For the third year in a row, Canada heads a list of 22 countries in terms of the sophistication of their online services and in overall e-government maturity. Singapore ranked second and the United States third in the annual survey released Tuesday by Accenture.
The Accenture analysis considered a variety of factors, including how well each government's services incorporate customer relationship management (CRM) practices, as well as the level of "maturity" with which each government delivers electronic services. Included in the study were the breadth and sophistication of the online services offered, such as whether the services involve only publication of information, offer some electronic interaction capability, or provide full capabilities for online transactions.
Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) is receiving great initial support throughout the industry. DSI's intent is to provide simplicity, automation, and flexibility to IT operations. Its mission is to unify hardware, software, and service vendors around common software architectures. DSI will provide the plumbing for a unified management architecture and is backed industrywide and supported by a number of successful companies in the system management space. DSI is similar to Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, which, at the Microsoft executive level, attempts to improve customers' experience in the areas of security, privacy, reliability, and business integrity. DSI's mission is to figure out how to unify the vision of managing enterprise environments.
In an otherwise light week for infrastructure security news, Microsoft issued a reminder to customers to beware of bogus security bulletins that look like they come from Microsoft. The note, posted on the TechNet security site on April 3, doesn't appear to be tied to any specific incident. "From time to time malicious individuals circulate e-mails that purport to be a Microsoft Security Bulletin or Patch."
A key code for installing Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 has leaked onto the Internet, a loss that could lead to widespread piracy of the software. A Microsoft representative confirmed the leak late Monday and said Microsoft was investigating the matter. The leak comes more than two weeks before the software's scheduled release on April 24. The leaked code appears to be from a Microsoft corporate customer that subscribes to one of the company's volume-licensing programs, the representative said.
The Microsoft representative made clear that the company will scour the Internet looking for the leaked code. "Our legal department works aggressively on that kind of thing," the representative said. Stolen codes are often traded with the software, typically on Web sites, newsgroups or Internet Relay Chat (IRC).
Microsoft has chosen InterVideo to port the software giant's Windows Media technology to the open source Linux platform, the companies announced yesterday. The porting project allows consumer electronics companies to ship Linux-based consumer devices such as set-top boxes, personal video recorders, and other multimedia devices that are compatible with audio and video files encoded in the Windows Media 9 Series formats. The goal isn't to produce a Windows Media Player for Linux desktop systems.
Microsoft has shipped its Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), a new front-end for managing Group Policy-related tasks in Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003-based Active Directory domains (though it must be run on Windows 2003 or Windows XP Service Pack 1, SP1). The GPMC is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for managing Group Policy (GP), and the software giant is providing this tool to Windows 2003 users for free. Because the tool presents a unified view of Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and Organizational Units (OUs), domains, and sites across an enterprise, the GPMC can provides a central entry point for all GP tasks.
Microsoft is readying plenty of "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base" information for hardware-partner attendees of its May confab. Microsoft will be doing a lot more than just demonstrating an early prototype of its secure OS, code-named "Palladium," at the upcoming Windows Hardware Engineeringn Conference (WinHEC). Microsoft published on Monday details of the sessions it is planning around Palladium (now called "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base," or NGSCB).
As leaked copies of Windows Server 2003 begin to surface before its launch, Microsoft says not to expect many changes to product activation in the new operating system - indicating the anti-piracy technology has met expectations. The company has yielded any drastic changes for its next generation Windows client, code-named Longhorn. Windows Server 2003 will have no more of the controversial activation technology than was seen in the first Windows XP service pack, along with a few tweaks.
When retooling activation for Windows Server 2003, Microsoft targeted scenarios specific to server environments. Algorithms were modified to reflect differences in hardware present in business and enterprise systems. RAID controllers and hot swappable drives, for example, are not often found on the desktop. Despite these differences in architecture, the trigger for re-activation remains unchanged.
Unisys is betting big on Windows Server 2003, and will release a new version of a server that will run up to 32 Intel processors to showcase the new operating system. Code-named Dylan, the Unisys ES7000/500 server comes little more than two weeks before Microsoft's official launch on April 24 of Windows Server 2003. Last month, the Redmond, Wash.-based company released final, or gold, code of the software, clearing the way for the release of new systems running Windows Server 2003.
For Unisys, Dylan marks the revival of the ES7000. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based company unveiled the mainframelike 32-way server in mid-1999, rapidly winning deals with other computer manufacturers to carry the product. In 2000, Compaq Computer, now owned by Hewlett-Packard, and Dell Computer agreed to sell the server. But Compaq dumped the ES7000 about a year later. Dell followed suit in early 2002.
The Wintel (define) juggernaut has conquered the desktop and 32-bit servers, but it may face its greatest challenge in "big iron." Preparations are being finalized for the April 24 release of Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The software and corresponding tools are expected to be the Redmond, Wash.-based firm's most significant release, not because it is aiming to become more secure, but because it includes support for supercomputers, clusters and mainframes -- a virtually new space for Microsoft.