Latest [wsjlatest] from SOA World Magazine

Cloud Expo Power Panel Streaming Live From Times Square

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:45:00 EST

Cloud Computing and its ability to process the needs of multiple users with shared resources in a dynamic and transparent fashion doesn’t happen by chance. The underlying technologies and their ability to provide elasticity, scalability, and automation, while protecting data in motion, data at rest and data in process are critical to a successful Cloud Computing implementation.

OpSource Cloud Computing Partners

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

OpSource announced three innovative OpSource Cloud partner programs that offer incentives, discounts and easy technology on-ramps for individuals and companies of all sizes looking to enter the lucrative cloud computing space. Available for online purchase by the hour from www.opsourcecloud.net, OpSource Cloud is the first cloud to bring together the flexibility, availability and community of the public cloud with the security, performance and control the enterprise requires. To take advantage of OpSource Cloud's power and help hasten mass adoption of cloud computing, OpSource is offering a referral plan, SI/Developer/VAR discount program and a white label technology opportunity. These plans enable third parties to share cloud revenues and quickly build businesses in this white hot space.

Google Says "Cloud Computing Is" ...

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Techcrunch reports that Google has some implicit suggestions about newspapers, based on the drop-down suggestions it gives when you begin a search with "Newspapers are." It's a nice example of the hive mind at work. But check out the first suggestion Google gives you if you type "Cloud Computing is" into a Google search bar. I won't spoil the surprise here. Interestingly, Google used to give similar suggestions for "SOA is", but the results are now a lot less frank and confrontational than they were a month ago. Does this show a change in general attitude about SOA, or is it just that Google cleaned up the results? hmm.

CA Wants More Than a Few Good Men

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

CA is looking for talent in EMEA: associate account managers, directors of solution sales, senior solution strategists, sales account managers, technical sales consultants and alliance account managers. It says it’s launched a large-scale recruitment drive and it’s not often big companies put out press releases saying so. It says it means to capitalize on cloud computing and virtualization.

Citrix XenServer Helps Rankin County Go Virtual

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

Citrix Systems, Inc. announced that Rankin County, which ranks among the top 10 percent of fastest-growing U.S. counties, has deployed Citrix XenServer to upgrade, consolidate and maintain the county's server infrastructure. XenServer is an open and powerful server virtualization solution that helps reduce datacenter costs by transforming static and complex datacenter environments into more dynamic, easy to manage IT service delivery centers. The IT team for Rankin County, Mississippi serves more than 20 departments across disparate locations. Technology support across the county includes the 911 emergency call center, police officers on patrol and county government officials. Running out of space in the county's server room and faced with aging hardware, Rankin County needed a way to make room for more servers to support the county's IT needs while maintaining services around the clock. In response, the Rankin County Board of Supervisors funded a virtualization project that uses Citrix XenServer to provide a way to upgrade and update mission-critical server applications without any service outages or downtime.

An Exclusive Interview with Oracle, Cloud Expo 2010 Diamond Sponsor

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:30:00 EST

"We believe that cloud is an important trend that we will support. We have two objectives. The first is to ensure that cloud computing is fully enterprise grade, meaning high performance, scalability, reliability, availability, security and standards-based for portability and interoperability. Second, we will support both public and private cloud computing in order to give customers choice," says Richard Sarwal, SVP Product Development for Oracle Enterprise Manager - and upcoming Keynote Speaker at SYS-CON's 4th International Cloud Computing Expo - in this Exclusive Q&A with Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan.

Fujitsu America To Peddle Cloud Computing

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

Doubling the floor space, reducing carbon emissions by 21%, increasing available power and cooling capabilities to expand the data center’s effective capacity by over 800% is supposed to cost many million of dollars. The company says users can migrate existing multi-platform and multi-vendor mission-critical systems to enterprise clouds. Fujitsu will support the cloud application interface (API) specification that it recently submitted to the Open Cloud Standards Incubator of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to promote interoperability.

Actuate to Buy Xenos for $35.8m

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

The combined company is supposed to expand the market opportunity for the BIRT Web 2.0 development environment by transforming content and structured data into BIRT-based Rich Information Applications (RIAs). Xenos, which has got a string of 350 brand name customers, including 170 of the Global 1000, provides a scalable Xenos Enterprise Server that extracts, transforms, repurposes and personalizes data and documents culled from clients’ supply chains for storage, real-time access, e-presentment, printing and delivery in numerous formats across multiple channels.

NetIQ OEMs Centrify’s Widgetry

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

NetIQ’s already got solutions for Active Directory-based delegated administration, group policy and password management. The Centrify technology will increase its users’ security and improve their compliance while reducing their operating cost and complexity. Integrating Unix systems with Microsoft Active Directory pares costs, enhances admin productivity and reduces sign-in complexity.

Microsoft Overcomes Most of its Writer’s Block

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

In a status report Tuesday the Justice Department said that Microsoft can go back to collecting nominal royalties under its Communications Protocol Program now that it’s conquered its writer’s block and provided “substantially complete” documentation of the stuff. It’s been seven years since the 2002 antitrust settlement that required Microsoft to make documentation available to other vendors so they could interoperable with Windows.

LaserJets Get New Boss

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

HP has tapped Ron Coughlin to run its LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions unit, reporting to printer chief Vyomesh Joshi. He succeeds David Murphy who is leaving “to pursue other professional interests.” HP reckons it’s handing Coughlin, a Pepsi veteran who been running HP’s printer marketing and strategy the last couple of years, a $100 billion opportunity. The printer goldmine hasn’t been producing as much ore as it used to.

Perot Jr. Named to Dell Board

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

Dell, as expected, has appointed Ross Perot Jr. to its board. He’s the son of the founder of Perot Systems and CEO of the joint from 2000 until Dell bought it last month.

EC Cuts Deal with Rambus

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:45:00 EST

The European Commission has come to terms with Rambus, which has pledged to put a cap on the royalties it charges for its DRAM patents in exchange for the regulator dropping its monopoly abuse investigation without a fine. Rambus currently charges 3.5%. From now on royalties on earlier chip standards will go to zilch and later ones just 1.5%, according to the Wall Street Journal. Rambus has spent a lot on lawyer to persuade regulators on both sides of the pond it didn’t commit patent ambush by getting its IP written into standards without disclosing it held the royalty-bearing patents.

New Diploma in Digital Marketing Qualification

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:45:00 EST

MMC Learning has launched the Diploma in Digital Marketing qualification accredited by the CAM Foundation and Awarded by the Chartered Institute of Marketing. The course is delivered through a unique, flexible study, video e-learning package designed for working professionals.

Microsoft, HP & Citrix Form Taiwan Cloud Computing Alliance

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

Microsoft, HP, Citrix and some local service providers have formed a Taiwan cloud alliance to create customized private clouds for local businesses, according to DigiTimes quoting an official announcement. Apparently there are supposedly simplified solutions called MCloud for SaaS, PaaS and IaaS that integrate Microsoft virtualization and management with HP hardware and support along with Citrix’ virtual desktop.

Sun Microsystems Releases Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the availability of the Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) and significant industry support from Java technology licensees including Caucho, IBM, Oracle and Red Hat. Java EE is the premier platform for web and enterprise application development and deployment. Java EE 6 introduces features to increase the flexibility of the platform and enable companies to use specific application scenarios, in addition to the full enterprise platform, to help meet their use case requirements. The Java EE SDK has been downloaded more than 18 million times and the specification is supported by 28 licensees that market Java EE compatible-products. Developers can download and begin deploying Java EE applications today using the Java EE SDK available at: http://java.sun.com/javaee/downloads/index.jsp.

SYS-CON.TV Looks "Under the Hood" of Cloud Computing

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:45:00 EST

View the live panel discussion taped on December 8, 2009 at SYS-CON.TV's 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests from EMC, Intel and Unisys will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

CSC Signs Cloud Computing Agreement With UK Royal Mail Group

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:00:00 EST

The new contract is an industry first, with CSC being the first Microsoft partner to lead and win a cloud computing services agreement of this scale. Under terms of the contract, CSC will provide Royal Mail Group's 30,000 employees with access to new IT services using Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), part of Microsoft Online Services. CSC will also provide first line helpdesk support. CSC's cloud services are designed to help businesses easily and securely adopt cloud computing solutions, allowing them to reduce the costs of managing and maintaining business systems while giving them access to the latest Microsoft Online Services including Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

Migrating from UNIX / RISC to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Intel® processor-based servers helps your customers reduce TCO, while providing a better foundation for growth. This white paper provides a guide to planning and conducting a strategic and successful transition.

SOA Software Extends IBM WebSphere Service Registry Repository

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

SOA Software today announced a new product to extend the capabilities of the IBM WebSphere Service Registry Repository (WSRR). This new product called Policy Manager for IBM WSRR complements the policy management capabilities of WSRR enabling customers to define policies for services and service consumers regardless of their platform and can audit the policies implemented and enforced by the platform in a closed-loop process.

Cloud Computing and Silos

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

While writing a separate post on the business value of public versus private cloud computing investments I specifically called out the fact that infrastructure – virtual or physical – provisioned in a cloud environment is applicable only to that cloud environment; it really can’t be shared within the enterprise architecture or other public cloud computing environments, for that matter.

New IBM Study Uncovers Business Strategies For Weathering Economic Storm

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Top-performing companies were 15 times more likely to apply analytics to strategic decisions than their underperforming peers, according to a new IBM study of the role information-based decision making is playing in successful business strategies during the current economic cycle. In addition, top performers were 22 times more prepared to challenge the status quo in their organizations, rethink current strategies and business processes, and aggressively apply and act on new insights derived from analytics. The IBM study also found that top performers were six times more likely to entrust a broader base of employees with greater authority to make decisions and act on insights.

SaberSource Is Now an Authorized Reseller of Google Apps

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

SaberSource announced its partnership with Google to resell and support Google Apps. Google’s powerful communication and collaboration tools can make projects faster and easier by allowing customers to collaborate more effectively with shared calendar and documents, as well as the ability to access data from anywhere, even from mobile devices and without the need for additional software or hardware to install and maintain.

EMC Storage and Management Software Getting FAST

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

Some vendors will jump up and down similar to donkey in shrek wanting to be picked or noticed claiming to have been the first to implement LUN or file movement inside of storage systems, or, as operating system or file system or volume manager built in. Others will claim to have done it via third party information lifecycle management ILM) software including hierarchal storage management (HSM) tools among others. Ok, fair enough, than let their games begin (or continue) and I will leave it up to the variou vendors and their followings to debate whos got what or not.

Developing the Next Gen of iPhone Apps Programmers

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

I had an opportunity to audit a computer science class this week at Washington University, a class that was teaching students how to write iPhone apps. It was their final presentation, and I got to see a dozen apps that were very impressive. As I was watching the kids present, I was thinking back to [...]

Attenda Secures Contract to Host and Manage New Ofwat Website

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:45:00 EST

Attenda Limited announced that Ofwat has signed a new three year hosting contract for its new website application to be fully managed by Attenda.

Ofwat is the economic regulator of the water and sewerage sectors in England and Wales. They make sure that the water companies provide household and business customers with a good quality service and value for money.

The Attenda web hosting contract includes the deployment of a new web application and hosting environment. The single site solution has been delivered within short timescales to meet Ofwat's business requirements. This required a very robust and flexible solution to be operational, to handle the expected peak demand in traffic, in conjunction with a major announcement to publish final determinations on price limits for the water companies for 2010 to 2015.

The solution is based upon Attenda's RTI (Attenda's Cloud Computing Platform) which is a unique blend of a highly available and scalable computing platform with integrated managed services, enabling Ofwat to match IT capacity with changes in business demand, to create unprecedented business agility.

Commenting on the new contract with Attenda, Carl Poulton, Head of Information Management & Technology at Ofwat, says, "We were confident that Attenda had the right credentials and proven track record to deliver a fully managed solution to meet both our immediate and future business needs."

Attenda has worked in partnership with Ofwat's web application development partner to implement and deploy the new web application. The web application has been developed on the Alfresco based Web Content Management and Document Management solution to replace their legacy content management system which was both slow and costly from an editorial and maintenance perspective.

Carl Poulton continues, "Attenda has demonstrated a responsiveness to our needs, with a high quality, highly available, yet cost effective solution, based upon ITIL based processes, PRINCE2 project management disciplines and application-led Service Levels. This will ensure that we have not only minimised our risks, but also have the required agility and capability for Continuous Service Improvement in the future."

About Attenda Limited
Attenda, the Always On Managed Services company, manages those vital applications that every business relies upon today to function effectively allowing our clients to selectively outsource their IT operations and re-focus on using IT to add strategic value to their business.

Through a commitment to operational excellence, we manage, secure and optimise the performance of their applications, irrespective of the physical location of the infrastructure.

With over 8 years' investment into Attenda M.O., Attenda's operations platform, we provide the people, process and technology to deliver exceptionally high service levels, but at a cost that is amortised across Attenda's entire client base - currently 134 of the UK's leading companies.

The company enjoys substantial financial backing, the industry's leading accreditations and an unrivalled portfolio of clients including bmi, Christian Aid, easyCar, Microsoft, NHS, Princes, St. James's Place and Travelodge.

Attenda is ISO9001, ISO27001 and ISO20000 accredited, an HP SP Signature Partner, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a SAP Adaptive IT Hosting Provider, a SunTone accredited managed service provider and an Accredited Catalist Supplier. Attenda is one of only seven companies to have been ranked in the UK's Sunday Times ARM Tech Track 100 for three consecutive years. It was voted Best Managed Services Provider by Data Centre Europe Awards for both 2007 and 2008 and VMware's EMEA Hosting Partner of the Year 2008 and 2009.

For further details, visit www.attenda.net or contact
Attenda Corporate Communications
Simon Hansford +44 (0)1784 211100
simon.hansford@attenda.net

Cloud Computing, Virtualization and SOA Will Transform the Government

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:00:00 EST

Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Open Source Software (OSS) and Geospatial technologies are poised for increased federal government adoption over the next five years as cost-saving initiatives drive investment in these solutions, according to new research from INPUT, an authority on government business. Nearly half of federal and IT industry professionals surveyed by INPUT believe these technologies will have a major impact on their technology environment despite concerns over security and up-front costs.

Extending SOA to Cloud Computing

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

WSO2, the open source SOA company, today announced the launch of the WSO2 Cloud Platform. Available today, the new WSO2 Cloud Platform features a family of WSO2 Cloud Virtual Machines; WSO2 Cloud Connectors for enabling fast, secure cloud services; and the multi-tenant WSO2 Governance-as-a-Service. All WSO2 Cloud Platform services are based on open software standards, and they support all applicable interoperable protocols, as well as relevant open data standards. Additionally, they allow users to take complete control of their data, ensuring that enterprises can protect and preserve their information.

Intel Aborts Larrabee, Its First Many-Core Chip

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

Intel has canceled Larrabee, its vaunted many-core graphics retort to Nvidia and the ATI side of AMD, because it wasn’t competitive enough to best them. The chip, Intel’s first standalone discrete graphics chip and a test of its multi-core prowess, was already late, and hardware and software development had fallen behind schedule.

Daddy, Where Did Windows 7 Come From?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

This from the Windows Blog: “An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed. If you’re interested in learning more about the design of Windows 7, I suggest reading this AP story with Julie Larson-Green as well as these WSJ (membership required) and Fast Company articles. And here is one of many blog posts on the E7 blog discussing the design process of Windows 7.”

Google Considered Buying the New York Times: Report

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

Oh, my sainted aunt. Google thought about buying the New York Times, according to Barron’s, which got it from somebody else’s interview with Ken Auletta, author of Google: The End of the World as We Know It. Reportedly the hands of Google co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt were stayed by the thought that the deal would “sabotage” Google’s status as a neutral source. Auletta, who generally writes for the New Yorker, said the reason they were interested is the fact that “Google’s search engine depends on good information.”

Google Chrome OS Brings New Era in Cloud Computing

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

More good news for cloud computing! Google last week released its once mysterious Chrome Operating System to open source. Chrome OS, available in 2010 – is a web-based operating system that promises to boot up super-fast on a netbook – way faster than the time it takes to start your basic PC. And Chrome has web applications (competing with Microsoft Windows Azure) that will run on application tabs. Users can access with one click and manage in a series of windows.

EMC Re-orgs

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

EMC has cut its 2009 guidance because it’s going to take a $100 million to restructure its international operations into a single existing international holding company that’s supposed to be cheaper to run. It’s not anticipating any layoffs but it cut projected Q4 earnings from 21 cents to 16 cents and took a nickel off the full-year’s earnings now expected to be 50 cents.

Is IBM XIV Still Relevant?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

Given the time, money as well as effort IBM has poured into promoting and generating awareness around XIV, it must be relevant to someone. IBM recently released another round of momentum news, customer testimonials and product enhancements while making a point that there are now over 1,000 XIV systems installed around the world. 1,000 systems installed (regardless of if revenue or trial) in the just under 2 years since IBM bought XIV would be a triumph for most startups. However for a major player with the resources of IBM, I would have expected the number of installed systems to be more in the 5,000 to perhaps 10,000 systems when looking at the progress of Dell (EqualLogic), HP (LeftHand) or others.

My Experience Developing A Google Wave Robot

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

This past weekend I set out explore some of the extension capabilities of Google Wave. One of the weaknesses that have been identified by many is the lack of integration with email. For me, in particular, because Wave is new, many Waves are being orphaned as those playing and testing out Wave don't come back to the conversation for long periods, if at all. My goal was to use email as a means to bring people back to the Wave and keep the collaboration/discussion going in a single environment. Some developers are exploring letting users contribute from email, but in my opinion, that undermines the goal of Wave.

Marketing Content Should Educate Both of You

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:45:00 EST

There's a lot of talk about how we need to focus on our buyers' issues and provide them educational insights to help them learn what they need to know to make buying decisions. Heck, I say it in my book...in several places, I think. I've said it on this blog, and I'll continue to say it. But perhaps, what I...

How to Send Diagnostic Info With CloudBerry Backup

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

In CloudBerry Lab we are striving to make our customer service better. In this competitive market with the abundance of free offerings this is the only way to stay afloat. One of the ways to keep customers happy is to be very responsive when it comes to support request resolution. Should you delay the request and the customer will turn to a competitor. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to understand what the issue is and what caused it. This is very diagnostic log helps dramatically. In the new version of CloudBerry Backup we made it even easier to send us the diagnostic information.

Back to the Basics: Don’t Sleep on The Blogging

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:15:00 EST

We talk a lot about social media on Marketing Trenches. And for good reason – Social media seems to be at least one item on the agenda for about 90% of the meetings we have these days. Everyone wants to run 100 miles an hour to do something on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I wrote [...]

Netbook Apps SDK Betas

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

Intel has put out its promised beta SDK for Windows (C and C++) and Moblin (C) developers working on future Atom-based netbook apps and ports. It can be downloaded at http://appdeveloper.intel.com. Intel couldn’t help but repeat the forecast that netbook units shipped should top 50 million by the end of the year.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No HTTP Service

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:15:00 EST

But on the web, access to services is implicit in the fact that the business is offering the service. If the HTTP service is accessible, it’s implicitly allowing connections and providing service without any standard criteria for access. This results in access by more than just customers and potential customers. Bots, spiders, and miscreants are afforded the same access to business services as more desirable visitors. This can unfortunately lead to compromise, theft, and corruption of data via myriad injection and attack methods – many of them automated. While gating access to services that comes from offering a service is likely not the best solution (although it is a solution), there has to be a way to at least mitigate the automated abuse of open access to services by miscreants that leverage scripting to attack sites.