IBM Fires Juniper-Loaded Salvo at Cisco
IBM said today it will resell switches and routers made by Juniper under the IBM brand to compliment Big Blue’s server products aimed at data centers.The move is a direct response to Cisco’s creation of its own brand of servers it calls the Unified Computing System, as well as efforts by Hewlett-Packard to bring that company’s ProCurve networking gear closer to its servers. They’re all part of a larger attempt to keep pushing the boundaries of virtualization beyond hardware and into the network itself.
Virtualizing the network, or creating a network fabric, is the next big trend in data centers. Once the servers are virtualized the hardware is separated from the software running on it. However, when the time comes for that software to access the network, it is once again tied down to physical infrastructure — limited by the the cables that attach the server to a switch or the storage network. That means the network becomes a bottleneck in highly virtualized environments. But in many cases, by adding software and some gear to virtualize the network, a data center operator can reduce manual intervention and cut costs while increasing performance. For more on this see my article over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required). Read more…
Some of resources: Internet Marketing Services, Freelance Projects USA
Connecting the Dots Isn’t Enough
This interview with Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive of Adobe Systems, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. What’s the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned?
A. I really honed a lot of my leadership skills and style at Apple. I worked for Apple for many years, and I had a mentor, Gursharan Sidhu, from whom I learned just a tremendous amount.
I think two leadership lessons really stand out for me. He forced me to think about doing things that I did not think were possible. Challenging individuals by setting goals and then letting them use their ingenuity to accomplish them is something that I hope I can pass on as part of my leadership style. If you set a common vision and then get really scary-smart people, they do things that amaze you.
The other aspect of being a good manager has always been getting gratification from what others do, because the higher you get in management, frankly, the less you do yourself.
Q. How do you make sure goals are calibrated properly?
A. I like to say that if you can connect all the dots between what you see today and where you want to go, then it’s probably not ambitious enough or aspirational enough. On the other hand, if people look at it and say there is no way that’s going to happen, then it’s probably a little too much. So it’s a balance. Read more…
Some of resources: Internet Marketing Services, CAD Services
Earnings Climb Nearly 8% at Yahoo
SAN FRANCISCO — Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s chief executive, is known for peppering her public presentations with the odd expletive or two. But her conference call Tuesday to discuss Yahoo’s second-quarter financial results was entirely family-friendly. Then again, Ms. Bartz did not have much to swear about.
Yahoo’s revenue declined 13 percent in the second quarter as advertisers continued to reduce spending in the downturn. But cost-cutting initiatives helped to soften the blow, and profits climbed nearly 8 percent, beating analysts’ expectations.
Yahoo also said that it planned a new round of investment in products and a rebranding campaign, which would lead to a drop in profit in the current quarter. Investors reacted by sending shares down nearly 3 percent in after-hours trading.
“Over all, the long and protracted turnaround process continues,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “We don’t see a catalyst that is going to turn things around soon.”
Yahoo continues to discuss a search and advertising partnership with Microsoft that would create a more viable rival to Google. The talks have intensified recently, according to people briefed on them.
Both companies have declined to discuss their talks publicly and, for the first time since Ms. Bartz became chief executive in January, analysts did not ask her about them. Read more…
Some of resources: Internet Marketing Services, CAD Services
Sales Drive Robust Quarter for Apple
SAN FRANCISCO — While earnings have faltered at other electronics companies, unexpectedly strong sales of Macintosh computers and a surge in iPhone purchases pushed Apple’s profit up 15 percent in the third quarter, the company said Tuesday.
“We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding,” Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive, said in a statement.
Apple recorded its best nonholiday quarter ever when other electronics makers were hurting because of a downturn in consumer spending. According to various estimates, PC shipments for the industry fell 3 to 5 percent over the last three months. But Apple said it sold 2.6 million Macs in the quarter, up about 18 percent from the 2.2 million it sold in the previous quarter, which ended March 28.
Apple said Mac sales were helped in June by updates to its line of MacBook Pro laptops, which got new features like longer battery life and a price reduction of $300, or 25 percent, from the previously least expensive Pro model. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said the company saw an “acceleration of sales” after the introduction, which he said had led to some inventory shortages.
About half of Mac buyers in Apple’s own retail stores had never owned a Mac before, said Mr. Cook.
Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers, said that Macintosh computers were “resonating with increasing number of customers, as it is arguably the best platform for what people do today, which includes Web surfing and creating and managing content.” Read more…
Some of resources: Internet Marketing Services, CAD Services
Bitter Foes Microsoft and Linux Unite Against Software Rules
The mutual disdain between Microsoft Corp. and Linux, an open-source computer operating system, is unrivaled.
But new rules for software contracts put out by The American Law Institute have united the enemies as part of a growing protest of tech companies and their lawyers. The most controversial of the guidelines is that software vendors must guarantee buyers that there are no hidden flaws in the software.
Industry lawyers say the rules will create undue product liability for companies and developers because of the inherently flawed nature of software.
“It creates an unrealistic standard and a lot of litigation,” said Mark Radcliffe, a DLA Piper lawyer who’s worked to oppose the new rules. “Any project that has Microsoft and Linux on the same side, you know there’s something wrong.”
The Principles of Law of Software Contracts, as they are called, were passed in mid-May by ALI, the venerable and scholarly group that clarifies laws. The principles are not law, but they serve to guide judges, who frequently cite them in decisions, and may be adopted by states.
Robert Hillman, a Cornell Law School professor who headed the multiyear project for guidelines to clarify software contract law, said the criticism that the changes will bring a lot of litigation is overblown.
“That’s the cry of anyone who opposes any law — that it’s going to create litigation,” he said. “Fraudulent concealment law is as old and established as any law, which is all we’re doing here.”
The debate divides consumer protection advocates, who say software companies should be liable for the quality of their products, from the industry, which calls the principles unnecessary and potentially crippling.
Hillman said that “users of software are very supportive of this, and for the most part we haven’t heard from a lot of the industry.”
But both Microsoft and Linux — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once called Linux a “cancer” and open-source advocates consider Microsoft an evil empire — joined together to oppose the changes. They submitted an open letter (pdf) of protest before the principles were adopted. “There is no great failure in terms of substandard quality or unmet expectations that would justify imposition of mandatory new rules, particularly given the existing remedies under misrepresentation and consumer protection law,” the joint letter stated. Read more…
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10 reasons open source smartphones will win
The mobile industry is becoming interesting. We have finally reached a point where the smartphone is actually smart and the average user can gain serious benefits from using one.
How did this come about? In a word: competition.
When the iPhone arrived on the scene, users scrambled to get their hands on it, and competitors scrambled to make a device that would have the same appeal. It has taken a while, but the competition has arrived. Android phones, Palm Pre, BlackBerry Bold–they are all outstanding entries into this market.
But two of those entries will, in my opinion, outshine the rest for one simple reason–open source. Why is open source going to help raise these phones above the competition? Here are 10 reasons.
1. Open standards
With the iPhone, you do what Apple says, you follow Apple standards, and you use only Apple-approved apps–unless you jailbreak your phone. With both the Android-based phones and the Palm Pre, open standards are not just a bullet point or buzz phrase, they will be adhered to. And that principle will have lasting effects.
Software will be easier to develop, Web sites will load as expected and will be easier to develop for the mobile device. Hardware accessories will be more readily available.
2. More applications
As it stands, the iPhone is the king of the app. It seems Apple has an app for just about everything. But as the Android phones and the Pre begin to be more widely used, apps for those phones will multiply exponentially. Read more…
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Linux Box: Open Source On The Grow
Ann Arbor’s Linux Box, which has spent the last 10 years writing custom open-source software applications for a long list of clients, says its business is growing rapidly enough that it’s likely to boost staff by 50 percent to 20 within the next year or two.
“The future is really positive,” said Linux Box co-founder Elizabeth Ziph.
She said a recent Gartner study shows that more than half of American companies have used open source software, and the percentage is much higher overseas.
“I think almost anybody that we talk to knows about open source, and when I talked about open source five years ago
people looked at me as if I had fallen from the moon,” Ziph said.
Open source software is defined as computer software for which the source code and other rights normally reserved for copyright holders is in the public domain, or is part of a license that meets the Open Source Definition at
http://opensource.org/.
Ziph is a veteran of the software industry, starting in 1975 as a programmer at PriceWaterhouse in Boston, after getting a
bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Brooklyn College of City University of New York. She moved to Detroit to work for ANR, then Michigan Seamless Tube Division and finally landed at Comerica Bank where she stayed eight years working initially as a development manager and then as a data center and network manager. She later spent four years as associate director of technology at the University of Michigan and six years as CIO of Franklin Bank before founding LinuxBox in 1999.
“I had always worked with closed source products until shortly before founding Linux Box,” she said. “I worked with a very small bit of it at Franklin Bank, and I wondered how you’d know it was secure, how you’d get updates and how you’d make money on it. But the more I worked on it the more I decided I liked it.”
Ziph said that in working with open source, she discovered that “customers find out it gives them more power and control over what they want software to do. The vendor doesn’t have to say ‘no’ to them.”
And as for security and reliability she said, “For any function you want to do there are many open source products. You need to understand which ones are the right ones, which have the most following, which are up to date, which have an underlying architecture that is sustainable.” Read more…
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Redmond Releases Code to Linux Kernel Community
Microsoft, which has been at odds with the Linux community over the years because of intellectual property issues, said on Monday it has released 20,000 lines of Linux code to the Linux kernel community.
Available for inclusion in the Linux tree, the code includes three Linux device drivers; it will be available to both the Linux community and customers. It will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 virtualization software, according to Microsoft. Code will be offered under the GNU General Public License 2.
[ About two and a half years ago, Microsoft forged a Linux partnership with Novell that still generates controversy. ]
“We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers,” said Microsoft’s Sam Ramji, senior director of platform strategy in the company’s Server and Tools organization, in a statement released by the company. “The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for.”
“Today’s release would have been unheard of from Microsoft a few years ago but it’s a prime example that customer demand is a powerful catalyst for change,” said Ramji. Read more…
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New Study Finds Correlation Between Social Media and Financial Success
A new study released by enterprise wiki provider Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group shows that the brands most engaged in social media are also experiencing higher financial success rates than those of their non-engaged peers.To determine this relationship, the study focused on 100 companies from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands survey and the various social media platforms they used like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and forums. Although it’s difficult to prove for certain that the companies’ involvement in social media has led to their increased revenues, the implication behind the new data is that it has.
After examining the companies and their social media activity levels, the brands were ranked on an “engagement scale” where scores ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.
Four “Engagement Profiles”
The study grouped the brands into one of four engagement profiles that related to the number of channels they’re involved in and how deep that involvement is. At the top of the list are “mavens,” the brands heavily engaged in seven Read more…
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Google Earth Goes to the Moon
Just in time to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, Google has just enabled a model of the moon in Google Earth. Moon in Google Earth features a 3D model of the moon with both current and historic images, panoramic, street view-like photos, and models of numerous lunar landers, as well as guided tours with videos (one narrated by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin). Google unveiled this new layer at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. today. Any user of Google Earth 5.0 can now roam around the moon without the need to update the program. Just click on the planet button in the top toolbar and select ‘Moon.’
It’s worth noting that Google Moon already offered a Google Maps-like experience since 2005, but the 3D-view and the higher degree of interactivity (especially thanks to the embedded videos from Spacecraft Films) makes Google Earth a far better vehicle for these images. Read more…
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