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Mono 2.0, an open-source runtime enabling .Net-based applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix, is being released Monday, featuring capabilities for a number of .Net technologies.

Considered a major upgrade, the open source Mono 2.0 runtime leverages Microsoft's .Net Framework 2.0 programming model. With Mono, developers can build desktop and server applications using Microsoft-based environments and deploy them across multiple platforms, including Windows. Novell is leading the Mono effort.

"The existing apps you build on Windows, you can now run those applications on Linux or MacOS 10. Different people have different reasons for doing so," such as platform consolidation, said Miguel de Icaza, vice president of developer platforms at Novell and Mono project maintainer.

Mono 2.0 supports the C# 3.0 language and LINQ (Language Integrated Query) for querying of data across databases, objects, and XML content, de Icaza said. Also, users can move over server applications built for .Net and client applications built with Windows Forms.

Version 2.0 of Mono, however, lacks support for key .Net 3.0 and .Net 3.5 APIs, specifically Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows Presentation Foundation. These are not currently supported because they were not amongst the most requested technologies sought by early users of Mono, de Icaza said.

"We don't support them because we haven?t developed those pieces yet," he said. Work on WCF support is planned for next year.

Also featured in Mono 2.0 is MoMA (Mono Migration Analyzer), a tool to assess the readiness of Linux environments for migration of .Net applications.

Microsoft's reaction to Mono has been mixed, according to de Icaza. "I guess it depends on who you ask. In some cases, of course, they would rather have people stay on Windows," he said. Microsoft is working with de Icaza and Novell on Moonlight, which will enable applications built for Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in to run on Linux. Moonlight 1.0, a more complete release than what has been available, is set to be released by the end of this month.

Mono is intended to help more applications be moved to Linux and help developers reach a larger market. "From our position, we want more developers to be able to start deploying their third-party applications on Linux. We want to enrich the Linux ecosystem," de Icaza said.

He estimated that 45 percent of applications will run on Mono 2.0 out of the box while 18 percent will require developers to spend a couple of weeks to make some changes due to operating system differences. About 20 percent will require significant work, taking about three to six months, if the application is tightly integrated with Windows, de Icaza said.

Current Mono user Mindtouch, maker of the Deki collaboration platform, opted for Mono because it sought to provide cross-platform solutions, said Aaron Fulkerson, Mindtouch founder and CEO.

"I think Mono is fantastic for us," he said. Mindtouch founders and many of the company's developers had worked at Microsoft and sought to leverage Windows-based development skills, he said. But .Net lacked platform independence.

"We very seriously considered going with Java and then [took] a good hard look at Mono," Fulkerson said. Mono was determined to be a "sufficiently mature technology to build on," he said.

"In fact, we developed our product and deployed solely on Mono and Linux up until this month," just now adding support for Windows, said Fulkerson.

The Mono 2.0 runtime is offered under the LGPL, while class libraries and compilers are available via the MIT X11 license.

Mono was built using Microsoft documentation pertaining to the .Net engine and languages, which are ISO standards, de Icaza said. Work on Mono 2.0 has been going on for about two-and-a-half years. The Mono project itself was begun in 2001.

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The ongoing credit crisis is a concern for everyone in nearly every industry -- fear of lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and bankrupt businesses. But those lost jobs are likely to further bolster the booming offshore outsourcing market -- so the experts predicted.

Fast-forward two months: It's time for them to eat their words. Neither are customers outsourcing more nor is the industry growing any faster. In fact, each day service providers only revise their growth estimates in the downward direction.

[ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. ]

Some brave analysts are finally coming out with the truth. Days after Wall Street's collapse, vice president and principal analyst with U.S. research firm Forrester, John McCarthy, said the scale of the crisis had rendered all previous studies, including Forrester's own survey released earlier this month, redundant, and that Indian IT providers should prepare for slower growth and lower profits. "It is naive to say an economic slowdown is good because cost-cutting will lead to higher offshoring. This is no longer a recession, it is fundamental restructuring of financial services that is taking place," says McCarthy.

What the hell happened in these two months?

Multiple factors are at play here -- some recent developments and some historic issues that have been building over time.

About 20 to 40 percent of the revenues of offshore outsourcing firms are tied to the financial services industry. With its collapse, companies have been forced to look to other vertical markets. In normal circumstances, that should have been enough to offset the revenue erosion. But the problem is that everyone is in the same boat and those other industries are also impacted by the crisis, fading consumer demand, and reduction in spending.

For example, the travel vertical has started seeing a rise in ticket cancellations and refunds, which has led service providers like WNS to greater conservatism on revised guidance. Hexaware stated that delayed decision-making is spreading out from BFSI to travel, and it has now reduced its annual growth estimate from 24 percent to 7 or 9 percent. Sasken is now cautious about telecom handset segment as all the top-five handset customers are seeing a slowdown in sales (a U-turn from Sasken's bullish stand on this segment a couple of months ago).

So, suddenly all players are chasing a smaller market, in which there was little differentiation among players anyway, and it will lead to pricing pressure, reduced profitability, and less growth.

It will also become difficult to generate new business (unless driven by price), which will result in generic and inefficient players rightfully getting wiped out of the market. Rather than getting upset about it, I think it's an exciting opportunity for service providers to innovate and build their differentiators. Customers, I would say, have never had it so good -- they can finally be in the driver's seat.

It's also difficult to accurately quantify the business value of offshore outsourcing. At a theoretical level, it does make sense. At a headcount level, it also makes sense. But at a business outcome level, the real and hidden costs are often ignored and many companies are left thinking, "Hey, wait a minute, I offshored hundreds of my staff...why isn't my profitability increasing?" And despite share of offshoring rising, why haven't we ever seen a reduction in IT spend? That's because offshore outsourcing has so far focused on headcount as the currency, not the business value generated. That is about to, thankfully, come to an end.

The more I think about the full value chain, the more intrigued, and sometimes scared, I get about the full impact. TCS has reduced its annual hiring estimate by about 30 percent, Wipro already reduced headcount in IT services last quarter, Polaris has resorted to just-in-time hiring, Infosys is visiting fewer campuses...what does it mean for the employment market in offshore outsourcing countries? Will wage inflations ease off? Will attritions finally come to manageable levels? Will being skilled come back in fashion compared to just having an IT diploma/degree? We'll have to wait and see...

It is the end of the golden age of offshore outsourcing, but it also heralds a new dawn -- the age of truth and rationality. Where offshore outsourcing delivers real, tangible business value, and service providers are focused on making things work for customers in unique and innovative ways.

Here's to the new age...cheers!

Arpit Kaushik runs a business redesign company in London, Crystals, that helps technology-centric companies get unstuck. CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiliate.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) claimed late last week to have issued nearly 50,000 takedown notices about BitTorrent files in the first half of this year.…

Ask.com plans to upgrade its search engine on Monday with several enhancements that it considers significant and that it believes could give its popularity a boost in a market dominated by Google.

Ask.com has sharpened the relevance of its search results, made the engine faster, and simplified the site's layout, said Ask.com president Scott Garrell.

"The strategy from a product perspective is to provide the best answer the first time, everytime," Garrell said. "We want to reduce the distance between your query and the answer you want."

If Ask.com can consistently provide direct answers in its search results page, Garrell believes it will grow its user base. It generally takes people three to four clicks in any search engine to get the desired information, he said.

Behind the scenes, Ask.com's makeover includes an improved ability to extract data from Web pages; to mix in a wider variety of result types like photos, news, images, and videos; and to tap a broader pool of data sources for queries about entertainment, jobs, health, and reference information.

With this upgrade Ask.com, owned by IAC, is also aiming to recapture the functionality that gave it its prominence during its heyday: the ability for people to type in queries in natural language. Ask.com is bringing this functionality back via a question-and-answer feature that uses semantic search technology to interpret the questions and return relevant answers found on the Web, Garrell said.

In the mid to late 1990s, before the rise of Google, Ask.com -- then called Ask Jeeves -- was a leading search engine, along with others like Altavista and WebCrawler. After the dot-com bubble burst, Ask Jeeves de-emphasized its consumer search engine and focused on providing search services and software to the enterprise market. However, it abandoned this strategy in mid-2003, exiting the enterprise market and vowing to regain the ground lost in the consumer search space.

Since then, Ask.com has regularly updated and enhanced its search engine, often earning praise from industry experts for clever and useful innovations in technology and layout. Unfortunately, the company's share of search usage in the U.S. has fluctuated in recent years roughly between 4 percent and 7 percent, coming nowhere near market leader Google, which has in turn increased its dominance more and more.

For example, in November 2005, Google handled almost 40 percent of all U.S. queries, while Ask Jeeves placed fifth with 6.5 percent, according to comScore. By comparison, in August of this year, Google had a 63 percent share of U.S. searches, while Ask.com placed fourth with 4.8 percent, according to comScore.

Evan Andrews, a Jupiter Research analyst who was given a demo of the new and improved features, said Ask.com has a chance to attract new users, something that is hard in the search engine market because people grow very attached to their preferred provider -- Google for most.

However, there is a segment of users that Jupiter Research has identified as "power searchers" that have a voracious appetite for new search products and features. They might be drawn to give Ask.com a try and stick around if they like the improvements in blending different types of results, the so-called universal search concept that Google and all other major search providers are pursuing.

"Ask has always been a leader, a pioneer in universal search and pushed the envelope when it comes to that, so it stands a good chance to see additional gains in market share," Andrews said.

Andrews also liked the new Q&A search functionality, as well as the expanded repositories of structured data that Ask.com can tap to deliver direct answers to queries. "It's going to be difficult with just one announcement and some new features to overtake Google, but that doesn't mean Ask shouldn't try," he said. "Based on our research, the strategy of delivering richer search results is the right one."

Microsoft has released the next version of its desktop management toolset for IT that includes updates to its application virtualization and asset management tools.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2008 R2 is now available to users with volume licensing contracts and Software Assurance maintenance contracts. 

MDOP is designed specifically to help IT administrators manage collections of Windows desktops, including Vista SP1.

The R2 release does not include the new license reconciliation features for MDOP's Asset Inventory Service 1.5 (AIS). That update will be available in early November. The AIS 1.5 reconciliation feature tells users if the software deployed in their infrastructure is compliant with their licensing agreements.

Early next year, Microsoft will add to MDOP its Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) software, which is the first Microsoft-branded release of the recently acquired Kidaro technology.

MED-V runs multiple versions of Windows or applications concurrently without having to open multiple virtual machine sessions. The software complements another MDOP tool called App-V.

The R2 release does include App-V 4.5 (formerly Softgrid), which introduces integration with System Center management tools, including the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack for App-V 4.5.

App-V 4.5, which was first made available individually Sept. 15, lets users package applications up into "containers," store them on a server where they can be centrally managed, and then stream those containers to desktops, devices or shared PCs.

The 4.5 version is the first developed under Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing and Secure by Default guidelines.

App-V 4.5 also features Dynamic Suite Composition (DSC), which lets virtualized applications share middleware resources; support for 11 languages; and a service provider license option called Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 Hosting for Desktops.

In addition, Advanced Group Policy Management 3.0 (AGPM) also has been updated to include new settings to enforce the use of the Group Policy change management tool.

MDOP includes AIS; App-V; Enterprise Desktop Virtualization for managing and deploying virtual PCs; System Center Desktop Error Monitoring; Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) for change management via group policy objects; and the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, which helps in recovering a crashed PC.

MDOP is composed of software from Microsoft 's purchases of Softricity, Kidaro, AssetMetrix, Winternals Software and DesktopStandard.

MDOP is a big part of Microsoft's Optimized Desktop, which addresses centralized management and deployment of physical and virtual resources.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate

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HP on Monday is updating its SOA governance software, HP Systinet 3.00, which assists with discovering and reusing services in composite applications and business processes.

Featured is support for standards such as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and integration with other HP SOA products. In Version 3.00, multiple users within an organization can discover and reuse services, the company said.

With the upgrade, customers can automate service lifecycle policy compliance by capturing best practices to achieve SOA objectives. This is being accomplished by integration with HP Quality Service Center, a separately available product.

Pre-built lifecycles and templates in Version 3.00 enable nonexperts to quickly use the product, HP said. More sophisticated users can customize service lifecycles through use of wizard-driven programming interfaces. Role-based dashboards provide information in a format related to a specific user's responsibilities.

HP acquired the Systinet product when it bought Mercury Interactive in 2006; Quality Center also came over with the Mercury buy. "The focus of HP SOA Systinet 3.00 is all about enabling customers to take their SOA governance efforts to a much larger scale," said Kelly Emo, HP software SOA product marketing manager.

HP has completed integrations between all of its quality solutions for SOA, she said.

Users of the upgrade can build reusable business processes and include them in the governance framework through support for BPEL. Productivity can be increased via business processes that are easier to discover and reuse, HP said.

Automation of repetitive tasks across a large number of services is featured, with support for bulk operations and lifecycle "cloning," HP said. Support for Open SCA (Service Component Architecture) and WSDL 2.0, for exposing interfaces, is featured as well.

Version 3.00 also can trigger business policies based on service quality through integration with HP Service Test Management or manage rogue services in production through linkage with HP Universal Configuration Management Database.

HP Systinet 3.00 is available now.

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Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP on new PCs by six months, the company confirmed Friday.

Computer makers that "downgrade" machines from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate to Windows XP Professional will be able to obtain media for the latter through the end of July 2009, a Microsoft spokeswoman said Friday.

The new date is a change in policy. Previously, Microsoft had planned to halt XP Professional media shipments to major computer makers after Jan. 31. 2009.

"As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible. Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

The Jan. 31, 2009 date is also the last day when smaller companies, dubbed "system builders," will be allowed to purchase Windows XP licenses to install on the machines they assemble. The system builder deadline has not changed, the spokeswoman added; It remains next Jan. 31.

To confuse matters, some PC makers have long claimed that they would provide XP downgrades on new computers past the Jan. 31 deadline. Last June, for example, Hewlett-Packard talked of a July 2009 cut-off. "HP...will continue to offer this option on its business systems through at least July 30, 2009," a company spokesman said almost four months ago .

The Microsoft spokeswoman clarified the situation. "The [downgrade] rights don't go away," she said via instant messaging in response to follow-up questions. "It's all about having the media on hand. It's always been okay to use what you've got."

Microsoft sent Windows XP into semi-retirement last June when it stopped selling the aged operating system at retail, withdrew Windows XP Home from use on new PCs and allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade.

The latter tactic takes advantage of Vista's end-user licensing agreement (EULA), which allows users -- and in their stead, computer makers -- to install Windows XP Professional while also providing media for Vista for a possible upgrade later. More than a third of all new PCs are being downgraded to Windows XP, according to data from a Florida company that operates a community-based performance testing network.

It's also possible that XP will be widely available long after July 31, 2009. "Downgrade rights do not expire," Microsoft's spokeswoman said Friday.

The longer availability puts Microsoft in an unusual position; the new timeline will make it possible for users to purchase XP-powered PCs through next July, just months before Microsoft plans to roll out Windows 7, the successor to Vista.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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