Oct 27th, 2009 - At the risk of coming off like TV's "Mad Men," Amazon Web Services really are New and Improved. The company today announced the addition of Amazon Relational Database Service, giving users of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) access to a virtual instance of MySQL. That's the New part.... (Read More)

Aug 14th, 2008 - It’s a new day for open source developers. A U.S. Federal appeals court yesterday ruled that someone releasing code under an open source license can control future use of that code using copyright law. That’s important because copyright laws carry stronger remedies—including court injunction—along... (Read More)

Jun 20th, 2008 - Less than a year after launching its high performance computing strategy, Microsoft finds its HPC Server 2008 near the top of the heap. The Windows Server 2008 derivative placed 23rd on a list of the 500 top-performing supercomputers in the world, as measured by the National Center for... (Read More)

Jun 2nd, 2008 - A year ago last week, Facebook released the Facebook Platform, enabling users of the social network to create their own applications. Today, 400,000 developers and 24,000 applications later, the company introduced the Facebook Open Platform, which releases much of the Facebook Platform source code... (Read More)

May 27th, 2008 - Here’s a new twist on the open source craze. Fabless chip and system designer Via Technologies has released to the community OpenBook, a reference design for a low cost ultra portable laptop that runs Windows or Linux at up to 1.2 GHz and includes WiFi, BlueTooth and high-res 3D graphics... (Read More)

Jul 2nd, 2009 - This post has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, his death, his kids, his Neverland Ranch or anything related to him. It has everything to do with my need for a virtual laboratory where I can test virtual machines, write about them or produce other documentation about them without a significant... (Read More)

May 23rd, 2009 - Jason Perlow and I had the pleasure of interviewing Kickfire CEO Bruce Armstrong for the May 22nd episode of Frugal Friday to discuss the Kickfire appliance. The Kickfire appliance is a Linux-based, rack-mountable, database appliance tuned for Data Warehousing. Here's the real scoop: Starting at... (Read More)

May 14th, 2009 - Well, well, well...Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO added Virtual Iron to his collection today. Congratulations, Larry. When is Oracle going bankrupt? Every time that I've seen a company acquire too many other companies in a short time period, they always end up in the dustbin. Oracle just acquired Sun... (Read More)

Oct 14th, 2008 - The other day, I saw an article on Forbes.com named Ellison Shoots Hole in Cloud and just had to read further. I did read it. The whole thing. I was puzzled, then I laughed, and finally I was mystified by his comments. The article made me wonder just what the hell is wrong with Larry Ellison and... (Read More)

May 29th, 2009 - Busy this weekend? President Barack Obama and his IT staff are asking for ideas through June 3 to help make government more open. The call for ideas first went out on May 21. So far, there's 1171. People can vote thumbs up or thumbs down on the ideas. "Then on June 3rd, the most compelling... (Read More)

Nov 21st, 2008 - Is the time that it takes to boot up and power down a computer at the beginning and the end of the day work? A number of lawyers are trying to settle that question. On the one hand, users start rebooting the computer and then spend up to 15-20 minutes chatting, getting coffee, and so on during... (Read More)

Jul 31st, 2008 - Alfresco released Alfresco Labs (Beta) 3 today and with it announced a new capability that enables businesses to leverage Microsoft Sharepoint functionality without buying additional Sharepoint licenses. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, and what has allowed Alfresco to do this is the 2004 EU... (Read More)

Mar 2nd, 2009 - Seems every time I write a piece suggesting open source as an option, I get a couple of comments warning readers about the scary complexities of open source licenses. So I decided to ask a guy who knows free and open source (FOSS) exactly what the deal was regarding FOSS licensing and whether they... (Read More)

Nov 18th, 2008 - In a report on enterprise open source usage released this week, Gartner research director Laurie Wurster stated in rather strong language that companies could face a big intellectual property issue because they are using the software without understanding the IP implications of the licensing... (Read More)

Nov 6th, 2008 - Microsoft announced a new program the other day called Microsoft BizSpark, where they give away a boat load of software and services to young startups and presumably lock them into Microsoft long-term. For a small start-up with little capital, this has to be a very attractive offer. Microsoft... (Read More)

Sep 10th, 2008 - This morning EMC, Microsoft and IBM announced they had worked together over a two-year period to create a content interchange standard for enterprise content management systems. It may not sound like much, but it's meaningful on several levels. For content management customers, it means it will... (Read More)

Aug 14th, 2008 - Community journalism encourages members of the community to participate in the news process, not just as passive readers, but as active producers of the news itself. This direct connection to the product is similar in many ways to the kind of community building that goes on in open source... (Read More)

Jun 11th, 2008 - I spent the day yesterday at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, all in all a fascinating day and great conference, but what caught my attention was a presentation by two representatives of the CIA, and I’m not talking about the Culinary Institute of America, but *the* CIA, as in the preeminent intelligence... (Read More)

Apr 21st, 2008 - Zoho, makers of an online office suite and business tools, aimed mostly at small to medium sized businesses, made its best effort to make a big splash last week when it announced it was introducing an enterprise version of the Zoho CRM product. Unfortunately, Zoho’s announcement was timed in the... (Read More)

Apr 21st, 2009 - Will the tech sector lead an economic turnaround? Forbes.com thinks so. This week, Peter C. Beller writes that Monday’s IBM revenues numbers and the fallout from the proposed Oracle and Sun Microsystems could lay the groundwork for an economic rebound. I’ll get to the IBM numbers in a moment,... (Read More)

Jan 14th, 2009 - It’s another tough morning for tech stocks, with Apple, HP, Oracle, Motorola, Google, and Dell all seeing their stocks fall 2% or more. The falloff is primarily from the news that consumer/retail spending fell 2.7% in December – twice the amount that economists had expected. At least the... (Read More)

Dec 18th, 2008 - Oracle, Research and Motion and Palm are all releasing earnings statements today, and that should pick up momentum in what has been a fairly dormant technology trading week. The web site Tradingmarkts.com thinks the earnings news means opportunity in two technology-heavy exchange-traded funds... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - Trying, ever so hard, to find some good news amidst the doom and gloom on Wall Street. At least the market went up for a second straight session, with the DJIA up 400 points on Monday trading; that after rising 500 points last Friday. Investors seemed cautiously optimistic about the Federal... (Read More)

Sep 14th, 2008 - One of the year’s biggest disappointments has to be Seagate Teachnology. The high-tech heavyweight is taking on so much water that barnacles are starting to grow on its bottom line. Hey . . . at least something is growing on Seagate’s bottom line. Before I get into Seagate’s woes, I realize... (Read More)

Aug 6th, 2008 - A good friend of mine thinks that data technology access kingpin Qualcomm can be to the wireless market in the 2010’s what Microsoft was to software in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Granted, Qualcomm is smack in the sweet spot – the premier provider of high-speed data access products and services at a... (Read More)

Jul 16th, 2008 - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is between a rock and a hard place. Bernanke, who spends another day in front of a congressional panel defending his handling of the Fed during a tough economic period, is stuck with a Hobson’s choice. Lower interest rates to help the economy but risk... (Read More)

Apr 20th, 2009 - It's probably a little early to be looking for implications of Oracle buying Sun (no, it's official, here's the press release). They've only just confirmed it's happening, and as one of the journalists who covered Novell buying Lotus many years ago I can confirm things aren't done until they're... (Read More)

Apr 8th, 2009 - Just as the excitement started to hot up, first with the news that the controversial and increasingly popular legal free streaming music service Spotify was to open up with the release of a third party developer API, and then with the actual announcement of the availability of Libspotify itself, so... (Read More)

Aug 14th, 2008 - According to ChannelWeb a federal judge sitting in the US Court of Appeals has ruled that open source software licenses are legal under copyright law. This is a complete u-turn on a previous ruling which had thrown the not so small matter of open source licensing into something of a legal quagmire.... (Read More)

Aug 8th, 2008 - It has been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally announced the release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008. "Microsoft developed this release of SQL Server with the customer in mind," said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. "SQL... (Read More)

Feb 6th, 2008 - According to HP an incredible 92% of top IT decision makers in Europe do not feel that their organisation is exploiting the competitive advantages offered by information management. In fact, respondents who took part in the 2008 Pressure Point Index survey were pretty dissatisfied overall with both... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2007 - The new version of the GNU Affero General Public License has been published by the Free Software Foundation, based upon the existing GNU GPLv3 license but with one important difference: support for on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. By publishing this license, the FSF aims to... (Read More)

Mar 4th, 2009 - With the success of the iPhone App Store and Microsoft wanting a piece of the action it was only a matter of time before RIM got into the online application storefront game. With the BlackBerry App World online store launching later this month, submissions are now being accepted from developers... (Read More)

Oct 19th, 2008 - According to the Sunday Times today, anyone in the UK who wants to buy a mobile phone will need to produce a valid passport as a form of ID soon. The story is wrapped around the planned introduction of a national database to help combat crime and terrorism. The proposed database would contain... (Read More)

Nov 21st, 2008 - A few years ago, small businesses just needed a telephone line and maybe a single computer with a dial-up connection to set up shop. Now that technology has exploded, nearly every company needs a reliable phone system, a Web site, and maybe even a whole network of computers to stay competitive. ... (Read More)

Nov 17th, 2008 - If you've been clinging to the interoffice email and calendaring capabilities of Microsoft Exchange as your company's last vestige of proprietary software, it's really time to consider giving up the ghost. Open source collaboration software vendor Open-Xchange, Inc. announced recently it now... (Read More)

Nov 12th, 2008 - There's plenty of speculation that the current state of the economy will greatly benefit open source technology, and you know an idea is taking root when mainstream IT conferences include presentations about implementing FOSS solutions in enterprise. Desmond Atkinson, with UK-based capacity... (Read More)

Nov 11th, 2008 - There's a kerfuffle brewing in the Sunshine State over who owns the rights to the software that powers certain alcohol breath-test machines. The outcome may mean the difference between a valid or false DUI charge on your permanent driving record. The machine in question, the Intoxilyzer 8000,... (Read More)

Nov 3rd, 2008 - If the state of the economy has got you down and you're ready to stop throwing money at commercial software vendors, you might be overwhelmed at the amount of open source options that exist. Buck up, IT soldier, here are three applications that let you dip your toes in the pool without jumping in... (Read More)

Aug 26th, 2008 - There's an old and tired theory that open source solutions in enterprise are risky because there's no "single throat to choke" if things go wrong. It's time to retire that worn out idea. The process goes something like this: The IT department gets into a discussion with the big bosses about how... (Read More)