Opinion

StorCloud at SC05

The show hasn't even officially opened yet, and I just got a brief but enlightening tour of the StorCloud infrastructure. 650TB of storage from a dozen vendors, linked through SCInet via 10G, 1G, Infiniband, and FC to various clusters elsewhere

Why VoIP Users are Calling the Help Desk

Storage middleman

I had a chance to chat with Wayne Karpoff from YottaYotta today at SC05. Although YottaYotta has been relatively under the radar until now, it seems that they're ready to move into the mainstream market with their newest product, the GSX3000. I

The database the open source community won’t build

Has database vendor EnterpriseDB found the business model for the next generation of open source companies?

IT projects that matter

InfoWorld 100 prizewinners innovate while keeping an eye on ROI

Are shortcuts acceptable?

Dear Bob … Here is a question: What do you think of when people use initials instead of either the first name or last name in a communication? For example, when I get e-mails from my boss, she refers to me like this "EC I need you to do this,

SC05 and the low end of interconnects

I'm spending the weekend and Monday at SC05 in Seattle, taking in the latest in supercomputing concepts. Today, I've been focusing mostly on interconnects. The cluster interconnect talk by DK Panda proved quite interesting, focusing on Infi

Motivating a team to act as a team

Dear Bob … Your point: Beware of anecdotes and metaphors. They're useful … for illustrating a point, or for demonstrating that something is possible. For anything else you need statistically valid evidence. Yes, Disraeli said there are three

Losing its cool, Apple iPod gets ROI; plus auto industry avoids RFID

Coolness no longer sole reason to buy iPod; plus RFID foot-dragging in supply chain

Microsoft security is nothing to sneeze at

It's not off the hook yet, but Microsoft is cleaning up its act — and the results are showing

When Your SOA Breaks Down – How Will You Fix It?

Everyone is really excited about the flexibility and re-usability afforded by loosely coupling software components and reusing the best stuff rather than building the same functionality over and over again. But, does anyone really have a handle on w

Yukon comes in out of the cold

Packed with rich features, SQL Server 2005 is worthy of serious consideration

Getting tough on data security

Initiatives and products from Atempo, NetApp bring a ray of hope to storage security

More from the SOA Executive Forum…What’s a Standard?

One thing that did stand out at the summit was a question I got after my "SOA 101" session….

Beyond office document formats

The current debate over office document formats misses the bigger challenge still facing us

Preparing for a technology disaster

Planning for any situation you’re afraid to face makes responding to any other far easier

Recruit a culture of honest inquiry?

Dear Bob … Working for a moderately large, but significant government agency gives opportunities to observe (and strive to change) organisational culture of many different colours and textures. The concept of 'building a culture of honest inqu

Microsoft is stuck on the C: drive

Despite its new service offerings, Redmond will have a hard time transitioning from the desktop software model

Outsourcers gone bad

If your CEO is in bed with your consultant, trouble can't be far behind

Handling a CEO who starts with the answer

Dear Bob … Your column, "Building a culture of honest inquiry" was right on target. This type of thinking is what some of us try to practice, but often times getting the correct answer is squashed by getting the answer the boss wants. &qu

Notes from InfoWorld’s SOA Executive Forum

First of all, there are a ton of people here. Full house. The vendors must be loving it. The conference is in NYC….

Verizon goes back to the workbench

Convincing developers to embrace SOA meant extensive custom development

Steps to SOA No. 6: Start tackling governance

Particularly in large enterprises, managing service interface definitions and deciding who is responsible for what pose the biggest challenges

Stepping into the future of SOA

Missing technology pieces stand in the way of ultimate business agility, but limited SOA deployments can still deliver benefits today

New processes for Thomson Prometric

Getting developers on board for SOA called for a radical change in thinking

Sabre’s customer-driven SOA

The travel solutions provider Web services-enabled its applications in response to customer demand

Making SOA work

Four companies explain how they met the challenge of implementing service-oriented architecture

SOA: Watch your steps

Presenting a process for thinking about, and implementing, SOA

Developing with open source, risk-free

A new insurance product protects companies against liability for unintended license violations

British American Tobacco builds SOA one step at a time

Flush with early success, the company has begun transitioning legacy systems across the enterprise

More relaydelay code

In keeping with my earlier promise to start posting functional yet somewhat incomplete code, here's a link to a relaydelay front end. I've posted some of this code before, but there are some new additions. Modifications to relaydelay.pl to

Moving beyond platitudes

Dear Bob … I'm disappointed in my staff, and trying not to show it. Our company is facing significant challenges right now and our executive leadership is smart enough to know we don't have all of the ideas. So each of us asked the manage

Can your SOA Scale? Many Can’t

Making solutions scale is nothing new. However, the SOA technology and approaches recently employed are largely untested with higher application and information and service management traffic loads. SOA implementers were happy to get their solutions

A constant state of insecurity

Passwords are in the air, and it isn’t even spring

Is the CIO’s prestige really slipping?

New research shows that very few have a seat at the table among the corporate board of directors

Gen X style, Gates on trial

The old gray gossip monger just keeps cranking along

Riding a 10G gale at SNW Fall

Storage vendors push 10Gbps transport technologies

Office 12 needs to be more format-friendly

Microsoft must accept that PDF and OpenDoc are here to stay

Wrapping up the Help Desk trio

Dear Bob … Thanks for taking a second try at my issue (Fix a broken Help Desk process or toss it out?). It was very helpful. BTW I like your on-line form solution. However, it would not work here for a reason related to the knee-jerk reaction to th

Toolkits for user innovation

Software that takes a toolkit approach can make mass customization economical

AMD in hot pursuit of bulletproof servers

Mainframe blueprints from tiny Opterons would be the key

Pick Your SOA Levels

There seems to be more thinking out there around the strategic nature of SOAs, and the discipline of architecture in general. That's a good thing. However, I'm also seeing vendor-focused thought leadership that could steer a few off course.

Working for Dilbert’s boss

You can't do a three-month project in three weeks

Cellular data services ramp up

With carriers struggling to maintain profit margins, could an Oracle phone be in your future?

Case study

I'm really not a guy for fancy computer cases. I like my systems to speak softly and carry a big stick. For the past year or so, I've run my main Linux workstation with an MSI MASTER-2 mainboard with dual Opteron 248 CPUs, 2GB of RAM, a 3Wa

Managing merger mania

How to protect your IT investment when big vendors feel the urge to merge

The Hartford hedges its bets

Rigorous adherence to standards reduces risk of disruption from a shifting vendor landscape

Merger mania

Mergers and acquisitions throw a monkey wrench into carefully wrought IT strategies. Can you minimize the disruption?

CrossOver Office bridges the Linux-Windows divide

New version lets admins distribute, manage, and run Windows software on Linux desktops

Fix a broken Help Desk process or toss it out?

Dear Bob … Thanks for replying to my question (What scales, what doesn't, what's relevant, and what isn't). As usual, everything you say is true. Unfortunately, it isn't what I need. I do understand what "truly scaling well