Briefs: June 13, 2005

ORACLE GETS REAL WITH DEAL TO ACQUIRE TIMESTEN

Executives painted the deal as highly complementary. Oracle tends to run large back-end databases, while TimesTen runs in the middle tier for realtime handling of subsets of that data, said Jim Groff, CEO of TimesTen, Mountain View, Calif.

TimesTen's customers include telecommunications carriers, financial services companies and defense firms—all of which use applications "where milliseconds matter," Groff told press and industry analysts on a conference call.

Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of database server technologies at Oracle, said the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company's size will give TimesTen more exposure to large integrators and VARs. "Amdocs, the large telecom billing vendor, is a major VAR partner of both Oracle and TimesTen. When you run that solution, it runs atop a combination. But access to major system integrators is a challenge for a private company," he said. "This gives it credibility that causes major integrators to pay attention."

MICROSOFT PLANS TO UNFURL ANOTHER 10 SECURITY PATCHES
Microsoft is scheduled this week to roll out a series of 10 security updates.

As is its custom, the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor gave advance notice of the number, severity and target of the patches it plans to post June 14. Seven affect Windows, and one impacts each Microsoft Services for Unix, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, and the associated Small Business Server. At least one involving Windows will be tagged with the highest-possible severity rating, the company said.

CA EXTENDS INTO GOVERNANCE WITH PROPOSED NIKU BUYOUT
Computer Associates International agreed last week to buy Niku, a provider of information technology management and governance software, for $350 million in cash.

Niku posted net income of $4 million on sales of $66.3 million for its fiscal 2005.

The acquisition would give CA, Islandia, N.Y., a foothold in the fast-growing market for IT governance. The transaction will slightly reduce CA's earnings in fiscal 2006 but will add to its earnings in fiscal 2007. The deal is expected to close within three months, pending approvals.

CA said it expects that most of Niku's roughly 290 employees will remain with the company after the acquisition is complete. Niku CEO Joshua Pickus will join CA as senior vice president of Business Service Optimization, the unit that will handle Niku's software.

COREL GOES TO SCHOOL WITH NEW LICENSING PROGRAM
Ottawa-based Corel this week will launch a simplified licensing program for the higher education market that allows colleges and universities to buy a suite of Corel products for one price.

Institutions will be able to purchase anywhere from two to five products for about $1.25 per user in a school with 1,000 to 5,000 users. The program includes "take home" rights, technical training and five free support incidents. The program is available through Corel resellers.

RESEARCHERS SAY BLUETOOTH ISN'T BULLETPROOF
Bluetooth devices including phones, PDAs and personal computers can be hacked even when Bluetooth's security is enabled, a pair of researchers said last week.

Yaniv Shaked and Avishai Wool of Tel Aviv University were able to compromise Bluetooth devices in as little as 0.06 seconds by first forcing two devices to "pair," the term used when two Bluetooth gizmos first communicate and establish a security key for future wireless transmission, and then cracking the four-digit PIN, which in most devices is the default.

In the exploit demonstrated by Shaked and Wool, a Bluetooth device pretends to have been paired with another previously but has "forgotten" the link key. This begins a new pairing session, during which hackers could snatch the key. With the cracked key in hand, an attacker could monitor all data sent by the compromised device or even hijack it for his own use to, for instance, make calls that are charged to the hacked Bluetooth phone.

NEWS BRIEF SUBHEAD
Microsoft publicly disclosed last week its plan to take on the hugely popular BlackBerry PDA from Research In Motion (RIM).

Later this year, the software giant plans to offer software to "allow the kind of direct mobile messaging you all want," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told several thousand IT professionals and partners last week at the company's Tech Ed 2005 conference in Orlando, Fla.

"This is push e-mail—the kind we have not delivered and RIM has historically delivered, [but] without additional management costs," he said. "It's enabled by Active Directory, and you can control policy on those mobile devices."

CRN first reported on Microsoft's "BlackBerry killer" plans in April. The new capability Ballmer referred to requires Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and the Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0. Both updates are due this fall, Microsoft said.