Microsoft gave up pretending that Linux isn't a threat to its Windows server business a long time ago. But when the soft-spoken Allchin first brought up the server market during our conversation that afternoon, he dropped the L-word with such candor that I was frankly shocked.

"Linux is the expected winner," Allchin says, "with its lineage from Unix. But we're happy, because we're winning market share."

It makes sense, if you buy into the company's long-held position that Linux's growth comes at the expense of proprietary Unix OSes such as AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris, rather than from the Windows customer base. No matter what gains Microsoft might make in the server area, if you replace all that Unix iron with Linux boxes, the free OS's server-side market share will be truly massive.

A faulty update to antivirus software released over the weekend by Trend Micro Inc. caused PCs to slow down or stop working around the world, the company said today.

By 2 p.m. local time in Tokyo, Trend Micro had received 311,900 calls from business and consumer users in Japan saying their PCs had been affected by a faulty data file containing information about known viruses and worms, according to the company. The data file was available between 7:30 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. Tokyo time on April 23, said company spokeswoman Naomi Ikenomoto.

A bug in the file, Official Pattern Release (OPR) 2.594.00, created a loop that sucked up all or nearly all the processing power of PCs that had downloaded the update, she said.

The OSI (Open Source Initiative) board earlier this month issued a statement condemning open-source license proliferation as "a significant barrier to open-source deployment." For its part, Intel requested in late March that OSI withdraw one of Intel's patents from future use. Meta Group analyst Charlie Garry is predicting that through 2010, enterprises will flee from the steep fees of database software licensing and into the embrace of open source.

That's great, say the founders of the open-source MySQL database—David Axmark and Michael "Monty" Widenius—now take it a step further and kill all the software patents, and we'd be getting somewhere.

We've always felt that the next open source beach head would be in the commoditized database market. As MySQL moves to version 5.0 it nears Enterprise level performance in functionality, scaleability and speed. Read this in-depth interview on eWeek.

MySQL AB has released a new beta version of a tool for customers migrating from competing products to its own open-source database, it announced today.
The MySQL Migration Suite is currently used for migrating from Oracle Corp.'s database and Microsoft Corp.'s Access. Future versions will support Microsoft SQL Server, IBM's DB2 and Informix databases and Sybase Inc.'s database, MySQL said.

MySQL often says that its database complements, rather than competes with, databases from the major vendors, but the migration tool suggests otherwise. Availability of the new beta was announced at the company's user conference in Santa Clara, Calif., where it is also highlighting an upgrade to its database aimed at corporate users. Called MySQL 5.0, it is due for release by the end of the second quarter, the company has said.

Part I of the Cluetrain Manifesto Revisited takes a quick look back at the affect that book had on conversational marketing. Part II examines the underlying themes of the cluetrain and looks for evidence that the conversation really exists.

Azul Systems, a start-up headed by former Sun executives, Monday rolled out its first products, appliances designed to take the load off busy Java application servers, giving IT managers a flexible platform that can add processing oomph when Web-based applications need it.

The company unveiled the Azul Compute Appliance 960, 1920 and 3840. The 5U Compute Appliance 960, for test and development environments, has 96-processor cores and 32 gigabytes of memory and is priced at $89,000. The 11U Compute Appliance 1920, comes with 192 processor cores and 64 gigabytes of memory and is priced at $199,000. And the 11U Compute Appliance 3840 comes with 384 processor cores and 128 gigabytes of memory for $499,000 or 256 gigabytes of memory for $799,000.

In a move that is likely to have major ramifications for the publishing, print and Web design industries, Adobe Systems Inc. has announced it will buy archrival Macromedia Inc. in a deal worth around $3.4 billion. ADVERTISEMENT
The deal, which has been approved by both sets of directors, is an all-stock transaction under which Macromedia shareholders will receive 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock, which will mean that former Macromedia shareholders will hold around 18 percent of the combined companies after the deal.

Calculated from prices at close of the markets last Friday, this makes the deal worth $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock.

WiMax broadband wireless technology cleared a hurdle today when Intel Corp. announced volume shipments of its Rosedale chip for the wireless broadband technology.

Intel has put its marketing weight behind WiMax for years as standards development dragged on, but the chip giant finally is supporting the technology by churning out silicon. Equipment vendors including Alvarion Ltd., Proxim Corp., Redline Communications Inc. and ZiMax Technologies Inc. all have announced agreements to use Intel silicon in products based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard that Rosedale addresses.

Role-Based Together Suite Offers Easy-to-Use Modeling Tools with UML 2.0 Support for the Microsoft Development Environment

Scotts Valley, Calif. - April 18, 2005 : Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ NM: BORL), a global leader for Software Delivery Optimization™ solutions, today announced the newest release of Borland® Together® 2005 for Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET, a significantly updated version of its popular Together modeling suite for Visual Studio .NET users. The release marks the first Borland role-based modeling solution for .NET and is one of the first products to support the UML® 2.0 standard for Microsoft's development environment.

Together for Visual Studio .NET provides Visual Studio developers with an important bridge between Microsoft's own modeling solutions, including the emerging Software Factories approach, and advanced modeling benefits offered through the use of the industry standard Unified Modeling Language™ (UML). The new Together 2005 for Visual Studio .NET suite includes Together Designer and Together Developer, integrated and easy-to-use products made available individually for role-specific modeling functions within the software development lifecycle

Salesforce.com Inc. is focusing on integration with the Summer '05 edition of its online customer relationship management (CRM) product, it said Tuesday.

The release, due online in June, includes Sforce 6.0, an upgrade to the Salesforce.com integration offering. Part of Sforce 6.0 is a new Sforce Partner Portal toolkit that will let users create dedicated Web sites for partners. Salesforce.com unveiled and demonstrated several of the new features at a San Francisco event that it dubbed "Integrationforce Day."

Another part of the new edition is Multiforce, which will allow users to either customize or build multiple applications running on top of shared services. Applications built on the platform can share a single data repository and use the same security features and user interface. Multiforce was announced last month and shown Tuesday for the first time.

The United States should deploy widespread wired and wireless gigabit networks as a national priority, according to a white paper from the IEEE-USA Committee on Communications and Information Policy (CCIP).

"Providing Ubiquitous Gigabit Networks in the United States," issued 14 March, says that our nation must act promptly to ensure that a new generation of broadband networks - of gigabit per second speed - is ubiquitous and available to all. Failure to act will "relegate the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure to an inferior competitive position" and undermine the future of the U.S. economy.

Omnipresent U.S. gigabit networks, readily achievable by deploying optical fiber and high-speed wireless, would carry numerous benefits, the report says. These include providing the U.S. economy with superior ability to compete globally; stimulating economic activity in digital home entertainment; enhancing online education and training; and facilitating health care remote diagnosis and consultation (telemedicine).

Keynote study found that 76% of consumers who were ready to purchase a car visited a manufacturer's Web site and 65% of consumers visit a non- manufacturer Web site. But only 53% of consumers with online connections turn to newspapers. Kelley Blue Book rates highest with consumers for satisfaction, brand recognition, and likelihood of conversion, out of a total of 10 non-manufacturer car Web sites: Autobytel.com, Automotive.com, AutoTrader.com, Cars.com, CarsDirect, Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book, MSN Autos, Vehix.com, and Yahoo! Autos. Cars.com was the second-highest-rated site overall, and Edmunds.com came in third.

Problems with the Domain Name System (DNS) servers at Internet service provider Comcast Corp. prevented customers around the U.S. from surfing the Web yesterday, but the company said the interruptions weren't linked in any way to a spate of recent DNS attacks known as "pharming" scams.

Comcast technicians noticed problems with the Philadelphia-based company's DNS servers around 6:30 p.m. EDT. The problems interrupted DNS service to Comcast high-speed Internet customers across the U.S. just hours after the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center advised Internet service providers to make sure their DNS servers weren't vulnerable to new attacks.

IBM on Monday expanded its technical services to independent software developers, offering free limited-time access to its consultants. Any developers signing up to participate in the PartnerWorld Industry Network program on IBM's Virtual Innovation Center Web site can get six months of unlimited E-mail technical support and a two- to three-hour individual telephone consultation.

In April, 1999 Chris Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger wrote “the cluetrain manifesto”, the book that announced the emergence of conversational marketing to the people of earth. The authors maintained that “a powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

Grand Central Communications delivers Integration On Demand™ at a fraction of the cost that enterprises currently spend on software-based integration projects. Grand Central’s Network represents a new and far better model for companies to integrate with customers, partners and internal business units. Delivered as a subscription-based service built on top of the Internet, Grand Central lets businesses pay for usage, not software and hardware.

OTTAWA, Canada March 10, 2005 -- DataJungle Software (OTC:BB: DJSW), a company providing flexible front end applications and collaboration solutions for the Cognos and Microsoft business intelligence (BI) platforms, today announced that its software has been purchased by the agency that operates Canada’s coast-to-coast air traffic control system.

The customer will deploy Matrix and Annotator initially in the finance group to support its reporting and analysis requirements. The DataJungle software will be deployed on top of an existing Cognos BI infrastructure.

Database professionals can count on being involved in a database migration at least once – and probably more than once – in their careers. Unless the migration involves a small, trivial system, such operations are not insignificant to say the least. Why do migrations occur? While there can be many reasons for performing a database migration, the motivation behind such a thing usually boils down to one of three issues:

• Scale — the current database configuration cannot support the current or upcoming workload and so a new database platform must be acquired.
  
• Cost — the current system has become cost prohibitive given its contribution to the overall business, so a more cost effective database platform must be found.
  
• Integration — for business reasons such as a corporate acquisition, the current database needs to be consolidated and integrated into another system that is not the same (but can be the same) database platform.

The movement to and from even similar platforms can be challenging, but when a dissimilar database platform move is attempted (like Oracle to Microsoft SQL Server)or a new operating system is utilized, then things can quickly become complex. This paper discusses the issues surrounding database migrations and focuses on how data lifecycle solutions from Embarcadero Technologies can take the bite out of such endeavors.

Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are racing to introduce a dual-core computer chip in what could be the biggest change in PC technology in a decade. Both companies have something to prove, and both expect in a matter of months to launch products that essentially combine two microchips into one.

For Intel, the transition offers a chance to shake off a year's worth of missteps and delays with an on-time product introduction. For AMD, the change amounts to its best opportunity in years to take business away from Intel, its much larger rival.

Having approached the limits of speed gains with traditional chips, Intel and AMD have moved to combine two chips onto a single piece of silicon.

Data theft has become big news in recent weeks. Between data lost or stolen from Bank of America, ChoicePoint and a unit of Reed Elsevier, the public (and more importantly, Congress) is up in arms about the protection of personal and financial data that can be the subject of massive identity thefts.

Data loss is, of course, nothing new. In our work, we are frequently called upon to investigate these incidents and to find out what happened and who was involved.

The recently announced partnering of IBM and Network Appliance may be what IBM needs to compete with EMC.

In an effort to take on storage behemoth EMC, IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., and Network Appliance, of Sunnyvale, Calif., announced Wednesday that they would band together to create storage and information-on-demand solutions that combine the two companies' technologies.

To do so, IBM will now sell solutions based on Network Appliance unified and open NAS (network-attached storage) and iSCSI/IP SAN solutions including NearStore and NetApp V-Series systems.

Composite applications and service-oriented integration enable the development of new solutions from existing applications. In short, they allow companies to do more with what they already have. Additionally, the supporting service-oriented architecture promises to deliver to enterprises the capacity for unprecedented agility. Read this important White Paper from Above All Software

In this second article in the JSF for nonbelievers series, Rick Hightower walks you through the six phases of the JSF request processing lifecycle. He explains what happens in each phase and how the phases interconnect, then he uses an example application to demonstrate the lifecycle in action. Along the way, he demonstrates how to work with some of the built-in JSF components briefly touched on in Part 1. He also incorporate Struts Tiles into your JSF development, and shows how to combine JSF and JavaScript for immediate event handling.

A new round of so-called pharming attacks is targeting the .com Internet domain, redirecting some Internet users who are looking for .com Web sites to Web pages controlled by the unknown attackers.

The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) issued a warning yesterday about the new attacks, which corrupt some Domain Name System (DNS) servers so that requests for .com sites sent to those servers connect users instead to Web sites maintained by the attackers. News of the attacks comes amid increasing reports of pharming scams and statistics that show that at least 1,300 Internet domains were redirected to compromised Web servers in a similar attack in early March.

Blue Titan Software Inc. last week released two upgraded products, Network Director RM 3.5 and Network Director 3.5, designed to extend the reach of the company's line of SOA-enabling tools.

Network Director RM 3.5 supports the WS-ReliableMessaging specification and other features, including JMS (Java Message Service) bridging. JMS bridging lets users incorporate any proprietary messaging backbones they may be using into the overall service-oriented architecture

Systems Integration 2005 Conference Presentation
Presented By: Deborah Scharfetter, Above All Software

Many companies today have embarked on SOA initiatives for all the right reasons – IT and business agility , easier integration, better leverage around existing investments and more. However, turning the SOA vision into reality has many pitfalls and requires new processes, skill sets and technologies.

Review this important keynote presentation that will address the issues and opportunities involved with turning Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) investments into rapidly assembled high impact integration solutions.

This presentation covers:

• What are the most likely areas of business impact and operational payoff for SOA initiatives?
  
• How do these technologies better integrate applications, organizations and processes than traditional approaches?
  
• Can these technologies help IT and business alignment? What changes must be made to facilitate the transformation?
  
• What required capabilities are missing from today’s product offerings in order to deliver on the promise of SOA? And can the overall complexity of the existing IT portfolio be simplified?

Systems Integration 2005 Conference Presentation
Presented By: Alan Shortnacy, Embarcadero Technologies

Enterprise data is exploding at a rate of almost 2 exabytes each year while companies are merged and acquired, new compliance issues are levied and management needs to make decisions faster still to keep a competitive edge. In the midst of these complicated operational issues underlies the technologies that are inherited, grown and maintained, all by a fewer number of people. In light of these facts, a seamless process for data integration is crucial for accomplishing dynamic, data-centric business goals. This session will cover strategies for integrating systems such as ERP/CRM, Business Intelligence, Legacy systems, etc. with ETL processes to fulfill business requirements.

Systems Integration 2005 Conference Presentation
Presented By: Clay Williams, Grand Central Communications

We’ll answer the following questions in the presentation:

Systems Integration 2005 Conference Presentation
Presented By: Chuck Russell, Collective Intelligence Inc.

CRM has become a strategic weapon and is now being extended beyond the boundaries of traditional sales force automation, marketing and customer support tasks. In this presentation we’ll examine several strategies for distributing Customer knowledge throughout the enterprise providing management tools that support decision making.

Plumtree Software announced the general availability of Plumtree Analytics Server, a new product that delivers real-time reporting on portal activity and content usage.

New functionality is driving desire to replace core apps.

A thaw in the four-year IT spending freeze is becoming more evident as enterprises slowly begin to look at replacing core applications with newer systems that offer improved functionality and scalability, IT managers and analysts said this week. At the same time, some organizations are using Web services and service-oriented architectures (SOA) to extend some older applications in addition to installing new ones.

THE VISION OF MULTICHANNEL CRM is of a business where every channel touchpoint is enabled with common customer information and is able to receive and process response data from customers. Supposedly, this results in increased customer acquisition, satisfaction, wallet share and retention - the multichannel value proposition. While there is empirical evidence that this is true, there has been little theoretical backing to validate it so that multichannel CRM success can be understood andrepeatable.

This article examines a different theoretical basis for the multichannel value proposition and look at examples from business and the natural sciences that provide both strategic guidance and a metaphor to understand why multichannel CRM really works.

The trend in business intelligence these days is performance management and digital dashboards. Real time business performance monitoring (zero latency) requires dashboarding tools that can get the 'message out' by graphically articulating the measurment managers need to run their business.

Recently, Data Jungle, a company staffed with business intelligence industry veterans, has released several new products that knock the cover off the EIS ball: Matrix, Annotator and Reporter...

Marc Benioff, the genial CEO of anti-software maker Salesforce.com, has a challenge that lots of other CEOs would envy. Over the past six years, as the San Francisco-based company grew from quirky infancy into a force to be reckoned with, he used his considerable PR skills to attract a ton of media attention and way more coverage than a company of that size would normally warrant. But just when we reporters think we've had enough—there isn't anything new to write about Salesforce.com—Benioff pulls another furry animal out of his hat. It's a sweeping vision that could make his company a much bigger force in the tech world. The new thing is Multiforce, which in his typical understatement, Benioff calls, The first on-demand operating system.

Embarcadero Technologies DT/Studio Wins Prestigious Jolt Productivity Award

Embarcadero's Data Integration Solution Recognized as One of the Industry's Best Product Offerings Two Years in a Row

San Francisco , Calif. – March 28, 2005 - Embarcadero® Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: EMBT), a provider of data lifecycle management solutions, today announced that Embarcadero DT/Studio® has been selected by Software Development magazine as the 15th Annual Jolt Productivity Award winner in the "Business Integration and Data Tools" category. This year's award marks the second consecutive year Embarcadero's Java-based data integration solution has been recognized by winning what is considered one of the software industry's most prestigious accolades.

The software-as-a-service market is expected to grow to $9.1 billion by 2008.

Grand Central Communications Inc. has expanded the online services available through its integration hub, Business Services Network, by adding 14 partners, including accounting and customer-relationship-management application supplier NetSuite Inc. and business-process-automation vendor NSite Inc.

Many organizations are discovering that composite interfaces can be a good option when full-blown EAI isn't needed.

While J2SE 5.0 has added many new features Sun Microsystems has also been working to continue to improve scalability and performance, with a new emphasis on startup time and memory footprint. This guide gives an overview of the performance and scalability improvements made in the J2SE 5.0 release along with various benchmarks to demonstrate the impact of these improvements.

Months late, the SCO Group has unveiled a Web site set up to detail its claims against Linux, which the company argues in court cases violates its own Unix intellectual property.

SCO said in October it planned to set up the Web site--something of a counterbalance to the Groklaw site that frequently takes potshots at SCO's claims. Initially expected to be called ProSCO and upon launch in November, the site ended up with the name SCO IP.

Visit the SCO Site

Very few of us are surprised when we hear about the browser flaws in Microsoft's Internet Explorer however the rate at which they're discovered and exploited has a few industry watch-dog groups worried.

"At this time, Microsoft is not aware of any malicious attacks attempting to exploit the reported vulnerabilities, and there is no customer impact based on this issue...", said a spokesperson from Microsoft.

READ MORE

The Systems Integration 2005 Conference, held on March 17, 2005 attracted 74 attendees from over 50 different Central Pennsylvania companies. The conference focused on systems integration best practices and highlighted presentations on SOA, ETL, Composite Applications, Web Services and Customer Relationship Management. Get a more in-depth look at the conference, downoload copies of the presentations and access white papers authored by industry experts.

• April 2009
• March 2009
• March 2008
• September 2006
• July 2006
• April 2006
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005

• Open Sourced Business Intelligence
• Early Access - Oracle ADF Faces Implement Java Server Faces Spec.
• Google Enters Impression Based Ad Market
• Microsoft Expects Linux to Win the Server Wars
• URGENT NEWS!! - Trend Micro Antivirus Update Disaster
• MySQL Founders: Kill All the Patents
• MySQL updates beta of database migration tool
• The Cluetrain Manifesto Revisited - Part II
• Azul unveils Java compute appliance
• Adobe to Buy Macromedia in $3.4 Billion Deal