Data Center Management Articles
Progress Software Corporation announced a new strategic focus in which it will become a provider of a next-generation, context-aware application development and deployment platform in the cloud for the application platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) market, by beefing up investments in its core OpenEdge, DataDirect Connect, and Apama Analytics and Decisions products and integrating them into a single offering. As part of the plan, Progress says it will divest multiple product lines that are not core to the new vision and launch immediate operational restructuring initiatives to significantly reduce annual costs.
Posted April 30, 2012
BMC Software, a provider of business service management solutions), released what it calls one of the industry's first application performance "management-as-a-service" solutions for cloud applications. BMC End User Experience Management OnDemand measures and monitors individual user performance, errors and availability of web applications and provides a more accurate and actionable approach to service-level assurance for the cloud.
Posted April 30, 2012
IBM announced an overall 7% jump in profitability in the first quarter of 2012 over the previous year, but hardware and server revenues lagged. The company's net income for the quarter was $3.1 billion, compared with $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Total revenues for the first quarter of 2012 of $24.7 billion were flat (up 1%, adjusting for currency) from the first quarter of 2011.
Posted April 30, 2012
The vibe surrounding cloud computing at SHARE in Atlanta was all about forgetting the hype and dealing with reality. Attendees came looking for results after hearing for years about the computing model that reduces costs while increasing flexibility and scalability. Veteran tech journalist Pedro Pereira discusses the cloud computing content at SHARE in Atlanta in the SHARE's President's Corner.
Posted April 30, 2012
Scott Handy, vice president, STG Strategy and Business Development, PowerLinux, IBM, lays out the value proposition for IBM PowerLinux solutions in his new blog post: On April 24, IBM announced IBM PowerLinux solutions, built on a new Linux-only family of servers. These two-socket servers - one rack-mount and one compute node - run industry standard Linux, and have been tuned to run key emerging workloads like big data and open source network infrastructure. With these new offerings, IBM is taking Power's well-known strengths in scalability, flexibility, and security and making them available to customers that might not previously have thought of Power as an option. Now, quite simply, IBM is taking pricing off the table.
Posted April 25, 2012
IBM has introduced new value-priced Power Systems and PureFlex System offerings to help customers exploit the cost efficiency of Linux and virtualization for business-critical workloads. IBM PowerLinux Solutions offer deep integration of new Linux-specific POWER7 processor-based hardware with industry-standard Linux software from Red Hat and SUSE for analyzing Big Data, managing industry-specific applications, and delivering open source infrastructure services.
Posted April 25, 2012
2012 will be a big year for KVM, Jean Staten Healy, director, WW cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, writes in a new blog: There is a tipping point at which a disruptive technology takes off in the marketplace, displacing other technologies that may have previously been believed to be firmly entrenched. For open source solutions, this occurs when there is a compelling reason, such as cost, to switch from proprietary technologies, after it has been proven that the new technology delivers enterprise compatibility, ecosystem support, and the high quality and reliability required for enterprise adoption. We have already witnessed that tipping point with Linux - and we are seeing that same story play out now with KVM.
Posted April 25, 2012
IBM introduced a new family of "expert integrated systems" called IBM PureSystems, which features built-in expertise based on IBM's collective experience running customers' IT operations. IBM PureSystems' scale-in design integrates and optimizes all of the critical components required in a data center - system networking, storage, compute, management, etc. - and provides for a single-view management system. Out of the box, all PureSystems family members are built for the cloud, enabling corporations to quickly create private, self-service cloud offerings that can scale up and down automatically.
Posted April 25, 2012
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, released its latest report on kernel development. The report covers work completed through the Linux kernel 3.2 release, with an emphasis on the releases made since the last update to the report in December 2010 (2.6.36 to 3.2). The report was authored by Jonathan Corbet, LWN.net; Greg Kroah-Hartman, The Linux Foundation; and Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation.
Posted April 25, 2012
Nineteen leading technology companies have announced their plans to become Platinum or Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation, an independent and long-term home for OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system. IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, as well as others based on the principles outlined in the published mission and framework.
Posted April 25, 2012
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is a gold sponsor of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2012, which will take place May 21-22 in San Francisco.
Posted April 25, 2012
Linux and Android are separate operating systems now, but that may change since Android code has been re-admitted to a staging area for inclusion the Linux kernel, according to an article by Cade Metz for Wired Enterprise, "Android and Linux Reunite After Two-Year Separation."
Posted April 25, 2012
Scott Handy, vice president, STG Strategy and Business Development, PowerLinux, IBM, lays out the value proposition for IBM PowerLinux solutions in his new blog post: On April 24, IBM announced IBM PowerLinux solutions, built on a new Linux-only family of servers. These two-socket servers - one rack-mount and one compute node - run industry standard Linux, and have been tuned to run key emerging workloads like big data and open source network infrastructure. With these new offerings, IBM is taking Power's well-known strengths in scalability, flexibility, and security and making them available to customers that might not previously have thought of Power as an option. Now, quite simply, IBM is taking pricing off the table.
Posted April 25, 2012
IBM has introduced new value-priced Power Systems and PureFlex System offerings to help customers exploit the cost efficiency of Linux and virtualization for business-critical workloads. IBM PowerLinux Solutions offer deep integration of new Linux-specific POWER7 processor-based hardware with industry-standard Linux software from Red Hat and SUSE for analyzing Big Data, managing industry-specific applications, and delivering open source infrastructure services.
Posted April 25, 2012
2012 will be a big year for KVM, Jean Staten Healy, director, WW cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, writes in a new blog: There is a tipping point at which a disruptive technology takes off in the marketplace, displacing other technologies that may have previously been believed to be firmly entrenched. For open source solutions, this occurs when there is a compelling reason, such as cost, to switch from proprietary technologies, after it has been proven that the new technology delivers enterprise compatibility, ecosystem support, and the high quality and reliability required for enterprise adoption. We have already witnessed that tipping point with Linux - and we are seeing that same story play out now with KVM.
Posted April 25, 2012
IBM introduced a new family of "expert integrated systems" called IBM PureSystems, which features built-in expertise based on IBM's collective experience running customers' IT operations. IBM PureSystems' scale-in design integrates and optimizes all of the critical components required in a data center - system networking, storage, compute, management, etc. - and provides for a single-view management system. Out of the box, all PureSystems family members are built for the cloud, enabling corporations to quickly create private, self-service cloud offerings that can scale up and down automatically.
Posted April 25, 2012
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, released its latest report on kernel development. The report covers work completed through the Linux kernel 3.2 release, with an emphasis on the releases made since the last update to the report in December 2010 (2.6.36 to 3.2). The report was authored by Jonathan Corbet, LWN.net; Greg Kroah-Hartman, The Linux Foundation; and Amanda McPherson, The Linux Foundation.
Posted April 25, 2012
Nineteen leading technology companies have announced their plans to become Platinum or Gold members of the OpenStack Foundation, an independent and long-term home for OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system. IBM, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, as well as others based on the principles outlined in the published mission and framework.
Posted April 25, 2012
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is a gold sponsor of the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2012, which will take place May 21-22 in San Francisco.
Posted April 25, 2012
The Linux Foundation will hold its Enterprise End User Summit April 30-May 1 at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. The event will bring together high-performance end users with the highest level Linux community developers CTOs, architects, IT representatives, and kernel developers to advance the features most critical to using Linux in the enterprise.
Posted April 25, 2012
Oracle has announced StorageTek Tape Analytics, monitoring and management software for its StorageTek tape libraries. The software is intended to simplify tape management by eliminating manual intervention and help improve operational efficiency. It captures library, drive and media performance metrics and presents them in a single pane of glass, identifying potential problems while providing immediate recommendations to prevent data loss. StorageTek Tape Analytics software also allows rapid drill-down into detailed drive and media health specifics, enabling customers to make decisions about their tape infrastructure, and reduce downtime and data management resources.
Posted April 18, 2012
IBM introduced a new family of "expert integrated systems" with built-in expertise based on IBM's collective experience running customers' IT operations. The company says the new system, dubbed PureSystems, offers clients an alternative to today's enterprise computing model, in which multiple and disparate systems require significant resources to set up and maintain.
Posted April 16, 2012
HP announced HP Converged Cloud, which it describes as the industry's first hybrid delivery approach and portfolio based on a common architecture spanning traditional IT, private, managed and public clouds. "The whole idea of converged clouds is to say that, increasingly, as the cloud matures, companies are no longer looking at just one cloud to provide for all their needs," Christian Verstraete, chief technologist for Cloud Solutions at HP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "They are going to start using multiple clouds to respond to the needs of their business people."
Posted April 16, 2012
OpDemand, a provider of solutions for agile IT operations, announced it is shipping a cloud infrastructure management platform, designed to enable software development teams to leverage raw cloud infrastructure without being overwhelmed by technical complexity. "I think there is still a false assumption that mission-critical apps must be kept on-premise. While it's true that certain issues like security compliance and I/O performance may necessitate on-premise deployments, by and large you're going to see higher availability utilizing a cloud provider like Amazon who boasts eight geographic regions with dozens of isolated data centers. The trick is managing it all," Gabriel Monroy, CTO of OpDemand, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 16, 2012
Red Hat announced the beta availability of Red Hat Storage 2.0, based on new capabilities that build upon the company's support for unstructured data storage. In December, Red Hat launched the Red Hat Storage Software Appliance, its first integrated storage product, and since then, it says, there has been significant interest as organizations look to address the growth of unstructured data.
Posted April 16, 2012
Intel Corporation introduced its Solid-State Drive 910 Series, a high-performing SSD designed to address data center storage demands driven by cloud computing, virtualization and online transactions. The Intel SSD 910 Series expands Intel's offerings for data center applications with its first entry in the 900 family of its highest-performing, PCIe-based SSDs. The Intel SSD 900 Family joins Intel's other high-volume SSD solutions for the data center including the Intel 700 SSD Family of SATA-based SSDs with High Endurance Technology and the Intel SSD 300 Family of SATA SSDs for a broad range of server and storage applications
Posted April 16, 2012
NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a provider of communication and IT solutions, has upgraded its grid storage platform to deliver encryption for data at rest, instant file copy, and shared system mode. NEC's system, HYDRAstor HS8-3000, is available to existing customers via software upgrade.
Posted April 16, 2012
Dell has acquired Clerity Solutions, a provider of applications modernization and re-hosting solutions and services. Clerity's capabilities will enable Dell Services to help customers reduce the cost of transitioning business-critical applications and data from legacy computing systems and onto more modern architectures, including the cloud. "The addition of Clerity gives us a clear advantage in helping customers modernize and migrate their applications off outdated hardware infrastructure to more current architectures," says Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Dell Services.
Posted April 16, 2012
Oracle announced two x86 world record benchmark results delivered by its software and hardware. An x86 world record result was achieved on the SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark, with Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, Oracle Database 11g Release 2, running Oracle Linux on Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server. In addition, an x86 world record TPC-C benchmark result was set with the Sun Fire X4800 M2 server, running Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2, Oracle Tuxedo, and Oracle Database 11g Release 2.
Posted April 11, 2012
Last month, I told you about my favorite master-level blogs for the SQL Server professional. This month, I'm reviewing my favorite blogs for working SQL Server professionals who seriously want to grow their skills. What's the difference between a master-level blog and a practitioner-level blog, you ask?
Posted April 11, 2012
Quest Software, Inc. has announced the availability of vFundamentals, a new product suite that delivers backup, capacity planning and resource optimization for VMware virtual environments. vFundamentals is intended to enable virtualization administrators to grow their virtual environments knowing that critical assets are properly utilized and protected. The new bundle includes Quest vRanger Pro, a VMware backup, replication and recovery solution, as well as capacity management and optimization technology from VKernel's vOps Server Standard Edition. VKernel was acquired in November 2011 by Quest.
Posted April 10, 2012
Oracle Corporation announced that GAAP total revenues for fiscal 2012 Q3, which ended Feb. 28, were up 3% to $9.0 billion, and non-GAAP total revenues were up 3% to $9.1 billion. Among the highlights for the quarter were Oracle's engineered systems. Hardware revenue for engineered systems grew 139% in the third quarter and bookings are strong going into the fourth quarter, said Oracle president Mark Hurd in a statement released by the company with the announcement of its quarterly financial results.
Posted April 04, 2012
HP has announced a new line of Application Transformation solutions that target the need to integrate consumer-led technologies into enterprise systems. The expanded portfolio is intended to help clients to design, build and manage applications that support consumer-driven solutions entering the enterprise realm, including smartphones, mobile applications, and social networking platforms. "Modern enterprise applications require a different approach to design and testing than traditional applications," says Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager for application transformation solutions at HP.
Posted April 02, 2012
Symantec Corp. plans to announce, on Tuesday, a new solution intended to help organizations improve storage I/O performance and availability for VMware vSphere implementations. The product, Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing for VMware, is designed to help companies increase I/O performance, increase visibility and improve management of underlying storage, as well as enhance the availability of the virtual machine and applications. "Organizations are moving mission-critical applications to VMware, but when they do that, they add certain SLAs or performance requirements that they have to meet," Dan Lamorena, director of product marketing for Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted April 02, 2012
Compuware Corporation and Rosetta, part of the Publicis Groupe and a member of the Compuware Partner Network, announced a partnership designed to help customers ensure high performance with their e-commerce sites. The integrated offering offers pre-production testing and ongoing application performance management.
Posted April 02, 2012
GT Software, a provider of enterprise modernization solutions, announced availability of a new version of its legacy modernization suite, which includes support for JCA Resource Adapters and a new IMS/TM Application Wizard.
Posted April 02, 2012
gen-E (formerly generationE Technologies), an IT process automation software company, has received a private equity investment from Solis Capital Partners, enabling the company to expand its data center solutions business across new channels. The vendor's Resolve Social ITPA software, first launched in 2009, combines automation with social media-powered collaboration and knowledge management capabilities to help companies break down traditional organizational and process constraints.
Posted April 02, 2012
KPMG LLP, a financial advisory firm, and Apptio, a provider of technology business management solutions, are working together in a concerted effort to beef up clients' IT operations. KPMG will leverage Apptio's enterprise software as a service (SaaS) platform, as well as its applications in IT strategy and CIO advisory engagements to help clients better understand how costs are flowing through their IT infrastructures.
Posted April 02, 2012
Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc., has unveiled its next generation Mobile Commerce platform. With the updated platform, Sybase 365 seeks to enhance the customer engagement experience that financial institutions and mobile operators can offer their end-users, by providing a complete set of rich features for mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile money services - on a single platform. The Sybase mobile commerce platform has been architected to meet increasing demands as mobile commerce moves from a minor service to a mainstream service offered to a vast array of customers worldwide.
Posted March 29, 2012
Oracle has unveiled release 20.2 of Oracle AutoVue, an enterprise visualization solution to help customers in the energy, public sector, high tech and manufacturing industries increase operational efficiency and capitalize on information. "The goal is really to unlock the technical data and let it flow throughout the lifecycle so people can make the best decisions possible," Celine Beck, manager of Product Management and Strategy, Oracle AutoVue, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted March 28, 2012
Social media business intelligence is on the rise, according to a new Unisphere Research study sponsored by IBM and Marist College. The study found that while social media monitoring and analysis is in its early stages, many organizations plan to monitor, collect, stage and analyze this data over the next 1 to 5 years and. In particular, LOB respondents, who are closer to customers, show appreciation for the benefits of monitoring SMNs.
Posted March 21, 2012
Novell announced an update to its ZENworks suite, which includes integrated Mac device management, and full disk encryption capabilities. ZENworks 11 Support Pack 2 enables customers to lock out threats without shutting down IT access, the vendor says. ZENworks 11 now offers a more holistic approach to supporting Mac devices in the enterprise. With this release, Mac support is provided through Remote Management for Mac, Asset Management for Mac, Mac OSX Patching and Mac Bundles.
Posted March 21, 2012
At last week's SHARE conference in Atlanta, CA Technologies announced the first five recipients of $35,000 scholarships to its Mainframe Academy, an accelerated educational curriculum that helps promising young technologists expand their skills and fill potential talent gaps in future mainframe management. CA announced the scholarship program last March as part of its workforce education effort, promising over $1 million in grants to attend the Mainframe Academy through 2016. Recipients are selected by SHARE representatives, who award scholarships to applicants that demonstrate a desire to master mainframe programming skills.
Posted March 19, 2012
Serena Software announced enhanced offerings that help automate, control and instrument important application development and operations processes to deliver DevOps and Orchestrated IT. DevOps is the growing practice of developers and operations teams working in tandem to roll out and manage applications, and Serena defines "Orchestrated IT" as IT management systems that tie together existing tools into a more streamlined process-driven human workflow.
Posted March 19, 2012
IBM has announced new software to beef up its SmartCloud line of management and monitoring tools for cloud deployments. IBM's new SmartCloud Foundation offerings enable organizations to install, manage, configure and automate the creation of cloud services in private, public or hybrid environments with enhanced levels of control, the vendor says.
Posted March 19, 2012
Symantec Corp., a provider of security, storage and systems management solutions, has released Symantec Data Insight 3.0, the latest version of its solution that helps improve information governance by providing information about ownership and usage of unstructured data such as documents, presentations, spreadsheets and emails. With data volumes growing rapidly, and unstructured data in the enterprise growing even faster, Symantec says it is becoming increasingly difficult for organizations to stay on top of who owns the data and how it is being used. This makes it challenging to manage and protect it, a situation further complicated by data governance objectives to reduce costs, reduce risk and achieve compliance.
Posted March 19, 2012
UC4, a provider of IT automation solutions, announced the general availability of a tool that enables IT organizations to plan software releases, track progression and perform automated deployment. UC4 Application Release Automation V2 also is designed to simplify implementation by delivering built-in support for common middleware, source code management tools and issue tracking tools.
Posted March 19, 2012
For enterprises grappling with the onslaught of big data, a new platform has emerged from the open source world that promises to provide a cost-effective way to store and process petabytes and petabytes worth of information. Hadoop, an Apache project, is already being eagerly embraced by data managers and technologists as a way to manage and analyze mountains of data streaming in from websites and devices. Running data such as weblogs through traditional platforms such as data warehouses or standard analytical toolsets often cannot be cost-justified, as these solutions tend to have high overhead costs. However, organizations are beginning to recognize that such information ultimately can be of tremendous value to the business. Hadoop packages up such data and makes it digestible.
Posted March 19, 2012