US lawmakers question ICANN gTLD plan

Several U.S. lawmakers urged the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to back off on a plan to offer an unlimited number of new generic top-level domains until concerns about trademark protections and other issues can be addressed. You guys made us come here today." The board at ICANN, the nonprofit organization created in 1998 to oversee the Internet's domain name system, voted in June 2008 to move toward unlimited gTLDs, in addition to the 21 gTLDs available now, including .com, .biz, and .info. Members of a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday questioned ICANN Chief Operating Officer Doug Brent about why the organization continues to move forward with its plan to sell new generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, complained that ICANN hasn't been able to resolve complaints about its plan to sell new gTLDs to compete with .com, .org and other current TLDs. "This is a hearing we shouldn't have had to call," Conyers said. "If the parties had come together, I doubt if we'd be here this morning. Under the ICANN plan, anyone could apply for a new gTLD - some suggested have been .food, .basketball and .eco - at a cost of about US$100,000. Asked by lawmakers how soon ICANN planned to offer new gTLDs, Brent said he wasn't sure.

Critics of the TLD expansion, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, have complained that a huge expansion of gTLDs would force trademark owners to buy multiple domains on each new gTLD, potentially costing them and their customers billions of dollars. ICANN had originally planned to offer them this year, but the latest estimate is February, and Brent said he expects that deadline to slip as ICANN works with critics to resolve issues. This week, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), an organization with 19 large-business members, called on the U.S. government to conduct a "full-scale" audit of ICANN. "ICANN has not properly vetted this decision in an objective fashion," CADNA said. "This rollout expands the size of the Internet exponentially without first performing a sound cost/benefit and security and risk analysis to determine both desirability among and risk to Internet users." At the Wednesday hearing, Conyers seemed to connect the gTLD disagreements with the end of an oversight agreement ICANN has with the U.S. Department of Commerce. A spokesman for Conyers wasn't immediately available to clarify his comment. ICANN's long-standing formal relationship with the U.S. government ends Sept. 30. "If you don't meet the 30th deadline, you're going to all be sorry that you didn't make it," Conyers said.

ICANN's Brent defended the organization's decision to move forward with new gTLDs. Internet users, including the U.S. government, have long called for new TLDs, he said. Winners of new gTLDs will have to abide by a lengthy set of rules, he said. "ICANN did not casually think this plan up," Brent added. "This will not be an unbridled expansion. In addition, the expansion of TLDs would allow Internet users who don't use the Roman alphabet to have domain names in their native languages, he noted. It is the work of many hands from a bottom-up process." Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, questioned whether ICANN had enough resources to enforce strong trademark protections and other rules in the new gTLDs. He asked if ICANN saw that there were still "a lot of things that need to be worked out here." "We might question 'a lot,' but I think, absolutely we have more work to do," Brent answered. Instead, we should address these concerns." But Steve DelBianco, executive director of e-commerce trade group NetChoice, suggested the new gTLDs are little more than an effort to create new labels, when ICANN has more important issues to work on. "Every day our industry and my members create new applications, Web sites and services," he said. "Labels are just one of the ways people find these new services.

Despite the continued concerns, Paul Stahura, CEO and president of domain-name registrar eNom, said the ICANN plan will lead to more competition among domain-name registries. "There is high consumer demand for many new gTLDs," he said. "There currently is little or no competition to satisfy this demand, and ... we shouldn't prohibit competition because of trademark concerns. The label is not the creation, it's just something we stick on it." One proposed gTLD is .food, he said. "Dot-food won't create a single new restaurant," DelBianco said. "It won't create a new Web page, it won't create new restaurant reviews or online reservation sites."

The Net at 40: What's Next?

When the Internet hit 40 years old - which, by many accounts, it did earlier this month - listing the epochal changes it has brought to the world was an easy task. Businesses stay in touch with customers using the Twitter and Facebook online social networks. It delivers e-mail, instant messaging, e-commerce and entertainment applications to billions of people.

CEOs of major corporations blog about their companies and their activities. On Sept. 2, 1969, a team of computer scientists created the first network connection, a link between two computers at the University of California, Los Angeles. Astronauts have even used Twitter during space shuttle missions. But according to team member Leonard Kleinrock , although the Internet is turning 40, it's still far from its middle age. "The Internet has just reached its teenage years," said Kleinrock, now a distinguished professor of computer science at UCLA. "It's just beginning to flex its muscles. That will pass as it matures." The next phase of the Internet will likely bring more significant changes to daily life - though it's still unclear exactly what those may be. "We're clearly not through the evolutionary stage," said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at Enderle Group. "It's going to be taking the world and the human race in a quite different direction. The fact that it's just gotten into its dark side - with spam and viruses and fraud - means it's like an [unruly] teenager.

We just don't know what the direction is yet. It may doom us. It may save us. But it's certainly going to change us." Marc Weber, founding curator of the Internet History Program at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., suggested that the Internet's increasing mobility will drive its growth in the coming decades. Sean Koehl, technology evangelist in Intel Corp.'s Intel Labs research unit, expects that the Internet will someday take on a much more three-dimensional look. "[The Internet] really has been mostly text-based since its inception," he said. "There's been some graphics on Web pages and animation, but bringing lifelike 3-D environments onto the Web really is only beginning. "Some of it is already happening ... though the technical capabilities are a little bit basic right now," Koehl added. The mobile Internet "will show you things about where you are," he said. "Point your mobile phone at a billboard, and you'll see more information." Consumers will increasingly use the Internet to immediately pay for goods, he added.

The beginnings of the Internet aroused much apprehension among the developers who gathered to watch the test of the first network - which included a new, state-of-the-art Honeywell DDP 516 computer about the size of a telephone booth, a Scientific Data Systems computer and a 50-foot cable connecting the two. We were confident the technology was secure. The team on hand included engineers from UCLA, top technology companies like GTE, Honeywell and Scientific Data Systems, and government agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "Everybody was ready to point the finger at the other guy if it didn't work," Kleinrock joked. "We were worried that the [Honeywell] machine, which had just been sent across the country, might not operate properly when we threw the switch. I had simulated the concept of a large data network many, many times - all the connections, hop-by-hop transmissions, breaking messages into pieces. It was thousands of hours of simulation." As with many complex and historically significant inventions, there's some debate over the true date of the Internet's birth. The mathematics proved it all, and then I simulated it.

Some say it was that September day in '69. Others peg it at Oct. 29 of the same year, when Kleinrock sent a message from UCLA to a node at the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. Kleinrock, who received a 2007 National Medal of Science, said both 1969 dates are significant. "If Sept. 2 was the day the Internet took its first breath," he said, "we like to say Oct. 29 was the day the infant Internet said its first words." This version of this story originally appeared in Computerworld 's print edition. Still others argue that the Internet was born when other key events took place. It's an edited version of an article that first appeared on Computerworld.com.

Avaya wins Nortel enterprise business for $900 million

Avaya has emerged as the winning bidder for Nortel's enterprise business, reportedly beating out Siemens Enterprise Communications over the weekend. Avaya will also contribute an additional pool of $15 million for an employee retention program. The firm will pay $900 million for the unit, Nortel's Government Solutions group and DiamondWare Ltd., a Nortel-owned maker of softphones.

That price is nearly twice what Avaya was initially said to be buying the enterprise business for back in July before auction bidding kicked in. Telecom carrier Verizon, however, is expected to contest the sale on the grounds that Avaya does not plan to retain customer support contracts between Nortel and Verizon. Slideshow: The rise and fall of Nortel Avaya has sought Nortel's enterprise business in hopes of boosting its share of the enterprise telephony and unified communications markets, and getting more customers to migrate to its IP line of communications products.  The sale, expected to close later this year, is subject to court approvals in the U.S., Canada, France and Israel as well as regulatory approvals, other customary closing conditions and certain post-closing purchase price adjustments. Nortel is confident the sale will go through without any snags. "We do not expect the Verizon interaction to impact court approval or the close of this deal," said Joel Hackney, president of Nortel Enterprise Solutions. "We will continue to go forward in supporting customers." Hackney would not say whether Nortel is engaged in the negotiations between Avaya and Verizon on the future of certain customer support contracts, mentioning only that Nortel supports Verizon as a customer as well as the carrier's customers. Nortel customers hope the deal works out in their interest. "Nortel earned the trust of our user group members by delivering innovative, reliable communications solutions and ensuring high-levels of service and support, " said Victor Bohnert, Executive Director of the International Nortel Networks Users Association, in a prepared statement. "With the announcement of today's purchase by Avaya, we look forward to extending that relationship forward to serve the business communications needs of our constituency base across the globe." Nortel will seek Canadian and U.S. court approvals of the proposed sale agreement at a joint hearing on September 15, 2009. The sale close is expected late in the fourth quarter.

Hackney also said there were two bidders for the enterprise unit but would not identify the second suitor. In some EMEA jurisdictions this transaction is subject to information and consultation with employee representatives. As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that its common shareholders or the preferred shareholders of Nortel Networks Limited will receive any value from the creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

UN document details $300 million ERP mega-project

An early-stage planning document for the United Nations' ongoing global ERP (enterprise resource planning) project calls for a budget north of US$300 million and provides a detailed look at the challenges the effort must overcome.

Dubbed "Umoja," after a Swahili word meaning 'unity,' the project "presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to equip the organization with twenty-first century techniques, tools, training and technology," the document states.

The UN's IT infrastructure is a staggering tangle of disconnected, redundant and antiquated legacy infrastructure, resulting in gross inefficiencies throughout the organization, according to the document.

Over the years, the organization has collected "at least" 1,400 information systems, many of which are "used to support or track paper-based processes," states the report, which was first brought to light in a Fox News report this week.

For example, the equivalent of up to 40 full-time employees is currently being used to process interoffice and interagency vouchers, and the total time spent each year processing travel claims "is more than the full-time equivalent (FTE) of 60 person-years," the report said.

IT operations are also heavily siloed, according to the report: "Most duty stations, and many organisational units within duty stations, contain their own stand-alone finance, human resources, supply chain, central support services and information technology areas."

If the ERP implementation is successful, it could provide between roughly $470 million and $770 million in "ongoing annual capacity improvements, costs savings and cost recovery," the document states.

But the project has a sizable price tag of its own. The report proposes a budget of $337 million, which is divvied up among a series of line items, including:

- $76 million for "2,597 work months" of system build and implementation services.

- $14 million for travel, which presumes 1,285 trips will be taken by "ERP team members, subject-matter experts and corporate consultants" at an average air ticket cost of $6,000. Each trip will also get $202 for "terminal expenses" and $5,000 for 20 days worth of per diems, for a total cost of about $11,000 per trip.

- $1.8 million for office furnishings to support 234 workers, including 80 core staff, 66 subject matter experts, eight consultants and 80 system integrators, or about $7,700 per person.

- $6.7 million for office rental, based on an annual rate of $14,300 per person

- $564,200 for long distance telephone calls, teleconferencing and videoconferencing

- $18 million for hiring "limited replacements" for subject matter experts involved in the project

- $16 million for software licenses and maintenance fees

Also, according to the Fox News report, the project had originally been budgeted at $286.6 million.

The draft report has since been updated and the numbers in it have changed, said UN spokesman Farhan Haq. He could not say whether the project's scale had shifted significantly or confirm the budget figure cited by Fox News.

Haq declined to comment further, but said the UN would discuss the project in greater detail once the report is finalized.

What is clear is that the project remains in extremely early stages. An initial design phase began in May and is scheduled to last between nine and 12 months, according to the document.

In addition, the UN has yet to finalize a contract with its chosen vendor, SAP, and won't solicit bids for the integration work until the last quarter of this year.

Despite the project's staggering scale, the UN could recoup its investment within two years of "full deployment and stabilization," the report said.

In the UN's case, a slow pace may well be for the best, said Ray Wang, a partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group.

While every global ERP rollout is difficult, the UN is in a special situation given its international makeup and set of missions, such as managing military peacekeeping forces and responding to emergencies, he said.

"You're trying to push a system out to people with different cultures, habits, levels of [connectivity]. It requires a lot of change management, a lot of face-to-face sessions for a project of this type to succeed.This isn't a standard business case. ... This isn't your standard ERP system," he said.

The UN report echoes the sentiment: "The enormous change in the human skills, working methods, procedures and technology required to fully realize the benefits of Umoja requires a strong commitment from staff at all levels."