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Oracle’s OpenOffice Surrender

April 25, 2011 No Comments

Tweet It’s hard to believe that it was only about six months ago that LibreOffice was born. The free and open source productivity software suite was created, of course, in response to Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) unclear intentions regarding OpenOffice.org, which had long been the community’s suite of choice. At the time, Oracle chose to keep […]

Clouds, Consolidation, Culture: Making Federal IT Less ‘Horrible’

April 25, 2011 1 Comment

In a new interview with Politico, the dirt-inside-the-beltway site, federal CIO Vivek Kundra didn’t hold back on his thoughts about the world’s largest IT consumer:

Process Mapping: A Vital Step in All BPM Deployments

April 25, 2011 No Comments

Instead of sharing a specific customer anecdote today, I want to take the opportunity to talk about the first – and arguably the single most critical – stage of BPM deployment: process mapping.

What Will This Bubble’s Legacy Be? Open Source Big Data and Analytics Tools

April 22, 2011 No Comments

First of all, let’s leave aside the issue of whether we’re in a bubble or not, and just assume that we are. Ashlee Vance has an excellent piece in Business Week looking at one tragic aspect of this bubble: too many mathematicians are flocking to Silicon Valley to work for companies like Google, Facebook and Zynga to work on advertising platforms. Former Facebook employee and Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher is quoted saying “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”

IT’s Cloud Resistance is Starting to Annoy Businesses

April 22, 2011 No Comments

IT technology portfolios. However, in the real world, that’s not always the case. Indeed, IT is still skeptical about the value and use of cloud computing. As a result, the business side is becoming impatient over the speed and innovation of IT or, more accurately, the perceived lack thereof.

Business Intelligence: Intuitive vs Cool Data Visualization and Infographics

April 22, 2011 No Comments

Though somewhat ironic, many BI purchase decisions are made on abstract (or outright flimsy), rather than tangible benefits-based grounds. – A stunning interface, fancy shapes or colors, can push one Philly over the line in a close two-horse race.

Red Hat’s New Java Alternative: From Coffee to Tea

April 22, 2011 No Comments

Tweet When a FOSS company gets to be the size of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), pretty much every move it makes is of interest to those of us here in the Linux community. So when said company unveils plans to create an alternative to none other than Java, well, let’s just say everyone sits up […]

Business Processes and Data Quality: Dirty Data Leads to Process Issues

April 21, 2011 No Comments

Quality processes begin with quality data. That’s the premise behind a Forrester report by Rob Karel and Clay Richardson. The growing volumes of data that organizations are managing coupled with rapid change mean that in order to ensure quality processes, the data that those processes rely on must be cleansed and up-to-date to ensure the high quality of the process. The quality of a business decision is often based on data captured and processed by data warehousing and business intelligence systems.

Cisco completes NewScale acquisition

April 18, 2011 No Comments

Cisco has finalised its purchase of enterprise IT and cloud management software company NewScale. The deal, announced on 29 March, will allow Cisco to offer customers the option of building, provisioning and expanding their own private cloud infrastructure on an on-demand basis. Cisco did not reveal terms of the purchase.

Alas, Groklaw, We Hardly Knew Ye

April 18, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Here in the world of technology, it’s an everyday occurrence to see new companies and organizations spring up out of nowhere and begin to play an active role. What’s far less common, however, is to see one disappear — particularly one that has been an extremely productive and well-respected part of the community for […]

VMware’s Cloud Foundry must deliver on openness pledges

April 15, 2011 No Comments

Tweet VMware’s announced Cloud Foundry — an open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) — strengthens the company’s standing in the developer and open source communities. The Palo Alto, Calif virtualization giant stepped into the development and open source arena with the acquisition of SpringSource in September of 2009. This deal brought VMware a top Java development framework […]

V. 3 – You Can’t Go GNOME Again

April 15, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Now that Canonical has adopted Unity for its next Ubuntu release, it seems likely that no desktop environment in history has ever launched to as much scrutiny as the new GNOME 3. Indeed, the GNOME project’s latest contender made its long-awaited debut last week, and the reviews have been coming fast and furious ever […]

Red Bend bringing virtualization to mobile devices

April 14, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Quite a while ago, I spoke with the executives of VirtualLogix about the use of virtualization technology to better support mobile or handheld devices such as smartphones. In September 2010, VirtualLogix was acquired by Red Bend, the supplier of a portfolio of device and software management products for mobile environments. Recently, I had the […]

Microsoft apps: the road ahead

April 14, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Two hours into Convergence 2011 and I was wondering why I’d come. The keynotes, while beautifully crafted and 100% buzzword compliant, were like one of those Chinese take away meals where you feel stuffed from overindulgence but ultimately unsatisfied. It wasn’t helped by the fact Kirill Tatarinov, who leads the Dynamics team, got himself […]

Digital oil: What is it?

April 13, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Here are two new words to add to your IT lexicon: Digital Oil. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra is using the phrase “digital oil” to describe the current state of information technology. “What do you mean by that?” Alan Marcus, a senior director with the World Economic Forum USA, asked Kundra during a morning session […]

Live From Impact 2011: IBM Software’s Steve Mills on Business Agility

April 12, 2011 No Comments

Katie Linendoll, the “chic geek” technojournalist for both CNN and CBS, spiritedly kicked off today’s Impact 2011 morning keynote.Scott and I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie yesterday afternoon for Impact TV, whereupon Katie went out of her way to give Scott a hard time about his pad and paper “Think” pad. (We cool kids both had iPads, albeit mine’s a 1st generation, Katie’s the iPad 2.)

Tibco Seen As Failed Target Of HP Acquisition

April 12, 2011 No Comments

Reuters gave observers a peek behind the scenes on Tuesday, reporting that HP had recently taken a run at Tibco. The talks broke down about two weeks ago, according to two unidentified sources cited by Reuters and said to be close to the talks.

The War With Microsoft Is Over…who won?

April 12, 2011 No Comments

Tweet There’s nothing like an anniversary to inspire a trip down memory lane, but after 20 years of such milestones, the effect tends to be even more pronounced. No wonder, then, that the occasion of Linux’s 20th birthday this year has provoked so much reflection. Numerous Linux fans, of course, were busy kicking off celebrations […]

FuseSource Continues Strategy Of Support For Apache Projects

April 12, 2011 No Comments

Back in October I wrote about a new spin off from Progress Software called FuseSource. They are trying to do with Apache Projects what Red Hat has been able to do with Linux. I like the company because they are very clear on what their mission is. They don’t consider themselves “open core” or anything like that. They package the open source Apache projects with a commercial installer and bundle support and services. The software they bundle in addition to the Apache open source is their own and is generally not open sourced. Today they announced the latest addition to the FuseSource lineup with the Camel IDE.

Make Peace In The BI-Versus-Excel Battle

April 11, 2011 No Comments

Tweet I would have thought that by now business intelligence tools and Microsoft Excel would be happily coexisting. In some cases they are, but a larger number of Excel users, managers, and BI professionals simply seem battle weary. This week at TDWI in Washington, DC, I taught an updated course on “BI & Excel: Friends […]

IBM’s Inna Kuznetsova speaks about virtualization

April 8, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Recently, Inna Kuznetsova, Vice President, IBM Systems Software, presented a webinar about the changing economics of virtualization. When IBM speaks about virtualization technology, I always find time to listen. IBM clearly was one of the companies responsible for the innovative notion that functions could be placed into an artificial or virtual environment. IBM was […]

Android and the Great Openness Debate

April 7, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Fragmentation has long been a criticism of Google’s Android mobile platform, but until recently, its reputation for openness had been relatively undisputed. Of course, it’s not hard to be seen as open when your principal competition comes from Cupertino. On the other hand, recent decisions in the Googleplex are making that distinction less and […]

IEEE’s Cloud Portability Project: A Fool’s Errand?

April 7, 2011 No Comments

IEEE, the international standards-making organization, is jumping with both feet into the cloud computing space and announcing the launch of its new Cloud Computing Initiative. The IEEE is trying to create two standards for how cloud applications and services would interact and be portable across clouds.

CRM Idol 2011: The Open Season, Begins! Small Companies, Let Us Know

April 6, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Okay, everyone. Sit down and listen close….C’mon. Sit already. God, this is like herding cats. Shhhhhhh. I have a big announcement…or should I say WE have a big announcement. You’ll understand what I mean in a minute if you just sit down and shut up. Starting now, we are opening the doors for the […]

How Technology Can Help Fight Our Most Expensive Health Care Burden

April 5, 2011 No Comments

Our lives have transformed so dramatically when it comes to utilizing technology to communicate. We have our hand-held devices, our iPads and tablets as well as our Facebook pages. But, what is most exciting is that we are finally seeing the wireless generation being applied to help advance the care of chronic diseases and conditions.

Solving Cloud Computing Challenges with Fun and Games

April 4, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Cloud computing solutions require a diverse set of technologies (networking, server management, virtualization, etc.) and skills (integration, multi-tenant application development, etc.) working together in harmony to bring optimum solutions for customers. Necessity of multiple technologies working together challenges large technology companies with profitable on-premise products to integrate efforts in the conceptualization, development, selling and […]

Linux’s Own ‘Canterbury’ Tale: Laughing, Wishing and Hoping

April 4, 2011 No Comments

Tweet The Linux blogosphere is never a boring place to be even on the most ordinary of days, but when April Fools’ Day comes around, let’s just say there’s no end to the excitement. Take this year, for example. April hadn’t even yet arrived for those of us here in the U.S. when a series […]

Litigious Times in Android World

April 1, 2011 No Comments

Tweet There’s nothing like a splashy success to make the lawyers start crawling out of the woodwork, and that’s just what we’ve been seeing in spades with regard to Android over the past few weeks or so.  Just recently it was the hullabaloo over Android’s licensing and headers, of course, and now it’s starting to […]

DataStax Brisk: Marrying big data tools Hadroop and Apache Cassandra

March 31, 2011 No Comments

Tweet A while ago, I had a chance to speak with some folks from DataStax —Matt Pfeil, CEO and co-founder, Ben Werther, VP of Products, and Michael Weir, VP of Marketing. It was an interesting discussion of something DataStax was announcing and an exploration of one of the newer catch phrases, NoSQL, and what it […]

The Day Firefox Left IE in the Dust

March 28, 2011 No Comments

Tweet Firefox 4’s victory is “just another sign that Microsoft is past its prime when it comes to generating excitement,” opined Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot. “For decades users have internalized the ‘upgrading Microsoft products can put you in a world of hurt’ meme: ‘What I’ve got works. Let someone else be the guinea […]

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