Wednesday, 2008-10-29, Copenhagen
A few key words on establishing a SOA portfolio in an enterprise. First one needs to have SOA service enablement and orchestration. And there should be police and performance management, esp. the run-time management. And a proper governance model is also compulsory.
The European Parliament has adopted a series of new measures designed to increase the competition in the EU telecoms market and provide consumers with a wide choice of services.The EU assembly voted in favor of a proposal to force telecoms companies to split their network and retail services and run them as separate businesses that will provide competitors easier access to networks. This can be a great news to those small retail-based business that has more brilliant ideas on mobile-based services.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
What's new in week 41, 2008
Sunday, 2008-10-12, Copenhagen
It seems that Microsoft and HP are very confident on their business. Both giant IT vendors have announced buying-back large amount of their stocks. In this economy down time, these two are trying to boost their investor confidence.
After years of efforts, MicroStrategy is now recognized by Gartner in the leaders' quadrant in business intelligence platform. The wonderful idea of using Magic Quadrant has made Gartner the leading consulting firm of the IT market. But how can they be sure about these quadrants? It's just a business company, even not as responsible as CNN (which is already well-known for selling lies to fool people)
Here I found something very interesting: The 9 biggest cloud storage vendors.
1. Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition is a file storage and backup service that's priced starting at $2 per month per user, plus $0.15 per GB per month of storage used, $0.10 per GB of data uploaded and $0.17 per GB of data downloaded. For more on Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition, see Jason Brooks' review "Jungle Disk Aids Amazon Storage."
2. Box.net Enterprise is a file sharing and storage service that's priced starting at $15 per user for 15GB. For more on Box.net Enterprise, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Symantec Acquires Online Backup Service."
3. MozyPro is an online backup service that's priced starting at $3.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month for desktop licenses, or $6.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month for server licenses. For more on MozyPro, see Chris Preimesberger's story "EMC Upping Prices for MozyPro Online Backup."
4. Carbonite is an online backup service that's priced starting at $49.95 for a one-year, unlimited subscription. For more on Carbonite, see Larry Seltzer's column "Backup Becomes a Standard PC Feature."
5. Egnyte is an online backup and file sharing service that's priced starting at $15 per user per month, with unlimited storage for accounts with three or more users.
6. Swapdrive is an online backup service that's priced starting at $36 per month or $360 per year for 1GB. For more on Swapdrive, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Symantec Acquires Online Backup Service."
7. Evault is an online backup service whose Web site doesn't disclose pricing information. For more on Evault, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Why We're Starting to Trust Storage in the Cloud."
8. Windows Live SkyDrive is an online file storage service that's priced starting at nothing for 5GB of file storage. For more on Windows Live SkyDrive, see Frank Ohlhorst's story "Microsoft's Pie in the Sky Play with SkyDrive."
9. Symantec Online Backup is an online backup service that's priced starting at $9.99 for 10GB of storage. For more on Symantec Online Backup, see Brian Prince's story "Symantec Builds Out SAAS Business with Remote Access Control.
It seems that Microsoft and HP are very confident on their business. Both giant IT vendors have announced buying-back large amount of their stocks. In this economy down time, these two are trying to boost their investor confidence.
After years of efforts, MicroStrategy is now recognized by Gartner in the leaders' quadrant in business intelligence platform. The wonderful idea of using Magic Quadrant has made Gartner the leading consulting firm of the IT market. But how can they be sure about these quadrants? It's just a business company, even not as responsible as CNN (which is already well-known for selling lies to fool people)
Here I found something very interesting: The 9 biggest cloud storage vendors.
1. Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition is a file storage and backup service that's priced starting at $2 per month per user, plus $0.15 per GB per month of storage used, $0.10 per GB of data uploaded and $0.17 per GB of data downloaded. For more on Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition, see Jason Brooks' review "Jungle Disk Aids Amazon Storage."
2. Box.net Enterprise is a file sharing and storage service that's priced starting at $15 per user for 15GB. For more on Box.net Enterprise, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Symantec Acquires Online Backup Service."
3. MozyPro is an online backup service that's priced starting at $3.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month for desktop licenses, or $6.95 plus $0.50 per GB per month for server licenses. For more on MozyPro, see Chris Preimesberger's story "EMC Upping Prices for MozyPro Online Backup."
4. Carbonite is an online backup service that's priced starting at $49.95 for a one-year, unlimited subscription. For more on Carbonite, see Larry Seltzer's column "Backup Becomes a Standard PC Feature."
5. Egnyte is an online backup and file sharing service that's priced starting at $15 per user per month, with unlimited storage for accounts with three or more users.
6. Swapdrive is an online backup service that's priced starting at $36 per month or $360 per year for 1GB. For more on Swapdrive, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Symantec Acquires Online Backup Service."
7. Evault is an online backup service whose Web site doesn't disclose pricing information. For more on Evault, see Chris Preimesberger's story "Why We're Starting to Trust Storage in the Cloud."
8. Windows Live SkyDrive is an online file storage service that's priced starting at nothing for 5GB of file storage. For more on Windows Live SkyDrive, see Frank Ohlhorst's story "Microsoft's Pie in the Sky Play with SkyDrive."
9. Symantec Online Backup is an online backup service that's priced starting at $9.99 for 10GB of storage. For more on Symantec Online Backup, see Brian Prince's story "Symantec Builds Out SAAS Business with Remote Access Control.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
What's new in week 40, 2008
Sunday, 2008-10-05, Copenhagen
For most companies in US and western and northern EU countries, where are the best-fit outsourcing places? Well, there can be a few in the list. India, Canada, China, Philippines, Ireland, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania. Even though India has been topping the list for the past years, one can start observing that countries like Canada, Ireland, and those in the eastern European area are able to start attracting more focuses.
The power of social computing is exploding. IBM recentlt opened its social software research center in Boston area. After so many years of focus on top IT solutions, many people in the industry are now thinking in improving the social ways of IT life.
How should we reflect from the technology's role in the Wall Stree crisis? Well, of course there are more business or economic reasons for the crisis, technology still takes certain responsibility as there are many risk-management systems used by these financial institutions. Even though we can blame the algorithms or methodologies used inside these software, the quality of information fed into these systems is also one of the biggest problems. As the old programmer saying has it, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
For most companies in US and western and northern EU countries, where are the best-fit outsourcing places? Well, there can be a few in the list. India, Canada, China, Philippines, Ireland, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania. Even though India has been topping the list for the past years, one can start observing that countries like Canada, Ireland, and those in the eastern European area are able to start attracting more focuses.
The power of social computing is exploding. IBM recentlt opened its social software research center in Boston area. After so many years of focus on top IT solutions, many people in the industry are now thinking in improving the social ways of IT life.
How should we reflect from the technology's role in the Wall Stree crisis? Well, of course there are more business or economic reasons for the crisis, technology still takes certain responsibility as there are many risk-management systems used by these financial institutions. Even though we can blame the algorithms or methodologies used inside these software, the quality of information fed into these systems is also one of the biggest problems. As the old programmer saying has it, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
What's new in week 37, 2008
Wednesday, 2008-09-10, Copenhagen
HP is quite serious about its competition with IBM and MS on all types of software and hardware systems. It has recently launched project and portfolio management tools into its business product suite. Seems that enterprises now have quite a few (more than 3) choices to go when only giant vendors are considered.
Seems that Google is becoming a place where people meet and discuss their ambitions and leave and create their own company and sell their company with a big number. One example is the new engine called Cuil ("cool" as it is pronounced) which is designed by former Google members. This new search engine is claimed to provide even more information with less hardware spending. Let's see how this start-up goes and when Google will acquire it.
Friday, 2008-09-12, Copenhagen
Sun is definitely joining the cloud computing team. It recently annouced the preview release of JavaFX, which is its rich client platform for building rich internet applications (RIAs). After Microsoft and Adobe, Sun is becoming another vendor that provides the basic programming facilities for building cloud computing applications.
Look out! Amazon is crazy about getting people to use its cloud computing web services. Long after its Elastic Cloud and Simple Storage Service offers, it launches the Mechanical Turk, which is a website that let non-programmers to create basic tasks of certain web services with requirements and let other people (such as a part-time programmer) to finish the rest of the work.
Sunday, 2008-09-14, Copenhagen
When enterprises grow bigger, it become more and more important to have better understanding of its IT architecture and assets. Meta recently annouced a road-mapping tool, called "Mega IT Planning," to help enterprises to manage IT architecture. Looks like that many architects will be interested in the tool.
The Web-collaboration-tool market is far away from being mature. Google and Microsoft SharePoint are among the leading ones. Central Desktop is another software provider who tries to compete with the giants in this market. As claimed by its CEO, Central Desktop provides more collaboration functionalities than Google Apps while requires less resource than SharePoint. It seems that Central Desktop is trying to find a balance between the "thin" functionalities of Google App and the "fat" requirements of SharePoint.
HP is quite serious about its competition with IBM and MS on all types of software and hardware systems. It has recently launched project and portfolio management tools into its business product suite. Seems that enterprises now have quite a few (more than 3) choices to go when only giant vendors are considered.
Seems that Google is becoming a place where people meet and discuss their ambitions and leave and create their own company and sell their company with a big number. One example is the new engine called Cuil ("cool" as it is pronounced) which is designed by former Google members. This new search engine is claimed to provide even more information with less hardware spending. Let's see how this start-up goes and when Google will acquire it.
Friday, 2008-09-12, Copenhagen
Sun is definitely joining the cloud computing team. It recently annouced the preview release of JavaFX, which is its rich client platform for building rich internet applications (RIAs). After Microsoft and Adobe, Sun is becoming another vendor that provides the basic programming facilities for building cloud computing applications.
Look out! Amazon is crazy about getting people to use its cloud computing web services. Long after its Elastic Cloud and Simple Storage Service offers, it launches the Mechanical Turk, which is a website that let non-programmers to create basic tasks of certain web services with requirements and let other people (such as a part-time programmer) to finish the rest of the work.
Sunday, 2008-09-14, Copenhagen
When enterprises grow bigger, it become more and more important to have better understanding of its IT architecture and assets. Meta recently annouced a road-mapping tool, called "Mega IT Planning," to help enterprises to manage IT architecture. Looks like that many architects will be interested in the tool.
The Web-collaboration-tool market is far away from being mature. Google and Microsoft SharePoint are among the leading ones. Central Desktop is another software provider who tries to compete with the giants in this market. As claimed by its CEO, Central Desktop provides more collaboration functionalities than Google Apps while requires less resource than SharePoint. It seems that Central Desktop is trying to find a balance between the "thin" functionalities of Google App and the "fat" requirements of SharePoint.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Notes for Chapter 5 of "Beyond Software Architecture"
Chapter 5 "Technology in-licensing"
This chapter talks about how different technologies can be integrated into a software architecture by licensing. A general point is that using code or components by licensing can save the energy and time of the key technical employees. On the other hand, it is important to have lawyers to clarify the relevant issues when licenses are involved.
There are many risks/rewards for using licensed technologies. One should keep all these in mind when being at the front of such decisions. Actually this is not only about component-based software. An OS can be a licensed technology to an enterprise. Such considerations of risks/rewards still apply here.
Another thing to be careful with is the software itself may have a different pricing model that conflicts with the licensed technologies. Here the software architecture matters. It should be designed to solve the conflict.
Open source technology is always a good consideration, but one has to bear in mind the pros and cons behind it. Every open source software license is different.
This chapter talks about how different technologies can be integrated into a software architecture by licensing. A general point is that using code or components by licensing can save the energy and time of the key technical employees. On the other hand, it is important to have lawyers to clarify the relevant issues when licenses are involved.
There are many risks/rewards for using licensed technologies. One should keep all these in mind when being at the front of such decisions. Actually this is not only about component-based software. An OS can be a licensed technology to an enterprise. Such considerations of risks/rewards still apply here.
Another thing to be careful with is the software itself may have a different pricing model that conflicts with the licensed technologies. Here the software architecture matters. It should be designed to solve the conflict.
Open source technology is always a good consideration, but one has to bear in mind the pros and cons behind it. Every open source software license is different.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
What's new in week 35, 2008
Tuesday, 2008-08-26, Copenhagen
Open source tools have been evolving to the era that enterprises are starting to use them in mission-critical tasks. Open source community has started working on three emerging areas, VOIP, CRM, and mobility, which brings more challenges to the commercial vendors. Linux is another striking example against Windows system.
Intel recently launched its new Centrino 2 platform which offers better performance at a low power consumption. Well, let’s wait and see what AMD says about it.
Cloud computing is also coming into the security market. In addition to all existing online virus –detection services, vendors are looking into the online-backup market. To put your files into the cloud may be the only safe thing if one cannot trust her/his own computer system. Companies like Webroot, HP Upline, and SOS Online Backup are in this field.
Open source tools have been evolving to the era that enterprises are starting to use them in mission-critical tasks. Open source community has started working on three emerging areas, VOIP, CRM, and mobility, which brings more challenges to the commercial vendors. Linux is another striking example against Windows system.
Intel recently launched its new Centrino 2 platform which offers better performance at a low power consumption. Well, let’s wait and see what AMD says about it.
Cloud computing is also coming into the security market. In addition to all existing online virus –detection services, vendors are looking into the online-backup market. To put your files into the cloud may be the only safe thing if one cannot trust her/his own computer system. Companies like Webroot, HP Upline, and SOS Online Backup are in this field.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
What's new in week 32, 2008
Sunday, 2008-08-10, Copenhagen
Seagate has recently released 1.5 TB desktop hard drive and a 0.5 TB drive for laptop. With the great growth of information in different enterprises. Hard drive technology seems to be always important in terms of both technology and business.
Many enterprises have been realizing the importance and benefit of collaborative intelligence. A lot of collaboration tools are coming into the business world. Despite the big vendors, cloud computing sites, such as SocialText, are bring the concpets to SMBs and private customers.
One of the major IT services companies, InfoSys has reported a strong increase in net income in Q1 of 2008. It seems that, despite the economy down in the western world, the big asia countries are still benfiting from the low service prices. Well, when economy is down, every western enterprise is searching for ways of saving the budget. To go to the eastern world is one of the solutions.
Big enterprises to start using open source databases? Well, maybe not for mission-critical applications. But if we look at the price lists from the giant vendors, why not throw away the vendors' offer and hire a few talent guys who know the open source tools much better?
Seagate has recently released 1.5 TB desktop hard drive and a 0.5 TB drive for laptop. With the great growth of information in different enterprises. Hard drive technology seems to be always important in terms of both technology and business.
Many enterprises have been realizing the importance and benefit of collaborative intelligence. A lot of collaboration tools are coming into the business world. Despite the big vendors, cloud computing sites, such as SocialText, are bring the concpets to SMBs and private customers.
One of the major IT services companies, InfoSys has reported a strong increase in net income in Q1 of 2008. It seems that, despite the economy down in the western world, the big asia countries are still benfiting from the low service prices. Well, when economy is down, every western enterprise is searching for ways of saving the budget. To go to the eastern world is one of the solutions.
Big enterprises to start using open source databases? Well, maybe not for mission-critical applications. But if we look at the price lists from the giant vendors, why not throw away the vendors' offer and hire a few talent guys who know the open source tools much better?
Monday, July 28, 2008
What's new in week 31, 2008
Monday, 2008-07-28, Copenhagen
Microsoft to acquire DATAllegro! Yes and I just got this message in my box this morning. So the Data Warehousing market is having another round of re-ordering. It seems that Microsoft SQL Server team has been trying hard to find good solution to hold more than 20 TB of data in their system and the conclusion is that: “Well, since we cannot do that, let’s buy an existing opponent to deal with that.” I would guess that the SQL Server solution for data warehousing will become more popular in the market and we will see how the next version of SQL Server 2008 can include the technologies in DATAllegro platform.
Where is the source of all kinds of database research? Well, one can try to look into all the different universities (esp. the old ones) in the world and find if their department pages include some great names in the faculty list. One interesting blog-note that I just found recently is in the Stanford DB-blog (http://infoblog.stanford.edu/2008/07/database-research-principles-revealed.html) which is a very good understanding of different principles of doing database research. I guess this can be a classic note for most DB research newbees to learn.
VMWare just changed their CEO from Diane Greene to Paul Maritz. From a small start-up to a company with $1bn revenues, Greene has contributed a lot to the VMWare’s big growth. But, just like any other successful start-ups, it comes the time that the whole strategy of the company needs to be changed. Now, facing more challenges from Citrix and Microsoft, let’s just hope the new CEO can keep the company in good health.
Google to challenge Wikipedia? Why not! Google has formally released the “Knol” which is an alternative encyclopedia thing to Wikipedia. Actually this new tool includes some news thoughts from Google on how social collaboration should work and benefit people. Knol writers can make money by using AdSense program. What is more interesting is that Google also has an agreement with the New Yorker magazine and allows any author to add one cartoon per knoll from the New Yorker’s cartoon bank.
After the failure of acquiring Yahoo!, Microsoft is looking for another alternative to build up good web search engines for the future business. It has recently agreed to acquire a start-up company, “Powerset” to strength its free Live Search service. Seems that Microsoft is looking for another life-reboot like what Google did sometime ago.
Microsoft to acquire DATAllegro! Yes and I just got this message in my box this morning. So the Data Warehousing market is having another round of re-ordering. It seems that Microsoft SQL Server team has been trying hard to find good solution to hold more than 20 TB of data in their system and the conclusion is that: “Well, since we cannot do that, let’s buy an existing opponent to deal with that.” I would guess that the SQL Server solution for data warehousing will become more popular in the market and we will see how the next version of SQL Server 2008 can include the technologies in DATAllegro platform.
Where is the source of all kinds of database research? Well, one can try to look into all the different universities (esp. the old ones) in the world and find if their department pages include some great names in the faculty list. One interesting blog-note that I just found recently is in the Stanford DB-blog (http://infoblog.stanford.edu/2008/07/database-research-principles-revealed.html) which is a very good understanding of different principles of doing database research. I guess this can be a classic note for most DB research newbees to learn.
VMWare just changed their CEO from Diane Greene to Paul Maritz. From a small start-up to a company with $1bn revenues, Greene has contributed a lot to the VMWare’s big growth. But, just like any other successful start-ups, it comes the time that the whole strategy of the company needs to be changed. Now, facing more challenges from Citrix and Microsoft, let’s just hope the new CEO can keep the company in good health.
Google to challenge Wikipedia? Why not! Google has formally released the “Knol” which is an alternative encyclopedia thing to Wikipedia. Actually this new tool includes some news thoughts from Google on how social collaboration should work and benefit people. Knol writers can make money by using AdSense program. What is more interesting is that Google also has an agreement with the New Yorker magazine and allows any author to add one cartoon per knoll from the New Yorker’s cartoon bank.
After the failure of acquiring Yahoo!, Microsoft is looking for another alternative to build up good web search engines for the future business. It has recently agreed to acquire a start-up company, “Powerset” to strength its free Live Search service. Seems that Microsoft is looking for another life-reboot like what Google did sometime ago.
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