says that the company on Friday will unveil its certification program for spyware-free software to assure users that what they download from your site doesn't contain key-loggers, adware and other nasty code. The certification program is free and works like those from VeriSign Inc. and Truste, which give online visitors confidence about a Web site's integrity. Carlson claims that spyware is more than a nuisance to IT and is the No. 1 reason for poor PC performance and crashes. Join now while the price is right.

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