No app store for make-or-break ZuneHD

Microsoft's ZuneHD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature an open application store like its competitor the iPod Touch. Those capabilities will determine whether the ZuneHD sells well - and whether Microsoft decides to keep selling its own music player, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner, and with software that has been well-received by users.

After observers noticed a Marketplace folder during earlier demos of the ZuneHD, many had hoped the new device would feature an open application store like the one accessible from the iPhone and the iPod Touch. But the Zune Marketplace will be a closed store, meaning third-party developers won't be able to easily build applications for it. Marketplace is the name of the open app store that will be available on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, to be released in early October. The new device will include the same casual games that came with earlier Zunes, plus a few other applications like an MSN weather application and a calculator, said Brian Seitz, group marketing manager for Zune. Zune customers will be able to download the applications they like for free. In November, Twitter and Facebook applications will become available, as well as a "Project Gotham" racing game, he added.

Seitz said the timing wasn't right to include the Windows Mobile Marketplace application, which isn't due out until next month, with the ZuneHD, but he also said it's not certain that a similar open Marketplace will come to the Zune in the future. "Down the line, if there's an opportunity for us to snap into what they're doing from a mobile application perspective, I'm sure it's something we'll look at," he said. He acknowledged that people are likely to criticize the decision. "I'm not saying we won't get dinged for that because I know we will," he said. However, Microsoft may decide it makes more sense to limit the applications in the Zune market and offer them all free, he said. That's for good reason, Rosoff said. "When you look at it as a head-to-head comparison with the iPod Touch, people will see it as a shortcoming," he said. It will feature the "smart DJ," which allows the user to pick an artist and then automatically creates a playlist of similar songs.

Microsoft will also debut new Zune software on Tuesday that customers use on their PCs to manage their music. Microsoft will also start offering people who subscribe to Zune Pass a way to access the Zune music collection from a browser. A Zune Pass subscription lets users stream any song from the entire Zune catalog and download 10 songs each month. That means subscribers will be able to listen to music from the entire catalog from any PC, including one at work, rather than only from a PC running the Zune software. Microsoft also revealed a few more details about a Zune feature that will start showing up in Xbox Live later this year.

That's part of a strategy to move the Zune software experience into other products from Microsoft, Seitz said. "Going forward, we hope more people think of a 'holistic Zune business,' as opposed to how many of these things we sell," he said, pointing to the Zune hardware. Xbox users will be able to buy or rent movies from a new Zune store that will be featured in Xbox Live. The most important upcoming product that will include Zune software will be Windows Mobile phones, Rosoff said. "The Zune interface will show up in Windows Mobile," he said. Rosoff suspects that Microsoft will eventually get out of the MP3 player market altogether. "We'll just see the Zune as a consumer component of Windows Mobile," he said. "This is sort of the last [Zune], if it doesn't sell." Even Zune hardware elements, like the touch screen and the form factor of the device, will likely make it into Windows Mobile phones, he said.

Lotus user wary of social networking tool rollout

As IBM moves to upgrade its cache of social networking tools, some users are taking a cautious approach to the technology while figuring out where it will apply and how to measure its effectiveness. The new 2.5 version software includes micro-blogging, file sharing and new mobile capabilities. Where IT pros do their social networking IBM Tuesday unveiled Lotus Connections 2.5, its upgraded lineup of social networking tools that are a major expansion to the company's suite of collaboration software. But some of the features are expanding faster than users' plans to utilize the software.

The company's manager of messaging and collaboration asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. One Connections 2.5 beta tester, a global consumer product corporation, is taking a deliberately slow approach to rolling out the social collaboration tools. The company started slow with a few hundred users who were only allowed to communicate with each other. At that point, the manager says, the number of users exploded by 650% to a few thousand. The group's size was eventually doubled and then the tools were opened up companywide. Despite the growth, the company is still "seeding the environment," said the manager, but a broader rollout is planned.

We will likely "wind up doing it anecdotally," said the manager. "The things we're struggling with there is that this doesn't match the ROI [metrics that executives] are used to looking at. The harder part to plan is the expected results because the company has yet to figure out how to measure its return on investment. How do you measure, 'we recruited this person because of the [collaboration tool]?'" While results are hard to gauge, the broader, anticipated benefits are being defined in the context of capturing and recording corporate knowledge. The worker could develop a how-to guide for use by others, he said. For example, a certain administrative assistant may routinely be tasked with booking a certain type of event, said the manager. The manager said it is a good time to ramp up internal communities and knowledge-sharing because as the economy and job markets rebound, workers who may have suffered pay or benefit cuts amid the recession will be looking to move on. "Now is the time to get people to put information in, so you're not losing it on the back of a Post-it note." Follow John on Twitter. -Kanaracus is with the IDG News Service Follow Chris on Twitter.

Macs retake reliability ranking top spot

Apple reclaimed the top spot in the computer-reliability ranking of Rescuecom, a Syracuse, N.Y.-based technical support franchise, as netbook maker Asus' rating plummeted, Rescuecom's CEO said Saturday. But Apple recaptured the top ranking for the third quarter with a reliability score of 374. Behind Apple were Lenovo and Asus with 320 and 166, respectively, followed by Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard in fourth and fifth place. Apple's Macs, which led all rivals in Rescuecom's rankings during 2007 and 2008, ceded first place to PCs sold by Asustek Computer (better known as Asus) in the first half of 2009, falling as low as third in the first quarter, behind both Asus and Lenovo. Rescuecom produces its scores by comparing the percentage of support calls represented by each vendor with each computer maker's U.S. market share.

For example, although Apple's U.S. market share was 9% - according to research firm IDC, whose data Rescuecom used to calculate its ratings - Macs accounted for just 2.4% of the calls to Rescuecom. The greater the difference between the two, the higher the score. According to Rescuecom's reasoning, the higher scores indicate more reliable hardware and better support from the computer makers. But Asus' decline was the big story. Apple's third-quarter rating was actually 5% lower than the 394 Rescuecom gave the company's computers for 2009's second quarter.

The Asian computer maker, which led Rescuecom's rankings for the first six months of the year, has seen its reliability rating plunge from a first-quarter high of 972 to 166 in the third quarter. That, in turn, meant that Asus machines had been in users' hands for just several months, which could translate into fewer support calls. "It will be interesting to see in the coming quarters if Asus will start coming down to the level of the other vendors, or can sustain it," Kaplan said at the time. Asus' nose-dive was hardly a surprise, said David Milman, Rescuecom's CEO. "This is what we were waiting for on Asus, whether or not their reliability score would be maintained," said Milman in an e-mail. "Now that many of the netbooks by Asus have been out for a while, there is obviously a higher need for service." Last March, when Asus first jumped to the top spot on Rescuecom's list, company president Josh Kaplan said Asus' ranking should be taken with a grain of salt, since it was based on a huge bump in sales during the last few months of 2008, when Asus' netbook sales took off. Apparently, it couldn't sustain its record rating, which in the first quarter Rescuecom measured as 972, nearly six times higher than its score in the third quarter. Toshiba's reliability score was 165 in the third quarter, down 24%, while HP's third-quarter score of 134 was off 6% from the previous quarter. Asus' second-quarter rating was 416. Toshiba's and HP's scores also fell from the second quarter, although less dramatically than Asus.

DOJ requires AT&T to sell some assets in acquisition

The U.S. Department of Justice will require telecom giant AT&T to sell off pieces of its mobile network in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi in order to continue with its US$944 million acquisition of Centennial Communications, the agency said Tuesday. The area covered includes parts of southwestern and central Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi. If AT&T did not divest its assets in the two states, the acquisition would "substantially lessen" competition for mobile telecom services and would likely result in higher prices, lower quality and reduced network investments, the DOJ said.

The DOJ's Antitrust Division, along with the attorney general of Louisiana, filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the proposed acquisition of Centennial by AT&T. At the same time, the DOJ and the Louisiana attorney general filed a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve the competitive concerns in the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that the proposed transaction would substantially reduce competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services in each of the areas. According to the complaint, AT&T and Centennial are each other's closest competitors for a significant number of customers in eight cellular marketing areas (CMAs), as defined by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. AT&T is the second-largest mobile telecom provider in the U.S. by number of subscribers, serving nearly 80 million subscribers throughout all 50 states, the DOJ said. Centennial is the eighth-largest mobile telecom provider in the U.S., with about 1.1 million subscribers in six states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 2008, AT&T earned mobile revenues of about $44 billion.

CA looks to ease encryption key management

CA today unveiled key-management software that helps automate the storage and distribution of encryption keys for multi-vendor tape encryption purposes. According to CA's director of storage product marketing Stefan Kochishan, CA intends to add support for other vendor tape-encryption methods in the future. "This product will manage the keys," Kochishan says. "If there's a call for centralization of management of either public or private keys, that can be done. Cool new products of the week CA Encryption Key Manager is z/OS-based software (it also runs on Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris platforms) that can support the IBM TS1120 and TS 1130 tape encryption devices as well as the CA Tape Encryption subsystems from the same interface.

You can also set up key stores in various sites and those sites will be updated when there's a change. CA Encryption Manager allows tracking and monitoring of encryption keys and digital certificates as well as deletion once a key is no longer used, Kochishan notes. It's full life cycle key management." CA Encryption Key Manager will also interface with security systems that include IBM RACF, CA ACF2 for z/OS, and CA Top Secret for z/OS for public/private key and digital certificate storage. Changes are propagated via SSL-encrypted TCP/IP. The goal is to let IT managers more easily share encryption keys across business units or with outside business partners. Mark Depathy, senior infrastructure engineer there, indicated it has simplified key distribution for business-to-business tapes and other uses. "It's something that gives you real-time key distribution," Depathy says, adding it allows for a common database related to keys. Peoples United Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., has been beta-testing the CA Encryption Key Manager for the past month.

CA Encryption Key Manager, available now, starts at $16,000.

Windows 7 May Spur Virtual Desktops, On and Off the iPhone

Predictions from analysts and virtualization vendors that desktop virtualization will take off during 2010 may be off the mark. VMware, Citrix and a range of other companies are putting clients on smart phones, minimalist thin-client hardware and USB keys in an effort to find something about Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) that will hook a customer's imagination, says Andi Mann, head of systems and storage-management research at Enterprise Management Associates. "VMware and Citrix both announced support for the iPhone, which is sexier, even though Blackberries have a greater penetration in business," Mann says. "Virtualization on handhelds is a kind of halo project -like the Chevy Corvette that dazzles customers who come in and end up buying a Chevette." The Chevette, in this case, is the aging desktop PC or laptop used by any one of millions of corporate workers stuck with Windows XP and looking to upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out later this year, says Chris Wolf, virtualization and infrastructure specialist at The Burton Group. "Windows 7 is going to drive a lot of the activity around desktop virtualization for companies that want or need to upgrade to Windows 7," Wolf says. Sales may take off, but the desktop PC may not have much to do with it.

Bulk migrations will take a long time, but many companies will at least begin moving users to the new OS within weeks or months, Wolf says, and will try to avoid spending the money it would take to upgrade every PC while they do it. [ For timely virtualization news and expert advice on strategy, see CIO.com's Virtualization Drilldown section. ] "Strategically, both Citrix and VMware have been planning that Windows 7 would be a major catalyst for desktop virtualization, and have been working toward it for a long time," Wolf says. Citrix Systems demonstrated its iPhone client in May. "Right now, it's a race to produce client-side hypervisors," according to Wes Wasson, chief marketing officer of Citrix Systems. "With that, [enterprise applications] are just a URL to the user. VMware announced more than a year ago that its VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client would run on the iPhone. You could be using a home-office PC or a Mac or a smartphone; as long as the client is there, you have secure access." Racing to an Anywhere Virtual Client Other software and hardware developers are also racing to build add-ons to make virtualization usable, and devices to make it easy to acquire. AppSense, whose code is part of both VMware and Citrix's VDI offerings, stores all that data and code on the server and reloads it all every time that user logs on, no matter through what device the access comes, according to Martin Ingraham, VP of strategy for the company. "We have to make it transparent across all the delivery technologies, so a user can set preferences on one, and go home and sign on using a different one, and have it exactly as they left it," he says.

The User Environment Manager from AppSense, for example, is designed to make a virtual desktop mimic the real thing by allowing end users to make changes, install software add photos, store cookies and do all the other things they'd do on an actual "personal" computer. Competitor Moka Five's desktop suite offers similar functionality adding the ability to personalize PCs and Macs without disturbing the "golden" PC image on which the company relies. It's just a hub to connect a keyboard, mouse, monitor and other peripherals to a Windows desktop image running in the data center. Thin-client manufacturer Pano Logic sells what it calls a "zero client" that has no CPU no operating system, drivers or moving parts. A starter kit of five, plus one remote USB key that can turn any computer into an authenticated thin client, starts at $1,989. LG Electronics is trying to streamline the hardware by building a thin client from NComputing a Pano Logic competitor directly into its SmartVine line of LCD monitors.

NComputing sells a range of mini- to micro thin computers. The 19-inch version retails for $199, can save 70 percent on maintenance, 60 percent on hardware and 90 percent on electricity compared to a PC, the company says. Big VDI Question: Management Tools "The hardware can really be anything, which is the great thing," according to Steve Bonney, vice president of business development at Bayscribe, a software developer that builds high-volume, server-based dictation systems for medical facilities. But questions about how to manage those assets, protect intellectual property, and even measure the amount of risk involved are holding many companies back. "The fundamental problem is not getting access to the application from a phone," Mann says. "We can do that with a Web application. Bonney is hoping VMware will push its client out on all the major phone operating systems to save his company development costs and show that even heavy duty applications work on very thin clients if the client is ubiquitous enough. "This will completely reshape the way enterprise IT is done," Wasson says of Citrix' client-side hypervisor. "It shifts the information flow model back to pull-so you're not pushing things at users they don't want, and it simplifies things for IT." Even without the fancy hardware, VDI can save a ton of money for IT in support, capital costs and licensing, Mann says. It's all about the manageability, without that, there's no question it's cool, but no one is really sure if it's practical." Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.

Akamai pitches Hollywood on its HD Network

Akamai Tuesday began pitching its new HD Network as the perfect solution for entertainment companies that want to deliver high-definition video streams over the Internet. During a live videoconference Tuesday, Akamai executives pitched the network to entertainment companies as a compliment for live TV and DVDs that would let content providers stream higher quality videos without the traditional problems of jitter and long buffer times that users regularly encounter. The CDN provider's new HD Network utilizes its HD EdgePlatform and combines it with digital video recorder technology and an adaptive bitrate streaming technology that adjusts users' delivery bitrates based on their network capacity. Separated at Birth: Tech Honchos and Their Famous Lookalikes "Our HD Network has been designed for large-scale broadcasters and studios," said Akamai CEO Paul Sagan. "Our goal is to meet and surpass the needs of the film and television industries… TV is now possible online at HD bitrates." Akamai cofounder and chief scientist Tom Leighton said that Akamai's HD Network had a unique advantage in delivering HD streams because it had roughly 1,000 servers located on networks' last miles in 750 cities around the world.

Users streaming content over the Akamai HD Network will be able to watch video using Flash, Silverlight and iPhone protocols. Leighton said that this access to the last mile has enabled Akamai to deliver content at a rate of 2Mbps or greater to two-thirds of users in the United States and at a rate of 5Mbps or greater to around a quarter of users in the United States. The network also features an HD content analytics that allow providers to monitor and understand who is accessing their content and an HD player based on the open source standard provider through the Open Video Player Framework.