Latest News from Dana Gardner

Oracle Faces Growing Price for MySQL

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

The irony is that Oracle has advanced MySQL, lost money in the process, and helped its competitors - all at the same time. When Oracle buys Sun and controls MySQL the gift (other than to Microsoft SQL Server) keeps on giving as the existential threat to RDBs is managed by Redwood Shores. Oracle has uncharacteristically found itself maneuvered (by its own actions).

HP Gets Real on Client Virtualization

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

The thin-client offerings from the Palo Alto, Calif. company include the HP t5740 and HP t5745 Flexible Series, which feature Intel Atom N280 processors and an Intel GL40 chipset. They also provide eight USB 2.0 ports and an optional PCI expansion module for easy upgrades. The Flexible Series thin clients support rich multimedia for visual display solutions, including the new HP LD4700 47-inch Widescreen LCD Digital Signage Display, which can run in both bright and dim lighting while maintaining longevity, and can be set in either a horizontal or vertical position. With the new HP Digital Signage Display (DSD) Wall Mount, users can hang the display on a wall to showcase videos, graphics or text in a variety of commercial settings where an extra-large screen is desired.

IBM Sitting Pretty on Oracle-Sun Debacle

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

It's my contention that we're only now entering the true data-driven decade. And all that data needs to run somewhere. And it's not going to be in MySQL, no matter who ends up owning it.

Business Commerce Clouds

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:15:00 EST

As the general notion of cloud computing continues to permeate the collective IT imagination, an offshoot vision holds that multiple business-to-business (B2B) players could use the cloud approach to build extended business process ecosystems.

Survey: Virtualization and physical infrastructures need to be managed in tandem

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:31 EST

Virtualization is seen as a key enabling technology. But on its own it does not address the most important operational and management challenges in a shared infrastructure.

Aster Data architects application logic with data for speeded-up analytics processing en masse

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:23 EST

When both data and applications reside in the same system, they are independent of one another, but both execute as "first-class citizens" with their respective data and application management services.

HP tackles application transformation pay-offs in series of free virtual conferences

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:15 EST

Many IT architects are discovering that technical and economic incentives are mounting for exploiting alternatives to mainframe computing applications and systems. As enterprises seek to cut their total IT costs, they examine alternatives to hard-to-change and -manage legacy systems.

Internet Acceleration Supports Data Center Consolidation

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Data-center consolidation and modernization of IT systems helps enterprises reduce cost, cut labor, slash energy use, and become more agile. Infrastructure advancements, standardization, performance density, and network services efficiencies are all allowing for bigger and fewer data centers and strategically architected and located facilities that can efficiently carry more of the total IT requirements load.

A Lot of Legacy Code Can Be Jettisoned

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:10:00 EDT

A widening cost and productivity division exists between older, hand-coded software assets and replacement technologies on newer, more efficient standards-based systems. Somewhere in the mix, there are also core legacy assets distinct from so-called contextal assets. There is legacy wheat and legacy chaff.

Linthicum's latest book: How SOA and cloud intersect for enterprise productivity benefits

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:17:42 EDT

SOA is the way to do cloud. It's really about breaking down your architecture into a primitive state of several components. Then, it's figuring out how to assemble those in such a way that you can use those components to resolve problems as your business changes over time. Cloud computing is a nice enhancement to that. Cloud doesn't replace SOA, but is basically an architectural option in how you can host your services.

Application Transformation Case Study

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:00 EDT

The ongoing impact of the reset economy is putting more emphasis on lean IT -- of identifying and eliminating waste across the data-center landscape. The top candidates, on several levels, are the silo-architected legacy applications and the aging IT systems that support them.

Global study: Hybrid model rules as cloud heats up, SaaS adoption blazing

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:14:35 EDT

Nine months ago, 61 percent of respondents indicated that they were using only internal IT systems and today, that number has dropped to 41 percent.

SOA Survey Compares OSS, Commerical Brands

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:58:50 EDT

Forgive my harping on this, but I keep hearing about how powerful social media is for gathering insights from the IT communities and users. Yet I rarely see actual market research conducted via the social media milieu. So now's the time to fully test the process. I'm hoping that you users and specifiers of enterprise software middleware, SOA infrastructure, integration middleware, and enterprise service buses (ESBs) will take 5 minutes and fill out my BriefingsDirect survey. We'll share the results via this blog in a few weeks.

What's on your watch list? Forrester identifies 15 key technologies for enterprise architects

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:06:38 EDT

Forrester Research has tried to sort things out with a new report, “The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch.” And, if even limiting the selection to 15 sounds like a lot to keep your eye on.

Workday's Bhusri on SaaS ERP

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

The thing that Dave and I both took away from PeopleSoft is that you have to stay on top of innovation, and that's what Workday is doing. We are innovating where the large ERP vendors have stopped.

Architects to Cloud: Get Real

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:45:00 EDT

The popularity of the concepts around cloud computing have caught many IT departments off-guard. While business and financial leaders have become enamored of the expected economic and agility payoffs from cloud models, IT planners often lack structured plans or even a rudimentary roadmap of how to attain cloud benefits from their current IT environment.

Successful data center transformation usually requires overdue rethinking of the network

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:37:40 EDT

Nowadays, we see that network requirements have, and are, shifting as IT departments adopt improvements such as virtualization, software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing, and service-oriented architecture (SOA).

HP roadmap dramatically reduces energy consumption across data centers

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:46:20 EDT

We're talking about collapsing infrastructure requirements by factors of 5, 6, or 10. You're going from 10 or 20 old servers to perhaps a couple of servers running much more efficiently. And, with modernization at play, you can actually increase that multiplication.

BI Gets Better with Managed Web Data Services

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:15:00 EDT

The more relevant and useful content that enters into BI tools, the more powerful the BI outcomes -- especially as we look outside the enterprise for fast shifting trends and business opportunities. That's what web data services can bring. As the recession forces the need to identify and evaluate new revenue sources, businesses need to capture such web data services for business intelligence (BI) to work better and fuller. In Part 1 of our web data series we discussed how external data has grown in both volume and importance across internal Internet, social networks, portals, and applications in recent years.

Cloud Computing By Industry

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:45:00 EDT

As enterprises seek to exploit cloud computing, business leaders are focused on new productivity benefits, on how to make the most of cloud computing for innovative solving of industry-level problems.

Kapow and StrikeIron Team-Up to Offer Web Data Services Capabilities to SMBs

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EDT

Under Kapow's strategic partnership with StrikeIron, Web Data Services 7.0.0, which is available immediately, will be offered on StrikeIron's Web Services Catalog. Under the terms of the agreement, Kapow will maintain full technical and operational responsibility for Kapow Web Data Services, including enhancements and upgrades. StrikeIron will provide the commercialization capabilities, handling all customer relationship management functions, including sales, billing, and account support.

Open Mashup Alliance Makes Debut

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:45:00 EDT

The latest consortium on the technology scene, the OMA’s mission is to foster the successful use of web data services and enterprise mashup technologies and the adoption of an open language that promotes enterprise mashup interoperability and portability. This is a high priority for more and more enterprises, which is why the OMA could gain momentum. In fact, it already has on one level. The founding members of OMA is a diverse list of software vendors, consultants, tech service provides and other industry leaders that share a common interest: promoting the open, free-to-use Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML) for the development, interoperability and compatibility of enterprise mashup offerings.

Doing nothing can be costliest IT course when legacy systems and applications are involved

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:13:36 EDT

The cost of legacy systems and the cost of supporting the mainframe hasn’t changed in 12 months. What has changed is the available cash that companies have to spend on IT.

Akamai Aims to Power Virtual Desktops

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:15:00 EDT

I think we're facing an inflection point for desktop virtualization, fueled by the pending Windows 7 release, pent-up refresh demand on PCs generally, and the need for better security and compliance on desktops. Call it a trend – and not just a virtual one. Akamai Technologies is the latest tech firm to join the effort to push desktop virtualization into the mainstream with the salient message of swift return on investment (ROI) and lower total costs for PC desktop delivery.

Web Data Services Expand BI

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:45:00 EDT

BI always has merit, and in a downturn it's even more relevant, because we are really less tolerant of being able to make mistakes. We have to execute with even greater precision, and that's really what BI helps us do. The explosion of information from across the Web, from mobile devices, inside of social networks, and from the extended business processes that organizations are now employing all provide an opportunity, but they also provide a challenge.

The CIOs' New Agenda

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:30:00 EDT

What should CIOs make as priorities in the short, medium, and long terms? How can they reduce total cost, while modernizing and transforming IT? What can they do to better support their business requirements? In a nutshell, how can they best prepare for the new economy?

Jericho Forum aims to guide enterprises through risk mitigation landscape for cloud adoption

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:06:39 EDT

Cloud computing could be looked at the ultimate form of de-perimeterization. You no longer know even where your data is.

SOA Survey Under Way

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:26:00 EDT

Open Group Focuses on Cloud Security

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:30:00 EDT

The Open Group is leading some of the top efforts to make cloud benefits apply to mission critical IT. To learn more about the venerable group's efforts I recently interviewed Allen Brown, president and CEO. Standards and open access are increasingly important to users of cloud-based services. Yet security and control also remain top-of-mind for enterprises. How to make the two -- cloud and security -- work in harmony?

Cloud Benefits from Existing Data Centers

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EDT

We expect that the way the clouds are built will be refined for more and more enterprises over time. The early goal is gaining the efficiency, control and business benefits of an everything-as-a-service approach, without the downside and risks.

Cloud Gets Endorsement From Events

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:45:00 EDT

Many of the concepts first proposed and extolled during the Internet hype curve in the mid-1990s are now bearing fruit. Perhaps we should think of cloud computing as less than a separate hype curve, and more as the realization of the original Internet value curve , now some 15 years into its mainstream maturity.

Governance Makes Cloud Payoffs Possible

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EDT

What becomes essential in effectively moving to cloud adoption is proper cross-organizational governance. There needs to be a holistic embrace of such governance -- with a full spectrum of technologies, services, best practices, and hosting options guidance -- to manage the complexity and relationships.

IT Events Audit Standard Emerges

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:30:00 EDT

This is an emerging standard that’s being orchestrated through The Open Group, but it’s an open-source standard that is hopefully going to help in compliance and regulatory issues and in improving automation of events across heterogeneous environments. This could be increasingly important, as we get deeper into virtualization and cloud computing.

How to Get to Cloud Use Securely

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:00:00 EDT

In order to ramp up cloud-computing use and practices, a number of potential security pitfalls need to be identified and mastered. Security, in general, takes on a different emphasis, as services are mixed and matched and come from a variety of internal and external sources.

Beware Virtualization Sprawl

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:00:00 EDT

As more enterprises use virtualization for more workloads to engender productivity from higher server utilization, we often see what can be called virtualization sprawl, spreading a mixture of hypervisors, which leads to complexity and management concerns.

A Role for Down and Dirty BPM

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:15:00 EDT

To better understand how business processes can be developed and managed nimbly to help deal with such change, I recently moderated a panel of users, BPM providers, and analysts.

How the Cloud Aids Supply Chain Recalls

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:30:00 EDT

In conjunction with GS1 Canada, HP announced a product recall process Monday that straddles many participants across global supply chains. The pressures in such multi-player process ecologies can mount past the breaking point for such change management nightmares as rapid food or product recalls.

IT Log Search as a Service

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:23:33 EDT

We explore how IT search and systems log management as a service provides low-cost IT analytics that harness complexity to improve performance at radically reduced costs. We'll examine how network management, systems analytics, and log search come together, so that IT operators can gain easy access to identify and fix problems deep inside complex distributed environments.

ITIL Means Business for IT

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:30:00 EDT

The "reset economy" has moved the business and operations maturity process of IT from "nice to have" to "must have," if costs are going to be cut without undermining operational integrity.

SpringSource Adds Grease to Java Cloud Skids

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:00:00 EDT

This is the clear path for open source and Java developers to the cloud. Microsoft will have its hands full just keeping the .NET developers and operators on the farm, so to speak. SpringSource made headlines last week when VMware scooped up the Java infrastructure and management firm for $420 million in a move to breed easier cloud migration. Now, the spotlight is on the San Mateo, Calif. company once again as it leverages one of its own recent cloud industry acquisitions.

Compuware Weighs in on Portfolio Management

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:30:00 EDT

One strong way to be on top of change is by employing IT portfolio management techniques, products, and processes. As IT budgets react to such change, leaders need to better understand how to manage such change holistically, and not have change manage them (or worse).

Cloud Era Demands a Services Czar

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:30:00 EDT

The enterprise architect role is in flux, especially as we consider the heightening interest in cloud computing. The down economy has also focused IT spending to seek out faster, better, and cheaper means to acquire and manage IT functions and business processes.

Does Software AG Get SOA?

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:45:00 EDT

Welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Volume 44. Our topic this week on BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, and it is the week of July 13, 2009, centers on Software AG's bid to acquire IDS Scheer for about $320 million. We'll look into why this could be a big business process management (BPM) deal, not only for Software AG, but also for the service-oriented architecture (SOA) competitive landscape that is fast moving, as we saw from Oracle's recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

How Frameworks and SOA Align

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Since we can't leave a good argument behind, we're going to use this ZapFlash to explore what reference architectures are all about and what value they have to add to the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) story.

HP Partners with iTKO on LISA Services Testing Suite for SOA, BPM

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:45:00 EDT

HP is reselling iTKO’s LISA Virtualize product, a suite of test, validation and virtualization solutions optimized for distributed, multi-tier applications that leverage SOA, BPM, cloud computing, integration suites and ESBs. How does LISA help HP’s Quality and Performance Management solutions suite? By eliminating common system infrastructure dependencies during application testing.

Got Middleware? Got ESBs? Take This Survey, Please

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:00:00 EDT

I'm hoping that you users and specifiers of enterprise software middleware, SOA infrastructure, integration middleware, and enterprise service buses (ESBs) will take 5 minutes and fill out my BriefingsDirect survey. We'll share the results via this blog in a few weeks.

Cloud Computing Proves a Natural for Offloading Development Processes

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Our latest podcast discussion centers on using cloud computing technologies and models to improve the test and development stages of applications' creation and refinement. One area of cloud computing that has really taken off and generated a lot of interest is the development test and performance proofing of applications -- all from an elastic cloud services fabric.

VMware Fleshes out Cloud Computing Support Model with SpringSource Grab

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:30:00 EDT

VMware’s proposed $362 million acquisition of SpringSource is all about getting serious in competing with Salesforce.com and Google App Engine as the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud with the technology that everybody already uses. This acquisition was a means to an end, pairing two companies that could not be less alike.

HP Takes to YouTube

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Posted on YouTube, HP with its "HPEN Top Ten," clip has spoofed the satirists. Usually Top Ten lists apply to areas of politics or entertainment -- but, honestly, most of the IT departments I've visited have plenty of both.

More Ways to Solve Cloud Goverance Emerge

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:30:00 EDT

For all the buzz about cloud computing, there remains a key challenge for companies: regulatory compliance and governance issues. Left unaddressed, these issues could derail the long-term growth of cloud adoption. That's why more companies are coming to market with ever-evolving solutions that aim to take the pain out of controlling the cloud. Now, Cambridge, Mass.-based WebLayers just updated its flagship automated governance software, WebLayers Center 5.0, with new features that aim to mitigate the risk and cut the costs of developing in the cloud.