Juniper Networks unveiled a new integrated router and security appliance on Feb. 6: the Secure Services Gateway 500 Series. The SSG is a LAN/WAN router that sports an integrated firewall, VPN, and will eventually support anti-virus, anti-spam and Web filtering features, according to Adam Conway, product line manager for Juniper’s Security Products Group. The SSG will help enterprises secure branch- and medium-size offices where Web-based applications are driving high-speed broadband adoptions, said Conway.

Online attackers are finding that the best way to hit a company is through mobile devices used by their growing remote workforces. That’s because many enterprises aren’t requiring that laptops and other devices undergo adequate security checks before accessing the corporate network. Dynamic Markets Ltd. reached that conclusion after surveying 500 enterprise IT managers across the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France last November on behalf of LANDesk Software, a vendor of configuration and security management products.

IBM is adding supply chain management and business-to-business integration capabilities to its consulting organization with the acquisition of Viacore, announced Feb. 8. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Viacore helps companies integrate with their suppliers. It offers a suite of software applications, dubbed BusinessTone, which it defines as an on-demand partner integration solution.

On Wednesday, computer big shot IBM said it is producing new computing systems based on powerful video-game microchips that will increase the processing power of corporate data centers. The systems could open new doors for many businesses, such as those in medical and military sectors, as companies continue to employ more demanding and graphics-intensive applications.

The enterprise software market is becoming a battle of "platforms," big, interwoven networks of applications that form the basis of CIOs’ architectures and attract smaller companies to build secondary applications that work with the big platforms. The leaders in the platform races are, of course, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle. But the battle isn’t just between these vendors says Accenture. The real battle is between vendor platforms and the Internet platform, which threatens to blow them apart by becoming the dominant assembly line for software development and the distribution model for a much more fragmented set of software services that can come from any source.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that ending the outages that have hit users of its Web-based CRM (customer relationship management) application service is a matter of "shaking out" the company’s new $50 million data center. Speaking at a Merrill Lynch IT services and software conference in Las Vegas, Benioff said that Salesforce.com was "going to do everything we can" to get its system availability "as close to 100 percent as possible." Customers experienced a major outage lasting more than five hours on Dec. 20 and what the company called a "minor interruption" of service on Jan 5. The most recent outage occurred Jan. 30 when Salesforce.com servers were down between about 10:00 a.m. and 2:15 p.m. EST, according to customers.

Hourly wages for tech professionals hit a record high during the fourth quarter of 2005, according to a report released Monday. According to the Yoh Index of Technology Wages, hourly pay increased by 3.1 percent to an average of $30.27 per hour between October 10, 2005 and November 6, 2005. Since the fourth quarter of 2001, wages for "high-impact technology professionals" have rise nearly 11 percent, the firm found. The positions in the most demand include SAP functional consultants, who commanded an average of $75.09 pr hour. Data warehouse architects, CRM managers, hardware/firmware engineers and a generic project manager classification rounded out the top five.

CBL Data Recovery Technologies now offers computer users suffering data loss complimentary packaging and shipping for their affected laptops and disk drives at convenient retail locations through the national network of more than 4,000 The UPS Store and participating Mail Boxes Etc. centers. In addition to providing free evaluations and free quotations, CBL now provides professional packaging and return shipping at no charge. This, coupled with CBL’s "No Data, No Charge" policy, ensures that users who experience data loss only pay for a successful recovery of their data.

uCertify, providers of IT certification exam preparation tools, announced that its present Holiday Discount Offer will end on February 15, 2006. The company currently offers up to 70% discount on the entire range of its Practice Tests and Collections for the certification exams of Microsoft, CompTIA, Oracle, Sun and other leading IT vendors. This is the last chance to order the Practice Tests and Collections and save money, because the prices will go up after 15th of February 2006.

Notes is not dead. Yellow is the new black. Upbeat messages from Lotusphere 2006. Lotus is riding high again and aiming for more. A lively and lengthy future for the Notes and Domino family was the theme. Read Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard’s in-depth analysis in this important article.

Read this DominoPower article.