Opinion

VMware announces new Mac desktop virtualization – Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

Mac virtualization users have been watching a very interesting tennis match between VMware and Parallels. And this time, it looks like it's VMware's turn to serve with the announcement around VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1. If there was a theme w

How to make a DBA blush

As the person who keeps the local instant messenger gateway server running, I have worked with our DBAs to ensure the database is backed up and regularly purged of old records. With the occasional update and patch, it has been running more or less pr

Outsourcing: Breaking up is hard to do

A few months back, I blogged about getting more value from your outsourcing strategy: Rather than sign a single $1 billion-plus deal, break your services up. Smaller deals, focused on smaller projects or services, may be the new way to go, I conjectu

Vista PCs: the hardware resources they are so hungry for

Cross-tabular analysis. It's one of those nerdy-sounding terms that statisticians like to use when expounding upon their latest data-mining gems. It's also the lifeblood of the Windows Sentinel project. We use cross-tabular analysis to extr

Riding the Autorenewal Express

<P>Do credit card companies protect their customers from online services that automatically renew annual subscriptions without clear notice, or do they collude with vendors to keep the transaction fees flowing? As autorenewals by security soft

Un-Conferences at Community One

Before kicking off Java One this week in San Francisco, Sun held their second Community One conference, pulling in several thousand developers for a free technical conference. While there was a large keynotes in the morning featuring Ian Murdock of D

When they change your job without asking you

Dear Bob …I have a bit of a dilemma that I'm hoping you can help me out with because I'm stuck.I was recently "promoted" to a new position. I say promoted in quotes because the promotion seems to be hardly that. I was suddenly g

90 Days to radical cost take-outs

IT organizations are increasingly challenged these days just to keep the lights on. Additionally, the business is looking to cut costs, maximize efficiencies and reduce spend during these economically challenging times. IT leaders usually leverage st

VirtualBox 1.6 – Desktop virtualization comes out of the Sun

VirtualBox 1.6 is a major update to the open source desktop virtualization platform from Sun Microsystems. This is Sun's first release of the product since acquiring it from the German company Innotek back in February. This latest version of Vir

Microsoft and Yahoo: Stop the insanity!

The on-again, off-again purchase of Yahoo seems to have collapsed over the weekend with Microsoft walking away from the table and abandoning the deal. On February 1, in a dramatic announcement, Microsoft "made a proposal to the Yahoo board of di

After Interop…

So I'm back in the office and thinking about what I saw and heard at Interop. What do I think you should be thinking about?   1. Splunk I've just begun really looking at this data-center correlation, indexing, and search tool, but

Youthful indiscretions

We tend to get a little serious about security at InfoWorld. Following the lead of ace contributing editor Roger Grimes, we focus on the ingenuity of new exploits and the endless race to stay ahead of criminal hackers who pounce…

MicroHoo we hardly knew ye

Was Yahoo becoming too open for Microsoft?

Look at the bright side: Yahoo will save a fortune on business cards and letterhead. Whether you think the breakdown of merger talks between Microsoft and Yahoo will lead to some other, greater good must depend to some degree, I suppose, on how much

Are applets making a comeback?

Good old applets — do they deserve a place in your RIA toolkit today?

Microsoft makes their heterogeneous virtualization management play

During Microsoft Management Summit 2008, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, outlined the company's dynamic datacenter strategy. Part of Microsoft's strategy is to expand its virtualization capab

Pair programming at a distance

One of the drawbacks of working by myself is that I can't usually do pair programming. This is usually offset by the increased concentration and &quot;flow&quot; that comes from being by myself and undisturbed for long periods, but somet

How to win with SOA … finally, focus longer term

Finally, SOA is a long term solution. No ROI will come soon for the majority of enterprises that leverage SOA approaches and technology, thus the value will be understood in years, not months. This is an especially difficult concept when you consider

How to win with SOA … fourth, remember the people

SOAs are not built by computers; they are built and managed by people. As such, you have to consider the impact to the humans as well as the impact to the enterprise architecture. There are two places to focus here. First, focus on the SOA-ability of

How to win with SOA … third, focus on understanding

While many may understand the notion of SOA by now, very few have any idea how to get there. Truth-be-told, there is no hard and fast rule as to how one builds an SOA in their organization. Clearly, SOA is a situational thing and your mileage may var

How to win with SOA … second, define the value

We implement SOA for two major reasons. First is the ability to save development dollars through reuse of services. These services may have been built inside or outside of the company, and the more services that are reusable from system to system, th

How to win with SOA … first, understand the pain

I've been getting a lot of e-mails about this…Those seeking general advice around SOA, and how to win. Here's my best shot at that. Here are 5 surefire ways that, if followed, will make your SOA a success. They are: 1. Understand the

Handling family matters

Dear Bob …In my department, a few core people are getting leaned one heavily since others have "lives".The classic case is when certain team members have kids, both parents work, and they miss random blocks of time for kids stuff. The non

Parallels, Microsoft and Leopard – Mac users watch out!

Parallels continues to rock the Apple world. After its recent announcement that the company has surpassed selling 1 million copies of the Parallels Desktop product, this virtualization company is still moving quickly to try and capture even more of t

Comcast gets nominated for worst ToS

<P>OK, so my challenge to readers last week to find a worse ToS (Terms of Service) than Dilbert.com's looks like it's going to be pretty easy. We've already got one very worthy candidate recently pointed out by a reader: Comcast&

Geek Week: Microsoft prepares for war, BEA is no more

One ring to rule them all. Remember that scene in The Lord of the Rings where Sauron has all the Orcs busy sharpening tools and digging up Goblins in preparation for the huge battle to decide the fate of man- elf- and dwarf-kind? That's apparent

Streaming Office: Death knell for Google Apps?

It's the holy grail of punditry: You make a bold, unconventional prediction that's way out in front of an emerging trend, then get to gloat as that prediction comes true. In my case, the prediction involved Microsoft's recently (at the

Lab test: Infortrend EonStor B12S Iometer results

Enterprise storage is typically fast, reliable, large, and heavy, and consumes a good amount of energy. Infortrend's EonStor (see Mario Apicella's review) is fast, reliable, thin (1U), and a scant 45 pounds with 12 disks. All because it use

3G iPhone?

Sorry if I'm a bit iPhone obsessed lately. But what the heck. Since my buddy Joe seemed to know all about the iPhone 3G release, I figured I'd share what I learned from him and from a bit of web research. Looks like the new iPhone is slated

SOA issues are people issues: where have you heard that before?

According to the Burton Group the issues around SOA are not as much about technology and complexity, it's about the people and the processes within an enterprise. Indeed, in this recent Network World article, some of these issues are highlighted

I/O and storage importance in a virtual environment

The whole notion of I/O in a virtual environment is becoming less and less of a mystery as more people are starting to realize that virtualization takes a hefty toll on the I/O of a system. Consumers will typically see this as they standardize on lar

Don’t be a cheapskate, Steve: Keeping XP won’t hurt Microsoft’s bottom line

Virtue may be its own reward when you go to church. But, like it or not, virtue generally takes a backseat to profit in the corporate world. But isn't it nice when the two come together? Case in point: Windows XP, an operating system whose time

Six lessons learned at the Uptime Green Enterprise Computing Symposium

"Green = efficiency = savings" was a recurring theme at this year's Uptime Institute Green Enterprise Computing Symposium in Orlando, Fla. It's a simple message, to be sure, but it gets right to the heart of the case for pursuing

Qumranet tackles virtualizing the desktop

The commercial sponsor of KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), Qumranet, launched its anticipated desktop virtualization solution – Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment). The Solid ICE product is used on x86 hosts and leverages the KVM hypervi

Categorizing OSS customers

I've been thinking about this statement from Sun/MySQL's Marten Mickos: "There's a difference between organizations that have more time than money and organizations that have more money than time." I coming to realize that OS

Ajax Web suite boosts customer interactions

Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, Ajax framework vendor Backbase introduced a new application suite called Customer Engagement 2.0. As far as I can tell, the 2.0 in the name has nothing to do with the version, as this is all new; it has everything to do

HP: Bad motherboards, broken support, and the black arts

Things have been kind of quiet lately on the Hewlett Packard front. There have been no recent spying scandals, no daily kerfuffles over what the CEO is doing, saying, or wearing. Bill Hewlett and David Packard have stopped spinning in their graves at

Gender does matter, and it doesn’t matter

Dear Bob …I have been in IT a very long time and I am a woman.I agree with you [see "Does gender matter?" Advice Line, 4/12/2008 – Bob] that there are competent, supportive managers of both sexes and evil, incompetent managers of both sex

Virtual Iron hits a customer milestone and releases a new update

Virtual Iron Software has reached a new customer milestone and at the same time released another update to their production-class server virtualization product. The company announced that its virtualization solution has been deployed in over 2,000 cu

$25,000 question: Is the Microsoft Architecture credential worth the cost?

You've heard of a Microsoft Certified Professional. Perhaps at one time you've even dreamed of being a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). You took one exam after another at a Microsoft testing center to reach this honored and pres

The view from Microsoft’s Live Mesh and Apple’s .Mac: Shared disks and remote desktop access, no VPN required

Apple's .Mac comes close to offering professionals secure shared data and remote desktop access without the hassle of VPN. Microsoft Live Mesh hopes to take it all the way. Old-schoolers will tell you that there are only two places your importa

Yahoo and the Facebook dilemma

It seems Google isn’t the only company borrowing a page from Steve Ballmer’s playbook. Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh took the stage at last week’s Web 2.0 Expo to announce that his company, too, is mounting a major push for third-party devel

Virtualization and Apple Mac sound like a winning combination

Remember the old days when Mac users and PC users used to argue about who had the better computer? Hmmm… Never mind. So maybe things haven't changed that much. But perhaps those Apple fans who swore off Windows might be coming around a bit? Or

McKinsey releases 2008 Enterprise Software Survey

Via Nick Carr's posting today. The McKinsey survey suggests: The software industry technology innovations of the past 2-3 years are nothing compared to new technologies we're about to see This innovation is likely driven by SaaS/PaaS and We

Report from the Web 2.0 Expo

Download file…

Interop News: Word from the show floor

So the show is open, the booths are built, and the crowds have descended on the exhibitors. My first impression: Wow. If trade show attendance is any indication of an industry's heath, then data networking is heading toward a boom. I haven'

Actively refused connections…OCS+Asterisk UC Integration

It's now been several weeks of tinkering to install an OCS Server collection (AD, SQL, OCS, Edge, Mediation, Web Access) on a brand new Dell M-Series Blade Server. The goal of the Unified Communications (UC) group in the INTEROP Labs (iLabs) is

Zoho becomes a better spreadsheet

I've found that there are several applications out there that can be a huge help for small businesses that need to economize on office productivity suites or more easily collaborate with partners, vendors, and customers. One of the suites is, of

Ziphone your iPhone

As soon as I told my buddy Joe I had borrowed an iPod Touch, he asked me whether I had unlocked it. Hey, it's a Touch, not an iPhone. He told me about an open source application called Ziphone that enables you to unlock any iPhone or iPod Touch

Don’t do this in Windows

Our own Test Center guru Brian Chee encountered quite a few setbacks in a recent installation of Office Communications Server. His blog, Geeks in Paradise, often offers insight — both amusing and useful — into the working life of an IT professional