Advice to beginners

One of my colleagues asked me to substitute for her in a systems engineering course that I used to teach until a few years ago. With the instructor's agreement, I decided to discuss some beliefs, attitudes and behavior that can help students entering the workforce for the first time as interns or new employees make the best of their opportunities. The assigned topic was how students could best work effectively in software development groups.

Some of these topics may be helpful to a wider audience. The first steps to success in any new job are to observe and learn: listen, watch, think! From this point on, I'll simply address readers rather than using the past tense. 1) How to enter a new work group The worst approach a new employee can take – especially a recent graduate or an intern – is to swagger into a new workplace and start comparing the way things are done to the style at a previous workplace – or worse, to what some professor told the student in a course. Keep your opinions to yourself until you have learned more than superficial impressions about your new work environment. If you don't mind the idea, keep a notebook (file) about what you learn. 2) Making suggestions Keep your opinions to yourself until you have earned credibility by doing your job well and being thoughtful, courteous and helpful.

Watch, listen, learn, and think. If you do see opportunities for improvement, find out who is likely to be responsible for making the changes you think might be useful. Describe your impression of the current situation, define the problem neutrally (avoid emotional language), and ask your contact about what she thinks about it. Don't launch into a diatribe about how rotten the current situation is: ask the person if she can discuss the specific issue you are concerned about. Then offer your suggestion respectfully (not arrogantly, not from a position of assumed superiority, not rudely) and be prepared to listen to a different perspective. Take every opportunity to share knowledge, lend a hand, prevent an accident – you will win as a worker and as a human being.

Don't assume that just because you think something ought to be changed that it will be. 3) Work (and life) is not a zero-sum game Helping someone to do better (at work, in your family, in your marriage, in your life) does not subtract from your success. Don't believe the cynics who tell you that the individual is all that counts, that there is no valid social group beyond the family, and that everyone should maximize their gain at the expense of all comers. When we write or code, we sometimes see in our work what we want to communicate rather than what a reader or a computer will see and execute: our assumptions are often implicit and invisible to ourselves. Life does not have to consist of a battle with every person competing against every other. 4) Egoless work Suggestions for improvement to code or writing are not attacks on you. Thus an editor or a code reviewer may challenge a passage of an article or a section of code and point to improvements. For more on this topic, see an article I wrote in this column in 2006 and the essay "On Writing." 5) Don't blindside your boss Always work to make your boss look good.

Be grateful, not resentful. In particular, keep your boss informed of anything out of the ordinary: the last thing you want is to have your supervisor challenged by a superior officer demanding to know what you have been doing – and have the supervisor unable to answer. 6) Be honest Do what you say you will do: don't pretend. In Eric Berne's famous book, "Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis", the author describes the why-don't-you-yes-but game, in which someone asks for advice and then proceeds to show why every possible solution is wrong or impossible to implement. For example, if you are seeking someone's opinion, listen honestly and openly – don't go through the motions. A typical application of this game is for a dishonest manager to ask for employee opinions about a planned or existing policy and then to ignore or discount every comment as meaningless or wrong. Don't do that.

The manager is being dishonest. So endeth today's lesson. Go forth and be good human beings.

AT&T changes tune, allows VoIP over cell network

All engines, full reverse! Previously Skype and other Voice over IP (VoIP) applications for the iPhone, such as Fring, were relegated to Wi-Fi connections, prompting calls of foul play by consumers who often wanted to take advantage of features like the services' cheaper rates for international calling. That's the order AT&T seemed to be giving on Tuesday when it announced that it would be altering its existing policy to allow Internet phone applications such as Skype to place calls over the iPhone's cellular data connection.

An FCC investigation was launched in April at the behest of Internet advocacy group Free Press, shortly after the Skype app was released for the iPhone. While some alleged that AT&T's desire in keeping Skype off its data network was a way of stifling competition and forcing customers to use the wireless company's international calling options, it's also been suggested that AT&T was worried about the amount of traffic the immensely popular iPhone could bring to bear on its network. Notably, the ban did not apply to non-iPhone devices on AT&T's network. "Today's decision was made after evaluating our customers' expectations and use of the (iPhone) compared to dozens of others we offer," AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega told The Wall Street Journal. Somewhat coincidentally-if you believe in such things-earlier in the day, Google and Verizon held a joint press conference to announce their new partnership, in which the two companies stressed network openness. Nor does it affect the contentious Google Voice service, which uses the standard telephone functions of the cellular network to route phone calls to and from users.

The decision today does not apparently affect other applications that suffer from similar restrictions, such as the iPhone version of SlingPlayer Mobile, which allows users to stream video from their home devices only over Wi-Fi connections.

Microsoft buys bridge between Java and .Net developers

Microsoft plans to acquire technology that has enabled Microsoft's TFS (Team Foundation Server) software to be an ALM (application lifecycle management) server for different software development platforms. Teamprise software lets Java developers using Eclipse-based IDEs or developers leveraging operating systems including Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X build applications via Visual Studio TFS. Microsoft's move is in recognition of heterogeneous development shops building in both .Net and Java, Microsoft officials said. The company will purchase Teamprise-related assets from SourceGear. TFS serves as a central software artifacts repository. "We've just built a bridge to Java developers. ... If you're building [in] Java today and want to share assets with Visual Studio developers, you'll do that with the Teamprise technologies," said Dave Mendlen, Microsoft's senior director of development marketing. [ InfoWorld's Martin Heller shows off the highlights of Visual Studio 2010. ] Users often have a business need to develop on multiple platforms but developers must collaborate and understand different parts of the work being done, said Doug Seven, senior product manager for Visual Studio at Microsoft.

Microsoft's Seven concurred that some customers had issues with the previous arrangement. "We've had a close relationship with Teamprise for a long time as being the provider of our heterogeneous development support, and both of us have heard from joint customers for a long time that it has been a struggle," Seven said. Microsoft's acquisition of Teamprise technologies addresses concerns of development shops reluctant to deal with a smaller vendor like SourceGear, said analyst Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research. "They were uncomfortable with a small partner providing the connectivity for their Java development teams," Hammond said. "Now they have Microsoft supporting their Java developers if they choose TFS as their single ALM solution. Hammond lauded the acquisition. "I think it's a great move, and they should have made it a long time ago," he said. Functionality from Teamprise Client Suite will be integrated into Microsoft's Visual Studio product line beginning with the Visual Studio 2010 IDE. Visual Studio 2010 will be officially launched on March 22, 2010 and ship around that time. TFS offers a less expensive alternative to products such as Rational Team Concert, Hammond said.

Leveraging Teamprise Client Suite technologies, developers on multiple platforms can use TFS for version control, work-item tracking, build management process guidance and business intelligence. The Teamprise software will continue to work with prior versions of TFS as well. Teamprise Client Suite includes: Teamprise Plug-in for Eclipse, allowing developers to access TFS from such IDEs as Rational Application Developer, JBoss and Adobe Flex Builder Teamprise Explorer, combining functionality available to Eclipse developers using Teamprise Plug-in into a standalone, cross-platform GUI application for team members working outside of an IDE, such as graphic designers and quality assurance testers Teamprise Command-Line Client, offering a non-graphical interface for TFS Teamprise Client Suite technology will be updated to work with TFS 2010, which will feature improvements in areas such as work item-tracking and build automation. Customers can jointly purchase Teamprise Client Suite technology and one Team Foundation Server client access license. SourceGear will continue to support Teamprise products and sell the latest release of the suite until the Microsoft-branded product is available.

Also, customers with the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN variant of the software development platform will receive Teamprise Client technology as part of their subscription. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Follow the latest developments in application development at InfoWorld.com. This story, "Microsoft buys bridge between Java and .Net developers," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.

Compuware to acquire Gomez for $295 million

Compuware today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Web application performance management vendor Gomez for $295 million.  Hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 The deal, expected to close in November, will augment Compuware's IT management software suite with Gomez's technology, which is designed to monitor and manage Web site and Web application performance. Executives from both companies point to complementary products and existing product integrations as a driver for the pending acquisition. "Together, Compuware and Gomez provide the industry's only unified application performance management solution, spanning the enterprise and Internet," said Compuware President and COO Bob Paul, in a press release. "For business and IT executives who are moving more business-critical applications onto the Internet, Compuware can now offer unified visibility, isolation and resolution of application performance problems from the data center to the customer. Gomez's 272 worldwide employees and management team, headquartered in Lexington, Mass., are expected to join Compuware, which is based in Detroit, after the close of the transaction.

Competitive offerings only cover isolated portions of the enterprise-Internet application delivery chain." Gomez executives say the deal will ultimately benefit the vendor's existing customers. "This agreement marks a fundamental breakthrough in how IT and business leaders can manage the performance of all the applications that drive their businesses," said Jaime Ellertson, Gomez CEO and president, in a statement. "The complementary nature of our products and our already-existing product integration will allow Compuware and Gomez to rapidly deliver dramatically extended value to our mutual customers." Compuware will be able to add Gomez's software-as-a-service business model to its own growing SaaS revenue, and Gomez will benefit from Compuware's research and development group, larger sales organization and geographic reach, company executives say. Follow me on Twitter. Do you Tweet?

Intel to roll out new low-cost and high-end SSDs

Intel Corp. will release a $120 solid-state disk (SSD) drive positioned as a server "boot drive" with only 40GB of capacity, but the drive could also be used in low-end laptops PCs and netbooks. Intel's current line of enterprise-class drives, the X25-E series , have capacities of 32GB and 64GB. The 120GB X25-V SSD, known internally as the Glen Brook drive, uses lower-cost multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips. Intel is also planning a new line of enterprise-class SSDs with 50GB, 100GB and 200GB capacities, which would more closely mimic the capacities of high-end hard disk drives used in servers today, an Intel representative said.

The drive is currently being shipped in sample volumes among computer equipment makers and is expected to be generally available in January, said Jon Peracchi, a marketing manager at Intel. For example, the new 50GB drive is expected to have an MSRP of $350. The new enterprise-class drives are expected to ship as samples to equipment manufacturers in April and are expected to be generally available in July, 2010. In other SSD news, STEC Corp. plans to begin shipping next week a new enterprise-class ZeusIOPS SSD with serial-attached SCSI interface. Peracchi, who was speaking at a SSD Seminar sponsored by Bell Microproducts Inc. in Westford, Mass. said the new enterprise-class SSDs, which are based on single-level cell NAND, would represent a 40% price cut or about $6.50 per gigabyte over its current X25-E SSD prices. The new drive would have a 6Gbit/sec SAS interface compared with the current 3Gbit/sec SAS SSD, according to an STEC representative. The company is also planning a new follow-on to its Mach8 SATA SSD, which will double the interface throughput to 3Gbit/sec and include support for native encryption.

The new ZeusIOPS SAS SSD will support sequential read rates of up to 350MB/sec and write rates of 300MB/sec. The Mach16 SSD drives are expected out in the second quarter of 2010, and will support read rates of 250MB/sec and write rates of 225MB/sec.

Wall Street Beat: Big tech deals stir market

As industry insiders attempt to gauge the impact of economic recovery on IT, acquisitions and legal deals among vendors including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, 3Com and Logitech are sparking investor interest by altering the shape of the tech market. The company and its archrival, Intel, announced on Thursday that they have settled all antitrust litigation and patent cross-license disputes between the companies. At first blush, AMD is one of the big winners.

Intel will pay AMD US$1.25 billion. But ultimately the real winner may be Intel, even though it will take a big earnings hit for the quarter. AMD's share price jumped 22 percent to close the day at $6.48, up by $1.16. The deal gives AMD a much-needed cash infusion. As a result of the legal settlement, Intel said it expects its spending in the fourth quarter to be approximately $4.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion. The deal also allows Intel "to focus on its real long-term threat," according to industry analyst Jack Gold. "No, it's not AMD – its ARM Holdings and all of the licensees of the ARM chip designs (e.g., Qualcomm, TI, Freescale, Nvidia, Samsung, Marvel). While PC and server chips are its breadwinner today, Intel rightly understands that the sheer number of personal and consumer intelligent computing devices that will be built over the next several years will far outnumber the traditional PC marketplace," Gold said in e-mail. However, the chip giant needs the competition from AMD to stay fresh and focused, and to allay antitrust concerns.

Intel shares dropped $0.16 to close at $19.68. That doesn't mean that IT investors thought the AMD deal was bad for Intel; most tech bellwether shares dropped Thursday on macroeconomic concerns. The federal deficit for the budget year, ended Sept. 30, set an all-time record in dollar terms of $1.42 trillion. The Treasury Department reported that the federal deficit for October totaled $176.4 billion, higher than economists expected. High deficits may push up interest rates, which could in turn hurt what looks to be a slow, fragile recovery. The purchase is a challenge to networking giant Cisco Systems and a major step toward HP's ability to provide a one-stop shop for computing, storage, services and networking.

The signature M&A deal of the week was HP's $2.7 billion acquisition of network switch maker 3Com. Cisco earlier this year started selling servers, which made it more of a direct competitor to HP. However, the deal may have its biggest impact not on Cisco, but on smaller networking players like Brocade Communications. Cisco shares declined by only 2.17 percent, dropping $0.52 to close at $23.40. The HP acquisition takes Brocade out of play as a possible acquisition target by HP while increasing competitive pressure. Brocade shares Thursday slumped to close at $8.08, down by $1.17 or 12.7 percent. In what would have been the major M&A deal in most other weeks, tString := StoryDateLine + " (" + @Text(StoryFiledDate) + ") - "; @If(datelineinbody = "No"; tString; "")Logitech said Tuesday it will acquire HD video communications equipment maker LifeSize Communications for $405 million in cash. Logitech shares slumped in the wake of the news, however.

Video communications systems, a major thrust for Cisco as well, has become a hot product category as businesses cut travel to pare costs. Often, acquisition announcements have a negative impact on the acquiring company's stock. However, Standard & Poor's Equity Research reiterated its "hold" recommendation on Logitech, stating that the deal will help the vendor in a fast-paced market. A big purchase can dilute earnings for the acquiring company. Tech market reports this week, meanwhile, were generally positive.

In the mobile-phone arena, smartphone sales increased 13 percent in the third quarter over the year-earlier period, Gartner said Monday. IDC Monday said that microprocessor unit shipments in the third quarter rose 23 percent from the second quarter, and by 0.3 percent from the same period in 2008, though the overall value of shipments declined. Overall mobile-phone market growth was much lower, increasing by 0.1 percent, Gartner said. With that all industries will suffer; certainly consumer electronics will have its ups and downs." The big hope for tech is that, just as it has been less affected by the recession than other sectors, it will fare better in the recovery as well. "The good news is certainly consumers continue to gravitate toward technology," DuBravac said. "They continue to spend on technology while trying to cut back on other categories to make room for their tech spend." While economic recovery appears to be underway, economists urge caution. "We believe that the recession is ended, that it ended in July ... but that certainly doesn't mean that we're out of the woods," said Shawn DuBravac, an economist at the Consumer Electronics Association. "We believe that while we're in an expansionary period now that it will be a mediocre, slow recovery where jobs continue to be hard to come by.

Google Alters News Indexing to Accommodate Pay Walls

In a bid to appease publishers, Google has updated its search programs, allowing publishers who charge for their content to limit users to only five free page views per day. If you browse the WSJ site directly, for example, you could browse a certain number of articles for free, but once you reach the set limit, you would be prompted to register or subscribe to the site. Many publishers impose this type of limits on free page views for Web surfers who visit their sites directly. But, in the past, Google refused to implement these limits on its search results and articles in its Google News service.

Because of this stance, Google has drawn the ire of some news publishers. If you only clicked through WSJ articles using Google News, for example, your entries weren't counted toward the site's limit. Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has called Google many names and has threatened to remove its news assets (like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) from Google search. Google has stood firm and refused to pay news publishers for indexing their content. There were even discussions of Murdoch partnering with Microsoft, which would pay to exclusively index the content.

But the search giant now seems to have acknowledged the turmoil the newspaper industry is going through and is now making changes to accommodate the much disputed pay walls on certain Web sites. So if one user clicks on more than five articles in a day, he/she will be automatically routed to subscription purchase pages. The changes to Google's First Click Free program let publishers prevent unrestricted access to subscription Web sites. Google's John Mueller explains in a blog post that the company hopes "this encourages even more publishers to open up more content to users around the world!" On Tuesday, the same day that Google announced the changes, Rupert Murdoch spoke at a Federal Trade Commission workshop on the future of journalism in the Internet age. He did not mention name of sites, but this has been seen as a direct attack at Google and its News service. Murdoch explained that good journalism is an expensive commodity and criticised sites that profit from reusing news articles by others without paying.

Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post also spoke at the workshop on Tuesday, and accused Murdoch of confusing aggregation of news with misappropriation. Rupert Murdoch is expected to erect more pay walls for it news properties in the coming months. Huffington said she strongly believes in aggregation next to original content, noting that some of Murdoch's own sites aggregate eternal content as well.