IBM upped the stakes in an ongoing contest over corporate email software with a program that offers business partners up to $20,000 to dump Microsoft’s Exchange in favor of IBM’s Lotus software on Linux. Dubbed "Migrate to the Penguin," the latest IBM incentive plan is an expansion of its Move2Lotus program, which is aimed at winning over third-party consultants and software resellers that work with Microsoft’s Exchange. IBM is offering a limited-time rebate for IBM partners that move customers from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux. The offer gives $20 per licensed Exchange user, or "seat," maxing out at $20,000.

Malicious hackers have fitted rootkit features into the newest mutants of the Bagle worm, adding a stealthy new danger to an already virulent threat. According to virus hunters at F-Secure, of Helsinki, Finland, the latest Bagle.GE variant loads a kernel-mode driver to hide the processes and registry keys of itself and other Bagle-related malware from security scanners. The use of offensive rootkits in existing virus threats signals an aggressive push by attackers to get around existing anti-virus software and maintain a persistent and undetectable presence on infected machines.

A District Court in California quashed an attempt by Microsoft to force Sun Microsystems and Oracle to provide documents in its battle with the European Commission. But judges in New York and Boston are still considering similar requests against IBM and Novell, respectively, as Microsoft fights against possible fines of up to 2 million euros ($2.4 million) a day for failing to carry out sanctions imposed by the Commission.

Gannett officials expect the media company’s hosting capacity to grow and are already planning for ways to keep the 15,400-square-foot data center powered up and cooled as that occurs. One option under study is the use of DC power distribution within the data center. Analysts said the drumbeat for DC power is likely to increase through June, when the Electric Power Research Institute will host a two-day data center conference focusing on DC power in Washington. While many in the industry have brushed off DC power, calling it more marketing hype than reality, others–including Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems–are interested.

IBM will be investing US$1 billion over the next three years to expand its information management software development efforts. To support the initiative, the company will be dedicating 15,000 skilled practitioners globally and hopes to grow this base by 65 percent over the same period. Big Blue is further aligning its software and consulting arms to address an emerging business opportunity estimated to reach $69 billion by 2009.

Enhancements to the automatic diagnostic collection feature and the new fault analyzer feature make Lotus Notes and Domino 7 more serviceable. See how these improvements can help you with your next server or client crash.

IBM announced that the 11th podcast in the series "IBM and the Future of…" will begin today on its investor Web site. The podcast is called IBM and the Future of Work. "IBM and the Future of Work" discusses how changing technology and demographics will affect patterns of work in developed and developing countries, and the emerging skills of the future. As work evolves, companies and employees will have to deal with the blurring of traditional boundaries between work and family life, between offices and remote locations, between manager and employee, and between nationalities and cultures in the global economy.

A new telecommunications reform bill in the U.S. Congress would kill the Internet because it does not protect users against decisions by broadband providers to discriminate against some types of Internet traffic, consumer advocacy groups said. The draft bill, released late Monday by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, would gut so-called Net neutrality rules prohibiting large broadband providers from blocking or slowing access to Web content and services from competitors, the advocates said. The House committee included net neutrality provisions in earlier drafts.

Novell has its ups and its downs, but Jack Messman, the company’s CEO, is determined to see the open-source course his way. In an interview with Linux-Watch, Messman explained where he thinks the company is today and where it, and its Linux products, are going.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a patent case involving online auctioneer eBay that is part of a wider struggle between the software and pharmaceutical industries over the future of the U.S. patent system. Lawyers for eBay and small e-commerce company MercExchange will square off over whether eBay should be barred from using its popular "Buy it Now" feature, which infringes on two MercExchange patents.