Software Licensing & Master Service Agreements : Chicago Software Licensing Lawyer & Attorney : Sam Conforti Law Firm : Master Service Agreements, Negotiations, Outsourcing : Cook County, Illinois

FOXNews.com has picked up an Associated Press story that Wednesday, January 30th, two undersea cables were cut resulting in a huge interruption to India’s bandwidth. The Internet Service Providers' Association of India reported that “the country had lost half its bandwidth.” The cut cables, which lie in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, first affected the Middle East, including the Dubai Stock Exchange. The slowdowns and outages quickly spread through the Persian Gulf States, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Customer Service call centers located in India were severely impacted as engineers attempted to reroute the traffic through satellites and cables in Asia. As of now the cause of the cuts is unknown. It is estimated that repairs to the cut cables could take up to a week.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)
• Share Link

If my previous post on 12/22/07 Open Source Violation Could Get You Sued did not spark your curiosity, well then maybe this one will make you sit up and take notice. McAffee, the company use to warning their customers about potential problems in their customer’s own software, now has issued a cautionary note to its investors about possible risks (that means litigation) as a result of Open Source software in its own products. Jason Haislmeir deftly explains this issue in his article McAffee Issues Risk Factor Over Open Source Licenses.  

 

It appears that the risk stems from the 2^nd version of the General Public License (“GPL”) as yet untested by the courts. Since the GPL imposes an obligation on its users of Open Source to make such software available at no additional charge and also make available software that relates or interacts with the Open Source software, it is easy to see that McAffee’s concern is genuine.   Haislmeir goes on to describe how others such as Tivo and Microsoft have encountered GPL license issues and have issued similar warnings to their investors.         

 

Until these issues on use of Open Source software and what obligations attach to the users of related products containing such Open Source software are settled, it would be a very prudent approach for companies to ramp up their compliance programs. At the very least this could help identify a possible violation and allow the company an opportunity to formulate a response or make any necessary adjustments to avoid the aforementioned risks.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Soon users of Lotus Notes will have the same access to SAP’s business applications as Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users have today. The jointly developed cross-platform application, announced at IBM’s Lotusphere in Orlando, is in answer to customer’s demands. With over 135 million users of Lotus Notes and a majority of its top customers using SAP, what seemed inevitable will finally come to fruition. Both companies will offer this application in the 4^th quarter. 

SAP's CTO, Vishal Sikka, stated in a press release:

Lotus has been an innovator in collaboration for 20 years. This agreement is a great example of how SAP enables our customers to empower their users by providing easy access to SAP business processes and data through productivity tools and user interfaces of their choice.

The new application is entitled “Atlantic”. Larry Barrett reports in his article IBM Teams Up With SAP on ‘Atlantic’:

While Atlantic will first provide support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics, the two companies plan to include other tools in future releases to extend and adapt these collaboration capabilities and leverage additional offline features found in the Notes and Domino product lines.

In August, IBM began shipping Lotus Notes and Domino 8, the company's latest refresh of its flagship communications suite. Along with a snazzier user interface, Lotus Notes and Domino 8 included custom applications and Web 2.0 features such as mash-ups in the hopes of providing a more interactive user experience.

The integration of SAP’s business suite coupled with the new function-packed Lotus Notes 8, which allows independent software vendors the ability to develop new applications from their Notes dashboard, will further IBM’s quest to overtake Microsoft’s competitive advantage in unified communications and collaboration.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

SAP unveiled nine new software packages that allow the monitoring and response to business information from any format or application. Three of the nine new offerings are targeted to the SMB market space. This all stems from SAP’s purchase of Business Objects (see post 12/21/07 in this Blog SAP Merges with Business Objects). SAP’s CEO, Henning Kagermann, stated:

Our key competitive differentiator is that we're building a portfolio on the most open platform. We are the only one that can offer business performance optimization in a closed loop.  At the end of the day, you have to take immediate action. Our business suite and business intelligence close the loop. You have faster and better insights and you can transform it immediately into actions.

Is this rollout all in response to the current activity now taking place in the industry? As I alluded to in my post of 1/9/08 What’s Next for ERP in 2008, Larry Ellison has not and will not sit on the sidelines as these mergers and new products are rolled out to the customer base. Just this week Reuter’s reports that Oracle has finally succeeded in its bid for BEA.

Kagermann addressed the issue of growth and competition in the industry stating:

You never in life should exclude an opportunity in business. The question is where is your priority.  Growing through organic growth is No. 1 for SAP.  If there's a unique opportunity to expand our opportunities, we will do it.  These are things you can't plan ahead and sometimes you have the opportunity and must take advantage of it.

SAP plans to integrate functionality from Business Objects into its Saas offering, Business ByDesign. SAP’s 2007 operating margins were down by .8% due mainly to its approximate half a billion dollar investment in getting Business ByDesign to market.

To read the full article click here

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

 

Looks like the obvious has finally been reported for all to read.  How Corporate America intends to deal with this one is anybody's guess.

Telecommuting may boost morale and cut stress, but it can have the opposite effect on those left behind in the office, according to a new study.

When a number of their coworkers toil away from the office using computers, mobile phones or other electronic equipment, those who do not telecommute are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job and leave the company, said Timothy Golden, a management professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Several studies have touted the health and morale benefits for flexible workers, but Golden's research suggests that their coworkers tend to find the workplace less enjoyable, have fewer emotional ties to coworkers and feel less obligated to the organization.

"While reasons for the adverse impact on nonteleworkers are varied, it possibly is due to coworker's perceptions that they have decreased flexibility and a higher workload and the greater frustration that comes with coordinating in an environment with more extensive telework," Golden said.

He added that with a greater prevalence of telecommuters in a work unit, nontelecommuters find it less personally fulfilling to do their work.

"There's little doubt that work life impacts one's role in the family. However, organizational decision makers need to take into account the broader impact of telework on others in the office," Golden said.

 Copyright 2007 Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Read the complete article Telecommuting not so Great for Workers in The Office

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

InternetNews reports that Gartner predicts outsourcing will grow by more than 8% this year to approximately $441 billion. The trend in this continued use of outsourcing seems to be moving away from large vendors to more of the smaller vendors with specialized products or services that can meet a company’s particular needs. Gartner’s survey results indicate a recent change in company’s strategies and priorities vis-à-vis outsourcing. There has been a decidedly huge increase in the percentage of companies from 2005 to today that have established a disciplined process in their approach to determine if they will outsource.

"[We're] seeing our clients set up internal processes and applications to create a service model for other internal organizations to leverage," Hemant Ramachandra, managing director of BearingPoint's Technology Solutions unit, wrote in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "This can be software-as-a-service or even application as a service. Setting up the right governance structure is critical to ensure that outsourcing is leveraged appropriately."

In 2007 IBM increased its market share for IT outsourcing to 8.1%. EDS was second with a 5.3% increase followed by a 3.3% increase for ADP.

In know what you’re thinking. Woe is me. All of our jobs are going overseas. This is the initial knee-jerk reaction when one hears about outsourcing and its inevitable increased use. But this does not have to be the only truth. As our economy evolves and adapts to the changes in our society and new needs arise, the way we work and the makeup of our workforce will necessarily evolve as well. The largest increases in new businesses in the US are in small business and a large percentage of those new small businesses are home based. New companies will also need to be created to meet the changing model from ASP to the new approach of Web-based Software as a Service (“SaaS”), which allows businesses access to software functionality for a more cost effective monthly fee instead of the cost of the application’s license fee and the upfront cost of more hardware. Who these new companies will employ is yet to be determined.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link