Opinion

Virtual Bridges Releases Product to run Windows on Solaris 10

Austin, TX based Virtual Bridges recently announced the release of its Win4Solaris product which allows Windows to run on the Solaris 10 operating system. The company announced two products: Win4Solaris Pro Desktop – which runs as an application on x

Xen 3.1 is Available for Download

In case you missed the news, the Xen team was excited to announce that it had released Xen 3.1 for download. The team said the release represented a major milestone in the Xen project. This version contains performance and stability enhancements, as

Dell Shows off VMware HA/DRS with Video Demonstrations

For those of you who still haven't gone down the path of evaluating or purchasing VMware's VI3 High Availability (HA) or Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) or even if you haven't driven past someone using it and honked your horn just

Apatar Data Integration Tool

You MUST check this tool out. Simply put, this is not just a one time data migration tool! You can literally have your high power sales folks on SalesForce.com and then your calling center on something like SugarCRM do a join and send an RSS feed to

Taking the 64-bit Plunge

Well, I finally did it. I moved full-time to Windows Vista 64-bit. It was something I had wanted to try for a while now, however, I was reluctant to make the move since it would require disturbing my well-tuned Vista 32-bit configuration (one I hadn&

Akorri Offers Application Service Level Management for VMware

Akorri introduces their BalancePoint 1.5 management software and ties it to the rising virtualization market. The company hopes their new software will help accelerate consolidation by improving performance and efficiency of the virtual infrastructur

Stunts and software

My son and I were talking this morning, and I asked what he wants to be when he grows up. His reply (I'm not making this up):Oh, I don't know. Either a Microsoft guy in England or a stunt man.I didn't have the heart to tell him they mi

Farstone’s RestoreIT

In my long search for a backup/restore utility for my Windows machines, I've tried just about everything I could get my hands on. Norton's Ghost was pretty good, but only for a full backup and bare metal restore. The rub is that everything

AmEx takes issue with Purchasing Portal coverage

In response to an article filed on Tuesday and written by me in which I said American Express will deliver a new consumer service for cardholders called Purchasing Portal that aggregates shopping catalogs and offers to obtain for cardholders American

Fabrizio…235 more reasons to love open source

We don't spew this kind of folly in open source. Other kinds, yes, but not this patent rubbish. So that's why I love Fabrizio's new shirt: I think he's planning to wear it to Microsoft's Monday "we sure do want to hug yo

Microsoft Popfly Released

John Montgomery is an old friend who is currently at Microsoft. He has alluded to working on a project codenamed "Tuscany" in his blog, but has been quiet about what it actually is, until this morning. Welcome to Popfly d

Like father, like son (Microsoft’s patent progeny)

I was talking with a friend this morning, and he brought up a funny connection. Microsoft now holds the distinction of World's Biggest Patent Troll, but just a few weeks ago that distinction may have gone to former Microsoft CTO, Nathan Myhrvold

Zimbra adds yet another 2 million paid users

I admit (again) that I didn't much like Zimbra for its first year of existence. I thought it was all hype. But even the crustiest of observers (like me) is starting to be persuaded that there's a whole lot of substance going on over at Zimb

The economics of open source (Stephe Walli)

Is open source the only way to write good software? Absolutely not. But, as Stephe Walli argues, open source proves to be a more efficient means to that end:Now good software has always been written by good software developers without regard for how

Microsoft + advertising may help it to drop the proprietary ball-and-chain

So, Microsoft is buying aQuantive (formerly known as AvenueA/Razorfish) in a $6B takeover of the advertising agency/consultant. It's an interesting acquisition, as Larry Dignan suggests:On the surface, the integration of the two companies should

Hands on: Seagate FreeAgent Go

Seagate FreeAgent Go Anyone who travels knows all too well how inconvenient is to carry along a heavy laptop. If you are thinking of an hand-held device such as the Blackberry consider that many people can't survive just on an e-mail diet when o

New boss, bad boss

Dear Bob …I am currently in a sticky situation. I am the senior IT person in a small to mid sized company. A year ago, there was a big upper management shakeup as some of the top executives left the company.During this change, my new boss was hired

I got da horse right here….

As I predicted back on April 16, Microsoft has indeed purchased online ad network aQuantive. The final price tag was $6 billion, or approximately $100 million for every hair left on Steve Ballmer's head. Who knew this futurist business would be

Rank Your SOA Vendor

 I happed to catch this post by Mark Fralick, Technology Editor, Supply Chain Digest who has a rather cool way of ranking SOA vendors. Mark talks about the hype, and how to see the core value of SOA beyond the hype. "Here's my suggest

Test Center Tracker: Secure those wireless networks

Fresh from the Test Center: A one-two punch from Trapeze Networks and AirDefense makes it easier to figure out what's happening on your wireless network and control who goes where. Brian Chee set up Trapeze RingMaster 5.0 with AirDefense 7.0 at

Listen and learn

<p>A tremendous way to motivate your team is to deal with them in ways that give them a meaningful role to play in what is going on around them. People in all situations feel valued when they feel they have impact or influence on their surround

Backup Blues

Like every experienced developer I know, I tend to be a little obsessive about backups. OK, more than a little.&nbsp;The trouble is, most backup applications are flawed. Backups are a form of insurance. You keep hoping you'll never need to u

Enterprise HPC News Weekly Wrap-up for May 18, 2007

This week's summary includes Sun announcing Java on Itanium, Canadian HPC vendor Liquid Computing working on massive data warehouses, and IBM's grid solution for medical computing.

True confessions

I screwed up — and the bosses thanked me for it. This is a confession of guilt. Many years ago I worked as a contractor for a fairly large company, a national leader in its field. The project involved the migration of about 13 legacy systems into on

Built-in encryption is the key to protecting against information leaks

Cisco offers a preview of its upcoming switch-based approach to data encryption

Why I hate RBLs

Anti-spam real-time block lists become a royal pain when it comes to getting innocent servers off the list

Salesforce Ignores Office Compatibility Issue

Customers migrating to Vista and Office 2007 are bound to run into the occasional compatibility problem with their existing applications. But while that's to be expected, one reader has been flabbergasted to find that Salesforce.com seems to hav

Using Yahoo makes your city greener?

Yahoo's "Greenest City" Challenge requires more commitment to the company's services than to the environment

SWsoft Financials and Parallels One Stop Shop

It looks like parent company SWsoft and its desktop virtualization acquisition, Parallels, are both making announcements. In a recent press release from SWsoft, the company released information about their first quarter 2007 financials. Evidently, VM

Microsoft doesn’t want to sue, but is the alternative any better?

I feel Bill Hilf's pain. He went on the record with Infoworld to counter some of the criticism that has erupted from Microsoft's incendiary comments in Fortune Magazine about patent violations in open source software. Bill is a good guy, an

The Vista Aero vs. Battery Life Myth

Lately, there has been a rash of unscientific reporting around the issue of Windows Vista and notebook battery consumption. Some customers have apparently reported decreased battery life under Vista, however, most of these reports have been entirely

Zimbra’s steady rise

I admit it. I have spent the last year pretending that Zimbra was more hype than reality. I suppose I can be forgiven for this, given just how overwhelming the hype has been. (TechCrunch's somewhat silly math being a prime example.) But I had br

The no bull prize

In an effort to save a sacred cow named Shambo from execution at the hands of local health officials, monks at the Skanda Vale ashram in Wales have set up a Webcam to wrangle sympathy for the endangered quadraped. Its name: MooTube, of course. There

Preview: ActiveBatch 6.0’s new tools make its good job-scheduling software better

ActiveBatch 6.0 is going GA soon, and it boasts some impressive enhancements added since my review of the previous version. There are actually too many to talk about here, but I'll highlight my favorites. I ask myself one question each time I pi

Gartner weighs in on what ‘open source’ means

Or, rather, not what it means, but that vendors should figure out a consistent definition of what it means so as not to confuse buyers. Fair enough.According to Gartner, the current debate among open source vendors is about reconciling an inherent in

Test Center Daily: Do the mobile hop!

DiVitas handless wireless hand-offs: Getting cut off in the middle of a phone call isn't just annoying; it's not good for business. DiVitas has devised a wireless solution, its Mobile Convergence Appliance, lets a mobile-phone user seamless

Betting on Java (O’Reilly book data)

I've been grateful for O'Reilly Media's quarterly State of the Computer Book Market. It provides interesting insight into which programming languages/tech topics are hot, and which are on the wane. In this latest installment, two thing

Linking Processes to Services = SOA

Yesterday at the SOA Executive Forum I moderated the "Bridging the Gap between Process and Services" panel. Basically the idea was that: "SOA is a conversation between IT and business. Mapping out business processes is an essential fir

Green demands trickle down the supply chain

If you want to sell to the big-name IT vendors, you must inject green into your products — and your practices Government regulations, both national and international, impose a fairly high green bar for hardware vendors, limiting the toxic substances

Culture clash at SAP

"Americanization" may spell trouble for German software giant's global designs

Rails management riding in at conference

FiveRuns is announcing on Thursday FiveRuns' Management Suite for Rails, a hosted service providing application lifecycle management for Ruby on Rails application development. Being announced at the RailsConf 2007 event in Portland, Ore., the su

AMD Updates Its I/O Virtualization Technology

AMD has announced the second version of its I/O virtualization technology specification. The latest specification extends the benefits of AMD's I/O Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) to provide a secure, scalable, high-performance solution for I/O v

Tibco readies AJAX messaging service

Tibco has announced plans to release its Tibco Ajax Message Service 1.0 software, which pushes live data and events from servers to Web pages, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications and other software. Recognizing the growth of AJAX rich

A Microsoft Pyrrhic victory?

The Great Canteloupe Debacle

Ok, after releasing my TechED Survival Guide the other day, I got this reply from one of my friends at MS. Shame you’ll not be at TechEd. But at least I am spared the moment where I see you in the audience and recall exactly what you have been

Microsoft’s Patent Medicine

If you're wondering whether Microsoft has its boxers in a bunch over the open source software threat, this week's news left no doubt. In an interview with Fortune, MS Chief Counsel Brad Smith claimed open source apps like Linux and OpenOffi

“CIOs don’t care about open source”

Stephe Walli and Barry Klawans recently opined in the comments of this blog that CIOs don't care about open source. They care about value, which ties to the product/solution, not the license. This is similar to what Olliance reports from its Thi

Calling all developers to the Open Source Business Conference

I was looking through the attendee list for the Open Source Business Conference yesterday, and it struck me that one group is missing: developers. We have an unprecedented number of IT executives joining us this year, and the usual assembly of open s

Who’s Blocking SOA?

There has been a lot of blogging going on around the notion of SOA adoption. Specifically, ZapThink's Ron Schmelzer post, and Joe McKendrick response around Ron's assertion that SOA is making more sense to business than IT. Indeed, that in

Type Editing in Freebase

When I wrote about Metaweb and Freebase on March 21st, I thought that my long-term interest in this technology&nbsp;would be centered on the Metaweb API. In real life, what happened is that I got interested in structuring types in Freebase that