Did you know that over 20 threats emerge every minute? Actually, there is a new one every 2.5 seconds. Most of these threats are from the web. According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, the average adult Internet user spends an average of 13 hours a week online — a trend that has been increasing over the years. Hence, more cause for concern in our technological future?

Cloud-computing and virtualization are becoming increasingly popular. At cheaper costs, the ease of work mobility, increased reliability, lighter installations and improved efficiency, it’s hard not to progress with this trend. But with the ups must come the downs, I suppose. The Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report (released December 2009) predicts the grounds on which cyber-criminals prey are also expanded due to the expansion of cloud-computing and virtualization.

Continue reading more security threat predictions in 2010 >>

A computer virus may be acquired by downloading infected files and can corrupt a computer’s memory or cause it to operate incorrectly. To protect your computer you should always make sure that your operating system is up-to-date and that you have the latest security software.

For a limited time, you can purchase the latest version of Panda AntiVirus for half the price. This deal is available for the instant download version only.

Panda AntiVirus protects against viruses, spyware, rootkits, hackers, online fraud and identity theft. New features include: protection against USB drive infection, generic signatures, and remote heuristic scanning from the cloud. There are many improved features such as: 80% reduced memory consumption, improved scanning of instant messaging traffic, and better shielding from hackers on the web, to name a few. For more information about Panda AntiVirus, check out this article by Computer Security Review.

Adding to our last post about customers switching to Google Apps, CNET News has just reported that Los Angeles is ready to make the switch. The city, like many government agencies, has had security concerns over making the switch. The concerns were brought to light “after the poor e-mail practices of an employee at Twitter and an easy password reset mechanism at Yahoo gave a hacker access to sensitive Twitter documents stored on Google Apps.” While this has nothing to do with the security of Google Apps, it did raise questions about cloud computing in general.

Despite concerns, L.A. appears to be moving forward with the 5-year, $2 million contract. The main driver appears to be cost. Meanwhile, the city will keep Microsoft Office on PCs that already have it, and future additions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

What do you think of the country’s second largest city making the switch to Google Apps?

You read that right. Over 1.75 million companies have moved their email, scheduling, and document creation software into the cloud with Google Apps. Every day, more and more IT departments decide to leave email hosting and software upgrade cycles behind in favor of “Going Google”.

Google Apps is a web-based collection of email, communication, and collaboration applications designed to help business work more efficiently. The core of Google Apps is Gmail. With Google Apps Premiere Edition, Gmail is customized to your company and seamlessly integrates with your contact lists. Tools like message grouping (to keep replies to the same email in the same place) and message tagging let you keep on top of your inbox and never lose important emails. Also included in Google Apps is Google Calendar (for easy task management and scheduling that integrates with your email), Google Voice and IM chat from your inbox (with chat logging), and Google Docs (for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations).

So why are so many companies switching to a hosted software solution like Google Apps? One of the main reasons is cost. Google Apps Premiere Edition for business only runs $50 per user, per year. Compared to expensive Microsoft Office Suites and email hosting servers like Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps is a true bargain. There is no hardware to buy up front, because Google hosts all of the services. And, all software updates are integrated without any input from your IT department or users. And, there is no cost associated with upgrading to newer versions of Google Apps. It just happens automatically as new features are added.

Google Apps has other advantages like access to all of your emails, chats, documents, and calendars from anywhere, on any device. There is no extra cost for terminal services or BlackBerry integration. Almost any device with an internet connection will work with Google Apps, right out of the box.

Many companies are hesitant to trust all of their important emails and documents to a hosted solution based on remote servers. However, many secure government agencies have dissected Google Apps and found its backup and security capabilities to be more than sufficient.

I have a feeling we are only seeing the beginning of cloud-based software solutions like Google Apps. As high-speed internet and wireless broadband access becomes the standard, and users begin to trust hosted software more and more, we will see even more companies moving from the standard software license and hardware solution. It is just too cost effective to pay a yearly service fee to take care of all your software and hosting requirements. Google Apps even has a calculator to determine how much you could save by Going Google.

SoftwareMedia.com is working on Google Apps to our customers as an alternative to traditional software licensing. Stay tuned for further details.

For more information on Google Apps, check out the official site.

This week McAfee announced its definitive agreement to acquire MX Logic, Inc., leading provider of software as a service (SaaS) for email, web security, archiving and business continuity. We have written about the increasing movement to SaaS in the past, and this latest news from McAfee further proves the trend. MX Logic’s filtering, email archiving and continuity services will be integrated with McAfee’s threat intelligence technologies. MX Logic has 40,000 customers and four million end users. The agreement was said to be for $140 million.

McAfee President and CEO Dave Dewalt said this in a statement to partners:

“The acquisition of MX Logic will reinforce our position as a leader in Security-as-a-Service, and brings world-class email and web defense, including archiving and business continuity services, extending our proven expertise in providing cloud-based services to our customers. MX Logic aligns with the McAfee vision to lead Security SaaS by bringing industry-leading technologies and a strong partner ecosystem.”

This week, the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference is going on in New Orleans. This the premiere Microsoft event of the year,with keynote addresses from top Microsoft executives and partners from around the world. There are a lot of news stories coming out of the conference, but I thought I would summarize some of the highlights here.

One of the main themes running throughout the conference so far is the future of software plus services. New and innovative cloud services, like Windows Azure, are paving the way for new ways to implement software solutions. Today, Microsoft announced the business model for the Windows Azure program. Companies will be able to deploy a cloud-based operating system, a web-based database (SQL Azure), and .NET Services with pay-as-you-go pricing. For more information on the new Windows Azure platform, check out Microsoft’s official press release from today.

In order news, Joe Matz, corporate VP of Microsoft Worldwide Licensing and Pricing announced an increased level of simplification for Microsoft licensing products. Through feedback from customers and resellers, Microsoft is constantly adjusting their licensing models to be easier to understand and deploy. One example of this is the new Microsoft Enrollment for Application Platform. It will save customers money and simplify purchasing decisions by bundling popular products together. This particular platform includes licenses for SQL Server, BizTalk Server, SharePoint Server, Visual Studio and more. For more in-depth examples of how Microsoft licensing will be changing this year, check out this interview with Joe Matz.

Also, I’ve embedded part of the Day 2 keynote below. In this segment, CEO Steve Ballmer gets the crowd excited about Microsoft’s upcoming product launches and the extraordinary changes coming for customers and partners.

For all the breaking info surrounding Microsoft WPC 09, including a live Twitter feed, check out Digital WPC09.

Late last night, Google posted a new blog entry announcing their plans to develop a Google Chrome Operating System. A natural progression following their successful Chrome Browser, the Google Chrome OS will be their attempt to re-invent what an operating system should be. Their aim is to create a lightweight, open source OS that is designed around the web.

Just like the Chrome Browser, the Chrome OS will be focused on simplicity and speed. Google wants you to be able to start up your computer and be on the web in mere seconds. They want to re-structure the underlying architecture of the OS and go back to basics. Their goal is to keep the OS out of your way and to have it just work like it should. It will be safe from viruses and will perform updates automatically. They also want your data to live in the cloud, where it will be accessible from anywhere, no matter what happens to your computer.

Initially, Google’s focus will be on the netbook market. They have been quietly talking with manufacturers for the past few months to strike up OEM deals, and they already have netbook manufacturers on board. A completely different project from Android, which was designed for phones and mobile devices, the Chrome OS is being built for everything from netbooks to powerful desktops. Because it will be open source, this could dramatically lower the cost of buying a new computer.

Should Microsoft be worried about the Chrome OS gunning for Windows? Definitely. While it will take years for Chrome to gain any kind of major foothold in the OS arena, consumers definitely want more from their computers and are eager to try something new. Just look at all the hype surrounding the upcoming Windows 7 release. Vista was completely underwhelming, and it’s lukewarm reception left a huge hole in the OS market. Both Apple and Microsoft are releasing new operating systems this year, but neither one will deliver anything revolutionary. They are both just incremental improvements over prior versions. Google Chrome OS has a good chance of shaking things up and will generate plenty of buzz. Microsoft hasn’t ever really faced a serious threat to Windows. If anyone can change that, it’s Google.

Microsoft recently launched Bing, which was directly aimed at taking market share from Google search. It is only fitting that Google would immediately take a shot at the core of Microsoft’s business, Windows. I have a feeling these two companies will be battling on all fronts well into the next decade. As consumers, competition like this can only be beneficial, with new technology innovations and lower prices.

This announcement from Google was just a teaser of what is to come. They don’t expect to start shipping the Chrome OS on netbooks until the second half of 2010, but the open source code will be available well before then. This will give software developers lots of time to create new apps for the Chrome OS. Google’s goal is to have its applications based in the web, using the latest web technologies. This is the future of computing, and Google will be on the forefront.

For more details, check out the Official Google Blog. Stay tuned for more on the Google Chrome OS this fall.

Despite being one of the world’s most profitable companies, Microsoft is about to report its first decline in annual revenue in its 23 year public history. One could argue that this decline in sales revenue comes as a result of the slumping economy. While it’s true that many companies are putting off software purchases and upgrades as a way to cut costs and tighten their own belts, there is also an underlying shift in the software world that is beginning to gain some traction: the shift to online alternatives and software as a service (SaaS).

Computers now take on many different forms. Devices like the iPhone and netbooks are allowing the world ways to access software like never before. The Internet now lives in your pocket, and the applications running on these small devices are increasingly based in the cloud. The era of stand-alone PC’s installed with individual software programs is coming to an end. For a company like Microsoft that makes it’s money on selling up-front licenses to its proprietary programs, this shift is disconcerting to say the least.

So what is Microsoft doing to adapt to the changing landscape of personal and business computing? Unlike what it’s down for the past 10 years, Microsoft is going to be venturing into new areas with original ideas. Recent products like the Zune were aimed at simply playing catch-up with already successful products in the marketplace. Most of the time this will result in a massive financial loss. So, this time around, the new leaders in Redmond are exploring ways to stay ahead of the curve.

Microsoft is currently testing the waters in the SaaS market by offering Exchange and SharePoint as a monthly subscription service to businesses. This lowers costs to the end user by eliminating the need for expensive servers, IT workers, and maintenance. It also reduces their up-front costs by not having to shell out for a software license all at once, not to mention the hardware savings. In turn, Microsoft stands to make more money off these SaaS services by providing a complete solution that will cost more than a simple software license. It’s challenge is to find a price point that will work for both parties.

Hosting the software and providing constant support to end users is a monumental task, considering the shear number of companies running Microsoft software. These SaaS services will also increase Microsoft’s costs and reduce its profit margins, despite the fact that it will pull in a larger amount of money on the whole.

Microsoft is also adding new features to the upcoming Office 2010 suites. Applications like Word and Powerpoint will be more web-friendly than ever before. New tools will be unveiled that will allow document collaboration between multiple users, at the same time. Instead of emailing a draft of a document back and forth between members of a team, users will be able to work on different parts of a document at the same time.

There is no doubt that future editions of Office will explore this idea of software plus services even further. It will have to keep evolving in order to keep up with free services like Google Docs and OpenOffice.

Microsoft is not going away anytime soon. Windows still commands an enormous lead in the operating system market. It’s business software division, with titles like Office, Exchange, and Windows Server, is pulling in ridiculous amounts of money. However, in ten years the world of software will be completely changed, and Microsoft is planning its evolution to adapt to those changes.

For further reading, check out these great articles from Business Week:
Microsoft: Beyond ‘Software Plus Services’
Microsoft Defends Its Empire

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I first heard about Apple’s new MobileMe features last week, with the official release of the new iPhone OS 3.0 firmware update.  Your new upgraded iPhone 3.0 software includes incredible features like locating your lost phone on a map in real time , displaying a message on a lost phone, and remotely deleting all of your personal info on your phone in the event that you have lost it forever. These features are all enabled through Apple’s $99 a year service called MobileMe.

Well, just a few days after the iPhone OS 3.0 was released, the first story about finding a lost iPhone has emerged, and it’s a good one. Kevin Miller was just a guy in Chicago for a Lego convention (really?), who happened to leave his iPhone behind in a sorta sketchy dive bar he had never been to before. He realized his mistake just a couple minutes later and went back to the bar, but alas, his iPhone was already gone. So what to do now? Fire up a laptop with a 3G card and find the phone!

Kevin tells his story very well, and it’s a good read. Check out the long version on his blog. Highlights include three geeks stalking a thief in a random Chicago neighborhood, and the pure awesomeness of new technology that works better than you expect it to.

If you have a habit of losing stuff, Apple’s MobileMe may be worth $99 a year to give you the piece of mind that your iPhone will never truly be lost. You also get other cool cloud-based services like 20GB of remote data storage, access to those files from your phone, and the ability to publish photos and videos to your storage account directly from your phone.

There are a few flaws in the iPhone finder service through MobileMe. First of all, a thief would only have to remove the SIM card to render this application completely useless. Also, thieves can currently access your Settings panel and turn off MobileMe with a simple switch. Apple needs to tweak these features by allowing you to remotely access certain settings on the phone and lock the phone down. These are minor glitches though, and most petty thieves would not know how to perform these actions, just like in Kevin’s case.

For the complete list of the features in MobileMe, and to activate a free trial, check out Apple.com.

This week, Tom Sullivan of InfoWorld interviewed Nicholas Carr, author of the much talked about Harvard Business Review article “IT Doesn’t Matter“. This article, written in 2003, outlines an argument for the inevitable transition of IT from proprietary technologies to a more utility-like function, similar to telephone or electricity. If you’ve never read this article, take some time to look through it. Nicholas states that looking at how previous technologies like electricity, telephone, and the railroad progressed can tell us what will eventually happen with current technologies in the corporate IT world. His argument boils down to this: when a new piece of technology is developed, a few companies can make money for a short time by adopting them early on and creating proprietary systems to utilize this technology. However, as more and more companies adopt the same technology, the resource that was once scarce becomes “essential to competition but inconsequential to strategy”. Basically “the risks it creates become more important than the advantages it provides”. This happened as telegraph lines were installed in mass and when railroad tracks were laid in a large network around the country. The resource becomes commonplace and it turns into a commodity. Nicholas predicts this will happen with enterprise IT departments in the near future.

In this recent interview, Tom Sullivan wanted to know how things have progressed in the last 5 years, and how new Web 2.0 technologies are bringing us closer to the point where IT becomes shared infrastructure. One of the biggest points made by Nicholas in this interview is the timeline of this transition. He says that this shift towards corporate cloud computing and shared resources is still a little ways off. There has been a lot of hype surrounding cloud computing lately, but not many companies are truly adopting it. There have been small advances in the corporate world, like Salesforce.com, but most centralized, cloud computing is done on a personal level at home. Corporate IT departments are resisting the change from in-house technologies and proprietary software simply because their jobs are on the line. Nicholas thinks that massive change in corporate IT is coming, but it is still 10-15 years down the road.

In this interview, Nicholas also mentions that the next generation of workers and managers have grown up with social networking and Web 2.0 technologies. It seems natural they will want the same types of tools for their office and corporate life when they get there. This will be a catalyst that should bring about sweeping changes in the IT world. He also makes an interesting point about how products like the Amazon Kindle are changing the world. The Kindle is always connected to the internet without any additional costs, it is just inherant to the device. More and more products will harness the unlimited power of the cloud in the future, which will help to reduce its image of a luxury tool and transform it into something essential in the business world.

To read this entire interview, click on over to it at ComputerWorld.