MySQL Taps Open Source Community For Innovation

April 21, 2009
MySQL new boss, Karen is asking the open source community for help to innovate

MySQL new boss, Karen Tegan Padir hopes the open source community will help the company innovate

Despite trouble times at both MySQL – which lost its founders – and Sun (sold to Oracle), more developers (2,000 according to the organisers) made the journey to Santa Clara, Calif. to attend the MySQL conference this year than ever.

At the show, Karen Tegan Padir, the open source database’s new boss, unveiled a beta version of the database engine, as well as a more “community” friendly vision.

MySQL’s innovation comes from open source community

MySQL 5.4 performance improvements mostly came from “patches” written by Google and Oracle – through its InnoDB open source team – and added to the source tree of the open source database.

“For every 4 times increase in processing power, MySQL gets 3 times the throughput. It’s not perfectly linear, but it’s a lot closer. On the benchmarks we see on average 60 to 70 percent performance gain… and that’s without changing anything on the application,” explains Sun’s vice president of Software Infrastructure Marketing, Mark Herring.

MySQL wants to reengage with its fans

But the main emphasis for MySQL this week is to show the open source world that it is now more community friendly by:

  1. trying to get patches from the community into the main source tree;
  2. changing the way it accepts contributions, letting developers keep ownership of their source code’s copyright;
  3. releasing a monthly update for the software source code to the community.

“This is the key to our success. We have to be more inclusive because innovation happens everywhere,” said Herring.

Here’s a video excerpt of my conversation with Sun’s vice president of Software Infrastructure Marketing, Mark Herring on the open source company announcements today:

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Gaming Startups Fail To Attract Large Venture Investments

April 21, 2009

Comparatively speaking, gaming startups tend to attract less VC fundings than other tech companies

Comparatively speaking, gaming startups tend to attract less VC fundings than other tech companies

Gaming is hot, but venture investments in the sector are still much lower than most other tech sectors.

Last year, gaming startups – mostly from Silicon Valley and some in LA/Orange county – raised a total of $315 million in 53 deals.

“It’s not a huge sector. Actually most of the big winners don’t have venture funding. And that’s because gaming is a hits business which gets a disproportionate influence despite its lack of investing,” said PwC managing director Steve Bengston at SDForum’s event on gaming investing.

In his retrospective of last year’s gaming investing, Bengston outlined the top 5 gaming venture investors (Silicon Valley’s Founders Fund, Redpoint Ventures and True Ventures and East Coast-based Columbia Capital and Greylock Partners).

Also speaking at the SDForum event were venture capitalists Ken Elefant of Opus Capital, Michael Kim of Rustic Canyon Partners and Ho Nam of Altos Ventures, who were sharing their experience in gaming investing which I will cover on a upcoming post.

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Venture Industry To Shrink By Half In 2009; Bottoming At $15 Billion

April 21, 2009
With a lack of exits, venture capital is not as attractive for investors anymore, says Steve Bengston, a director at PwC

With lack of "exits", venture capital less attractive to investors, says Steve Bengston, a managing director at PwC

The venture capital industry is going to get a lot smaller than anyone expected.

Speaking this morning at the SDForum’s event on investing in gaming, PwC managing director, Steve Bengston, predicted the venture industry is heading back to it’s 1997 levels; investing about $15 billion annually versus over $28 billion last year, and $105 billion in 2000.

“This year will be better than 1997, when we had a viable healthy venture capital business. However, only half of the firms and the general partners today will survive. But there’s nothing inherently problematic to this as it always was the top quartile that made all of the money anyway,” explained Bengston.

For the PwC executive and all the major investors, the question that remains is who are going to be those leading VCs.

“Venture capitalists have not been good at transferring their skills to the next generation. Today, most of the original founders are still in place but when they leave, we might see funds go to younger firms,” adds Bengston.

Another issue that plagues the venture community is the lack of returns which makes it a less attractive to large investors.

“Venture investing is a risky asset class, and investors are asking for a premium in returns of the risk. Historically, returns have been around 20 percent, now it’s more 10 to 15 percent. There are simply no exits, it’s illiquid,” said Bengston.

For entrepreneurs, a smaller venture capital industry means that the little money available for funding is now going to be much harder to get!

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Internet Trust Continues To Build Despite The Downturn

April 21, 2009

I often look to online banking as an indicator of the public’s overall trust in the Internet.

If you someone is comfortable enough to check account balances, transfer money and do other banking chores online, they are obviously willing to share personal data in many other less critical on-network situations.

After all, what’s more important than money? ☺

A recent survey from comScore suggests that this bond of trust continues to build, despite the financial downturn.

ComScore found that in the second half of 2007, consumers pulled back from online banking, after several years of strong adoption.

But that largely reversed in 2008, with a burst of interest again in the third quarter, even as the financial markets melted down.

Not surprisingly, the fourth quarter was weak. Who by then had any money in their bank accounts any way?

The study suggests that come what may in the economy and the nation’s banking system, the steady movement of crucial communications online is an irreversible trend likely to accelerate. So is trust.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Security Startups Keep Innovating Despite The Downturn

April 21, 2009

Security remains an escalating problem on the Internet.

John Whaley wants to bring better security to virtualization

John Whaley wants to bring better security to virtualization

Large multinational companies continue to see millions of malicious probes a day. Botnets link thousands of computers in nefarious networks. Even new computer users in emerging countries are now under increasing attack – and less aware of how to defend themselves.

Such an environment creates opportunities for startups searching for new ways to protect computers, cell phones and the networks that link them. Despite the sour economy, many continue developing innovative products and services. Several showed off their wares on the first day of the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

Among them was Mokafive, a company that got its start at Stanford University. John Whaley, founder and CTO, said its virtualization-management software closes a security hole in virtualization products, such as those from VMware.

The software renders computer infections ineffective by installing fresh, uncontaminated operating environments on a computer or mobile device every time it reboots. Worms and other infections are erased in the process.

SafeMashups is targeting the business market, says Ravi Ganesan

SafeMashups is targeting the business market, says Ravi Ganesan

But Mokafive hardly had the innovation crown to itself. SafeMashups hopes to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of Internet mashups that link their sites to others.

Businesses are eager to expand marketing and sales efforts, but fear they can never be sure whether a site they link to it’s the real thing or an impostor. “They have no standard, secure way of knowing who is on the other end,” says Ravi Ganesan, founder and CEO. “You see this problem again and again.”

SafeMashups authenticates the connections.

White Cyber Knight tackles an even more complicated problem – monitoring corporate governance and compliance policies. The Israeli-based company can block an unauthorized database query or observe that the risks of a policy violation are greatest in a company’s supply chain.

The system monitors business processes, says CEO and founder Eyal Adar.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Cisco Plans To Bring Real Time Data To Security

April 21, 2009

One of the biggest challenges in online security lies in getting the latest information about threats to the firewalls, gateway filters and other cyber sentries standing guard in networks around the globe.

Real time data is hard to capture and distribute.

Cisco hopes to improve intrusion detection up to two fold

Cisco hopes to improve intrusion detection up to two fold

Cisco Systems hopes to tackle this problem with an ambitious effort the company will unveil Tuesday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The network equipment maker plans to gather data about network attacks from hundreds of thousands of devices installed in networks around the world.

It will use this massive download to pump out network updates every 10 to 15 minutes to routers and other security gear. This intelligence should make networks better able to fend off today’s steady stream of probes and attacks.

Cisco itself receives 2 million attacks an hour, suggesting the huge volume of data the company could receive.

Cisco Correlation will work with its Intrusion Prevention System and other hardware. It is expected to make the new IPS version 7.0 up to two times more effective in stopping malicious attacks.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

VMware Improves Virtualization Performance With vSphere; Targets Enterprise Critical Applications

April 21, 2009
With vSphere, VMware claims to bring the benefit of cloud computing without the disruption of having to rewrite the application

With vSphere, VMware claims to bring the benefit of cloud computing without the disruption of having to rewrite the application

VMware unveiled today vSphere 4, the new name for its virtualization infrastructure previously called VMware Infrastructure or VI.

“The old name wasn’t a great name: it was too long, generic, undifferentiated and was too close to its product category of virtual infrastructure,” admitted to me Bogomil Balkansky, vice-president of Product Marketing at VMware.

Cloud OS will not require to rewrite applications

VMware touts vSphere as the Cloud OS (operating system), that brings the benefits of cloud computing – lower cost, reliable, pay-as-you-go model – to the enterprise data centre, but without the disruption.

“Today enterprises hesitate to jump on the public cloud bandwagon because it forces them to rewrite all their applications using those public clouds APIs (programming interfaces). With vSphere, enterprises do not have to rewrite anything. They just have to move their existing applications to this upgraded virtualization infrastructure,” adds Balkansky.

Improved performance allows virtualization of critical applications

But what vSphere really is a vastly improved virtual machine with much better performance and reliability features than its prior generation.

“We’ve made huge improvements in terms of the size and scalability of the individual virtual machines. And that’s very important to enable to run business applications, including critical applications. All the speeds and feeds of virtual machines have increased 2 to 4 times: like the processors, the memory, the storage speed and the network connectivity per virtual machines. Now applications that run on vSphere are as fast as if they were running on a native server. Today, there’s no excuse not to virtualize a 100% of your datacenter,” pounds the VMware executive.

vSphere will require server shutdown

The migration to vSphere will not be trivial as it will require to shut down the physical servers, install the new virtual machine and restart. To prevent downtime during the upgrade, VMware recommends to use its Vmotion migration tool to move around the virtual machines while servers are been updated.

High price is no hurdle!

Although VMware has a version of vSphere targeted at small and medium businesses – limited to 3 physcal servers – for less than $1,000, prices can quickly jump to more than $3,000 per processor.

“When customers look at our solutions, they get so much value and such an ROI that prices is not typically a hurdle. And honestly, we have free products like our hypervisor is free,” replies Balkansky.

With a $995 edition, VMware hopes to accelerate small and medium businesses adoption of virtualization

With a $995 edition, VMware hopes to accelerate small and medium businesses adoption of virtualization

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Macs Are Vulnerable To Attacks Too, Symantec Warns

April 20, 2009
The Macs perception of invulnerability is gone for ever. Beware of malicious files, links

The Mac's perception of invulnerability is gone for ever. Beware of malicious files, links

Note to Apple users: the Mac is vulnerable to security attacks too, and more are coming!

Proof of the new trend is the recent discovery by Symantec researchers of a malicious file embedded in pirated copies of Apple’s iWork 09 software that then went on to steal the user’s password and take control of the infected Mac machines to attack Web sites.

Threats are shifting from targeting software vulnerabilities to people

The lesson to this story is not that attackers have finally cracked the Mac security, but that ultimately, security is a people’s problem.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re on Windows, Mac or on any other platform. Last week’s Mac incident was a social engineering attack which did not target a specific vulnerability on the Mac. Actually we found that only 3 percent of the malicious files target known vulnerabilities anyway,” explained Zufilkar Ramzan, a Symantec Architect speaking at the company’s “influencers” event in San Francisco.

For Ramzan, it’s only a matter of time until the Mac becomes the target of more attacks.

“Attackers have so far focused on Windows machines because of the large market share and the fact that they could leverage existing tools to create malware. But as the Mac gain popularity, you will see more attacks targeting its users,” adds Ramzan.

The obvious advice is of course not to click on that Web link or file that you’ve downloaded from peer-to-peer networks or received by email or Facebook.

Because the Mac is not invulnerable anymore.

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Symantec To Embed Security With Companies Information; To Prevent Data Leaks

April 20, 2009
Mark Bregman, CTO, Symantec

Mark Bregman, CTO, Symantec

The problem of the consumerization of the enterprise is becoming more pervasive as public computing clouds and “hot” devices such as the iPhone proliferations throughout company ranks.

But for Symantec CTO Mark Bregman the dilemma is between blatantly banning those usages and devices inside a corporation – and by the same time scare good talent away – and ways to “manage” the issue.

“In the financial services sector, we’ve seen people performing computational work on public clouds because it was a faster to complete their jobs, but without anyone at IT knowing it and against company policies. Same thing on the device side, where employees are using their private iPhone to send corporate emails or work on company documents,” said Bregman speaking at Symantec’s “influencers” event in San Francisco.

Enterprise digital rights management can’t solve the IT headache from the “consumerization” of the enterprise

To try to prevent data “leaks” or “breaches”, Bregman suggested to automatically classify the data that comes out of an enterprise and embed security to it by adding strong digital rights like “who can read the document, copy/paste it, print it, etc…”

A strategy that complements Symantec’s current solutions centered around its “data loss prevention” (or DLP) solution (from the Vontu’s acquisition) and “endpoint virtualization” solution which now only work on Windows machines and creates a secure and isolated environment that IT can control.

“Today’s Enterprise Rights Management solutions (from Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, EMC and Liquid Machines) do not scale and adds too much complexity in managing endpoints as you need to write ERM plug-ins for each applications you are trying to secure,” adds Brian Witten, senior director of Advanced Concepts at Symantec’s Research Labs.

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Oracle Guns For Java, Sun’s Hardware Comes Along For The Ride

April 20, 2009

Oracle has never been afraid to remake the technology industry.

Almost a half a decade ago, it kicked off a major consolidation in the enterprise software market with its hostile bid for PeopleSoft.

Oracles merger with Sun is seen as a defensive bid to control Java

Oracle's merger with Sun is seen as a defensive bid to control Java

Now it is shifting the dynamics among software and hardware firms, melding its ever expanding database, middleware and applications empire to include Sun Microsystems’ server hardware. The company said it would buy Sun for $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion after backing out Sun’s cash.

That will lead to awkward relations with Hewlett-Packard, a long-term partner, and other firms that make a business supplying hardware for Oracle’s software. IBM is already an intense rival, so the ties between the companies may not fray further.

But to focus on the conglomeration of hardware and software misses the point. Oracle bought Sun primarily for Java. The prospect of IBM buying Sun and controlling Java was too much for Larry Ellison and company. Oracle’s entire software stack is built on Java.

“We view this deal as a defensive maneuver on
Oracle’s part to keep Sun, a long time ally, out of the hands of IBM, a long time enemy,” says Cowen analyst Peter Goldmacher. “We are positive that Oracle never wanted to get into the hardware business, but when faced with the likelihood of IBM owning Sun’s Java assets and the company’s installed customer base, Oracle was forced to buy Sun.”

But all this raises an interesting question. Despite gaining Sun’s Java – and its other software assets including the Solaris OS and its open-source MySQL database – can Oracle make due with its lower margins of a hardware business?

“By promising to make Sun hardware ‘profitable,’ Oracle seems to be suggesting that growth in software alone is not sufficient and that consolidation should be extended,” says Miko Matsumura, deputy CTO at Software AG. “Instead of taking a fundamental open source approach which is primarily driven by services revenue anyway, Oracle is moving to a systems approach. This is not a terribly optimistic acquisition in my opinion.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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