Websphere News Desk

Smarter Computing and IT Consolidation with IBM's Enterprise Linux Server

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:00:00 EDT

Data centers today are stretched to the limits with fast-paced business demands. On top of that, integrating and managing IT infrastructures can pose major challenges. Organizations need a new solution that consolidates servers and workloads without breaking the bank—and Linux, together with IBM Enterprise Linux Server offers exactly that. In this informative webcast you’ll gain Jean's perspective on how you can overcome your IT challenges by optimizing workloads and lowering costs with an enterprise-wide Linux strategy, and gain “the flexibility of many and the efficiency of one.”

PaaS Deployment Models

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:58:58 EDT

Rapid deployment capability is table stakes when we are talking about a PaaS solution. Every vendor touts it, and to be frank, every user simply expects it to be there. While I think it is interesting to talk about rapid deployment and perhaps compare speed of one solution to that of another, I think it is infinitely more interesting to talk about the mechanics of deployment for a particular solution. That is, I think the more interesting and important question is ‘What deployment style does a particular solution take?' At a very high, black and white level, I think two primary deployment styles permeate the landscape of PaaS today: contained and referential. I want to compare each approach, but before that, let me use a few words to describe each style.

Big Data and the Cloud at Cloud Expo New York

Sat, 05 May 2012 12:00:00 EDT

Organizations in every industry, regardless of size or geography are embracing cloud computing as a way to reduce the complexity and costs associated with traditional IT approaches. This reality is driven by three related shifts: Customer, employee and partner expectations are changing as self-service consumption of technology and services becomes the norm. The economics of computing are changing as organizations access world-class computing power, now available anytime, anywhere. Faster delivery of higher-value products and services is now mandatory to address formidable competition and escalating customer and shareholder expectations.

IBM Slurps Up Tealeaf

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:16:00 EDT

IBM is going to buy Tealeaf Technology for its tealeaf-reading software, which lets marketing types analyze online buying data, spot trends in real-time and see if promotions work or not. They call the stuff Customer Experience Management (CEM) software. It’ll replay all the details of a customer’s visit to a web site to find site errors or issues and understand the impact that transaction failures have on business processes. It works across online and mobile devices. Terms were not disclosed.

IBM’s Buying Vivisimo for Its Big Data Push

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT

In the name of its Hadoop-based Big Data platform, IBM is buying Carnegie Mellon spin-off and enterprise search house Vivisimo on undisclosed terms. The Pittsburgh ISV, which has its own search and navigation system, is supposed to be good at “capturing and delivering quality information across the broadest range of data sources, no matter what format it is, or where it resides,” providing a “single view across the enterprise.” It’s all automated and can be used standalone or embedded. Vivisimo saw all of $5.66 million in funding from 2000 through 2008 according to CrunchBase, including a $4 million A round led by North Atlantic Capital.

IBM Rips Out Its Siebel Seats

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:00:00 EDT

IBM is ripping out a reported 67,000 internal Siebel seats that it’s been paying Oracle for – the same Oracle that competes with IBM at the top of its voice – and replacing them with SugarCRM. It’s to say the least a boost for SugarCRM, which is doubtlessly thinking IPO at some point, because not only is IBM reselling SugarCRM, it’s eating the dog food – a great reference as well as a way into the enterprise. Sugar’s chief attraction is reportedly the fact that unlike, say, Salesforce.com, Sugar is agnostic about clouds. You can use its cloud or anybody’s cloud like, say, IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise. And it’s not as cumbersome, restrictive and expensive as, ahem, older solutions. SugarCRM claims to be the third-biggest CRM vendor out there with 10 million downloads to its credit, over a million active users, some 7,000 organizations using it and 30,000 registered developers.

IBM Sells POS Unit in Lenovo-Like Deal

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:30:00 EDT

In a deal reminiscent of IBM selling its PC unit to Lenovo, its printer unit to Ricoh and its hard drive unit to Hitachi, Big Blue is dumping its point-of-sales terminal business figuring it’s got better things to do like software and the cloud. Toshiba Tec, the Japanese maker of scanners and barcode machines, and 50% owned by Toshiba, is going to buy the business for about $850 million. Toshiba and Toshiba Tec are also thinking about the cloud. The systems IBM’s Retail Store Solutions (RSS) sells are used to process and record transactions, manage inventory and collect and analyze data including purchasing trends. The acquisition will make Toshiba Tec the world’s largest vendor of retail machines and boost its collaborative cloud platform.

IBM Buying Varicent Software

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:15:00 EDT

IBM has gotten as predictable in its acquisitions as it used to be in its suits. It’s buying another analytics house. This time it’s Varicent Software from up Toronto way. And again IBM isn’t saying what it’s paying. Nine-year-old Varicent does analytics software for compensation and sales performance management. More specifically, it automates and analyzes the collection and reporting of sales data across finance, sales, HR and IT. Blue figures it can be used horizontally, and combined with other stuff in its grab bag delivered through on-premise or cloud models. Les Rechan, the general manager of business analytics at IBM, said the Varicent purchase would advance Blue’s efforts to get analytics into the hands of front-line employees in the name of improving the bottom line.

IBM Puts All Its Experience in a Box

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT

In case nobody noticed, IBM put its reputation on the line the other day. It said it had distilled all the years of experience it got from tens of thousands of customer engagements around the world – and nobody can compete with that – into a box, an “expert integrated system” that it made every conceivable marketing claim about, beginning with making everything utterly simple. It said it was a snap to deploy, cuts application deployment time from maybe, say, six months all told to a month, and uses self-healing intelligent software to install, maintain, update and monitor itself and all its parts from operating systems through to applications to cut support costs. Blessedly the thing reportedly doesn’t need ham-fingered human intervention so IT can go off and do cleverer, creative things because it’s no longer worried about just keeping the lights on and spending 70% of its budget on maintenance. The nimble miracle box is called PureSystems – which makes it sound like it’s been through some sort of ritual bath – and it’s supposed to put IBM at the head of the next technology curve.

IBM and Red Hat Join OpenStack

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:45:00 EDT

OpenStack announced Thursday that, as expected, it’s moving to a foundation governance model with a published framework that’s supposed to limit Rackspace’s dominance of the nascent open source cloud platform. OpenStack is an alternative to Amazon. Citrix started a competing effort to OpenStack last week around its open source CloudStack, which unlike OpenStack uses Amazon APIs. These APIs are supposed to make Amazon, which now also has the open source Eucalyptus in its corner, the de facto standard. The new Open Stack Foundation has eight companies kicking in as platinum members including IBM and Red Hat, which have both been working in the background until now. In fact, Red Hat says it ranks third of all corporate members in contributions to date.

Part V: PureSystems, Something Old, Something New, Something from Big Blue

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:01:00 EDT

So what about vendor or technology lock in? So who is responsible for vendor or technology lock in? When I was working in IT organizations, (e.g. what vendors call the customer) the thinking was vendors are responsible for lock in. Later when I worked for different vendors (manufactures and VARs) the thinking was lock in is what was caused by the competition. More recently I'm of the mind set that vendor lock in is a shared responsibility issue and topic. I'm sure some marketing wiz or sales type will be happy to explain the subtle differences of how their solution does not cause lock in.

Part IV: PureSystems, Something Old, Something New, Something from Big Blue

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:01:00 EDT

What could very well differentiate IBM PureSystems from those of other competitors is to take what their partner NetApp has done with FlexPods combing third-party applications from Microsoft and SAP among others and take it to the next level. Similar to what helped make EMC Centera a success (or at least sell a lot of them) was inclusion and leveraging third-party ISVs and BPs to add value. Compared to other vendors with object based or content accessible storage (CAS) or online archive platforms that focused on the technology feature, function speeds and feeds, EMC realized the key was getting ISVs to support so that BPs and their own direct sales force could sell the solution.

Part I: PureSystems, Something Old, Something New, Something from Big Blue

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:01:00 EDT

Yet for another generation who may not yet be future IBM followers, fans, partners or customers, there could be a sense of something new and revolutionary with the PureFlex and PureApplication systems (twitter @ibmpuresystems). In between those two groups, exist others who are either scratching their heads or reinvigorated with enthusiasm to get out and be able to discuss opportunities around little data (traditional and transactional) and big data, servers, virtualized, converged infrastructure, dynamic data centers, private clouds, ITaaS, SaaS and AaaS, PaaS, IaaS and other related themes or buzzword bingo topics.

OpenXava 4.4: Rapid Development for WebSphere Portal

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:43:18 EDT

IBM Acquires Worklight

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:00:00 EST

How about we start this post off with some facts? - Mobile data traffic exceeded voice traffic in 2010 (Wireless Industry News, August 26, 2010) - Shipments of smartphones exceeded the shipment of PCs for the first time in 2011 (2011 Economist) - Ten billion mobile connected devices are expected to be in use by 2020 (2011 Economist) - 74% of surveyed CIOs indicated mobile capabilities were a top investment priority over the next three to five years (2011 IBM Global CIO Study)

Compuware Supports IBM WebSphere Environments with dynaTrace 4.1

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:15:00 EST

Compuware on Monday released Compuware dynaTrace 4.1, an application performance management (APM) solution to provide full support for IBM WebSphere Message Broker. dynaTrace 4.1 also adds to its User Experience Management (UEM) capabilities, enhances visualization and integrates with Compuware Gomez Real-User Monitoring - Data Center. dynaTrace 4.1 provides broad support of IBM WebSphere and brings cutting-edge APM to IBM WebSphere environments including WebSphere Message Broker, Application Servers and Portal Servers. dynaTrace advanced end-to-end transaction tracing and UEM combine to provide development, test and operational insight into WebSphere infrastructures. "Customers across industries and around the world rely on the IBM WebSphere stack and WebSphere Message Broker to conduct tens of millions critical business transactions a day, and now they enjoy unprecedented visibility into those transactions from the world's leading APM solution," said John Van Siclen, General Manager of Compuware's APM business unit. "The end result is significantly improved time-to-value and faster ROI for WebSphere deployments and updates. Development, test and production costs are all slashed by reducing the time it takes to create, debug and finalize production releases."

APM Industry Support for IBM WebSphere Environments with dynaTrace 4.1

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:25:00 EST

Compuware Corporation the technology performance company, today announced the release of Compuware dynaTrace 4.1, the industry's first application performance management (APM) solution to provide full support for IBM WebSphere Message Broker. dynaTrace 4.1 also adds to its powerful User Experience Management (UEM) capabilities, enhances visualization and integrates with Compuware Gomez(R) Real-User Monitoring - Data Center. This new release furthers Compuware's leadership in the APM industry and extends its ability to deliver unprecedented business agility, cost optimization and competitive advantages to the marketplace.

IBM Buys Worklight

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

IBM is buying a privately held 12-year-old Israeli outfit called Worklight for its write-once-run-anywhere application platform and tools for smartphones and tablets. The price IBM is paying wasn’t disclosed. Worklight’s widgetry, which can be used to create and run HTML5, hybrid and native apps, is supposed to put new and existing consumer and employee-facing apps on multiple mobile devices – including iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids – and then securely connect them to a company’s data center. It includes an IDE, middleware, management and analytics and is supposed to reduce time to market, cost and complexity. The apparently key acquisition is expected to close this quarter and be part of IBM’s Software Group.

IBM Acquires Platform Computing

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 EST

IBM on Monday announced it has completed the acquisition of Platform Computing, a privately held company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed. On October 11, 2011, IBM announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Platform Computing, a global leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software for distributed computing environments. Platform Computing's focused technical and distributed computing management software helps clients create, integrate and manage shared computing environments that are used in compute- and data-intensive applications such as simulations, computer modeling and analytics. These technical and high performance computing (HPC) applications fuel product development, critical business decisions and breakthrough science in financial services, manufacturing, digital media, oil and gas, life sciences, government, research and education. More than 2,000 clients, including 23 of the top 30 largest global enterprises, use Platform Computing solutions.

IBM Acquires Cloud Software Testing Enabler, Green Hat

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:00:00 EST

After a spate of recent acquisition announcements from IBM like DemandTec Inc., Emptoris Inc. and Curam Software Ltd, the IT services giant continues to stay in mode with yet another one. IBM has just said that it is acquiring software quality improvement and cloud testing company Green Hat, which is headquartered in London, England, and Wilmington, Delaware, for an undisclosed amount. Green Hat's application virtualization technology helps developers conduct testing on a software application by leveraging the cloud as a virtual test environment instead of the traditional method of running simulation testing by physically constructing a full-blown testing lab composed of both hardware and software. This becomes more relevant in the context of the current explosion in the mobile applications market for smartphones and tablets. These applications require shorter development cycles and so virtual regressions are more cost-effective and time-efficient. Green Hat will bring additional functionality in terms of features, bandwidth and scalability to IBM's Rational Software business, which already offers a suite of software development and testing tools. The newly acquired testing solutions will be offered through IBM Global Business Services' Application Management Services (AMS).

IBM to Acquire Green Hat

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:00:00 EST

IBM on Wednesday announced a definitive agreement to acquire Green Hat, a provider of software quality and testing solutions for the cloud and other environments. Financial terms were not disclosed. Kristof Kloeckner, General Manager, IBM Rational, noted that the “acquisition extends IBM’s leadership in driving business agility and software quality by changing the way enterprises can manage software development cost, test cycle time and risk.” Founded in 1996, Green Hat is jointly headquartered in London, England and Wilmington, Delaware. Green Hat helps customers improve the quality of software applications by enabling developers to leverage cloud computing technologies to conduct testing on a software application prior to its delivery. Historically, to run simulation testing on a software program, a development team must construct an actual testing lab made up of both hardware and software. This time consuming and labor intensive process has become even more compounded with the short development cycle needed to compete in rapidly expanding markets such as those for smart phones and tablets. By using Green Hat’s solutions, a virtual test environment can be set up in a matter of minutes versus weeks, and for a fraction of the cost.

Rapid Development for WebSphere Portal

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:59:45 EST

OpenXava is a framework for Rapid Development of portlet applications compatible with WebSphere Portal. It is well-suited for business and database oriented applications. OpenXava allows you develop applications just by writing simple domain classes with Java or Groovy. The user interface is generated automatically in runtime, without code generation. OpenXava 4.3 adds support for total properties in collections, it has a new editor for HTML_TEXT stereotype, add info and warning messages and some other useful new features. Now you can use square brakets in @ListProperties to asociate one or more properties of the container entity to a property of the collection. In this way you can add arbitrary values as totals.

IBM Buys DemandTec for Its Cloud-ified Analytics

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:00:00 EST

IBM said Thursday morning that it was buying DemandTec for $13.20 a share, close to 57% premium. Big Blue will ante up roughly $440 million, net of DemandTec’s cash on hand, to take over the cloud-based ISV for its 10-month-old Smarter Commerce initiative. IBM estimates the market opportunity for Smarter Commerce at $20 billion in software alone. By running different customer buying scenarios, DemandTec’s subscription-based price, promotion, merchandising and marketing analytics are supposed to help users define their best price points and product mix based on customer buying trends both online and in stores. DemandTec has approximately 450 customers worldwide mostly in retail and consumer products like groceries, drug stores, convenience shops, consumer electronics, office supplies, apparel, department stores and fast food. IBM said it also has 31 patents in the areas of pricing, response analysis and promotion analysis.

Warren Buffett Buys 5.5% of IBM

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:00:00 EST

Tech-shy Warren Buffett disclosed on CNBC Monday morning that his company Berkshire Hathaway has acquired a ~5.5% position in IBM since March, spending about $10.7 billion to pick up roughly 64 million shares. He said he spent about $170 a share on average. IBM was up nearly $2 pre-market to $189.25, tickled 1% on the news. Its top has been $190.53. A close friend of Bill Gates, Buffet is famous for steering clear of high-tech investments. Now he said he regrets not buying IBM back when Lou Gerstner was running the company. Reading IBM’s 2010 annual report persuaded him. He said IBM details its growth plans and delivers on its promises. Its “stickiness” with IT departments and big stock buy-backs also contributed.

IBM and Jaspersoft Pair Up on Big Data

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:45:00 EDT

IBM is adding Jaspersoft to its extensive BI collection. The pair will be combining IBM’s enterprise-class Hadoop-based InfoSphere BigInsights with Jaspersoft’s BI suite to provide a complete reporting and management solution. Jaspersoft is licensing and integrating InfoSphere BigInsights under an Application Specific Licensing Agreement. The resulting Jaspersoft for InfoSphere BigInsights is supposed to combine the power of IBM’s analytics platform to manage, analyze and provide deep insight into Big Data with Jaspersoft’s ability to extract key information using reporting, dashboard and analytics views in one integrated solution.

IBM Names Ginni Rometty as CEO

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:45:00 EDT

After the market closed Tuesday, IBM’s president and CEO Sam Palmisano, 60, unexpectedly passed the touch to his successor Virginia Rometty, 54, who will become the first woman ever to run IBM. She starts January 1. Palmisano, CEO since 2002, will remain chairman. IBM CEOs have traditionally hung up their spurs at 60. It was thought Palmisano would stay on. Rometty, who was tipped for the job and has been at IBM for 30 years, will also be on the IBM board come the New Year. She currently heads sales, marketing and strategy. IBM, now a $99 billion concern and the second most valuable high-tech company by market cap, said she “has successfully led several of IBM’s most important businesses over the past decade – from the formation of IBM Global Business Services to the build-out of our Growth Markets Unit. But she is more than a superb operational executive. With every leadership role, she has strengthened our ability to integrate IBM’s capabilities for our clients.” She is credited with championing and then integrating IBM’s 3.5 billion PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting acquisition and pushing into the cloud and analytics. Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina was reportedly willing to pay $19 billion for PWC but couldn’t get it done. Palmisano has left it to Romettty to deliver on his promise to realize $20 a share by 2015. During his tenure, IBM exited commodity businesses, including PCs, printers and hard disk drives, and pushed into emerging markets in China, India, Brazil, Russia and other developing countries, which Rometty spearheaded and which now account for 23% of IBM’s revenues. Rometty’s obvious rival for the job was Steve Mills, now responsible for both hardware and software. He reportedly didn’t want to be CEO. Her elevation will put her in a tiny league consisting of Meg Whitman, now running HP, and Ursula Burns, who runs Xerox. Other women running Fortune 500 companies include Indra Nooyi of Pepsico and Ellen Kullman of DuPont. “Progressive social policies” had nothing to do with Rometty’s appointment according to Palmisano. In a prepared statement she said, “Sam had the courage to transform the company based on his belief that computing technology, our industry, even world economies would shift in historic ways. All of that has come to pass. Today, IBM’s strategies and business model are correct….Sam taught us, above all, that we must never stop reinventing IBM.”

IBM's Cloud Billows

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EDT

IBM wants 200 million users on its cloud widgetry by the end of next year. It has to get to them before Oracle, HP or Dell do. It projects $7 billion in revenue from cloud computing hardware, software and services by 2015. To advance its ambition it’s unveiled a new “simplified” enterprise-grade public cloud PaaS it calls SmartCloud Application Services (SCAS) that will ride on its SmartCloud Enterprise and Enterprise+ IaaS, which won’t be deployed globally until the end of next year. Initially it’ll be US-only. SCAS is supposed to be safe enough for new and traditional mission-critical enterprise applications development and deployment. IBM promises cloud-based economics along with enterprise-grade security and governance, open Java and “cross-platform support with no vendor lock-in.” It’s to beta later this quarter with what IBM calls “business-centric” SLAs. What they are exactly isn’t clear. Among Blue’s offerings is a new SmartCloud for SAP Applications service for automating the most common labor-intensive tasks associated with managing SAP environments in the cloud. The widgetry will put all databases on the cloud IBM said.

IBM OEMs Nirvanix Cloud Storage

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EDT

IBM Global Services is going to be OEMing Nirvanix’ enterprise-grade cloud storage under what the pair calls a strategic partnership. IBM said integrating Nirvanix would give its SmartCloud storage services a solution capable of supporting millions of users, billions of objects and exabytes of data to complement its secure cloud-ified virtual server environments. The technology IBM is bringing on board is supposed to let users upload any size file just once rather than force them to upload the same file multiple times in multiple geographies because of strict file-size limitations. They will still get continuous access to the data at multiple redundant locations. IBM says the widgetry is ideal for unstructured data as well as for storing objects in which data, metadata and index are all encapsulated as one blob. Each node in the SmartCloud storage service knows what’s stored in its neighboring nodes so they essentially work like a massive, cross-connected grid.

IBM Buys Platform Computing

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EDT

IBM is buying HPC pioneer Platform Computing for its cluster, grid and cloud management software. Terms were not disclosed. The privately held Canadian company, now almost 20 years old, is thought to have revenues of around $70 million-a-year. It claims 2,000 customers including 23 of the Global 30. IBM said it considered the acquisition “a strategic element for the transformation of HPC into the high-growth segment of technical computing and an important part of our smarter computing strategy.” It figures the widgetry can be leveraged across IBM and paired with its Big Data analytics capabilities. IBM used IDC’s estimate to fix the combined opportunity for servers, storage and systems software for technical computing at over $14 billion this year, a number expected to grow over 8% a year to $18.5 billion by 2014.

IBM Buys Q1 Labs

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:45:00 EDT

IBM is buying privately held security ISV Q1 Labs, whose software is used to detect hacking threats and attacks through real-time data analysis. Terms were not disclosed. Q1 Labs, which competes with HP’s ArcSight acquisition and EMC’s RSA unit, will become part of a new IBM Security Systems Division to be run by Q1 CEO Brendan Hannigan and combine 10 other security acquisitions IBM’s made in the last few years.

IBM Donating Cooperative Web Technology

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:53:00 EDT

IBM on Monday announced that the company is donating new software code to help health care and other industries work on shared content in real-time, on the Web. The code is from IBM Project Blue Spruce and will be donated to the Dojo Foundation’s Open Cooperative Web Framework (OpenCoweb). Developed in the IBM labs, Project Blue Spruce allows people to simultaneously interact and update content in real-time via a web browser on computers and the Apple iPad and includes video chat. For example, using Project Blue Spruce, a sales rep could in a browser conduct a video chat with a client while they complete an online sales form together. Today, researchers for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are using the IBM code to help analyze health records of patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPDGeneR).

The Value of Workload-Aware Management

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:30:00 EDT

A couple of weeks ago, I dropped by the Intel Developer Forum to present a session and listen in on a few others. As always in these types of shows, I learned quite a bit. Most strikingly though, I was reminded of something that is probably quite obvious to many of you: Consumer interest in cloud computing will not be letting up any time soon. Based on this, and some of the other things I heard at the show, I decided to catch up with fellow IBMer Marc Haberkorn. Marc is an IBM Product Manager and is responsible for IBM Workload Deployer amongst other things. I asked him about IBM Workload Deployer, the competition, and cloud in general.

SOA Software Appoints Former IBMer as VP Technology

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:00:00 EDT

SOA Software has appointed Corey Scobie to the position of Vice President Technology, the company announced on Tuesday. Scobie, who has been a leader in the IT industry with roles ranging from software development to SOA portfolio strategy, will become part of SOA Software's senior technology development group. At SOA Software, Scobie will be involved in SOA Governance, partner activities and the company's growing API management product line. Commenting on the announcement Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, stated "We are looking forward to Corey’s contributions to our efforts, especially in partner integration and SOA architecture."

An A-Z of Cloud Computing at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:00:00 EDT

An alphabetical selection of some of the many themes & topics to be discussed at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (9th Cloud Expo) - being held November 7-10, 2011, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA. The markets may still be melting, but Cloud Expo is definitely coming of age!

Google Buys Some Java Patents Off IBM

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:15:00 EDT

Google has bought what appears to be another 1,023 patents from IBM, a transfer recorded by the US Patent and Trademark Office Wednesday and noticed by Bloomberg, which said Google bought them on August 17. The PTO also transferred 1,030 patents from IBM to Google in July after Google lost the auction for 6,000-odd Nortel patents to the combined might of Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, Sony and EMC and their $4.5 billion. The blog SEO by the Sea flipped through the latest IBM haul and says the batch includes a bunch of Java and scripting-based patents. Whether any of them can defuse Oracle’s massive Java infringement suit against Google and its Android operating system is unclear.

IBM Buying i2

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:45:00 EDT

IBM is buying yet another business analytics outfit. This time it’s UK-based i2, which looks out for crime, fraud and security threats via unstructured Big Data. Financial terms with the investor group headed by Silver Lake Sumeru that owns i2 were not disclosed. I2’s got 4,500 customers in 150 countries in banking, defense, health care, insurance, law enforcement, national security and retail including 12 of the top 20 retail banks globally and eight of the top 10 largest companies in the world. IBM expects to join its real-time analytical solutions with i2’s technologies.

IBM Buys Algorithmics for $387 Million

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:00:00 EDT

IBM is buying Algorithmics, the Toronto-based risk analytics firm, for $387 million cash. Its services are used by 350 banks, investment and insurance businesses such as Allianz, HSBC, Nomura and Société Générale. The money will go to the Fitch Group, the credit ratings agency majority owned by Fimalac, the Paris holding company. The acquisition will add 900 people to IBM’s Software Group. Blue’s business analytics and optimization team, the result of $14 billion spent on 25 acquisitions the last five years, currently has more than 8,000 consultants including 200 mathematicians with more than 500 patents.

An Eye on the Competition

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EDT

When it comes to IBM Workload Deployer, I have no illusions regarding the veracity of our competitors. They are out there, and they are constantly on the attack. Their dubious claims aside, I know this because I still get asked quite frequently to explain the benefits of IBM Workload Deployer versus some other general purpose cloud provisioning and management solution. So, while I have done that many times in various forums, I figured it was time to yet again address this question.

After Five-Year Drought, Java SE7 Is Here

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EDT

Java SE 7, the Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 is out. It’s the first major release in five years and took 9,494 bug fixes, 1,966 enhancements, 9,018 changesets, 147 builds and four JSRs to get here. It’s also the first release of the Java platform under Oracle’s stewardship, and threatened not to happen until Oracle put its foot down and went off and wheeled and dealed and leveraged IBM. (Remember the Apache Foundation stalking off and slamming the door?) Still, it’s based on the open source OpenJDK, making it something of a novelty for a commercial release.

GSX Solutions SVP Eileen Fitzgerald Selected as IBM Champion

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:40:00 EDT

GSX Solutions, a provider of proactive, consolidated monitoring, reporting of enterprise messaging, mobile and collaboration environments, including Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES), is proud to congratulate senior executive Eileen Fitzgerald for being selected as one of this year's IBM Champions. Fitzgerald, GSX Senior VP for Customer Delivery and Product Management, worked in the Global Notes environment for over 15 years and then focused on Service Delivery, managing Notes services, infrastructures and functionalities according to Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Standards. She is also a co-organizer for several Lotus User Group conferences (such as ILUG and UKLUG) and a regular speaker at IBM Lotusphere.