Opinion

Service Design for Service Externalization

Most of my projects are "real world," and as such things are never perfect. While most think about SOA as the design and development of these new shiny services that are perfectly designed, tested, and implemented, the real world is that mo

Another Hit from the VMware Crack Pipe

It's been a couple of weeks since my last update. I've been transitioning to my summer home on Mauritius (always an arduous task, but more so with wife, 2 children and 4 notebook computers in tow), however, I couldn't pass up an opport

Direct TV, Current deal will open door for broadband via utilities

The news that Direct TV signed a deal with the Current Group to deliver broadband over power lines opens up a fascinating new chapter in last-mile solutions and will certainly ramp up the competitive landscape. The deal between Current Group and Dire

IT as profit center

Dear Bob …I would like to raise a topic that needs to be considered in this rapidly growing age of technology.I'm interested in the trend most companies have about making IT Departments an income rather than expense unit. The reason I want the

Intel announces Penryn ship date, launches new QC Xeons, AMD releases multicore software tool spec

<p>In today's enterprise HPC wrap-up we focus on new technology announcements from Intel that will shape big compute in the enterprise, including two new quad core Xeons from Intel and a ship date for the new Penryn 45nm processors. AMD is

Eat packets, VoIP boy

Who knew&nbsp;that using voice over IP&nbsp;was so fraught with disaster? After I posted M. K.'s tale of&nbsp;VoIP woe on Monday, I received an outpouring of comments and emails from other TeleBlend sufferers. I've never seen so

SMB Tech News Today; 8/15

* Yahoo! gets the win in e-biz customer happiness. The University of Michigan just did a big study on customer satisfaction with e-biz services. Turns out Yahoo! took the win over Google. When you compare the finish on products like Yahoo! Mail vs. G

Power6: IBM’s mainframe on-a-rack

IBM's merging of its mainframe and RISC engineering groups lights the way to more reliable servers The advent of the microprocessor created a new class of system that liberated computing from air-conditioned rooms and washing machine-size storag

Exchange 2007 SP1 packed with goodies

Better security and OWA enhancements top the list of improvements

What To Value

I’m having a lot of difficulty understanding the debate surrounding MySQL’s decision to make their enterprise binaries and source less available than before. I was hoping that a few days into it I would get a better sense of the debate an

Analyst: Expect more offshoring if U.S. tightens on immigration

Offshore and near-shore development centers will proliferate, especially in major Latin American companies, Mexico, and Canada, if the U.S. government turns its focus on closing loopholes on H-1B legislation and tightens the screws on immigration to

Does Adobe Want to be an Office Productivity Apps vendor?

It is funny how Matt and I can read the same article and come up with different conclusions. I read this article and thought that Adobe's entry into the Office applications market has little to do with OSS or Open Standards, so no need to blog a

Outsource!

A mighty ionic wind could revolutionize chip-cooling

Researchers at Purdue University have demonstrated a new technology that employs "ionic wind engines" to cool chips as much as five times more effectively than other experimental cooling approaches, the institution reports.

A Day Without SPAM is, well, Rare

A couple of interesting security announcements today, one positive and one much less so. On the positive side, Microsoft has released Forefront Security of Exchange Server SP1 Beta 2 just in time for the release of Exchange Server SP1 Beta 2. The rea

Embedded Programming with the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework

In June and July, I discussed the .NET Micro Framework, the Tahoe Board, and the &nbsp;Tahoe SDK. Since then, the Tahoe SDK has been updated, and Microsoft Press has published Embedded Programming with the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework, by Donal

Q&A: MuleSource adopting CPAL

Preamble: I am not a lawyer, though I often wish that I had gone to law school and not business school so that I could possibly explain open source licensing and how we've somehow made freely available software as complicated as telecom. The fac

SCO: Going, going, gone?

First Karl Rove, now SCO. Last week, a judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, owns the rights to Unix code and that SCO can't sue IBM for violating rights it doesn't own, signaling that&nbsp;the endless, $5 billion legal battle over Linux m

Is SOA Working?

Download file…

Disclaimer Explained

Roy Russo, of Loopfuse, said: "I have to say the funniest things about your posts are: "The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions." I guess its indicative o

XenEnterprise v4 Helps ISVs Grow Solutions

On the heels of the announcement of XenSource's latest release, XenEnterprise v4, XenSource also announced that the new version of the company's server virtualization product is making it possible for several ISVs to offer new integrated so

The game with no winner

A coworker's need to get ahead sabotaged my career from that point forward In 1993, I took a job with an insurance broker. With the public use of the Internet looming, they didn't even have a real network. Having been a midrange developer,

The demise of Google

Niche search services could herald hard times ahead for the Web's own 800-pound Gorillla Nothing lasts forever. And while Google is riding high on the crest of a wave, there is an almost imperceptible undercurrent that could spell trouble for th

An Aversion to Supporting Vista

<P>The introduction of Windows Vista has been plagued by many dysfunctional aspects, from <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/story/2006/12/12/1755/3900">licensing screw-ups</A> and <A href="http://www.gripe2ed.

XenEnterprise 4.0: Questions and answers

XenSource's XenEnterprise 4.0, announced today and available August 20, erases a number of shortcomings Paul Venezia noted in his July 9 review of XenEnterprise 3.2. These included lack of support for 64-bit guests, no live VM migration or autom

XenSource Fights Back with its Latest Enterprise Offering

XenSource made a bold move today as it decided to announce its next generation XenEnterprise product, version 4.0, on the same day the entire community and financial industry awaited news about VMware's IPO. The company is looking to offer a muc

VMware IPO

VMware IPO's tomorrow and is estimated to be oversubscribed by as much as 25x the number of shares available according to MorningNotes (via TheStreet.com). The 33M share IPO at $29 will bring in $957M, and that's only for an 11% stake in VM

More on Access

OK, well, the response to my last Access post was a lot more than expected. There are some pretty good comments in there. Some of you made some very good points, both for and against my post. And for the first time in a long time I actually got on an

JetBrains extends IDE to Groovy, Grails

JetBrains announced Monday a public preview of the JetGroovy Plugin, enabling Groovy and Grails developers to leverage the company's IntelliJ Idea IDE. Productivity features of IntelliJ become accessible by Groovy and Grails programmers. Capabil

Broadcasters fight move offering Internet access over TV

Microsoft, as part of a high-tech coalition that includes Intel, Google, and Dell, will give testimony today before the FCC refuting that commission's claim that the use of "vacant TV airwaves," also called "white space," for

A developer who can’t install, or connect

Dear Bob …We're going from Novell (dead end) to ActiveDirectory. And even as a developer (mostly Unix, but some PC), "they" want to lock down my desktop so I can't install apps (not even give me a login I can switch to to do the

Thinking in lists

Test Center Tracker: Beware the power of Office SharePoint Server

With great power …: Senior Contributors Oliver Rist and Brian Chee are boldly tackling all five of Microsoft's new Office servers, and this week, they're sharing their experience with SharePoint 2007. The duo is blown away by the amazing

NSF’s got a really big pair, AMD’s icky factor up again, XenSource revs offering and much more

<p>In today's HPC news roundup the NSF announces the winner of its $208M Track 1 supercomputer award, AMD continues its press barrage against Intel and ups its icky factor yet again, XenSource revs its virtualization offering, and much mor

FireScope adds SDK for business service system

FireScope has added a software development kit for building custom interfaces to its FireScope business service management appliance. The company's software and appliance offer a real-time view of the health and security of IT operations, FireSc

TeleBlend and the VoIP Blues

When I'm not on my cell, I use a VoIP line from a company whose name begins with V. Some days I think it's great, and sometimes I pine for the days of the&nbsp;rotary dial and good old Monopolistic Ma Bell. And it seems I'm not alo

AppStream Improves Application Streaming and SaaS Market

AppStream, Inc., a leader in on-demand application deployment and management, is challenging the application streaming and SaaS market with the latest edition of their software, AppStream 5.2.2. The product comes in two flavors, an Enterprise edition

Serving Two Markets

One of the challenges open source companies have is that you serve two distinct markets: your customers as well as non-paying community users. Paradoxically, the non-paying users can be the most vocal and demanding. Matt Asay blogs about this as the

Calling all alpha geeks

You think you're smart? Take our IT IQ test and find out how you measure up

Making the case with central IT

Dear Bob … We are a small group of dedicated people working for a public safety unit under a large agency. We have accomplished the impossible and have worked in an environment of hostility towards the public safety department by other support unit

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Performance on VMware ESX Server 3

This VMware white paper discusses the performance and scalability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 when deployed within virtual machines running under VMware ESX Server 3.0.1. The introduction of this 19 page white paper reads: Virtualization has be

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 VHD

Microsoft has released a pre-configured VHD of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 that can be downloaded and safely evaluated in a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 environment in a similar manner to that of a VMware virtual appliance. Overview: Mic

The Future of SOA

In doing my weekly reading, I came across the transcript around the July 27th Podcast, Briefings Direct, hosted by Dana Gartner. Just a few comment to share around the future of SOA, and especially my comments during my keynote presentation at the Op

Mastering Virtualization from the Datacenter to the Desktop

InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum is right around the corner. If you haven't signed up or made plans to attend this event, I invite you to do so. Once again, this event is going to take place in the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New

Stealth Virtualization from Illumita Raises $6M

Illumita, an emerging company in the virtualization technology field, has secured $6 million in Series A funding. The money raised is expected to help the stealth company accelerate its product development and get its first product to market. The mon

VMware IPO is Upping the Ante

It seems as though VMware has filed an amended statement with the SEC for an initial public offering of its common stock. The company now expects the initial public offering of its Class A common stock to be between $27.00 and $29.00 per share, a 17

Microsoft Virtualization Security Fix Planned on Patch Day

Microsoft issued an advanced notification of nine security bulletins that the company plans on releasing with next Tuesday's patch day. Six of these will fix critical security vulnerabilities with bugs being found across the board from the Windo

Wait. What?

Okay, maybe it's just me, but I swear that the default "new email" tone on Profimail is the Super Mario Bros. "new life" tone. Seriously. I'm not sure how I feel about that….

Second Life Responds: A Conversation with Joe Miller

In response to my Friday posting on August 3rd about reliability and voice in Second Life (SL), Joe Miller, Linden Lab’s VP for product and platform development, called me on the phone&nbsp;the following Monday. If you look at Joe's bi

Online storage will become a necessity

The news this week that Microsoft Live is now offering 500MB of online storage via its Skydrive service and that Google will allow Gmail users to extend their 1GB of storage with a fee-based storage offering makes me wonder what's going on. I ha