Latest News from SYS-CON MEDIA

Hosting.com Presents Cloud Computing Solution

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:16:00 EST

Hosting.com has announced the general availability of CloudNine, a hosted cloud computing environment that provides intuitive, scalable business solutions. CloudNine production solutions are immediately available for beta users, clients and prospects. Hosting.com is continuing to allow companies to participate in the ongoing CloudNine Beta at no charge for 90 days.

IDC Predicts Fluffy Clouds

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:16:00 EST

IDC figures that clouds services – that's the consumer and business products, services and solutions delivered via the cloud – is "crossing the chasm" and "entering a period of widespread adoption." It reckons that over the next five years spending on the widgetry will grow almost threefold to $42 billion. Spending on cloud computing itself – the delivery model – will accelerate over the same five years to capture 25% of IT spending in 2012 and nearly a third of growth in 2013.

Cloud Computing Giant and Facebook Collaborate: Force.com for Facebook Is Born

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:00:00 EST

"This is the premier social graph fully integrating with the premier enterprise cloud computing company - this is the true power of Internet," gushed Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, as he today launched a new offering called Force.com for Facebook – designed to foster a global development community for Facebook’s 120 million users and salesforce.com’s 100,000 developers.

Google & the Razor's Edge

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:58:00 EST

Google is more like Microsoft than it would admit. Not only is it regarded as a monopoly by the U.S. government, it likes dangling its toes over the crevasse. Sandy Litvack, the guy that the Justice Department hired to build an antitrust case against Google if it persisted in doing that deal with Yahoo, has been dining out on the news that Google came within a hair's breath of getting sued by the DOJ.

It’s Official. We're in a Recession

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:30:00 EST

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private non-profit research organization that determines such things based on broad and more precise measurements than most, said Monday that the U.S. is in a recession and has been since the beginning of the year. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 680 points after the news started circulating. Now we have to get out of this thing before it turns into the Great Depression 2.0.

Cloud Computing Journal: Microsoft & Novell Still Together Two Years Later

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:30:00 EST

The two-year anniversary of the Novell-Microsoft alliance that scandalized the open source community passed quietly enough earlier this month. The pair waited a couple of weeks to mark the occasion and then said that in the second year of their arrangement they added upwards of 200 new joint customers, including BP Oil International and China Mobile, which are getting certificates from Microsoft for three-year priority support subscriptions to Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

MPUs Down Practically Any Way You Look at Them

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:22:00 EST

Barclays Capital analyst Tim Luke says microprocessor revenue was down 53.6% in October compared to September and 40.1% less than the industry average in October for the last 10 years. They were down 23% year-over-year and up 2.1% quarter-over-quarter. Units were down 40% MoM and down 6% YoY but up 12.6% QoQ. ASPs were down 22.5% year-on-year, 10.4% quarter-on-quarter and 21% month-on-month.

Cloud Computing Journal: Zoho Builds Data Bridges in the Cloud

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:15:00 EST

Zoho, the prolific Microsoft wannabe that has already proven it can knock off a web app at the drop of a buzzword, is branching out into middleware. It’s come up with some widgetry – aimed at developers this time, not end users – called CloudSQL that’s supposed to let people interact with their Zoho-stored business data on the cloud through the SQL language.

HP Expects to Save MegaBucks on IT

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:06:00 EST

The other day, HP, the industry's resident smarty pants, let drop that starting this fiscal year – which is now, oh, five or six weeks old – it will save a billion dollars a year on IT compared to 2005 – although it's added upwards of $25 billion in revenue since then. COO Randy Mott, the guy who wrought this transformation, said it wasn’t just a technology initiative in the IT organization, it was a "business strategy adopted throughout the company."

Cloud Computing Journal: Scalable Pricing in a Scalable World

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:05:00 EST

In most discussions about scalability, we often approach the topic as a pure technical/architecture challenge, and ignore cost issues. The problem is that when we truly scale our application, and want to benefit from economies of scale, we're going to end up with scale limitations, not because of technical issues, but because of the pricing and licensing models.

Cloud Computing Economics, Part Two

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST

As described in Part One of this series, the cloud is not the answer for every enterprise or every workload. This is true based on the current economics even without considering additional factors like security, control and SLA's. On the other hand the economics do point out a major cloud advantage when it comes to short term or variable workloads.

Versant Buys db4objects Database Business

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:54:00 EST

db4objects has sold its open source object database business, native to Java and .NET, to Versant to focus on Servo, a newfangled user data management service. Price was not disclosed. The company will now be known as Servo Software Inc. Versant traffics in specialized data management software. Carl Rosenberger, founder and CTO of db4objects, has joined Versant as chief software architect. db4objects has a community of 50,000 registered members.

Novell Narrows Loss

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:35:00 EST

To no one's particular surprise, Novell missed its quarter. Wall Street thought it could turn six cents a share on $249.78 million. Instead it lost $16.3 million, five cents a share, on flat year-over-year revenues of $245 million in its fourth fiscal quarter ended October 31. It lost $17.9 million last year. The loss from operations was $6 million, compared to a loss of $13 million last year. The rest was a $14 million impairment charge related to the company’s auction-rate securities.

OSA Taps Unisys Exec as President

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:20:00 EST

The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), the two-year-old consortium dedicated to interoperability and the adoption of open software, has picked Anthony Gold, who runs Unisys' open source business, to be its president. He replaces SpikeSource exec Dominic Sartorio. The organization has also made Bluenog COO Scott Barnett OSA marketing chair; Essentia CEO and founder of CollabNet Gopi Ganapathy community development chair; and Jaspersoft VP of engineering Mike Moody and Unisys senior architect Uwe Vielle interoperability co-chairs.

Cloud Computing Journal: The Cloud is Coming of Age

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:05:00 EST

Cloud Computing is no longer a just a “newfangled” movement but rather an established IT and business strategy that as the economy tightens further will be critical to all companies regardless of business models. Cloud computing is an opportunity for business to implement low cost, low power and high efficiency systems to deliver scalable infrastructure. It increases capacity and expands computing capabilities without heavy investment in infrastructure, training or software licensing. SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal seeks to boost your understanding of Cloud Computing concepts and to bring you the latest news, views, and developments - but we couldn't do so without our amazing high-energy pool of contributors, including many of the hard-working executives driving some of today's most successful Cloud strategies, technologies and techniques.

Virtualization Journal: Intel & Hitachi Cut SSD Joint Venture

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST

Intel has cut a joint venture with Hitachi to make solid state drives (SSDs) for servers, high-end workstations and storage – not the consumer goods where such pricey widgetry is usually found these days. Their first products, branded and sold exclusively by Hitachi, are supposed to appear early in 2010, putting the effort behind other SSD players.

Cloud Computing Journal: Amazon SimpleDB Hits Public Beta

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:30:00 EST

After spending a year in private beta, Amazon's SimpleDB has been pushed into what the company calls "unlimited public beta." Any developer or business can now sign up and start using the web service. As a come-on, for the next six months or so Amazon will be offering a free monthly usage tier good for 25 machine hours, 1GB of data transfer in and out, and 1GB of storage.

Will Cloud Computing Mean Fewer IT Jobs?

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:00:00 EST

The advent of cloud computing is bringing a new dynamic to the way companies are managing their infrastructure. One of the fall-offs from a move to the clouds is the potential ability for companies to reduce headcount within its infrastructure and application development groups.

Back to the Future with Cloud Computing

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:45:00 EST

First there was the service bureau, then the application service providers (ASP), after that came software as a service (SaaS) and now its time for Cloud Computing. Basically we have one single concept which is as old as IBM Mainframes. Every generation seems to rediscover it, and create their own version of it.

Adobe Comes Up Short, Cans 600

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 07:15:00 EST

As fate would have it, Adobe picked the worst possible quarter to roll out the great update to its flagship Creative Suite widgetry. Because the economy is tanking, it hasn’t been selling the way it was supposed to. As a result, revenues came up short in the November quarter and Adobe has decided to lay off 8% of staff worldwide, 600 people.

Virtualization Journal: Court Orders Ballmer Deposed

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:45:00 EST

The federal court hearing the disclosure-rich "Vista Capable" class-action suit claiming consumers were misled by the logo has ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to submit to a three-hour deposition. Microsoft, which tried to block the discovery, maintains that everything Ballmer knows about the marketing program is second-hand and that the Microsoft executives responsible for it have already been deposed.

Third Brigade Announces Free Cloud-Ready Security Software to Support VMware vCloud Initiative

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:30:00 EST

Third Brigade has announced the availability of Third Brigade VM Protection, a free-of-charge software package that complements the security-hardened VMware platform and helps organizations achieve protection and compliance for VMware virtual machines (VMs) that are deployed in private or public cloud computing environments.

A Sneak Peek at Sun's Cloud Computing Offerings

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:30:00 EST

Sun's role in enabling Cloud Computing is not widely recognized today. However, did you know Sun is playing a big role in this space? Check out Sun's Cloud Computing porfolio below and stay tuned for more to come from Sun in this space.

Web Apps Will Be Built in the Cloud: Keynote Systems Exec

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:30:00 EST

In this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan of SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Rajeev Kutty of Keynote Systems speaks of the factors currently driving companies to increase their effort in monitoring the performance of their Web and mobile applications, and about how Keynote foresees an enormous increase in the number of Web applications being built in the cloud and programmers using cloud computing platforms like Apps Engine, Force.com., Microsoft Mesh, Bungee Connect – all Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers.

Cloud Computing Journal: Economic Climate Will Accelerate Cloud Computing

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:15:00 EST

Aside from low prices, it's also cash flow and up-front loading of risk and money of traditional, on-premise projects that are driving more buyers to SaaS offerings. In an economic downturn, "do more with less" and quick ROI behavior become the norms. But wait, isn't that what open source and SaaS does? As budgets constrict, as headcounts lower – demands on IT will not decrease; they will almost certainly increase. Open source and Software as a Service will all bring IT staff – and end users – the abilities and cost savings they need and the innovation they want.

Linux Gets a Stocking Stuffer from Oracle

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:15:00 EST

Oracle threw some data integrity protection code over the wall and it's been accepted into the 2.6.27 Linux kernel. It reportedly lets the Linux kernel utilize key data protection information for the first time in its life. It's also the first implementation of the T10 Protection Information Model standard for an operating system.

Cloud Computing Journal: The Past, Present and Future of The Cloud

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:00:00 EST

Cloud Computing is no longer a just a “newfangled” movement but rather an established IT and business strategy that will be critical to all companies regardless of business models. It was at the end of March 2008 that the search term “Cloud Computing” (according to Google Insight) really started a strong upward trend within World Wide Searches.

Novell Reminds Folks It Bought PlateSpin

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:00:00 EST

Novell is repositioning the virtualization widgetry that it bought for $205 million this spring when it bought PlateSpin and now claims to be the only kid on the block who can support 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux servers, as well as all the leading hypervisors. It ticks off Citrix’ XenServer, Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Virtual Server, VMware’s ESX and ESXi and the Xen integrated in its own SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Four Ways to Profits for Data-Centered Cloud Computing Companies

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:45:00 EST

How do you make money as a datacenter-focused cloud computing company? Aside from the sale of compute capacity (a la Amazon or Rackspace), what are the other revenue opportunities available? Here are some thoughts...

Tooling Up for Web 2.0

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:15:00 EST

Most of the discussion surrounding Web 2.0 applications revolves around the way it revolutionized end users' interaction with applications and with other users. An area that is sometimes left out of the discussion is the impact Web 2.0 had on the developers who are actually building these applications. Creating Web 2.0 applications involves a variety of technologies and standards from UI technologies such as AJAX and DHTML to back-end technologies such as SOA and other mash-up technologies.

Web 2.0 Journal: Leveraging the Advantages of Top-Down and Bottom-Up

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:55:00 EST

Nowadays we can observe changes going on in management and especially project management in organizations. More and more, organizations are abandoning top-down management style. Among them are the New York Times, Tribune Co., Ernst & Young and many others. Even the world biggest corporations, such as Toyota and IBM, are trying to implement bottom-up management style elements in some of their departments.

Microsoft Picks Yahoo Geek To Run Google Counter-Offensive

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:49:00 EST

The job of running Microsoft’s flagging Google counter-offensive – which has lain like a fallow field since Kevin Johnson left the company in July to become CEO of Juniper Networks, having been foiled in buying Yahoo – has been filled. As widely suspected lately, Microsoft is bringing in ex-Yahoo exec Dr. Qi (say Chee) Lu, who worked at Yahoo for 10 years.

Intel to EC: 'We Left Our Kid Gloves Home'

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:44:00 EST

Thanks to a sketchy notice in the Official Journal of the European Union we now know a tad more about why Intel has taken the European Commission to court. Seems Intel is accusing the EC of making it the butt of a "discriminatory and partial" antitrust investigation because the EC won't go and get certain documents from AMD that Intel believes are exculpatory evidence.

A Hobbled Sun Limps to the RIA Starting Gate

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:32:00 EST

It's a wonder it has the entry fee, but Sun Thursday showed up for the RIA race against Adobe’s Flex, Flash, and AIR and Microsoft's Silverlight – and for that matter the open source AJAX – riding JavaFX 1.0. According to Sun it's one of the most significant advances ever to come out of its stable. Once called JavaFX Desktop 1.0, it was at least two years in the making.

Four Paths to Java Parallelism

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:40:00 EST

Parallel programming in Java is becoming easier with tools such as the fork/join framework, Pervasive DataRush, Terracotta, and Hadoop. This article gives a high-level description of each approach, pointing you in the right direction to begin writing parallel applications of your own. Companies today are swimming in data. The increasing ease with which data can be collected, combined with the decreasing cost of storing and managing it, means huge amounts of information are now accessible to anyone with the inclination.

JavaFX vs Silverlight vs Flex

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:30:00 EST

We shouldn’t forget that Java really started as an RIA technology back in the late 90s with applets. But I don’t think JavaFX will win any “hearts and minds”. In the end, I think everybody goes with what they know. Dot Netters will go with Silverlight, and Adobe people will stick with Flex. All that’s changed is that finally Java people have an option now. That’s it. No more and no less. Some

Googling the Cabinet?

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:10:00 EST

Newsweek – which apparently sees the Obama cabinet amounting to a lot of big names with little experience – is floating the idea that the president-elect might make Dan Reicher, Google's director of climate change and energy initiatives, energy secretary. Reicher was assistant energy secretary during the Clinton administration, and given his subsequent résumé the magazine thinks "he would bring something unique: private-sector experience and a mindset not currently limited by the bounds of government."

Cross-Domain JSON with Silverlight Avoids crossdomain.xml Restriction

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:15:00 EST

One of Silverlight’s advantages over Flash is the relatively effortless interop with AJAX. The other day, I needed to mash up some JSON data from various sites, and found it pretty easy to use AJAX to circumvent the crossdomain.xml restriction.

AMD's Quarter Sours

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:55:00 EST

AMD sent out a short sharp message Thursday morning saying that the way things are going it expects revenues from continuing operations this quarter to be ~25% lower than they were last quarter and that was only $1.585 billion. Its calculations do not include process technology license revenue. It said demand is weaker than expected "across all geographies and businesses, particularly in the consumer market."

IBM Harnesses Virtualization & the Economy to Push Microsoft Off the Desktop

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:48:00 EST

IBM is taking another shot at blowing Microsoft off the desktop and this time it’s got the foul economic winds at its back. In the name of cost cutting, IBM is proposing that companies virtualize their desktops and turn them into thin clients using Virtual Bridges' Virtual Enterprise Remote Desktop Environment (VERDE), replacing Windows and Office with Canonical’s desktop Ubuntu Linux and IBM's own Open Collaboration Client Solution software (OCCS).

New Relic Announces Support for Ruby on Rails Release 2.2

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:24:00 EST

"Ruby on Rails is always evolving and has over the past five years gone through some fifty-plus public releases," said David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Rails and member of the Rails Core Team. "Rails developers need the supporting ecosystem to keep up with that evolution. New Relic is proving that they're willing to do just that by being quick to ensure compatibility with Rails 2.2."

Sun Frees Rich Internet Applications from Browsers, Releases JavaFX 1.0

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:10:00 EST

"The Internet marketplace has evolved within and well beyond the traditional Web browser, fueled by an explosion of Java-powered smart phones and consumer electronic devices from RIM's Blackberry to Amazon's Kindle," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO & President of Sun, as JavaFX 1.0 was unveiled today. "Sun's newest JavaFX platform unifies Java technology across billions of such devices," he added.

PC Growth to Drop to Turtle Speed: IDC

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:26:00 EST

IDC took another look at its 2009 PC forecast Wednesday and in view of economic realities dropped its worldwide unit growth rate prediction from 13.7% (which is what it said in Q2) to 3.8% and said the value of the PCs that do ship will decline by 5.3%. It used to think that revenues would increase next year by 4.5%. It puts the decline down to constrained GDP, confidence, and capital and credit availability.

Don't Look Back! The Server Landscape's Ugly

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:18:00 EST

Worldwide server shipments might have been up 4.4% to 2.3 million units in the September quarter but revenues were down 5.4% to $12.7 billion according to Gartner. IDC's numbers aren't all that different. It hasn't been this bad since 2002 and IDC for one doesn't expect a rebound this quarter or next year. The downturn hit x86 ASPs and Unix servers no matter how they're measured.

Using Aspects to Unit-Test the Integration of Third-Party Components

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:30:00 EST

Unit testing is hard. There I said it. Although I have been developing software for the past 18 years I still find that putting my applications through their paces via unit testing is difficult. I have learned the lesson (I'm sure like many of you) the hard way. Unit testing is probably the most important part of software development. We all get caught in the trap once in a while when we believe that there is no need to test a piece of software we just wrote.

VMware Revamps Its Virtual Desktop Widgetry

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:00:00 EST

VMware, the struggling virtualization leader, has, as expected, put View 3 on the market to do battle with Citrix' XenApp and XenDesktop widgetry. It's supposed to be a big advance in virtual desktop computing, described by the company as a major step in its vClient Initiative, which was announced in September and is due next year and is supposed to solve the "desktop dilemma" over whether to provide employees with thick or thin clients.

1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo: What They're Saying Web-wide

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:20:00 EST

"I think it was a great success" (MIchael Sheehan, GoGrid); "very exciting times, and a great event" (Dmitry Sotnikov, Quest); "Interesting stuff" (Parand Darugar, Yahoo!); "I was surprised at how crowded the sessions were" (Mike Maxey, ParaScale); "jam-packed, with standing room overflowing into the hallway" (Stuart Charlton, Elastra) - just some of the many commentaries that have begun to appear Web-wide as people shake off the Thanksgiving torpor and post their thoughts about SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, held last month in San Jose, CA.

Continuent Announces Support for MySQL 5.1

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:12:00 EST

Continuent has announced support and enhancements to MySQL Server 5.1.30 GA release, the 5.1 production version of the open source database. MySQL 5.1.30 is recommended for use on production systems by the MySQL build team at Sun Microsystems. Continuent Tungsten provides advanced replication for MySQL, including a number of specialized capabilities for MySQL 5.1 users.

1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo: Observations

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST

Last week the masses converged on San Jose for the SYS-CON convention that covered SOA, Virtualization and Cloud Computing. The event spanned three days and was very well attended. I was surprised at how crowded the sessions were given the state of the economy these days. People love a trend and Cloud Computing is no exception. I managed to catch a couple of interesting presentations on the cloud computing side that were standing room only.

Cloud Computing Economics, Part One

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:55:00 EST

The economics of Cloud Computing do point out a major Cloud advantage when it comes to short term or variable workloads. On the surface though it's apparent that Amazon's EC2, for example, is significantly more expensive if the set up is utilized 24x7x365, even a 40 hour week yields a slightly higher cost.