Opinion

All abuzz over Oracle’s BEA bid

Plus: New weekly tech news quiz tests your geek credentials

By Steve Fox

Oct 15, 2007 3 mins

When your boss tells you to terminate an employee

Dear Bob …A few months ago I became the manager of our IT group, and inherited a long-term employee with stunningly inadequate performance. I have worked with him to set clear performance standards, which are now being achieved.Two weeks ago, my ma

By Bob Lewis

Oct 15, 2007 5 mins

Borland boosts apps modeling

Borland Software is adding domain-specific language (DSL) capabilities to its Together package for application modeling. Available Monday, Borland Together 2007 is intended to help developers as well as application analysts and architects to deliver

By Paul Krill

Oct 15, 2007 2 mins

Microsoft Finished Baking How To’s in These Virtualization Cookbooks

If you've previously read any other technology cookbooks released from other publishers or other companies, then you are probably already well aware of the value provided by these technological recipes. Cookbooks are structured and designed in a

Oct 14, 2007 4 mins

SOA Vendor Mistakes Costing them Business…How to Fix This

I can't believe the unsophisticated approaches many vendors have when considering selling their product. Indeed, I'm taken back weekly by a vendor pitch that just does not flatter their technology, perhaps even making them take a few steps

By Dave Linthicum

Oct 14, 2007 2 mins

VMware Targets the SMB Market with Virtualization Offerings

Last week, in addition to announcing its latest virtualization platform update, VMware also announced its plans to go after the SMB market with a new set of offerings that target those companies and their efforts to tackle virtualization projects. Th

Oct 14, 2007 3 mins

Sun’s Virtualization Strategy Includes xVM

Sun Microsystems unveiled its virtualization platform which includes a hypervisor and management tool combination called Sun xVM which the company hopes to deliver in December. The technology will first be included in the company's management st

Oct 14, 2007 2 mins

The Windows URI exploit: Whose Bug Is It, Anyway?

Microsoft is fixing a well-known bug in Window XP and Windows Server 2003 that has been at the root of vulnerabilities. The bug relates to the Uniform Resource Indicator (URI) handler in Windows that allows you to launch other programs to support a c

By Sean Gallagher

Oct 13, 2007 2 mins

Going Open for SMB?

If you're like most small business IT folks, keeping a lid on expenses is a key part of your job. There's no question that many commercial applications are very capable, but they frequently carry non-trivial pricetags, so alternatives are a

By Curt Franklin

Oct 13, 2007 3 mins

Selkie Rescue

One of my favorite techniques for rescuing Windows systems that won't boot normally or in safe mode is to try booting them from a CD-ROM, because what I care about most at this point is the data on the system. Sometimes I use a Windows CD, espec

Oct 12, 2007 3 mins

Who wins if Oracle gets BEA?

Man, what a wacky world software has become. Remember when $6.6 billion meant something? It's play money at this point. Who wins and who loses if Oracle gets BEA? Oracle: Probably Oracle has never had a clear story about app servers and despite

By Dave Rosenberg

Reading between the lines of the Oracle bid for BEA

It is the end of an era. Oracle's take over of BEA, be it imminent or eventual, along with last week's acquisition of Business Objects by SAP tells us that we will see a major change in how the enterprise buys software. Let's leave sof

By Ephraim Schwartz

Oct 12, 2007 4 mins

Components of Non-Support

<P>A hallowed tradition in the computer industry is the buck passing game hardware and software vendors play to avoid their support responsibilities. "Sorry, that's a software problem, so we can't help you" the computer manu

By Ed Foster

Oct 12, 2007 3 mins

Oracle + BEA?

Wow, never a dull moment in the software industry… Oracle has long been rumored to acquire BEA and now they've made a formal offer. I've heard some sources that Oracle's previous attempts to acquire BEA were rebuffed and for a while

By Zack Urlocker

Oct 12, 2007 1 min

Greed Is Good

Oracle Offer Could Spark Bidding War for BEA Systems It didn’t take long for yet another M&A shoe to drop. While the software world was still digesting SAP’s $6.7 billion friendly offer to buy Business Objects, Oracle this morning put

By Bill Snyder

Geek Week in Review

Please check your number and try again. Microsoft has re-organized its mobile platform team, as it gears up to take on Apple and Google in the only OS fight that really matters these days – the battle for your cell phone. With luck, the newly f

By Robert Cringely

Test Center Tracker: Green tops Gartner’s list, security best practices gone wrong

Green is number one! At least according to Gartner, whose list of ten strategic technologies for 2008 caught the eye of greenalyst Ted Samson. See yesterday's Sustainable IT for Ted's take, and his swift run down the rest of Gartner's

By Doug Dineley

Oct 12, 2007 1 min

Oracle makes $6.7B bid for BEA

Via Roy Russo's heads up: Oracle, in letter to BEA Systems' board, offers cash at a 25% premium; says it seeks friendly acquisition. From TSS via CNN: "We believe our all cash offer provides the best value for BEA's shareholders a

By Savio Rodrigues

Oct 12, 2007 1 min

How twisted is the leadership scene?

Dear Bob …Commenting on your recent series about business archetypes ("Jung at heart," Keep the Joint Running, 9/24/2007 and "More business archetypes," 10/1/2007):Of course there are the business archetypes that never make it i

By Bob Lewis

When good recommendations go bad

Just because a recommendation is in a "best practices" document doesn’t mean it's right for your network

By Roger Grimes

Oct 12, 2007 5 mins

Security

Parity pioneer combats data corruption

Panasas unveils tiered parity to prevent data corruption in the inevitable event of drive failure

By Mario Apicella

Oct 12, 2007 4 mins

Modeling Data Access for SOA

There has been a lot of interest lately in modeling data access in the context of SOA, and few understand how to do it. Indeed, many of the same "traditional" data modeling techniques still apply, but SOA brings its own complexities. At the

By Dave Linthicum

Hyperic Jaspersoft Smackdown?

A couple of weeks ago Hyperic announced their cooperation with JasperSoft to add advanced reporting to their open source systems management tool. Hyperic is interesting because it enables IT managers to get first-class monitoring of LAMP and other in

By Zack Urlocker

Oct 11, 2007 1 min

Green IT No. 1 on Gartner’s top 10 techs for ’08

There's plenty of hype surrounding green technology these days, and while some IT types, anecdotally, are expressing fatigue from hearing about the topic, Gartner suggests that it will be high on organizations' radar in the coming year. As

By Ted Samson

Oct 11, 2007 4 mins

Test Center Tracker: Free software worth paying for

Trialware is a pain. Once you install it, its self-destruct sequence begins. If you don't have time to give trial software a thorough workout before it goes poof, it's unlikely that you'll come away from the experience impressed with

By Tom Yager

Entier DB Enables Advanced Search on Devices

One of the many vendor meetings I postponed from ESC and took later over the telephone was one with Collin Bruce of Hitachi Embedded Systems. His basic pitch is that the Entier embedded database can enable a new level of search capability on converge

Oct 11, 2007 3 mins

IBM’s Outsourcing Patent Application Withdrawn

Net/Net: The patent application for "outsourcing of services" was filed 8 months before a new IBM policy to reduce business method patents. This one slipped through the cracks of the "new policy". Our bad. Via Bob Sutor's blo

By Savio Rodrigues

Review: DataAssist 2.0 simplifies development of database-driven Web sites

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and their intricate development environments, such as Adobe Flex 2 and Microsoft Silverlight, are getting a lot of attention right now. Yet most dynamic Web sites still work with tried-and-true coding that connects to

By Mike Heck

Buy, buy BOBJ

Why SAP's purchase of Business Objects will be bad for employees, buyers, and innovation Shareholders of Business Objects are making out like bandits. But if the acquisition by SAP runs true to form, expect to see job losses, less competition in

By Bill Snyder

Oct 11, 2007 7 mins

Walking the line between lean and green

Many an analyst, pundit, and IT enthusiast have taken stabs at defining just what "green technology" really means. One approach — one I've admittedly taken — is to lump environmentally friendly technology — that is, technology aimed

By Ted Samson

Oct 11, 2007 4 mins

When humans meet data management

Hard data is more than 0s and 1s; real people, with their real-world behavior, are behind those numbers

By David Margulius

Oct 11, 2007 3 mins

Databases

Serena offers software configuration management tool

Serena Software announced this week the release of Serena Dimensions Express, a developer-focused software configuration management tool that is intended to be easy to use. With the product, advanced software configuration management is offered as a

By Paul Krill

Off-Topic: IBM IMS, 40 yrs Strong

I ran into this piece of PR from IBM today. "Initially developed to power the Apollo space program, IMS is recognized as the industry's first modern database and transaction management software. Over the past three decades, the reliability,

By Savio Rodrigues

Oct 10, 2007 2 mins

Brad Abrams ReMix Boston Keynote videos posted…

I mentioned Monday that I arrived late for Brad Abrams' keynote, which was mostly about Silverlight, at ReMIX 07. The videos (6 of them) are already up on Channel 9, as Brad blogged in the wee hours: Brad Abrams : ReMix Boston Keynote videos pos

Test Center Tracker: Apple, SUN and virtualization

Apple, SUN and virtualization As improbable as it may seem those apparently unrelated topics have so much in common. Please read on to find out. More SPARCs from that SUN Whatever your preference, rack-mounted or blade architecture, SUN has some news

By Mario Apicella

Oct 10, 2007 2 mins

Mandriva Linux 2008 offered

Mandriva is offering Mandriva Linux 2008, which is intended to offer simplicity for first-time Linux users, the company said on Wednesday. Featured are enhancements such as the new versions of the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. Also featured is

By Paul Krill

Lawyers, guns and the RIAA

There was no way the recording industry was going to come out of the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case smelling like anything but cow dung. If they lost, we'd be singing "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead." Having won a jury verdict, they co

By Robert Cringely

Oct 10, 2007 3 mins

VMware’s VI3 Gets an EOY Upgrade

VMware announced a new version of its long standing enterprise server virtualization platform suite that the company says will provide greater levels of automation, increase overall infrastructure availability and boost performance for mission critic

Oct 10, 2007 3 mins

The next best thing to OS X

Where OS X doesn't fit, you have an impressive alternative It is no small source of consternation to those of us who have grown attached to OS X that systems that would run it best — primarily, those with processors created by AMD — will never

By Tom Yager

Oct 10, 2007 6 mins

So much for “More Secure”

There has been a lot said about how much more secure Microsoft Windows Vista has better security features than its predecessors. Security researchers who were invited to Redmond for this year's Blue Hat security event talked up how much better V

By Sean Gallagher

Oct 10, 2007 3 mins

RingCube’s Free MojoPac and a New USB Spec

RingCube Technologies is introducing their latest entry into the virtualization space, a product called MojoPac Freedom. And guess what, they said that it is free! Who can argue with free? And then, at Intel's annual developers forum in San Fran

Developers, Designers, and WPF

As I mentioned yesterday, I heard at ReMIX from two teams of developers and designers who had completed WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) projects using the Microsoft Visual Studio developer tools and Expression designer tools. The good news is t

Oct 9, 2007 4 mins

SAP + BO

In the last couple of years, it seemed that Oracle was setting out to acquire just about every independent software company, outbidding SAP in several occasions. But now with SAP's planned acquisition of Business Objects, it's clearly a sig

By Zack Urlocker

Oct 9, 2007 1 min

Test Center Tracker: A Great Day for Blogs

The weather can't quite seem to decide whether it's Summer or Fall, but no such indecision wracks the ranks of InfoWorld bloggers and columnists. It's solid information and strong opinion all around as we look at the issues and technol

By Curt Franklin

Oct 9, 2007 2 mins

Talking from the other side of the mic

At the recent InfoWorld Virtualization Forum in New York, I hosted a panel discussion about the green datacenter. One of the participants was Lewis Curtis, infrastructure architect and advisor at Microsoft, who hosts a blog of his own about the green

By Ted Samson

Oct 9, 2007 1 min

Globalization takes on a new look

Cross-fertilization of companies and countries is creating something brand-new Globalization is not only alive and well, it's happening on a massive scale. How else to explain why certain Indian outsourcing providers are buying up U.S.-based com

By Ephraim Schwartz

Oct 9, 2007 4 mins

Preview: OpenProj brings free, robust project management to the desktop

Microsoft Project 1.0 for Windows (my very first InfoWorld review assignment, by the way) didn't score high. In fact, during the late 1980's Scitor's Project Scheduler – with its speed, usability, and accurate scheduling –

By Mike Heck

Oct 9, 2007 3 mins

Password disaster in the making

What's worse: passwords taped to the monitor or a boss who assigns them all? My contract ended yesterday, and today I am a happier and feel much more comfortable in my chair. This gig was for the local hospice organization, which falls under HIP

By InfoWorld Anonymous

Oct 9, 2007 2 mins

Data Management

The price is right: Next open source business model

2007 is shaping up to be a banner year for open source companies. SourceForge, which hosts almost 160,000 projects, just posted fiscal year 2007 revenues that showed a hefty 35 percent increase over 2006. Red Hat posted a 28 percent revenue increase

By Brad Shimmin

Oct 9, 2007 4 mins

Indian outsourcers’ U.S. shopping spree

Are recent acquisitions of U.S. companies a sign that big Indian firms are snagging a bigger piece of domestic IT? Or is globalization simply rising to the next level?

By Ephraim Schwartz

Oct 9, 2007 6 mins