Java Industry News

Cloud Expo NY: Predictive Analytics Leads to Successful Recommendations

Fri, 18 May 2012 16:00:00 EDT

Businesses today generate billions of events or 100s of TBs of data in a month. These data contain valuable insights into customer behavior, key trends, buying patterns, etc. If these are successfully mined, they can lead to successful decision-making to maximize revenue and traffic for the business. Successfully driving a business is only partly about understanding what happened; the other part lies in knowing what’s going to happen next. In order to use past data and predict future events, there needs to be sufficient technology that is not merely extrapolating events. Powerful machine learning algorithms in association with combinatorial and graph algorithms are imperative to make accurate predictions about future events based on cross-dimensional correlations within the data, time-event correlations and recognizing patterns that would not be identified or understood using standard statistical, AI or Bayesian techniques. Handling the scale and the complex relationships within the data requires purpose-built algorithms that are specially designed to handle the needs of online businesses.

Cloud Expo New York: Industry-Leading CxOs to Present June 11-14

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:15:00 EDT

What do the CTOs of the CIA and the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the CIO of the National Reconnaissance Office have in common with the CEOs of Eucalyptus, GoGrid, ActiveState, Appcara, OpSource and Nortonworks, the CTOs of Rackspace, SoftLayer and AppZero, the Founder & General Manager of Dell Boomi, the VP of Big Data & Streams at IBM and the Chief Strategy Officer at Pacific Controls? Answer: all are shortly to present breakout sessions as members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty of Cloud Expo New York, taking place June 11-14, 2012, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Cloud Expo New York: A Blueprint for Organizational Agility

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:06:00 EDT

We are a part of a dynamically connected world where consumers are rapidly adopting new technology and dismantling business models in their wake. Disruption, unpredictability and variability happen without warning. The challenge for any organization is to evolve, to adopt new architectures and processes that increase business agility, scalability and governance/compliance and decrease risk. While cloud is complex, the consideration and adoption process can be simplified. In his general session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Kevin Hanes, Executive Director, Dell Service & Solutions, will talk about a pragmatic approach to realizing the potential of cloud today while building a strong foundation for the future.

Cloud Computing Standards | CTO Power Panel at Cloud Expo New York

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:30:00 EDT

In this CTO Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, chaired by Jeremy Geelan, industry-leading CTOs & VPs of Technology will discuss such topics as: Which do you think is the most important cloud computing standard still to tackle? Who should and shouldn’t be using a PaaS product today, and why? Can a public cloud ever be truly secure? How important is open source to cloud computing and Big Data? "Mission-critical apps are now safe in the cloud." True or false? In your company how important a component is mobility in your cloud thinking? If we now have "elastic IT" does that mean you view yourself as an "elastic CTO"???

Citrix Buys Virtual Computer

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:06:00 EDT

Citrix has acquired Virtual Computer, a little Massachusetts outfit with enterprise-scale management solutions for client-side virtualization. It means to combine the acquisition’s NxTop widgetry with its XenClient hypervisor to create a new Citrix XenClient Enterprise edition that can manage “large fleets” of corporate laptops across a distributed enterprise and give users a virtual desktop “to go.” It’s due this quarter as a standalone product at a reported $175 a user. Citrix said it’s getting the management piece faster by buying it. Virtual Computer has historically focused on solutions for Xen-based client hypervisors. Its technology includes backup, disaster recovery, provisioning, security and monitoring capabilities. The merger also promises greater integration between XenClient and XenDesktop.

Leveraging the Cloud for Better User Experience at Cloud Expo New York

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:45:00 EDT

The cloud has many benefits, but when it comes to application development, how does the cloud help enterprises and development teams create custom software and applications that end users actually care about? Using real world examples from Adobe, Herff Jones and Navy Federal Credit Union, this session will highlight the advantages cloud computing provides for quickly developing custom software and applications with compelling user experiences. In their general session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Anthony Franco, president of EffectiveUI, and Ken Guiberson, CTO of EffectiveUI, will explore: Using the flexible nature of cloud computing to rapidly design and deploy integrated enterprise applications Leveraging the cloud for a highly visible and transparent development process Using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to create a hybrid cloud

SHI Coupon Code ▸ shiVIPgold Special Offer as Cloud Expo Sponsor

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:29:00 EDT

As the Diamond Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, SHI International is offering special passes to 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. Founded in 1989, SHI International Corp. is a global provider of technology products and services. Driven by the industry's most experienced and stable sales force and backed by software volume licensing experts, hardware procurement specialists, and certified IT service professionals, SHI delivers custom IT solutions to Corporate, Enterprise, Public Sector, and Academic customers. With over 1,800 + employees worldwide, SHI is the largest Minority/Woman Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) in the U.S. and is ranked 19th among Everything Channel's VAR 500 list of North American IT solution providers.

Threatened, BMC Adopts Poison Pill

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:13:00 EDT

BMC Software Monday adopted a defensive poison pill to ward off Elliott Associates and its sister firm Elliott International, which have acquired 5.5% of its stock and want BMC to form a special committee to chase a sale of the company. Elliott, you will remember, is the activist hedge fund that pushed Novell into the arms of Attachmate. BMC said Elliott’s proposal is not in the best interests of other shareholders. In a letter to the board Tuesday, Elliott Management said BMC’s future will be increasingly difficult as a standalone public company; it’s suffering from sluggish growth, underperformance on its business plan and substantial execution challenges – it’s changed its sales chief four times since 2010; it’s been written off as a “growth-impaired legacy asset” with a low stock price; it lacks revenue-scale compared to its major competitors, IBM, HP and even CA; it’s late to SaaS and the cloud; and it’s facing new rivals eager to carve up its territory

The Most Immediate Way of Getting to the Cloud: Cloud Expo New York

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:00:00 EDT

Whether you are a large enterprise, a growing business, a government organization, or a service provider, Cloud Expo New York is THE place you need to be June 11-14...so you can better understand both the provision and use of the cloud services that increasingly transforming IT and business alike. Cloud Expo covers every aspect of Cloud Computing: performance, integration, security, availability, compliance, purchasing, budgeting, development, visibility, automation...the works!

Cloud Expo New York: Private PaaS for the Enterprise and Beyond

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:15:00 EDT

If your organization already uses virtualized infrastructure, you are well on your way to providing IT as a Service. But as businesses demand faster results in today’s competitive market, organizations look to gain more benefits from cloud computing than just virtualized infrastructure. Learn how to extend & ensure your private cloud investment with a private Platform as a Service (PaaS) and provide on-demand availability, flexibility, control, and ultimately, faster time-to-market for your development teams. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Bart Copeland, President & CEO of ActiveState Software, will discuss how Private PaaS technology gives you control over where, when and how you leverage the cloud.

Cloud Expo New York: How Secure Are You?

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:45:00 EDT

Nearly every enterprise is evaluating cloud computing solutions either today or in the near term. Many have already made the leap, and many more are getting close to putting that first toe in the water. But there are key considerations that should be made, questions to be asked, and designs to consider before you can feel secure with your provider. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, David Gulick, Product Manager, Hosting Product Management at Savvis, will help give you food for thought when having these conversations both internally and externally with service providers.

Mule ION iPaaS Connects Cloud to On-Premise Apps

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:00:00 EDT

New tools and services for swift software-as-a-service integration in the cloud lowers the barrier to SaaS adoption for SaaS providers and developers. MuleSoft this week launched Mule iON SaaS Edition, providing a broad set of new tools and services for swift software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integration in the cloud, and lowering the barrier to SaaS adoption for SaaS providers and developers. In recent commentary, Ross Mason, founder and CTO of Mulesoft, said, "The world today is moving at lightning speed to SaaS and cloud applications, and the idea of gaining competitive advantage through legacy enterprise applications is no longer relevant."

Smarter Computing and IT Consolidation with IBM's Enterprise Linux Server

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:00:00 EDT

Data centers today are stretched to the limits with fast-paced business demands. On top of that, integrating and managing IT infrastructures can pose major challenges. Organizations need a new solution that consolidates servers and workloads without breaking the bank—and Linux, together with IBM Enterprise Linux Server offers exactly that. In this informative webcast you’ll gain Jean's perspective on how you can overcome your IT challenges by optimizing workloads and lowering costs with an enterprise-wide Linux strategy, and gain “the flexibility of many and the efficiency of one.”

Facebook Tickles Its IPO Again

Thu, 17 May 2012 08:45:00 EDT

Facebook Wednesday upped the number of shares that will be sold when it IPOs Friday by almost 25% or 84 million shares to about 421.2 million shares of Class A common stock. The overallotment has also been increased from 50.6 million to 63.2 million. If all 484.4 million shares move, it’d estimated $18.4 billion could change hands, up from $14.7 billion. The added shares will be coming from early investors. The move, which gains Facebook nothing, will also cut CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s dominant voting power from 57.3% to around 55.8%. Pricing remains, at least for the moment, at between $34 and $38 a share. It won’t be locked down until Thursday night when it could be increased again. The range was between $28 and $35 until Tuesday and the stock has traded as high as $44 in the secondary markets recently.

GT Nexus Launches Cloud Tools

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:15:00 EDT

Cloud supply chain platform provider GT Nexus on Thursday announced the general market availability of Cloud Tools, a multi-enterprise trade network administration solution. Cloud Tools allows authorized participants to independently manage their interactions with other companies on the GT Nexus cloud platform. For years, companies have struggled to support global supply chains with scalable information systems. The traditional approach of bilateral electronic data interchange (EDI) between ERP systems has fallen short of delivering a global supply chain monitoring system capable of giving companies the information they need to run their trade networks. GT Nexus provides a shared, multi-tenant, multi-enterprise platform as well as collaborative inter-enterprise applications on which thousands of companies operate using harmonized processes and standards. These applications are synchronized with customers' ERP and other back-office systems.

Cloud Expo New York: Using APIs to Extend Your Business Reach

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:00 EDT

How can businesses harness the power of APIs to reach new customers and markets? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software, will walk the audience through the growth and evolution of the API, why effective API management is important, and how the game changes when companies expose business applications to the outside world. He will also discuss: A brief history of the API How to use APIs to make money, save money, build brand "Appification" and the innovation model of the open API API management nuts and bolts, and best practices Why Enterprise APIs are important Some great examples of companies doing it right

Java Jury Deliberating Google’s Patent Infringement

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

Oracle’s Java patent infringement case against Google and Android went to the jury Tuesday afternoon. The jury, which delivered only a partial verdict on copyright infringement last week, deciding that Google infringed but unable to say whether that infringement made “fair use” of the IP, is now down to 11 jurors. One juror reportedly called in from the San Francisco Bay Bridge with car trouble, unlikely to make court at all. The judge excused her from ever coming back, ZDnet said, and pushed on. Only two patents are at issue. In its closing statement Oracle accused Google of being reckless and willful and told the jury that words like fair use, open source and clean room had no meaning in this phase of the trial, only the fact that Google’s Dalvik virtual machine works just like Oracle’s Sun-inherited Java virtual machine and that Google lacked a license. Google continued to maintain that it designed Android from scratch – though that’s not a defense in patent infringement cases – and different from the claims of the two patents. Over the weekend the judge told Oracle the damages phase of the trial couldn’t wait for a retrial of the fair use issue. Oracle, in turn, said it wouldn’t accept a bench verdict on damages and is insisting on asking for disgorgement of infringer’s profits on a few lines of copyright infringement although the judge has tried to disabuse Oracle’s lawyers of the notion that that theory is going to translate into a finding worth billions or even hundreds of million of dollars. It’s unclear when the judge will decide if APIs are copyrightable or not – but currently it won’t be in time for part three of the trial on damages – and until he does there’s no possible liability. According to Law.com Oracle lawyer David Boies tried to strike a deal with Judge Alsup. “He said Alsup should put off the damages phase of the trial until after the judge resolves the burning legal questions, chiefly whether the 37 API packages are copyrightable. And should Alsup rule against Oracle then Boies said he would agree to forgo a jury award on infringer’s profits and would let Alsup award any statutory damages on those two lines of infringed code. But should Oracle prevail in the legal finding that the API packages are copyrightable material then Oracle wants a shot at the more lucrative damages in a jury trial….Alsup seemed to indicate Boies’ idea might be doable if Google agreed. He asked for more briefing.”

Cloud Expo New York: High Performance Database Hosting in the Cloud

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:15:00 EDT

Do you like fast MySQL databases? How about superfast databases – like near 300 TPSs? Do you think you can’t find them in the cloud? Well, think again! In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Daniel Morris, Senior Product Manager at Rackspace Hosting, explains why databases in the cloud are a reality and how you can benefit by implementing them. He will cover built-in redundancy and automated configurations as well as how using container-based virtualization will make your cloud database become blazingly fast – without locking your data into a proprietary platform. He will close by showing some real-world examples utilizing this new technology available from Rackspace.

Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up US Citizenship

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Brazilian-born Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, 30, traded in his American citizenship last September to take up residence in Singapore, a move that will cut his taxes when Facebook IPOs on Friday. He is estimated to own about 4% or 5% of Facebook. The company was valued at $77 billion–$96 billion ahead of the IPO although, according to Bloomberg, its roadshow is producing less institutional demand for the stock than expected since Facebook said last week that advertising revenues weren’t keeping pace with user growth and may not reach its rosier forecasts. It’s supposed to go out at $28–$35 a share and sell 337.4 million shares, 180 million put up by Facebook itself. The rest of the shares are coming from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and selling shareholders like Accel Partners, Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies.

Judge Finds Google Copied More Java Code than Jury Said

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

District Court Judge William Alsup, who refused last week to decide whether Google had fairly used the Java IP a jury said Android infringed, had no trouble Friday deciding that the jury made a mistake in finding Google only copied nine lines of Java’s rangeCheck code as well as infringing the sequence, structure and organization of 37 Java APIs. In a judgment as a matter of law the good judge said Google directly copied eight other Java files and that it wasn’t a petty little thing. FOSS Patents had said when it came out that the jury’s verdict was odd since “there are code files in there that are much larger than the rangeCheck function, and infringement was so clear that it shouldn’t even have been put before a jury.” The judge effectively said the blog was right.

Cloud Expo New York: Hosting in the Cloud – What You Need to Know

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:00 EDT

If you'd like to be able to use a PaaS offering to quickly and securely deploy your website, blog or web-based application, come see a demo and deep dive on Rackspace Cloud Sites. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Jereme Hancock, a Rackspace Cloud Sites Linux Systems Administrator, will walk you through load balancing, planning capacity, managing DNS and your domains as well as setting up WordPress on Cloud Sites, MySQL DB's, and everything you need to know to optimize your web hosting needs on the cloud.

Thompson Told Yahoo Board He Has Cancer: WSJ

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:45:00 EDT

Departed Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, 54, told the board before he resigned over the weekend that he was just diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was starting treatment, the Wall Street Journal said overnight. It isn’t clear exactly where this piece is supposed to fit in the puzzle but if it’s a sympathy bid it may not have worked. All Things Digital says Yahoo is claiming he’s gone for “cause” over ethics violations because of his phony computer science degree – which appeared in Yahoo’s regulatory filings – and won’t be getting much in the way of severance. Heidrick & Struggles apparently didn’t vet his resume when it placed him at eBay years ago but kept a copy of the resume he submitted back then and was able to shoot down his claim that the great headhunting firm had introduced the fabrication. It appears that was Thompson’s last possible defense.

PTO Finds Key RPost Patent 100% Valid

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:45:00 EDT

A US Patent and Trademark Office re-examination has found a basic RPost proof-of-delivery patent valid. In a sweeping decision all 89 of its claims have been left standing against challenges of prior art. Patent holders dream of such things. It is understood to be a so-called “final final” decision covering items such as time-stamp authentication. No one except the PTO knows who made the claims of prior art but that unknown challenger reportedly dumped scads of documentation on the PTO for it to wade through and failed. It’s bad news for the slate of companies RPost is suing in federal courts in California, Texas and Virginia for infringing US Patent No 6,182,219 including Swiss Post, Canada Post, Adobe, Docusign, Zix, RightSignature and Farmers Insurance among others.

Dell’s Got the First 22nm Microservers

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:15:00 EDT

Dell has turned up with the very first cloud-directed microservers using Xeon processors built on Intel’s teeny-weeny 22nm process with sexy TriGate transistors. It will be amusing to see if AMD sends its recent SeaMicro microserver acquisition, which used to be tight with Intel, out to buy the same chips on the open market while it retools for some AMD dingus. AMD did say SeaMicro would continue its Xeon line. Intel is also warding off promised server competition from ARM. ARM server start-up Calxeda is supposed to be about a month away from beta testing its boxes.

EffectiveUI Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2012 New York

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that EffectiveUI has been named Gold 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. EffectiveUI is a full-service user experience agency that architects and delivers custom software and applications that translate into exceptional digital experiences. Our technology services team – the largest dedicated to user experience in the industry – has a passion for innovation and simplifying complex systems. We dive deep into technical challenges, bringing perspective to the big picture and quality to the details of every product.

Study: Cloud Computing Cuts $5.5 Billion Annually from Federal Budget

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:30:00 EDT

The federal government saved nearly $5.5 billion a year by moving to cloud services. But it might have saved up to $12 billion if cloud strategies were more aggressive, a survey of federal IT managers found. The study, drawn from interviews with 108 federal CIOs and IT managers, was published by MeriTalk Cloud Computing Exchange, a community of federal government leaders focused on public-private collaboration in Washington, D.C. The IT managers surveyed also reported spending 11 percent of their current, fiscal year 2013 budgets, or $8.7 billion, on cloud computing. The chief impediment to implementing cloud services was security, listed by 85 percent of federal IT managers. Also of concern were agency culture, named by 38 percent of managers, and service levels, listed by 32 percent of managers.

Cloud Expo New York: Building a Private, Public, or Hybrid Cloud?

Fri, 11 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

Whatever your course, meet Cloud complexity head on with a unified approach to handle extreme performance, reliability, availability, and simplicity. In her session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Ayalla Goldschmidt, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle, will reveal the underpinnings for the Oracle Public Cloud as well as technology best-practices for developing private and hybrid cloud architectures using Oracle’s Engineered Systems together with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Fusion Middleware is a complete array of technologies enabling you to embrace the paradigm shift of cloud computing and take full advantage of the cost savings and improved agility they promise. Together with Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata provide the world’s first and only integrated engineered system, which provide enterprises the best possible foundation for running enterprise applications with the performance, elasticity, reliability, and scale characteristics expected for cloud-based applications.

Securing Cloud-Based Communications at Cloud Expo New York

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:45:00 EDT

While cloud-based communications include a complex web of ports and protocols, typically 85 percent of the traffic flowing in and out of an organization through the cloud is email and web, including identity services. Taking more of your business and business processes to the cloud begins with knowing your data and ensuring that your existing IT security controls on these major traffic channels extend well into cloud models. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Ramon Peypoch VP, Global Business Development at McAfee, will discuss what key security controls need attention when considering the cloud for your initiatives including preventing data leakage, protecting against exposure to service interruption, minimizing the risk surface as identity services are exposed beyond the physical network boundary, and maintaining your resilience to malware and web-borne threats.

Yahoo Pushed to Name New Interim CEO

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:00:00 EDT

Dissident shareholder Daniel Loeb, head of the Third Point hedge fund that uncovered Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s resume lie, sent the Yahoo board another letter Wednesday saying it was “farcical” for them to be spending more time deciding whether to fire him than it had deciding to hire him. He wants Thompson out and recommends that Yahoo CFO Tim Morse or global media head Ross Levinsohn replace him on an interim basis – unless they were privy to Thompson’s little deception – lest Yahoo “flounder under a discredited leader for an undefined period.” Loeb also wants his slate installed on the Yahoo board, one of whom would lead a search for a new CEO. Meanwhile, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent Thompson some support but noted that eBay’s filing were always accurate even if its web site and PR material weren’t. He said, “Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department.” So it would seem then that Yahoo legal department does shoddy work too.

Google Demands New Java API Trial

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:45:00 EDT

Google, as expected, has put in its papers asking the court to declare a mistrial because the jury only decided it infringed 37 Java APIs in building Android and didn’t decide whether that infringement constituted so-called “fair use” of the code. So it wants a whole new trial “as to both infringement and fair use as to Oracle’s claim that Google is liable for infringement of its copyright on the structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 API packages.” Google claims the two issues – infringement and fair use – are “opposite sides of the same coin” and “indivisible.” It’s standing on its Seventh Amendment rights to trial by jury and a unanimous decision on liability, using its “indivisible” contention to oppose a partial retrial in front of a new jury. Oracle has yet to reply to Google’s “indivisible” argument but it wants the judge to decide the fair use question in one of those handy judgments as a matter of law (JMOLs) that both Google and Oracle asked for before.

Judge Refuses To Decide ‘Fair Use’ in Java Trial

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:15:00 EDT

Judge William Alsup Wednesday refused to decide whether Google had fairly used the Java IP a jury found Android infringed Monday. There are, you see, circumstances that allow copyrighted work to be copied without the owner’s consent such as creating something new that advances the public interest but the jury deadlocked on that issue and returned only a partial verdict. Oracle hoped the judge would intervene and hand down a judgment in its favor as a matter of law since Google’s liability depends on it but he refused. He reportedly said, “I don’t think it would be right to rule in favor of Oracle” at a hearing Wednesday. His decision suggests that Google will get the new trial it’s asked for. “I hate to even contemplate the idea of another trial,” the judge was quoted as saying, “but if it comes to that, that’s the way it will have to be.” It’s unclear whether a new jury would be asked to decide infringement as well as fair use like Google wants. Judge Alsup also reportedly refused to throw out the jury verdict that Google cribbed nine lines of Java code. He is expected to rule on the copyrightability of APIs and of course he has to rule on Google’s motion for a mistrial. The existing jury is currently hearing the patent infringement phase of the case and has heard from folks like Android creator Andy Rubin as well as other engineers.

Cloud Scaling: Back to the Basics at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:30:00 EDT

It’s easy to lose your head in the clouds. While virtualization has provided a way to satiate the need for on-demand solutions, it is easy to lose sight of the appropriate architecture when being allured to the sky. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Phil Jackson, Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer, will go back to the basics and take a practical approach to solution building: how to structure your application to take advantage of hybrid environments and provide the basis for a truly scalable solution. As Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer, Phil Jackson is the lead customer contact for SoftLayer’s robust API. He also develops and maintains a portion of the company’s software platform and content. Mr. Jackson joined SoftLayer from The Planet, where he was a Sales Engineer building test environments, architecting complex technical solutions, and serving as a technical consultant for customers pre-and-post sale. Prior to The Planet, he served on the top tier of the Customer Care and Response team for Ev1Servers, where he also led the training department and created numerous training initiatives. Mr. Jackson is proficient in a wide variety of software languages and has a diverse background in the technology industry.

Dependencies Gone Wild: Testing Cloud Applications at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:15:00 EDT

The move to cloud-based applications has undeniably delivered tremendous benefits. However, the associated distribution creates various challenges from the quality perspective: End-to-end tests need to pass through multiple dependent systems, which are commonly unavailable, evolving, or difficult-to-access for testing. Accessing such systems often involves transaction and bandwidth fees. Teams need to test and tune the system under test against a realistic and broad range of performance and behavior conditions – yet such conditions are often difficult to achieve in a test environment.

Yahoo Board Member Quits over ResumeGate

Wed, 09 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

Yahoo board member Patti Hart, who led the search committee that resulted in Yahoo hiring PayPal president Scott Thompson as its CEO, won’t stand for re-election at the next annual meeting, according to sources tapped by All Things Digital. Activist shareholder Third Point has been agitating for her to go and take Thompson with her since it discovered last week that both of them had faked their college degrees. It’s currently demanding transcriptions of all of Yahoo’s records concerning Thompson’s appointment although what it really wants is to get its slate of candidates on Yahoo’s misbegotten board. The blog says Third Point’s going to find it wasn’t much of a search. Thompson reportedly sent Yahoo board member and Intuit CEO Brad Smith a cold-call e-mail out-of-the-blue looking for the job.

Cloud & Big Data Strategy | CEO Power Panel at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 09 May 2012 07:00:00 EDT

In this CEO Power Panel at the 10th International Cloud Expo, moderated by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, leading executives in the Cloud Computing and Big Data space will be discussing such topics as: Is it just wishful thinking to depict the Cloud as more than just a technology solution? If not, then what concrete examples best demonstrate cloud computing as an engine of business value? Big Data has existed since the early days of computing; why, then, do you think there is such an industry buzz around it right now? Do you agree that cloud computing is basically to technology what credit is in the financial services industry, i.e., it enables companies to leverage capabilities that they don’t own. Or are there better analogies?

Performance Management in ‘Big Data’ Applications at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 09 May 2012 04:30:00 EDT

Do applications using NoSQL still require performance management? Is it always the best option to throw more hardware at a MapReduce job? In both cases, performance management is still about the application, but “Big Data” technologies have added a new wrinkle. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Michael Kopp, Technology Strategist at dynaTrace Software, will explain some of the main application performance problems of “Big Data” applications and how to solve them.

Multi-FaaSited Approach to the Cloud at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 09 May 2012 03:45:00 EDT

“Cloud” promises Flexible IT. Cloud has also taken various forms of every aaS imaginable. Determining the right model for the developer is just as confusing as it is for the end user. The primary reason – multi-vendor, cross-platform components are needed to truly deliver on the promises of flexible IT through integrated, cloud solutions. Hybrid has extended from internal to external connectivity – to easy management of multiple platforms from multiple vendors. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mike Robski, VP of Research & Development at Hostway, will provide a technical perspective on how developers can create and service companies can integrate utilizing open API calls to deliver fully customized, service-rich solutions to the market. From a business perspective, learn how this approach has helped Hostway and its partners jointly deliver high-value solutions to the market and create new revenue streams.

Google and Android Infringed Oracle Copyrights

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:00:00 EDT

After days of deliberating, a San Francisco jury Monday found that Google and its Android operating system infringed the Java copyrights now held by Oracle. However, the jury remained as deadlocked as it was last Friday over the issue of whether Google made so-called “fair use” of the IP. It couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on that question. Google denied all the allegations and claimed it developed Android from scratch and that the parts of Java it did use aren’t covered by copyright. After the verdict was read Google moved for a mistrial – which would mean a whole new trial and possibly new evidence – while the judge accepted the partial verdict and forged ahead. The partial verdict says Google infringed the sequence, structure and organization of 37 Java APIs by using those APIs in Android. FOSS Patents figures that was the most important decision the jury made. The blog also figures there’s really no “fair use” case here and is critical of the instructions given to the jury about fair use.

ComputeNext to Exhibit at Cloud Expo 2012 New York

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that ComputeNext Inc. 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. What’s the scope of your “single pane of glass”? If you’re a cloud architect wouldn’t you be better suited with a telescope than a magnifying glass? The ComputeNext marketplace and workload manager sprawls across public clouds, eliminating vendor and platform lock-in. A single point of payment and integration enables choice and flexibility to build, deploy, and manage servers from a vast selection of platform-agnostic infrastructure – empowering businesses to maximize utilization of compute resources.

Cloud – Vision to Reality at Cloud Expo New York

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:00:00 EDT

There is no longer any question that the cloud computing model will be the prevailing style of delivery for computing over the coming decades; Forrester Research predicts that the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. Greenfield application development projects can be designed from the outset to benefit from cloud computing features such as elastic scalability, automated provisioning, infrastructure level APIs, object storage services and middleware services such as message queues and key/value stores. However, for existing legacy applications the journey to cloud is not quite so straightforward. Understanding the impact of factors such as security/compliance, application architecture, integration, the pattern of demand and operational maturity is crucial when performing a cloud feasibility assessment. Additionally, many organizations perceive cost-reduction as one of the primary benefits of adopting a cloud hosting model. In practice however, this is not always an accurate assumption. There are nuances to the financial analysis: public cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than traditional dedicated hosting. Furthermore, there are considerations around the impact on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), transformation/migration costs and the position of an organization with the IT life cycle.