Data Center Management Articles
Attachmate Corporation has introduced a new enterprise fraud management solution that is intended to take the guesswork out of application monitoring. According to Attachmate, the new solution, Luminet, reveals user activity within enterprise applications and transforms the data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to protect the privacy of mission-critical data, reduce internal fraud and ensure regulatory compliance.
Posted July 14, 2010
Unisys has unveiled new planning and migration services to help clients transform their desktop environments to capitalize on the power of the new Windows 7 operating system.
Posted July 14, 2010
New research sponsored by Unisys has revealed gaps in readiness by global IT organizations to manage, support, secure and capitalize on the rapidly growing use of consumer technologies and tools in the workplace. The research was done as a result of trends that Unisys has observed in the market during interaction with customers, Sam Gross, vice president, Global IT Outsourcing Solutions, Unisys, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Unisys, Gross says, has seen "a real division between what our clients and our customers were telling us, what the majority of the industry analysts were saying and publishing, and what we actually saw with our eyes as we looked around the workplace, and how people are working, where we are servicing them."
Posted July 14, 2010
EMC Corporation has signed a definitive agreement to acquire California-based Greenplum, Inc. Greenplum is a privately-held provider of data warehousing technology, and a key enabler of "big data" clouds and self-service analytics.
Posted July 13, 2010
Oracle Coherence, the latest version of Oracle's distributed in-memory data grid product, became available yesterday. Oracle Coherence 3.6 is a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, and, along with Oracle WebLogic Server as well, is a critical component of application grid and private cloud deployments.
Posted July 13, 2010
In biology, we are taught that survival favors diversity. Organisms that reproduce without variation die out during periods of rapid change, while organisms that show variation in feature tend to survive and adapt. Likewise, ecosystems consisting of relatively few homogenous species thrive only when conditions stay static. Does IT diversity create a competitive advantage in the business application ecosystem? Predictably, large vendors with vertically integrated stacks argue that mixing software components is a Bad Thing. These vendors claim that reducing the diversity in the application stack leads to better efficiency and maintainability.
Posted July 12, 2010
Despite its many advances, the modern data center is still a complicated mess of technology silos and components that are manually cobbled together and managed. This complexity imposes tremendous operational burden and cost. Fortunately, data centers are going through a major transformation, driven in large part by virtualization. This sea change promises to simplify and automate management, allowing IT to focus less on data center plumbing and more on delivering IT services that drive the business forward.
Posted July 12, 2010
IBM announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire BigFix, Inc., a privately-held company based in Emeryville, Calif. The move aims to accelerate IBM's efforts to help organizations more intelligently secure the enterprise by managing and automating security and compliance updates on thousands of computers globally. Financial details were not disclosed.
Posted July 12, 2010
NEON Enterprise Software announced that it is offering NEON zPrime for IMS for just one dollar. NEON zPrime for IMS is designed to make costly IMS workloads eligible for processing on IBM specialty processors (SPs) instead of IBM System z central processors. To take advantage of the offer, customers must make a 2-year commitment at a dollar per year, and install a new version of NEON zPrime in production by December 31, 2010.
Posted July 12, 2010
BMC introduced a new mainframe product for IBM IMS, the leading database management system for the IBM System z mainframe. The BMC Fast Path Online Restructure/EP solution is designed to reduce downtime to improve availability of critical IMS Fast Path applications.
Posted July 12, 2010
Relational Architects International (RAI) has announced Version 9.1 of its REXX Language eXtensions (RLX) product which lets users code SQL and XML statements, DB2 commands and IFI requests - all natively within programs written in the high-level REXX language, known as "REXX execs." RLX Version 9.1 fully supports DB2 for z/OS functionality at the Version 9 level in traditional z/OS environments like TSO, ISPF and batch as well as in newer environments like System REXX, Health Checker, SDSF and ISPF panel exits.
Posted July 12, 2010
Oracle today announced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, an integrated and scalable suite of business intelligence products for helping customers to achieve better business visibility and alignment. The new release provides a unified environment for accessing and analyzing data that resides in relational, OLAP, and XML data sources; improved end user experience with a new integrated scorecard application and innovations in enterprise reporting, visualization, search and collaboration; and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Posted July 07, 2010
Confio Software, which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing
Posted July 07, 2010
Oracle has added upgrades to the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System product line, including built-in inline data deduplication that can be combined with inline data compression, 4 and 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel protocol support, multiple storage pools and new 1 and 2 TB SAS disk drives - doubling maximum system capacity to 576TB. The features are intended to help customers reduce the costs of storing, consolidating and managing data with increased storage efficiency, expand the use of the Sun Storage 7000 System product line into Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), and improve overall capacity and availability.
Posted July 07, 2010
Oracle has announced its next-generation Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems, including rackmount servers, blades and a 10 GbE cluster fabric. The Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems are designed for customers that run a mix of demanding Oracle and non-Oracle enterprise workloads across a grouping of systems. These systems, which ship with Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM, deliver an end-to-end virtualized environment that provides a completely tested and supported solution for Oracle Software, including Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications. The systems are also certified with other x86 operating systems and virtualization platforms.
Posted July 07, 2010
At the Red Hat Summit in Boston, Dr. Kristof Kloeckner, vice president, Strategy & Enterprise Initiatives, Systems and Software, and CTO, Cloud Computing, at IBM, delivered a keynote address on current cloud computing initiatives and the future of cloud computing in the software industry.
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2. In addition to providing the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, the 2.2 release provides new scalability capabilities, migration tools and features to expand the performance and security of the solution.
Posted July 07, 2010
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), a Linux certification organization, announced that it delivered over 258,000 exams and 85,000 certifications worldwide. LPI's industry standard certifications are delivered in thousands of locations worldwide and in multiple languages, with the support of employers, vendors, and trainers.
Posted July 07, 2010
Red Hat last week released the second beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The first beta was released in April, and incorporated a range of new and upgraded features. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta 2 provides an updated installer, additional new technologies and resolutions to many of the issues that were reported in the initial beta. Red Hat is asking customers and partners who are testing the initial beta to install and continue their testing with beta 2.
Posted July 07, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of its SQL Anywhere 12 database and synchronization solution. A core component of the Sybase Mobility Platform, SQL Anywhere is optimized for mission-critical database applications running outside traditional data center environments requiring little or no onsite IT support. According to Chris Kleisath, senior director of engineering, SQL Anywhere 12 represents a major platform release, providing many key new enhancements for performance and scalability such as support for storage and synchronization of spatial data, support for iPhone devices, and new self-management features.
Posted June 29, 2010
Rocket Software, a developer of enterprise modernization and SOA integration products, announced support for IBM Rational Open Access: RPG Edition for the IBM i platform. Rational's RPG Edition decouples application business logic from the 5250 screen layer and enables RPG developers to create new, non-screen-based access to RPG application functions.
Posted June 28, 2010
EnterpriseDB, a supplier of PostgreSQL-based solutions, and Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse and analytic appliances, announced a new partnership intended to ease database migration projects. Under the agreement, Netezza will resell EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which includes its Oracle Compatibility Layer, as Netezza Migrator. Migrator will be compatible with the Netezza TwinFin appliance.
Posted June 28, 2010
Sepaton, a provider of disk-based data protection solutions, announced it is shipping a new solution that provides for the guaranteed, auditable erasure of information on virtual tape cartridges. Sepaton's Secure Erasure, a licensed option for Sepaton's S2100-ES2 data protection systems, enables storage administrators to schedule all or selected cartridges for a total data overwrite with the clearing or purging of low, medium and high sensitivity data.
Posted June 28, 2010
dynaTrace software, a provider of application performance management (APM) software, has extended its Continuous APM system to business transaction management (BTM), enabling companies to manage every transaction from a business context from a single system, while also providing IT with actionable data.
Posted June 28, 2010
NEON Enterprise Software released its latest version of NEON zPrime, a software product that enables organizations to safely and legally offload work from IBM System z mainframes to low-cost IBM specialty processors (SPs), and potentially carve millions of dollars from IT budgets.
Posted June 28, 2010
Syncsort, a provider of data management software, announced a new set of solutions intended to help organizations accelerate mainframe application modernization initiatives while consuming fewer resources and reducing costs. At the core of the solution set is DMExpress, designed to deliver what Syncsort calls "extreme performance translation" of large amounts of mainframe data to open systems platforms, as well as transformation capabilities on the open systems platforms.
Posted June 28, 2010
Red Hat has announced a set of solutions for planning, building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service private and public clouds. The first series in its Red Hat Cloud Foundations line, dubbed Cloud Foundations: Edition One, targets private cloud efforts. Edition One bundles Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid. The solution also includes a "cookbook" implementation guide for cloud setup, as well as a detailed reference architecture providing step-by-step instructions, scripts and settings for creating and configuring private clouds. Red Hat is also providing consulting services and training to enable turnkey assessment, implementation and operational management of private clouds. Cloud Foundations: Edition One is "everything that a customer needs to successfully plan, deploy and manage a private cloud and it is the first in a family of Cloud Foundations that Red Hat will expand along with its partners to provide a complete set of cloud services." said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business Unit, at a press conference during last week's Red Hat Summit in Boston.
Posted June 28, 2010
Make SHARE a "must" this summer by joining hundreds of enterprise IT professionals in Boston by registering and booking your housing today. The discounted room rate ends June 30!
Posted June 28, 2010
New Aberdeen reports on best practices for decreasing cost and improving processing power on the mainframe are available now.
Posted June 23, 2010
Are you currently evaluating the business benefits of running virtualization in a distributed versus mainframe environment?
Posted June 23, 2010
This webcast hosted by Novell and IBM discusses the highly scalable, superior IT optimization and workload consolidation that System z delivers to a virtualized environment.
Posted June 23, 2010
At the recent Novell BrainShare EMEA event in Amsterdam, for which IBM was a sponsor, Jay Ennesser, vice president, Global Alliance Solutions, IBM, was interviewed about the emerging role of Linux in the cloud, and the strong IBM and Novell partnership which spans more than 10 years. Commenting on the role of Linux in the cloud, Ennesser noted it is already in utilities, water management systems, in how the infrastructure of people's homes is managed, and in cars. It is in everything people do every day and becoming more and more mainstream. "Cloud is just another natural extension of what has already gone on with Linux today. We will just provide you another opportunity from a cost of ownership point of view to deploy the services that are being deployed."
Posted June 23, 2010
Openness was the theme of the OpenForum Europe Summit 2010 earlier this month in Brussels. Speakers included Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president for the Digital Agenda, and Dr. Michael Karasick, vice president of technical and business strategy, IBM Software Group, as well as Don Deutsch, vice president, Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle, Prof. Yochai Benkler of Harvard University, and Prof. Nigel Shadbolt of University of Southampton.
Posted June 23, 2010
VMware and Novell have expanded their strategic partnership with an original equipment manufacturer agreement through which VMware will distribute and support the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. Under the agreement, VMware also intends to standardize its virtual appliance-based product offerings on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Posted June 23, 2010
Openness was the theme of the OpenForum Europe Summit 2010 earlier this month in Brussels. Speakers included Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president for the Digital Agenda, and Dr. Michael Karasick, vice president of technical and business strategy, IBM Software Group, as well as Don Deutsch, vice president, Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle, Prof. Yochai Benkler of Harvard University, and Prof. Nigel Shadbolt of University of Southampton.
Posted June 23, 2010
VMware and Novell have expanded their strategic partnership with an original equipment manufacturer agreement through which VMware will distribute and support the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system. Under the agreement, VMware also intends to standardize its virtual appliance-based product offerings on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Posted June 23, 2010
Sybase has announced the availability of Sybase Advantage Server 10, the latest version of its client/server database with both ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) table-based and SQL-based data access.
Posted June 23, 2010
Confio Software which offers Ignite 8 performance analysis software, has unveiled IgniteFree, which the company describes as the only free response-time database performance analysis tool. IgniteFree is carved from Ignite 8's primary feature set and gives DBAs a point-in-time view of bottlenecks in their database. IgniteFree for Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and DB2/LUW can be downloaded from Confio at no cost. "We have taken the core feature of Ignite - which is the response time monitoring - and we have packaged it in a free version so that you get all the response time information for real time monitoring for the past hour at no cost," Don Bergal, chief operating officer of Confio, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 22, 2010
At the Innovate 2010 conference, IBM announced new software and services, based on its Rational line of software development tools, intended to help deliver a new "systems of systems" approach for integrating products and services. "The value, lifecycle and ecosystem of any smart product today are driven by software," says Dr. Daniel Sabbah, IBM Rational general manager. "In order to build an enduring and innovative competency in software delivery, it must be managed as an agile and cost-effective business process within a framework that allows continuous improvements and accommodates change."
Posted June 14, 2010
SOA Software, a SOA and cloud services governance provider, announced Service Manager product version 6.0, designed to provide advanced virtualization, management, security, monitoring and mediation capabilities for SOA and cloud services, implemented using an OSGi-based architecture. "Private internal and private external cloud implementations probably make up the majority of what we are seeing in enterprises today," Alistair Farquharson, CTO for SOA Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "They definitely add another layer of governance automation to the mix - not only are you governing how applications should be built but where and how they are run. Enterprises are trying to save costs by automating as much of this infrastructure as possible and this creates risk without governance."
Posted June 14, 2010
ScaleMP, a provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, introduced a new version of its server virtualization for aggregation software platform, designed to help companies handle larger workloads, larger applications and support more and more building block component servers.
Posted June 14, 2010
Nasuni, a gateway to cloud storage, has partnered with Rackspace Hosting to offer customers a scalable online storage solution that leverages the power of the cloud. Rackspace customers will now be able to use cloud-based files for their primary storage needs, as Nasuni extends the use of the service's backup and file archiving. The combination of Rackspace and Nasuni simplifies file storage by eliminating the intricacies of backup or needing to manage multiple storage tiers.
Posted June 14, 2010
iTKO, a provider of virtualization and validation solutions for enterprise cloud applications, announced integration of its LISA software with the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform, based on the IBM Jazz platform. The combined products are intended to help to ease the challenges of developing and testing modern applications, including cloud-based services, integration platforms such as IBM WebSphere/MQ, DataPower and many more enabling technologies.
Posted June 14, 2010
Veryant, a COBOL and Java technology integration tool vendor, announced its isCOBOL Application Platform Suite (APS) 2010 Release 1 is "Compatible with Windows 7," having met all of Microsoft Corp.'s technical requirements for compatibility and reliability.
Posted June 14, 2010
ARM, IBM, and four additional vendors have founded a new not-for-profit company, Linaro, committed to providing new resources and industry alignment for open source software developers using Linux on sophisticated semiconductor System-on-Chips (SoCs). Linaro's work will help developers and manufacturers provide consumers with more choice, more responsive devices and more diverse applications on Linux-based systems.
Posted June 09, 2010
IBM has successfully leveraged its experience managing the world's largest computing environments to offer IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud. This offering, which is now available in the U.S. and Canada, is specifically designed to meet the security and reliability needs of enterprise-class clients. The offering will be available in additional geographies later this year.
Posted June 09, 2010
In the newest version of the semiannual Top500 list, Linux continues to dominate as the operating system of choice for the world's most advanced supercomputers. According to the latest list, compiled by compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, more than 90% of the Top500 fastest supercomputers run some version of Linux.
Posted June 09, 2010
Navigate your business through the economic downturn by lowering your total cost of ownership and embracing enterprise-class solutions using Red Hat Enterprise Linux with IBM Client for Smart Work. Attend this Wednesday, June 23rd webinar to learn how to apply the Liberate-Migrate-Virtualize strategies, which will help you optimize software licensing and prepare your organization to get more value from user-segment driven desktop virtualization, cloud computing, and client access choices.
Posted June 09, 2010
IBM has successfully leveraged its experience managing the world's largest computing environments to offer IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud. This offering, which is now available in the U.S. and Canada, is specifically designed to meet the security and reliability needs of enterprise-class clients. The offering will be available in additional geographies later this year.
Posted June 09, 2010
In the newest version of the semiannual Top500 list, Linux continues to dominate as the operating system of choice for the world's most advanced supercomputers. According to the latest list, compiled by compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, more than 90% of the Top500 fastest supercomputers run some version of Linux.
Posted June 09, 2010