Opinion

Ardence Technology now integrated within Citrix

Back in December of 2006, Citrix Systems, Inc. announced that it would acquire privately held Ardence for their operating system streaming technology in order to further the Citrix strategic end-to-end application delivery infrastructure. Since the a

Shouldn’t whistleblowing be an option?

A comment on "How an Advice Line situation turned out," (1/21/2008), about an employee who learned he was on the chopping block, and instead left under his own steam:Bob, while your advice has once again been proven right, I think you deval

MS + Yahoo = Antitrust bait?

The Microsoft monopoly alarm is being raised, but few will listen given Google's position in the marketplace What is a monopoly? Wikipedia states, "In Economics, monopoly (also 'pure monopoly') is a persistent situation where ther

VMware’s stock drops: question of faith?

VMware stock was the Wall Street technology darling with a story book beginning last year. Originally priced at $29, VMware stock (VMW) quickly soared as high as $125 last fall. However recently, the company's stock plunged by more than 30% afte

Test Center Tracker: Virtually Green Blogs

It's a bloggy day in the Test Center, with a look at green features in unexpected places and reports from the InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum. Unexpected Hints of GreenTed Samson went looking for different shades of green and found them

Food for thought: What would a Microsoft-Yahoo deal mean for developers?

IDG News Service posted this yesterday: Microsoft-Yahoo deal: What about developers? | InfoWorld | News | 2008-02-04 | By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service Do you consider yourself a Microsoft developer? a LAMP developer? Do you consider yourself a Y

IBM touts open source app server use

IBM this week announced two companies using its open source application server, WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE). The two companies are Avada Software and Nexxar Group. Avada plans to offer its messaging management solutions wi

Gordano offers Gizmos for mashups

Gordano is announcing the release Tuesday of Gizmos, a mashup technology bundled with the Gordano Messaging Suite (GMS), which serves as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange. With Gizmos, GMS users can interface with external data sources without lea

United charges for second bag

In what is clearly a sign of a business that doesn't understand its customers, United Airlines has decided to start charging domestic customers $25 for checking a second bag. This is in addition to the fact that you have to pay for meals, curbsi

Defining SOA Governance

SOA governance is one of those topics that mean different things to different people in the world of SOA. I'm a bit tired of briefings by governance vendors who start out the conversation with "What's your definition of SOA governance?

How to get bloggers to talk about your brand

Avoiding dot-bomb 2.0

With an increasing wave of Web-based applications in development, it may be worth remembering some of the follies from the dot-com boom era so that we don't repeat some of their mistakes in the new enthusiasm. [Submit your own tales of IT woe! E

The medium is the business

With new startups delivering distributed infrastructure, and old models failing, dot-com promises are finally coming true Sitting at Demo08 in Palm Desert, Calif., was quite a change from my normal northern New England digs where the meteorologist ca

Dell Neglects Small Biz System Problems

<P>When <A href="/article/07/07/10/Dell-Vostro-aims-to-ease-PC-use-for-SMBs_1.html">Dell launched</A> its Vostro line of computers for the small business market, it said it would make it more attrac

An update on SpringSource

I had a great conversation with Rod Johnson, CEO of SpringSource last week. As readers of TSS will know, news of SpringSource acquiring Covalent caused much buzz amongst notary middleware personalities. Rod explained that acquiring Covalent provides

Rogue Wave touts SOA service creation

Focusing on SOA data service creation, Rogue Wave Software has announced the release of its HydraSDO for XML 2.2 product and the next edition of HydraSDO for Databases. HydraSDO data components automate the creation of service-oriented data services

Microsoft Yahoo Deal Springs a Leak

In the arena of corporate combat, the well-placed leak is a venerable weapon. In the three days since Microsoft announced the blockbuster, $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo, there has been a spate of tasty tidbits leaked to the financial press. The New Y

Virtualization: The Management Take

I'm now in one of the breakout sessions at InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum (I had an abbreviated form of the event name in my earlier post), where five executives are talking about deployment of blade servers and other virtualiza

New Mexico’s supercomputer may have a troubled future

Ubuntu 8.04: hard(l)y worth a yawn

I had high hopes for the next Ubuntu. Version 7.10 was a solid release, and apart from a debilitating ACPI bug that rendered it impractical (to me) for day-to-day use, I found little to dislike about it. Unfortunately, Ubuntu 8.10 — a.k.a &quot;

Debugging into the .NET Library Source

I was hesitant to add any preview plug-ins or apply any patches to Visual Studio 2008 until I'd finished my review, but now that it's done I've gone a little wild. I have installed the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, the ADO.NET Entity Framewo

Virtualization: The SMB Take

I'm at InfoWorld's Virtualization Forum in San Francisco today, and much of what we're hearing is aimed squarely at the largest IT organizations. I'm beginning to see more vendors and analysts talked about virtualization for SMB o

More questions for Microsoft and Yahoo

On the surface, I don't see how Yahoo can say no to Microsoft's offer. It's premium of 60% over their current share price. And it's likely far higher than any other company would bid. But that still doesn't mean it's an

Geek Week in Review

Talk QWERTY to me.&nbsp; Microsoft isn't the only big player in the acquisition game. While everyone was kvelling over MS's Yahoo offer, Amazon bought Audible for $300 million, presumably so it can deliver audiobooks to its Kindle e-boo

Citrix introduces public beta for XenServer 4.1

While at Summit 08, Citrix had a lot to say about their acquired XenServer line. The company bulked up the XenServer team with 60 new people and were able to add 400 new customers into its camp in Q4. The company's goal is to deliver $50 million

Venturing into the virtual world

Today I'm emceeing our fifth Virtualization Forum here in San Francisco. Executive Editor Doug Dineley has developed a killer lineup of adopters, industry players, and thought leaders. As you read this, we're having a rocking good time trad

Some Surprises in Worst Vendor Poll

<P>The polls are still open, but the outcome is not in doubt. In a wire-to-wire victory, Microsoft ran away with the GripeLog's Worst Vendor of 2007 <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2008/1/1/23242/37468">poll&lt

A backstabbing situation

Dear Bob …Through the grapevine, (actually my boss) I have heard that I am about to be let go. I say through the grapevine because apparently my boss was directed by the board to not inform me of my impending doom until later this year.The back sto

Dell servers + virtualization: a disastrous combination

OFF TOPIC RANT MODE: ON I like Dell. Over the years I've owned several dozen Dell systems, including notebooks, desktops and servers. So naturally, when it came time to spec out a new server for the exo.performance.network Web site, I went with

Community and Cooperation are the Keys to Success!

iPhone Open Application Development

This is yet another oxymoron of the day: Open iPhone. And yet, there's a whole book on the subject, or at least a Rough Cut. You have to love a book that reads like the ethnic-joke recipe for Chicken Soup. You know the joke: "First, steal

IBM Agrees with Me…Good SOA People are Hard to Find

I found this article to be an interesting read this morning, specifically the data points that IBM has around the lack of SOA talent hindering the forward progress of SOA. Here is the most interesting excerpt: "From IBM's internal survey of

I object to RFID payment schemes without positive acknowledgment!

  Technologists object to U.S. RFID passports – Jul. 13, 2006 &lt;Start soap box&gt; I just got my replacement American Express Blue for Business credit card and to my dismay I found that Amex has given up on smart card tech and has

T-Mobile Tower Topples, But Termination Fee Still Stands

<P>Early termination fees are the bane of cell phone customers and a boon for the phone companies. But should they apply when the cell phone service has become unusable due to problems on the company's end? That's what one T-Mobile cu

MicroYahoo: A marriage made in heck

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Geek News roundup to bring you this bulletin filled with conjecture and unsubstantiated opinions. In what has to be both the biggest tech news story of the last year and the least surprising, Microsoft has made a

Microsoft offers $44.6 billion for Yahoo

Ok, who knew that this week's earlier deals were just a precursor to Microsoft making an acquisition offer for Yahoo! It's been clear for a long time that Microsoft was running in third place (or later) in many of the new markets like searc

Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

Breaking news from the NY Times: Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo By MIGUEL HELFT Published: February 1, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO — In a bold move to counter Google’s online pre-eminence, Microsoft said Friday that it had made an

Microsoft to Yahoo: We have R&D synergies

You've all read about the proposed deal. The National Post has a copy of the letter that Ballmer et al sent to the Yahoo board. Here are two paragraphs I found interesting: 1] Ballmer reminds Yahoo that he/Microsoft was right all along (emphasis

SMB Business Continuity: Only One ISP?

Early this week I wrote about the importance of backing up your business data. The "Backup" meme continues through the week with news of another sort — network failures on a grand scale. First we hear that the Middle East is off the Intern

AccuRev change management links to ClearCase

AccuRev formally unveiled this week its AccuRev 4.6 for ClearCase product, enabling the AccuRev software change and configuration management (SCCM) system to co-exist in environments with the IBM Rational ClearCase software change management platform

Strategic security: Get a handle on authentication

One rational, standardized authentication policy across the organization will make all your applications more secure

Make interoperability the goal

A new set of storage specs takes a timid first step toward compatible components — but is not likely to go far enough

Venture capitalists can’t get enough of virtualization – Thank Goodness!

Yes, you've heard it before: Virtualization is a hot, growing market. The strange thing is, it isn't just the analysts and media talking about it anymore. And it's not just those people in the virtualization community talking about it

VMware bumps Mac Fusion up a notch

Devoted users of VMware's desktop virtualization application for Mac might be happy to hear that VMware has updated the product with a new dot release (VMware Fusion 1.1.1). And its true, while a minor dot release normally wouldn't make peo

Microsoft to Renault: It’s tax time!

InformationWeek is reporting a deal between French automaker Renault and Microsoft: "Under the arrangement, Microsoft will provide Renault with 1,000 "certificates" for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise server product. The deal also

VMLogix brings virtual lab automation to Citrix XenServer

VMLogix is joining forces with Florida-based Citrix to make its virtual lab automation solution, VMLogix LabManager, the first solution of its kind available on the Citrix XenServer hypervisor. The partnership is an extension of a relationship that w

XP vs. Vista: Readers respond

I've been called plenty of names in my time, but never so many and from so many different people, as I have in response to my post titled "Save XP? Why bother?" Apparently a lot of folks needed a target for their pent-up Vista-induced

Hyperic 3.2 update

Hyperic has announced a new major version of their HQ monitoring system that adds plenty of new capabilities. HQ enables companies with a web infrastructure to monitor all the various components of the stack, whether open source, closed or a mix. For

Zell and the art of employee management

It always irritates me when this happens: Frank Hayes beat me to the punch (a sadly common occurrence; for my money Frank is the best columnist in IT). Take the time to read his excellent column about the Tribune company and its new owner/CEO, Sam Ze

Can Apple’s iPhone success be sustained like the Mac’s?

iPhones, iPods, iTunes — sometimes it's hard to remember that Apple makes a product that doesn't start with the letter "i." But Apple does, and it's a personal computer. This is a good week to remember that fact. While Wall