Sitecore CMS goes cloud for Azure

Image by Shinichi Haramizu via Flickr

New platform promises improvement in web experience with no extra IT ivestments

ECM Plus – Sitecore has just released it lastest CMS Azure Edition platform to scale web sites and applications.

According to Sitecore, most organisations today host websites in single geographical locations which can undermine Web experiences and website performance.

Sitecore’s CMS platform enables firms to raise of reduce system capacity within minutes to deploy and manage websites. With a single click from the Sitecore interface, organisations can extend corporate websites to any of six Microsoft cloud data centres located around the world.

By using Windows Azure for extending the powerful content delivery and management platform of Sitecore CMS, users gain the ability to quickly and seamlessly bring needed capacity to meet demand. As a part of a cloud deployment, Sitecore will automatically convert Web content and applications into the Microsoft Azure format, allowing users to be up and running in as little as one hour, a fraction of the time it would typically take to provision and deploy a Web solution.

“As organisations grow and respond to real-time market demands, it is increasingly difficult and expensive to scale their IT infrastructure to support changes such as launching a customer facing website in a new region or to support a successful, short term event,” said Lars Floe Nielsen, senior corporate vice president of technical marketing at Sitecore. “With Sitecore CMS Azure Edition, enterprises now have more flexibility without added costs – enabling them to focus on their core competencies.”
Powerful, Enterprise-Class Web Content Management – Anytime, Anywhere
A company’s website is often the first touch point for new customers, in response to successful campaigns, or in association with a major event.

To ensure meaningful Web experiences regardless of time or location, enterprises need to manage websites to meet both predictable and unexpected traffic and content interactions.
Microsoft Windows Azure is a scalable cloud environment with compute, storage, hosting, and management capabilities that seamlessly and reliably link to on-premise applications. When coupled with Sitecore CMS, enterprises can easily scale their Web experiences locally and globally to best meet the needs of their organisations and target audiences.

Key benefits of Sitecore CMS Azure Edition include those such as being able to choose deployment options for changing business needs. Sitecore CMS Azure Edition enables customers and partners to leverage Sitecore in a traditional on-premise or cloud-based delivery model. Users can manage Sitecore editing and database servers securely on-premise and leverage those same front-end Sitecore servers to push website content to Windows Azure cloud servers in dispersed geographic locations.

It also promises the ability to extend Sitecore investments without additional hardware costs. Without heavy capital investment or infrastructure planning timetables, users can quickly deploy public-facing Sitecore websites around the globe using Microsoft Azure data centres. This provides affordable geographic coverage, optimised response times by distributing data loads, and adequate redundancy for reliability and disaster-readiness.

Sitecore said that by applying a cloud strategy with the CMS, it was possible to innovate faster and without investing in unnecessary resources before a new offering is approved or ready for release.

HTTPS Everywhere anti-FireSheep security gaining traction

Image via Wikipedia

EFF tool provides protection from ‘Firesheep’

ECM Plus – The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just launched a new version of ‘HTTPS Everywhere’, a free security tool with enhanced protection for the Mozilla Firefox web browser against so-called “Firesheep” and other exploits of webpage security flaws.

According to the Foundation, HTTPS secures web browsing by encrypting both requests from the Firefox browser to websites and the resulting pages that are displayed. Without HTTPS, online reading habits and activities are vulnerable to eavesdropping, and accounts are vulnerable to hijacking.

Their report stated that while many sites on the web offer some limited support for HTTPS, it said it was often difficult to use. Websites may default to using the unencrypted, and therefore vulnerable, HTTP protocol or may fill HTTPS pages with insecure HTTP references. The HTTPS Everywhere tool uses carefully-crafted rules to switch sites from HTTP to HTTPS.

The new free version of HTTPS Everywhere responds to growing concerns about website vulnerability in the wake of Firesheep, an attack tool that could enable an eavesdropper on a network to take over another user’s web accounts, on social networking sites or webmail systems, for example, if the browser’s connection to the web application either does not use cryptography or does not use it thoroughly enough. Firesheep, which was released in October as a demonstration of a vulnerability that computer security experts have known about for years, sparked a flurry of media attention.

“These new enhancements make HTTPS Everywhere much more effective in thwarting an attack from Firesheep or a similar tool” commented The Foundation’s senior staff technologist Peter Eckersley. “It will go a long way towards protecting your Facebook, Twitter, or Hotmail accounts from Firesheep hacks. And, like previous releases, it shields your Google searches from eavesdroppers and safeguards your payments made through PayPal.”

Other sites targeted by Firesheep that now receive protection from HTTPS Everywhere include Bit.ly, Cisco, Dropbox, Evernote, and GitHub.

In addition to the HTTPS Everywhere update, the Foundation also released a guide to help website operators implement HTTPS. “Firesheep works because many websites fail to use HTTPS,” said technology director at the Foundation, Chris Palmer. “Our hope is to make it easier for web applications to do the right thing by their users and keep us all safer from identity theft, security threats, viruses, and other bad things that can happen through insecure HTTP. Taking a little bit of care to protect your users is a reasonable thing for web application providers to do and is a good thing for users to demand.”

The first beta of HTTPS Everywhere was released last June. Since then, the tool has been downloaded more than half a million times.

To download HTTPS Everywhere for Firefox:
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

For more on implementing HTTPS in websites:
https://www.eff.org/pages/how-deploy-https-correctly

CMS gets flash as storage gets encrypted

Protecting your assets

Firm offers high-capacity secure encrypted flash drives

ECM Plus – by Paul Quigley – CMS Products has just launched the Secure Encrypted Flash Drive line to include capacities up to 128 gigabytes, using AES 256-bit encryption to ensure maximum data security protection.

CMS Products said the new drives are compliant with the HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Biley (GLB) standards.

According to the firm, secure encrypted flash drives enables the securely protection of data stored on USB flash drives. The drives will be available in capacities up to 128GB. Drives are bus-powered and the AES 256-bit encryption is pre-loaded and resident on the drive.

“Our customers demand high levels of capacities without sacrificing the performance and security of the flash products that we develop” commented CMS Products President Ken Burke. “The Secure Encrypted Flash Drive is a valuable asset for those users who need their data to be portable, yet completely safe and unable to be accessed by unauthorized people.”

CMS Products’ Secure Encrypted Flash Drives also support a screen-displayed virtual keyboard to defeat keyloggers, complex password structures, a lock down feature in the event of multiple incorrect password entries and the ability to add up to two administrative passwords for helpdesk support. Encryption and decryption of the data is performed on the host system.

Secure Encrypted Flash Drives leave no trace of data on the computer when a flash drive is removed and is instantly locked and fully secure upon removing the flash drive from the USB port. Support is provided for Windows 7, Vista and XP as well as Windows Server 03 (R2) & 08 (R2). Drives are available in capacities from 4GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64 and 128GB.

KM goes mainstream with SharePoint auto-tagger

SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 Auto-Tagger from Layer2 jump-starts migration with rule-bsed cntent cassification

ECM Plus – by Paul Quigley – A new SharePoint add-on to auto-tag items and documents based on classification rules has been released by Layer2. 

The software claims to spped up the migration process so that users can use all of SharePoint features based on tagging.

According to the company, with the new released of SharePoint Server 2010, Collaborative Knowledge Management (CKM) and Social Networking are a cost-effective approach to enable organisational intelligence in the enterprise.

Tagging based on managed metadata can drive navigation, discovery, relation, and re-usability of content, the company said. Managed metadata also provides a common corporate vocabulary and can connect people to social networks. But these great features however completely rely on amount and precision of tagged content items and documents.

By default SharePoint 2010 offers a manual tagging feature only. “The initial content tagging process required for thousands of documents definitely lowered user acceptance in our migration projects” said Frank Daske, Business Development Manager at Layer2. “The potential benefit of the new features can hardly be obtained by means of manual tagging. That’s why we have created the Auto Tagger extension.”

Auto Tagger for SharePoint Server 2010 completely automatically categorises SharePoint items and documents in background using taxonomy-based managed metadata or terms organized in the term store. Tag rules, item or document properties, metadata, the information store context and textual document contents are considered with the auto-classification. Auto Tagger could be helpful for initial tagging, e.g. after content migration from any system to SharePoint 2010, and for daily background operation. List items are processed as well as enterprise documents and files located in SharePoint libraries.

A high quality of subject classification can be achieved using a high performance completely .NET Framework based rule engine. Rule-based classification is much faster, less expensive to implement, and produce reliable, reproducible results with higher accuracy compared to linguistic and statistical approaches. Existent IFilters are used for content analysis, e.g. for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and many more. The add-on is seamlessly integrated with the default SharePoint tagging process. Manually assigned tags are kept untouched. There are flexible background operation settings to adjust to customer requirements.

The open API allows existing 3rd party solutions for text-mining, rule generation etc. to plug in. You may also tag any external data source to use with the SharePoint Knowledge Management and Social Networking features without any restrictions with the help of the Business Data List Connector for SharePoint. Auto Tagger is a component of the new Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010.

Knowledge Management Suite comes with auto- tagger, tag suggestions and advanced metadata navigations

The Knowledge Management Suite for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 encourage knowledge workers to take advantage of the new SharePoint 2010 features by making it as easy as possible to manage tags, tag content and use tags for knowledge browsing, navigation, content discovery and search. The suite consists of several components, e.g. for improved taxonomy management, content based tag suggestions, auto tagger and metadata navigation Web Parts.

The Tag Navigation Web Part harvests the value of collaborative tagging by using the SharePoint 2010 managed metadata taxonomy tree directly for content discovery and navigation. The Tag Directory Web Part renders managed metadata as A-Z directory index or enterprise glossary, to alphabetically browse the corporate knowledge. The Related Content Web Part for SharePoint 2010 automatically displays related content context-based by using existing tags, for example, related products or services, assigned file downloads, context-driven contact information, tasks, events etc.

The solution was developed 100% based on the new SharePoint 2010 Server Enterprise Metadata Management API.

Alterian motive updates ECM suite Version to 6.3

Alterian Content Manager. Picture adept_yho

Latest Content Manager – Corporate Edition 6.3 boasts raft of new features

ECM Plus – Alterian has launched its latest version of Corporate Edition web content management system, dubbed Content Manager.

Now available in Corporate, Professional and Enterprise flavours, Alterian boasts advanced web content management tools.

Alterian said that CMC 6.3 suite consists of enhancements to Content Manager, Web Asset Manager, Sharepoint Connector and Taxonomy and Categorization Manager.

Other features include support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (x86), as well as Windows Server 2008 (x64) environments; full support for SharePoint 2010; new permission levels to provide Page Locking and User Locking privileges to non-system administrators; editor changes including Find-and-Replace features within Source Code and changes to Javascript handling; the CMC Plug-in Installer now allows installation of Multiple Plug-ins into Multiple Sites at the same time.

Arjen van den Akker of Alterian said. “Our aim is to provide a collaborative and dynamic approach to web publication and version 6.3 is the evolution of Alterian’s product offering.”

Alterian said it had also improved a number of CMC plug-ins, which have been included in the v6.3 suite. CMC v6.3 is available from Alterian’s web content management partners.

Esker auto-doc nails order-to-cash for ED&S

Farewell then, paper

Intenal processes upgrade waves goodbye to paper

ECM Plus – Esker has just announced a new win that saw client ED&S automate its entire ‘Order-to-Cash’ process by getting rid of its paper-based documents.

According to the company, it has now managed to improve its accuracy and speed of the order entry process and is to also progress to accounts receivable processes as well as automating invoice delivery.

ED&S said hitherto it had been using large amounts of paper within its invoice process, which meant that there were specific areas that could be improved by eliminating the paper such as; automating manual effort, updating internal processes, eliminating delivery errors and accelerating cash collection.

Esker said that when orders were placed with ED&S the invoices would be printed out, then manually sorted and batched (according to each individual customer), folded, stuffed into envelopes and finally franked for delivery by postal mail. This meant that the whole invoice delivery process from the time it took to produce the final document to the time it was received by the customer was very slow.

Manual processes could also be open to errors occurring from misplaced batching which could lead to possible invoice disputes. This impacted both internal productivity and supplier relations.

ED&S has used Esker’s on-demand software to improve the processing of its supplier invoices. Esker on Demand was a simple pay-as-you-go model that enabled ED&S to avoid the high costs of implementing expensive in-house applications or having to take up vital resources of existing staff in order to deliver the business critical documents to their customers.

ED&S invoice files are sent directly from their SAP enterprise resource planning application to the ‘on Demand’ production facility at Esker where a hosted rule automatically receives, batches and intelligently reads the way in which the invoices are to be delivered to the ED&S customer. ED&S required the invoices to be sent via a mix of both postal mail and email at the customer’s request but are proactively promoting the adoption of 100% electronic invoicing.

The ability to easily migrate from manual paper-based invoice delivery to electronic invoice delivery led to a number of benefits to improve the Order to Cash process:

Emmanuel Olivier, Chief Operating Officer at Esker said “We have been delighted to be able to continue working with ED&S to further eliminate paper-based processes from their Order to Cash cycle. Esker prides itself on reducing the inefficient non-value add that paper documents cause within business processes and ED&S have always been very proactive in this area to maximise the benefits that can be gained”.

BMC to automate IT governance, risk and compliance

BMC does ITGRC with BSM

BMC ITGRC goes enterprise-wide for GRC

ECM Plus – by Paul Quigley – BMC Software has just expanded its Business Service Management (BSM) platform with a new set of automated capabilities enabling an IT-centric approach to governance, risk and compliance.

According to BMC, its IT Governance, Risk and Compliance (ITGRC) software offers automation to orchestrate the ITGRC lifecycle from policy creation to assessment reporting across the enterprise.

BMC said its ITGRC solution includes functionality, including the ability to define and manage policies, manage and automate controls and audits, automate and enforce compliance across infrastructure, suppliers and end-users as well as assuring appropriate user access permissions across the entire IT environment including mainframe, distributed, virtual and cloud.

“By facilitating the mapping of controls to specific IT resources, and by automating the collection and reporting of information on the degree to which those controls are being performed, IT GRCM can strengthen an organization’s position with respect to external audits, and can reduce compliance reporting costs and improve an organization’s capability to address IT risks” write Gartner analysts Mark Nicolett and Paul E. Proctor in their report, Critical Capabilities for IT Governance, Risk and Compliance Management, April 30, 2010.

The company added that ITGRC is fully-integrated into its BSM platform, which provides customers with the crucial link between compliance management and compliance execution. This offering constitutes one of the first steps in BMC’s strategy to further develop functionality and products that address the growing customer and industry need to automate these processes.

Open Text does doc deal with Department of Defense

The Defense Logistics Agency headquarters. Source: Wikipedia

All military branches offered way to take advantage of content lifecycle

The US Department of Defense’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Document Services unit is to use Open Text’s ECM Content Lifecycle Management software for agencies working for the DoD.

According to the company, the deal will provide all branches of the military to access content, including records and email documents. SharePoint is one of the formats included in the offering. 

Open Text said that DLA Document Services automates document management in the Department of Defense. It actively functions as a ‘transformation agent’ to move the DoD toward online documents. DLA Document Services can then collaborate with the military to consolidate records and storage, to use content management and search capabilities, Open Text said.

To fulfill its ‘mission’, as they call it, DLA Document Services has enlisted the services of Open Text as a technology and implementation provider, it said, tapping into Open Text’s core ECM software.

“By offering Open Text’s CLM solutions, DoD customers have a cost effective solution without having to go through the traditional contracting process typically required for licensing these types of tools,” said Michael Smith, Vice President, Public Sector, Open Text. “Open Text’s CLM tools will help U.S. military customers easily manage their content throughout its entire lifecycle and ensure it is secure, meets DoD requirements, and reduces risk and storage requirements. These are all imperatives for this market.”

As a field activity of the Defense Logistics Agency, DLA Document Services manages over 180 facilities, primarily located on U.S. military bases worldwide in seven countries. The DLA provides a range of document management services ranging from offset printing, on-demand output, to online document services.

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Xerox arm does ‘documents on demand’ compliance bundle

Before the signing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Mr. Copy launches DocuShare on Demand hosted ECM for document management

ECM Plus – Xerox’ Mr. Copy has just launched DocuShare on Demand targeting small-to-medium-sized businesses

The D-o-D system is a hosted enterprise content management solution which enables users to undertake document management, collaborate, review and approve as well as web publishing.

Xerox said that when coupled with Xerox scan-enabled multifunction devices from Mr. Copy, DocuShare on Demand provides a complete document management solution from one trusted vendor.

“It’s important to offer services that will help customers improve business operations and productivity” commented Bob Leone, president of Mr. Copy. “We developed DocuShare on Demand for companies committed to business modernization and green technology initiatives. We work closely with customers to contain costs and implement sustainability processes. In addition, we ensure document integrity and follow rigorous security standards, including SAS 70, Red Flag and HIPAA certifications.”

Xerox also claims that DocuShare on Demand can save users up to 90 percent of operational and storage costs relating to document management. It added that the new service would improve operational efficiencies by cutting the time it takes to find vital information by up to 80 percent.

The company also boasts compliance for HIPAA, FERPA, Sarbanes-Oxley and 37 other state privacy laws were also bundled in the package.

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ECM and DM vendors target small businesses

Small businesses being targeted

Nuxeo and Immo-Systems collaborate in document management systems targeted at small to medium-sized businesses

ECM Plus – Open source ECM firm Nuxeo has just partnered with document management specilIalist Immo-Systems, a document management systems integrator serving the US Midwest – as well as West African markets.

Immo, which offers both cloud and on-premise document management applications, has joined up with the Nuxeo Galaxy programme in order to bring a flexible, easy-to-integrate Java-based solution with ‘workable pricing’ to its small-to-medium-sized enterprise.

Immo’s main product is called Espace which is a document management software system which is being offered as a hosted service.

The company said it was now targeting businesses with fewer than 200 employees with their hosted solution, whilst for larger organisations, Immo-Systems offers a dedicated server hosted in its data centre, or as a server located at the firm’s own premises.

“We serve markets with a dearth of ECM options and solutions that still have huge data archival and management needs” said Telly Masse, general manager at Immo-Systems.

“Companies of all sizes in growing markets around the world share many of the same compliance, governmental regulation and disaster recovery challenges that larger, global businesses face. Working with Nuxeo, we’re able to quickly and easily deliver custom applications that solve these dilemmas and provide a foundation for sound data management practices.”

According to Masse, part of the value of the Galaxy program is the availability of Nuxeo Studio, a configuration and customisation environment for Nuxeo’s ECM technology that is offered as a hosted web-based tool.

Immo-Systems said it can rapidly customise Nuxeo’s products, including the Nuxeo Enterprise Platform and packaged applications, such as Nuxeo Document Management.

“Nuxeo’s efforts with partners such as Immo-Systems will help speed delivery of ECM – a core infrastructure need for all organizations in today’s knowledge economy – to markets on the rise” commented Eric Barroca, CEO of Nuxeo. “To maximize value for customers and contain project costs, our shared commitment to open, extensible and flexible technology is crucial.”

Nuxeo said its Galaxy partner program, which is designed to help expand the Nuxeo ecosystem, is continually adding new North American integrators and application builder partners. Espace, Immo-Systems’ document management offering, is available as a SaaS hosted service.

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Google data privacy breach leaves brand reputation in tatters

Image via Wikipedia

Street View privacy breach damaging to user confidence in the brand

by Jack Adams, SEO Consultant, Greenlight

Google has escaped a fine for collecting personal data – including email addresses and passwords – being used in UK public Wi-Fi spots.

Despite labelling the act as a “significant breach” of the Data Protection Act that was “not fair or lawful,” the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has simply requested that Google delete the offending data and given the search giant nine months to review its privacy practices.

The general consensus is that the ICO has been very lenient over this – its probe has been labelled “lily-livered” by Tory Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Halfon. But has Google really escaped lightly?

The damage to Google’s brand perception is substantial. In direct monetary terms it seems certainly Google has got off lightly, in the UK at least. Investigations in other nations are ongoing.

However, there can’t be any denying that some extent of damage has been done to users’ confidence in the brand and its squeaky-clean image, built around the company’s ‘don’t be evil’ motto.

This damage has been compounded by the widespread national news coverage of the privacy breaches, especially with the matter being discussed in UK parliament.

Even in general conversations, one slightly less-than-tech-savvy individual expressed reservations over Google, asking whether this breach means they should discontinue internet banking in fear of online fraud, demonstrating just how this news has pervaded the general public. The question though is whether this has put the respective individual off searching with Google? Will they now switch to a competitor?

The damage to Google’s brand perception is substantial.



Open Text and Oracle intertwine as consolidation looms

Compliance, governance issues dominate consolidation moves

Open Text taps Oracle for database access and compliance

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus – Open Text is to embed Oracle technology for enterprise content management. The two corporations have just inked agreements on mutual distribution and technology transfer..

Open Text added that it actually will embed Oracle’s technology into its own in order to offer new enterprise content solutions, the company has confirmed.

According to the two firms, the move caters for archiving, eDiscovery and regulatory compliance.

Open Text confirmed it was obtaining a technology and distribution license specifically for Oracle Universal Online Archive Content Management SDK.

As part of the agreement, Open Text will embed Oracle technology into its products, enabling it to use the capabilities of Oracle’s Database 11g as an enterprise content repository.

The partners said such a move would also enable a ‘rapid uptake of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g’ and ‘other Oracle platform capabilities’.

Such a deal would also, the firms stated, enable Open Text customers to capture large volumes of emails, documents, images, and application data and manage their entire lifecycle in an integrated environment.

The firms said that by using Oracle technology, Open Text would also be able to offer secure archiving and risk mitigation solutions.

Rich Buchheim of Open Text said the move with Oracle was “a strategic priority for us” and added that the deal was also to “expand our information governance capabilities”. Buchheim added that content was now “exploding out of control” for organisations.

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Content ‘too controversial’ as CAGW ad goes viral

Viral ad campaigns: Picture - KayVee.INC

CAGW’s ‘Chinese Professor 2030’ video ad goes viral

http://www.youtube.com/v/OTSQozWP-rM?version=3

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has unveiled a national advertising campaign that has just gone viral.

Dubbed as content being ‘controversial’, the ad’s creators at CAGW said it was addressing government spending, and highlighted the dangers of what it called the ‘relentless deficits’ and the ‘corrosive nature of our national debt’.

According to CAGW, the advertisement has received critical acclaim from both the public and the press.

James Fallows of The Atlantic characterized the ad as “The Phenomenal ‘Chinese Professor’ Ad,” that “you can imagine people actually remembering a decade from now.”

The ad, which CAGW said depicts a ‘chilling look at one potential future scenario if we continue on our current destructive fiscal trajectory’, is a 2010 homage to a 1986 ad that was produced by W.R. Grace & Co. called “The Deficit Trials.” The ordinal ad was a sensation; however, it was considered so alarming that the major networks refused to run it.

CAGW said it would continue to run the ad on FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business News, CNN, CNBC, and CNN Headline News. Within 96 hours of its premier on FNC’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” the ad has had more than 350,000 views on YouTube and dozens of media mentions. History Channel, A&E, and ABC viewers will not see the ad because the ad has been rejected by those channels. In an eerie parallel to the 1986 “Deficit Trials” ad, the History Channel said that the content was “too controversial.’

Information Commissioner: Street View breaches data protection laws

Commissioner Graham finds Street View broke law

Government watchtdog finds search engine giant of unlawful Street snooping in private data dredge

ECM Plus – The UK Government Information Commissioner has found search engine behemoth Google will be subject to audit and must sign an undertaking not to breach data protection laws again.

The Information Commissioner further stated that if the search engine company were to undertake such an unlawful data breach in the UK again, they would ‘face enforcement action’ the ICO said in a statement.

Commissioner Christopher Graham said: “…there was a significant breach of the Data Protection Act when Google Street View cars collected payload data as part of their wi-fi mapping exercise in the UK.”

Commissioner Graham has instructed Google to sign an undertaking in which the company commits to take action to ensure that breaches of this kind cannot happen again.

Furthermore, in light of the breach of data protection, an audit of Google UK’s Data Protection practices will also be undertaken.

However, the Information Commissioner rejected calls for a financial penalty to be imposed on the search engine giant, but said that it was ‘well placed to take further regulatory action if the undertaking is not fully complied with.’

According to the ICO statement, iInternational data protection authorities that undertook in-depth investigations into Google’s activities found fragments of personal data, including emails, complete URLs – and passwords.

ICO said that following the admission by Google that personal data had indeed been collected, and the fact that Google used the same technology in the UK, the Commissioner decided that formal action was necessary.

Commissioner Graham is also requiring Google to delete the payload data collected in the UK as soon as it is legally cleared to do so.

Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, added: “It is my view that the collection of this information was not fair or lawful and constitutes a significant breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act.”

Said Graham: “The most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action in these circumstances is to get written legal assurance from Google that this will not happen again – and to follow this up with an ICO audit.”

Ding-dong Dell blags Boomi in bumper cloud deal

Boomi AtomSphere

Dell to acquire Boomi; adds integration cloud to SaaS capabilities

ECM Plus – In the wake of the recent farcical tussle with HP over 3Par, Dell has finally managed to bag its very own Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integration cloud specialist Boomi.

According to the PC builder, this move will assist in its ambitions ‘to help businesses reap the full value of cloud computing’.

Dell said Boomi was ‘powered by its revolutionary AtomSphere technology’ which, it claims, offers the ‘industry’s only pure SaaS application integration platform’

Apparently this method, said Dell, takes the cost and complexity out of integrating applications by allowing easy transfer of data between cloud-based and on-premise applications with no appliances, no software and no coding required.

Boomi Industry Leadership

Boomi’s technology is currently being used in Salesforce CRM, as well as in other unnamed marketing, financial, human resources, content management and service-desk management uses, Dell added.

Boomi Capabilities

“For years, Dell has been working directly with our customers and SaaS leaders to understand the value cloud computing can bring and the issues customers face when contemplating this paradigm shift” commented Steve Felice, president of Dell’s consumer, small and medium business division.

“The Boomi team is thrilled to be joining the Dell family” added Bob Moul, Boomi president and CEO. “This was a fantastic outcome for the team, our customers and partners. Dell gives us the global platform to continue to scale Boomi AtomSphere as the leading integration solution in the SaaS and cloud computing industry.”

SSD storage set to smash status quo

SATA ports - now open for SSDs

Magnetic hard drive players quake as SSD format takes hold

ECM Plus – Solid state drive pioneer Foremay has just launched new slim SSDs with standard 1.8″ micro SATA SSD interfaces.

According to the firm, the 5mm SSD is small in size but has high-speed and high-capacity. With read/write speeds of 280 MB/s, random read/write IOPS at 4KB up to
30,000/15,000, and jumbo capacity up to 400GB, the thin SSD is the fastest SSD in a 1.8″ form factor, and it is capable of being deployed not only in high end laptops, but also in industrial PC, HPC and enterprise servers.

“The length of our new 1.8″ SATA SSD is actually 7mm less than an American Express credit card,” said Jason Hoover, Foremay’s VP Marketing. “By offering both commercial and industrial operating temperatures, the 1.8″ SATA SSD empowers design engineers with great flexibility and easy use for designing the next generation of slim and compact size computers for commercial, enterprise and industrial
applications.”

In additional to the 5mm SSD offered with its SC199 and EC188 product families, Foremay also is offering a similar design in an even thinner model with its OC177 product family that has a thickness of only 3.3 mm.

Applications of the slim 1.8″ SSD include rugged laptops, UMPCs and tablet PCs, industrial / Embedded PCs, high End Commercial Laptops and PCs, handheld video/audio recorders and entertainment systems.

The slim 1.8″ micro SATA SSD drives are now shipping in volume with Foremay’s SC199, EC188 and OC177 product families. The SC199 features industrial operating temperatures, a 5mm thickness, and metal housing; the EC188 is for commercial operating temperatures with a 5mm thickness and metal housing; and the OC177 features a 3.3 mm thick housing-free design for both commercial and industrial
operating temperatures.

VRX proffers cloud-based MediaValet media management

Picture: bovinity

ECM Plus – VRX Studios has just released a new, cloud-based digital asset management system, dubbed MediaValet.

According to the company, MediaValet is an enterprise class, digital asset management system, cloud-based, highly scalable, globally accessible, and can also handle thousands of users at a time.

“Two years ago we started looking for a digital asset management system that could help us manage our rapidly growing archive of travel related virtual tours, video slideshows, still images and interactive maps” commented David MacLaren, president and CEO of VRX. “Our challenge was the large amount of digital content that we were steadily amassing and the thousands of hotels around the world that wanted access to the content on a regular basis.”

MediaValet(TM) is built on Microsoft’s Windows Azure ‘cloud’ platform. Azure provides the scalability, reliability, and global reach necessary to satisfy the system requirements of large organizations that have terabytes of digital assets, multiple locations, suppliers and distribution channels, and dozens – if not thousands – of users.

“Failing an exhaustive search for an existing solution, we made the difficult decision to enter the software realm and develop our own digital asset management system,” stated MacLaren.

The advent of the Cloud has enable VRX Studios to create one of the first global digital asset management systems, and in the process, has expanded VRX Studios’ opportunities beyond the travel industry.

“To our surprise, many of our hotel customers have been experiencing similar content management challenges as we have”, stated MacLaren. “We look forward to introducing them to MediaValet(TM) and to exploring opportunities beyond the travel industry.”

MPs lambast unauthorised data breach

Mass content mis-management collection awakens threats to invasion of privacy laws

According to reports, MPs are furious at attempts by search engine giant Google to hoover up private wi-fi data.

A BBC report quoted MP Robert Halfon who is questioning Google’s insistence that the details were sucked up by Street View cars as a result of code being ‘accidentally included in the software’.

He said: “I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing,” he said.

Another MP, Mark Lancaster, cited the case of a women’s refuge in his constituency which had demanded to be removed from Street View.

“Imagine their great concern when on entering the name of the organisation on Google, a picture of the building the refugees use and also their addresses appear on the search engine” Lancaster stated. 

Speaking in a two-hour session in the House of Commons, Lancaster added that the requests to remove the refuge from the map had received ‘no response’.

Said Lancaster: “I find it staggering that such an invasion of privacy on an organisation whose purpose is to protect others is allowed to occur” he said.

Halton added: “My own feeling is that this data was of use to Google for commercial purposes and that is why it was done.”