Maaf saya forward 2 berita
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http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/990112/industry/industry2.html
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Fiat keeps open mind on new
platform
By NATHAN COCHRANE
A BITTER experience with closed systems has caused
the Australian arm of the Fiat group's international truck
making giant, IVECO, to move to ``scarier'' open
systems for its business survival.
The decision last month to sign a year-long support
contract with Australia's only Red Hat Linux support
partner, Melbourne's CyberSource, was the latest step
in a long journey to an open systems solution, according
to IVECO's senior systems analyst, Phil McNally.
IVECO, formerly International Trucks, is testing the
popular freeware operating system with the intention to
roll it out to its branch network within the next three
months. The company ships nearly 32,000 line items,
weighing about 236 tonnes, a month from its Dandenong
plant. It is the first installation of its type in Australia, but
is likely to be mirrored over the next few months as other
corporate buyers investigate the platform.
The decision to migrate began with the conversion of
IVECO's PACE systems (Wang propriety software) to
Wang COBOL in February 1997, with associated Y2K
work for the manufacturing and distribution head office
systems. The branches had already gained Y2K
compliance the year before.
More than six million lines of COBOL code and 4000
programs have been converted to gain millennium
compliance. This was done with the help of smart
programs written in-house, which screened programs to
identify problem areas and automatically converted data
files.
Already there has been commercial interest in the
technology from outside Victoria as enterprises struggle
to beat their Y2K deadlines.
But it's the decision to seek shelter in open systems and
UNIX that marks a radical departure for the IT shop,
once geared to closed systems.
``At this stage we're only looking at Linux for the
branches and may consider it for our Dandenong
manufacturing plant in the future,'' McNally said. ``The
Linux system will be heavily tested and run in parallel
before the final cut over.
``You're talking about front counter sales. It's our front
line. I can't afford that system to be down.''
Until recently, the lack of institutional support stood in the
way of Linux's adoption, IT consultant Paul Radavicius
said. Busy IT departments did not have the time to surf
the Internet for platform help.
``The decision to sign with CyberSource, we anticipate
will reduce the need to surf the Internet for Linux
solutions which IVECO's IT department is not currently
staffed to do,'' Radavicius said.
``We're still in the process of learning Linux. Even
installing it presents problems.''
For Linux to become more acceptable to large
corporations the Linux online help facility needs further
development and made more user friendly, he said.
``We have our current systems to maintain and enhance,
the IT staff are only able work on Linux on a limited
basis resulting in varied levels of Linux expertise.
Therefore we require ad hoc training for all staff,''
McNally said. ``I'm talking to CyberSource about that.''.
McNally and Radavicius said it was up to Red Hat and
other distributors to take a more commercial focus if
they wanted the open source operating system to
expand into this market.
``The reason for selecting Red Hat is so that they
maintain the operational side without having to do it
ourselves,'' McNally said.
``We're application programmers, we don't want to
delve too deeply into the operating system,'' Radavicius
said. ``We needed a central logging system for our
problems and queries and we believe CyberSource will
provide this.
``If you haven't got support, companies like us won't
move across.''
IVECO looked closely at Microsoft's WindowsNT but
was put off by scalability limits placed by the system on
things such as the number of files that can be open at the
same time. Enterprise resource planning systems such
as SAPR/3 were also out of the running because they did
not offer the same features as existing systems. ``With
the growing interest in Linux, in another 12 months the
operating system should be ready for prime time and be
totally commercially acceptable,'' Radavicius said.
www.iveco.com.au www.cyber.com.au
www.redhat.com www.cmsolutions.com.au
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http://www.nwfusion.com/news/0111ntcrypt.html
(akses harus member tapi bisa daftar free...)
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NT 4.0 flunks cryptography test
Another service pack fix and
interoperability woes for users are the
results.
By Ellen Messmer
Network World, 01/11/99
Washington, D.C.
Last summer, Microsoft hoped to see NT 4.0
breeze through government tests of
encryption features such as Data Encryption
Standard and digital signatures. But things
didn't go exactly as planned.
Products must pass the Federal Information
Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1
certification test before they can be sold to
the U.S. and Canadian governments.
Not only did the Redmond, Wash., giant fail
the cryptography tests, but Microsoft
officials now acknowledge that the lab
scrutiny exposed shortcomings in NT's
cryptographic processing that will force
Microsoft to redesign the operating system.
Microsoft expects to issue a service-pack
upgrade later this year - once NT finally
makes it through FIPS 140-1 testing.
"We expect this to happen early in the first
quarter, but we have to allow for additional
delays," says Patrick Arnold, program
manager at Microsoft Federal Systems.
The Microsoft code fix, however, will
prevent users who apply it from using
Internet Explorer 4.0, Outlook 98 and
perhaps other applications, such as the
Microsoft Internet Information Server.
"Only Internet Explorer 5.0 will know how
to work in FIPS mode," Arnold explains,
adding Microsoft is still assessing the
application interoperability problems that
will result from the fix.
Microsoft has already released NT Service
Pack 4, which was supposed to be the last
upgrade for NT 4.0. The company has not
yet announced the FIPS upgrade and has not
explained whether all users - or just the
ones that need the FIPS compliance - will
be urged to upgrade.
The problems, which were uncovered at
CygnaCom Solutions, a
government-certified testing lab, are related
to NT 4.0's CryptoAPIs.
Government reaction
Government users, especially the
Department of Defense, which bought tens
of thousands of NT 4.0 servers, are bracing
for impact. "Will our department upgrade
and work through the interoperability
problems? Absolutely," says Dick Schaeffer,
a Defense Department security manager.
"FIPS 140-1 is an important benchmark
that tells us an encryption module is
working right."
Prodded by the Defense Department to meet
government encryption standards,
Microsoft insists that NT 4.0 and NT 5.0
will henceforth be designed around FIPS
140-1. And there will be only one version of
NT - the FIPS version - sold to the
government and commercial sectors.
Microsoft admits it might have sidestepped
the interoperability mess if it had gotten
into the government's test program earlier.
"We got into this a bit late," Arnold
confesses. "We weren't effectively paying
attention."
Late indeed. The FIPS 140-1 test program
was started five years ago by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), with help from the National
Security Agency.
During the past two years, the government
established a vigorous test regime with three
certified labs. Last year, agencies were told
they had to start buying FIPS 140-1
products to protect sensitive but unclassified
information.
To date, about 30 products have won FIPS
140-1 certification, including Netscape's
Communicator client software and
SuiteSpot server. According to NIST
officials, 30 other products are undergoing
testing.
Government agencies - in theory -
shouldn't be using NT to protect sensitive
but unclassified information because it isn't
FIPS 140-1certified, says Miles Smid,
manager of security technology at NIST.
Agencies can ask for a waiver, but the
reality is that none have bothered - the lack
of FIPS 140-1 products in the market seems
to be excuse enough.
"FIPS 140-1 is very important, but there
aren't enough products to buy," says the
Defense Department's Schaeffer.
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I Made Wiryana (0521-106 5328) Universitas Gunadarma - Indonesia
Rechnernetze und Verteilte Systeme http://nakula.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/made
Universitaet Bielelfeld Check my e-zine :
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://nakula.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/majalah
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