IBM Invests $1 Billion in Unified Communications - The company wants to outpace Microsoft, its most important rival on the market

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IBM has announced that the company is committed to investing $1 billion in its unified communications strategy for a three-year period. The move will allow the Big Blue to continue the battle with
Microsoft on a market that is developing rapidly.

According to Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM's software group, the company will continue to invest in software such as the Lotus Sametime suite, in order to provide unified communications to the company's largest business customers. However, developing the Sametime suite would allow IBM to improve its Lotus Notes collaboration software, given the fact that the latter is using the Sametime unified communications client.

The unified communications market is comprised of a combination of services such as instant messaging, Web presence, voice over Internet Protocol, videoconferencing, and other services that allow users to keep in touch and collaborate in real time, using a single interface for all the tasks. Microsoft has pressured IBM with the advent of its latest offering, the Office Communications Server suite.

However, IBM's product is totally different from Microsoft's offering: if the Office Communications Server suite can only work in a Windows-based environment, the Sametime product is able to support heterogeneous IT environments. IBM demonstrated yesterday some new functionalities that will be bundled with the Sametime suite until the end of 2008. the Unified telephony service would allow users to call another co-worker using the Sametime interface by routing calls to various devices. More than that, the user can set rules on how to handle calls based on status: working remotely would direct calls to a mobile phone, for instance.

According to Mills, despite the fact that Microsoft always boasts the fact that the Outlook/Exchange suite wins over IBM's Lotus Notes, the things are not quite exactly accurate. Mills claims that Lotus is gaining share in the "market where we compete with Microsoft," namely the business and corporate sectors.

"Microsoft makes a bunch of statements that are somewhat misleading in terms of what is happening," he said. The company expects 10 percent more revenue in the unified communications business year-over-year.

Running Windows on Your Mac? Symantec Wants You Covered - Symantec claims Mac owners running Windows are vulnerable to Windows malware

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Mac and security just don't make good news together, since the Mac is quite safe for the time being (a programming glitch here and there, but that's it). Still, Symantec believes that Mac users running Windows through Apple Boot Camp software, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop (virtualization software) are likely to be affected by Windows malware and other threats, according to the Yahoo News.

That's why the security company introduced Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection
for Mac on Monday. Mac owners running Windows via the utilities mentioned above will need to fork for $69.95 if they feel "insecure," while the respective software is available either as a download or on CD. Agreeing to pay $69.95 means you're good for one year of use with the constantly updating Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection for Mac.

I get the feeling we'll be hearing a lot of negative responses over this. It is bad enough to own a Mac and run Windows on it, ever more to claim that the machine itself is vulnerable to Windows viruses:

"While many debate the efficacy of anti-virus software for Mac, given the dearth of viruses and malware for the platform, Macs running Windows using Apple Boot Camp software or virtualization software like VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are indeed vulnerable to Windows-based viruses, malware and other threats," says the report.

It's quite true, nonetheless...

According to the Yahoo News report, the package contains Norton AntiVirus 2008 for Windows and Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac. The almost identical twins are intended to work with Intel-based Macs who have both Apple's Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows running on their computers. And yes, it is perfectly compatible with Leopard.

As Symantec confirms, Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection makes its own updates in the background periodically, with scanning and cleaning downloaded files, and e-mail attachments also being performed automatically.

Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection also includes performance and engine improvements which should provide better compatibility, better resource usage and faster system startup, according to Symantec.

Mac system requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later.
Windows system requirements: Windows XP SP2 or Vista.