IBM today announced expansions to
ASP Prime,* a program that provides education, application evaluation, technical
support and a variety of consulting services, to help developers enable their
applications for Web hosting. New features include ASP Prime Online, a web-based,
self-service offering that provides fast online assessment to
developers; Linux** support for ISV’s planning to test Linux-based applications
in a Web hosting environment; and the addition of a new competency center for
IBM NUMA* systems as part of the ASP Prime Solution Center in Hursley, UK. ASP Prime offers qualified ISVs a comprehensive way to gain a
competitive advantage and seize the opportunities in the emerging ASP marketplace.
More than 150 ISVs have successfully completed the ASP Prime Program since
its inception in late 1999 and the increasing frequency of requests have
exceeded the numbers the centers can answer. With ASP market growth estimates
going as high as $25 billion by 2004, IBM expects the number of ISVs interested
in the Web-hosted model to grow quickly. ASP Prime’s newly expanded features
will help IBM address the increased interest and provide assistance to a wider
variety of ISVs.

ASP Prime Online

In a marketplace where speed can make or break businesses, ISVs
need fast, comprehensive support to get their applications ready for the ASP
model. ASP Prime Online is a Web-based self-service offering that provides
application developers a quick and convenient way to assess business and technical
elements of deploying their ASP offerings. Developers enrolled in PartnerWorld
for Developers may go through the online questionnaire in as little as 20
minutes –with immediate feedback — while also accessing a variety of
complimentary benefits including:

• a telephone consultation with an IBM ASP Prime e-business
  architect;
• post consultation recommendations from IBM;
• marketing, sales & technical support such as discounts on software
  and
  training courses, marketing collateral templates, and toolbox and
  starter kits.

Once developers complete the questionnaire, those who qualify will
receive an invitation to participate in the ASP Prime Program at one of IBM’s
global ASP Prime Solution Centers.

“With the growing interest in the ASP business model, ISVs are
looking for many levels of support to help with assessing their application
readiness and get to market faster,” said Dave Carlquist, vice president, IBM Global
Net Generation Business. “With ASP Prime Online, we have a faster way of
helping ISVs, as they evaluate all possibilities and challenges of this
business segment. Regardless of the outcome of their assessment, each developer
will gain valuable insight as to their readiness along with a variety of
related benefits.”

The self-service offering will direct developers to an IBM
certified e-business architect for a telephone consultation. ASP Prime Online
will be vailable on April 27 and can be found at http://www.ibm.com/netgeneration/aspprime.

Extended Linux Support

As part of the extended support for the Linux platform, IBM is
expanding existing Linux competencies to ASP Prime Solution Centers worldwide.
Developers will be able to validate and document the scalability, manageability
and reliability of their Linux-based applications as well as learn how to
quickly enable them for server-based ASP hosting and Internet delivery using
IBM’s WebSphere* infrastructure software and open source technologies.

The program’s new Linux resources will also support non
Web-enabled applications by working with industry players such as Tarantella, Inc.
Through a recently announced co-marketing agreement with Tarantella, ASP Prime participants will get information on how to address challenges ISVs
face when hosting select applications running on Linux such as two-tier Java
client, X/Windows and other X.11 applications.

“Tarantella aggresively targets the ASP marketplace by providing
developers with products and services that will help them realize returns on their
Linux investments,” said Dennis Adams, vice president, marketing, Tarantella,
Inc.
“This will help service providers attain what they need and their
customers want — easy-to-deliver-and-manage solutions with very quick time-to-market.”

Competency Center for IBM NUMA Systems

IBM is complementing its ASP Prime Center in Hursley, UK with a
competency center supporting IBM NUMA based products, often the high I/O bandwidth
database servers at the heart of large mission critical applications. Their
advanced availability and scalability features provide significant high
reliability capabilities that are crucial in the ASP space.

This initiative is part of IBM’s joint efforts with Intel
Corporation to support the enablement of ISV applications running on IBM platforms
based on Intel Architecture. Intel began its participation in ASP Prime in 2000
to help increase emphasis and resources for the program, as it helps ISVs with Intel-based applications, as well as help expand existing IBM ASP Prime facilities and equipment.

:IBM’s ASP Prime program provides ISVs with the technical as well
as business support they need to successfully migrate to the ASP business
model,” says John Davies, vice president, Intel Solutions Channels Group.
“Many software vendors are ready to take their existing applications to the
Web. The strength of Intel Architecture solutions combined with IBM?s ASP Prime
program is a natural fit that will provide significant value to the ISV
community and the businesses they serve.”

Designed with Intel’s advanced microprocessors, IBM NUMA-Q systems
support a broad application portfolio, running Linux applications via the Linux Application Environment (LAE), S/390 and ptx applications. ASPs use
the eServer xSeries and IBM NUMA-Q systems to concurrently run applications from
all these diverse environments on a single platform and gain significant
operational cost savings.

The Hursley ASP Prime Center’s dedicated IBM NUMA systems and
qualified technical consultants are available at no cost to qualified
participants. A center of competency for IBM NUMA Systems is currently operating within the ASP Prime Solution Center located in Beaverton, Oregon.

About ASP Prime

Developers visiting IBM ASP Prime Solution Centers have access to
highly skilled, face-to-face, hands-on technical consulting, along with a wide
array of software, hardware, and tools to help them ready their web applications
for hosting environments. The centers also offer business consulting
before, during, and after the engagement. For more information on IBM ASP Prime, please visit http://www.ibm.com/netgeneration.

About Tarantella, Inc.

Tarantella, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Santa Cruz
Operation, Inc., provides web-enabling software that connects client devices,
server-based applications, and networks. The Tarantella product line includes
Tarantella Enterprise 3 for large companies and organizations, Tarantella
Enterprise 3, Tarantella Enterprise 3 ASP Edition for Application Service Providers,
and Tarantella Express for work group and departmental environments.
Tarantella products provide access to Windows, mainframe, AS/400, Linux and UNIX applications. For more information, go to www.tarantella.com.

* Indicates trademark or registered trademark of International Business
Machines Corporation.

**Indicates trademark or registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

***Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks
of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. Intel is a registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.

– By Dan Berkes –

Chicago — There are a few good security-minded sites and organizations in the Open Source world, but until today, Rackspace wasn’t widely known as one of them. All of that changed this morning when the Web hosting service announced the release of a tool designed to reverse the effects of Knark, a rather annoying tool frequently used by crackers.Knark is a type of Trojan Horse program known as a rootkit. It’s a loadable kernel module that, when inserted by an unauthorized visitor, will not only hide itself, but any other files and directories at the discretion of its handler, as well as any outgoing or incoming TCP or UDP connections. With this ability to cover any intrusion and cloak an ongoing security breach, Knark is a major headache for system administrators.

For Rackspace, Knark was much more than a simple headache, but a nightmare waiting to happen. The company made a name for itself by offering Linux-based hosting, and boasts more than 2,000 Linux servers in its San Antonio, Texas, data center.

Marketing manager Madel Robles said that discovering a way to counter Knark was just routine business for Rackspace. “Our product development team is always looking into anything that might be an issue for the servers,” she said from the Comdex show floor.

The solution to the problem is a small program created by Rackspace developer Kelley Spoon. Once applied, everything hidden by Knark comes back into view, allowing a system administrator to perform a security audit to determine if a system has been compromised.

While Alamo can’t completely counter what Knark does, it will provide system administrators with enough useful information, said Spoon. Anyone who wants to build on the foundation of Alamo is free to do so — the program is, of course, released as Open Source and complete with code.

The release of Alamo is a first for Rackspace, and most likely a first for all Web hosting companies, said Robles. “I think we’ve probably rolled out fixes and patches in the past, especially for our own servers. As far as I know, this is the first time we’ve made something like this available to the public.”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

Mozillaquest.com has a story about AbiWord, an anonymous reader tells us. “Microsoft Word likely is the most used word processor, and it has become the industry standard for word processing software — at least for the Microsoft (MS) Windows platform. However, if you use one of those other platforms such as Linux, or if you would like a free MS-Word-like program for your MS-Windows-based computer, take AbiWord for a spin around the block.
AbiWord is still in the beta stage. Nevertheless, it is quite usable for limited, regular duty.”

ZDNet reports that the Adore worm is “designed to create so-called back doors in the
security of Linux systems and send information identifying the compromised systems to four
different e-mail addresses hosted on servers in China and the United States.”

It’s posted at LWN.net: “We still look like we’re on target for a 0.7.2 release late this
week. We’re especially excited about this release, as it includes
the first drop of some cool features, as well as the addition of
some features to other components that we find pretty nifty and are
sure you will too.”

From PR Newswire: Conversay, a global leader in
speech technology solutions for both mobile and traditional Internet access
devices, announced today it is partnering with Seoul-based PalmPalm Technology
Inc., the leading software company optimizing the Linux OS for mobile devices.
Conversay will integrate its speech recognition software into the “Tynux”
embedded Linux platform developed by PalmPalm, to be used on smart phones, Web
appliances, wireless devices and more.

More information from a press release at InternetWire: A securities class action lawsuit was commenced
on behalf all persons who acquired Red Hat, Inc. (NASDAQ: RHAT) (“Red Hat” or the “Company”) securities
between August 11, 1999 and March 19, 2001 (the “Class Period”). A copy of the complaint is available from
the Court or from Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz, LLP. Please visit our website at www.bernlieb.com or contact
us at(800)217-1522 or by email at RHAT@bernlieb.com.

LinuxGram reports that Dell is saying that 13% of the servers it’s currently shipping are Linux boxes. Analysts are all happy.

LWN.net has posted this note from Caldera. “During code audits of the Linux Kernel several security problems
have been found. Some of them allow a local attacker to gain
root privileges through race conditions, others allow reading
and possibly writing of random kernel memory.

With these patches now being available in the 2.2.19 kernel, this
update backports them to the kernels used in our products.”

LinuxGram has a story about Fujitsu Software Technology’s new business idea. “Fujitsu Softek has serious ambitions that have been fanned by the market projections of analysts who claim the
market for storage devices will soon pass the value of the server market. Storage is supposed to be worth $60 billion
in 2004, servers only $54 billion.”