Real World Linux Showcases New Products, Strategies
By: Dee-Ann LeBlanc
Thursday, May 1, 2003 11:24:38 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4780/1/
TransGaming Technologies Launches New Face: Aclerex
Here in Toronto, the first Real World Linux conference is in full swing despite the overblown threat of SARS. Some speakers have canceled, and some of the exhibitors pulled out due to no-go orders from their companies, but attendance was still good and many of the major players are here.
The focus here is Linux in business. It's a smaller show than what in New York City or San Francisco, but that doesn't mean that nothing interesting is happening. There are a number of product launches, particularly from Canadian companies, and some European vendors that are stretching into the North American market.
Ontario-based TransGaming Technologies (www.transgaming.com) is using this event to launch a new face for their company. While TransGaming's focus is providing an environment for playing Windows games on Linux boxes, a number of their subscribers began attempting to run home and business applications under TransGaming's WineX. These users discovered that the programs ran under the gaming environment, or almost ran, and so TransGaming began receiving queries for helping various companies--including some from the Fortune 2000 set--to bring the Windows applications they can't leave behind into the Linux world.
Aclerex (www.aclerex.com) doesn't necessarily rewrite the applications from the ground up. If the source code is available, then this makes their job easier, but they don't require it. As TransGaming, they had to implement key Windows APIs, such as DCOM and RPC. With these two issues already solved, TransGaming is well on its way toward being able to port many Windows packages quickly and easily.
When it came time to do their first major project, a port of The Sims, it took only eight weeks, with the longest part of the project being the DRM (Digital Rights Management)--copy protection aspect. It only took such a short time on the first project because Gavriel State, TransGaming's and Aclerex's founder, was the principal force behind the last push within Corel to port its Office applications to Linux.
Some might worry about the legal aspects of reverse engineering to port the applications, but this isn't actually an issue. APIs are published standards, so no reverse engineering is required. In fact, a number of the programs Acelerx's clients want to have ported are their own custom code: software that the company can't leave behind when leaving the Windows world.
Acelerex isn't marketing products to end users. The porting issue is far too complex, with too many variables, to offer a package that could satisfy everyone's needs. Instead, they're simply sitting back and letting those who need to have Windows software brought into the Linux world come to them. This model serves the needs of those companies who say, I'd like to move to Linux, but...
As Sue Menard, Director of Strategy & Enterprise Planning, puts it, "We've solved the 'but.'"
Interphase Launches Two New Network Security Processors
US-based Interphase (www.interphase.com) has introduced two network security co-processor boards: the 55NS PCI Network Security Co-Processor and the 45NS PMC Network Security Co-Processor. Both pieces of hardware support both IPSec and SSL acceleration, along with LZS and MPPC compression; AES, DES, 3DES, and ARC4 encryption; SHA-1 and MD5 authentication; and RSA and DH encryption with key lengths available up to 2048 bits.
These products free your CPU to run servers and more while the card handles the important duty of analzing packets and their headers as they travel in and out, data compression, encryption, authentication, and more. With today's growing need for network and host security, any product that makes it easier to protect your data is worth looking into, and taking the burden off your already overworked servers can't hurt either.
SOPHOS Solidifies Anti-Virus Product Presence in Canada
UK-based SOPHOS has been protecting businesses from computer viruses for twenty years. When it came time to enter the Canadian market, SOPHOS learned that Canadians tend to prefer VARS, local sources of credit, and local contacts. Rather than opening and staffing their own offices, they went with Keating Technologies, a company with sixteen years of experience and constantly recommended by potential customers.
SOPHOS doesn't focus on end users, and also doesn't specifically aim at Linux. Its customers are businesses, governments, and educational institutionsthough they do allow their clients to license their virus products for employee use at home. Operating systems supported are everything from Linux and other Unix flavors to OS/2, Novell, and even a VAX/VMS machine at the White House. The software is solid, with a code base built on top of the same core code used twenty years ago, and networking was built in from the start as both a business model and technology.
The SOPHOS advantage, according to Keating, is Total Cost of Ownership. MD5 checksumming means that you don't have to slow a machine to a crawl in order to scan software to see if it's been interfered with: the software simply looks to see if the checksum has changed, a technique used by many other vendors to confirm that files have not been tampered with, but for some reason one that has not taken hold in the antivirus industry.
SOPHOS prides itself on service and support. Its product protects desktops, gateways, and servers with raw text updates, protecting you from damaging executables that might come down their own pipes. Virus hype is not used to sell or promote SOPHOS products: they have no special colored alerts, and don't even currently support software for PDAs and more because so far viruses aren't a problem in this area. Though, of course they're developing software for when this eventuality comes.
In the Linux world, it's easy to think that we're invincible. No system is completely secure. There are at least thirty documented viruses and worms so far that affect the Linux operating system, and no doubt are more to come. For a business, you should least have a plan of how you intend to deal with this eventuality.
Dee-Ann LeBlanc is an award-winning technical author with 11 books and over seventy articles in print. Along with writing, Dee-Ann teaches, develops courses, and also consults when time allows. Learn more at http://www.Dee-AnnLeBlanc.com/.