Latest News from XML Journal

What Does 2010 Hold for Desktop Virtualization?

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

At the end of last year I made some predictions for how I think desktop virtualization will develop in 2010. People who have listened to Brian Madden TV's prediction show will have heard references to some of them and I think the time is right to share the whole list with our broader readership. I am interested in your thoughts too, feel free to comment whether you agree or disagree.

Science Discovery: The Next Computing Landscape

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:45:00 EST

Computational science is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and numerical techniques that represent scientific, social scientific or engineering problems and employing these models on computers, or clusters of computers, to analyze, explore or solve these models. Numerical simulation enables the study of complex phenomena that would be too expensive or dangerous to study by direct experimentation.

Start Being Visible and Valuable in One Minute

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:52:00 EST

Time is a scarcity. We’re moving, receiving, listening, answering and engaging at speeds faster than ever before. Have you ever watched a video longer than one minute and become impatient? Proof positive that we must accelerate to even participate! The...

Audi Embraces KonaKart in New eCommerce Venture

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:08:00 EST

Prestige auto-maker Audi have just launched the "Audi Tradition Shop" which allows Audi enthusiasts to purchase spare parts on the web for their treasured vintage vehicles.

Looking Back to 2009, and Brokering the Cloud for 2010

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:45:00 EST

I'm pleased to report that Vordel today announced "a record increase in annual revenues and net income for 2009 with overall revenues up almost 80% on the previous year. Vordel added an additional 32 enterprise customers to its global user base validating Vordel's position as the premier provider of SOA and Cloud Governance products". If you read down through the news details, you can see that a key offering for Vordel in 2010 is the Cloud Service Broker. We are now seeing the category of the Cloud Service Broker begin to emerge, and it is as exciting as the early days of the XML Gateway.

Tale of Two XML Gateways

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:30:00 EST

These days XML Gateways are a core infrastructure component of any enterprise SOA deployment. XML Gateways provide the ability to integrate services securely with granular access control, data-level encryption, integrity through signatures and XML threat mitigation. XML Gateways can be deployed as a hardware appliance or as a software gateway. Both these form factors have their advantages and disadvantages. This article provides readers a quick synopsis of the advantages and disadvantages of each form factor.

Sixteen Hundred or So Posts Later

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST

Something I read reminded me that this blog was coming on four years. According to my old WordPress and my current Joomla admin thingdoodles, I have done 1,600 or so posts to date, or about one a day, including weekends and holidays.

I don't really take advertising, except for the odd favor for friends or to drive my own businesses, so the sum total of my ad revenues via Google AdSense has been something like $118. If I do the math right -- big IF -- I think that works out to something like seven cents a post. A post takes me about 20 minutes on average, sometimes a lot longer, so I think that means I am doing about 21 cents an hour on this thing.

Clearly, I'm a brilliant businesman.

I've had a number of people asking about advertising on the site and maybe I will do it, maybe I won't. I have to weigh money against the optics and whatever obligations I may feel to then write about the advertiser or be nice. I do press releases for piles of people via pressDOOH and most never get on here because this isn't meant to be a news site. To the credit of all those clients, none have suggested they figured that was part of the deal.

ONE of these days I will cut over to WordPress and wave Joomla a not terribly fond farewell. Spare time is an issue, for me and my gracious hosts at ITES, who are also stinkin' busy.

I also haven't done it yet because I am sorting out in my head what to do with Sixteen:Nine. There are some really interesting Web applications emerging, and I would love to see how these could apply and make this corner of the DS world a lot more of a two-way thing, and also better use real time streams of information.

So ... thinking about that. All ideas welcomed.

Thanks to all those who've sent me notes or stopped me at a trade show and passed on kind words. I'm particularly gratified when I take companies to task for something and they get that it's not personal. There's been the odd time when I've met people and thought, "Ok, is he going to crush my typing fingers when we shake hands???" But people have been overwhelming cool and professional.

I have been writing in serious spurts lately, dropping off for a week, and then doing 12 posts in three days. Depends on if I am traveling. Depends on how crazy-busy I am (been seven days a week all month, but that's a good thing). And more than anything else, it depends on whether anything interesting is shaking.

Thanks for reading. There is waaaaaaaay more stuff out there now from business news sites and smart bloggers who aren't just peddling company wares. It was pretty much me and Gerba back in the Jurassic era of digital signage. I still think there's a need for looking ahead and around the corners, getting beyond the obvious, poking holes, and pointing out the great and the goofy.

Billboard Mistress Upstages Larry Ellison

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:45:00 EST

Oracle’s co-president Chuck Phillips and his ex-girlfriend YaVaughnie Wilkins overshadowed Oracle’s hard-won victory over the European Commission and its pending $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems last week after Ms. Wilkins plastered snuggly “soul mates forever” pictures of the two of them on billboards in Times Square in New York (where Phillips maintains a place), Atlanta (where his wife and son live) and San Francisco (near Oracle and the $11 million house that he bought for the now-evicted or at least departed mistress).

XML Database Translation in Northern Alaska

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST

A Managed File Transfer solution, such as GoAnywhere Director, is typically not a check-list item for weather gathering expeditions, but it’s what Andrew Rettig and Dr. Richard Beck took on their trip to Alaska. Weather data gathering in the remote areas of Alaska is traditionally a manual process with stations monitored from nearby towns or airports. Real-time weather stations are limited by either the length of wire connecting them to a console or the feasible travel distance for regular readings. The goal of the University of Cincinnati project was to construct and monitor remote, unmanned weather gathering sites in near real-time, using standard equipment – thousands of miles away.

XML Security Trust and Threat Models for Dummies

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST

It is very rare today to find a business application that has not exposed its interface via SOAP/XML. XML is the building block that enables business or consumer applications to exchange data in a standard structured format. The exchange of XML data typically takes place through an SOAP/XML interface based on the Web Services standard or through the REST-based standard. These flexible standards that richly describe interface functions of an application also introduce a host of XML and Web Services security vulnerabilities. This article is a quick start guide to most common XML and Web Services security vulnerabilities and the two basic security models they follow.

‘Save MySQL from Oracle’ Petition Delivered to 3 Antitrust Regulators

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST

MySQL creator Monty Widenius’ petition to stop Oracle from getting the MySQL open source database along with Sun Microsystems collected more than 14,000 signatures before Widenius started circulating the results to “regulators, governmental bodies, parliaments and journalists” in the wee hours of Monday morning European time. According to campaign organizer Florian Mueller, “The numbers collected so far are phenomenal given the holiday season in large parts of the market. They will go up a lot in the days to come further dwarfing whatever Oracle has presented.”

What's the Plan for 2010?

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST

As you head into to 2010, no doubt you'll be thinking about business goals. Perhaps you already have a mental to-do list: blogging and Tweeting more, networking more, starting a Facebook group or uploading video content. Once New Year's has worn off, you just want to jump in and get started.

They're great intentions, but you'll never achieve them without a plan. Start your year off on the right foot with an editorial calendar that breaks your blogging and social media agenda down into manageable tasks. The calendar should plot out at least a month, and up to six months of content.

Here are five reasons for having an editorial calendar:

1. To stay on track with your topic, audience and purpose

Plotting out an editorial calendar forces you to think ahead about what's relevant, timely and marketable. Coming up with posts spontaneously on a daily or weekly basis means that there's no long-term strategy in place, and you're likely to veer away from your goals.

2. Help maximize content and effort

Taking the time to plan means that you're thinking about how to expend your energy and resources wisely. You're less likely to squander a great idea in one post if you've thought about it ahead. Get more out of less effort.

3. Target networking and social media efforts

Lots of great blog posts go unread because they're not promoted. If you know that at the end of the month you'll be writing about a particular subject, you'll have the lead time you need to promote the relevant post among the people who will be interested.

4. Improve your relationship with your audience

If a blog offers an educational series of how-tos, or an insightful breakdown of a particular process, it looks and feels authoritative. Your audience will respect that. They can tell the difference between a blog that wants to serve its audience, and one that is there for the sake of being there.

5. You can get ahead

Once your first calendar is planned out, it's a great idea to set aside time to get ahead on it. Then you have the breathing space you need to spend more time on other valuable tasks, like social networking, tweaking your blog design, or developing an idea for an eBook.

Right now, the year is a blank slate - get it started on the right foot.

Support Real Healthcare Reform: Start Using HL7 v3

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST

We all know that technology is central in reducing health care cost, eliminating dangerous errors, and eventually providing coverage to all. I like learning from others, so while we are innovative, there is no point in repeating mistakes. A quick view of what the Dutch have be working on for almost a decade now shows that they are on the leading edge of a useful Health Informaton Exchange (HIE) deployment. They have weathered major political headwinds in developing a visionary Health Information Exchange by using HL7 v3 - an ANSI health care standard modeling clinical, administrative, pharmacy, medical devices and imaging domains. The Dutch government's aggressive health care initiative in building a nationwide Health Information Broker (HIB) can serve as a good model for the current US Administration that is considering transforming US health care through nationwide electronic medical records (EMR) as one of its key policy initiatives. We are still working with EDI centric HL7 v2, whereas the Dutch are deploying XML-based HL7 v3. This article give a flavor for technology artifacts being deployed by the Dutch, including HL7 v3 messages using Schematrons.

Why is a Cloud Gateway Required?

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

Security has been on the forefront of discussion in the technology community as being the primary concern gating enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Although this is a valid concern, most cloud providers, owing to the security demands of maintaining a multi-tenant infrastructure, provide strong security provisions, perhaps better than an enterprise's own data center. Legal, compliance and process issues become more significant rather than technical security concerns.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

Although Windows 7 appears to be a great improvement over Windows Vista and Windows XP

to be replaced by Windows 7, the common prerequisites for working with Windows Azure Platform
appear to be limited to:
Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP as shown.

How come Windows 7 was left out of this?

How come VS 2010 was left out of this?

The common prerequisites from the Microsoft site are:

.NETFramework 3.5 SP1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 [VS90sp1-KB945140-ENU.exe]
ASP.NET MVC 1.0
Windows Powershell 1.0

The OS requirements for the above are :
Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP
Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008(for Powershell)

The Mass Adoption of Cloud Computing Is Coming

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

I’m really loving a phrase that I read recently about cloud computing. It came from the CIO of Avago Technologies, a San Jose, CA-based semiconductor maker, which is gradually migrating its data and apps to the cloud from its internal servers – including recruiting, human resources, e-mail and web security. According to Bob Rudy, CIO at Avago, migration has saved the company millions of dollars by eliminating hardware needs and software licenses and improving security, speed and storage. Moving to the cloud has also freed up employees from annoying and trivial tasks like managing their e-mail, enabling them to focus more on their core jobs.

Signing OAuth on the Vordel XML Gateway with Java Using Signpost

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:37:00 EST

As an exercise, I ran Signpost on the Vordel XML Gateway to see it insert the OAuth Authorization header into outbound messages. Getting Signpost up and running on the Vordel XML Gateway is simple. Firstly, download the jar files for Signpost and put them into the "/ext/lib" directory to extend the Gateway using Java. Now, Signpost's OAuth signing functionality can be imported into a script on the Vordel Gateway easily using "importPackage". Because Signpost is so simple, the entire process of signing an outbound HTTP request with OAuth effectively takes just six lines of code running on the Vordel Gateway:

View Cloud Power Panel on SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

View the live panel discussion taped on December 8, 2009 at SYS-CON.TV's 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests from EMC, Intel and Unisys will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

How to Architect For Web 2.0

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:30:00 EST

Web 2.0 may not have a clear-cut definition but irrespective of which way you look at it (there are 3 different ways of looking at web 2.0), it is about the behavior of complex system, it is about collective intelligence and it is about emergence. The fundamental principles governing such systems are that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts – the behavior of the system cannot be derived or understood by analyzing individual elements.

XML Gateway: Best Practices, Requirements and Deployment Strategies

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 21:00:00 EST

XML Gateways are a great IT component for managing information flow between your enterprise and your trading partners. They provide the required functionality, such as: Identity bridging (e.g., from HTTP Basic Auth to SAML) Transport mediation (e.g., between HTTP and MQ Series) Protocol and content based security (e.g., HTTPS, WS-Signatures, WS-Encryption)

XML Gateway Patent

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

Forum Systems, the pioneer in XML Gateways became the first network appliance to be issued a Patent for XML security functionality. This issued patent 7,515,333 has a significant impact on the XML Gateway market landscape and locks Forum Systems position as the pioneer in the XML Security appliance marketplace with defensible protection for XML Security hardware related Intellectual Property. Vendors in this space include:

Why is an XML Gateway a Requirement?

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:45:00 EST

Now let's take a simpler scenario where performance is not a problem and security is meant to be accomplished using SSL. I claim even in this scenario purchasing a dedicated server is a wise investment. Let's assume you intent to invoke web services from multiple partners. The number of partners could potentially be on the thousands. As is the case, currently most of this partners do not have any web services as of yet. So they start as usual writing it from scratch using something like .NET. These projects tend to be low key and usually prototypes, so the use of a gateway is not even considered.

Frequent XML Gateway Uses

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:45:00 EST

Identity mediation is the first step for the majority of SOA Deployments. Identities come in may shapes and sizes represented at both the protocol level (e.g., HTTP Basic Auth, SSL Mutual Auth) and message level (WS-Security tokens X.509, SAML, etc.). Even if an enterprise successfully standardizes on a single identity representation, it cannot dictate how it's trading partners should represent its identities. Thus, inditites need to be accepted in many forms and changed to a single internal representation - that is if everyone within an organization can agree to a standardized representation. Most likely, even internally, more than one identity representation exists.

Forum Systems Latest XML Gateway Targets SOA Federation

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST

Looks like Forum Sentry, the pioneer and leader of XML Gateway and XML Firewall technology has announced its latest product that now addresses the growing need for handling not just XML/Web services traffic, but also HTML/Portal traffic. From a technology standpoint, this is not a revolutionary jump, but a gradual evolution of the XML Gateway that now handles HTTP/HTML-header information, which is by far easier than looking deeper into the XML packets. However, the business implication of this is significant since companies can now use a single platform for HTML and XML processing.

Qualifying Your XML Gateway Horsepower

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:45:00 EST

Often in our tech industry there is a penchant to spout off performance numbers without qualifying the metrics and conditions under which these numbers are derived. The XML Gateway community is not immune to this indulgence. I have to admit, even I am guilty of committing this sin sometimes. In the XML Gateway world, performance cannot simply be defined in terms of transactions per second (TPS) due to complexity of a message transaction and the task policy of the gateway.

XML Flaws are Pervasive

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:15:00 EST

Finally! What companies such as Forum Systems pioneered a defensive layer for through its XML Gateway product, Forum Sentry, and Crosscheck Networks invented for identifying XML Security vulnerabilities thorough its XML/SOAP pen testing product, SOAPSonar is now becoming mainstream. Washington Post published an interesting article highlighting such XML-based vulnerabilities in a recent article titled XML Flaws are pervasive.

Holiday Presents from the Cloud

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:45:00 EST

As the year winds down, there are a few things I have come to expect: holiday parties, snow, and new features from cloud providers. This year exceeded all of my expectations, starting with a note in early December from our friends at Terremark letting us know that they have fixed their Windows pricing for cloud servers. Until this upgrade, if you started a Windows server in their cloud, you had to pay for a whole month of Windows licensing ($30-$100 depending on the version) no matter how much you used the server. This was rather un-cloudlike, where we want to only pay for what we use. With this new feature, running Windows in Terremark’s cloud only costs a few cents per hour (Linux cost + 20%).

Then came the snow—I live in New Hampshire, and on December 9th we received a foot of new snow to really get the season going. The very next day, Amazon made a big flurry of announcements—support for Windows 2008, the ability to boot from EBS, and the new US region US-West1.

Each of these features means big things for Amazon and for cloud users. First, support for Windows 2008 is a longstanding request from Amazon users. I think that Amazon was held back from supporting W2K8 because of the design of their boot volumes, which needed to be copied out of S3 into the local storage instance in order to boot the operating system. As the boot volume grows, the amount of resources consumed and the boot time of the servers grows significantly, withW2K8 requiring more than 10GB by default. In order to support W2K8, Amazon required another technology advance to make it possible—booting from EBS snapshots.

Perhaps the biggest problem enterprise users had with Amazon was the lack of persistent storage for boot volumes. Amazon has now created a way for users to build persistent boot volumes, coming up to parity with competitors on this feature. Sure, it’s a little different from how enterprises normally think about storage and configure boot volumes, but the ability to use EBS volumes for booting eliminates the window for data loss that most users had to contend with in the original boot methods. (This feature is not huge for CloudSwitch customers because we have always supported booting from EBS as part of our products; however, we can take advantage of this feature to improve boot times for servers in Amazon.)

Another major Amazon announcement is the new west coast region. Many of CloudSwitch’s early customers (not to mention our own development activities) are based on the east coast, so EC2’s primary location has been a good fit for us. Things only improved with the introduction of the Europe region since we have seen a lot of interest for European resources for both locality and compliance reasons. However, for west coast customers, having to hop across the whole country to access your cloud resources was less than ideal. Now these companies have local resources to target, but more important, this ongoing expansion shows that the public cloud is doing well. The addition of US-WEST1 and the soon-to-open Asia region reflect just how quickly the public cloud is growing and how hard Amazon is driving it.

The news from Amazon comes on top of what was already an outstanding year for cloud computing with major announcements from many key players, including: IBM software running in the cloud, new VMware-based public clouds, reduced pricing for servers and storage in the cloud, and Microsoft’s Azure gaining momentum. Each of the cloud providers is growing and maturing its cloud offerings, and we are reaching a tipping point where there are multiple clouds with sufficient features to support enterprise workloads. Get ready for 2010—it’s going to be an exciting year as large-scale enterprise cloud computing takes off.

Microsoft Loses i4i Appeal

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:30:00 EST

Microsoft has lost its appeal of the i4i patent infringement decision ordering Word off the market and dunning Microsoft $290 million. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Tuesday winnowed all of Microsoft’s legal arguments like a thresher, finding completely for the little Canadian company that holds a patent on some rarely used custom XML widgetry that Word treads on.

A Cloud Computing Wish List for 2010

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:30:00 EST

A cloud spot market allows commercial cloud service providers the ability to announce surplus or idle processing and storage capacity to a cloud exchange. The exchange allows buyers to locate available cloud processing capacity, negotiate prices (within milliseconds), and deliver the commodity to customers on-demand.

Young CNO - Chief Networking Officer

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:45:00 EST

We began the saga of the CNO - Chief Networking Officer publishing an article in national magazine in 2007 when we set all the responsibilities and the process of implementing business network management in organizations.

Neon Sues IBM for Trying to Destroy It

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST

Neon Enterprise Software sued IBM Monday morning in federal court in the Western District of Texas claiming Big Blue is out “to crush” it and prevent mainframe customers from saving hundreds of millions of dollars. Neon’s the Texas outfit with the newfangled mainframe widgetry called zPrime that, if unfettered, could supposedly drain IBM’s prized mainframe revenue stream.

Introducing SherpaTools for Google Apps

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST

As Cloud Sherpas continues to help businesses and organizations adopt Google Apps, we have found that many customers, regardless of location or industry, request a common set of additional management controls and end user features for their Google Apps environment. Until now, the response to most of these inquiries was that organizations had to develop custom applications that work with Google APIs to achieve their goals.

TIBCO Takes Social Software to Work

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

This is a clear sign that the enterprise software and social software worlds are munging. Get ready to see a lot more. TIBCO Software will release in 2010 software that lets people search for and then track corporate information by subject matter in a similar way to how they might follow people on Twitter. This is a clear sign that the enterprise software and social software worlds are munging. Get ready to see a lot more. The idea behind the tibbr – the name an obvious play on “Twitter” -- helps people find information related to their particular tasks and jobs quickly and easily by searching for information based on its subject matter, and then subscribing to relevant feeds on those topics, the company said.

Hitachi Virtualization Gets a New Boss

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, and innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, Hitachi GST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. Hitachi GST was established in 2003 with its U.S. headquarters located in San Jose, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at http://www.hitachigst.com.

Akamai Introduces Cloud-Based Firewall

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Akamai Technologies today expanded its cloud-based suite of security capabilities with the introduction of its Web Application Firewall managed service. Implemented on Akamai’s EdgePlatform, the service provides a scalable edge defense system for blocking Web application attacks in the cloud. Based on the open source ModSecurity Core Rule Set supported by Breach Security, the Akamai Web Application Firewall service is designed to protect against the most common and harmful types of attacks and exploitation techniques such as SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and other Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top-10 attacks.

Is Your JIT Telling You Lies?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:15:00 EST

Writing meaningful Java benchmarks is a tricky business. It's well known that the Java Virtual Machine's just in time (JIT) compilation process means that running an application for a few seconds won't let you predict the performance of the application over hours or days of uptime. In spite of this, developers often rely on micro-benchmarks to set performance SLAs for their applications.

Cloud Expo Sponsor Secures $10M Funding

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:15:00 EST

SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, today announced the successful close of $10 million in Series C funding as it prepares its global expansion. The round was led by UV Partners, and included participation from all existing investors Canaan Partners, Formative Ventures and The Entrepreneurs’ Fund. The company’s growth plan includes the opening of offices in Europe, broadening of the reseller channel and increasing its technology roadmap with product enhancements to address the growing demand for SOASTA’s cloud-based testing service.

SOASTA Named "Bronze Sponsor" of World's Largest Cloud Computing Event

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that SOASTA, the leader in cloud testing, has been named "Bronze Sponsor" of 5th Cloud Computing Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. SOASTA also recently $10 million in Series C funding as it prepares its global expansion in 2010.

Microsoft Federal CTO Speaks About Cloud Computing

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST

Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, was the keynote speaker for the December meeting. During the session, Lewis Shepherd spoke about the Microsoft cloud, and how Microsoft is spending $9.5 billion on research this year on the new paradigm of distributed computing. Earlier this week, Vivek Kundra, the Federal Chief Information Officer at the White House, announced deadlines for the federal government to become open, transparent, and participatory.

What is Cloud Computing?

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:30:00 EST

Cloud computing is becoming one of the next industry buzz words. It joins the ranks of terms including: grid computing, utility computing, virtualization, clustering, etc. Cloud computing overlaps some of the concepts of distributed, grid and utility computing, however it does have its own meaning if contextually used correctly. The conceptual overlap is partly due to technology changes, usages and implementations over the years.

Progress Software Appoints John Bates as CTO

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:45:00 EST

Progress Software announced the appointment of Dr. John Bates as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Head of Corporate Development. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class infrastructure software spanning event-driven visibility and real-time response, open integration, data access and integration, and application development and deployment – all supporting on-premises and SaaS and Cloud Computing deployments.

Using URI Templates on XML Security Gateways

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST

Somebody brought Anil’s tweet to our attention this week, and Jay Thorne, who leads our tactical group, put together a nice example of just how to do this using SecureSpan Gateways. URI templates are a simple idea to formalize variable expansion inside URI prototypes. A receiving system can then trivially parse out substituted components of the URI and use these as input. There’s an IETF submission here that describes the approach. It turns out that it was co-authored by my old friend and ex-IBM colleague Dave Orchard. Another co-author is Mark Nottingham, who I worked with at the WS-I. I guess I should have looked into this earlier. Sorry guys.

The Impact of Real-Time Search on Social Media Marketing

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

The recent launch of Google's real-time search engine is set to have a positive impact on the social media marketing industry and improve the results of campaigns according to Reality Digital, the leading provider of social networking software for brands and businesses. Google real-time search constantly updates as events and conversations occur around the web. The announcement that deals with Facebook and MySpace have followed the previous agreements with Twitter and LinkedIn means that streams from a brand's Facebook and MySpace pages will now have a direct impact on search engine results, and real-time updates from social networks will be visible on the search engine results pages themselves.

A Security Analysis of Cloud Computing

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:22:00 EST

With its ability to provide users dynamically scalable, shared resources over the Internet and avoid large upfront fixed costs, cloud computing promises to change the future of computing. However, storing a lot of data creates a situation similar to storing a lot of money, attracting more frequent assaults by increasingly skilled and highly motivated attackers. As a result, security is one – if not the – top issue that users have when considering cloud computing.

Sybase and iPhone in the Enterprise

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

I am always on the lookout for proof points to my thoughts on Enterprise Mobility and I was happy to find a great piece of coverage from Eric Lai of ComputerWorld that appeared last week. He wrote a Q&A with John Chen and was able to share some great insight, with regard to Sybase and iPhone in the Enterprise. John also shared his thoughts on the future of the “Unwired Enterprise”.

SOA Appliance for Cloud Computing

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

Web services-based Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) enable communication via ubiquitous standards such as XML and SOAP. To foster efficient, effective message exchange and satisfy increasing user demands for real-time, aggregated information from internal and external business partners, trust must be established among all entities. Comprehensive mediation, authentication, and authorization of identity exchange among customer and partner portals, Web applications, and XML-based Web services provide the business with a simplified, coherent model for identity management and build the pillars of Federated SOA.

Is IBM XIV Still Relevant?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

Given the time, money as well as effort IBM has poured into promoting and generating awareness around XIV, it must be relevant to someone. IBM recently released another round of momentum news, customer testimonials and product enhancements while making a point that there are now over 1,000 XIV systems installed around the world. 1,000 systems installed (regardless of if revenue or trial) in the just under 2 years since IBM bought XIV would be a triumph for most startups. However for a major player with the resources of IBM, I would have expected the number of installed systems to be more in the 5,000 to perhaps 10,000 systems when looking at the progress of Dell (EqualLogic), HP (LeftHand) or others.

The Ten Commandments for Achieving Excellence in Business and Life

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:00:00 EST

Successful people know that, building their mind, exercising their body, growing their skills and intellect provides them with layers of protection against failure in life, relationships and business. They are more confident, more hopeful and people are drawn to them by this healthy dose of self esteem

Move Over BI, Here Comes PI - Performance Intelligence

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:30:00 EST

"As companies such as MySpace continue to expand the richness of their site, the big thing is trying to seek a higher level of customer experience by replicating "beyond capacity" in a test environment, so that a company can see what it is exactly that they will need when traffic surges to peak levels and beyond, so that they know the "risk points" of their own success," Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA, told SYS-CON's Jeremy Geelan in an interview with Cloud Computing Journal on the day that SOASTA announced a significant test of the newly launched MySpace Music Videos hub using the Cloud.

Are You Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:00:00 EST

Holidays are fast approaching which means spending time with your family and loved ones, time off work for most of us and, of course, overspending on gifts and merchandise. The notorious Black Friday is usually perceived by analysts as being the main major marketing event that launches the Holidays' spending frenzy. It is soon followed by Cyber Monday, which sort of launches the same wave of spending though in the online space. This is a great time for retailers, etailers and affiliate programs.

Or is it? Are you prepared for Cyber Monday's frenzy?

1. Increase your marketing budget. Now is a good time to get a pay-per-click campaign going. Never had one of those before? Well SearchEngineLand has you covered - check out their collection of articles on PPC campaigns to get you started.

2. Revise your keywords. Buying keyword campaign could prove highly beneficial for your business, but first you need to make sure they're on target and representative of your business and service offering. Indeed, a well performing set of keywords could highly improve the amount of traffic directed to your site by search engines. SEOmoz's beginner's guide to conducting keyword research will get you there fast.

3. Organize a targeted marketing campaign with coupon codes. Indeed, coupon campaigns are proving to be efficient while also raising your link equity. Business.com has an interesting article on the efficiency of coupon strategies. This campaign can even be carried on Twitter and other social networks through sites like Coupontweet.

4. Put people in a festive mood. Have you ever noticed how inhaling the smell of warm bread at the grocery store makes you want to immediately bite into a baguette? Well adjusting your site's design to reflect seasonal moods could help increase sales. Brick and mortar stores have been doing it for decades, and so has Google.

Are you and your business ready for the start of the Holiday season? Any other tips you'd like to share with us?