The worm continues to infect a large number of computers while security experts try and figure out what to do.

Microsoft has created a new technology industry posse and a $250,000 reward for people who help turn over the creators of the Conficker worm.

The Conficker worm multiplied like wildfire, and spreads through a hole found in Microsoft Windows systems, though the vulnerability was patched in October.  It also is able to disable anti-malware protection and will block an infected PC from visiting anti-malware vendors Web sites to receive updates.

Security experts are even more worried about the possibility the worm calls home every 24 hours to at least 250 servers each day for instructions or directed actions.

The Houston police department was forced to stop arresting people with traffic warrants because the worm spread its way through the police and city court’s computer systems.  Violent offenders were still arrested, but those with outstanding traffic warrants were simply issued citations instead of being arrested, Houston police officials said.

There also was a Conficker outbreak among French military computers, which led to several fighter planes being grounded until everything could be fixed.

Microsoft is working with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and PC security experts while trying to identify the worm’s creators.  VeriSign, NeuStar, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International, AOL, F-Secure, George Tech, and several other organizations have joined the fight to help capture who ever created the Internet worm.

“As part of Microsoft’s ongoing security efforts, we constantly look for ways to use a diverse set of tools and develop methodologies to protect our customers,” Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Group G.M. George Stathakopoulos said in a statement.  “By combining our expertise with the broader community we can expand the boundaries of defense to better protect people worldwide.”

Security company Symantec reported that more than 2.2 million IP addresses over the past five days have been infected with two different forms of the worm, three months after it first hit the Internet.  To date, it’s infected at least 10 million PCs since first being introduced into the wild.

Microsoft India has announced that it will work with organizations to help leverage technology to drive cost control and efficiencies to weather the challenges of the downturn.

To this end it has launched a web site titled controlcosts.com, an IT knowledge resource for organizations looking to streamline operational costs.

The website provides information and guidance on solutions to solve business dilemmas faced by organizations from containing costs to enhancing efficiency to energy consumption.

The global economic meltdown has forced companies across the globe and in India to look for ways to cut costs and reduce risks as they confront issues like tighter credit, reduced business activity, and slower consumer spending, while maintaining business agility. We believe that technology provides powerful tools that can help companies reduce costs by enabling them to operate with greater efficiency and effectiveness, automate processes, and to do more with fewer resources. , said Rajan Anandan, MD, Microsoft India.

For instance, using Microsoft CRM solution, Liliput Retail has been able to increase efficiencies of its warehouses by 60 percent and also maintain a healthy turnover rate. Similarly, Lavassa Corporation has reduced response time to customer queries from one day to immediate action and has saved 20% in payroll by streamlining the sales operation with CRM solutions from Microsoft.

According to a McKinsey report of 2008, targeted IT investments can make operations more efficient and increase revenues, delivering returns larger than simple cost cutting measures typically do. As Roger Killick, IT manager, Siemens Standard Devices believes, Hyper-V gives us all the virtualization features we need in a very cost-effective package. It’s an excellent investment, because we’ll also save money on future training and support costs.

Strategic and innovative use of technology can deliver huge Return on investment in the short term and further, create conditions for more rapid growth when the economic climate improves , added Anandan.

With controlcosts.com, Microsoft aims to provide one stop tool for CFOs, CIOs and CXOs to learn how to identify high cost operations and streamline costs by leveraging technology solutions such as virtualization, unified communications, Customer relationship management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence and hosted services.
Readers can also access industry reports and whitepapers on the above mentioned solutions and view case studies of how organizations in India have used the solutions to achieve significant cost reduction and streamlined business processes.

Microsoft has recently announced the Developer Tools Specialist Club (DTSC), an initiative for Microsoft reseller partners who specifically focus to grow their business around developer tools.  The program is aimed to tap the immense opportunity for developer tools in the IT services market of India. This program is aimed to sustain engagements with the partners so as to understand the customer requirements better and address them more effectively. The program is designed specifically to grow the developer tools business.

As a part of this program, Microsoft will provide a host of resources to partners including training, marketing collaterals and co-funding. This will help the partners increase their business, sales momentum and competency to service their customers. The training session for the partners will also include quarterly readiness sessions for their sales and technical team. The program is aimed to support Microsoft partners and help them achieve their quarterly and annual target alongwith seeding of business with top developer tools customers.

“DTSC is aimed at enabling our network of specific reseller partners who promote Developer Tools to grow their business. This initiative will focus on maximizing and growing the market opportunities for developer tools in the Indian IT services industry. We are committed to increase our current network of partners and strengthen our relationship with existing partners”, said Mr. Moorthy Uppaluri, General Manager-DPE, Microsoft India .

Microsoft has already signed 11 partners under this program and aims to increase the network speedily in the next quarter. Partners under this initiative will regularly attend customer events focused on developer tools and will share a weekly pipeline of business opportunities in the market.  Both Microsoft and the partner will also jointly nominate a dedicated resource as “Developer Tools Champion.”

Mr. S Prashanth, Executive Director, Quadra Systems commented, “Developer tool business is a focus area for us and we are delighted to be a part of the Microsoft’s Specialists Club. Regular and timely support from Microsoft has certainly helped us to increase our focus and commitment on this business and we are headed to meet our targets better than before. Also, support to drive co-marketing activities for our customers will help us understand our customer needs better and provide us with quicker means to drive new leads for the business.”

Commenting on the announcement, Sidhartha Ramachandran, Director, Power Centre Private Limited said “The Developer Tools Specialist Club (DTSC) initiative from Microsoft has benefited us on many different fronts.  The seminars conducted in this regard have helped educate customers on the Microsoft range of development tools, thus, enabling them to better utilize and optimize their use of this technology.  The Developer Champion in my team is charged by the responsibility and incentives that go with the position and this enthusiasm has communicated itself to the entire sales team.  From all perspectives, it is an exciting initiative which offers something for everyone and helps us achieve our targets.”

Net4 India Limited, an IP communications services and solutions company, today announced the launch of subscription-based messaging and collaborative services offerings built on Microsoft’s Exchange platform for business customers.

With this, the company will provide a broad range of services ranging from basic e-mail to hosting additional storage, personal domains, calendars and tasks. The services will be offered to enterprises, small and medium businesses (SMBs), small office/home office (SOHO) businesses, and individual consumers.

The Microsoft hosted messaging and collaborative (HMC) solution works on a pay- as- you- go and Zero Investment model.

Jasjit Sawhney, chairman and MD, Net4 India, said, “The economic slowdown has fueled the demand for software as a service model among Indian enterprises and SMBs. Microsoft Hosted Exchange will provide more choice, flexibility and affordability to customers since they will not have to invest in licenses, hardware, installing and managing the software in-house. The hosted Microsoft exchange service shall be backed by Net4’s state-of-the-art Data Centers and STM8 Internet backbone connectivity.”

The company expects to expand its 2.5 lakh client base across tier 1 and tier 2 cities in the country.

Moorthy K. Uppaluri, general manager, developer and platform evangelism (DPE), Microsoft India, said, “Customers find value in a combination of software plus services delivered via the Internet, thus making owning and managing IT more affordable and convenient. We at Microsoft continue to provide this choice to our customers and partner community. We believe that this new offering from Net 4 will provide ample value to customers looking to leverage technology to provide high productivity while ensuring lower spends.”

The key features of Microsoft HMC include fast, reliable and secure infrastructure consisting of redundant network connections, premium anti-spam and antivirus, anywhere access, collaboration features like Group calendaring and scheduling, public e-mail folders, shared contacts, calendars and folders, message recovery and retention, data back up and archiving.

IDC has estimated Microsoft share in the e-mail messaging market at 40 percent in India, which is a large chunk of the market. Microsoft has over 200 customers on Exchange Server ranging from large enterprise to mid and small business market.

Software major Microsoft has come up with Release Candidate 1 (RC1) for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in 25 languages. “IE8 RC1 is much faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer, so you’ll notice that difference right away. IE8 is also your personal explorer, with customizations that will enable an online experience,” said Rajiv Popli, director for Windows at Microsoft India.

This new offering includes Accelerators and Web Slices, which allow users access online services from any Web page they visit as well as easily stay connected with information that they want the most - without having to visit the website, said Popli. The offering includes an array of Accelerators such as Live Search, Amazon, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Facebook, eBay, besides other popular sites.

The add-ons offer large amount of resources within a couple of clicks of the Web page visited. Instead of opening a new tab to look up for a search term on Yahoo or Google, users can simply highlight the term and click on the search page accelerator for an instant reference, thereby eliminating navigation to other Websites. In addition, users can discover other useful Accelerators through selection from More Accelerators option on the right-click menu.

Also, the company has initiated a platform-based approach to Web Slices that can enable virtually any developer to create them by merely adding a few lines of code to existing pages. Through this, users can update sites directly from the new Favorites Bar.

Microsoft is also working with partners to create more Web Slices for favorite sites. “IE8 RC1 will help keep users protected against the ever-evolving online threats - things like protection from cross-site scripting attacks that no other browser offers,” said Popli.

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is available for download, while its localized versions can be installed on Windows Server 2003 or XP in accordance with the base language of the operating system with that of IE8, and can be installed in English on any localized OS version. Other languages for IE8 include Japanese, German and simplified Chinese with codes JPN, DEU and CHS, respectively.

The Dynamics CRM 4.0 will help businesses optimize costs by streamlining customer relationship management based on many customizable parameters. It can integrate with software like Outlook and Excel. The software can be deployed on premises or accessed as a hosted service and offers a familiar user interface and absolute ease of use as of Windows.

Addressing the same space of CRM for the Indian SMEs, Oracle’s ‘On Demand 16′ will offer flexibility of defining relationships and will not require the user to write code, or compile the application. Some of the key features of the release include reviewing of critical information from a single interface.

Microsoft adCenter has released the results of an online survey examining the search marketing behaviors of small-business owners. The findings indicate that a majority of the small businesses surveyed, invest in developing Web sites, but fail to take even the simplest steps to enhance their online business presence. The study said that 59% of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 % have never even attempted it.

Seven in 10 small-business owners who participated said that they would rather try to do their own taxes than start a paid search marketing campaign.

“Given today’s current economic conditions, small-business owners need more effective ways to optimize their marketing dollars,” said Brian Boland, director of adCenter at Microsoft Advertising. “By investing in paid search marketing, small businesses can track online sales and determine the return on investment for their campaigns, while at the same time boosting traffic and visibility for their Web sites.”

Despite the lack of investment in paid search marketing, the weakening economy and increased competition, nearly nine in 10 (86%) small-business owners surveyed felt that they could be missing opportunities to grow their business, while three in four believed prospective customers could be searching online for the type of service their business offers. Although most do not embrace the practice, the small-business owners who use paid search marketing are very satisfied, as 72% reported an increase in sales inquiries and 68 % consider their paid search marketing efforts successful.

Among the participants’ chief concerns, most said the common misconceptions of cost, time, and complexity as major hurdles to conducting search marketing campaigns for their businesses.

Other key insights included the following:

* Nearly nine in 10 (89 %) feared keywords may become too expensive.
* 81% questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
* One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
* 21% thought it would be too time-consuming.
* 35% felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

“These opinions run counter to widely held marketing industry views on paid search marketing, which recognize the practice as one of the most cost-effective, easy-to-use, measurable and accountable forms of marketing,” Boland said.

Tools like Google Analytics can enable businesses to make informed decisions about their online marketing.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft has unveiled ‘Windows. Life without Walls’ – a holistic digital life experience across the PC with Windows Vista, mobile with Windows Mobile and internet with Windows Live. The event showcased four experience zones spanning memories, connectedness, family safety and productity. The experiential zones displayed multiple day-to-day life scenarios in which Windows enables consumers to seamlessly integrate across the PC, mobile and internet, thus enriching their lives and allowing them to leverage technology to do things their way.

“I am pleased and privileged to share Life without Walls where the PC, mobile and internet converge seamlessly to allow people to discover easier and simpler ways of connecting to each other with Windows, the language of a billion people across the world,” said Hemant Sachdev, Joint Managing Director, Consumer and Online, Microsoft India . He further added, “Today, in addition to our original vision of a PC on every desktop and in every home, we envision a smarter phone in every hand, internet access for everyone, everywhere and entertainment devices and experiences that enrich people’s lives and help them connect better with each other. Truly a Life without Walls – where the device, the place, the application all come together seamlessly.”

Microsoft India also announced the next generation of Windows Live, an integrated suite of online services that make it easier and more fun for consumers to communicate and share with the people they care about most. The new generation of Windows Live delivers services and experiences that will enhance how consumers connect across the PC, Mobile and internet, while on the familiar Windows platform. Multiple third party social networking sites have been integrated apart from other cool changes to instant messaging, email, photosharing and Live Skydrive that now has 25GB of storage space. The next generation Windows Live also includes Windows Live Essentials, free downloadable software that enhances consumers’ Windows PC experience by helping them simplify and enjoy digital content scattered across diverse form factors. The new Windows Live can be found at www.home.live.com and from the mobile on www.mobile.live.com.

Commenting on the new Windows Live suite, Hemant said, “Windows Live is the single place where people using our e-mail , messaging, photo-sharing and services can stay connected. Besides giving them a central place to organize and manage their information, Windows Live provides them a range of services and applications designed to work together across the PC, phone and internet, and the flexibility to decide how, when and where they can best use these services in their lives.”

The new Windows Live includes a host of Web services. Some of the key highlights include:

· Windows Live SkyDrive. Conveniently access all files with the increased ease and storage capacity from Windows Live SkyDrive, now offering 25BG of online storage and tighter integration with other Windows Live services.

· Windows Live Hotmail . one of the largest e-mail services worldwide with more than 375 million active customers, is now much faster and has 80 percent more effective spam filtering. It is simpler, faster and more intuitive with a sleek new interface that also has the ability to acess multiple email accounts all from Hotmail. Windows Mobile hotmail works like a free purshmail service without any monthly email subscription charge!

· Windows Live Family Safety . Parents can help keep children safe by managing which Web sites kids can visit, and the list of contacts they can communicate with when they are using Windows Live Spaces, Hotmail and Messenger. Family Safety even generates reports for parents so that they can monitor their children’s activity. Best of all, it lets parents monitor this from anywhere they are online - on their mobile, PC or from the internet.

· Windows Live People. The People page is for storage and management of your Windows Live contacts. It’s a central address book that contains your contacts from your Phone book, Windows Live Hotmail as well as all the people in your Windows Live network.

· Windows Live Messenger now includes more personalization, a “what’s new” feed with updates from contacts across the Web, drag-and-drop photo sharing in the conversation window, a favorites list to designate the most important contacts, and group IM to chat simultaneously with up to 20 people at the same time. It also provides new ways for customers to personalize their experience with the new scenes and even video display pictures.

With the economy in the shape it’s in, even Microsoft and Google are thinking twice before dropping $100 million on a new datacenter. But the two tech giants are easing off the funding pedal for different reasons.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has delayed breaking ground on a planned Oklahoma datacenter by 12 to 18 months, and appears to be going a little slower with a planned North Carolina center. It decided to pass on a $4.7 million state grant to build a data center in the town of Lenoir, N.C.

In the case of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), a source close to the construction of its planned Chicago, Ill. datacenter said work has been scaled back and many modular containers being used at the site are just being parked but not hooked up. Also, the company has yet to begin construction on a West Des Moines, Iowa datacenter despite announcing it with much fanfare last year.

It’s no surprise such projects would be delayed. Datacenters are about the most expensive capital project a company can undertake. A raised floor datacenter costs between $1,000 to $2,000 per square foot, making it the most expensive piece of real estate for almost any organization, according to Enterprise Management Associates. The cost of a five megawatt data center build-out can easily surpass $100 million.

Microsoft has publicly said it is cutting back datacenter expenses. On the last quarterly conference call to discuss the first fiscal quarter of 2009, CFO Chris Liddell said Microsoft would trim capital investments by $300 million, and he specifically said it would be on the datacenter side.

“We will probably also slow our growth in some of the facilities just by virtue of not having as many people as were expected as well. But that’s likely to be more of an FY 2010 phenomenon,” said Liddell.

Notoriously expensive to operate

He also said $500 million would be cut in operating expenses. Datacenters are notoriously expensive to operate because of their power and cooling requirements.

Google on the other hand, has made no such commitment to cut operating expenses. “Capex is lumpy business. Think about datacenters going up. We have no plans of slowing down. You just see the nature of that lumpiness. Every extra unit of capacity is cheaper for us,” said CEO Eric Schmidt on the company’s most recent conference call.

The delay in Oklahoma is simply because Google has enough capacity now, according to spokesman Eitan Bencuya. “We figured it doesn’t make sense to build it out and sit empty,” he told InternetNews.com. “We don’t feel like we need to turn it on, we have enough capacity elsewhere. So we decided to hold off construction for 12 to 18 months and then bring it online.”

Google’s four most recent datacenter projects have been in North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Iowa. The North and South Carolina facilities are open, and Iowa will open next year. Only Oklahoma was delayed.

It decided to pass on the North Carolina Department of Commerce offer of a $4.7 million tax incentive from the Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) program because, rather generously, Google didn’t need the money but the state did. “Considering State budgetary constraints as well as the difficulty in forecasting our business climate, we do not believe that JDIGs would be a wise investment for both Google and North Carolina at this time,” said Bencuya.

An ill wind hits Chicago

Microsoft’s Chicago datacenter is supposed to be for its Live and on-demand strategy, and by all reports from its own blog posts, the site looks very near completion.

The site is being kept somewhat under wraps in that Microsoft has not disclosed all of the details behind its construction. This is not unusual, as Google is equally guarded when it comes to datacenter construction. The Chicago datacenter is reported to be built using modular containers, with Rackable Systems the rumored provider. However, neither Microsoft nor Rackable would confirm this.

A source close to the construction told InternetNews.com on condition of anonymity that the work at the Chicago site has been significantly scaled back and much is left uncompleted. He reports the containers are being brought in but not hooked up. “It’s being handled like a big storage facility. They might bring power in, but they are talking about it months from now,” he said.

The containers there are only being wired for environmental controls for heating and cooling. They are not being networked or connected to the Internet at all. The project has seen the number of workers cut in half, the source added.

Microsoft has already disclosed some of these cutback details. It said in October that construction and container testing at the Chicago datacenter had entered into a second phase in Chicago, resulting in a workforce reduction, from 900 construction workers working 24×7 with 3 separate shifts, to approximately 450 construction staff, working one shift of 40 hours a week.

“Online and Live services are a major focus of Microsoft, and as we continue to build out our offerings and the Chicago data center, we’re working to make the right, smart operational and data center investments for today and tomorrow,” said Michael Manos, general manager of data centers in Global Foundation Services at Microsoft in an e-mailed statement to InternetNews.com.

Things are even murkier regarding the planned $500 million datacenter in West Des Moines, Iowa, which was announced in August. When the Azure platform was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference in October, the press release contained references to a number of datacenters, including Chicago, but not West Des Moines.

There often is a lag time between announcement and build-out, since these are not trivial undertakings. Microsoft told the blog Data Center Knowledge that it is in the design phase of the datacenter and plans to open it in the coming years. Beyond that, it would not discuss the facility any further.

Why delaying makes sense

Andi Mann, senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, isn’t surprised at the delays in datacenters. “Both companies are looking to expand their services, cloud services specifically, but the potential client base for them is holding off. Industries like financial, manufacturing and retail are all taking a hit with the recession at the moment,” he told InternetNews.com.

Given the huge cost for these facilities – Google’s South Carolina facility was $600 million – he’s not surprised they are trying to save. “There’s no reason why they should be immune to this slow down. IT is well positioned to weather the recession, People are just looking to see what they can delay,” said Mann.

The industry, said Mann, learned its lesson after the dotcom bubble burst and everyone was left with too much inventory, capacity and hardware. “IT is not running fat. IT is already running lean. IT cut back earlier in the decade and never expanded to the huge proportions of the late ’90s,” he said.

source: IN

Companies Expand Their Strategic Alliance to Advance a New Approach to Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention

Hopkinton, Ma and Redmond, Wa — Building on a long-standing, multi-faceted alliance, EMC and Microsoft Corp. today announced they have expanded their technology partnership to help companies better protect sensitive information and share it in a more secure manner. The companies will be working together with a built-in “systems” approach that helps protect information throughout the infrastructure based on content, context and identity.

The partnership will take advantage of resources and technology from Microsoft and RSA, The Security Division of EMC. Microsoft will build the RSA® Data Loss Prevention (DLP) classification technology into the Microsoft platform and future information protection products. The resulting collaboration is designed to enable organizations to centrally define information security policy, automatically identify and classify sensitive data virtually anywhere in the infrastructure, and use a range of controls to protect data at the endpoints, network, and data center. Additionally, in the near term RSA’s DLP Suite 6.5 will be engineered to integrate tightly with Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services (RMS) within Windows Server 2008.

Enterprises face growing risks of data leaks and an increase in compliance and corporate governance requirements. Companies recognize the importance of allowing employees, partners, customers and vendors to use business information within and across company boundaries. But this creates security challenges, as information moves across the infrastructure and is transformed throughout its lifecycle. Current information protection solutions are complex and costly. They require separate tools and lack visibility into the sensitivity of the data, the context of identity and centralized policy management.

“Companies continue to struggle to protect sensitive data across the enterprise,” said Christopher Young, senior vice president of products at RSA, The Security Division of EMC. “Point solutions require that multiple policies and technologies be stitched together and independently managed, which is costly and complex. By building technology such as RSA DLP classification into the infrastructure, Microsoft and RSA are providing a new approach that balances the need to help ensure protection with accessibility.”

RSA and Microsoft’s new approach helps address customer needs through an end-to-end solution with fewer point tools to buy, deploy and manage. By building DLP classification technology into Microsoft products, the infrastructure becomes content-aware. The solution is designed to allow customers to centrally manage and apply their information security policies, based on user identity, to wherever information lives or is used. Microsoft is an RSA DLP Suite customer, using the solution to enhance the security of data about payment, customers and intellectual property in thousands of its own file shares and Microsoft Office SharePoint sites. The company chose to work with EMC’s RSA Security division based on the accuracy and scalability of the RSA DLP classification technology, and the wide array of its out-of-the-box policies.

“Our expanded partnership with EMC’s RSA Security Division is centered on dramatically lowering the cost and complexity of information protection while allowing customers to take full advantage of perhaps their greatest asset: their information. The approach is about built-in solutions, versus bolted-on,” said Douglas Leland, general manager of the Identity and Security Business Group at Microsoft. “This collaboration is also a key example of the Microsoft commitment to helping customers secure their environments, boost productivity and reduce IT costs through solutions that incorporate both identity and security technologies.”

The first deliverable from the expanded partnership is a tight integration between RSA’s DLP Suite and Microsoft rights management technology. Scheduled to ship later this month, version 6.5 of RSA’s DLP Suite will include support for Microsoft Active Directory RMS, part of Windows Server 2008. The integration will allow customers to automatically apply RMS-based information access and usage policies, based on the sensitivity of information. In addition, the RSA solution’s integration with Active Directory will help enable customers to efficiently implement data loss prevention controls tied to employee identity or group membership.

“Embedding information classification and protection capabilities throughout the infrastructure is an ideal way for an organization to prevent sensitive information leaks,” says Gartner analyst Eric Ouellet. “The automatic application of rights management policies based on content awareness, context, and who is involved is a strong merger of two existing approaches for protecting an organization’s sensitive information that together equal much more than the sum of their parts.”

EMC offers a complete range of information security strategy, design and implementation services to help customers protect critical information, manage risk and integrate these solutions into their environments.

More information about RMS is available at www.microsoft.com/ida . Information about RSA DLP Suite is available at www.rsa.com/dlp .

source: RSA