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In-car computers--headed for a dead end?: News - Communications

In-car computers--headed for a dead end?

Rachel Konrad, Special to ZDNet

17 May 2002 01:40 PM

Tags: telematics, in-car computers, dead end, dashboard

If the automobile industry proceeds with current business plans, the car of the future will include an outdated, malfunctioning jumble of incompatible electronic gadgets.

That's the pessimistic prediction of some experts at Telematics Detroit 2002, a trade show for people who engineer and manufacture dashboard electronics such as wireless devices, navigation tools and passenger entertainment systems--an emerging industry known as telematics. The two-day conference, which concludes Thursday, has so far been a stark contrast to the euphoria that surrounded in-vehicle computing just one year ago.

With a few exceptions, speakers and panelists here Wednesday highlighted the roadblocks and potholes that automakers will likely encounter if they continue trying to develop telematics standards internally. Many experts urged automakers--especially General Motors and its 7-year-old OnStar division--to cede the young market to wireless providers and technology start-ups, lest they lose focus on their core business of designing and manufacturing vehicles.

"Automakers need to appreciate the fact that telematics is a subsegment of the great wireless market and not a separate market," said Andrew Cole, keynote speaker and wireless practice leader at London-based strategy consulting firm Adventis. "We believe that the current attempt by automakers to become service providers must go away. The wireless manufacturers will be the deliverers, and the automakers will be the enablers, based on the irrefutable view that the mobile phone is king."

Criticism is even coming from within the ranks of the auto industry. Several automakers, including Germany-based DaimlerChrysler, have decided to surrender to technology companies some of the US$20 billion in worldwide telematics revenue expected in 2010. Executives who have crunched the numbers say no automaker sees profits in the sector anytime soon.

"We had some hubris and thought we could figure out a business model for the industry six or seven years ago," said Jim Geschke, vice president of electronics integration for Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, which partners with DaimlerChrysler and plans to launch wireless electronics in vehicles in mid-2003. "But we couldn't. So we recoiled and reinvented our approach.

"We shifted paradigms and realised this was the key," Geschke said, triumphantly whipping out a cell phone from his suit jacket. "This is the mobile brick."

The rise and fall of a revenue source
Fawning over the garden-variety cell phone is a far cry from the hope many auto executives held in the mid-1990s, when the notion of Internet and wireless access embedded in vehicles became fashionable. Many executives planned to compete directly against wireless providers, with plans to offer mobile and satellite products and services that worked only in the automobile.

To be sure, some are still hopeful that Detroit can build automobile-oriented wireless products and charge customers monthly or annual fees for in-vehicle services--including hands-free e-mail access, real-time traffic updates and concierge services for restaurants and concerts. They see telematics as a way to get revenue for the vehicle's entire life cycle of 10 years or more, not just at the point of sale.

"We have to build upon our foundation," said Scott Kubicki, vice president of OnStar Core Services, who noted in an interview that OnStar is not yet profitable as a standalone division and would not say when it would move into the black. "Once people realize the value in this, it will start creating more revenue for us. It hasn't taken off as fast as we wanted it to, but we think it will."

Even pessimists at the conference noted that within five years embedded diagnostic technology could allow mechanics to detect engine problems remotely and alert drivers before breakdowns occur. And according to several surveys, 50 percent to 70 percent of calls made by 120 million wireless phone users in the United States begin in automobiles, so customers are clearly accustomed to using wireless devices on the road.

But a number of problems could thwart automakers' efforts to wring profits from telematics, insiders and independent experts warned.

An obvious hurdle is the disparity in cycle times between the technology and automotive industry.

In Detroit, engineers need at least 18 months to take a vehicle from concept to execution--add three more years if the vehicle doesn't share many parts with another vehicle already in production. The so-called cycle time is at least three times longer than in the electronics industry, where products flow in six-month cycles.

Because of that imbalance, automakers that insist on embedded telematics will produce vehicles that have outdated technology just a half-year after they roll off the assembly line. Or, customers will have to bring their vehicles back to the dealership or to an after-market shop for hardware and software upgrades as long as they own the car.

Another problem is a relative lack of technology expertise among automobile executives and dealers.

Automakers have diversified during boom times into aerospace, railroads, television and boats--only to bail out in downturns because the potential cash cows became financial suck holes. That makes many executives wary of expanding into wireless as the economy limps out of recession.

"What are the chances we'll manage telematics well?" asked Jack Withrow, director of telematics for Chrysler. "The odds are against us. We can stick with the core business and sacrifice some returns but build the business...If we don't, we'll find ourselves in a heck of a lot of trouble real soon."

"We cannot reinvent the wheel"
Some Detroit veterans acknowledge that, regardless of how much automakers study wireless access and electronics, they probably will lag behind chip, wireless and electronics companies. Intel, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, Verizon and dozens of start-ups in California's Silicon Valley are interested in partnering with automakers.

"Network carriers provide a unique set of services, functionality and applications, and they spend a lot of money to do it," said Peter van Alstine, vice president of telematics for the automotive practice of Cross Country Automotive Services, a Boston-based consulting firm. "We won't be able to do that. We need a partnership model...to execute on time, on budget and flawlessly. We cannot reinvent the wheel and compete with them. What's the point?"

Dealers are also holdouts. Car sellers are notorious for their circumspection of new technology and many are just starting to experiment with online sales. Showrooms suffer high employee turnover, so a constant stream of new salespeople would have to learn the intricacies of telematics in order to persuade consumers to purchase the service.

But the most daunting issue, executives say, is a relative lack of consumer acceptance for wireless devices embedded in the vehicle. According to a recent survey by research group GartnerG2, 99 percent of people said they did not even know what "telematics" meant--despite OnStar's lauded advertising campaign with Batman and the Batmobile.

Consultants also say that auto executives misunderstand consumers and therefore have inappropriate marketing pitches. Critics are urging automakers to minimize their emphasis on "safety and security" features (remote door-unlock and airbag deployment alerts to police) and instead tout traffic information and passenger entertainment, including OnStar entertainment options from ESPN and Disney.

"There is no doubt the hype of telematics has exceeded what's been delivered," said Mike Finley, vice president of enterprise business for Ford's mobile division, Wingcast. "If the customer's airbag never deploys, it will be a tough sell to get them to re-up."

Pessimism has become so pervasive that some experts worry about a morale drain in the emerging sector. GartnerG2 automotive analyst Thilo Koslowski said the entire niche may be in a hangover from the hype of 2000 and 2001, when automakers were touting grand plans for telematics to revitalise the "Rust Belt" and make vehicles more vital.

"The telematics high has cooled off significantly," Koslowski said. "There was a big vision and dream to realise revenue for car manufacturers, and now we realise that won't happen anytime soon and that vision was overly optimistic."

Tech giants put chips on security alliance: News - Security

Tech giants put chips on security alliance

Robert Lemos, Special to ZDNet

09 April 2003 10:40 AM

Tags: hardware, security, computing, robert, lemos, group, trusted, compute

Death to the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, long live the Trusted Computing Group.

A bevy of the biggest computer hardware and software companies, formerly members of the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance (TCPA), announced on Tuesday that they had reconstituted themselves under a new name: the Trusted Computing Group.

The group will license and market security hardware and software technology that they intend to be integrated into every computing platform, from PCs and PDAs to mobile phones.

"The TCPA organisations as a whole...is going away," said Jim Ward, director of the Trusted Computing Group and an IBM employee.

The TCG is a more formal group with licensing policy, a marketing budget, and a mission to push the trusted computing technology into a variety of devices. "As we go into the broader device categories," Ward said, "one of the key messages of the organisation is that we have this common building block that can be used in different devices."

The new group adds marketing polish to the largely standards- and development-oriented Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. The specifications created by that group will form the core of the Trusted Computing Group, but in addition, the new group has created reasonable and nondiscriminatory (RAND) licensing terms and a logo program, and it has broadened the types of devices and applications for which the technology will be promoted.

The five founding members, called promoters, are Advanced Micro Devices, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Ten other companies, including Nokia, Phoenix Technologies and Sony, have already joined.

The formation of the new group signals the start of a big push to put hardware-based security into a host of consumer and corporate devices. Security has become a much-marketed feature of the next-generation of chips and hardware coming onto the market. Among the many forthcoming technologies are Intel's LaGrande, chipmaker Via Technologies' Padlock, Phoenix Technologies' Core Managed Environment and Transmeta's next Crusoe chip.

However, the movement has prompted concerns by some privacy and digital rights advocates.

Some Hollywood movies houses have been pressing for legislation that would require similar security measures in all devices that handle digital content. While the Trusted Computing Group's initiatives would seemingly fit that bill, the promoters denied that appeasing Hollywood is a goal of the group.

"There is no intent to use these devices for Hollywood content," said Steve Heil, technical evangelist for Microsoft's Trusted Platform Technology and Infrastructure Group. "The intent is recognition that security on a platform can only get so good with software-only solutions."

In addition, the various technologies--especially Microsoft's hardware-software combination formerly known as Palladium and the Trusted Computing Group's predecessor, the TCPA--have become the center of a controversy over whether the modifications will erode consumer privacy.

Chipmaker AMD said that addressing privacy concerns will be a top priority for the new group.

"All of us are highly sensitised to this issue and have emphasised that these concerns must be addressed," said Geoffrey Strongin, platform security architect for AMD. Strongin argued that, far from undermining privacy, hardware-based security will improve user protections. "What we are doing here is a tremendous enhancement to privacy. Without adequate security, privacy protections is impossible."

The new security technology consists of two parts: a hardware component with hardwired encryption functions and memory, and a software component that curtains off memory and requires keys kept in the hardware to unlock certain data.

Despite the concerns, the new group seems set to push forward, said Roger Kay, director of client computing for market researcher IDC. While the Trusted Computing Group expands the types of devices that might include the technology, adds a marketing budget for the group and institutes licensing terms, the real improvement may be in governance, he said.

"They used to have something like a security council for governance, where anyone could veto," he said, adding that the new group will have a board that makes decisions on a two-thirds majority basis, and that should make decisions happen more quickly. "It's about the big guys saying, 'Look, enough of this posturing. We need to look forward.'"

For Intel, the group is its third attempt at pursuing a trusted computer platform. Privacy worries stymied the hardware maker's first attempt: the processor ID. After backing down from making the ID by default, Intel continued to manufacture chips with the feature disabled. Later, the company teamed with Microsoft and IBM to create the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance. Now, the company has left the TCPA in favor of the new Trusted Computing Group.

The PC hardware giant's latest security technology, "LaGrande," will be introduced in the second half of the year.

The group will charge US$50,000 for new promoters, who will be part of the decision-making body. Contributors who can participate in the working groups will be charged US$15,000, and adopters who use the technology will have to pay US$7,500.

Phoenix, a contributor, has already started building on the work of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance with its Core Managed Environment software that it intends to build into the Basic Input Output Software (BIOS).

In addition to Phoenix, the other initial contributors are Atmel, Infineon, National Semiconductor, Nokia, Philips, Sony, ST Microelectronics, VeriSign and Wave Systems.

CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.

MS and IBM get caring and sharing: Insight

MS and IBM get caring and sharing

Kire Terzievski, Technology & Business magazine

22 August 2003 02:00 PM

Tags: quickplace, collaboration, european union, sametime, rmit, lotus, domino, t&b

Both IBM/Lotus and Microsoft have recently released new versions of their groupware suites--Notes/Domino and Exchange--with an emphasis on collaboration. We take them both through their paces.

Products like Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange provide a foundation for collaboration, e-business, and corporate messaging. They are designed with reliability, scalability, interoperability, and performance in mind and feature a number of tools that help keep your systems ticking over as well as making administering them easier.

In a nutshell, these products will help you set up policies, manage e-mail quotas and spam filtering, as well archiving your users' e-mail. You can also purchase add-ons that will enable you to take responsibility for creating workspaces or discussion forums for projects that you may have running. They will enable you to share documents with colleagues from around the world in real time. They can communicate using instant messaging to mobile phones and wireless PDAs. Another area where they can help you is development. They can help you quickly create multi-platform applications to automate business processes and increase workflow. You can also combine Web-based standards to create e-commerce solutions.

The real battle between Lotus and Microsoft no longer rests on mere e-mail or calendaring. These days, the real competition is in developing environments where staff can collaborate on projects--Microsoft's SharePoint and Lotus' QuickPlace and Sametime. These two companies also wrangle in the area of rapid application development, enabling you to develop custom collaborative applications for staff.

Platforms
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 is specifically designed for Windows 2003 Server, while Lotus Domino supports most major server platforms including Linux, Windows 2000 Server, IBM iSeries (AS/400), IBM zSeries (S/390), IBM pSeries (AIX), and Solaris. So with Lotus Domino you have that multi-platform support that you don't quite get with Microsoft Exchange.

Web/Mail
Both Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange integrate a Web server. Microsoft's Exchange server is Internet Information Server (IIS). If you want to develop Web-based applications you can use the Comprehensive Object Library (CDO). CDO for Exchange 2003 includes enhanced calendaring and contact management, and is dual-interfaced for programming in C , Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual Basic Scripting Edition, Java Script, and Java.

For mail, Exchange Server can use SMTP/POP3, IMAP, and Microsoft's proprietary format MAPI. It integrates best with Microsoft Outlook. There's an Outlook Web Access client that provides a robust Web client for remote, home, and occasional users.

Domino's Web server on the other hand is firmly locked into the Domino package, but is based on Apache. For developing applications, Lotus Domino Designer 6 can be used to develop and maintain Lotus Domino applications. Some of the new features include JavaScript libraries, document locking, more flexible agent security, remote debugging, XML tools, and rich-text tools. You can also build and deploy applications on existing platforms while using industry-standard programming skills such as LotusScript, Java Runtime Environment (JRE), JavaScript language, HTML, XML, C application program interfaces (APIs), CORBA, component object model (COM), and object-oriented programming.

Lotus Domino offers iNotes mail and POP3 mail as its two primary e-mail services. iNotes Mail service provides you with two ways to access your mail: via a Web-browser (iNotes) and via a POP3 client. POP3 Mail service allows you to access your mail using standard mail clients such as Outlook Express or Eudora. However Lotus Domino works best with the Notes client, so in order to get the best performance from your Lotus Domino server, you should use Notes.

Choosing the right product can be a difficult task. There are a number of factors such as company size, whether or not you're going to be developing applications in-house, network infrastructure and budget which all have to be considered.

For this review we take a look at some of the features of Lotus Domino and Exchange Server and the add-ons that make them full-featured collaboration products.

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AOL7 takes Australian broadband plunge: News - Communications

AOL7 takes Australian broadband plunge

James Pearce, ZDNet Australia and Reuters

17 September 2002 12:40 PM

Tags: lisa hook, denise garcia, john miller, gartnerg2, broadband, aim, file-sharing, p2p

AOL7 will kick off trials of its new broadband service in "a matter of weeks," with a view to providing the service commercially by 2003, its chief executive officer said.

Amanda Lacaze, CEO of AOL7 - a joint venture between AOL Time Warner, Seven Network and AAPT - told ZDNet Australia that its Australian customers were anxious to secure the service quality made available through broadband technologies. Launch of the trial is scheduled shortly after AOL launches its broadband offering on a full commercial basis in the United States.

Lacaze declined to reveal pricing structures for the broadband service, saying they were still being worked out, but confirmed there would be limits on download volumes included in set pricing packages. "As with mobile phone plans we expect that the pricing will include a combination of included use, by either time or downloads, and then some sort of usage-based charging."

"Broadband will really unlock the value of a lot of the content assets we have within our group," said Lacaze, citing popular satirists Roy and HG as an example of in-demand content. Lacaze added that AOL7 would be sharing its content with the US and other countries. .

In America AOL will release version 8.0 of its Internet service next month. AOL's broadband head Lisa Hook said the new version will feature full-motion video on the welcome screen greeting AOL users connecting through broadband.

The service will also have CD-quality sound and programs like "Broadband Rocks", a TV-like show with behind-the-scenes concert footage. It will also let members swap music and photos, after finding file-sharing to be popular feature among broadband users.

"We have realized broadband can be a differentiated product, and we can exploit the technology by looking at it as a different medium" than TV, Hook said in an interview. "What we are going to be launching with 8.0 is really just the beginning of the day of a longer-term plan."

While version 8.0 does cater more to high-speed users than in the past, GartnerG2 media research director Denise Garcia said, "They are keeping up with everyone else, but I don't think they are blazing the trail."

AOL head Jon Miller said in a recent interview that no one has yet found the "killer" application that will convince droves of people to switch to broadband.

"The worst thing you can do is decide that you know. The best thing you can do is intelligently explore the potential of having that kind of high-speed connection. If you do that in smart ways--taking some of the learning that exists already--that's where your best shot lies," Miller said.

Reuters contributed to this story

Xbox sings a new tune: News - Business

Xbox sings a new tune

David Becker, Special to ZDNet

13 May 2003 02:20 PM

Tags: music, david, e3, mixer, xbox, becker

Microsoft announced the first nongame application for its Xbox video game console Monday and touted a handful of high-profile games intended to boost the system's cachet among hardcore players.

The unveiling of the Xbox Music Mixer was the most striking announcement at the company's press conference held in advance of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show here. The package will include PC and Xbox software that will allow owners to transfer digital music and photos from their computer to the console's hard drive.

"We have to expand the definition of interactive entertainment," Microsoft executive Ed Fries said during the presentation, promising the music software would "unlock more of the entertainment potential of Xbox."

David Hufford, Microsoft product manager, said before the press conference that the package helps expand the utility of the Xbox by allowing it to become a conduit for running slideshows on a television and for doing karaoke using the microphone included in the kit.

Nongame uses for the Xbox have been the subject of widespread speculation ever since the console was announced, with many analysts casting the machine as a Trojan horse for Microsoft to expand its reach into the living room. Potential uses for the Xbox as a digital jukebox, a video recorder or a limited-function PC substitute have been mooted. Microsoft fueled speculation last year by conducting a survey on possible Xbox-PC connectivity.

Hufford said the Xbox is now established enough as a games machine that Microsoft can look at other ways to utilise its capabilities. Music was a natural direction, he said, given the popularity of existing functions that allow Xbox owners to "rip" songs from a CD to the console's hard drive. "When we looked at the popularity of people using the Xbox as a jukebox to play their music, we thought there were ways to enhance the value there."

In related news, Microsoft announced that "Doom III," the highly anticipated shooting game expected to be released in a PC version possibly late this year, will come out for the Xbox. The software giant also showed previews of "Halo 2," the sequel to the million-selling shooter that helped drive initial Xbox sales.

The company also showed kid-oriented titles from Rare, the popular British game developer Microsoft bought last year in an expensive bid to boost the range and quality of its self-published Xbox games.

Finally, there were new services for Xbox Live, the online gaming service for the console. These included Web-based services that will alert subscribers by mobile phone, handheld computer and other devices when a buddy wants to play a game online.

Equally noteworthy were several announcements Microsoft failed to make. Despite widespread speculation, the company offered no price cut on the Xbox hardware and didn't show the slimmed-down version of the console many had expected.

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