Extreme Networks replaces CEO, lays off 70

Ethernet switch vendor Extreme Networks is replacing its CEO and laying off 70 employees in an effort to quickly improve the company's bottom line and set it up to run profitably with lower revenues. Canepa receives $639,354 severance. CEO Mark Canepa, who took the position in 2006, has resigned, but will remain for a short period to help recently hired CFO Bob Corey transition to Acting CEO. The company is seeking a permanent replacement.

As part of the restructuring, the company also eliminated the job of chief counsel, getting rid of Robert Schlossman, and replacing him with Vice Presideint Diane Honda, according to a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company didn't say where the 70 layoffs would come, but it represents about 9% of Extreme's workforce. Judging from the company Web site, the head of human resources and head software developer are also gone. Most Notable IT Layoffs of 2009  The moves will lower the company's expenses by $2.5 million per quarter, with the larger goal being to have the company break even if it makes $70 million per quarter. The company hasn't reported its financial statement for the quarter ended Sept. 27, but it said earlier this month that it expected to come up $14.4 million shy of what Wall Street analysts forecasted. The measures will cost the company a one-time $4.2 million hit.

The analysts projected Extreme would take in $66 million but the actual revenues will be more like $80.4 million, the company said. The company's stock prices hit a low of close to a dollar in March, struggled back to just over $3 last month then dipped to about $2.25 over the past weeks. "They're in a tough spot," says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee group. "This is a company that's truly having a hard time finding its way." He says the company is smaller than its main competitors, HP, IBM, Cisco, Juniper and Brocade (which has reportedly put itself up for sale).  Extreme makes a range of switches from edge, to aggregation to core, as well as wireless switches and security gear. A the time Canepa blamed the company's North American business as being particularly soft because some deals it had hoped for fell through and others were delayed beyond the end of the quarter. The company burst onto the networking scene in the mid-1990s as one in a pack of Gigabit Ethernet and Layer 3 switching pioneers and differentiated itself, among other ways, by uniquely packaging its technology in purple boxes.  "When you look at all the network vendors out there, what problem is it that Extreme is trying to solve that isn't being solved by somebody else?" Kerravala says. "If you look at data centers, all the emphasis is on converged fabric, and they just don't have a roadmap to get there. They'll get smaller and smaller and continue to exist off their installed base until their assets get acquired by somebody else." Insiders and channel partners said the firm seemed to be too focused on long range strategic planning instead of trying to figure out how to survive the dire economy. I think they'll go the route of Enterasys.

Extreme's Chairman of the Board Gordon Stitt said in a written statement: "Management and the Board decided to take this action to streamline our operations, reduce our breakeven and create an operating model that will position Extreme Networks for sustained profitability as quickly as possible. We remain committed to the products, markets, channels and customers and to continuing to introduce new and innovative products." These reductions have been taken across the entire organization.

Computer programmers set for smash-mouth brain battle

A smart people smack-down is set to start next week where thousands of university computer researchers will pit their brains and machines in a grueling battle of logic, strategy, and mental endurance. Layer 8 Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring During the competition, ten to twelve problems are attempted in a five hour period. The 34th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Contest (ICPC) pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a nerve-wracking five-hour deadline. The problems are of varying difficulty and flavor.

The goal is that every team solve two problems, that every problem is solved, and that no team solve them all, according to ACM. Contests in the past have included problems that searched for a missing boat at sea, triangulated the location of a faulty transmitter, computed golf handicaps, stacked pipe of varying diameters in a fixed width bin, coded or decoded messages, printed braille, sought an exit to a maze, processed satellite images and solved a math problem. ACM says it wants two problems that could be solved in an hour by a first or second year student, two that could be solved in an hour by a third year student, and two that will likely determine the winners. Problems are presented with no more than a page of text, a helpful illustration, a sample input set with and accepted output set, ACM states. And judging is relentlessly strict, IBM says. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build smart software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges.

The students are given a problem statement, not a requirements document. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner. Some problems require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only.

Still others are simply too hard to solve - except for the world's brightest problem-solvers, according to IBM. The Battle of the Brains is the largest and most prestigious computing competition in the world, with more than tens of thousands of students from universities in approximately 90 countries on six continents participating. Previously, the 2009 ACM-ICPC World Finals took place in Stockholm, Sweden, where a team from St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics in Russia emerged as the world champion for the second year in a row. Since IBM began sponsoring the contest in 1997, participation has grown from 1,100 to more than 7,100 teams. Regional bouts will begin in the United States on October 18 and continue through December, sweeping from continent to continent. Only 100 three-person teams will advance to the World Finals on February 5, 2010 hosted by Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China. "The ACM-ICPC affords students the opportunity to showcase their talents and gain exposure among top recruiters," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "The contest is also a forum for advancing technology in an effort to better accommodate the growing needs of the future."

NASA, European Space agency want to go to Mars

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s. NetworkWorld Extra: 10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos The envisioned program includes the provision that by 2016, ESA will build what it calls an Entry, Descent, and semi-soft Landing System (EDLS) technology demonstrator and a science/relay orbiter. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. In 2018, the ESA would also deliver its ExoMars rover equipped with drilling capability.

NASA and ESA will establish legally binding agreements, as soon as feasible, to cover specific activities of this initiative, the agencies said in a release. NASA's contribution in 2016 includes a trace gas mapping and imaging scientific payload for the orbiter and the launch and, in 2018 a rover, the EDLS, and rockets for the launch. The NASA/ESA agreement has been in the works for months and while the agencies have cooperated in the past, budgetary constraints likely helped move the discussions along. In fact one of the findings in the recent Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report said the US can lead a bold new international effort in the human exploration of space. The idea being they can support the costs of research, development and launch of Mars missions together better than individually.

If international partners are actively engaged, there could be substantial benefits to foreign relations and more overall resources could become available to the human spaceflight program. If humans are ever to live for long periods on another planetary surface, it is likely to be on Mars. The commission also said that "Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration of the inner solar system; but it is not the best first destination. But Mars is not an easy place to visit with existing technology and without a substantial investment of resources." NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back high-resolution images of about 30 proposed landing sites for the Mars Science Laboratory, a mission launching in 2011 to deploy a long-distance rover carrying sophisticated science instruments on Mars by 2012. The European Space Agency recently said to wants volunteers to take a simulated 520-day trip to Mars. The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 program being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research.

Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the Martian surface.

Berners-Lee's foundation wants the Web to improve life

The World Wide Web Foundation, Tim Berners-Lee's latest brainchild, is now officially open for business and involved with two initial projects, as it embarks on using the Web to empower people worldwide and bring about positive socio-economic change. The formation of the group was announced last year. Berners-Lee, the Web's inventor and founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, will make the announcement on Sunday at the 2009 Internet Governance Forum in Egypt. "We're not focusing on the technology of the Web itself, but on what the technology can do to help people improve their situations, create new opportunities, new businesses, attend to their families' health needs, [improve] education, even good governance," said Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation, in an interview.

It is opening its doors with two programs respectively focused on leveraging Web technology to improve farming in Africa and teaching low-income young people how to create online content. The idea is to help these farmers communicate better, share information, and learn and improve agricultural techniques. "It's a great project where we're going to train local developers and we're going to have local solutions to local problems, which may be applicable in other parts of the world, for all we know, in any desert area," Bratt said. "We hope the project will be a shining example for others to follow, and hopefully propagate good Web practices and integration of useful, life-critical Web services that way," he added. The first project, done in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and called Web Alliance for Re-greening in Africa, seeks to enlist local developers to build a Web-based platform for farmers in desert areas in Burkina Faso, Mali and other places. The second project, in conjunction with the Brazil-based Center for Digital Inclusion, will develop training for young people in how to create Web content that can be accessed via mobile phones and include voice and graphics. It will be rolled out initially in five inner-city community centers in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

Sharing Data Securely to Foster Product Development

Boston Scientific wants to tear down barriers that prevent product developers from accessing the research that went into its successful medical devices so that they can create new products faster. It's a classic corporate data privacy problem. "The more info you give knowledge workers, the more effective they can be in creating a lot of value for the company," says Boris Evelson, a principal analyst at Forrester. "This creates disclosure risks-that someone's going to walk away with the data and give it to a competitor." To read more on this topic, see: Security Breaches: Three Tools for Preventing Data Loss and Sustainable Innovation at Boston Scientific. But making data too easily accessible could open the way to theft of information potentially worth millions or billions of dollars. This tension compels the $8 billion company to seek out software that allows the broader engineering community to share knowledge while managing access to product development data, says Jude Currier, cardiovascular knowledge management and innovation practices lead at Boston Scientific.

That is, regularly monitor who's accessing what and adjust permissions as business conditions change. Active security is the way to address this problem, Currier says. Open but Protected Keeping the pipeline of new stents, pacemakers and catheters fresh is especially important because heart-related items account for 80 percent of Boston Scientific's sales. Boston Scientific had inherited regulatory problems from acquisitions it made during that time. Over the past few years engineers have been focused on quality system improvements, Currier says.

Now that those situations are addressed, the company is ready to reinvigorate internal innovation, he says. Before, Boston Scientific's product developers worked in silos with limited access to research by colleagues on different product lines. Boston Scientific is piloting Invention Machine's Goldfire software, which, Currier says, provides the right mix of openness and security for data. Information was so locked down that even if scientists found something useful from a past project, they often didn't have access to it. "We're changing that," Currier says. It combines internal company data with information from public sources, such as federal government databases.

Goldfire makes an automated workflow out of such tasks as analyzing markets and milking a company's intellectual property. Researchers can use the software to find connections among different sources, for instance by highlighting similar ideas. The goal is to have any engineer access any other's research. "The people in trenches can't wait for [that] day to arrive," he says. Engineers can use such analysis to get ideas for new products and begin to study their feasibility. Although the goal is more openness, not all data stays open forever. He adds that since installing Goldfire, patent applications are up compared to similar engineering groups that do not use the Goldfire tool. "We have had to educate [people] that we aren't throwing security out the window [but] making valuable knowledge available to the organization," he says.

For example, as a project gets closer to the patent application stage, access to the data about it is clipped to fewer people, Currier says. Senior Editor Kim S. Nash can be reached at knash@cio.com. Follow me on Twitter @knash99. Follow everything from CIO Magazine @CIOMagazine. Do you Tweet?

FBI building system that blows away fingerprinting

TAMPA – The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expanding beyond its traditional fingerprint-focused collection practices to develop a new biometrics system that will include DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans, blended to create what's known as "multi-modal biometrics." Slideshow: The changing face of biometricsHow the Defense Department might institutionalize war-time biometrics "The FBI today is announcing a rapid DNA initiative," said Louis Grever, executive assistant director of the FBI's science and technology branch, during his keynote presentation at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa. This multi-modal NGI biometrics database system will hold DNA records and more. The FBI plans to begin migrating from its IAFIS database, established in the mid-1990s to hold its vast fingerprint data, to a next-generation system that's expected to be in prototype early next year. Grever said that fingerprints and DNA appear to be the most mature and searchable biometrics possibilities, but the FBI is working to include iris-scan records among newer biometrics technologies to identify criminals and terrorists.

The FBI's current IAFIS database remains a workhouse; it processes about 200,000 daily transactions from its 370 million 10-fingerprint records, and it just crossed the 250 million transaction mark. The plan is to share this data with authorized U.S. and international investigative partners, as the agency does today. The next-generation FBI database system is under design by MorphoTrak and is expected to include DNA, iris scans, advanced 3-D facial imaging and voice scans among its multi-modal biometrics. The goal is to drop from a roughly two-hour response time for IAFIS urgent requests to less than 10 minutes. Lower turnaround times for delivering information over wide-area networks are planned.

But FBI officials acknowledged there's still a lot of research and development that needs to be done to reach its NGI goals. The FBI is cosponsoring research with the Department of Defense, which has a similar goal. One goal is to develop a rapid DNA analysis method that would provide DNA analysis in less than an hour, as opposed to several hours or even days. Kevin Reid, section chief for the biometrics service section at the FBI, said the FBI also wants to establish a service-oriented architecture for NGI, but it's not clear when this would be in place to provide services related to biometrics information-sharing. The FBI, under the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, is now allowed to collect reference-sample DNA material for biometrics analysis purposes at the time of booking, Grever said. "DNA has become a powerful and timely tool," said Grever, adding there are no "privacy or civil liberties issues beyond those associated with fingerprints." The FBI is already moving into new areas, including setting up a palm-print repository and searchable databases for scars, marks and tattoos that it will be collecting.

Branson unveils spaceship that will launch civilians into heavens

The man behind Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic Airways is launching a new venture that's out of this world. Virgin Founder and British billionaire Richard Branson is now throwing his entrepreneurial muscle behind Virgin Galactic , his latest business venture. Literally. The company later today plans to formally unveil its commercial spaceship - SpaceShipTwo - in the Mojave Desert.

The unveiling of [SpaceShipTwo] takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this ambitious project is not only moving rapidly, but also making tremendous progress towards our goal of safe commercial operation." However, the company didn't say when the craft will undergo the required "extensive test flying" program or when it will start carrying tourists into space. Virgin Galactic reports that about 300 people have forked over $200,000, or at least a hefty deposit, to take a flight into space as astronaut tourists. "This is truly a momentous day," said Branson in a statement. "The team has created not only a world first but also a work of art. An engineering team, headed by Branson's Virgin Galactic partner Burt Rutan, began building the spacecraft in 2007. The vehicle is designed to carry two pilots and six passengers into a sub-orbital flight. If all goes as planned, the venture should become the world's first commercial space line, capable of providing civilians with access to space travel. The company also hope the craft can carry scientific equipment and payloads into space as NASA retires its space shuttle fleet next year. The new spacecraft is set to be unveiled as darkness falls this evening at the Mojave Air and Spaceport , according to the company.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Gov. California Gov. Bill Richardson are expected to christen the spacecraft the "Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise."