Opinion

Getting big things done even when you can’t change the big picture

<p>It's easy to look at the mass of new management practices and decide that everything needs to be thrown out in the way we manage today or we'll never have another successful release. Sure, small teams are often better, and flat org

Web Service Blues

One of my software development clients is licensing a Windows&nbsp;application to another software company, for bundling with that company's own product, and I was tasked with integrating this unmanaged&nbsp;C++ application (compiled wit

Chipmakers flush billions in advertising, DDN fights silent SATA corruption, DataSynapse builds grids of 20,000 nodes, and much more

Today's enterprise HPC news summary is chock full of HPC goodness. Here are some of the stories we're covering today: chipmakers flush billions in advertising, customers still don't know who makes what; DataDirect Networks releases a n

Lost in Translation

moka5 Making Updates to its Virtualization Engine and the Company

moka5, a virtual computing company targeting consumers and SMBs, announced that it has completed a $15 million Series B round of funding. This round was led by Highlight Capital Partners and included an additional investment by existing investor Khos

Veeam Releases New Virtualization Tools

The Russian-based company creating software to help with managing virtual servers introduced today their latest entry into the virtualization marketspace, Veeam Configurator 1.0. The new software product is a Windows GUI interface that integrates wit

Whether oneness is a cause for concern

Dear Bob …Over the past six months or so I have run across several companies, including my most recent and current employers, who have mottoes on their sites along these lines: One Company, One Vision, One Source.Among those that I remember seeing

iPhone spurs mobile development renaissance

I wish I could have peppered my iPhone review with phrases such as "at present," "initially," or "for the time being." But Apple doesn't work that way. If I could be confident that Apple would address the major shor

Up for adoption: Windows Vista

Well, it's been six months since the second biggest tech debut of the year, Windows Vista. (OK, five months and 12 days, for those of you who are counting). How's has it gone? The good news: Security companies like Zone Alarm have, finally,

Sink your teeth into outsourcing

When your IT department's to-do list piles too high, consider enlisting outside help

Agile development platform upgraded

VersionOne is bolstering its platform for conducting agile software development projects, adding capabilities for strategic planning and enterprise teams. The Summer 2007 release of V1: Agile Enterprise continues to provide for software development p

Changing Role of the CIO

We've recently hired our first CIO at MySQL, and it's interesting to consider how the role of the CIO is different from what it used to be. MySQL has some particular challenges from an information management perspective because we have so m

Openmoko.org Portal Site

With all the iPhone hype, I've just got to wonder just how open the iPhone platform is going to be?&nbsp;While I've&nbsp;been hearing about java&nbsp;sdk's for it, I've not seen a download link yet on the Apple site. I

Corrections done correctly

<p>Last time I talked about the need to take corrective action when people — intentionally or unintentionally — act in ways destructive to what you are trying to create.</p> <p>Like the nuclear option, firing

Iona offers open source SOA products

Iona Techonologies announced this week products intended for open source SOA, available under the Fuse brand and based on Apache Software Foundation projects. Fuse components are designed to meet requirements for messaging, service enablement and SOA

New “Greg the Architect.”

Tibco has done a good job with this series, got to give them that. Here is the latest. Enjoy….

VMware Expands Lab Automation with Lab Manager 2.5

VMware announced the long anticipated update to its virtual lab automation system, VMware Lab Manager 2.5. The product enables users of VMware Infrastructure 3 to automate the setup, capture, storage and sharing of complex, multi-machine software con

Neoware joins The Green Grid

Thin-client vendor Neoware has joined The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in datacenters. "The Green Grid is a forward-thinking organization dealing with some of the most significant technology and en

Revisited – Returns on open source VC investments

I questioned the value of VC investments in OSS in a previous post. I estimated that the investments would have to be worth between $12.5B and $19.6B to be in line with the historical rate of return for VCs (i.e. 57%). Well, I was wrong, (somewhat).

No team, no staff, no hope

I couldn't talk to users and they wouldn't give me a staff. But I got the job done anyway. [ We need your IT horror stories! Submit your wildest tales at http://weblog.infoworld.com/offtherecord/ ] Back in the late 80's, I was a Cobol/

Pandemic flu test: Planning for the next disaster

Financial services will be the first industry to plan for a pandemic. Time for broader planning? On Sept. 11, 2001, the business continuity and the financial services industries met head-on. Long-term disruption was avoided in part by a decision to l

iPhone delivers more misses than hits

Gadget's list of strengths falls far short of its many disappointing weaknesses

No Shame Over Bogus Eli/New Hill Subscriptions

<P>I'm occasionally accused of focusing too much on the minor sins of the technology giants instead of exposing more of the outright scams perpetrated by lesser-known companies. And there might be something to that criticism. But one reaso

Where have all the SOA Standards Gone?

When standards are created in the SOA space I mark the occasion by creating a Google Alert for that standard, and then sifting through the piles of links to get the real scope on the maturation of a particular SOA standard. To date, I'm tracking

SWsoft and Parallels – Combining Forces and Dealing with LGPL

While VMware may be currently ruling the roost, that hasn't stopped SWsoft from making its own mark in a growing space. Back in May, the company announced first quarter revenue growth of 140% and virtualization revenue growth in excess of 600%.

Interruptions

Sony hits bottom of Greenpeace eco rankings

Despite Sony's consistently poor showings, Greenpeace remains fixated on Apple

JBoss offers enterprise product bundle

Continuing its pursuit of enterprise IT shops, JBoss is releasing on Tuesday JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2, which offers a single package of three of the company's open source middleware technologies. Featured in the platform are JBo

Funding FSF’s fight vs. Microsoft

Via CBR, I read Bob Sutor's (VP of Open Standards for IBM) comments on Microsoft and GPLv3: Frankly, whatever they say, it might end up being up to the lawyers and other aspects of the legal system to decide what it all means. Yes, it looks like

SMB Tech News Today; 7/09

* Google buys Postini. Deal is worth $625 million and is most likely in response to Microsoft's offering the same kind of thing through ForeFront. Strange how the anti-Microsoft is behaving…just like Microsoft. (Source: Bloomberg) * Don't

Advice for new managers: defending your core values

<p>We've talked about the need to set the tone in your organization, but what do you do when something happens that works against the tone you're trying to set?</p> <p>In this post I talk about those issues, and my list

Ratatouille, Second Life, and CGI

Saturday I spent some time looking at the re-creation of the Sistine Chapel on the Vassar Campus&nbsp;in Second Life.&nbsp;Sunday I took my kids to see Ratatouille. I thought the Sistine Chapel simulation was pretty impressive; my wife, who d

The year-long compile, Harvard’s HPC in biomed summit, and EnginFrame is revved

<p>In today's enterprise HPC news summary we get word of Harvard's invitation-only HPC biomed summit, the EnginFrame grid portal is revved, and Dan Reed asks us to rethink why we expect application compilation to take seconds, not mo

Is VMware feeling the heat?

InfoWorld Test Center shows its range with reviews

Samsung Option is Imaginary

<P>It may seem like a rather minor irritation to discover that optional equipment advertised for a product is not actually available. But it's a bit more annoying when that option is one of the reasons you chose that particular model. And

VMware Hires New CFO as IPO Approaches

Virtualization giant VMware recently hired former Amazon.com executive, Mark Peek, as the company's new Chief Financial Officer. In his new role, he will lead VMware's finance, IT and facilities teams. This, at an interesting time for the v

Transitive Ships QuickTransit 1.2 Helping Solaris/SPARC Migration

Transitive Corporation announced the release of Version 1.2 of its innovative QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64 solution. Just as server virtualization helped bridge the gap for legacy software running on Windows NT to operate on newer h

Where are the box’s boundaries

Dear Bob …I'm responding to your recent Keep the Joint Running, "Iacocca's alliterative leadership list," (6/18/2007) where you discuss the importance of "out-of-the-box" thinking.I believe the value of "new ideas

Returns on open source VC investments

Matthew Aslett reports that VC funding to open source startups rose more than 33% in 2Q07 vs. 2Q06. A decline in funding in 1Q07 resulted in an overall decline of 6.4% to $198.85M in 1H07 vs. 1H06. Matthew estimates that a total of $2.05B has been in

iPhone SIM works in any non-iPhone handset for calls, but not for data

As I expected, you can pull the SIM card from an activated iPhone and place it in any phone you wish. However, all you'll be able to do is make phone calls. Any Web or e-mail access you attempt with the other phone will be billed to you at $.01

iPhone unbrick (activate w/o AT&T service) hack works; single-step tool for Mac

Update: This page has a one-step downloadable tool for Mac users, and it includes the keys that make the directions in the following link easier for PC users to follow. The whole business in the PC technique about decompiling the .net assembly is to

Geek Week in Review

iPhone mania is finally over, thank Jobs. Here are some stories you might have missed in all the fuss: SAP zapped. German uber-software firm SAP has admitted to “inappropriate downloads” from Oracle's servers by its Dallas-based Tomo

Enterprise-class HPC in the America’s cup, and power at Intel’s Research Day

<p>In today's enterprise HPC roundup we look at an exotic use for enterprise-class HPC: designing the America's Cup winner. And Ars Technica does a deep dive on the power research featured at Intel's recent Research Day.</p&gt

Secure applications in a secure ecosystem: the next challenge

Reinventing a more secure Internet means adding authentication and building in access rights

iPhone: Proceed with caution

Apple's latest gadget charms — but it also increases your data-disclosure risk

Artificial Scarcity vs Value Triggers

The obvious question that any open source "business" needs to address is how to get people to pay for offerings. Being that the code is out there and customers can theoretically support themselves and/or never pay there needs to be a compel

Third Parties Pushing Virtualization – Nimsoft and uXcomm

Virtualization technology is great, but in addition to the really cool features being offered by the virtualization vendors, it's third party applications that sometime really make a virtual environment stand out. Nimsoft is now offering VMware

Can OSS guard against “do-overs” and “stupid decisions”?

BTL posted a 'highlight' of an interesting interview that Mary Jo Foley did with Iain McDonald, director of project management for Windows Server. In the interview, McDonald describes "Windows 2000" as the worst-run project of all

No iSoup for You

My Verizon Wireless (VZW)&nbsp;cell phone contract was up for renewal in August. I thought I might want an iPhone, so I kept resisting the repeated&nbsp;calls asking me to renew my contract early. I figured I'd wait until my contract was

How to fix cellular dead spots

I can currently see a couple ways to fixing the One to none bar syndrome in your home or business. Bitch loudly and constantly at your cellular provider but stop short of them not answering your calls Setup your own cellular repeater system Go VoIP o