Stories about: ATL

I love analysts. Whether it's predicting tomorrow's next big thing or sounding the death knell for yesterday's industry pacesetter, analysts never run out of new ways to get it wrong.

I had an interesting conversation this past week with Ben Rudolph, former marketing guru at Parallels and now a member of the Microsoft Windows 7 team. Apparently, my recent pronouncement of death for his new charge struck a nerve. In addition to setting up a flurry of conference calls with his fellow team members, Ben picked my brain a bit about what I felt they needed to do/say to salvage their next generation desktop OS.

Will Windows XP still be properly supported by Microsoft and, as a primary development target, by third parties? Is there something XP die-hards have missed, some hidden gotcha that's going to trip them up 12, 18, or 24 months from now?

There's been a lot of chatter lately about how Microsoft needs to start over with Windows. Many point to the (NT) code base's 16-year history and how the need to maintain backward compatibility is hampering efforts to move the platform forward. According to these critics, a clean break is necessary in order to stop the kind of bloatware madness that so crippled Windows Vista. Dump the creaking legacy that is the Win32 API/ATL/MFC, they say, and solve the compatibility riddle through VM technology.

Microsoft has added new security-related APIs to upcoming service packs for Windows Vista and XP to expand the use of the anti-exploit technology dubbed Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (VS08) is the current incarnation of the company's long line of IDEs. It's the premier IDE for developing applications with the Microsoft .Net Framework and, at least, a contender for the best Windows-hosted C/C++ IDE. Of course, Visual Studio 2008 isn't limited to developing desktop applications; it is also good for developing Web, SOA, and device applications.

A report that might have been a valuable contribution to the study of the security ramifications of monolithic IT infrastructures has instead become a pawn in the unending political battle between pro- and anti-Microsoft factions. And it has cost one of the co-authors his job.

HP is embedding technology in its storage tape libraries that should help users manage the migration and movement of data more easily, the company says.

Hewlett-Packard Co. has picked storage vendor Quantum Corp. as the supplier for its high-end automated tape libraries, ending a relationship with Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek).

Network Appliance today announced the first of an enterprise-class filer line for centralized, online backup for data from multiple remote site locations.

Long revered as the bastion of backup, tape enjoys a healthy status as the storage backbone of many organisations for its reliability and low cost. The trouble is, IT management now finds itself playing a numbers game as tape storage vendors jockey for position in a single-digit growth market.