A laptop with information on almost 200,000 current and former Hewlett-Packard employees was stolen last week, putting them at risk of identity fraud. The stolen computer belongs to Fidelity Investments, which provides services to HP, a representative for the Palo Alto, Calif., technology giant said Wednesday. The laptop was being used by several Fidelity employees in an off-site location, said Anne Crowley, a spokeswoman for Fidelity, which is based in Boston.

SAP’s messaging over its release of an on-demand CRM application sounded familiar to CRM industry observers. The company sounded many of the same themes that Siebel did two and a half years ago when it rolled out Siebel OnDemand, its belated entry into the hosted CRM market. Like Siebel, SAP touted the advantages of a hybrid deployment model, where companies can run the functionally rich, on-premise versions of their CRM software, while smaller divisions that need to get up and running quickly, or that may need only a simple tool, could opt for the on-demand version, thereby providing the best of both worlds. Yet large, successful hybrid deployments have been slow to materialize.

IBM announced that it has received a "Positive" rating in Gartner’s MarketScope for Distributed Output Management. The rating was based on evaluation of products, services, customer experience, strategy, ability to execute, and several other criteria. Sixteen vendors were evaluated by Gartner. Distributed output management is defined by Gartner as middleware that drives the output process and supports the automated creation and delivery of business process and ad hoc documents.

IBM announced new software and services to help organizations capture best practices and IT assets, allowing them to more easily integrate their business processes and information assets across the enterprise. Called SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Governance, the new portfolio helps businesses address the unique concerns that arise when adopting an SOA infrastructure, including measuring business goals, aligning IT to meet those goals, and tracking business performance. Comprised of best practices, processes and new software, IBM’s SOA Governance portfolio helps customers establish tailored decision rights in the organization and implement the policy, measurement and control mechanisms necessary to carry out those decisions. Effective governance helps free teams from the uncertainties and challenges of trying to figure out who needs to agree on what so they can focus on creating and delivering innovative business solutions.

There is a new kind of denial-of-service attack hitting the Internet these days, and it has VeriSign and others responsible for handling the Internet’s infrastructure very worried. The unusually powerful attacks strike at the basic structure of the Net, exploiting the computers that manage online traffic and using them to overwhelm Web sites. The new form of attacks emerged at the end of December 2005 and accelerated in January before settling down about mid-February, said VeriSign Chief Security Officer Ken Silva.

A faulty update to Symantec’s Norton security software began booting thousands of users off their AOL Internet connections last week, Symantec has admitted. The problem began with a 15 March intrusion detection signature file sent via LiveUpdate to customers using Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security, according to Symantec. The file caused Norton to mistakenly identify AOL traffic as malicious, effectively blocking Internet access for both dialup and broadband customers. Symantec said it released an updated signature file fixing the problem about seven hours after the first file was distributed. However, without a connection, those affected weren’t necessarily able to access the fix.

It seems that some CRM consultants and implementation partners could stand to take a little of their own advice when it comes to delivering customer satisfaction. A recent report from Forrester Research found that 40% of the companies surveyed wouldn’t recommend their CRM professional service provider to others.

At 5W Public Relations LLC, IM (instant messaging) became such a distraction that it was banned during office hours. The fast-growing New York public relations firm found that miscommunications were practically a given through IM, as employees carried on multiple conversations at the same time. But the IM experience is much different at IntelliCare, a medical services company that considers instant messaging mission-critical. Like it or not, experts say, you’re smarter to embrace IM than restrict it. Despite the reported security risks, for many companies the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks of using the messaging tool.

Learn about IBM AIX segment layouts for the Lotus Domino server and how to configure the Notes.ini file settings ConstrainedSHMSizeMB and PercentAvailSysResources to alter your server memory allocation. This article describes the possible segment layouts for a 32-bit application on the AIX platform as well as the layout that Lotus Domino uses currently. It also shows what happens to the layout as you use the different Domino memory options.

At EclipseCon 2006 IBM is continuing its significant investment and commitment to Eclipse by announcing new services, software, tools and support designed to improve the Eclipse platform, frameworks and to broaden the community initiatives around this leading development platform. Recognizing the massive growth in the number of software developers worldwide now utilizing Eclipse and its associated open source projects and plug-ins, IBM is announcing it is piloting a support offering for developers using Eclipse as their primary development environment. The pilot program is aimed at customers who want their development teams using both open source Eclipse and commercial Eclipse-based tools such as IBM Rational software.