Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »June 24, 2008 — IDG News Service —
Symbian's decision to make its source code freely available tips the scales in favor of open-source software in smartphones and could make it harder for Microsoft, and even other open-source platforms like Google's Android and Linux, to compete.
On Tuesday, companies including Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and Vodafone announced that they will work together to make the Symbian OS open source. They will offer it under a royalty-free license to members of a new nonprofit group called the Symbian Foundation.
Symbian is used in about 60 percent of the world's smartphones, which means that open-source software will soon drive the majority of those devices. The proprietary model behind mobile operating systems from Microsoft, Research In Motion and Apple, then, will for the first time be in the minority.
Symbian will become the biggest, but not the only, open-source game in town. Others include the LiMo Foundation, which is working on a mobile Linux-based operating system, and Google's Android, also an open Linux-based OS.
While those projects have been in the works for some time, the Symbian effort could have an advantage because of the decade of growth and development behind it. "It is nearly always easier to start from something you know and change it (Symbian), then to start from scratch (Android)," wrote Jack Gold, analyst with J. Gold Associates, in a commentary about the announcement.
Mary McDowell, Nokia's chief development officer, agreed. "If you look at the assets being contributed to the [Symbian] Foundation, we're talking about a platform with 200 million users, 10 years of development, support from multiple shipping vendors and operators ready today," she said. "As you've seen with some of the new entrants, that's sometimes a hard thing."
She may have been referring to a report on Tuesday that Google's Android project is progressing more slowly than expected, due in part to challenges involved with working with mobile operators. Google is running up against the same difficulties that any new entrant would in developing a new mobile operating system.
In addition, Google faces one of the same challenges that many say has held back Symbian. Even though Symbian powers the bulk of smartphones around the world, it has failed to become an industry standard due in large part to Nokia's perceived control of the software. The vast majority of phones running Symbian come from Nokia, which has made some other handset makers reluctant to license the software because they feel like they would be licensing it from their biggest competitor. Google faces a similar problem in that it's perceived to be driving the development of Android, rather then taking a more community approach.