Microsoft on Tuesday launched a new offensive against cybersquatters who allegedly gain illegal profits from thousands of Web sites, such as WindowsLiveTutorial.com and HaloChamp.com, that include the company’s trademarked names.

Redmond filed three lawsuits in federal court this week claiming that some Web site operators have registered and operate hundreds of domain names with the sole purpose of reaping “bad faith” profits and in violation of federal and state laws.

Two of the complaints, filed in Utah and California, name known individuals accused of running more than 400 such sites. A third “John Doe” complaint is aimed at unmasking alleged cybersquatters, affiliated with 217 different domain names, who have paid privacy protection services to have their registration information shielded.

The litigation marks the first time Microsoft has filed suits stemming exclusively from a 1999 law called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, or ACPA, although it has raised cybersquatting allegations in past suits against alleged phishers and spammers, company attorney Aaron Kornblum said in a telephone interview. ACPA subjects anyone who “registers, traffics in or uses a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar or dilutive of” an existing trademark to up to $100,000 in damages.

“We’ve seen a tremendous rush on domain name registration…in particular with domain names containing Microsoft intellectual property,” Kornblum said. “This effort is designed to more aggressively protect our customers trying to visit Microsoft Web properties as well as protect Microsoft’s brands and domains online.”

Designed to target those who registered the largest number of allegedly infringing domain names, the new suits are part of Microsoft’s broader plan to beef up its crackdown on cybersquatters and “typosquatters,” in which a person registers a name similar to a highly trafficked site, except riddled with a subtle spelling error. The company also announced plans to expand its crackdown on resale of such domain names on Internet auction sites.

The tactic used by the sites named in the lawsuits reflects a change in the cybersquatting “ecosystem,” Kornblum said. In the past, cybersquatting more frequently referred to sitting on popular domain names and essentially holding them for ransom. The sites targeted by Microsoft involve registrations of large numbers of domains by a single entity filled with online ads aimed at generating click-through revenues. Kornblum said he wasn’t sure how much money the sites in question had made for their operators but hoped the litigation process would reveal that information.

The domain name owners named in the complaint were not immediately available for comment.

On an average day, more than 2,000 sites containing Microsoft trademarks are registered, according to watchdogs with Internet Identity, a Tacoma, Wash., company hired by Microsoft several years ago to monitor domain name registrations. They estimated that about 75 percent are owned by professional domain name holding corporations and that 90 percent of all registrations occur among those hoping for illegal profits.

Combating alleged cybersquatters is not a new focus for Microsoft. The company began keeping a close eye on domain names several years ago because it noticed that Internet fraudsters frequently used them to dupe unsuspecting visitors into handing over, say, sensitive bank account information, Kornblum said. For the past few years, the company’s research arm has been engaged in a project called the Typo-Patrol, which produced software designed to scan URLs for typos and reveal the owners of domain names.

Microsoft also earned notoriety in 2004 over reports that it had threatened a 17-year-old Canadian student named Mike Rowe to turn over the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com. After admitting it had been overaggressive in its handling of the situation, the company reached an agreement with Rowe, who ceded control of the site in exchange for various Microsoft services including a new Xbox game system.

Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in IT these days, with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and other big players joining in the fray. However, the technology brings with it new terminology that can be confusing. Here are some common cloud-related terms and their meanings.

Advertising-based pricing model

A pricing model whereby services are offered to customers at low or no cost, with the service provider being compensated by advertisers whose ads are delivered to the consumer along with the service.

Amazon EC2

Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud Web service, which provides resizable computing capacity in the cloud so developers can enjoy great scalability for building applications.

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Services — Amazon’s cloud storage service.

CDN

Content delivery network — A system consisting of multiple computers that contain copies of data, which are located in different places on the network so clients can access the copy closest to them.

Cloud

A metaphor for a global network, first used in reference to the telephone network and now commonly used to represent the Internet.

Cloud broker

An entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services.

Cloud operating system

A computer operating system that is specially designed to run in a provider’s datacenter and be delivered to the user over the Internet or another network. Windows Azure is an example of a cloud operating system or “cloud layer” that runs on Windows Server 2008. The term is also sometimes used to refer to cloud-based client operating systems such as Google’s Chrome OS.

Cloud Oriented Architecture

A term coined by Jeff Barr at Amazon Web Services to describe an architecture where applications act as services in the cloud and serve other applications in the cloud environment.

Cloud portability

The ability to move applications and data from one cloud provider to another. See also Vendor lock-in.

Cloud provider

A company that provides cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services to other organizations and/or individuals, usually for a fee.

Cloud storage

A service that allows customers to save data by transferring it over the Internet or another network to an offsite storage system maintained by a third party.

Cloudsourcing

Replacing traditional IT services with cloud services.

Cloudstorming

Connecting multiple cloud computing environments.

Cloudware

Software that enables creating, deploying, running, or managing applications in the cloud.

Cluster

A group of linked computers that work together as if they were a single computer, for high availability and/or load balancing.

Consumption-based pricing model

A pricing model whereby the service provider charges its customers based on the amount of the service the customer consumes, rather than a time-based fee. For example, a cloud storage provider might charge per gigabyte of information stored. See also Subscription-based pricing model.

Customer self-service

A feature that allows customers to provision, manage, and terminate services themselves, without involving the service provider, via a Web interface or programmatic calls to service APIs.

Disruptive technology

A term used in the business world to describe innovations that improve products or services in unexpected ways and change both the way things are done and the market. Cloud computing is often referred to as a disruptive technology because it has the potential to completely change the way IT services are procured, deployed, and maintained.

Elastic computing

The ability to dynamically provision and de-provision processing, memory, and storage resources to meet demands of peak usage without worrying about capacity planning and engineering for peak usage.

External cloud

Public or private cloud services that are provided by a third party outside the organization.

Google App Engine

A service that enables developers to create and run Web applications on Google’s infrastructure and share their applications via a pay-as-you-go, consumption-based plan with no setup costs or recurring fees.

Google Apps

Google’s SaaS offering that includes an office productivity suite, email, and document sharing, as well as Gmail, Google Talk for instant messaging, Google Calendar and Google Docs, spreadsheets, and presentations.

HaaS

Hardware as a service; see IaaS.

Hosted application

An Internet-based or Web-based application software program that runs on a remote server and can be accessed via an Internet-connected PC or thin client. See also SaaS.

Hybrid cloud

A networking environment that includes multiple integrated internal and/or external providers.

IaaS

Infrastructure as a service — Cloud infrastructure services, whereby a virtualized environment is delivered as a service over the Internet by the provider. The infrastructure can include servers, network equipment, and software.

IBM Smart Business

IBM’s cloud solutions, which include IBM Smart Business Test Cloud, IBM Smart Analytics Cloud, IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud, IBM Information Archive, IBM Lotus Live, and IBM LotusLive iNotes.

Internal cloud

A type of private cloud whose services are provided by an IT department to those in its own organization.

Mashup

A Web-based application that combines data and/or functionality from multiple sources.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft cloud services that provide the platform as a service (see PaaS), allowing developers to create cloud applications and services.

Middleware

Software that sits between applications and operating systems, consisting of a set of services that enable interoperability in support of distributed architectures by passing data between applications. So, for example, the data in one database can be accessed through another database.

On-demand service

A model by which a customer can purchase cloud services as needed; for instance, if customers need to utilize additional servers for the duration of a project, they can do so and then drop back to the previous level after the project is completed.

PaaS

Platform as a service — Cloud platform services, whereby the computing platform (operating system and associated services) is delivered as a service over the Internet by the provider.

Pay as you go

A cost model for cloud services that encompasses both subscription-based and consumption-based models, in contrast to traditional IT cost model that requires up-front capital expenditures for hardware and software.

Private cloud

Services offered over the Internet or over a private internal network to only select users, not available to the general public.

Public cloud

Services offered over the public Internet and available to anyone who wants to purchase the service.

SaaS

Software as a service — Cloud application services, whereby applications are delivered over the Internet by the provider, so that the applications don’t have to be purchased, installed, and run on the customer’s computers. SaaS providers were previously referred to as ASP (application service providers).

Salesforce.com

An online SaaS company that is best known for delivering customer relationship management (CRM) software to companies over the Internet.

Service migration

The act of moving from one cloud service or vendor to another.

Service provider

The company or organization that provides a public or private cloud service.

SLA

Service level agreement — A contractual agreement by which a service provider defines the level of service, responsibilities, priorities, and guarantees regarding availability, performance, and other aspects of the service.

Subscription-based pricing model

A pricing model that lets customers pay a fee to use the service for a particular time period, often used for SaaS services. See also Consumption-based pricing model.

Utility computing

Online computing or storage sold as a metered commercial service in a way similar to a public utility

Vendor lock-in

Dependency on the particular cloud vendor and difficulty moving from one cloud vendor to another due to lack of standardized protocols, APIs, data structures (schema), and service models.

Vertical cloud

A cloud computing environment that is optimized for use in a particular industry, such as health care or financial services.

Virtual private data center

Resources grouped according to specific business objectives.

VPC

Virtual private cloud — A private cloud that exists within a shared or public cloud, e.g., the Amazon VPC that allows Amazon EC2 to connect to legacy infrastructure on an IPsec VPN.

Windows Live Services

Microsoft’s cloud-based consumer applications, which include Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Events, Windows Live Skydrive, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live for Mobile.

Cybersquatting is as much of a pain in the brand name as ever, but Verizon has been awarded what it calls the “largest-ever judgment” against OnlineNIC, a company squatting hundreds of domains related to Verizon products. Verizon is set to collect $33.15 million from OnlineNIC—if anyone from the company can be found.

OnlineNIC is a domain registrar based in San Francisco that, according to Verizon’s 480+ page complaint filed in June, has made a business out of registering over 600 domain names like iphonefromverizon.com, itunesverizon.com, and treoverizon.com. Since no one from the “accredited” OnlineNIC appeared to court summons, the court “concluded that OnlineNIC’s bad-faith registrations of Verizon-related domain names were designed to attract web users who were seeking to access Verizon’s legitimate websites,” Verizon said in a lawsuit.

The telecom won a default judgement against OnlineNIC for $50,000 per domain name that OnlineNIC registered, and both Microsoft and Yahoo filed their own similar lawsuits later this year.

Verizon Vice President Sarah Deutsch displayed an affinity for the theatrical in the company’s statement, declaring that “this case should send a clear message and serve to deter cybersquatters who continue to run businesses for the primary purpose of misleading consumers.”

According to Verizon’s lawsuit, however, it may have trouble striking fear into the knees of cybersquatters everywhere since OnlineNIC’s perpetrators employees have gone to great lengths to conceal their identities. OnlineNIC’s employees have used “numerous shell-entities, fictitious business, and personal names,” in addition to covering basic tracks such as withholding accurate information from the company’s public WHOIS database. Verizon believes that one or more of OnlineNIC’s employees conduct business with various aliases and contact information, including “dehau manglang ciqi CO., LTD.,” “txt@yogidesigns.com,” and “DN4Ever.”

Regardless of the whereabouts of OnlineNIC’s one-or-more employees, the World Intellectual Property Organization said in March that cybersquatters are on the rise. In 2007, it received 2,156 complaints over cybersquatting—almost a 50 percent increase from two years ago—and ICANN’s plan to introduce new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs like .com, .net, etc.) will almost surely make matters worse. Instead of having to protect against derivative .com domains like the ones that OnlineNIC registered, Verizon may soon need to register domains like http://phones.verizon and plans.vzw; the sky could truly be the limit.

With the economy in the shape it’s in, even Microsoft and Google are thinking twice before dropping $100 million on a new datacenter. But the two tech giants are easing off the funding pedal for different reasons.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has delayed breaking ground on a planned Oklahoma datacenter by 12 to 18 months, and appears to be going a little slower with a planned North Carolina center. It decided to pass on a $4.7 million state grant to build a data center in the town of Lenoir, N.C.

In the case of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), a source close to the construction of its planned Chicago, Ill. datacenter said work has been scaled back and many modular containers being used at the site are just being parked but not hooked up. Also, the company has yet to begin construction on a West Des Moines, Iowa datacenter despite announcing it with much fanfare last year.

It’s no surprise such projects would be delayed. Datacenters are about the most expensive capital project a company can undertake. A raised floor datacenter costs between $1,000 to $2,000 per square foot, making it the most expensive piece of real estate for almost any organization, according to Enterprise Management Associates. The cost of a five megawatt data center build-out can easily surpass $100 million.

Microsoft has publicly said it is cutting back datacenter expenses. On the last quarterly conference call to discuss the first fiscal quarter of 2009, CFO Chris Liddell said Microsoft would trim capital investments by $300 million, and he specifically said it would be on the datacenter side.

"We will probably also slow our growth in some of the facilities just by virtue of not having as many people as were expected as well. But that’s likely to be more of an FY 2010 phenomenon," said Liddell.

Enterprises that are virtualizing their environments can include their virtual machines in disaster recovery and backup plans.

Companies are moving to virtualization to cut costs. But many do not manage or back up their virtual machines because they don’t have the tools or don’t know which tools to use.

Some virtualization vendors want to change that.

Take some of the recent offerings by the big boys in virtualization – VMware (NYSE: VMW), Citrix (NASDAQ: CTXS), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT). Each announced virtual environment management capabilities, although these will not be available until later this year at best.

No wonder vendors are moving with product plans — analyst firm Gartner predicts that worldwide server virtualization management software revenues will climb 42 percent, from $913.9 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2009.

“Server virtualization management will be the primary source of growth in the virtualization market as hyper visor software functionality -– key to virtualizing a server -– rapidly moves to hardware,” Alan Dayley, research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

Citrix, Microsoft and Red Hat are trying to challenge VMware in management capabilities, which VMware is banking on as its next area of growth. But Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates, thinks VMware will remain king of the hill in virtualized systems management, at least in the near future.

“Many of the management capabilities Microsoft and Citrix announced are just catching up to VMware’s advanced add-on features,” Mann told InternetNews.com by e-mail. And Red Hat is not even in the picture, as far as Mann is concerned.

“Red Hat’s KVM is way back in the pack in terms of even the most basic features and manageability,” he said. “Red Hat is trying to get into the virtualization fight, but it is leading with a glass chin, and is just going to get a bloody nose for its trouble.”

VMware unveiled VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat, which uses technology licensed from its partner, Neverfail, at VMworld Europe 2009 in Paris. Heartbeat will monitor and manage the automatic failover of VMware’s vCenter Server, which centrally manages, controls and automates both physical and virtual systems.

“With a combination of VMware and Neverfail or another third party high availability tool your whole physical and virtual data center is covered,” Mann said. Solutions for automated recovery and disaster recovery of virtualized systems make businesses more competitive and profitable because they speed up recovery from crashes and system failures, he added.

Taking VMware head on

Meanwhile, Citrix has unveiled Citrix Essentials, which offers dynamic virtualization management tools for both its own XenCenter and Microsoft’s Hyper-V, and Red Hat has announced its own set of virtualization management tools for the desktop and server.

Citrix’s stance is particularly strong, as, earlier this month, it entered a partnership with VMLogix under which it will integrate VMLogix LabManager and StageManager into its products, bring application lifecycle management capabilities to XenServer. These capabilities span different virtualization platforms, giving Citrix more oomph, as the other major vendors have platform-specific products.

Large tool vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and CA (NASDAQ: CA) have extended their tools to manage the physical IT infrastructure to virtual environments, but many experts say these are not quite up to scratch because virtual systems need to be managed differently from physical ones. And smaller players like ManageIQ, Avocent (NASDAQ: AVCT) and Apani are – well – smaller vendors, so their impact on the enterprise market, which tends to be wary of small players, is limited, experts say.

On the other hand, all the major virtualization players focus mainly on their own environments, so that will hamper their growth. “The average environment has multiple hypervisors, and will retain a mixed physical-virtual deployment through 2010 at least,” Mann said.

“Solutions that manage multiple hypervisors, and both physical and virtual systems, are going to be the winners in the long run.”

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