News Desk

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Launches February 29

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:06:00 EST

A consumer preview of Windows 8, still a beta, is to launch February 29 during the Mobile World Congress at a two-hour affair at the Hotel Miramar in Barcelona. Microsoft sent out invitations Wednesday. It put out a developer preview last fall. Final release, after a release candidate, is still a big secret but the optimistic are hoping for fall in time for Christmas sales. Windows 8 is supposed to support both the ARM and x86 chip, has a new Metro interface and a built-in app store. Windows’ iconic Start button has reportedly been mothballed.

MMI Said to Want 2.25% of Apple Sales for Patents

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:42:00 EST

Mobile phone inventor and proposed Google acquisition Motorola Mobility apparently wants Apple to pay a royalty of 2.25% of sales to cover a FRAND license to its fundamental standards-essential patents according to an October 17 letter between the companies’ outside German lawyers unearthed over the weekend by patent sleuth Florian Mueller. That price, depending on MMI’s other terms, like how far back it’s talking and exactly what devices it means, could easily translate into a billion-dollar payment and give other essential patents owners similar delusions of grandeur imperiling Apple’s cost structure.

ScaleOut Software to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2012 New York

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:15:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that ScaleOut Software, a leading provider of distributed in-memory data grids and data analysis solutions, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. ScaleOut Software develops and markets distributed in-memory data grid (IMDG) software for storing, managing, and analyzing data in the cloud, on-premise, and mixed environments. Its flagship product, ScaleOut StateServer®, accelerates application performance with linear scalability and enables automatic data migration to and from the cloud. Integrated map/reduce functionality provides intuitive, powerful data analysis.

AMD Vows Not to Be Road Kill

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:13:00 EST

AMD Thursday told financial analysts it’s gonna try not to become road kill by addressing the “trends around consumerization, the cloud and convergence” and switching to a new “ambidextrous” strategy that includes other people’s technologies and IP to deliver differentiated products such as a tablet. That means AMD might pump for mobile maven ARM, whose low-power chips are challenging Intel enough for AMD CEO Rory Read to prophesy “the breakdown of proprietary control points.” Such a move has been suspected. The fact that AMD didn’t have a mobile strategy cost the company’s last CEO Dirk Meyer his job.

Oracle to SAP: ‘See You Back in Court’

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

As predictably as the sun rising in the east, Oracle Monday rejected the slashed $272 million award for damages that the presiding federal court judge decided it should get from SAP for its admitted copyright infringement rather than the $1.3 billion the jury awarded Oracle in late 2010 following a captivating and highly publicized trial. Oracle told the court it wants the new trial it was offered to “vindicate” the jury and its property rights as well as to avoid risking its right to appeal the court’s decision. SAP, which agreed to pay a $20 million fine to the US government to avoid criminal prosecution, said it was “disappointed.” Calling the jury award “grossly excessive,” Judge Phyllis Hamilton last September found Oracle only proved actual damages of $272 million. SAP’s third-party maintenance arm TomorrowNow illegally downloaded reams of Oracle software and customer-support documents before it was shut down in 2008.

Acer Sues Ex-CEO

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

Acer has sued its former CEO Gianfranco Lanci in Milan, charging him with breaching a one-year non-compete by going to work for its Lenovo rival. It is asking for damages. Lanci left Acer last year at the end of March in a strategy flap over the company’s direction, mobile gismos and an underestimated global downturn and started consulting for Lenovo in September. He was named head of a new Lenovo EMEA unit last month, starting April 2. Acer reportedly doesn’t want an injunction stopping him from taking the job, just money. Lenovo is on a tear currently challenging HP’s grip on its title as the world’s top PC vendor. Lenovo bought IBM’s PC unit a few years ago and last year added German merchant Medion, a move regarded as dangerous to Acer.

Cloud Expo New York: The Dark Side of Virtualization

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:15:00 EST

Virtualization and private cloud are good for server consolidation, creating flexible environments, and saving IT budget dollars. A recent survey of 1200 companies with 500+ employees showed that 59% had server virtualization in production or pilot. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dave Asprey, VP of Cloud Security at Trend Micro, will explain the types of situations when you should consider not virtualizing some of your applications. Reasons range from technical to legal to IT ops to politics to finances. Attend this session, and hear a true IT insider’s guide to the truth about virtualization.

Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Security for Regulated Industries – CloudAudit

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

Regulation of consumer and corporate data is increasing in response to the growing movement into cloud service offerings. Coupled with high-profile intrusions by groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec, the necessity for a standard way to assess the security of cloud service providers becomes apparent. CloudAudit is an open standard developed by a Cloud Security Alliance working group that provides an open, common, extensible namespace and interface to enable cloud providers and authorized customers to automate audits, assertions, assessments and assurance for their cloud infrastructure, platform or application environments.

EMC to Open Cloud and Big Data R&D Center in Russia

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

EMC on Wednesday announced it plans to establish an R&D center in the Skolkovo Foundation's Innovation Hub in Russia that will focus on development of cloud infrastructure solutions and Big Data analytics technologies for Bioinformatics and Energy Efficiency. EMC also plans to collaborate on research projects in these and other areas with Russian universities, government agencies, and local and multinational companies in the Skolkovo community. The new EMC facility will be located at the Skolkovo Innovation Center and will work in close cooperation with EMC's existing R&D center in St. Petersburg. The agreement was signed today in Moscow by Joel Schwartz, EMC's Senior Vice President, and Viktor Vekselberg, Skolkovo Foundation President. The Skolkovo Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on establishing an innovation hub to stimulate innovative entrepreneurship that will benefit Russia and the global economy. Skolkovo's goal is to leverage Russia's resources in the field of contemporary applied research and create a favorable environment for undertaking scientific developments in five priority areas of technological development: power engineering and energy efficiency, space, bioinformatics, nuclear and computer technologies.

Yahoo Chairman, Three Directors Fall on Their Swords

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:51:00 EST

Yahoo’s long-suffering stockholders are finally getting what they’ve wanted since he stiffened Jerry Yang’s resolve to torpedo Microsoft’s insanely great $47.5 billion $33-a-share offer to buy to company in 2008: the departure of chairman Roy Bostock. Bostock is taking with him three other tainted board members including HP printer exec Vyomesh Joshi, media investor Arthur Kern and ex-Disney exec Gary Wilson. The quartet, all reportedly volunteers, have agreed not to seek re-election this June. Who will replace Bostock is unclear but the beleaguered company has named two brand new directors, former Rovi CEO and one-time IBM higher-up Fred Amoroso and former LiveOps CEO and ex-eBay COO Maynard Webb. It is looking for more recruits. Webb serves on the board of Admob and salesforce.com and Amoroso, a Meta Group alum, knows the online video and video ad business. The exodus will leave Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson, imported from PayPal in January, with a board whose oldest member wasn’t there more than two years ago. Co-founder Jerry Yang departed the premises in mid-January. Bostock, who took credit for the re-composition of the board, made the announcements in a letter to stockholders Tuesday afternoon. He also said that the company has yet to hear an equity investment proposal it fancies to increase Yahoo’s value. It has reportedly entertained offers for a piece of Yahoo from consortia led by private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG Capital. What to do with its handsome stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan is still on the table too. Both Alibaba and Softbank want to buy Yahoo out. Bostock blamed the complexity of the potentially tax-free transactions for the continued delay and offered no reassurance of any final resolution. However, negotiations are reportedly moving along and Yahoo might have a deal next month, the whisperers say. The moves were made against the backdrop of a threatened proxy fight by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point LLC. After-hours after the news broke Yahoo added five cents to its Tuesday close of $15.83.

Cloud Expo New York: Goodbye PaaS 1.0, Hello PaaS 2.0

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The Platform as a Service (PaaS) market grew out of the fact that no other cloud solution addressed the ever-increasing complexity of managing and writing modern applications: no frameworks, libraries or APIs alone could tackle the sticky application engineering challenges. Unfortunately, PaaS 1.0 is what people are now seeing as strictly a “tool” to easily deploy apps to the infrastructure in a self-service way with little or no differentiation among offerings. However, in order for PaaS to reach its full potential and become the modern day abstraction layer for software delivery, we must enter the PaaS 2.0 phase. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Sinclair Schuller, Co-Founder & CEO of Apprenda, will explain how organizations are currently using PaaS, where PaaS is evolving to, and highlight best practices to maximize the value of existing investments when adopting PaaS today.

Cloud Expo New York: Best Practices for Big Unstructured Data Storage

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:15:00 EST

Big Data has become very popular as what can probably best be described as “loosely structured large scale data”, i.e., data sets of relatively small files. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Tom Leyden, Director of Alliances and Marketing at Amplidata, will explain what Big Unstructured Data is (lots of large, unstructured files) and how you build scalable storage infrastructures that can handle such volumes of data. The focus will be on Object Storage, which is the future storage paradigm that uses concepts of cloud computing to optimize the back-end storage for cloud applications.

Cloud Expo New York: The Growing Big Data Tools Landscape

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:45:00 EST

Hadoop, MapReduce, Hive, Hbase, Lucene, Solr? The only thing growing faster than enterprise data these days is the landscape of big data tools. These tools, which are designed to help organizations turn big data into opportunities, are gaining deeper insight into massive volumes of information. A recent Gartner report predicts that enterprise data will increase by 650% over the next five years, which means that the time is now for IT decision makers to determine which big data tools are the best – and most cost-effective – for their organization. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, David Lucas, Chief Strategy Officer at GCE, will run through what enterprises really need to know about the growing set of big data tools – including those being leveraged by organizations today as well as the new and innovative tools just arriving on the scene. He will also help attendees gain greater insight on how to match the right data center tools to a specific enterprise challenge and what processes need to change to handle big data.

Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Architectures Require Scale-out Storage

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:15:00 EST

Building a cloud computing environment with on-demand access to compute, network, and storage resources requires an elastic infrastructure at multiple levels. Virtualization combined with x86 servers has transformed the way we scale out compute resources. Unfortunately, legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage architectures are rooted in rigid mainframe-era designs, and are fundamentally mismatched with the dynamic, shared modern data center. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid, will discuss how Ethernet SAN architectures leverage off-the-shelf hardware, standard Ethernet, and distributed storage processing to enable a building block approach to scalability – no forklift upgrades required. With Ethernet SAN, capacity and performance both scale linearly with user demand without forcing users into a complex tiered storage environment to deal with price-performance tradeoffs. Now the same storage building blocks can be configured for backup or production, virtualization or database, enabling a flexible one-tier-for-all architecture. Learn how organizations today are already leveraging Ethernet SAN as the storage backbone of their dynamic public and private cloud architectures.

SoftLayer Appoints New Chief Financial Officer

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:45:00 EST

SoftLayer Technologies on Monday announced the appointment of Walter Z. Berger as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective in March. A seasoned finance and accounting executive, Mr. Berger will help guide and oversee the company’s continued market leadership and financial growth. He brings more than 30 years of experience to SoftLayer, including extensive operational experience as a CFO with several large, publicly held companies. Lance Crosby, CEO for SoftLayer, notes that Berger’s “proven track record and leadership will be invaluable as we embark on our next phase of growth. We’re delighted to have such a high caliber executive join our team.” Prior to joining SoftLayer Technologies, Mr. Berger was the CFO and executive vice president of Leap Wireless International Inc. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Berger served in senior management roles at CBS Corporation, including as executive vice president and chief financial officer for CBS Radio, a division of CBS Corporation. Prior to joining CBS Radio, Mr. Berger served as executive vice president and CFO and a director of Emmis Communications from 1999 to 2005. From 1996 to 1997, Mr. Berger served as executive vice president and CFO of LG&E Energy Corporation and in 1997 was promoted to group president of the Energy Marketing Division, where he served until 1999. Early in his career, Mr. Berger held a number of financial and operating management roles in the manufacturing, service and energy fields. Mr. Berger began his career in audit at Arthur Andersen in 1977. Mr. Berger is a certified public accountant and holds a Bachelor of Arts in business administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Computing and Healthcare

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

What are the legal implications and consequences of cloud computing in the healthcare and high-tech sectors? What are the potential legal protections and solutions from the point of view of providers, suppliers and consumers? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Paul Rubell, a Partner at Meltzer Lippe, will discuss the federal mandates that will encourage “meaningful use” of EHR technology by 2015, and what those mandates will require executives to understand about cloud computing and solutions for implementing cloud computing across large companies, corporations and not-for-profits in advance of federal mandates.

Information Builders and Infobright Announce OEM Partnership

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:03:00 EST

Infobright on Monday announced that Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, has entered into an OEM agreement with Infobright for its Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) analytic database. Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence platform is installed in tens of thousands of locations, servicing millions of users worldwide. With the huge growth of data volumes being captured and the expanding need for real-time reporting and analytics, IEE adds value to Information Builders' products as an embedded database for applications that capture and store large quantities of data. IEE enables very fast query performance without any manual effort and compresses data at rates averaging 10:1 to 40:1, allowing users to store far more data in a small hardware footprint. "Many of our customers are experiencing the challenges associated with Big Data," said David Sandel, senior vice president, Business Intelligence Product Group and Worldwide Customer Services, of Information Builders. "Embedding Infobright's analytic database into our product offerings will provide the performance they need without the work other databases require, and will significantly reduce hardware and operational costs while storing much greater volumes of data."

SeaMicro Adapts Xeon for Microservers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

SeaMicro, the ambitious start-up that has been building so-called microservers out of low-power Intel Atom chips, has started building microservers out of low-voltage quad-core Intel Xeon chips using the same architecture its Atom systems use. The development is called the SeaMicro SM10000-XE. Needless to say, it’s the first fabric-based Xeon microserver ever made. It’s also supposed to be the most energy-efficient, highest-density, highest-bandwidth Xeon server now available, period. A single SM10000-XE replaces 32 dual-socket servers, but draws half the power and takes up a third the space without any changes to operating systems, applications or management tools. It eliminates layers of Ethernet switches, server management devices and expensive load balancers.

Tilera’s New Server Chips Arrive

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

Tilera, the wannabe many-core Intel server replacement, said Monday that it’s delivering the expected 16- and 36-core versions of its new 64-bit low-power proprietary TILE-GX processors along with evaluation systems it hopes will give Intel something to worry about. The things should be in volume by mid-March. They’re Tilera’s first 64-bit chips capable of using more memory than its original 32-bit widgets – like 512GB or 1TB. They’ve been shipping in limited quantities – alphas – since September. The start-up claims to have 20 design-wins and 80 “deep” engagements for the GX family that it expects will turn into design-wins – probably this year – because they’re do-or-die mission-critical projects. Forty-seven are in the US, 13 in Europe, and 20 in APAC, mostly China.

SOA Software Announces Year-on-Year Growth of 60%

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:01:00 EST

SOA Software, a provider of SOA governance, cloud and enterprise API Management products, announced year-over-year business growth of 60% in 2011, spurred by the increasing need for effective cloud computing and mainstream SOA solutions. The company also expanded to new locations, significantly increased its employee base, and built exciting new partnerships while enjoying widespread industry recognition from analysts and awards for achievement. "It is very gratifying to see the planning, collaboration and hard work result in such positive gains," said Paul Gigg, President and CEO, SOA Software. "The company is delivering tremendous value to our customers with our products being recognized as best of breed around the world. I am excited about the trajectory of continued growth, innovation and product excellence; SOA Software can rightly claim to be a leader among the world's premier software vendors in SOA and Enterprise API Management." SOA Software's business growth reflects expansion of its client base to include significant new clients as well as expansion of business with existing customers. In 2011 the Company increased its personnel by 50% and opened centers of operations in the Middle East and South Africa to complement existing business centers in North America and Europe. SOA Software is succeeding in being a step ahead of customer demand for automated governance solutions for services that are either entirely cloud-based or hybrid on-premise/cloud instances.

Salesforce Trots Out Desk.com

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:45:00 EST

Cloud doyen Salesforce.com Tuesday fielded Desk.com, a new on-demand social and mobile help desk platform that’s supposed to let businesses deliver personal customer service by unifying support channels including Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, the phone and the web via a Desk.com Agent Desktop. Basic pricing starts at $49 a month per full-time agent for unlimited usage. Flex pricing runs $1 an hour per part-time agent. Users can reportedly respond to cases themselves on the go, re-assign, change groups, change status, change priority for cases and modify customer information associated with cases.

Dell's New Software Division - Great News for Dell

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:30:00 EST

Some companies get it. Others wander around in the fog and think that it's a "Cloud". In case you've missed it, 2012 has been the year of some amazing strategic moves by Dell. If you think Dell isn't a software vendor, you're dead wrong. Dell "gets it" - SaaS, Software & Cloud. Dell is making some exciting waves in the "solutions" business. Building on the momentum as a result of the acquisition of Perot Systems some years ago and a buying spree where they acquired a host of best-of-breed software solutions such as Boomi (Cloud-based Integration Platform),Dell has just announced a newly created Software Division and has appointed veteran John Swainson as president, reporting to Michael Dell.

Cloud Expo New York: Big Data, Colocation and the Cloud

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:15:00 EST

As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It would allow organizations to have a cloud at various data centers instead of one cloud at one datacenter. Costs are reduced significantly since one big Internet pipe is not needed.

Andreessen Horowitz Raises New $1.5 Billion Fund

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST

Novice venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, which wouldn’t be near so influential if Netscape survivor Marc Andreessen wasn’t at the helm, has raised another $1.5 billion fund in these days of not-so-scarce money. That means it’ll have $2.7 billion under management. Andreessen, who’s accorded rock star status and gets early access to plum investments, says it’s a “very opportunity-rich environment right now.” Naturally he’s looking for the disruptive start-ups. Andreessen Horowitz started in 2009 with $300 million. It’s in all the chi-chi firms like Zynga and Facebook and sold Skype to Microsoft for a pretty penny, $8.5 billion in fact.

Open Data Center Alliance Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that The Open Data Center Alliance, an independent organization that gives stakeholders a voice in shaping the future of cloud computing, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. The Open Data Center Alliance was formed in 2010 as a unique consortium of leading global IT organizations. The Alliance is led by a steering committee of senior IT executives from BMW, China Life, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., National Australia Bank, Terremark, Disney Technology Solutions and Services, and UBS. Intel Corporation serves as the organization’s technical advisor. The Alliance came together to deliver a unified voice for emerging data center and cloud computing requirements. Its mission is to speed the migration to cloud computing by enabling the solution and service ecosystem to address IT requirements with the highest level of interoperability and standards.

SoftLayer Introduces Flex Images

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

The lines between physical and virtual IT resources are being erased with the introduction of SoftLayer Flex Images. Flex Images allow users to capture, replicate, and store an image of a cloud or dedicated server, and then deploy the image on either type of computing environment. Capabilities traditionally in the domain of virtual infrastructure, including the ability to quickly clone and reload servers, are extended to dedicated servers, along with cross-platform compatibility and simple migration between physical and virtual environments. “Flex Images provide our customers with unprecedented flexibility and scalability,” said Simon West, Chief Marketing Officer for SoftLayer. “The ability to provision and automate server images seamlessly between cloud and dedicated computing environments empowers users to easily build out their IT environments while being able to quickly meet changing requirements. Our customers can focus on the purpose of their application and then on the right technology solution—with the freedom to move between or integrate technologies as needed.”

IBM Buys Worklight

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

IBM is buying a privately held 12-year-old Israeli outfit called Worklight for its write-once-run-anywhere application platform and tools for smartphones and tablets. The price IBM is paying wasn’t disclosed. Worklight’s widgetry, which can be used to create and run HTML5, hybrid and native apps, is supposed to put new and existing consumer and employee-facing apps on multiple mobile devices – including iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids – and then securely connect them to a company’s data center. It includes an IDE, middleware, management and analytics and is supposed to reduce time to market, cost and complexity. The apparently key acquisition is expected to close this quarter and be part of IBM’s Software Group.

Facebook Files To Go Public

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:00:00 EST

Facebook put in its papers to IPO after the market closed Wednesday, as expected. The S1 runs 200 pages. The S1 runs 200 pages. It’s supposedly looking to raise $5 billion, not the $10 billion expected, although that could change back to $10 billion by the end of this exercise. What tiny percentage of the company $5 billion or $10 billion might represent is unclear.

Open Data Center Alliance to Co-Locate “Forecast 2012” at Cloud Expo NY

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:54:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that the Open Data Center Alliance, an independent organization that gives stakeholders a voice in shaping the future of cloud computing, will co-locate its one-day event “Forecast 2012: Shaping the Future of Cloud Computing” on June 12 at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. “Forecast 2012: Shaping the Future of Cloud Computing” will be open to Alliance members, partner organizations and any companies and organizations interested in addressing the most pressing challenges associated with transitioning to cloud computing. The event will include presentations by top cloud visionaries, classes presented by Alliance technical leaders and the latest industry advancements in delivery of solutions based on Alliance requirements. For more information, or to register for Forecast 2012, please visit Forecast 2012.

UShareSoft to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2012 New York

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:45:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that UShareSoft, provider of a cloud template factory, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. UShareSoft offers a cloud server template factory and enterprise app store platform for self-service software onboarding to cloud. UShareSoft's UForge enables customers to automate the creation and management of cloud images and server templates, with full software governance. Additionally, UForge allows hosting providers to build their own dynamic app store for enterprise IT applications, quickly scaling their cloud services business and ecosystem. UShareSoft tools are helping hosting providers, ISVs and enterprises in their transition phase to the cloud. Headquartered in Europe, UShareSoft has an R&D center in Argentina and offices in the United States and Japan.

Riding the Enterprise Cloud Computing Wave of Change into the Future

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

In her general session at the 9th International Cloud Expo, Jill Tummler Singer, CIO for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), discussed the key elements needed for a triumphant enterprise cloud computing migration and highlighted strategies (including security advantages found in the cloud) to ensure you don't crash and get caught in the riptide of this rapidly emerging technology. Jill Tummler Singer is CIO for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)- which as part of the 16-member Intelligence Community plays a primary role in achieving information superiority for the U.S. Government and Armed Forces. A DoD agency, the NRO is staffed by DoD and CIA personnel. It is funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, part of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

The DNA of an Enterprise Cloud

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

Cloud computing has gained momentum and is increasingly being embraced by enterprises of all sizes for application delivery. But the cloud itself is often its own worst enemy as performance, reliability, and the lack of enterprise level capabilities have led to obstacles in growth and adoption of this still promising infrastructure methodology. This is only exacerbated by an increasingly mobile and global world, one that is plagued with security concerns. In his Day 3 Keynote at the 9th International Cloud Expo, Willie M. Tejada, Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Enterprise Cloud Division at Akamai, discussed what Akamai is doing to solve the challenges you face in the cloud, and how Akamai's Intelligent platform can help you leverage both public and hybrid cloud infrastructures without sacrificing security or control.

Apple Unseats HP in Client PCs: Canalys

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:45:00 EST

Apple was the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4, pushing HP off its perch, according to Canalys, which unlike Gartner and IDC, doesn’t hesitate to lump tablets in with desktops, netbooks and notebooks. It says that since Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs last quarter it did 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally, up 6% year-over-year. Canalys also figures that if tablets are thrown in, the total client PC market grew 16% year-on-year. If they aren’t, the client PC market declined 0.4%. Canalys predicts that “HP will struggle to compete with Apple following the end of its Touchpad” given doubts about how Windows 8 will do on HP tablets once it’s out.

Europe's IT Commissioner Announces European Cloud Partnership Initiative

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

"The cloud has the capacity to make lives easier for many of us, including the smallest of businesses. But to achieve that requires us to take many different policy areas and really test them to make sure they are as cloud-compatible as they can be." Writing in her official capacity as Europe's Commissioner for the Internet - and therefore as Czarina of the 'Digital Agenda' of the European Union - Commissioner Neelie Kroes has just announced a brand new initiative on cloud computing – the European Cloud Partnership.

SmartBear CodeCollaborator 7.0 Transforms the Agile Code Review Process

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:05:00 EST

SmartBear Software on Tuesday announced Code Collaborator 7.0, a major release that makes peer code review more productive and automated than ever before. Featuring revamped navigation, a streamlined, intuitive user interface, and a new SOAP API, CodeCollaborator enables teams to align their code review process with the core principles of agile development and deliver quality software faster. Kirk Poore, Software Engineer at DeniServ, LLC, a subsidiary of Delta Dental, said, “CodeCollaborator 7.0’s newly simplified review screens make it much easier to ensure everyone has reviewed and approved all documents and bug fixes. It also blends easily with Subversion 1.7 to form a nearly seamless process.”

GridIron Systems Joins the NetApp Alliance Partner Program

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:46:11 EST

GridIron Systems, a pioneer in Big Data acceleration, has announced its membership in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program. GridIron is collaborating with NetApp to integrate its TurboCharger SAN acceleration appliance into NetApp unified storage environments. This collaboration will enable customers to increase application performance and support more concurrent users and applications without disrupting operations, while preserving limited budget dollars. Customers can analyze extremely large, data-intensive workloads with boundless and secure storage for better decision-making and business advantage. The GridIron TurboCharger is a SAN-attached appliance that provides a high-performance, transparent access layer between servers and storage to significantly boost the performance of applications and databases with no changes to existing servers, storage, applications or processes. By bridging the I/O gap between servers and storage, the TurboCharger delivers solid-state performance from existing storage and satisfies the concurrent bandwidth and IOPS requirements of demanding applications. By combining TurboCharger with NetApp unified storage systems, customers can leverage their current multi-protocol, multi-vendor storage investments by improving performance and simplifying the management of multi-vendor disk arrays to obtain advanced storage efficiency, data protection, and data management features.

Three Down: Another HP Director To Leave Board

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:30:00 EST

HP told the SEC Monday that long-time board member Lawrence Babbio won’t be standing for re-election at the stockholders meeting in March. Babbio’s been on the notoriously dysfunctional HP board since the divisive Compaq acquisition, made over accusations of vote-buying, there through the pretexting spying scandal, the fallout resignation of chairwoman Pat Dunn; the Mark Hurd ouster; the questionable Léo Apotheker hire, the Apotheker ouster 10 months later; the shopping of the HP PC unit; the repudiation of the $1.2 billion Palm acquisition; the unpopular ~$12 billion Autonomy acquisition and assorted other overpriced board-approved acquisitions.

NaviSite Announces SSAE 16 SOC 1 Compliance

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

NaviSite on Monday announced it has completed its annual Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 Service Organization Control (SOC) 1 compliance for its cloud-enabled data centers in Andover, MA and San Jose, CA. SSAE 16 compliance also extends to managed services and managed cloud services in these two flagship data centers, as well as managed services in NaviSite’s Syracuse, NY and London, UK data centers. "The SSAE 16 program is of great benefit to customers of our managed services, including our industry-leading cloud services,” noted Allen Allison, Chief Security Officer at NaviSite. As an SSAE 16 SOC 1-compliant company, NaviSite has demonstrated its commitment to providing customers with the highest standards in processes, controls and procedures.

HP Commits to webOS Release Schedule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

Seems just the other day – actually it was two weeks ago – that we divined that HP, imagining blowing Google away, would pull out the stops to get the webOS that it bought, put in a tablet that failed in the market, dropped, then open sourced – life’s funny like that – in shape to publish the code in stages. And what do you know – surprise, surprise – HP Wednesday committed to a timetable for getting the thing out in steps by September under the lenient Apache 2.0 license. HP is making much of the fact that it materialized the roadmap 47 days after it said it would open source webOS. God knows whether HP or anybody else will ever really exploit the thing. For HP it depends on the auspices – like two bald eagles seen circling Google or Apple talons extended.

Tucci’s Reign Extended

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:45:00 EST

EMC CEO Joe Tucci is gonna keep his eventual replacement waiting a while longer. When the company posted pretty Q4 results the other day Tucci said he won’t be stepping down this year as planned. He said the board asked him to stay into 2013 and that “after much soul-searching” he agreed. “As I’ve said in the past, the board and I fully expect that my successor will come from within the existing, talented and experienced ranks of the EMC management team” – who reportedly all asked him to reconsider his transition plans.