Stories by Jon Brodkin

The blade server teams at HP and IBM are fighting it out over I/O virtualization. IBM unveiled an I/O virtualization tool called Open Fabric Manager Monday, claiming it one-ups HP's Virtual Connect because IBM uses open technology that's compatible with switches from multiple vendors.

You know retailers are ready for Black Friday -- but so are hackers poised to launch a slew of Web-based attacks against consumers. Your money and personal information could be at risk.

IBM has developed an I/O virtualization tool that makes it easier to move workloads from one blade server to another by automating the process of assigning I/O addresses.

IBM's purchase of Cognos immediately fueled speculation about which business intelligence vendor would be the next to sell out to a software giant.

IBM is bundling several of its technologies to help corporate data centers run large-scale Web applications in a "cloud computing" model that's similar to the way major Internet players like Google operate.

Google will give US$10 million to the developers who build the best applications for Android, the open source platform Google designed for building mobile phones. Google says it hopes to spark innovation with the so-called Android Developer Challenge, announced today concurrently with the release of Android. The software development kit is now available for download on the Android site.

A start-up that built a facial-recognition search engine wants to give online daters the ability to search for mates who look like celebrities, but ultimately hopes its technology will be used for larger issues, such as helping law enforcement track down child molesters.

A new online malware database details the latest virus outbreaks from around the world, and shows which antivirus tools were able to block the threats and which ones failed.

IBM, Microsoft and SAP are taking a charge at the business Web 2.0 market, but the big vendors still lag behind smaller rivals who have developed far more innovative technology with quicker release cycles, according to a Forrester analyst.

Web-hosted enterprise search has failed to catch on because of its limited scope and the rise of search appliances from vendors such as Google, analyst firm CMS Watch says in a new report.

Phones built with Google's Android operating system may suffer from a lack of interoperability, and enterprise IT executives will probably be wary about supporting multiple devices built with the much-hyped software platform, says Ken Dulaney, a Gartner analyst.

IBM is falling behind competitors EMC, Microsoft and Oracle in Web content management capabilities, analyst firm CMS Watch argues in a new report.

IBM will spend US$1.5 billion developing computer security products in 2008, a sum that could double the company's previous spending.

HP rolled out a set of services this week to help SAP users modernize and manage ERP systems.

Technology for reducing the energy consumption of computers running Windows Vista is hitting the market, with a product from power-management software vendor 1E that centralizes and automates the PC shutdown process.