Five Minute Briefing - Data Center
July 22, 2013
Five Minute Briefing - Data Center: July 22, 2013. Published in conjunction with SHARE Inc., a bi-weekly report geared to the needs of data center professionals.
News Flashes
IBM's second-quarter 2013 results were lower across the board, with the exception of its mainframe and enterprise software units. The computer giant reports net income of $3.2 billion for the most recent quarter, compared with $3.9 billion for the same quarter last year - a decrease of 17%. Total revenues for the second quarter of 2013 totaled $24.9 billion, down 3% from the second quarter of 2012. IBM took a $1-billion charge for what it called "workforce rebalancing" - cutbacks and layoffs across its global workforce.
CA Technologies has expanded CA Chorus, its integrated mainframe management platform, with new capabilities for network and system management. The company also announced additional mainframe management solutions to help improve IT performance and productivity, a combination of solutions aimed at helping IT staff provide uninterrupted business services. "The growth of mobile and cloud use in the enterprise has created a dynamic data center that contracts and expands at the will of the business users - not IT," Michael Madden, general manager for Mainframe at CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Technology performance company Compuware Corporation has made enhancements to Abend-AID, its mainframe application failure resolution solution. The latest improvements make Abend-AID easier to use. Abend-AID also includes analytics to help more rapidly resolve application failures. The new release is targeted at IT staff members unfamiliar with mainframe applications or entry-level developers who are more familiar with distributed, Java applications, Stuart Feravich, director of mainframe product management at Compuware, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Along with staff inexperience with mainframes, Feravich also is seeing less tolerance for any downtime, since many of these applications are now "very much part of the customer facing application or infrastructure in companies."
Dell Cloud Client Computing has begun shipping desktop and application virtualization software with server-streaming capability, intended to help organizations harness the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing. The new release, version 6 of Dell Wyse WSM, adds on-demand delivery of server OS images to Dell's end-user computing portfolio.
IBM announced it intends to acquire CSL International, a provider of virtualization management technology for IBM's zEnterprise system. CSL International is a privately held company headquartered in Herzliya Pituach, Israel. Financial terms will not be disclosed.
Riverbed Technology, an application performance vendor, announced a new release of its Riverbed Granite product family - including software and appliances - engineered to support enterprise-class server and data consolidation. New features are intended to enable IT managers to consolidate larger branch offices and data-intensive applications that previously were difficult or impossible to consolidate, the vendor says. Granite is intended to enable the removal of servers and data from branch offices so they can be positioned in a centralized data center.
Rocket Software, Inc. is now shipping a new product that enables mainframe data to better integrate with enterprise business intelligence and analytics initiatives. The new software, Rocket z/SQL for IBM System z, provides access from any system to non-relational mainframe data without moving data off the mainframe.
TIBCO Software Inc., an enterprise middleware provider, announced expansion of its partner ecosystem for the App Marketplace within tibbr, the vendor's enterprise social network. The tibbr platform was formed under the aegis of TIBCO to bring together all the key elements of enterprise collaboration - people, applications and content.
WSO2, an enterprise middleware provider, says it has launched a platform built to enable the development of an enterprise app store for delivery of application programming interfaces (APIs). The new product, WSO2 App Factory, is designed to provide cloud delivery through a shared, self-service, multi-tenant and elastic enterprise DevOps platform. The goal is for teams to be able to collaboratively create, develop and deploy enterprise applications into cloud environments, without the necessity of server provisioning. The platform also includes lifecycle management and governance to ensure compliance with IT, corporate and government policies
News From SHARE
SHARE spotlights its latest article, "Mainframe Security? It's About the Processes," highlighting Mainframe security both historically and as it functions today. With an ever-changing technological world, there is no doubt the mainframe has had to adjust to stay current with today's demands. Although it is an open discussion on whether or not the mainframe is actually hackable, people have strong opinions on either side.
Think About It
Electric cars are increasingly being seen on the world's roadways, bolstered by new technologies that enhance performance and battery life. Now, it's being reported that Nissan, maker of the "Leaf" electric car, is employing its mainframe systems to serve as the back end to the vehicle's online portal. The portal provides metrics and support for a range of in-car functions, such as battery status, recharging station locations, navigation functions, and in-car cooling or heating.