Perficient Inc., the St. Louis-based, publicly traded Microsoft National Systems Integrator (NSI), deepened its Microsoft SharePoint expertise today with the acquisition of a major Microsoft partner company in the southeastern United States.
Perficient acquired Northridge Systems Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $14.4 million. The move follows Perficient's purchase in February of Pointbridge, another Microsoft NSI with heavy SharePoint expertise.
Northridge brings to Perficient an organization with more than 90 consulting, technology, sales and support professionals; high-profile enterprise client relationships; and, according to Perficient CEO and President Jeffrey Davis, "critical mass" in the southeastern United States. In addition to Atlanta, Northridge has offices in Charlotte, N.C.; Cary, N.C.; Dallas; and New York. The company also has a development center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
According to Perficient, the addition of Northridge's $12 million annual services revenue business increases Perficient's annualized revenues to $350 million.
Northridge Co-Founder and CEO Rob Patten will stay and report to the general manager of Perficient's Microsoft National Business Unit, Aaron Sloman.
From a skills perspective, Northridge's two MPN gold competencies, Digital Marketing and Portals and Collaboration, overlap with Perficient's nine, but the smaller company does have a silver competency in Content Management that was not already included among Perficient's seven.
Posted by Scott Bekker on July 02, 20120 comments
Microsoft's Ben Rudolph posted a new video demo this week for the Windows Phone 7.8 Start Screen. For those who missed the Windows Phone announcements last week, Windows Phone 7.8 is the consolation prize for all Windows Phone 7.5 users, whose devices won't be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8.
One of the nicest visual changes coming to Windows Phone 8 is the ability to resize tiles and the introduction of a third, small tile size that can fit four-abreast on the home screen. All of the tiles take up more of the screen's available real estate, and new tile color options are available, too.
In his demo of what he described as "a very early build" of Windows Phone 7.8, Rudolph showed a fluid operation for changing tile sizes on a Nokia Lumia 900. Similar to the way tiles are moved and pinned or unpinned on the Start Screen in Windows Phone 7.5, the process involved pressing and holding the tile. A pop-up arrow allows the tile to be enlarged or shrunk.
The demo Start Screen looked identical to the Windows Phone 8 Start Screen that Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president for Windows Phone Program Management, showed off last week. For the record, Rudolph's 1:22 demo didn't reveal any new features of Windows Phone 7.8 outside of the Start Screen. A Windows Phone 7.5 News page where the video also appears also plugs Windows Phone's 100,000 apps and promises some new Lumia 900 features coming from Nokia.
The video seems like the start of a marketing campaign to ease the feelings, and maintain the enthusiasm, of Windows Phone buyers -- especially recent buyers of the flagship Lumia 900 -- who won't be able to get some of the features of version 8, such as a shared core with Windows 8, multi-core processor support, NFC support and higher-definition screen resolutions.
As tech consumers, we all understand the deal. The industry moves fast, and many of us upgrade devices within two years. Yes, Nokia released the first flagship phone only a few months ago, but these things have short shelf-lives. When you buy a mobile OS that's coming up on a year old, you can expect it to be eclipsed by a next generation soon. (Windows Phone 8 isn't out yet, either. That event still appears to be months away.)
Microsoft's efforts to include its early adopters are admirable and welcome. And let's be honest about the situation. Microsoft's user base right now is too small to cater to from a strategic standpoint. If Microsoft focuses too much on the few million Windows Phone users right now, and misses some technological advancements, Microsoft risks sentencing those early adopters to being orphans on a platform that gets killed for lack of market share.
I think Microsoft is striking the right balance with Windows Phone 7.8, but then I personally didn't just commit to a contract on a Lumia 900.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 27, 20121 comments
The average solution provider will soon manage a portfolio of 50 cloud solutions and can look forward to direct sales battles with vendors, predicts channel veteran Bob Godgart.
Godgart's comments came Tuesday during the SMB Online Conference going on this week. Godgart has an exceptionally broad view of the IT industry. In addition to founding Autotask, he is chairman of CompTIA and more recently launched ChannelEyes, a platform for vendors to communicate with partners.
"I think in less than two years, the average partner will manage a portfolio of 50 cloud solutions," Godgart said during one of the opening keynotes in the three-day conference for IT services companies. Godgart added that the number of solutions managed could rise to 100 at some point. That scale of products on the line card represents a significant jump from the way business is done today. For example, a recent CompTIA survey found that on average, a channel firm belongs to eight different vendor programs.
Channel professionals of the millennial generation are most comfortable with cloud solutions, skewing the portfolio even more cloudward. "Partners of the future may not even know what CAPEX means," Godgart said.
Godgart's other major forecast was for "significant vendor direct competition" with managed services providers and IT services companies representing cloud offerings. "I'm sure this [opinion] is not going to be popular," Godgart said. Between consumerization of IT and new freemium models, the temptation for vendors to go direct with cloud-based tools will be too big to pass up, he argued.
In the remote monitoring and management tool arena, Godgart cited Spiceworks with its ad-supported model as one example of the types of challenges MSPs will face.
Solution providers should take sensible self-defense measures, such as leading with their own brand by representing products that they can white label, entering into longer-term contracts with vendors and demanding price protection clauses in those contracts for the inevitable drastic drops in price.
Godgart made a few other predictions in his talk that aligned with the direction he's set for ChannelEyes. Currently in beta, ChannelEyes is a free and secure online portal for connecting vendors and channel partners. Godgart believes that solution provider employees are going to start demanding a "single pane of glass," where they can get all the information they need from all their vendors' channel programs.
He also anticipated that "mobile channel information delivery will be the new normal," a bet that ChannelEyes is capitalizing on with a new ChannelEyes App scheduled to come out this summer. A teaser image on the ChannelEyes Web site makes it look like the company's initial plans call for iPhone, iPad and Android versions.
During his talk, Godgart also hinted at what he might have in mind for ChannelEyes a few years down the road -- a hyper-personalized, cross-vendor ID card. "Obviously, there's a whole lot of technology and security wrapped around that, but wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to tell every vendor about...your job role, your interests and how you like to get information?"
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 27, 20120 comments
Oracle's channel got a lot bigger in the last 12 months.
During the Oracle Partner Network (OPN) Kickoff event online Tuesday, Judson Althoff shared some metrics on partner numbers and the channel business in the technology giant's fiscal year 2012, which ended May 31.
"The channel is making huge contributions," said Althoff, senior vice president for Worldwide Alliances and Channels at Oracle, during the North American version of the webcast. Oracle is conducting five of the events back-to-back for different geographies through Wednesday. "We grew our overall partner ecosystem to 25,000 partners, including 7,000 new partners [during the fiscal year]."
Of those OPN members, some 4,500 have achieved "Specialized" status through the OPN Specialized program, which offers about 70 Specialization options. On the OEM/ISV side, Oracle boasted that during FY12, 100 ISVs validated their applications for Exastack -- a logo program indicating a product's compatibility with Exadata, Exalogic, Solaris and other Oracle products. A further 40 ISVs took the extra step to earn the more stringent Exastack Optimization badge, Althoff said.
An effort to skill up systems integrators on Oracle technologies also bore a lot of fruit in FY12. According to Althoff, the number of certified implementation specialists doubled in FY12 from 30,000 to 60,000.
A number of changes in the OPN helped drive the growth. "We rolled out segmentation for the first time in our company's history, [and] we rolled out incentive programs," Althoff said. "Our growth in registered opportunities was up 90 percent year-over-year for fiscal year '12," said Althoff, adding the context that Oracle is a mature company, not a start-up building on very few registered opportunities. "These are very large compares."
He also cited momentum for the Oracle Database Appliance, which he described as a product launched "with the channel in mind."
Billed as a kickoff, the event was short on announcements. Instead the focus, at least for now, for FY13 is on executing the many changes that have come to the OPN over the last few years and getting partners to both earn specializations and represent more products across the Oracle stack.
Jim Standard, group vice president for Global Channel Sales for Oracle, encouraged Oracle's software partners to look hard at selling hardware and Oracle's hardware partners to consider adding software. "For this year, it's all about filling the gaps," Standard said.
Andy Bailey, senior vice president for Strategic Alliances, pointed Oracle's systems integration partners to what he described as the biggest opportunity in the near term: "The rich vein of revenue is around working with individual customers and identifying the right mix of engineered systems and cloud offerings to best balance their requirements for IT performance, reduced cost, security. And then having the skills and offerings to accelerate those customers to that transformed business environment."
As for the size of the OPN, Althoff wasn't signaling any kind of slowdown. While Oracle's segmentation model retains large enterprise accounts for direct sales, Althoff sees a lot of potential for systems integration partners throughout the rest of the market. "We want to grow that number," Althoff said of the certified implementation specialists. "We don't want to prime engagements, we want to enable you to prime them."
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 26, 20120 comments
One of Oracle's big partner events takes place online tomorrow. The computer industry giant with a fast-growing channel program will hold its fourth Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Kickoff with five interactive events timed for different areas of the world.
The event starts Oracle's fiscal 2013 for both internal sales and for the channel and lays out some of the themes Oracle will expand on at the Oracle OpenWorld conference on Sept. 30-Oct. 4.
Judson Althoff, Oracle senior vice president of Worldwide Alliances and Channels, hosts the interactive events, which also include executive keynotes from Oracle President Mark Hurd and other senior executives. Other elements on the agenda are a recap of FY12, calls to action for FY13, business opportunity discussions for ISVs, OEMs, systems integrators and channel partners, and Q&A sessions.
The North American event starts at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time and will feature a studio audience of about 200 partners in addition to online participants. Registration is available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 25, 20120 comments
Well, I guess Yammer is the next social media phenomenon that Microsoft partners will be forced to pay attention to.
We've all seen it with Facebook and Twitter. Each platform went from something in the background to something that exploded among consumers to something that became critical to business. (LinkedIn became an everyday social network, too, but its business utility was always pretty clear.) Microsoft partners could ignore those social networks only at their peril once customers expected to see them and Microsoft started using the platforms for its to-partner communication.
Why does Yammer rise above the noise created by employee-facing social business software such as Huddle, Acquia, Igloo, TWiki, Cubetree, Watchitoo, Socialcast, Socialtext or Moxie? That's simple -- Microsoft announced a definitive agreement to acquire Yammer today for $1.2 billion.
Say what you will about the state of Microsoft's market power. It remains one of the few technology companies able to throw a billion dollars or more at a startup and raise the company out of that noise level. Now the question is whether Yammer will become a major element of Microsoft's public-facing technology stack or get swallowed up to be never seen again.
The fact that Yammer already seems to have a landing place in Office -- Microsoft's golden child -- is probably a good sign. The way Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft's Office Division, positioned the company in a blog post also bodes well for Yammer having a successful run inside Microsoft:
"Yammer provides a free service for employees to join a private social network that's intuitive and easy to use. It also enables IT departments to easily transition an employee driven initiative into a managed, social-networking solution," DelBene wrote.
He described Yammer as fitting alongside SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype in enterprise social networking scenarios.
"I picture people being able to use Yammer to manage and expand their professional relationships, share and collaborate on Office documents, stay informed about content updates, and to seamlessly move from status updates and feeds into voice and video conversations," DelBene wrote.
In all, that sounds like a technology that will fit comfortably into the partner solution wheelhouse.
Related:
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 25, 20121 comments
Microsoft on Monday published its list of Partner of the Year Award winners and finalists for 2012. The awards will be handed out next month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. The awards this year cover 74 categories. In all, 68 companies won worldwide category awards. Leading the multiple-award-winning companies was Capgemini, which took three awards counting two by its wholly-owned subsidiary Sogeti. Double-award winners were Accenture/Avanade, New Signature, SoftwareONE and Wortell. The list of winners is posted below. Lists that include finalists and country award winners can be found on Microsoft's site.
Alliance ISV Industry Partner of the Year: OpenText
Alliance Advanced Infrastructure Partner of the Year: Citrix
Alliance Application Platform Partner of the Year: Accenture/Avanade
Alliance Cloud Innovation Partner of the Year:
Sogeti
Application Integration Partner of the Year: Breeze Training and Consultancy
Application Lifecycle Management Partner of the Year: Invit
Authorized Distributor Partner of the Year:
ETC
BizSpark Partner of the Year: Soluto
Business Intelligence Partner of the Year: Fusionex
Citizenship Humanitarian Response Partner of the Year:
NV Interactive
Citizenship Innovative Nonprofit (NGO) Capacity Building Partner of the Year:
Olidata
Citizenship Opportunities for Youth Partner of the Year:
New Signature
Communications Market Acceleration Partner of the Year: Hewlett-Packard
Communications Technology Partner of the Year:
Avtex
Content Management Partner of the Year: Concurrency Inc.
Corporate Account Virtualization Data Center Services Partner of the Year:
Infront Consulting Group
Corporate Accounts LAR Partner of the Year:
SoftwareONE
Data Platform Partner of the Year:
Systemgroup Consulting Inc.
Desktop Partner of the Year:
Insight Enterprises Inc.
Digital Marketing Partner of the Year:
Telligent
Exceptional Sales Management Partner of the Year:
Quadra Systems
Hosting Partner of the Year:
Rackspace Hosting
Identity and Security Partner of the Year:
Itergy
Innovative Customer Advocacy Partner of the Year:
Mimecast
ISV/Software Solutions Industry Partner of the Year: Numerix
Learning Competency Marketing Excellence Partner of the Year: DDLS
Learning Competency Training Solution Excellence Partner of the Year: Quickstart Intelligence
Messaging Partner of the Year:
Dimension Data
Microsoft Cloud Partner of the Year:
Infusion
Microsoft Dynamics Cloud Business Excellence Partner of the Year: Zero2Ten
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year:
PowerObjects
Microsoft Dynamics Distribution Industry Partner of the Year:
Blue Horseshoe
Microsoft Dynamics ERP Partner of the Year: INFOMA Software Consulting GmbH
Microsoft Dynamics Financial Services Industry Partner of the Year: Traviata
Microsoft Dynamics Manufacturing Industry Partner of the Year: Edgewater Fullscope Inc.
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence Partner of the Year:
ClickDimensions
Microsoft Dynamics Professional Services Industry Partner of the Year: Systems Advisors Group
Microsoft Dynamics Public Sector Partner of the Year: Rock Solid Technologies
Microsoft Dynamics Retail Industry Partner of the Year:
Ignify Inc.
Management and Virtualization Partner of the Year:
Veeam Software
Microsoft Office 365 Commercial Partner of the Year:
Cloud Business
Microsoft Office 365 Innovation Partner of the Year:
Wortell
Microsoft Office 365 Solution Partner of the Year:
Slalom Consulting
Microsoft Services Outstanding Collaboration Partner of the Year: Capgemini
Microsoft Support Partner of the Year: Wortell
Mid-Market Solution Provider Partner of the Year:
Quadra Systems
Mobility Business-to-Business Application Partner of the Year:
FOXit
Mobility Business-to-Consumer Application Partner of the Year: Sequence Collective
Mobility Partner of the Year: Accenture/Avanade
OEM Hardware Reseller Partner of the Year: Micro Center
OEM Hardware System Building Partner of the Year:
Wortmann AG
Outstanding Sales Operations Partner of the Year:
Softchoice Corp.
Portals and Collaboration Partner of the Year:
Foundation SP
Private Cloud Partner of the Year:
NetApp
Project and Portfolio Management Partner of the Year:
SharkPro Software
Public Sector, Education Partner of the Year:
Dell Inc.
Public Sector, Government Partner of the Year: IEG4
Public Sector, Health Partner of the Year: Ascribe
Public Sector, Public Safety and National Security Partner of the Year: iLink Systems
Sales Specialist of the Year: Glenn Williams from Intellinet
Search Partner of the Year: EMC Corp.
Server Platform Partner of the Year: CDW
Small Business Specialist Partner of the Year: eMazzanti Technologies
Software Asset Management Partner of the Year:
Specialist Software Services
Software Asset Management Market Acceleration Partner of the Year: Chengdu Time Carnival Software Technology | (Chengdu Shi Dai Jia Hua)
Software Development Partner of the Year: Readify
Sustainability Partner of the Year: Iconics Inc.
Systems Management Partner of the Year: Catapult Systems
Visio Partner of the Year:
Process4Biz
Volume Licensing Partner of the Year: SoftwareONE Brazil
Web Development Partner of the Year: NV Interactive
Windows Azure ISV Partner of the Year:
Jack Henry & Associates Inc.
Windows Azure SI Partner of the Year: Sogeti
Windows Intune Partner of the Year:
New Signature
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 25, 20121 comments
At the Windows Phone Summit today, Microsoft declared that the Windows Phone Marketplace has reached 100,000 apps. The number has been floating around the ether unofficially for a few weeks now, but the official confirmation is worth noting.
While 100,000 Windows Phone apps pales in comparison to the estimates of 650,000 apps in Apple's App Store and 500,000 apps in Google Play, it's a huge milestone for Microsoft.
It's only been a little over a year since Microsoft was claiming 10,000 apps. An order of magnitude improvement is a testament to Microsoft's willingness to keep investing and investing despite repeated disappointments in quarterly sales and market share figures.
With 100,000 apps, Microsoft hits the nice round number that many observers have suggested will make app count comparisons less important for the platform. I'm not sure anyone outside of the Windows Phone team would want the "100,000 apps and counting" coffee mug that Microsoft just made available, but let's forgive Microsoft some justified exuberance. The platform really has arrived.
One outside measurement indicates that the ball Microsoft got rolling with apps is gaining its own momentum. Flurry, an app advertising and measurement platform, this week blogged about new project starts using its Flurry Analytics tool. With more than 70,000 companies using the tool for 190,000 applications, the company has a wide lens on the industry.
Apple dominates project starts, and Android is a strong second, but Microsoft is emerging from the noise level. Peter Farago, vice president of marketing for Flurry, blogged that Windows Phone project starts went from 1 percent last year to about 6 percent in June. BlackBerry project starts, for comparison, have stayed around 1 percent for the duration.
In fact, Farago suggested Microsoft is actually beginning to threaten Google for developer attention. "If we look at just Android and Microsoft in the month of June, for every Windows Phone new project started, 4 have been started for Android," Farago noted.
Flurry's data shows that industrywide project starts are up about 50 percent, with growth rates varying wildly by platform. "Specifically, growth rates per platform for year-over-year growth are: iOS 66%, Android 82%, Windows Phone 521%, BlackBerry 13%," Farago wrote (emphasis mine). "It's clear that Microsoft still knows how to attract third party developer support."
The Windows Phone Marketplace's 100,000 apps won't be orphaned when Windows Phone 8 comes out either. At the summit today, Microsoft executives said that all the apps written for Windows Phone 7.x will run on the Windows Phone 8 devices that come out next fall.
See Also:
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 20, 20120 comments
Microsoft is famous for its demo failures (who can forget the Windows 98 beta crashing on Bill Gates during a Comdex demo?), and the Surface debut kept that tradition alive.
Surface is Microsoft's newly unveiled tablet designed in part to take on the Apple iPad with a single-vendor integration of hardware and software. The idea is to make the experience smooth and seamless and highlight what is possible with Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Of course, the timetables of the product marketing world require Microsoft to demonstrate that promise with prototype hardware running pre-release software. This time, the unlucky demonstrator was Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft president of Windows and Windows Live. He ran into serious problems during an Internet Explorer demo on the new device last night. Check out The Verge's video below; the demo failures start around 13:30.
"We can see here I'm running Internet Explorer. I can browse smoothly," Sinofsky began, swiping down repeatedly from the top of the screen with a finger to no visible effect. Continuing with the script, Sinofsky turned the Surface away from the audience and could be seen jabbing the screen and center button. Apparently the move wasn't working, because when he turned the device around briefly a few seconds later, the IE screen was still present.
Looking mortified, Sinofsky went on talking about games with a pause that suggested he was either skipping a demo or choosing where to pick up the transcript. Trying again, Sinofsky said, "Movies and entertainment look great as well," while fiddling with the device.
After a "hang on" under his breath, Sinofsky finally gave up. "Excuse me for just a second," he said and jogged to a lectern to grab a backup. New device in hand, he quickly launched into a smooth and fast demonstration of a Netflix app for Windows 8.
Sinofsky fully got his groove back a few minutes later when demonstrating the Touch Cover. The magnetic cover, which folds out to provide a touch-sensitive keyboard and mouse pad, was one of the biggest audience applause points of the event.
 |
| The Surface "Touch Cover," which doubles as a keyboard. |
More Surface Coverage on RCPmag.com:
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 19, 20120 comments
There's more trouble for one of Microsoft's underdog strategic partners. This time it's Nokia, rather than Yahoo or Barnes & Noble.
The Finnish phone company today announced up to 10,000 layoffs by 2013 and an executive shakeup at the tier below Stephen Elop, Nokia president and CEO and a former Microsoft senior executive. Nokia also cautioned investors that second quarter results would be worse than the company had predicted previously.
Significantly, on the Microsoft partnership side, Nokia's moves reinforce the company's controversial commitment to Windows Phone and the Lumia handset line that supports the Microsoft OS.
"We intend to pursue an even more focused effort on Lumia, continued innovation around our feature phones, while placing increased emphasis on our location-based services. However, we must re-shape our operating model and ensure that we create a structure that can support our competitive ambitions," Elop said in a statement.
On the Windows Phone platform, Nokia said it plans to broaden the Lumia price range and differentiate the devices with new materials, new technologies and location-based services, such as navigation, visual search applications and industry-specific mapping. Related to those moves, the company also announced plans to acquire Scalado, an imaging technology company based in Sweden.
The layoffs will come amid the planned closure of research and development facilities in Ulm, Germany and Burnaby, Canada and the closure of a manufacturing facility in Salo, Finland.
Senior executives being shown the door include Jerri DeVard, chief marketing officer; Mary McDowell, executive vice president of Mobile Phones; and Niklas Savander, executive vice president of Markets.
Replacing those executives on Nokia's executive leadership team at the end of the month will be Juha Putkiranta as executive vice president of Operations, Timo Toikkanen as executive vice president of Mobile Phones, and Chris Weber as executive vice president of Sales and Marketing. Weber, who had been running Nokia's North American subsidiary, is a familiar name to Microsoft partners. Prior to Nokia, he had been corporate vice president in Microsoft's Enterprise and Partner Group.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 14, 20120 comments
One of Microsoft's Office 365 syndication partners is looking for 400 North American resellers.
The syndication partners are the select few Microsoft partners, mostly major hosters and providers of high-value related services, with permission from Microsoft to directly bill their customers. Non-syndication Microsoft partners that offer Office 365 to their customers must leave billing for that portion of their offering to Microsoft. The arrangement has been a source of controversy.
Boca Raton, Fla.-based intY USA on Wednesday announced a new Office 365 channel partner program for resellers in the United States and Canada. The 15-year-old intY specializes in Internet access security and cloud-based business applications. Parent company intY Ltd. in Bristol, England was an early syndication partner back in 2010 when Office 365 didn't include licenses to the Office desktop software and was called the Business Productivity Online Suite.
According to intY, the new channel program targets SMB and mid-market sales and includes step-by-step sales and marketing support, online provisioning and service management, margins, recurring revenue, incentives and promotions.
Details of intY USA's partner program are available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 13, 20120 comments
While Flame has been all the rage lately, huge news broke today on another piece of malware suspected to have been cooked up in a spy agency lab. Turns out all that speculation about Stuxnet having been created by either the United States or Israel to attack Iran's nuclear capabilities appears to have been on target.
In a book excerpt published today on The New York Times Web site, Times reporter David Sanger quoted several government officials in the Bush and Obama administrations on a not-for-attribution basis.
Among the biggest revelations in Sanger's piece:
- The Bush Administration started the planning and work on what would be dubbed by security researchers as Stuxnet. The official codename for the operation was "Olympic Games."
- Stuxnet was never intended to get outside the Natanz plant in Iran. A programming error caused it to spread onto an engineer's laptop and then out into the wild, where security researchers noticed it in the summer of 2010.
- The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Israel's Unit 8200 to develop the worm, which the Americans referred to as "the bug." Two imperatives drove U.S. cooperation: Israeli's deep intelligence about operations at Natanz, and ensuring Israel's full awareness of progress to dissuade them from conducting a pre-emptive strike.
- Both presidents were closely involved in planning the development of Stuxnet (Bush) and the attacks using the code weapon (Obama).
- Before it was deployed against Iran, "the bug" was tested on a replica of Natanz using similar centrifuges the U.S. confiscated in 2003 from Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi when he gave up his nuclear weapons program.
The whole excerpt provides compelling and convincing reading. I'm looking forward to the rest of Sanger's book, "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," when it comes out on Tuesday.
While the government hasn't officially admitted using cyberweapons, the wink-and-nod conversations with a reporter at this stage are surprising. I hadn't expected definitive answers to the question of whether the U.S. was involved in the Stuxnet attacks until files were declassified decades from now.
Having these facts in the open, introduces a whole new set of thorny questions. For example, in a comment e-mailed to reporters, Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, wrote, "This news changes everything, it opens a Pandora's box of new complications. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day." As one immediate implication, he suggests opponents of the U.S. Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act will have a new line of attack.
The fact that Stuxnet itself used four zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows as part of its attack package was not good news for the Microsoft ecosystem. Still, there's opportunity here for the Microsoft channel. With fairly solid confirmation now that Stuxnet was a government operation, everyone involved in IT security sales has a new bullet point for their PowerPoint deck.
Posted by Scott Bekker on June 01, 20120 comments