Sun has released a new version of xVM VirtualBox, its platform for desktop virtualization, and is also starting to offer enterprise support for the platform, the company said on Thursday.

XVM VirtualBox 2.0 comes with improved performance and platform support, adding support for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

[ Stay up to date on the latest virtualization developments with InfoWorld's Virtualization Report blog and newsletter. ]

Sun has also developed a new user interface for the Mac platform. Mac users will also get better networking performance, as will users who are running Sun's Solaris OS. It has also improved overall performance on AMD-based systems.

To get enterprises interested in the platform, Sun now offers around the clock premium support with the xVM VirtualBox Software Enterprise Subscription, which start at $30 per user per year. Additionally, customers will receive a Right-to-Use License, allowing companies to deploy VirtualBox using their own software deployment tools.

XVM VirtualBox software lets users create "virtual machines" into which they can install their operating system of choice. Developers can for example build, test and run cross-platform, multitier applications on a single laptop or desktop computer, according to Sun.

Other programs that do the same thing include VMware's Player or Fusion, Microsoft's Virtual PC and Parallels' Workstation or Desktop.

VirtualBox became part of the Sun virtualization product when the company announced it planned to acquire Germany's Innotek in February this year. The 20MB VirtualBox is currently being downloaded about 15,000 times a day, according to Sun.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association plans to launch the upcoming second generation of its low-cost XO laptop in the first quarter of 2010, according to an official from the group.

The XO-2, an update to the original XO laptop that's designed for low-cost computing for kids in developing nations, will carry two 16-by-9-inch touchscreens and eschew a keyboard. It opens like a book and can either be held vertically for reading, or horizontal for laptop computing. When used horizontally, the bottom touchscreen displays a keyboard for typing.

[ See the related stories "OLPC's dual-boot laptop due out soon" and "Amazon to sell OLPC XO laptops." And get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The new design is based on the fact e-books are a necessity for schools and should make reading easier.

"The e-book reader is the most popular function of the laptop," said Matt Keller, director of Europe, Middle East, and Africa at OLPC, in an interview Wednesday.

The XO-2 was announced in May, but with scant details beyond a general 2010 time frame for its rollout. The new device will improve upon the XO, which has captured the world's imagination as a way to lower the cost of putting computers in the hands of kids around the globe, thereby narrowing the gap between modern and developing nations in terms of computing expertise.

The XO currently costs around $203 or $204 to make, said Keller, while the XO-2 will likely cost around $80.

OLPC's Web site says the goal of the project is to reach a price of $75 per laptop for educational buyers.

The key technology behind the new laptop is the touchscreen, which is being developed by Mary Lou Jepsen at Pixel Qi. The company says it already has several screen manufacturers interested in building its screens.

Sony is recalling 73,000 Vaio TZ laptops because of a possible manufacturing defect that may cause them to overheat, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Thursday.

The recall relates to a problem with wiring near the computer's hinge, which could short-circuit and overheat in certain circumstances, perhaps burning the user.

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One person has suffered a minor burn as a result of the latest defect, and Sony has received 15 other reports of overheating computers, according to the Commission.

The affected models are the VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300, and VGN-TZ2000 -- although not all laptops in these series are affected. Sony suggests users contact the company to see whether their computer is part of the recall, and if so to stop using it immediately.

The overheating could be caused by misplaced wiring near the hinge, or if a screw in the hinge falls out and short-circuits the wires.

In 2006, Sony was forced to recall millions of laptop batteries used in its own and other manufacturers' laptops because they presented a fire hazard, causing some computers to burst into flames.

Sony isn't the only PC maker that has had to deal with battery problems. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Acer have all recalled laptop batteries in the recent past.

The Commission has published one other laptop safety recall this year: In May, Dell recalled almost 1 million notebook electrical adapters because of a risk of fire and electric shock.

This story was updated on Sept. 4, 2008.

Amazon.com will start selling One Laptop Per Child's low-cost XO notebook computer as part of the Give One, Get One program OLPC developed last year, according to an official from OLPC.

The non-profit organization started Give One, Get One as a way to raise money to send laptops to school kids in poor countries. The idea is that a person pays for two of the XO laptops developed by OLPC. One is sent to the buyer, and another is donated to a child in a developing country.

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This year, OLPC opted to team up with a Web e-tailer instead of running the program itself, said Matt Keller, director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at OLPC, in an interview Wednesday.

Amazon.com will start selling XO laptops under the Give One, Get One program in late November, around the time of Thanksgiving in the U.S. Sales will likely extend through to around the end of December.

"We're a small group of people," said Keller, explaining the rationale for working with Amazon.com.

OLPC is run by a small group of people, he said. There are a few thousand volunteers that help out with software development and other projects, but the core group itself is just 25 people.

A low-cost XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) that carries both Windows and Linux will be out within the next month or so, according to an OLPC official.

The dual-boot XO laptop was originally expected to be available in August or September. The new device will allow users to boot up the OS they prefer, either Microsoft Windows XP or the Linux-based Sugar OS originally found on the XO.

[ See the related story Amazon to sell OLPC XO laptops. And get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The new device is important to the spread of the XO around the world. OLPC started as an attempt to build a $100 laptop and work with governments to pass them out to kids in poor nations around the world. But some governments have said they don't want the XO laptop, no matter how cheap it is, unless it has Windows.

"Some countries have been adamant about using Microsoft software," said Matt Keller, OLPC's director for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, in an interview Wednesday.

A high-level government official in Egypt was among the first to tell OLPC that his country only wanted the XO if it could run Windows.

Now that OLPC has announced the dual-boot version of the laptop, Egypt plans to use them in schools, Keller said.

There has been some disagreement at OLPC about working with Microsoft and speculators have attributed some high profile departures from the non-profit to its decision to put Windows on the XO. Views differ widely between software developers who believe the source code of an application should be made freely available to users, and those makers of proprietary software who view the source code as a secret ingredient to be guarded.

In OLPC's case, the question came down to reaching out to kids, said Keller.

"We're all about educating kids," he said. "We're willing to work with anyone who shares that vision."

OLPC's goal is to make sure nobody misses out on the benefits of computing. The fear is that the price of a PC is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how software, the Internet and communications via computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives. To prevent poor countries from falling further behind the modern world in computing, a number of organizations are working to increase their access to computers.

Microsoft has launched a number of programs with governments in developing countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, to build computer labs in rural areas and send Microsoft employees to train people how to use software and write programs.

Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do ? all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?

After all, if Hollywood writers can organize effectively, you'd think IT workers would have a shot. As with Teamsters in the transportation industry, when IT walks off the job, everything comes to a grinding halt.

[ Stuck in a miserable IT job? Check out How to keep your tech career afloat and learn about today's most marketable skills ]

Unfortunately for would-be organizers, most experts agree that the odds against an IT union are long. Unions don't exactly appeal to the classic techie temperament.

"We're talking about people who are really lone gunmen," says Bill Pfleging, co-author of "The Geek Gap." "They're good at what they do, they're paid well, and they can go wherever they want to ? none of these things are a good fit for working in a union environment."

Then there's the sheer diversity of technical workers ? from help desk personnel to programmers and developers to network and software engineers ? each with their own, sometimes conflicting, issues and concerns.

But that's not stopping some geeks from trying. For example, the Washington Alliance of Tech Workers (WashTech) has been fighting for IT workers' rights for more than 10 years.?

"How much do you think your employer really values your work when they think they can just ship it off to India or China?" asks WashTech director of communications Rennie Sawade. "The union is trying to stand up for your right to be able to work in America and have a job." WashTech is now seeking people to help organize and recruit members, says Sawade.?

So far WashTech, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, has had limited success. In November 2005, it organized approximately 1,100 employees at a Cingular (now AT&T) Call Center in Bothell, Wash. The union is currently negotiating with AT&T over benefits; salary discussions are slated for next year. WashTech also has 243 at-large members, mostly software engineers.

Another CWA-affiliated tech union, Alliance@IBM, boasts roughly 300 dues-paying members, from IT specialists and programmers to scientists, says Lee Conrad, national coordinator for the union.

[ For the untold story of life in the IT trenches, read InfoWorld's investigative report: IT workers pushed to the limits ]

"Even though IT workers are considered a different type of animal, they're still impacted by the same things that hit the manufacturing industries 10 or 15 years ago ? pay cuts, downsizing, and loss of benefits," says Conrad. "We are seeking a union contract, a voice in the workplace, and more respect for IT employees."

But the alliance is still looking to secure a seat at the table with IBM management. So far, its most noteworthy accomplishment is staging picket lines outside the company's annual shareholder meetings.

A better alternative, say some, may be a professional organization modeled after the American Bar Association or American Medical Association. Less formal or rigidly organized than a union, it would allow technology professionals to speak with one voice on issues that affect them all ? such as maintaining limits on H-1B visas for foreign employees or offering tax incentives for companies that keep IT jobs onshore.

"The diversity of employers and job skills makes unionizing IT workers unrealistic, other than within certain large employers," notes Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, a nonprofit that works to advance IT issues. "But clearly IT workers need a voice to level the playing field against the powerful industry lobbying groups, like ITAA, Compete America, and NFAP."

An impending update to Java might sound like just an incremental release, based on its cumbersome naming: Java Platform Standard Edition 6 Update 10 (Java SE 6 u10).? But the upgrade actually features technology considered critical to reviving the concept of client-side Java applets.

Applet startup times are improved and applets can be turned into desktop widgets via different improvements in Java SE 6u10. Java SE runs on desktops and servers. The upgrade had been slated to appear Thursday but a Sun representative on Wednesday afternoon said the release will be delayed until an as-yet undetermined time. A last-minute issue emerged during final testing.

Among the highlights of the update is Java Quick Starter, providing an enhanced runtime experience by significantly improving Java application and applet startup times, Sun said.

"We've structured the way the Java runtime starts up so the elements associated with starting an applet or starting an application produce results that are visible on the screen quicker," said David Bryant, senior director for Java marketing at Sun.

Sun with Java SE 6u10 also is offering a new method of getting Java software running faster, via Java Kernel. With this feature, users download a kernel featuring the most commonly needed Java Runtime Environment (JRE) components. When additional components are needed, they are downloaded as needed. Users no longer need the full 14.5-MB kernel.

"Now, you just install a 4.5MB initial piece of the Java kernel and that's enough to run common applications and applets," Bryant said.

Although Java initially was hailed in the mid-1990s as a way to run client-side applets, the platform instead became known for its server-side capabilities. But applets are useful in delivering Web application functionality such as charting and data analysis, Bryant said.

"Applets have swung back to being a popular way of delivering functionality through the Web," Bryant said.

The Java update has been viewed as a companion to Sun's new JavaFX technology for rich Internet applications.

"The release of Java SE 6u10 is important because it solves the JRE and Java application deployment issues," in which the entire runtime had been required, said Java developer Jim Weaver, of JMentor and author of a JavaFX blog. "These issues have kept rich-client Java from being feasible for most applications -- until now. I'm looking forward to a future that includes wide use of rich-client Java and JavaFX and I'd like to see Apple follow suit [and support the Java update on MacOS] so that Mac users can enjoy the same deployment benefits and JRE ubiquity."

Weaver noted that Google's new Chrome browser requires Java SE 6 u10 to run Java applets.

An analyst concurred that the update boosts JavaFX.

"The JRE is slimming down at the same time as alternative plug-ins like Silverlight and Flash/Flex are getting beefier, so it helps to make Java (with JavaFX) a competitive alternative to other RIA platform technologies," said analyst Jeffrey Hammond, of Forrester. But Sun still needs to work on getting JavaFX on mobile devices, something not addressed by Java SE 6u10, Hammond noted.

Another boost for applets is inclusion of a built-in Deployment Toolkit in Java SE 6u10. This ensures that users are running the most recent version of Java SE. This makes it easier to deploy applets or Java Web Start programs, Sun said.

Also highlighted is the capability to drag applets directly from a browser and run them as desktop widgets. This is being done by a new implementation of the Java Plug-in. "Browsers don't need to embed the Java [virtual machine] in them. Bryant said.

"My end users can take the mouse, drag that applet out of the browser, drop it on their desktop and now it's running as a desktop [application] outside the browser," Bryant said.?

A browser-independent architecture in Java SE 6u10 enables the plug-in to operate in the same fashion across a variety of browsers.

A modern look and feel is featured via Nimbus, offering enhanced user interface controls for developers. It is drawn using Java 2D vector graphics.

To improve graphics performance of Java applications on Windows desktops, the graphics pipeline in Java SE 6u10 has been rewritten to use Direct3D, a 3D API, for tasks ranging from fills and copies to translucency, gradients, and more advanced 2D operations. Runtime performance of Swing applications is bolstered as well via this improvement.

Sun had provided this download URL as the place to access the update. The release candidate for Java SE 6 u10 is available online.

Security researchers have reported finding vulnerabilities in Google's new Web browser a day after it was released in beta.

One vulnerability would allow hackers to crash the browser. Security researcher Rishi Narang described the issue on the SecuriTeam Web site and posted a proof of concept at Evilfingers. According to Narang, a hacker could build a malicious link that includes an undefined handler followed by a certain character. When a user clicks on the link, Chrome crashes.

Another, potentially more serious vulnerability could result in Chrome users downloading malicious code. The problem is due, in part, to the fact that Google uses an older version of WebKit, the open-source browser technology also used in Apple's Safari browser, that includes the vulnerability.

Discovered by researcher Aviv Raff, the problem lies in the way Chrome downloads files and the way Windows handles the downloaded files, he said.

Chrome's default setting downloads files into a folder. It then displays a download bar at the bottom of the browser page. Users click on the bar to open the file. If the file is an executable, Windows displays a warning, which can help users avoid inadvertently downloading malicious code.

If the file is a JAR (Java Archive), however, it isn't treated like other executables, Raff said. When a user clicks on that download bar, instead of displaying a warning, Windows automatically runs the file.

The problem is exacerbated by the way the download bar looks, Raff said. The bar appears to be part of the Web page. In a proof of concept that Raff posted, users might think they're clicking on a link or a button on the page, rather than opening up a downloaded file.

"This is again a sort of a 'blended threat'," he wrote in a blog post. "Two small issues in different products, when blended together, create a much larger problem."

He thinks Google might face other, similar issues in the future because Chrome uses technologies from different browsers, including Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox.

"Security wise, it's very problematic," Raff wrote. "They'll have to track all security vulnerabilities in those features, and fix them in Chrome too. This will probably be only after those vulnerabilities were fixed by the other vendors or were publicly reported. It will put Chrome users at risk for a long time."

Google did not directly address questions about this vulnerability or whether it plans to make any changes to Chrome to prevent any potential problems. Instead, a Google spokeswoman said in a statement that, by default, Chrome downloads files into a separate folder instead of on the user's desktop as a way to avoid some security problems. In addition, she said that users can set the browser to ask where to save each file before downloading it.

She also did not say whether Google intends to upgrade to the more recent version of WebKit, which addresses the problem by displaying a dialog box for JAR files asking users if they want to download them.

In yet another example of Google's expanding influence, the search company's co-founder, Sergey Brin, said he expects the new Chrome browser to eventually become part of the Android wireless phone platform, which is under separate development by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google.

Brin, in an interview with CNET at the Chrome announcement yesterday, said that "probably a subsequent version of Android is going to pick up a lot of the Chrome stack." Google officials were unavailable to elaborate.

[ Special report: Google Android: Invader from beyond ]

While developed separately, both Chrome and Android's browser rely on WebKit open-source software for interpreting HTML code that builds and renders a Web page.

The first Android phone is expected to launch in November, manufactured by HTC as the Dream phone and first sold in the U.S. by T-Mobile.

Google's ultimate ability to increase its influence in the mobile device market may well depend on whether a mobile Chrome browser is used on any other phones using Android software, several analysts said. Among the mobile browers available today are FireFox, Internet Explorer, Opera and the emerging Skyfire.

Lenovo and EMC on Wednesday announced an effort to free small businesses from the hassles of data backup by offering an unlimited Mozy storage service for Lenovo's SL-series laptops.

In the first such deal for the Mozy division, buyers of the small-business SL laptops will be able to sign up for a special hosted service for backing up an unlimited amount of data. With the regular Mozy Pro service, subscribers pay per gigabyte and per user.

[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

The Lenovo Online Data Backup offering with unlimited storage is priced at $79.20 per year for a limited time and, so far, is available only in English in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Singapore. The regular price will be $99 per year. By year's end, Lenovo aims to offer it in more countries and in six other languages.

Data protection has become a more critical concern with growing documentation requirements and increasing reliance on IT, even by small companies. Mozy's services let users back up the data on their PCs without having to buy and manage storage capacity. Mozy has its roots in backup services for consumers but is trying to expand its reach to businesses. It started offering Mozy Pro last year and was acquired by EMC in October. Of Mozy's approximately 850,000 subscribers, only about 23,000 are businesses.

With Mozy, users can have backups run without closing their files or shutting down applications, according to the company. They can also set how much of their Internet bandwidth the backup service takes up while it's working.

With the introduction of the Lenovo-branded service, Mozy is also upgrading its system for privately managed encryption to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) from the Blowfish technology that it has previously used, said Devin Knighton, a Mozy spokesman. The stronger encryption is also available to other Mozy users.

The Lenovo-branded service is designed specifically for individual users in small businesses, unlike Mozy Pro, which costs $3.95 per user license per month in addition to $0.50 per gigabyte of storage per month.

In addition to the unlimited service, buyers of the Lenovo laptops can get a service with a 50GB ceiling for $48.99 per year for a limited time, with a regular price of $69. They can also try out Lenovo Online Data Backup with a free three-month trial that has a 5GB limit.

Also on Wednesday, Mozy announced it has opened its first datacenter outside the United States, in Dublin. The new center will help businesses in Europe meet European Union data-privacy laws that require information to be stored within the E.U., and it should increase international use of Mozy, Knighton said. Today, only about 25 percent of Mozy users are outside the United States, he said.

The six additional languages set for later this year are French, German, Italian, Japanese, Universal Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese, and more will come next year, according to Knighton. He did not detail the additional rollout by countries. Eventually, the service will be available worldwide, he said.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison failed to preserve e-mails as well as interview materials related to a book called "Softwar" that should have been supplied in connection with a shareholder lawsuit filed in March 2001 against the company, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

The plaintiffs allege that Ellison and others made false statements about the company's financial results during fiscal 2001, how the economy was affecting business, and Oracle's 11i application suite, according to the decision filed in U.S. District Court-California Northern District.

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

Oracle produced only 15 e-mails sent or received by Ellison from Ellison's own files, but pulled more than 1,600 Ellison e-mails from the systems of other company workers, according to Judge Susan Illston.

"Having established with certainty that numerous emails were not produced from Ellison's email files ... it is impossible to know whether additional unproduced emails were also deleted or not turned over," she wrote. "This uncertainty about the existence of other emails is precisely the reason all of Ellison's e-mails should have been preserved and produced."

The plaintiffs had also wanted material stemming from interviews Ellison gave between March 2001 and August 2002 to writer Matthew Symonds for the book "Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle."

But the materials never made it to the plaintiffs, because Symonds had disposed of the laptop containing them in late 2006 or January 2007, according to the filing.

Symonds told Oracle's attorney that Ellison had waived his rights to the materials several years ago, but that still meant Ellison could -- and should -- have preserved them at least until sometime in 2003, well after the suit was filed, according to Illston.

Illston ruled that the jury in the case, Nursing Home Pension Fund et al vs. Oracle Corp. et al, will be told they can infer the missing materials "would demonstrate Ellison's knowledge of, among other things, problems with Suite 11i, the effects of the economy on Oracle's business, and problems with defendants' forecasting model."

An Oracle spokeswoman said Wednesday the company would have no comment.

Google will dump a section of the licensing agreement for its new Chrome browser after some Internet users objected to its copyright implications.

Google said Wednesday it would dump one section of the end-user licensing agreement that gave the company "a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through" the new browser.

[ Check out InfoWorld Test Center's verdict on the new browser wars in "Lab test: Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer 8." ]

Several Web users raised copyright and privacy concerns about portions of the licensing agreement shortly after Google launched Chrome Tuesday. Some critics suggested the language would allow Google to use any Web content displayed in Chrome without getting copyright permission.

Google said it borrowed language from other products, "in order to keep things simple for our users," when it inserted the copyright provision in the Chrome license.

"Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don't apply well to the use of that product," Rebecca Ward, senior product counsel for Chrome, said in a statement. "We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."

In addition to the perpetual copyright granted to Google in section 11, the license allowed the company to "make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

That language comes from Google's universal terms of service, the company said.

The wording lead to a copyright debate on Slashdot.org, although one poster noted that Slashdot's parent company, SourceForge, uses similar language in some license agreements. Florida lawyer David Loschiavo dissected the Google licensing agreement in his own blog post.

"In other words, by posting anything (via Chrome) to your blog(s), any forum, video site, myspace, itunes, or any other site that might happen to be supporting you, Google can use your work without paying you a dime," Loschiavo wrote."It applies to everything you pass through Chrome. Google can take your submitted content and edit and reuse it all they want, as long as they do so in connection with Chrome."

The license agreement seemed to assume that Web users had ownership of all the content they produced and displayed through Chrome, he added. Employees of Web publishers or universities probably couldn't legally agree to the Chrome terms of service, "because these people most likely don't have the right to give a license to the intellectual property (IP) they produce," Loschiavo wrote. "Most likely your employee or student agreement requires that your employer/university exclusively owns all IP that you make during your time there."

Web content creators, such as news writers and musicians employed by a company, may have been in breach of their employment contracts had they agreed to the Google license, he said. "Further, you probably can't use your company or school email with Chrome, because your company probably exclusively owns your email, and you can't give away a license to something you don't own," Loschiavo wrote. "You also can't make representations to Google that you have the power to license this IP if you don't."

Other companies have attempted to use similar language in Web-based products, including Microsoft and AOL for their instant messaging products, Loschiavo said. Those attempts raised objections as well, he said.

CIOs and senior IT executives lack the "green" to go green, even though they overwhelmingly believe that a more energy-efficient datacenter will become mission-critical, according to a recent survey.

Seventy-six percent of executives queried do not have a committed budget for a greening policy, even though 90 percent believe that greening their datacenters will be crucial to meeting their companies' business objectives in 2009, according to the survey conducted by Voltaire, a maker of server and storage switching and software products for grid computing.

[ Keep up on green IT trends with InfoWorld's Sustainable IT blog and Green Tech newsletter. ]

In addition, 57 percent said they believe going green will give their company a competitive advantage, the Voltaire study found.

Voltaire queried CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives who attended the 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. Voltaire says a Fortune 500 company with five datacenters worldwide and 3,000 servers per datacenter can save approximately $7.4 million per year.

The study also found that 43 percent of respondents will implement a green datacenter in the next two years, and that reducing power and cooling costs/requirements was ranked by 52 percent of the respondents as the most important benefit gained by going green in the datacenter.

The next most important benefit was helping the environment (37 percent), followed by increased utilization (32 percent), reducing real estate/space requirements (28 percent), and reducing/consolidating equipment needed (27 percent). Among the respondents who said that going green gives their companies a competitive advantage, 72 percent said it provides a more efficient and cost-effective infrastructure so that they can invest more in new technologies.

In response to the survey findings, Voltaire says it developed a "50-50-300 Pledge," which states that IT executives, working with the company to deploy a Voltaire InfiniBand-based unified fabric, can save 50 percent on power/cooling related to server interconnections and 50 percent on hardware allocation/usage, while delivering up to a 300 percent increase in application performance. Voltaire has also developed an efficiency calculator to help IT executives estimate their network energy and cost savings and justify the investment.

Unified fabrics provide networking services between InfiniBand, Fibre Channel storage-area networks, and Ethernet LANs over a single fabric with multiple virtual interfaces replacing actual physical adapters. By merging all three traffic types within a single switching chassis, IT executives can reduce power consumption by consolidating and virtualizing their datacenter interconnects, Voltaire says.

VMware said Wednesday that its product will run reliably with software from Microsoft.

VMware has certified its ESX hypervisor to work with Windows Server and other software from competitor Microsoft. The move also gives customers using ESX technical support from both companies to deploy VMware virtualization software on Microsoft infrastructure.

[ Keep up with the latest in virtualization news with David Marshall's Virtualization Report ]

ESX update 2 is the first hypervisor to be certified through the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program, introduced by Microsoft in November 2007, according to VMware.

The program enables vendors to test and validate virtualization software running on Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of the OS. It also enables Microsoft to offer cooperative technical support to customers running Windows Server on validated virtualization software other than Hyper-V, its own hypervisor.

VMware remains the leader in selling virtualization software, which allows multiple and different OSes to run on one piece of server hardware. According to IDC, VMware had 76.4 percent market share in 2007, followed by IBM with 9.8 percent.

However, competitors -- particularly Microsoft -- are hoping that won't be the case for long. Microsoft released Hyper-V earlier this year as a competitive offering to ESX and the hypervisor of choice for Windows Server. At the same time, Microsoft also realizes it must work with other virtualization vendors, which is why it introduced the validation program last year.

VMware has already been feeling the effects of competition from Microsoft and other vendors seeking to commoditize the technology on which VMware's business was built. In July, the company replaced its President and CEO Diane Greene with a former Microsoft executive, Paul Maritz. Her departure came as the company lowered its revenue forecast for fiscal 2007.

On Tuesday, VMware disclosed that its Executive Vice President of Research and Development Richard Sarwal was leaving for his previous employer, Oracle, after less than a year at VMware.

CIO.com has published several stories that examined the sometimes volatile, often misunderstood and never dull relationship between CIOs and application developers -- from "9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless" to "8 Reasons Why a Developer Would NEVER Want To Be a CIO" to "Getting Clueful: 7 Things CIOs Should Know About Agile Development."

Those articles were presented solely from the programmer's viewpoint, however. We wanted to give the bosses -- CIOs and IT leaders who perhaps were irked by the "clueless" label -- a chance to respond. Because, certainly, developers can be out-of-touch too -- just in different ways.

[ Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]

CIO.com asked IT leaders what they wish developers knew so that the programmers don't appear clueless to the rest of the organization. The bosses' responses, gathered from eight CIOs and IT managers and which have been anonymously condensed, show that many developers need to gain the bigger-picture view of their organizations to appreciate the challenges of those "clueless" CIOs.

"It turns out that the concepts of business strategy bear repeating," observes one IT director. "Developers get so heads-down in the minutiae of coding that they forget about the 40,000-foot view of the business."

1. Developers Don't Think PracticallyDevelopers often look for an elegant or slick solution to a problem, but they don't always look for the practical one. "I've had developers that will go to any lengths to write something instead of buying it, even if their hours cost more initially, plus upgrades and testing each and every time the data base or interfaces change," notes one CIO. "I rid myself of one of those [developers] recently."

This CIO retells a story: "I had to fire a developer who never had an error when his program compiled; he desk-checked [the application] so many times to assure himself (and it was a source of his pride) there were no errors. The compilers had error checking routines to do much of the same thing. His programs were elegant, but he got fired for scarcity of output. Others who used the compiler testing were completing 300 percent of his output, but he just couldn't give up his opinion of the correct way to do it."

2. Developers Still Don't See the End-User PerspectiveSolving business problems is more complex than everyone imagines, says one CIO. But to IT management, the business unit and the development team, these problems often appear quite easy to solve. "Getting your development team to truly see the world from the end-user perspective is important and much harder than you would think," notes the CIO. "The developers need to learn to quickly empathize with the end users' needs and issues-and attack the solution from that perspective."

Adds an IT director: "Personally, it is surprising to me that most of the developers that I work with still have no sense of the user experience. A development team can create an application that does everything from balance your checkbook to burning your toast, but if the user interface sucks, no one will use it-period. No amount of training or re-training will make users sign on to an application with a difficult UI. That simple concept seems to be a struggle for developers to understand."

Another CIO adds: "As a developer, I want to add as much functionality as rapidly as possible to keep users happy," says the CIO. "As a CIO I want the users to still be happy five years from now, which takes a bit more upfront planning."

3. Developers Can't Get Away from the "Wow" FactorDevelopers love the "cool" or "wow" factor of applications. CIOs seek stability and standardization. "It's more efficient to be on one platform than to spread your resources thin over many because you bring in the best new tool without retiring the legacy," says a CIO.

Another CIO points to the dire need to build applications for reliability and scalability. "Many business owners have a short attention span and limited patience. We need to engineer applications for rapid performance under maximum load," the CIO says. "An application with fewer features that is completely stable and fast is better than a full-featured application that is unreliable and slow."

"I'm less concerned about cool technology or wow factor," the CIO adds, "and am more concerned that the finished application supports the required business processes."

4. Developers Don't Think About ROI, TCO, and Other Business PrioritiesA CIO has to balance a whole panoply of choices and pressures, says a CIO. "Often the best way to do something is to make it cost effective-not cool. CIOs have to weigh risks and costs and potential benefits. Remember the 80/20 rule, think of return on investment and total cost of ownership issues and business priorities. The developers have a limited number of tasks to do and can pretty much concentrate on one item. Many have spent their career focusing on the development of simple working units, not running a business."

Another CIO says that "the CIO is not only responsible for getting the right technical solutions to the company but also ensuring that a number of additional objectives are met including TCO, positive relationships with the business units, the strategic use of the IT function and more. Getting this done may make the CIO look aloof or clueless-but without this leadership, IT will fail in the organization."

The IT director says that developers also lack a sense of how their work impacts the business and therefore the bottom line; or a broad knowledge of the business strategy. "These are fundamentals that need to be included in any in-house developer's career development plan," the IT director adds.

5. Developers Don't Get the Underlying IT Value PropositionThe CIO is trying to show the overall value of the IT function to the organization, notes one CIO (unless it is a software company, which is a different model). The executives that CIOs have as customers are trying to get an answer, perform some function and get their jobs done.

"IT to them is like electricity: they need it, but they don't appreciate it," says the CIO. "Having the'prima donna' developers' attitude that the organization exists to provide them with some intellectual stimulation is not what the executives want to hear or feel!"

Instead, some developers think it's all about their code. They fail to understand the mission of the business and "that they don't drive it, they support it," notes the IT manager. "Their work is often not mission critical or urgent."

6. Developers Don't Have (or Want) Corporate SkillsetsMost developers do not have the skills to become a CIO, observes one CIO. "I think a survey would show that 80 percent of the CIOs that came up through IT to be a CIO came through the operations side," says the CIO.

The skills required of a IT leader, the CIO contends, are not those of a developer: CIOs have to deal with uncertainty-not hard and fast coded rules; CIOs have to manage the economics of IT-not the technical "coolness" factor; CIOs have to live in a world of compromise-not the "one true answer."

"I think it is like the Mars and Venus gender discussions," notes the CIO. "What they see depends on where they stand, and they stand in completely different environments."

7. Developers Aren't Into "Group Think""When you get a technical team together to discuss issues and ideas for improvement you will hear what sounds like a consensus set of issues and solutions," observes a CIO. You need to probe deeper, the CIO says, because "each technical person is different and when asked individually you will find that they do not all share the group opinion, thus solving for the group's suggestions won't bring about all of the desired results."

Along similar lines, another CIO points out that "the lone genius developer" is a risk to the organization since his departure can put entire applications at risk. "Every application needs to be developed by a team and have thorough documentation so that it does not depend on any one person," the CIO adds.

8. Developers Don't Understand StaffingOne CIO says that developers think that profitable companies shouldn't have layoffs, which the CIO feels is clueless. "That's like saying as long as the flowers are growing, you shouldn't prune," the CIO says. "Efficient companies need prune back in areas they grow out of to preserve the strength of the overall company."

In addition, the CIO says that many developers think offshoring is un-American. The Hudson Institute Center forecasts that by 2014 the U.S. economy will need 9 million more degree holders than will be available, offers the CIO. " Offshoring IT helps CIOs to manage this gap," the CIO says.

BONUS: What CIOs Admit They Do WrongSeveral CIOs who read "9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless" article admitted some fault in communication and relationship breakdowns that can occur. Notes one CIO, on why each side can appear clueless: "Failure of the organization to provide transparency between business units to help everyone understand each other's role in supporting the vision and mission."

Another CIO says the problem is that "Most organizations are structured to build barriers between the user community and the development community. This is especially the case when development is outsourced," notes the CIO. "Organizations place liaisons (or business consultants) as interfaces to the business. Developers are therefore at quite a distance from the business and risk losing touch with what's really important to drive the business."

CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Spammers are abusing free Web services to make their spam links look more legitimate, according to e-mail security vendor MessageLabs.

One of the services, a photo-hosting site called ImageShack, lets people upload different types of photo formats, including Flash files, said Paul Wood, a senior analyst with MessageLabs.

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Flash files, which have the extension ".swf", can be used for animated graphics and can also be used to automatically redirect people to other Web sites. That feature can be abused.

The attack involving ImageShack works like this: Spammers upload a Flash file then copy the link for that file -- which comes from ImageShack's domain -- in a spam message. If the link is followed, the Flash file redirects the victim to a spam site, Wood said.

The technique offers an advantage for spammers. Antispam software will often scan links in e-mail and block those e-mails with suspicious-looking ones. But ImageShack's domain is considered to have a good reputation, so messages won't be blocked.

"If you start blocking on domain name only, you can incur a lot of collateral damage," Wood said.

Another more dangerous variation on this theme is a spam e-mail promoting a video. If the link is clicked, a Flash file redirects the victim to a site where a pop-up window immediately implores the user to download a codec supposedly needed to play the video file. Invariably, the file isn't a codec but some piece of malicious software.

Even if the spam link in the e-mail appears to be OK, there are many other ways to tell if a message is spam.

The header -- or batch of information that shows where an e-mail came from and the path it followed -- can be used to tell if it came from a domain that has been prone to abuse and subsequently blocked, Wood said.

Google's Picasa photo service and Yahoo's Flickr don't allow Flash files. But that hasn't exempted Picasa from abuse. Spammers use Picasa to host images, which are then incorporated into spam messages, Wood said.

Again, spammers are piggy backing on Google's good reputation. Images that are hosted on less reputable services or domains have a greater chance of being automatically blocked by security programs.

MessageLabs has also seen a similar type of abuse of Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive, which is an online file storage service, Wood said.

The scenario is almost the same: The link is connected with a file on SkyDrive, but then the link performs an HTML redirect to a dodgy site. SkyDrive also allows Flash files to be uploaded, offering another possible way to attack.

Microsoft is boosting integration of functional programming with its Visual Studio 2008 software development platform.

Improved integration is featured in a September Community Technology Preview of the F# language for the .Net platform. F# has been positioned as a language based on concepts of functional programming, in which computation is treated as the evaluation of mathematical functions. It also supports object-oriented programming.

"This release marks an important step along the path we laid out in October to integrate the F# language into Visual Studio and to continue innovating and evolving F#," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog entry this week.

?Functional programming has been viewed as valuable in domains such as the financial and scientific realms as well as technical computing. Microsoft has described F# as combining type safety, performance and scripting with advantages of running on a modern runtime, with intentions to make the language a "first-class citizen" on .Net.

Accessible here, the CTP features improvements to the F# language and libraries to make them simpler and more regular, Somasegar said. "Broadly improved" Visual Studio 2008 integration allows F# users to scale from scripting and explorative development to large-scale component and application design from within Visual Studio.

Also, Microsoft with the CTP is introducing a language feature called "Units of Measure," which extends F# inference and strong typing to floating point data.

Another Microsoft blogger, Don Syme, who has spearheaded development of F# in the Microsoft Research group, stressed added support for scripting in the language, compiler, and Visual Studio via the CTP. An improved project system, meanwhile, enables large-scale, tool-based software development with F#.

"One of the key things about F# is that it spans the spectrum from interactive, explorative scripting to component and large-scale software development," Syme said.

The new F# Language Services provides more reliable intellisense typing tips.

"Programming with F# can be enormously?fun and rewarding, as well as just plain productive. This is now more true than ever, and we hope you enjoy using F# as much as we do," Syme said.

Additionally, Microsoft has launched an F# Development Center on MSDN, providing resources for developers and links to F# user communities. F# has been a joint project of Microsoft's Developer Division and Microsoft Research.

A new study of more than 1,400 U.S. CIOs found that 11 percent plan to hire additional staff in the fourth quarter of this year, while 3 percent expect cuts.

The net 8 percent result fell short of the 10 percent projected last quarter, according to IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology, which has commissioned the studies on a quarterly basis since 1995.

[ Read the related feature, Where the hot IT jobs are going to be, and get sag advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld's Advice Line blog and newsletter. ]

Help-desk and tech-support jobs are expected to grow the most. The top skill in demand is network administration, which was cited by 70 percent of respondents. Windows Server 2000 and 2003 administration and desktop support came next, both with 69 percent.

In a related finding, the need for additional customer support was the top driver behind hiring plans, cited by 25 percent of respondents. It edged out business growth, which garnered 23 percent. Installing or creating new applications drew 21 percent.

The results show that companies are focused on providing core services as weak economic conditions persist, Robert Half's executive director, Katherine Spencer Lee, said in a statement.

On a regional basis, the hiring picture is strongest in the Mid-Atlantic region, where 16 percent of respondents plan to add jobs and only 1 percent intend to make cuts.

In terms of verticals, CIOs in the transportation sector were the most bullish, with 17 percent reporting they will add jobs and 1 percent looking to reduce head count.

Networking company Buffalo Technology has finally launched its external SSD drives at prices that promise to steal a share of the portable market from old-world 2.5-inch hard drives.

The capacities of the new MicroStation drives are modest by the standards of a spinning drive -- 32GB, 64GB, and 100GB -- but there are other features to tempt buyers beyond the gigabytes.

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The first is perhaps size. Weighing around 60 grams, the aptly named drives are not much bigger than a credit card at 57 x 14 x 89 millimeter, a form factor that looks tiny next to the supplied wrap-around USB 2.0 connector and cable used to attach it to a PC.

The other advantages are ones inherent to the SSD (solid-state drive) concept, that of shock resistance and power consumption. As to performance, Buffalo claims up to 35GBps transfer rates if used with the company's proprietary TurboUSB drivers though it is likely that under real-world loads the actual rates achieved will be somewhat lower.

Street prices are quoted as being £98.25 ($172), excluding VAT, for the 32GB model, £195.31 for the 64GB model, and £292.38 for the top-end 100GB version, a premium compared to today's portable drives, but perhaps worth it for what is on offer. The drives also come with an encryption suite for added security.

The company has bided its time over this product, having trailed it many months ago in its home market of Japan. The new drives are identical to those on offer at that time, albeit with the new "Micro" drive branding.

Storage server vendor 3PAR has built a key function for storage efficiency into a specialized chip, offloading that job from the main processors in a pair of server models it introduced on Tuesday.

The company's storage servers, originally introduced in 2002, are purpose-built for datacenters using virtualization and designed to reduce the amount of effort required to manage storage in those environments. This includes allocation of storage capacity for particular applications, said Craig Nunes, vice president of marketing at 3PAR.

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3PAR's storage servers are designed to save both storage space and IT managers' time by automatically allocating capacity across a disk array. They can either set aside a certain amount of storage for each application, as defined by the administrator, or allocate just the amount of space the application really needs.

The 3PAR Gen3 ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) can handle either task, as well as the migration between them. The chip is built into the company's new InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers and is the first chip that can make that shift, according to 3PAR. Previously, the company's gear has done so with software. Handling such tasks in hardware typically makes them run faster.

However, customers will have to wait until the next version of the 3PAR InForm Operating System to tap into the ASIC's new capability, Nunes said. He declined to say when the new software would be available.

Like 3PAR's last ASIC, the new chip also includes 3PAR Fast RAID 5, a system for distributing data across multiple drives so it remains available in case of a failure. RAID 5 requires less overall space than RAID 1, which uses two complete copies of the data, but it runs more slowly. 3PAR's Fast RAID 5 speeds that up by putting it in hardware, Nunes said.

The T400 and T800 servers each are made up of several controllers, or blades, that communicate via a backplane in the server. The T400 can have between two and four controllers and the T800 can have as many as eight, Nunes said. In addition to the servers, 3PAR sells the disk arrays that go with them. The company builds its systems mostly from third-party components but designed the ASIC itself over the course of two or three years, he said.

3PAR's servers and storage arrays have helped Memphis financial services company Morgan Keegan make more efficient use of its storage capacity, according to Parker Mabry, vice president and manager of network systems engineering. His company uses two S400 servers, an earlier 3PAR product. With Morgan Keegan's previous storage systems, dividing up one array to serve two major applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server would have been difficult and made the drives work too hard, Mabry said. The S400s divide every drive in the array into units of 250MB that can be pooled and virtualized, which provides much more flexibility, he said.

Alibris, an online store for books and other media, changed its storage system to 3PAR in 2006, said CTO Michael Shaffer. The company has an IT staff of just four and was able to shift one member to new tasks from what was almost a full-time job managing storage, he said. Shaffer's team still assigns a certain amount of storage to each application, and 3PAR storage servers automatically distribute it across multiple disks, which allows for fast reading and writing of data, he said. Shaffer doesn't let the storage servers set the amount of capacity yet, but with the new chip, he probably could do so quickly and easily, he said. Then he could switch back if he didn't like it.

"Having the ability to change one's mind is a rare ability," Shaffer said.

The InServ T800 Storage server is priced starting at $175,000 for a base configuration with two controllers and 16 146GB drives. The T400 is priced from $130,000.