Ryan Clothier

VMware's third-quarter profit dropped by more than half as the company invested more heavily in research and development, though its revenue increased 4 percent from a year earlier, the company said Wednesday. Including one-time items, the company made a profit of $95 million, or $0.24 per share, better than the $0.20 per share analysts had been expecting, according to Thomson Reuters. Net income for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was US$38 million, or $0.09 per share, down from $83 million, or $0.21 per share, in the third quarter of 2008, VMware said.

Revenue for the quarter was $490 million, up from $472 million for the same period last year. The economy remains challenging but VMware now has better visibility into the coming quarters, Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek said in a statement. Analysts had been expecting $474 million in revenue, Thomson Reuters said. He forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $540 million to $560 million, ahead of current estimates, but said revenue in the first quarter next year is likely to be down sequentially. Sales and marketing expenses also climbed, as the company continued to promote a new version of its virtualization software, vSphere 4. "Our solid third-quarter results were driven by strength in the U.S. federal sector, increased transaction volumes and particularly robust growth in our maintenance renewals," Peek said in the statement. VMware spent $133.5 million on R&D during the quarter, up from $85 million in the same period last year.

A 1 percent drop in revenue from the U.S. was more than offset by a 9 percent increase in international sales, VMware said. Services revenue, which includes maintenance fees and professional services, climbed 33 percent to $249 million, while revenue from new software licenses declined 16 percent to $240 million.

The European Union should update its laws to better suit cloud computing, Microsoft's top lawyer urged in Brussels Tuesday. The existing E.U. laws "are starting to show their age," he told students, E.U. officials and industry executives. Laws covering data protection and data retention go back to the mid-1990s and need to be revised to take into account the massive and constant flow of data between users' computers and multiple cloud servers that can be located anywhere in the world, Microsoft head legal counsel Brad Smith said in a speech.

The data retention law passed in 2006, when cloud computing was mostly limited to online e-mail accounts, calls on the 27 E.U. member states to each set their own length of time for the retention of data, between six and 24 months. A request to access the information can be done only with a court order. Under the directive authorities can request access to details such as IP address and time of use of every e-mail, phone call and text message sent or received. Smith said countries have chosen widely varying retention times. The discrepancy makes compliance by telecom and cloud services companies complicated, Smith said. A subscriber to cloud services in, say, Italy, with a relatively short data retention regime, may see their data stored in Ireland, with one of the longest retention times.

He urged the E.U. to change the law, either by setting a standard length for retention time, such as a year for all E.U. member states, or by applying mutual recognition principles, so that each country applies the retention time of the country where the user's data is being stored. In the cloud it is constantly moving," he said. Greater harmonization is needed in the 1995 data protection directive too, Smith said. "At the time it was passed, data moved location occasionally. While technology and its uses have moved on since 1995, the importance of privacy hasn't changed, Smith said. I disagree. And in a thinly veiled attack on Microsoft rival Google, he added: "Some firms based on the West Coast (of the U.S.) don't think privacy is so important.

The right to privacy is the right to choose who sees your information and it is as important now as it was 15 years ago."Data transfers are global, and while Smith acknowledged that a global data protection treaty is unlikely in the near future, he suggested that trading partners including the U.S. and E.U. should try to forge an agreement similar to the bilateral free trade agreements they both sign up to in other commercial fields. For wireless connections, he urged the E.U. to free up more radio spectrum for services that run in the cloud. His final piece of advice for E.U. lawmakers concerned broadband access to the Internet – a prerequisite if cloud computing is to take off in the way many people predict it will in the coming years."Governments need to consider how to enhance broadband, both wired and wireless," Smith said.

Verizon mocks AT&T for whining in its response to lawsuit. Tony Bradley Was this article useful? Verizon's legal filing says "the truth hurts" and claims AT&T is simply trying to squash the marketing before the holidays. Yes 76 No 1 Verizon has responded to the AT&T lawsuit over the "There's a Map for That" marketing campaign with a legal filing of its own.

Legal briefs and filings don't usually make very compelling reading, but this one is actually a pretty good read. Verizon's message to the court and to AT&T essentially boils down to three words: "the truth hurts". Verizon responds to AT&T lawsuit by stating 'the truth hurts'The Verizon legal team should be commended. It has a little drama, a little humor, and ultimately makes the point that AT&T is simply trying to use the courts to obscure the simple truth that its 3G network is inadequate. AT&T may not like the message that the ads send, but this Court should reject its efforts to silence the messenger." The legal response from Verizon concludes by saying "This motion is a blatant effort to ask the Court to do what the marketplace will not do: shield AT&T from truthful comparative advertisements that Verizon has a right to air and that consumers have a right to see." Touché. Well-played, Verizon. In the filing, Verizon states "Remarkably, AT&T admits that the 3G coverage maps-the one thing that is common to all five ads-are accurate and that the ads' express statement that Verizon has "5X More 3G Coverage" than AT&T is true." Verizon goes on to say "In the final analysis, AT&T seeks emergency relief because Verizon's side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison of its own 3G coverage with AT&T's confirms what the marketplace has been saying for months: AT&T failed to invest adequately in the necessary infrastructure to expand its 3G coverage to support its growth in smartphone business and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly. Recent reports from Brandindex.com show that Verizon's brand image is skyrocketing, while AT&T's has plummeted.

Or, perhaps AT&T's claim has become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. AT&T could construe the reports to support its claim that the ads are misleading and damaging to its image. By suing Verizon and making a big deal over the ad campaign, AT&T has increased the exposure of the ads exponentially. The fact that AT&T is whining about it publicly certainly doesn't improve its brand perception either. If the shift in brand perception is a result of the ads, it could be because they're true rather than because they're misleading. AT&T was hoping to get an emergency injunction to force Verizon to pull the entire marketing campaign pending the results of a full hearing.

Even if AT&T ultimately prevails, the holidays will be over, the damage will be done, and Verizon will most likely have ended the campaign of its own volition anyway. It appears that AT&T will not get that injunction and that this case will not be heard for awhile. Verizon isn't making any claim in the ads that AT&T's own customers haven't already stated. I doubt AT&T will be taking its customers to court to get them to stop complaining. Consumers have taken issue with AT&T's high dropped call rate in some areas, sparse 3G coverage, and more.

AT&T is its own worst enemy in this case. Seems like a lose-lose and makes me wonder if the AT&T legal team isn't secretly working for the Verizon marketing team. It is drawing attention to disparaging details about its own network which it admits are accurate, and coming off looking like whiners at the same time.

IT professionals looking to boost their high-tech careers in the coming five years are betting on security certifications and skills to help them stand out to potential employees, according to a new survey. Separately, nearly 20% indicated they would seek ethical hacking certification over the same time period. Five ways to get affordable certification skillsSome IT skills see pay hikes during the downturn CompTIA, an IT industry trade association, polled some 1,537 high-tech workers and found 37% intend to pursue a security certification over the next five years.

And another 13% pinpointed forensics as the next certification goal in their career development. "When you add the results, you will see that about two-thirds of IT workers intend to add some type of security certification to their portfolio," says Terry Erdle, senior vice president of skills certifications. "This trend is driven by two factors: one, security issues are pervasive, and two, more and more people are moving to managed services and software-as-a-service models, which involves more complex networking. Nearly 90% said they want to spruce up their resumes and another 88% said they hope to grow personally with new certifications. That level of non-enterprise data center computing has people look more closely at their security infrastructure." High-tech workers surveyed cited economic advancement and personal growth as the motivation to seek further certifications. Emerging technologies and vertical industry trends also drive certifications seekers. Green IT, mobile and healthcare IT also placed among high-tech career development plans. "We are going to see upwards of 70,000 IT jobs in healthcare and the related network and storage skills that come with electronic records, such as e-reporting and e-charting," Erdle adds. "We are working now to determine what kind of IT roles should be supported in certifications from CompTIA." Do you Tweet? For instance, SaaS ranked among the technologies in which IT workers intend to seek certifications in the coming years.

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Cisco this week enhanced its IPv6 offerings for its carrier core and edge routers in an effort to ease the eventual migration from IPv4. The Carrier-Grade IP Version 6 Solution line includes a new hardware module for Cisco's CRS-1 router, and software for that system as well as for the ASR 9000 edge router. By 2015, there will be 15 billion IP endpoints on the Internet. Cisco also unveiled professional services offerings to assist customers in the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. The evolution of the Internet Cisco says there are 700 days left until the last block of IPv4 addresses are allocated. The IPv6 enhancements rolled out this week are intended to provide a bridge from IPv4 to full IPv6 network while at the same time preserving existing IPv4 addresses to ease the migration.

IPv6 has 340 undecillion unique addresses - or more than 50 billion billion billion - for each person on earth, more than enough to continue to support the demand for IP addresses, Cisco says. IPv4 has a finite set of unique addresses, numbering approximately 4 billion, which is rapidly depleting due to the growth of Internet-connected devices and smart devices. However, the protocols of IPv4 and IPv6 are not directly compatible, so migrating a network from IPv4 to IPv6 requires preservation of IPv4 while orchestrating a gradual and prudent transition to IPv6. This has been a chief reason why the industry has been procrastinating on this migration even though IPv6 was developed a decade ago. It's probably something to take seriously two to five years from now but (carriers) have to start to prepare." With that, Cisco unveiled the Carrier-Grade Services Engine for the CRS-1. Deployed deep in the core of service provider's network, this module supports large-scale, high-throughput network-address translation (NAT). At the edge, Cisco rolled out Carrier-Grade IPv6 Solution for its ASR series routers. But with IPv4 addresses facing imminent depletion, the time may have come to accelerate the adoption of IPv6. "I do think we've reached the point where we should be concerned about it," says Glen Hunt, an analyst at Current Analysis. "The biggets problem might be that we've been crying wolf about IPv6 and defining ways to get around attacking the problem. This is software that helps enable NAT at the edge of a network for smaller or distributed IP networks.

These are professional services designed to make the transition to IPv6 smooth and reduce the risk to network operations. The software is intended to first tunnel IPv6 addresses through IPv4; and then perform the inverse function as IPv6 addresses outnumber IPv4. Lastly, Cisco is offering services for the Carrier-Grade IPv6 Solution implementation. The services include initial planning and IPv6 readiness assessment to design and implementation. All products will be available in early 2010. Cisco did not disclose pricing.

A look back at the week's biggest Google-related news stories:   Google, Verizon unite on Android devices  Verizon and Google have entered into an agreement to jointly develop wireless devices based on Google's open source Android mobile platform. Verizon says that it will have two Android-based handsets on the market by year-end with more to come by 2010   Google celebrates anniversary of bar code patent  Google's "doodle" on its search home page Wednesday was a bar code that presumably translated into the word "Google". It also said happy 57th anniversary to the awarding of a patent for the bar code by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. During a teleconference Tuesday, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlined the companies' new strategic partnership that will see them working together to develop Android-based smartphones, PDAs and netbooks, and to deliver users with applications sold through the Android Market app store. It also coincided with the announcement earlier this week of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Charles Kao for his work on fiber-optic communications and Willard Boyle and George Smith, who invented imaging technology using a digital sensor dubbed a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). The CCD has enabled developments such as bar codes/bar code readers to come along.   Gmail, other webmail passwords stolen  In the wake of the posting in online forums of stolen account and password information for thousands of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo e-mail accounts, evidence emerged of yet more abuse that entails attackers exploiting that information to hack into compromised accounts over the last few days to send spam aimed at stealing credit cards.

Attackers have been taking advantage of the exposed account information for Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo to break into the victim's e-mail accounts and send out deceptive messages to the victim's contacts to promote the scam.   Google Voice in the middle of things AT&T buoyed the spirits of Google Voice fans this week by saying it would allow the application to run on its network, but later in the week word emerged that lawmakers want the FCC to look into whether Google Voice blocks calls to people in rural areas because they are expensive to connect. According to Patrik Runald, senior manager security research at Websense, the security firm noticed about a 40% surge in spam related to Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail accounts in recent days, with some of the spam being a phishing scam related to a fake Chinese electronics shopping site. And guess which big carrier is encouraging the lawmakers in this pursuit?   Google Squared freshens up  PC World's David Coursey writes that "Google Squared, the ambitious project that delivers search results as a table, has received an update that improves both the quality and quantity of the information it presents." He cites a post on Google's blog that the update results will allow up to four times as many facts to be squeezed into a square.   Google, Microsoft woo Twitter  Various reports (All Things Digital, Reuters, etc.) had Google and Microsoft chatting with Twitter separately about how to best integrate Twitter with outside search engines.   Google: DRAM, DRAM, DRAM!  Computerworld reports that Google and the University of Toronto released a study of tens of thousands of Google servers showing that "data error rates on DRAM memory modules are vastly higher than previously thought and may be more responsible for system shutdowns and service interruptions." For more on Google, visit Network World's independent Google community, Google Subnet.

Sophos has added data-loss prevention capabilities to its desktop anti-malware software, the security firm says, promising gateway-based DLP in the future as well. Rainer Gawlick, chief marketing officer for Sophos, says the desktop DLP technology is designed to monitor for sensitive content a user might transmit via e-mail, Web uploads, USB sticks or DVDs, and block it if need be. "We're using the existing agent to scan malware and for confidential information," he says, noting for existing Sophos endpoint-security customers, the DLP technology is a free upgrade. 11 security companies to watch Many DLP systems today cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; however Sophos doesn't claim the DLP functionality it packed into Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9 is the same found in high-end endpoint/gateway DLP products. Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9 combines a fully-integrated desktop agent for DLP and malware protection in a single product. For instance, the Sophos product doesn't have a DLP discovery tool, and it basically works by focusing on personally-identifiable data such as credit-card and driver's license numbers.

DLP is a scanning problem. But it allows for the creation of customized rules in order to identify and catch file data through discrete triggers, such as project codes, that could be added to documents as identifiers. "There's pressure increasing on customers every day to protect data," Gawlick says. "What we're doing is making DLP implementable. We're using the existing agent to scan for malware and scan for confidential information." Some organizations may find they do need more sophisticated DLP, Gawlick says, but others may find what Sophos has come up with to be "practical DLP" that makes it hard for people to violate content-protection policies. Raymond had been using another standalone DLP product he declined to name, noting there had been minor interference at times among separate agent software. John Raymond, IT security manager at Sacramento-based SAFE Credit Union, has long used Sophos anti-malware software in his organization, and for the past two months has been beta-testing the DLP features in Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9. The single-agent DLP/anti-malware software from Sophos appears to have less of a software footprint and uses less CPU resources than having a separate DLP and anti-malware agent, he says.

While the other DLP agent made use of a type of fingerprinting technology that might be more accurate than the Sophos DLP, so far it appears that the Sophos technology is going to be sufficient to protect sensitive customer data. "I think it's going to be accurate enough for what we need," Raymond says, adding that the firm also has other gateway means to monitor for unauthorized transmissions. Administrators can be kept apprised of DLP actions via the same management console used to watch for malware events. According to Gawlick, Sophos DLP on the desktop can be used to block, allow or notify a user of violations of policy. "You can use it to simply warn the user," Gawlick says, by telling them if the file is sent, that transmission will be logged into the management console. Although Sophos DLP doesn't support FTP now, subsequent editions will, and Sophos also plans a gateway-based product by the end of the year that would work with the same set of DLP rules. Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9, available now, starts at $34.25 per user for 500 users.