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The top IT industry stories from February 2008

• The Pakistani government caused a globa outage of YouTube.com after an attempt to censor the site within the country accidentally caused Internet service providers (ISPs) around the world to block the website for two hours. Pakistani officials ordered the site to be blocked within Pakistan because it contains material that they believe to be anti-Islamic. However, the redirect that the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority assigned to YouTube.com’s IP address was somehow distributed among the world’s ISPs – meaning that visitors to the site in all countries were confronted with an error message.

• Cape Clear, the Dublin-based enterprise service bus maker, was acquired by Workday, the business software-as-a-service start-up led by former PeopleSoft head Dave Duffield.

• The management of CIO Connect, the IT leaders’ networking organisation, led a buy-out from parent the National Computing Centre.

• Software provider Novell got its hands on technology that helps organisations manage their increasingly complex virtual environments by agreeing to pay $205 million for PlateSpin, a specialist in the containment of ‘virtual sprawl’.

• Microsoft made its biggest ever enterprise software announcement, with the unveiling of SQL Server 2008 (its enhanced database, middleware and business intelligence bundle), Windows Server 2008 (the five-years-in-the-making upgrade to its operating system that now includes advanced virtualisation capabilities) and Visual Studio 2008 (the re-crafting of the company’s application development environment).

• The European Commission slapped a further 899 million fine on Microsoft for allegedly failing to comply with an original antitrust ruling dating back to 2004. The amount – the largest ever imposed on a single company – is on top of the 497 million penalty the Commission agreed with Microsoft in October 2007.

• Networking company Nortel Networks said it would lay off 2,100 staff after its fourth-quarter revenues fell by 4% to $3.2 billion and losses soared to $844 million.

• UK home secretary Jacqui Smith unveiled plans for a gradual roll-out of ID cards. Non-EU foreign nationals coming to work in the UK will be required to have ID cards from this year. Next year, airport workers will be issued with cards; and students, those working with children and other select groups will be encouraged to get a biometrically verifiable identity. From 2011/12 the Identity and Passport Service will issue “significant volumes” of cards to people applying for British passports.

• Apple launched an assault on the corporate mobile device market. A free update to its iPhone software will enable workers to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers and access Outlook, plus virtual private networks. Apple also opened up the iPhone future external applications, with the launch of a software developers’ kit.