Latest News from Weblogic Journal

Oracle Fusion Middleware Delivers World Record Single-Node Result

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 01:26:00 EDT

Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, running Oracle Linux on a HP ProLiant DL980 G7 server, together with Oracle Database 11g, achieved a world record single-node result with the SPECjAppServer2004 industry standard benchmark(1). This achievement adds to Oracle WebLogic Server's current SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark records including world record results in multi-node(2) and dual-node(3) categories; the highest performance ever achieved running a clustered database(4); and the highest performance per core(5) of any result ever published.

LogLogic to Exhibit at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:30:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that LogLogic, a provider of Log Management and Security Event Management solutions, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 7th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 1–4, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. LogLogic offers a comprehensive suite of log management and security management products to help you: achieve regulatory compliance, protect valuable company and customer information, and mprove the efficiency of your IT operations.

RTT (Round Trip Time): Aka – Why bandwidth doesn’t matter

Tue, 25 May 2010 15:15:00 EDT

A great post over on ajaxian got me to thinking today. Why is it whenever you hear people talking about speed on the internet, they use a single metric? Whether they’re discussing the connection in the datacenter, their residential DSL, or the wireless connection via their mobile device, everyone references the bandwidth of their connection when talking about speed. “Oh I just got a 20Mb/s connection at home, it’s blazing fast!". That’s all well and good, and 20 Mb/s is indeed a lot of throughput for a residential connection. Unfortunately for Joe Average, about 98% of the population wouldn’t know what the heck to DO with 20 Mb/s of download speed, and even worse than that…they would likely see absolutely zero increase in performance while doing the one thing most people use their connection for the most, browsing the web.

No one seems to ever bother mentioning the true culprit for slow (or fast) web browsing performance: latency, measured in RTT (Round Trip Time). This is the measure of time it takes for your system to make a request to the server and receive a response back. I.E. one complete request loop. This is where the battle for speed when browsing the web is won and lost. A round trip is measured in milliseconds (ms). This represents how much time it will take regardless of file size (this is important later in the discussion) to make the trip from you to the server and back. This means each connection you have to open with the server for an additional request must take at least this long. You add in the time it takes to download each file after accounting for RTT.

“Impossible!” you say, “Clearly going from a 10Mb/s connection to the new, fast, fancy (expensive?) 20 Mb/s connection my provider is proud to now be offering will double my speed on the web! 20 is twice as much as 10 you dullard!” you assert? Oh how wrong you are, dear uneducated internet user. Allow me to illuminate the situation via a brief discussion of what actually occurs when you are browsing the web. We’ll skip some of the fine grained details and all the DNS bits, but here’s the general idea:

Whenever you make a request for a web page on the net, you send out a request to a server. That server, assuming you’re an allowed user, then sends a response. Assuming you don’t get redirected and are actually served a page, the server will send you a generally simple HTML page. This is a single, small file that contains the HTML code that tells your browser how to render the site. Your computer receives the file, and your browser goes to work doing exactly that, rendering the HTML.

Up to this point people tend to understand the process, at least in broad strokes. What happens next is what catches people I think. Now that your browser is rendering the HTML, it is not done loading the page or making requests to the server, not by a long shot. You still haven’t downloaded any of the images or scripts. The references to all of that are contained in the HTML. So as your browser renders the HTLM for the given site, it will begin sending requests out to the server asking for those bits of content. It makes a new request for each and every image on the page, as well as any other file it needs (script files, CSS files, included HTML files, etc.)

Here are the two main points that need to be understood when discussing Bandwidth vs. RTT in regards to page load times:

1.) The average web page has over 50 objects that will need to be downloaded (reference: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/average-web-page/) to complete page rendering of a single page.

2.) Browsers cannot (generally speaking) request all 50 objects at once. They will request between 2-6 (again, generally speaking) objects at a time, depending on browser configuration.

This means that to receive the objects necessary for an average web page you will have to wait for around 25 Round Trips to occur, maybe even more. Assuming a reasonably low 150ms average RTT, that’s a full 3.75 seconds of page loading time not counting the time to download a single file. That’s just the time it takes for the network communication to happen to and from the server. Here’s where the bandwidth vs. RTT discussion takes a turn decidedly in the favor of RTT.

See, the file size of most of the files necessary when browsing the web is so minute that bandwidth really isn’t an issue. You’re talking about downloading 30-60 tiny files (60k ish on average). Even on a 2Mb/s connection which would be considered extremely slow by today’s standards these files would each be downloaded in a tiny fraction of a second each. Since you can’t download more than a few at a time, you couldn’t even make use of a full 2 Mb/s connection, in most situations. So how do you expect going from 10Mb/s to 20Mb/s to actually increase the speed of browsing the web when you couldn’t even make use of a 2Mb/s connection? The answer is: You shouldn’t.

Sure, if they were downloading huge files then bandwidth would be king, but for many small files in series, it does almost nothing. You still have to open 50 new connection, each of which has a built in 150ms of latency that can’t be avoided before even beginning to download the file. However, if you could lower your latency, the RTT from you to the server, from 150ms down to 50ms, suddenly you’re shaving a full 2.5 seconds off of the inherent delay you’re dealing with for each page load. Talk about snappier page loads…that’s a huge improvement.

Now of course I realize that there are lots of things in place to make latency and RTT less of an issue. Advanced caching, pre-rendering of content where applicable so browsers don’t have to wait for ALL the content to finish downloading before the page starts rendering, etc. Those are all great and they help alleviate the pain of higher latency connections, but the reality is that in today’s internet using world bandwidth is very rarely a concern when simply browsing the web. Adding more bandwidth will not, in almost all cases, increase the speed with which you can load websites.

Bandwidth is king of course, for multi-tasking on the web. If you’re the type to stream a video while downloading audio while uploading pictures while browsing the web while playing internet based games while running a fully functioning (and legal) torrent server out of your house…well then…you might want to stock up on bandwidth. But don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that paying for more bandwidth in and of itself will speed up internet browsing in general when only performing that one task.

Technorati Tags: RTT,Latency,Bandwidth,Web Page,Browsing,Broadband,Colin Walker

#Colin

Takeaways from the Great Content Marketing Experiment

Sat, 22 May 2010 16:22:00 EDT

Last week, John Bottom (@basebot) from Base One Group in the UK took a unique approach to his presentation at the IDM conference. He designed an experiment to show 150 B2B marketers the impact that can be achieved with content marketing. He asked attendees to answer the following questions before the conference: What the single biggest benefit of social media...

Internet Business Transactions near 450 Billion a Day

Fri, 21 May 2010 17:40:00 EDT

By D. Bruce Johnston, President and CEO, DBJ Associates Commerce on the Internet continues to skyrocket. Chad Levitt, author of the “New Sales Economy Blog,” recently wrote a post, “Sales Reps, Are You Ready for the Digital Universe?,” based on information he gleaned from a recently released IDC report on predictions for the year 2020. Here are some [...]

Sending Email in Windows Azure

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:59:00 EDT

Steve Marx has a blog post and an example on how to send email in Windows Azure. Sending email directly from Windows Azure presents some challenges, because you don’t have a dedicated IP address, and it’s quite likely that spammers will use Windows Azure to send spam. Once that happens, spam blacklists will quickly flag [...] Related posts:

Email Archiving in the Windows Azure Cloud Using SQL Data Services I wrote previously about the potential of SQL Data Services, the...
I Have A Bad Feeling About Windows Azure After more than two “azure” months, with lots of new...
Weekly Cloud Application: Email Center Pro From Palo Alto Software, creators of Business Plan Pro and...

IT Leaders Can Improve Productivity

Wed, 19 May 2010 08:16:00 EDT

A panel of experts examines how to gain new capacity from existing data centers through both modernization and savvy exploitation of all sourcing options. By outsourcing smartly, migrating applications strategically, and modernizing effectively, IT leaders can improve productivity while still under tightly managed costs. IT leaders now face a set of complex choices, knowing that discretionary and capital IT spending remain tight, even as demand on their systems increases. Economists are now seeing the recession giving a way to growth, at least in several important sectors and regions. Chances are that demands on IT systems to meet this growing economic activity will occur before IT budgets appreciably go up.

Access Solutions for AT&T Synaptic Storage

Tue, 11 May 2010 11:55:00 EDT

As a CTO or an IT admin thinking about AT&T Synaptic Storage, you may be looking for an access solution that delivers AT&T Synaptic Cloud Storage to your user’s desktops and your organization’s file servers. Thinking access? Try Gladinet …

Developing a Master-Detail View – Part 3

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:45:00 EDT

The JPA ORM Generation wizard allows modification of existing O/R mappings and the creation of new entity associations. The tasks you will complete in this step are: Create a new one-to-one association between CUSTOMER and CUSTOMERID; Review generated classes with annotations; Add annotations to an existing Java class. Create a new one-to-one association between CUSTOMER and CUSTOMERID Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse also supports the creation of new entity associations in case your database lacks foreign key definitions (such as for performance reasons). It can create Simple Associations (one to one, one to many, many to one) between two tables and Many to Many Associations through an intermediate table.

The End of IT 1.0 As We Know It Has Begun

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:00:00 EST

You may wonder whether it’s too early to make the call given the lack of interoperability standards, security concerns, and common definition of cloud computing. Well, the IPTV space shares many of the same similarities – emerging technology, emerging standards, emerging adoption, varying definitions, and yet the call was made in that space. Cloud computing is a shot across the bow for the giants of the IT industry. They are on notice. Certainly, some will make the transition, slowly, at the speed which the overall market develops or slower, as they have no incentive to drive the market and rapidly cannibalize their existing businesses for a less lucrative business model even if it is more cost effective, flexible, and efficient for most of their clients.

With Market Accelerating, HP Raises Guidance

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:30:00 EST

After things clicked for HP in the January quarter and it sniffed an “accelerating market,” it decided to raise its outlook for the year believing it can outperform the market. CEO Mark Hurd says 2010 ain’t gonna be 2009 redux, at least not for HP. He’s predicting growth of 6%-7% and an earnings tickle of 14%-15%. He also means to hire, at least in sales. In its first fiscal quarter HP’s net revenues came to $31.2 billion, up 8%, making for earnings of $2.3 billion, or 96 cents a share, up 25%. It earned $2.7 billion before charges. It exceeded its own and Wall Street expectations on the revenue side by better than a billion dollars. Hurd’s cost-cutting didn’t hurt the earnings.

Latest Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g Release Now Available

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST

Demonstrating its commitment to the developer and open source communities, Oracle has announced the latest release of Oracle® Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse is a free set of certified plug-ins that enable developers to build Java EE and Web Services applications for the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform where Eclipse is the preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This release delivers a significant vendor provided extension to Eclipse with unique Oracle WebLogic Server features, WYSIWYG Web page editing, SCA support, JAX-WS Web Service validation, an integrated tag and data palette, and smart editors.

Adaptivity CEO Tony Bishop's Cloud Expo Presentation on SYS-CON.TV

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:15:00 EST

The applications in support of an enterprise exhibit a wide range of operational characteristics. That diversity is the key to business success, but it has consequences. Three different perspectives must be accommodated: 1. Enterprise Application Architect – Recognition that a single standard platform configuration is insufficient to meet the behaviors exhibited across the portfolio of applications.

What’s Next for Oracle-Sun?

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:15:00 EST

It’s apparently all over but the shouting at Oracle and Sun. The European Commission is reportedly supposed to wave Sun’s acquisition through on January 19. In the process it’ll have to explain how it came to change its mind after needlessly costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs – well, at least that’s the Oracle-Sun story.

Oracle to Present at the Largest Cloud Computing Event in the World

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

What are the key capabilities and benefits of an enterprise private PaaS based on a shared Java and database platform? In his session at the 5th International Cloud Expo, Mohamad Afshar, VP of Product Management at Oracle, discusses the key capabilities and benefits of an enterprise private PaaS based on a shared Java and database platform, and discusses best practices for building and operating a private PaaS. Mohamad Afshar, PhD, is VP of Product Management at Oracle. He has product management responsibilities for Oracle's middleware portfolio and is part of the team driving Oracle's investments in SOA on Application Grid - which brings together SOA and data grid technologies to ensure predictable low latency for SOA applications. Prior to joining Oracle, he founded Apama, a complex event processing vendor acquired by Progress Software. He has a PhD in Parallel Systems from Cambridge University, where he built a system for processing massive data sets using a MapReduce framework.

Why Cops and Java Developers Have Low Salaries?

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 14:45:00 EST

In enterprise IT no one just raises salary if there is a way to hire someone else for less money. It's just not in the corporate culture where people are treated as nameless resources. Have you ever wondered why policemen get lower salaries than Java developers even though people in the uniform risk their lives on daily basis? It's because there are many people who apply for jobs in the police. Preparing a mediocre policemen takes about the same time as preparing a mediocre Java programmer. The same holds true for good policemen and Java developers. Market rules. If no one will want to go to police, their salaries and perks will increase.

Congratulations to Burton Group

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:30:00 EST

Looking down my blogroll earlier today, I see "A message from Jamie Lewis". Jamie is the CEO of Burton Group, and always worth listening to, especially at his Catalyst talks. So, I click on the link and read that Burton has been acquired by Gartner! Analyst consolidation continues into 2010...

Federated SOA: A Pre-Requisite for Enterprise Cloud Computing

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:45:00 EST

Successful enterprise SOA implementations build on a set of localized, project-level efforts with services that have clearly identified and accountable business and technology owners. Ownerships defines a SOA Domain. SOA domains may exist within corporate boundaries or may be provided as services by third parties. Deciding what services are core to a business owner and should be implemented within her/his domain versus consumed from another SOA domain becomes a critical part of building Federated SOA. Understanding core capabilities provided by SOA domains is a crucial task at the enterprise-level for encouraging efficiency through re-use and for keeping focus on core business services. As SOA domains mature, key issues arise in enabling "SOA Domain Jumping," -- easily and rapidly integrating with other SOA domains. Here are the top three Federated SOA requirements that corporations must first address before embarking on a meaningful and sustained cloud computing deployment.

Happy New Year To Influential Bloggers Everywhere!

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:45:00 EST

Virtualization Magazine on Ulitzer. I hate those end of year lists, made especially tiresome this year being the end of the decade (which really doesn’t end until next year, but we won’t get into that). Nevertheless, I will call your attention to this list where I reside at #26: Ulitzer Names The World’s 30 Most Influential Virtualization Bloggers. I am honored to be among such great company. Happy new year everyone!

VMware Reportedly Buying Zimbra

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:15:00 EST

VMware is reportedly branching off into the groupware business. According to All Things Digital, the Dow Jones blog that majors in Yahoo’s doings, VMware is gonna take Zimbra, which has been on the block for at least a few months now, off of Yahoo’s hands, having been persuaded that it should move up the software stack and not be so focused on virtualization.

Enterprise BI: Snaplogic and Mindtouch Team Up

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

Sophisticated and advanced analytics tools that can strategically aggregate relevant data is key to the success of every business. The right solution can be challenging to find considering that we grab information from a multitude of platforms today – enterprise, web, social networks, SAAS, you name it. Snaplogic and Mindtouch have decided to combine their respective offerings in a package that they call Business Application Integrations (BAI) which they say will work out cheaper to meet enterprise integration requirements for medium sized businesses.

The Triumph of the Ho-Hum SOA

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

If you’ve followed the arc of the SOA revolution, you might have expected the current moment to be one of great fanfare and proclamations of success. SOA (was supposed to have) arrived! SOA (was supposed to be) an accepted standard for software development and enterprise architecture. Yet, as we have seen, the naysayers appear to have had their day. SOA is DOA, we are told again and again.

Moffat’s & Other Indictments Delayed

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire ringleader of the Galleon insider-trading mob, and Danielle Chiesi, the ex-beauty queen who allegedly charmed ex-IBM SVP Robert Moffat and ex-AMD CEO Hector Ruiz into telling her valuable company secrets, were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on 17 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy. They are expected to be arraigned Monday, December 21 and plead not guilty.

Rackspace’s Popular Cloud Computing Tools Ecosystem

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

The Rackspace® Cloud, the cloud computing division of Rackspace Hosting (NYSE:RAX), today announced the latest addition to Rackspace’s popular Cloud Tools ecosystem. FathomDB, a leader in Database-as-a-Service (DaaS), enables businesses and developers to easily manage their MySQL databases in the cloud. Now built on The Rackspace Cloud’s open, standards-based API, FathomDB provides a seamless database management experience that leverages Cloud Servers and frees users from time-consuming system administration tasks.

WSO2 Delivers Middleware for Heterogeneous SOAs

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

WSO2 announced that it is delivering the first complete middleware platform specifically built to support and extend a heterogeneous service-oriented architecture (SOA). WSO2 offers a lean approach to middleware that covers the complete requirements of an enterprise architecture, including connectors, mediation and governance, all the way to the executive business dashboard—all available as open source and in the cloud

TIBCO Goes to IBM Before the End of March 2010 -Prediction

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:22:00 EST

I hate to make new year's resolutions like a new diet program or another trainer at my local gym. I also usually never bother with annual predictions either, for that matter. One exception to that personal rule is the long over due sale of TIBCO Software. Since Oracle's bloody murder acquisition of BEA Systems, for the past two years there has been rumors that TIBCO would be next, of course which never happened so far. Now that TIBCO's fourth quarter results are around the corner (on Tuesday after the close), these rumors started to resurface again. The company is expected to beat the Street with an impressive Q4, together with Red Hat and Progress Software next week.

OpSource and Mezeo Secure Cloud Storage

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST

Mezeo Software today announced that OpSource Cloud will offer the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform, enabling OpSource Cloud users to enjoy online sign-up and immediate provisioning of cloud storage service, speeding enterprises’ cloud deployment and offering flexible, secure storage options to help ISVs differentiate themselves. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform will be available to OpSource Cloud users in the first quarter of 2010.

Cloud Computing with a Chance of Convergence for 2010 Predictions

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

I'm off to Seoul, South Korea next week, but before I leave I wanted to give you a little holiday gift, yes, the gift of my prognostication. Before I do, as anyone who routinely reads my blog will understand, all I pretty much do is attempt predict the future. As an entrepreneur that has always been a key part of my successes & failures. (That and I also seem to be an eternal optimist) Generally my view of the future is not shaped by selecting any particular point in time but instead done from what I see from my ever changing vantage point in the present.

Cloud Computing on Windows Azure

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:15:00 EST

“One of the reasons it’s so difficult to satisfactorily define cloud computing is that people have many different needs and expectations from a cloud platform. To start a conversation about cloud — especially one that seeks to evaluate the relative merits of competing cloud platforms — without first identifying what needs are being met is to invite misunderstanding and confusion. So before I come to my analysis of Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform and the hidden danger lurking there for many ISVs looking to embark on a SaaS strategy, I’m going to segment cloud computing into several important but separate categories.”

Sun Microsystems Releases NetBeans IDE 6.8

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

With complete Java EE 6 and GlassFish v3 support, the NetBeans IDE 6.8 makes language and platform improvements easily available to developers and helps accelerate application development. The NetBeans IDE 6.8 enables developers to take advantage of the latest Java EE 6 language features that simplify Java application creation, including POJO-like development, more annotations and less XML configuration. Additionally, developers can easily target and deploy to GlassFish v3, including the new lightweight GlassFish v3 Web Profile

Sun Microsystems Releases Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:30:00 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.

Upgrading WLS via Oracle Support Maintenance Patchsets

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:45:00 EST

Recently I blogged about Upgrading WLS using the Oracle Smart Update utility. We discovered that while this utility will happily patch our developers' machines, we had h3lls own trouble trying to get it to work on our server. After much head scratching, gritting of teeth, yelling, begging and sobbing at our firewall administrators, without a solve, we decided a new approach was required.

As per Andreas Koop's comment in that original blog post, you can in fact run the Smart Update utility in offline mode, which implies you can download the patches and install them from the utility locally without directly connecting to the Oracle web services. However what I couldn't see was how to run the Maintenance Patch option in offline mode. Yet given the offline mode support it seemed reasonable that you could download a patchset from somewhere, and this post details where that's from.

Under Oracle Support's MOS and the HTML version you can click on the Patches and Updates tab.

In MOS under the Patch Search box with the Oracle, Siebel and Hyperion tab selected, click on the Product or Family link. From there as per the following screenshot enter WebLogic Server as the product, pick whichever release you want to upgrade to (not from), and the platform:

From here you can download the relevant patch:

The MOS interface isn't ideal as you can't use download managers for speeding up the stupendous size of the patchsets. Alternatively the HTML version does. The following screenshot shows the equivalent search'n'results under HTML:

From the resulting downloaded zip, extract it and run the exe. This invokes the upgrade installer that looks similar to the normal WLS installer. The installer steps from then on are self explanatory, requiring you to pick the existing WLS home then proceeding with the installation.

Rackspace Appoints Chief Operating Officer

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:45:00 EST

Roenigk comes from the online retailer eBay, where he was Chief Procurement Officer & vice president of Operational Excellence. While there, he was responsible for the implementation of a company-wide operational excellence program that substantially improved the customer experience while driving significant process and financial efficiencies. Previously, Roenigk was senior vice president of Operations for XM Satellite Radio, where he was responsible for all supply chain activities and global procurement in the manufacturing and distribution of XM products. He also served as vice president of supply chain operations at Intuit and General Manager for Microsoft Corporation. His experience with Microsoft spanned 10 years and included operational roles across multiple business units.

GoGrid Content Delivery Network Slides

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST

A few weeks ago, we did a webinar about GoGrid’s new Content Delivery Network which is now available for all GoGrid users. Some of the important features that the GoGrid CDN includes are: Website Acceleration — faster page load times for your website Large Object Download Service — for software, videos, games, music, podcasts and movies—the best way to provide delivery

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.

Forget Defining Cloud Computing

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:15:00 EST

Defining cloud computing has proven to be nearly impossible. Ask ten different people and you'll get ten different answers. Countless discussion groups, blogs, articles, etc. have attempted to give their own take on cloud computing, and all to no avail. The industry just can't agree on a common definition. With that in mind, perhaps it's time to move past trying to define the cloud and look into the common characteristics of such solutions. Many of us have heard or read about some of these cloud characteristics, so I thought I would offer up my top five cloud computing solution characteristics here.

Cloud Computing Shows Promise During Navy Trident Warrior Exercise

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:45:00 EST

During a recent interview, Robert Carey, Navy Chief Information Officer, also stated that cloud computing offered real value to the Navy. Citing that both the Navy Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) and Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) programs will leverage cloud computing, he envisioned a future day when "Grey clouds" within a ship's hull would eventually transition to clouds within the battle group. The increased IT efficiency delivered through cloud computing would also enhance mission accomplishment by making more resources available for investment into naval mission platforms (ships and planes). Mr. Carey sees ready access to authoritative data from the cloud as an important enabler to a real-time/near real-time decision making process, saying that the cloud delivers the ability to have a ubiquitous computing environment and interoperability. After observing the experiment, SPAWAR representatives showed similar sentiments, saying that the Navy was actively considering the use of cloud computing technologies as part of its Naval Networks Enterprise-2016 strategy

How the Enterprise Cloud Computing Affects the Datacenter

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

There are a variety of applications that support numerous business lines across an enterprise. These applications exhibit a wide range of operational characteristics as they service the diverse business demands. That diversity is the key to business success, but it has consequences. Ask an enterprise application architect about how IT should run a data center and you will find that the range of behaviours exhibited across the portfolio of applications cannot be run on one set of standard platform configurations. Most critical applications have extreme operational requirements that require specialised adjustments to operating environments.

Why SOA Needs Cloud Computing - Part 1

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

It’s Thursday morning, you’re the CEO of a large, publicly traded company, and you just called your executives into the conference room for the exciting news. The board of directors has approved the acquisition of a key competitor, and you’re looking for a call-to-action to get everyone planning for the next steps.

Einstein, Sharks and Clouds

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

What can these things possibly have in common? In a word – relativity. I’m reminded of the old joke, two guys are swimming in the ocean when they notice a shark and one guy takes off swimming towards the boat, while the other says, “What are you doing? We can’t swim faster than a shark”, the [...]

Cloud Computing Risk Assessment Report

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:15:00 EST

I've been traveling so there is a bit of a back log of news. In case you missed this, The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), working for the EU Institutions and Member States has released a Cloud Computing Risk Assessment report. ENISA is the EU’s response to Information security issues of the European Union. As such, it is the 'pacemaker' for Information Security in Europe. ENISA supported by a group of subject matter expert comprising representatives from Industries, Academia and Governmental Organizations, has conducted, in the context of the Emerging and Future Risk Framework project, an risks assessment on cloud computing business model and technologies. The result is an in-depth and independent analysis that outlines some of the information security benefits and key security risks of cloud computing. The report provide also a set of practical recommendations.

Security Report Predicts Cloud Computing Attacks in 2010

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

M86 Security, a leading global provider of Web and messaging security products, released Predictions 2010, a report on its expectations for Web and messaging-based threats for the coming year. The report is based on M86 Security Lab’s extensive research into the current trends in threats over the past year and its views on the major vulnerabilities facing organizations. The report highlights the increasing sophistication of traditional threats such as botnets, scareware, compromised legitimate Web sites and blended threats. However, it also projects what the company sees are new threat vectors coming from open API’s in Web 2.0 applications, the increased use of shortened URLs and the advent of non-Latin based domain names.

Supreme Court Case Could Freeze Innovation

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

In the High-Tech industry, the machinations of the US Supreme Court are, at best, fodder for dinner party trivia questions. There is one case on the Supreme Court docket this year that has the potential to change the way intellectual property protected in the United States, and have a major effect on the software companies who rely on the patent process. It could also have a devastating effect on innovation.

eBook: The Art of Social Sales

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

The Customer Collective has released a new eBook with contributions from some truly insightful sales leaders to help us understand just what "social selling" means in today's marketplace. Although we all know that our buyers have changed, business is moving so swiftly these days that its hard to know just how we need to adapt to keep pace...and keep selling. This eBook shares some great perspectives on what's required...and what's working. As a preview, I decided to pick some of my favorite insights from a few of the featured experts - but this is just a taste. You really should go download the eBook. It's good stuff!

How the Delivery of Virtualization is Being Transformed

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EDT

As virtualization becomes more widely deployed, and enterprises look for new ways to leverage this revolutionary technology, the consumption and delivery of this technology is changing. At the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo, Simon Crosby will talk about how it is no longer one-size-fits-all and confined to a specific area of the data center, but instead is proliferating within the data center and out to the user via the desktop and applications.

The Economics of Cloud Computing Analyzed

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:00:00 EDT

The President’s budget for fiscal year 2010 (FY10) includes $75.8B in information technology (IT) spending, which is a 7-percent increase from FY09. Of this, at least $20B will be spent on IT infrastructure investments. The FY11 budget for IT is projected to be nearly $88B. The government is actively seeking ways to reduce IT costs, and the FY10 budget request highlights opportunities for the federal government to achieve significant long-term cost savings through the adoption of cloud computing technologies.

IBM’s Mainframe Monopoly Threatened by BMC Founder’s Shop

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:45:00 EDT

There’s another burr under IBM’s mainframe saddle besides the Justice Department’s investigation into its practices with the European Commission passing the DOJ notes – a Neon burr. Neon Enterprise Software is a Sugar Land, Texas, mainframe tools company 100% owned by John Moores, the “M” in BMC, who has reportedly poured a pretty penny into the place.

Mike Rowe From Dirty Jobs Could Use This Technology

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Voice-Insight (http://www.voice-insight.com ) was at the show and was demonstrating and talking about some of its technology and some of their R&D projects. Voice-Insight is not necessarily focusing on SOA or services; most of their appeal comes from integration to other technologies.Voice-Insight built its own voice language (VQLTM) that attempts to bridge voice with GIS, maintenance, quality control, vehicle navigation and e-Government applications. This is real; they have applications running in most West-European languages as well as Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin). Their approach is to try to make user dialogues are close to natural language as possible and minimize user .”Voice training is not required.” Voice-Insight was at the show because they are a big Oracle partner. They also have partnerships with Motorola Inc, IBM, Thales, Magellan Navigation , IBM , ESRI Inc., Acteos (France), Incas (Italy & Spain), Working Machines (USA), ClearOrbit (USA), Patech (UK), MDS (Greece), CAPINFO (China), NBT (Bulgaria), Geodan (The Netherlands), BASF IT (Germany), GTS (RSA) etc.

Oracle in Leader's Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers (EAS) positions Oracle in the leader's quadrant. (1) Oracle's EAS technology includes Oracle WebLogic Server, which is available together with related Oracle application grid technology as part of Oracle WebLogic Suite. The Gartner Magic Quadrant positions vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute on that vision.

Oracle Fusion Middleware Delivers World Record Single-Node Result

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:11:00 EDT

Today, Oracle announced that Oracle® WebLogic Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database 11g running on an HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server, achieved a world record single-node result with the SPECjAppServer2004 industry standard benchmark(1).