Data Center Management Articles
Compuware Corporation, a technology performance company, announced pricing for what it says is the industry's first deep transaction management solution for optimizing performance of Apache Hadoop applications. Compuware APM's dynaTrace Enterprise for Hadoop will be offered starting at just $1,000 per Hadoop Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Posted October 29, 2012
The recent explosion of mobile applications has dramatically altered the consumer landscape, making it the norm for users and customers alike to expect access and support anytime, anywhere. With Cisco recently reporting that mobile-connected devices are set to exceed the world's population this year, it's no surprise that the surge is overflowing into the enterprise. While there are a few leading innovators in enterprise mobility, the vast majority of businesses are still struggling to take the first steps towards a streamlined strategy. The question is no longer "Do we?" but "How do we?"
Posted October 24, 2012
Application performance management (APM) software provider Precise has announced the availability of Precise 9.5, a major product release designed to help organizations deliver a better experience for customers using their cloud and mobile applications. Precise 9.5 rapidly detects and analyzes application problems resulting from server and storage virtualization resource contention, and also addresses the challenge of managing mobile traffic growth. The new release focuses on three key themes, all with the common goal of identifying and resolving potential problems before they can affect the customer experience or cause an outage, Sherman Wood, vice president of product at Precise, tells DBTA.
Posted October 24, 2012
Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 was recently introduced with capabilities for deploying and managing business applications in an enterprise private cloud, such as Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS), enhanced business application management, and integrated hardware-software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. According to Oracle, "engineered-together management" is especially important for a consolidation platform such as Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, where multiple business applications need to run reliably and securely. In addition, as a result of demand from customers leveraging Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, a new IOUG Management Special Interest Group (SIG) has been created.
Posted October 16, 2012
Research teams from CornellUniversity and Microsoft are setting forth a proposal for building data centers without wires or cables. "Conventional data centers, based on wired networks, entail high wiring costs, suffer from performance bottlenecks, and have low resilience to network failures," the researchers say. Instead, they propose a new methodology for building wire-free data centers based on emerging 60GHz RF technology. Ultimately, they claim, wireless data centers can deliver "higher aggregate bandwidth, lower latency, and substantially higher fault tolerance than a conventional wired datacenter while improving ease of construction and maintenance." Interestingly, the proposal draws upon schematics laid out in a paper written in 1889 by mathematician Arthur Cayley
Posted October 15, 2012
AT&T and IBM announced a business agreement to deliver a "network-enabled" cloud service that uses private networks rather than the public Internet. The companies are combining AT&T virtual private networking, new technology from AT&T Labs, and IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ cloud capabilities to create what they say is a faster and more secure shared cloud service. "As more organizations realize that cloud can be secure, easily managed, and a key part of their business strategy, cloud will quickly evolve as a tool for innovation rather than just for infrastructure," says Erich Clementi, senior vice president for IBM Global Technology Services.
Posted October 15, 2012
BMC Software delivered major updates to its IT Service Management portfolio, that enable organizations to transform their service desk into a flexible, proactive "genius bar" experience. This new approach, to be built into a number of BMC's ITSM products, helps IT organizations transition from passive, infrastructure-oriented support functions to ones that deliver more proactive, personalized enablement to today's highly mobile workforce. "Enterprise IT organizations and service providers want to deliver a differentiated, modern service experience," says Kia Behnia, BMC's chief technology officer.
Posted October 15, 2012
SnapLogic, a provider of enterprise cloud integration tools, announced new enterprise platform features intended to help lower the effort to integrate with traditional data sources. Meeting the needs of enterprise IT architects, the latest release of the SnapLogic Integration Platform provides high availability and rollback support, smarter server shutdown options, and a more intuitive interface for administrative tasks. "This release, like most other SnapLogic releases, is for both private and public clouds," Zeb Mahmood, principal of product management for SnapLogic, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted October 15, 2012
GT Software, provider of technology solutions for enterprise modernization, has rolled out Ivory Hub, a product suite targeted at mainframe enterprises seeking to address the demands for rapid application delivery for mobile, web, and cloud. Ivory Hub is designed to help organizations modernize their mainframe investment in a secure and low-maintenance environment. "The overall purpose and intent of the technology is to simplify accessing resources on the mainframe that are valuable, yet in many ways hidden due to the lack of skilled resources in the marketplace today," Chris Garner, senior vice president of the products group at GT Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. GT Software will also present a webcast about Ivory Hub Thursday, Oct. 18 at 11 am ET.
Posted October 15, 2012
Technology performance company Compuware announced two new solutions aimed at reducing complexity in the data center and the cloud. Compuware APM for Mainframe provides transaction management capabilities, intended to help administrators more rapidly resolve performance problems, reduce MIPS costs, postpone hardware upgrades and accelerate time-to-market for new applications. In addition, a second new solution, Outage Analyzer, tracks cloud and third-party web service outages with instant notification of cause and impact. Outage Analyzer is available now as a free service.
Posted October 10, 2012
Progress Software Corporation announced that it has signed a definitive agreement with Rocket Software for Rocket to acquire the Shadow product. According to the companies, Shadow middleware software is complementary to Rocket Software's existing product portfolio and will offer Rocket customers improvements in total cost of ownership and performance of integration projects that involve mainframe assets.
Posted October 09, 2012
Real-time IT management company ManageEngine, a division of ZoHo Corp., debuted key product portfolio enhancements at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. In addition to its flagship network monitoring software (NMS), OpManager, the company has upgraded its network configuration and change management (NCCM) solution, DeviceExpert, and enterprise password management software, Password Manager Pro. "Historically, IT has been more of a batch-oriented organization, where you submit a problem and wait for some resolution but as businesses make technology more ingrained in their overall revenue generation and profit generation functions, you just can't have that. It has got to move with the pace of business, and so a lot of the product announcement and development focus for us has been to deliver more real-time capabilities," Raj Sabhlok, president of ManageEngine, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted October 09, 2012
ExtraHop Networks, a provider of network-based application performance management (APM) solutions, has introduced ExtraHop Discovery Edition, a new 60-day, free trial version of the ExtraHop Application Delivery Assurance system, and the EH2000v, a more powerful version of its EH1000v virtual appliance. The ExtraHop Discovery Edition is aimed at helping IT teams to easily explore the benefits of network-based APM, while the EH2000v supports enterprises' increasingly virtualized and distributed IT environments, providing up to a sustained 3Gbps throughput capacity and support for over 1,000 hosts or VMs.
Posted October 08, 2012
Business analytics vendor OpTier has released OpTier APM 5.0, a solution that provides real-time business transaction analytics and deep diagnostics, enabling improved visibility and gains in productivity. OpTier also released a new Big Data Analytics solution that takes advantage of OpTier's business transaction-based platform, providing real-time big data analytics already in context and reducing time and cost.
Posted October 01, 2012
CloudBees, Inc., a Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider, announced the availability of two new "one-click" services to customize cloud platforms and to streamline end-to-end application deployments across user-defined runtimes. The first new service, ClickStarts, is intended to reduce to a single click everything needed to create and deploy a running application that builds from source, is set up with continuous integration and deployment, and connects to other hosted services. ClickStacks enables end users to customize CloudBees runtimes and compose new runtimes that applications run on.
Posted October 01, 2012
EMC announced storage and backup support for customers deploying the new IBM zEnterprise EC12 Mainframe System. EC12 sites can now implement EMC VMAX Family, EMC Connectrix storage connectivity capabilities, fully automated storage tiering (FAST) software and the EMC Disk Library for mainframe.
Posted October 01, 2012
CA Technologies announced a global distribution agreement with Nastel Technologies, a middleware infrastructure monitoring and management company, which adds Nastel's AutoPilot for middleware management to CA's cross-platform offerings. CA will resell and distribute Nastel's AutoPilot for middleware, covering IBM WebSphere MQ, Message Broker, DataPower and TIBCO. The AutoPilot solution complements the performance management solutions that CA offers by extending the management and monitoring capabilities deeper in the middleware infrastructure.
Posted October 01, 2012
Emerson Network Power, a provider of infrastructure availability, capacity and efficiency solutions, announced it is teaming up with Joyent, a cloud infrastructure provider, to offer an integrated end-to-end solution that provides both physical and virtual infrastructure and dynamic management tools for enterprise cloud environments, including energy management.
Posted October 01, 2012
There is still great demand for terminal emulation, as a new release from Cybele Software, Inc. shows. The vendor released z/Scope Anywhere 7.0, a remote-computing solution for users of IBM mainframes, AS/400, and UNIX systems. Cybele says it designed z/Scope Anywhere 7.0 as a pure HTML5/JavaScript client. There is no ActiveX or Java applet to install, making z/Scope Anywhere "100% native-firewall friendly."
Posted October 01, 2012
Percona, Inc. has announced the latest release of Percona Server, which it describes as its "enhanced drop-in replacement for MySQL." According to the company, Percona Server Version 5.5.27-28.0 includes new features that make it more valuable as an alternative for MySQL users. Offered free as an open source solution, Percona Server has self-tuning algorithms and support for high-performance hardware. In addition, the company is planning a two-day Percona Live Event for NYC in October and also for London in December, with speakers and tutorials spanning multiple tracks across the MySQL ecosystem. A more expansive, four-day conference, Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013, is planned for Santa Clara in April.
Posted September 26, 2012
Silver Peak Systems has announced Silver Peak Velocity, a combination of products, pricing and packaging that aims to allow storage administrators to accelerate their offsite replication workloads. SilverPeak Velocity is available for NetApp SnapMirror deployments, providing what the company says is on-average 20x faster offsite replication, and will be available for replication solutions from Dell, EMC, and Hitachi Data Systems in the coming months.
Posted September 26, 2012
Bradmark Technologies, Inc., an established provider of database tools for enterprise monitoring and administration, has announced the expansion of its seven-year global reseller agreement with Sybase, an SAP company, through the execution of an addendum granting Bradmark the right to sell SAP Sybase database products in North America. Under this agreement, Bradmark will offer SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), SAP Sybase IQ server, SAP Sybase Replication Server and Mirror Activator database products to its existing customers and prospects through its direct sales force and marketing campaigns in the United States and Canada.
Posted September 26, 2012
If you have not heard the buzz around Oracle's Engineered Systems, then you must not be keeping up with Oracle's marketing promotions, reading any technical journals, or even just walking through any airports lately. While the marketing claims are impressive, the use of Marvel's characters was imaginative and Oracle's use of the slogan "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together" is enticing, you may be asking yourself, "What does all of this mean to me?" Well, let's illustrate by example.
Posted September 26, 2012
An educational and interactive webcast will review the findings of the 2012 IOUG Test, Development and QA Survey and discuss the best practices and issues that it highlights. This IOUG study was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by IBM. Presented by Kimberly Madia, WW product marketing manager at IBM, and Thomas Wilson, president and CEO, Unisphere Research, the webcast will be held Thursday, September 27, from 12 - 1 PM CDT. Attendees to the webcast will receive a copy of the study report.
Posted September 26, 2012
The first computer program I ever wrote (in 1979, if you must know) was in the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), and the second computer platform I used was SAS (Statistical Analysis System). Both of these systems are still around today—SPSS was acquired by IBM as part of its BI portfolio, and SAS is now the world's largest privately held software company. The longevity of these platforms—they have essentially outlived almost all contemporary software packages—speaks to the perennial importance of data analysis to computing.
Posted September 19, 2012
In recent years, the networks of developers, integrators, consultants, and manufacturers committed to supporting database systems have morphed from one-on-one partnerships into huge ecosystems in which they have become interdependent on one another, and are subject to cross-winds of trends and shifts that are shaping their networks. Nowhere is this more apparent than the huge ecosystem that has developed around Oracle. With Oracle's never-ending string of acquisitions, new functionality, and widespread adoption by enterprises, trends that shape this ecosystem are certain to have far-reaching effects on the rest of the IT world. Concerns that percolate through the ecosystem reflect — and influence — broad business concerns. New paradigms — from cloud computing to big data to competing on analytics — are taking root within the Oracle ecosystem long before anywhere else.
Posted September 19, 2012
Serena Software announced advancements to its "Orchestrated IT" solution set, now designed to help enterprises take full advantage of mobile, social and cloud technologies. Serena's solutions are designed to help IT stakeholders to automate the continuous delivery of applications on-premise and to the cloud, as well as enable users to view release activity, analytics and key metrics from mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets.
Posted September 17, 2012
Layered Technologies, Inc. (Layered Tech), a provider of cloud and hosting services, announced a cloud platform that combines Layered Tech's management, security and compliance capabilities with self-service functionality. The LayeredTechCloudDataCenter includes a self-service portal, intended to give customers greater control, visibility and management of their cloud environments.
Posted September 17, 2012
Brocade, a provider of network solutions, advanced its vision of software-defined networking, with new switches and routers designed for cloud and virtualization workloads. The vendor began shipping a new switching platform intended to enhance data center network simplicity, efficiency and resiliency. The Brocade VDX 8770 Switch, along with VCS Fabric technology enhancements, is designed for enterprises and service providers striving to both simplify and scale-out their data center infrastructure. Brocade also announced what it calls the industry's highest core router density, with the introduction of a new 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) module for Brocade MLXe Series routers, part of its software-defined networking (SDN) strategy.
Posted September 17, 2012
CA Technologies announced it acquired privately-held Paragon Global Technology, Inc. (PGTI), a provider of software products designed to help clients improve service delivery by visualizing data from CA Workload Automation AE (formerly CA AutoSys). Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The acquisition brings predictive analytics, critical-path monitoring, service-level agreement (SLA) management, historical reporting, and a centralized management platform to CA Technologies workload automation product portfolio.
Posted September 17, 2012
VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced the general availability of the new VMware vCloud Suite 5.1, a complete, integrated cloud infrastructure solution that integrates VMware's leading virtualization, cloud infrastructure and management portfolio into a single SKU, simplifying the adoption of cloud era technologies. "By bringing together everything customers may need to build and manage agile, reliable cloud infrastructure, the VMware vCloud Suite simplifies and automates IT operations and delivers on the promise of cloud computing," says Mike Clayville, vice president of product marketing for cloud infrastructure products for VMware.
Posted September 17, 2012
IBM unveiled new social sentiment analysis tools, based on its sophisticated analytics technologies, targeted at helping cities better measure and understand public opinions on key issues and services, such as public transportation or education. With a wealth of online content and public commentary on social channels such as Twitter and Facebook, city officials need new ways to measure positive, neutral and negative opinions shared by citizens regarding important city issues. IBM's advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies - used to analyze large volumes of public social media data in order to assess and understand citizen opinions - are now available to city governments around the world via new capabilities delivered with the IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities.
Posted September 17, 2012
CA Technologies has introduced a new version of its converged infrastructure management solution for enhancing customer experiences. CA Infrastructure Management (CA IM) integrates elements of CA Technologies Service Assurance portfolio, and is capable of translating volumes of disparate performance data into actionable insight delivered in unified, user-specific views, the vendor says.
Posted September 17, 2012
It seems easy to fall into a state where projects and activities assume such soft-focus that routine takes control, where one simply does necessary tasks automatically, no questions are raised regarding what is moving through the work-life production line and everyone is essentially asleep at the switch. Certainly, we may have one eye open ensuring that within a broad set of parameters all is well, but as long as events are basically coloring inside the borders we continue allowing things to just move along. In this semi-somnambulant state we can easily add columns to tables, or even add new entities and tables, or triggers and procedures to our databases, then eventually at some point down the road have someone turn to us and ask, "Why this?" or, "What does this really mean?" And at that point, we surprise ourselves with the discovery that the only answer we have is that someone else told us it was what we needed, but we do not really understand why it was needed.
Posted September 11, 2012
Embarcadero Technologies announced a suite of major new releases to help developers rapidly build, migrate and maintain single-codebase native applications for Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion. "Today's mixed Windows and Mac environment poses unparalleled opportunities for ISVs and enterprises," says Michael Swindell, senior vice president of marketing and product management at Embarcadero. "Time pressure and R&D costs are the real barriers to reaping the Win/Mac benefits. Delphi XE3 and C++Builder XE3 enable development teams to code a project once, and deliver true native user experiences across multiple Mac and Windows OS versions and form factors."
Posted September 10, 2012
GT Software, a provider of technology solutions for enterprise modernization, has announced the general availability of its latest releases of the NetCOBOL compiler solutions - NetCOBOL for Windows v10.4 x64 and NetCOBOL for Linux v10.4 x64.NetCOBOL is a COBOL compiler and development environment used to create standalone COBOL applications and/or COBOL components. The latest release of NetCOBOL v10.4 brings new levels of flexibility, removes file size restrictions, and provides updated support for the growing Linux COBOL community. It can be used to create 64-bit server applications or applications that need the power of easy to maintain COBOL business logic.
Posted September 04, 2012
IBM announced an updated mainframe server configured to meet the heightened performance demands of cloud computing, as well as providing enhanced security. The zEnterprise EC12 mainframe server also offers support for operational analytics that can help clients sift through large volumes of raw data and transform it to gain knowledge that can be used for competitive advantage. The EC12 is the result of an investment of over $1 billion in IBM R&D, and the work of more than 2,500 development engineers across 18 labs worldwide, says Rod Adkins, senior VP of IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
Posted September 04, 2012
Luminex Software, a virtual tape solutions vendor, and Nirvanix, a provider of cloud storage, have teamed up to provide a new cloud-based tape vaulting solution designed specifically for mainframe environments. As a result, the companies say, mainframe customers are no longer limited to open or distributed systems, and can securely store mainframe tape volumes in the Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network and access them globally.
Posted September 04, 2012
William Data Systems (WDS) has introduced a new gateway server intended to help data centers move to the IPv6 protocol. According to WDS, transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 is a challenge for many customers, since there are costs and risks of changes to applications, networks and hardware. The vendor's ZEN Application Gateway (ZAG) is a software solution designed to help implement IPv6 under z/OS by minimizing the need to make changes to applications, hardware or networks. "Our ZEN Application Gateway can be used for either production or testing, it depends on the shop's agenda," Graham Storey, vice president of marketing at WDS, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 04, 2012
Neebula Systems, a provider of service modeling and management solutions, has unveiled a preview of its latest cloud management solution, the Neebula ServiceWatch solution in the cloud. The offering is intended to provide IT managers access to a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based product to discover and map IT resources - hardware and software - that make up a specific business service. This eliminates the long, labor-intensive process of installing on-premise software and then manually discovering and mapping IT resources, the vendor says.
Posted September 04, 2012
The Big Data Spotlight at SHARE in Anaheim included two full days that addressed SHARE attendees' most pressing Big Data questions and concerns. Everyone from the keynote speakers to daily technical session speakers (including a full Big Data hot topic track) discussed why Big Data is so important today.
Posted September 04, 2012
EnterpriseDB, provider of PostegreSQL and Oracle database compatibility products and services, has released a public beta of its new Multi-Master Replication (MMR) capability in Postgres Plus xDB Replication Server. According to EnterpriseDB, this will provide database administrators with improved write-availability and read-scalability, customization, database performance, as well as a cost reduction in Oracle licensing.
Posted August 28, 2012
Miami-Dade provides its county agencies an easily accessible and robust IT environment to support three million citizens and host millions of Miami's visitors. It needed a smarter way to improve business processes and lower costs. IBM has worked with Miami-Dade to support all of Miami's County Municipal agencies with IBM's Business Analytics.
Posted August 24, 2012