IBM announced it had a stellar first quarter for this year, and that mainframe systems sales were through the roof. Overall, IBM's first-quarter net income was up 10% over the year before, up from $2.6 million to $2.9 billion. Total revenue for the first quarter of 2011 of $24.6 billion increased 8% from the first quarter of 2010. The company also reported that revenue from its systems and technology segment totaled $4 billion for the quarter, up 19% from the same quarter a year ago. Leading the way was revenue from System z mainframe server products, which increased 41% compared with the year-ago period.
Posted May 02, 2011
CA Technologies has announced a month-long virtual tradeshow designed to help IT professionals discover new ways to leverage mainframes to meet key business challenges. Called May Mainframe Madness (MMM) 2011 the event leverages cloud technology to deliver educational presentations, and offers networking on a wide range of topics with subject matter experts, including CA Technologies staff, analysts and customers.
Posted May 02, 2011
Cleversafe Inc. has announced that it has been issued five patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, helping the company build its portfolio around information dispersal. In addition, the company has two allowed patent applications, and, as of April 11, 2011, 65 published pending U.S. patent applications. The company also has more than one dozen foreign pending patent applications, and continues to file more U.S. and foreign patent applications. The capabilities that these patents represent are the foundation techniques that are required to build and deploy large scale storage systems, Chris Gladwin, president and CEO of Cleversafe, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted May 02, 2011
Data center vendors NetApp and MeriTalk have released a new report which provides a status update on federal data center consolidation progress to comply with the Office of Management and Budget's deadline for federal agencies to eliminate 800 data centers by 2015. Based on a survey of 152 Federal IT decision makers, the report states that about half (47%) of federal agencies have consolidated some of their data centers. However, they lack a consistent definition of what a data center compromises, Mark Weber, NetApp president of U.S. public sector, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Clearly, there is action happening and people are reducing data center counts, he says. "That is pretty big news. The big key message is being received and people are starting to monitor, measure and capture results on their efforts."
Posted May 02, 2011
Novell announced the expansion of its Long Term Service Pack Support (LTSS) program for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, lengthening customers' access to the company's Linux support for each service pack release. For the first time, long term support is also provided globally for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z. Novell further announced the immediate availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 4 (SP4), bundling all previously released patches, fixes and updates for SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, while supporting the newest hardware, storage systems and networking devices, including Intel's latest Xeon E7 processor family and AMD's latest Opteron processors.
Posted May 02, 2011
A recent study conducted among members of SHARE and readers of Database Trends and Applications finds that plans for hiring of new IT professionals are strong, reflecting a bounce-back from the recent recession. A majority of the 376 IT employers surveyed, however, express concerned about the caliber and capabilities of today's IT college graduates. This not only relates to new types of skill sets such as business intelligence and analytics, but also to longstanding foundational skills such as mainframe administration and programming. In addition, many employers find the technical graduates they recruit are severely lacking in core business skills.
Posted May 02, 2011
Sepaton, Inc., a provider of disk-based data protection platforms, announced that it will extend its V6 data protection platform by enhancing its OpenStorage solutions for the latest version of NetBackup 7 by now supporting auto image replication. The Symantec OpenStorage technology allows Sepaton to deliver a tightly integrated solution with NetBackup. This integration enables enterprise IT organizations to eliminate administrative and operational complexity as data protection is consolidated into a single, integrated process across the entire infrastructure.
Posted May 02, 2011
There's a wide disconnect between the individuals charged with ensuring database security and those in corporate management at those organizations. And while database professionals and managers are charged with overseeing information security, many are actually not aware of the level of corporate commitment. This is a key finding from the "2011 ISUG Report on Data Security Management Challenges," based on research conducted among ISUG members by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by Application Security, Inc. The study drew responses from 216 data managers and professionals, and the full 37-page research report is being offered as an ISUG member benefit.
Posted April 29, 2011
Representing a continuation of a long-running partnership between the two companies, IBM and Sybase have introduced a new workload-optimized server appliance aimed at financial institutions, mobile operators and enterprises called the IBM mCommerce Appliance Solution. The hardware and software appliance features IBM POWER7-based Power 750 servers running IBM DB2 information management software and IBM WebSphere software application server, IBM System Storage DS5300 and the Sybase mCommerce 365 solution. Specifically, the appliance is targeted at financial institutions and mobile operators but it is not limited to those customers or verticals, Charlie Chen, vice president of platform alliances, Sybase, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 29, 2011
Sybase has announced plans for the release of new functionality connecting Sybase Replication Server to Sybase Aleri Streaming Platform. This new functionality will enable data events from heterogeneous databases to be propagated in real-time, via complex event processing (CEP), addressing challenges such as reference data management and risk aggregation.
Posted April 29, 2011
Sybase has announced that the Call for Papers is now open. TechWave 2011 will be co-located with SAP TechEd, September 12-16 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. TechWave will continue to deliver training on Sybase products, as well as keynote sessions, exhibits, special event and other networking functions.
Posted April 29, 2011
Rocket U2 has introduced the U2 Migration Factory, which facilitates the migration of legacy MultiValue solutions to U2. The U2 Migration Factory combines an Automated Migration Tool (AMT) with the expertise of migration specialists who have completed more than one thousand successful migrations. Free remote assistance is available for basic migrations and proof-of-concept exercises based on the number of users a customer is migrating. Additional assistance is available for comprehensive migration projects including code reworking, assurance testing, project management and status reporting.
Posted April 27, 2011
InterSystems Corporation, which develops and markets advanced integration, database and business intelligence technologies, has announced the winners of its 2011 Innovator Awards, which recognize those who use InterSystems technologies in new ways to create innovative applications and integration solutions. Winners were recognized at the InterSystems Global Summit 2011 conference.
Posted April 27, 2011
BlueFinity International, a member of the Mpower1 Group of Companies, has announced that mv.NET Solution Objects was recently selected as best new technology innovation of the year by a panel of judges at a recent MultiValue conference.
Posted April 27, 2011
NorthgateArinso is planning a series of webinars focused on Reality, the company's MultiValue SQL-enabled database environment. The complimentary webinars will be presented by Mark Fuller, director of technology, Reality USA, who has more than 20 years' experience with Reality.
Posted April 27, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, announced it has begun shipping the latest release of its BI platform, which includes data visualization capabilities. MicroStrategy 9.2 includes a feature called Visual Insight, which is designed to allow business people to answer business questions on their own, avoiding the lengthy process of report specification and design. Users can access data from a full spectrum of data stores, ranging from massive enterprise data warehouses, to distributed departmental databases, to financial databases, to data that resides on the individual's desktop computer and in Excel spreadsheets.
Posted April 26, 2011
DBI (Database-Brothers, Inc.) has released Brother-Panther for DB2 LUW 5.1. "Brother-Panther is all about performance monitoring, analysis, tuning and trending. Our customers are very successful at using Brother-Panther to understand what costs the most and what hurts the most in the database. And in a couple of more mouse clicks we are usually able to hand them a solution that will make all that pain go away," Scott Hayes, president and CEO of DBI, tells 5 Minute Briefing. With this release, says Hayes, Brother-Panther now can now help people understand the big picture and the details regarding the consequences of change.
Posted April 26, 2011
Full 360 Inc., a New York-based systems integrator, has introduced a new release of its elasticBI platform-as-a-service (PaaS). elasticBI pairs Jaspersoft4, the open source BI application, with the Vertica Analytic Database in a PaaS offering that is tightly integrated via the Opscode Chef framework. The platform is offered by Full 360 on Amazon Web Services, the Amazon cloud. According to Full 360, elasticBI provides a complete BI-data warehouse platform that is accessible from a cost and technical perspective for small and mid-market companies, as well as enterprise departments.
Posted April 26, 2011
Citrusleaf, a new database technology company, has officially launched and announced Citrusleaf 2.0, which the company describes as a different type of NoSQL database that combines the best practices of both database and distributed technology. Simultaneously with the product launch, the company, which was founded in 2009 by Brian Bulkowski, CEO, and Srini Srinivasan, CTO, also announced Series-A funding from Alsop Louie Partners, Kalpathi Investments and Draper Associates. The funding will be used to enhance products, expand the team, and support growing vertical market customers in the advertising, financial, government and healthcare sectors.
Posted April 26, 2011
Oracle yesterday announced a major new version of the NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE), NetBeans IDE 7.0, allowing developers to take advantage of the newest developments in Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). NetBeans IDE 7.0 introduces language support for the upcoming JDK 7 release, currently available as a Developer Preview.
Posted April 21, 2011
Oracle has announced the latest release of Oracle Real User Experience Insight, an update to Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g's Application Performance Management capabilities. The release provides integration between Oracle Real User Experience Insight and the Business Transaction Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g, enabling customers to achieve better insight into end-user satisfaction and transaction fulfillment.
Posted April 21, 2011
Clerity Solutions, a provider of mainframe migration, modernization and optimization solutions, announced that it has certified its UniKix Mainframe Rehosting software to work with Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud engineered systems. Explaining Clerity's motivation for certifying with Oracle Exalogic and Exadata, Wendy Williams, director of marketing, Clerity, tells 5 Minute Briefing, "We are starting to see a greater interest in cloud-based initiatives from our customers. They are looking for ways not only to move their file-sharing and basic applications to the cloud but they are also starting to talk about how they can move some of their critical business-imperative applications to the cloud as well."
Posted April 21, 2011
Oracle has announced that the latest release of its distributed in-memory data grid product, Oracle Coherence 3.7, is now available. The new release simplifies the configuration and management of large scale deployments and offers customers more storage capabilities and dynamic load balancing of client connections. In total, the 3.7 release includes almost 500 improvements over the 3.6 release which came out last July, Cameron Purdy, vice president of development, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 21, 2011
Quest Software has unveiled Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle, a new desktop solution that offers DBAs a dashboard view of all of the Oracle backups across the enterprise that they are managing and also provides drill-down views into a single database for more detailed reporting. In addition to simplifying and cutting the time needed to report on the status of Oracle backups, the new solution is also aimed at reducing the risk associated with failed or poorly performing backups.
Posted April 21, 2011
Oracle has agreed to acquire Datanomic Limited, a provider of customer data quality software and related applications for risk and compliance screening. According to Oracle, the Datanomic technology combined with Oracle Product Data Quality will provide a complete data quality solution to reduce the cost and complexity of managing data across its customers' businesses. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of calendar year 2011, and Datanomic's management and employees are expected to join Oracle.
Posted April 21, 2011
Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) met with Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) president Mark C. Clark during last week's COLLABORATE 11 conference in Orlando, Florida. Now, more than 2 years following the financial meltdown of late 2008, it is clear that more users are again out attending COLLABORATE. "We have gone through a period of very tight IT budgets, a 2-to-4 year phase of maintenance. Everybody I am talking to is looking at opportunities to do projects this year. And if they aren't doing it this year, they are planning for it next year," said Clark, commenting on the renewed enthusiasm for attending the conference.
Posted April 19, 2011
SQL Sentry, Inc., a developer of software products that optimize the performance of Microsoft SQL Server environments, and DBSophic, a provider of performance management products for database-centric applications, have announced a new product bundle, the "Power Suite + Qure Quick Start Pack," to help SQL Server DBAs monitor, manage, troubleshoot and tune database server performance.
Posted April 19, 2011
Trillium Software has formed an alliance with Microsoft to provide integration between the Trillium Software System data quality solution and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customer relationship management (CRM) software. As a result, Microsoft Dynamics CRM users who choose to leverage integrated Trillium Software data quality services can ensure that global customer data is accurate and fit-for purpose, whether using on-premises or cloud deployment models (utilizing the Windows Azure platform).
Posted April 19, 2011
BMC Software has announced database management solutions to help customers exploit the cost savings advantages enabled by DB2 10 for z/OS. Customers are moving more aggressively to DB2 10 than BMC has seen in the past when new versions of DB2 have been released, Robin Reddick, director, MSM Solutions Marketing at BMC Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The primary motivation that BMC is hearing from its customers is that they can achieve cost savings with the new release. According to Reddick, about 50% of BMC's customers say they will have moved to DB2 10 within 18 months of the release of the latest version, and about 25% say that they are going to skip version 9 and go right from version 8 to version 10.
Posted April 18, 2011
CA Technologies announced a new version of its service catalog that integrates with CA Virtual Automation and CA Oblicore Guarantee, designed to enable the automatic provisioning of physical, virtual and cloud services based on the cost and performance criteria of the service request. With these new additions, companies can now employ use CA Service Catalog 12.6 to enable private and hybrid cloud provisioning, service automation, user self-service, IT costing/financial management, and provisioning role-based security. This single point of contact, says CA, is intended to support a customer's journey to an increasingly virtualized service environment. CA Service Catalog also bridges the gap between current IT operations and the challenge of moving existing services to private clouds.
Posted April 18, 2011
HP says it is adding seven new offerings intended to expand its Application Transformation solution portfolio, targeted at enterprises seeking to better assess, modernize and manage their applications. The purpose of these products is to enable enterprises to understand their application portfolios and decide what to keep, change or retire.
Posted April 18, 2011
IBM announced two new services for companies moving enterprise business processes into production cloud environments. They are IBM SmartCloud, an enterprise cloud technologies and services offering for private, public and hybrid clouds, and IBM Workload Deployer, a single platform designed to enable companies to provision middleware and application components to run web workloads in the cloud.
Posted April 18, 2011
IBM announced a suite of new software and services aimed at helping organizations transform their business processes. IBM's new unified Business Process Management (BPM) platform, IBM Business Process Manager, is intended to provide companies greater visibility into business operations so they can model, automate, monitor and adjust plans instantly. IBM also announced it is launching a global consulting and services delivery organization for business process improvement. The new services will be delivered via a new methodology, called the IBM Method for Business Process Optimization.
Posted April 18, 2011
Application Security, Inc. (AppSec), a provider of database SRC solutions for the enterprise, and Securosis, a security research and analysis firm, have partnered to provide what they are describing as the industry's first comprehensive guide to quantifying enterprise database security processes. "What we wanted to do was go to some of the experts in the industry who have not only been analysts but also lived in this environment and have them systematically go through the process and document everything from organizational considerations down to specific steps, and then provide a means to quantify the man hours, the expenses, and the technologies associated with each step in this process," says Thom VanHorn, vice president of marketing, AppSec.
Posted April 13, 2011
Platform Computing, a provider of cluster, grid and cloud management software, has announced support for the Apache Hadoop MapReduce programming model to bring enterprise-class distributed computing to business analytics applications that process big data.
Posted April 12, 2011
HP has updated its Information Management portfolio to enable organizations to reduce risk, increase efficiency and simplify the way they manage their business information. By bringing a holistic approach to information management, HP says the solutions and services will help executives harness the power of their information to make better decisions, manage for cost and compliance, and deliver the right information to the right users at the right time.
Posted April 12, 2011
Melissa Data Corp, a developer of data quality and address management solutions, has announced that customers can now access detailed property and mortgage data on more than 140 million U.S. properties by using the company's new WebSmart Property Web Service. The comprehensive solution is available for sourcing nearly any information on a given property - from parcel and owner information to square footage to zoning and more.
Posted April 12, 2011
Queplix Corp., a provider of data virtualization software, has introduced new Application Software Blades for Hive, HBase and Cassandra. Queplix's Application Software Blades enable the Queplix Virtual Data Manager platform to connect to many different source applications and data. According to the company, the new software blades for NoSQL databases can identify and extract key metadata and associated security information from the data stored within these databases, then bring it into the Queplix Engine to support data integration with other applications.
Posted April 12, 2011
EMC has announced three new additions to its EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA) line of products - the High Capacity DCA, the High Performance DCA, and the Data Integration Accelerator - as well as version 4.1 of Greenplum Database.
Posted April 12, 2011
HiT Software, Inc., a BackOffice Associates, LLC company and provider of data management products, has released HiT ODBC/DB2 v6.2 and HiT OLE DB/DB2 v4.2, the newest versions of its high-performance connectivity products specifically for application access to IBM DB2 for z/OS and IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX, Windows (LUW) databases.
Posted April 12, 2011
Quest Software has unveiled Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle, a new desktop solution that offers DBAs a dashboard view of all of the Oracle backups across the enterprise that they are managing and also provides drill-down views into a single database for more detailed reporting. In addition to simplifying and cutting the time needed to report on the status of Oracle backups, the new solution is also aimed at reducing the risk associated with failed or poorly performing backups.
Posted April 11, 2011
UNITE, the volunteer-based organization of Unisys users from around the world, has announced that Disneyland is providing a special offer for discounted tickets to UNITE 2011 Technology Conference and Exhibition attendees. This year's conference will take place May 22-25 at the Hyatt Regency Orange County in Garden Grove, California.
Posted April 11, 2011
CA Technologies and Unisys Extend Alliance to Offer Joint Cloud Solutions
Posted April 11, 2011
Unisys has announced its Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, a comprehensive methodology and set of services for helping organizations manage multiple IT delivery models - both traditional and cloud-based - within a consistent computing environment managed as a single entity.
Posted April 11, 2011
Dynamic Solutions International (DSI) and B&L Associates have partnered to offer a fully integrated solution including the DSI9000 Virtual Tape Library family of solutions with B&L's data center operations automation and management products, enabling a single point control of the automated VTL environment. This partnership provides current B&L users with a solution for virtual tape which improves reliability, performance and functionality over physical tape libraries. According to the vendors, the combined software and VTL results in a best-of-breed package for the MCP market space.
Posted April 11, 2011
With the annual Oracle users conference COLLABORATE about to begin, Andy Flower, president of the IOUG, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the IOUG's strong areas of focus in terms of overall conference content, and how the addition of the MySQL user base into the Oracle community is evolving. Citing a MySQL keynote, 75 sessions at COLLABORATE focused on MySQL, and a new MySQL Council headed by Sarah Novotny, Flower says the IOUG is making strides in giving voice to the MySQL community within the IOUG and setting a stage for positive interaction with Oracle.
Posted April 06, 2011
Oracle has announced three new integrations in support of its open and integrated technology stack. Enhancing its backup and recovery capabilities for Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance now directly connects to the Oracle Exadata InfiniBand fabric to simplify deployments and accelerate backup and recovery time by more than 50% compared to traditional NAS systems. Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure now provides integration with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with rapid iSCSI provisioning that automates desktop provisioning and accelerates virtual desktop deployments. Additionally, Oracle Secure Backup is qualified for Sun ZFS Storage Appliance backup and recovery with Oracle's scalable StorageTek tape libraries.
Posted April 06, 2011
Three new Oracle Validated Configurations are now available to speed the deployment of solutions based on Oracle Linux with Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. The three new configurations consist of Oracle Linux 5 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage 7420 appliance. The configurations also include one of the following: Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 server, an 8-socket rackmount x86 system, with QLogic FC HBAs; Oracle's Sun Fire X4470 server, a 4-socket rackmount system; or Oracle's Sun Fire X4270 M2 server, a 2-socket rackmount system.
Posted April 06, 2011
"Big data" has emerged as an often-used catch phrase over the past year to describe exponentially growing data stores, and increasingly companies are bolstering their product lines to address the challenge. But helping companies manage and derive benefit from the onslaught of mainly unstructured data has consistently been the focus for MarkLogic Corporation, whose flagship product, MarkLogic Server, is a purpose-built database for unstructured information. The company, which has roughly 240 customers in industries, including media, government and financial services, today announced Ken Bado as its new chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. "Unstructured data, literally and figuratively, is huge. Clearly, 80% of the data that is generated every day by all of us is unstructured. The question is: How do you deal with it?" Bado tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 05, 2011
DBAs and IT operational teams, pressured by the unabated flow of data streaming in from an ever wider range of sources, require proactive self-managing and automated systems to supplement or replace manual techniques and processes which are no longer scalable given the rate of data growth, according to the results of a new Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) study on database manageability.
Posted April 05, 2011