Opinion

Communicator Mobile 2007

Oliver Rist and I had a whole lot of fun with Office Communication Server when folks from the Microsoft Unified Communications group brought five different Virtual Server images to my Hawaii lab to show off OCS in all its glory….

Test Center Tracker: Server On, Server Off; The View from 2008

With the writers in Hollywood on strike, we'll look to classic films for the links in today's Test Center Tracker. First, Mr. Miyagi's training advice to the kid can help save data center energy dollars. After earning your green belt,

SOA as a Corporate Responsibility

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Dell Hands Over $1.4 Billion for iSCSI Vendor EqualLogic

Dell announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the data storage provider EqualLogic for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. Dell, the second largest PC maker in the world, made the move to help further distance itself from

No photos, please

As the newly hired tech specialist of a 500+ store chain of fast food restaurants, it was my responsibility to work with food scientists, designers, and management to research new methods of providing food safely and quickly into the customers'

Vetting the quality of VoIP

When it comes to measuring quality of service, experience is all that counts Judging by the gamut of responses to my recent blog post "The lie that is Voice over IP," the verdict on VoIP is still out. Sure, plenty are crowing the virtues of

The Ubuntu Plunge – Day 1: VM Madness!

I've just survived my first full 24 hours under Ubuntu. I say “24 hours” and not “day” because the term “day” infers that there was a following “night” during which I actually rested. On the contra

Fair Use or Foul?

<P>Where copyright law and contract law intersect, it's not always easy figuring out what the rules are. An interesting case in point is that of a reader who was not quite sure what he could and could not do with a Windows Vista upgrade.&l

Red Hat and Sun Collaborate on Java

Sometime rivals Red Hat and Sun are collaborating once again, this time on the open source version of Java. Ace CNet reporter Steven Shankland has the scoop, as usual. Seems like good news all around. The community gets a more open, collaborative dev

When Data Abstraction Meets Open Source

If there is anybody who is a champion for data abstraction when it comes to SOA, it's me.   Moreover, if there is anybody who is a champion for open source SOA technology, it's me.     So, how about if there wa

The problem with Social Networking

Can SCM Make Your Software More Reliable?

No developer in his or her right mind builds significant software in this day and age without some sort of version control or software configuration management (SCM). Free climbing (without a belay rope) and free tightrope walking (without a net) may

Cassatt unveils Active Reponse suite for cutting datacenter energy waste

With backing from big-name IT companies such as Sun, Citrix, and Red Hat, Cassatt today unveiled its Active Response 5.0 software suite, capable of actively powering servers on and off as needed and pooling physical and virtual server resources to re

The Heartbreak of Drive Fragmentation

The conversation is always the same. "This laptop (or desktop, or server) was so fast when I first got it," someone will say to me, "but it just seems to get slower and slower." "Have you run disk defragmentation on it recent

I, Android

Google Mobile Platform = ISV Heaven If it were as hard to develop applications for a PC as it is for a cell phone, we’d still be back in the DOS era. There’d be far fewer ISVs, a relatively small number of broadly popular applications and

Microsoft Windows Server 2008

With the leaves starting to turn color on the Redmond Washington Microsoft Campus the world’s technical journalist have gathered at the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center to hear from the Windows Server team about the long awaited rollout of S

Open Source Drives Google’s Open Handset Alliance

The platform (dubbed Android) will be Linux &amp; Java based. Don't expect to see phones that implement the platform until 2H08 (which means late December 2008). The Android platform (software stack) will be licensed under the Apache license

Ubuntu: Taking the Plunge

Call it “taking the plunge.” After very publicly disparaging Ubuntu (and by doing so, exposing the dark underbelly of the Linux community), I've decided the time is right to play “devil's advocate” and see what it&#0

The great social networking swindle of 2007

Sorry Bridget, Claire, Monica, and Shannon. Thanks but no thanks, Dixie, Lola, Shana and Zara. The same goes for Aimee, Willie, Lolita, Cassandra and the three dozen other "people" who sent me bogus MySpace friend requests in the past 24 ho

SWsoft Expands in China and JumpBox Expands to Microsoft

SWsoft is a huge player in the virtualization market and they continue to expand that presence every day. Case in point, the company is continuing to grow its sales by expanding more and more in China. Also expanding their presence is virtual applian

Test Center Tracker: SOA, the right way, plus a meeting with Shorty

Another ride on the ESB: Embracing SOA (services-oriented architecture) is a downright complex endeavor — even with some great real-world examples to serve as a guide. One critical component is an ESB (enterprise service bus). But where to begin cho

Symantec Survey Shows Virtualization can Help Data Center Struggles

According to a new report created from the results found in a recent Symantec survey, some of the biggest challenges facing data center managers include tough internal service level agreements (SLAs), continuing data center growth, and a lack of qual

Does variable compensation work for IT professionals?

Dear Bob …Your compensation model is just fine (see "Poor Joe," and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007) … except that some of the folks who migrate to IT see variable and spot bonuses as insults.In

Building an SOA that works

Our ninth SOA Executive Forum testifies to SOA's effectiveness This week I'll be in New York hosting the ninth InfoWorld SOA Executive Forum. Count 'em, nine — that's a lot of industry panels and case studies. So what accounts fo

Five ways to roll out SOA

Big-name companies from Comcast to United Airlines are jumping into SOA, changing the way organizations plan, develop, and deploy enterprise applications

Curl RIA platform advances

Curl this week is unveiling a beta release of Curl Rich Internet Application Platform Version 6, for building enterprise Web applications. The product works with the Curl language and is intended for applications with large data sets. The company is

Infragistics previews tools for Microsoft apps

Infragistics on Monday is releasing previews of tools built for Microsoft's Windows Presentation (WPF) and ASP.Net AJAX as well as a new gauge to work with the Microsoft Silverlight platform for multimedia applications. For the Infragistics NetA

Previews: Early peek at the HP c3000 – Part 1

A clear sign of technological obsolescence is the form factor of a product. Disk drives for example have moved from massive packs such as the IBM 3330 (a relic of the mainframe era, if you are too young to remember) to today's one inch drives. S

10 Steps for Corporations to Get Started with Social Media – the Right Way

In my last post, I went on a bit of a rant about social media and how corporations need to start the shift from theory to execution. I also invited you to my Nov 6th chat where I'll be going into detail about this subject. But, here are some sta

Top Ten Server Virtualization Technology Considerations

SWsoft, a provider of both operating system and hardware virtualization products, has an interesting whitepaper titled "Top Ten Considerations for Choosing a Server Virtualization Technology". This top ten list provides key guidelines for h

Virtual Iron to Refocus Company With New CEO

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure software, has made a company change at the top as it announced a new CEO who plans on changing the focus of the company to help maximize their mark

Egenera Breaks from Blade Server Hardware to Offer Software Solution

Egenera is considered a pioneer in the blade server market, and it's known for incorporating two of today's hottest technologies, blade servers and virtualization. Egenera's BladeFrame line is a blade server system powered by the compa

IDC Report Says Green Technology Is More Than a Passing Fad

Green technology is a growing concern that is significantly affecting the buying decisions that IT executives are making, both now and in the future. At least, that's one of the conclusions being drawn from a recent survey that was conducted by

A Visual Critique of Ubuntu

Recently, I stumbled cross a rather stinging, yet even even-handed, critique of Ubuntu's Gnome-based UI implementation. In a series of blog posts, Farhad Shakiba – a self-described "unemployed software engineer, hardware engineer, artist, w

Google Set to Announce Mobile Phone SW & Open Handset Alliance

Tom Krazit at News.com is reporting that Google will formally announce a mobile platform dubbed "Android". Tom writes: "A software development kit for what's being called "a complete mobile-phone software stack" is belie

Will the Support Business Model Survive?

A while ago Shaun Connolly at JBoss posted an entry titled "What's in a Subscription". Shaun states: "Put simply, a Subscription is comprised of: 1. Software bits 2. Patches and updates to the bits 3. Support in the use of the bit

Everyone’s Out to Get Dave

First Sanjiva challenged Dave's views (repeated by yours truly) that OSS vendors should focus on competing against the enterprise gorilla in the market vs. competing with each other. Next, BEA decided to make his prior post on "whether BEA

What Facebook Developers Say About OpenSocial

As you already know from multiple InfoWorld articles, including this one from our own Robert X, Google has released its JavaScript-based OpenSocial API, and gotten some of the biggest competitors to Facebook, including MySpace, Linked-In, and Salesfo

Some more on fileages.pl

I made a few changes to the code, enough to warrant a sub-version bump. These were a few cosmetic changes and I added a -i option that will force fileages.pl to ignore .snapshot directories. In the future, I might expand that syntax to handle a defin

Xerox and GreenPrint ink deal to cut print waste

The datacenter, server room, and the desktop aren't the only places to cut tech-related waste at your organization. The printing station is a prime location to reap some eco-friendly, cost-cutting benefits, considering that organizations waste

Test Center Tracker: One-one-one with OS X Leopard, small project management with OpenProj, seizing control of remote service monitoring, and defeating denial of service attacks

Shacking up with Leopard: Apple's OS X Leopard hit the North American market one week ago this evening, prompting Tom Yager to swing by the Apple store, MacBook Pro in hand, then make a beeline for an isolation chamber (the local Holiday Inn) fo

Geek Week in Review

In your Face… book. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And if you can't buy 1.6% of them, round up their competitors to beat them to a pulp. Google's response to losing out to Microsoft on the Facebook deal was to sign up vir

Why Enterprise Architecture is a Corporate Responsibility

In these days of corporate responsibility and compliance, we need to consider the efficiencies of our IT infrastructure along with other corporate assets. For most companies enterprise architectures are the single most limiting factor to their busine

Don’t laugh at Estonia — it could happen to you

Massive DDoS attacks can be devastating, no matter who or where you are

Closing back doors to your data

Axeda's new service-monitoring app puts IT managers back in control of remote datacenter access

Reader Voices: The Rebate Police

<P>Do we need the government to police the rebate practices of vendors? <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2007/9/6/14313/89003">The recent story</A> about one tech company that was caught tossing customer rebate

Future Ubuntu Code Names “Revealed!”

It's been a slow news week, so…time for some fun with names! Here's my list of possible "future Ubuntu code names and slogans." Feel free to add your own suggestions via the Comments section. Illiterate Impala – RTFM? Would that

IBM enters the energy efficient credit game

Big Blue today is launching the IBM Efficiency Certificates initiative, a program through which companies can earn certified energy efficiency credits (EECs) for reducing power consumption in the datacenter. Also known as white tags, EECs can serve a

SOA Performance Modeling

I'm not sure I'm giving birth to a new TLA, figure somebody has used this by now. However, I wanted to touch upon the concept of performance modeling and its importance with SOA. Performance modeling is nothing new; however its use within t

Test Center Tracker: Open Sourcery

Apple's delivery of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) has Mac users all a-tingle, and somehow that success brought to mind Sun's turnaround idea of using open source to sell hardware. In a story on Sun's open source program, InfoWorld related th