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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