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Google App store takes strain

Lezette Engelbrecht
By Lezette Engelbrecht, ITWeb online features editor
Johannesburg, 07 Jun 2010

Google App store takes strain

Two weeks after announcing a business version of its Google App Engine application building and hosting service, Google acknowledges the performance of the product's data store has been chronically deficient for weeks, reports PC World.

To make up for the recent string of outages, slowdowns and errors, Google is waiving data store CPU costs retroactively effective to the 31 May bill and until further notice.

The data store problems, which have rippled out to other App Engine components, have been caused by the platform's growth, which has outpaced server capacity, Google said in a blog post last week.

Mobile charts new business path

Many employees now spend more time using their phone to check e-mail than they do making calls. It's hardly surprising, as today's smartphones offer a wealth of features that can help business users do more while they're on the move, says Accountancy Age.

However, the current crop of smartphones use a bewildering array of operating systems, and many of these mobile platforms are primarily targeted at consumers. The question is how do they square up when it comes to real business features?

In the near future, Blackberry is likely to remain the number one choice, thanks to its excellent push e-mail system and strong support from business software developers. However, Apple is likely to be a significant player. It's starting to make inroads in the business world with the consumer appeal of the device helping to ease its path.

IT staff find packaged apps risky

IT security professionals are hacking into their own systems because they believe packaged applications are riddled with vulnerable bugs, according to a recent survey from a security firm, states Computing.co.uk.

Nearly one in three (31%) of the respondents to Fortify Software's survey admitted their organisation had been hacked in the past, and a similar number said they didn't know if it had.

The vast majority (83%) said they thought off-the-shelf software was buggy and insecure and more than half (565) said it was vulnerable to hackers. Consequently, many are hacking into their own systems to test the defences they have built.

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