OpenStack is becoming the most popular open source platform for building private and public clouds. The number of code commits and the engineering velocity of this project is matched by no other technology adoption in history. While OpenStack is merely two years old, there have been six production releases of it. Those who opted to deploy an OpenStack-based cloud a year ago are now likely running production workloads on a version of OpenStack that is three releases behind what they initially deployed. Just as the evolution of software development methodologies and high-level programming languages has empowered organizations to adopt continuous deployment practices at the application level, increased engineering velocity and innovation in the infrastructure space are now forcing companies to consider the same at the lower levels of the stack. In the modern age of distributed and ever-evolving infrastructure, traditional rip and replace methods of upgrading are no longer optimal. The problem becomes particularly acute when dealing with open source products such as OpenStack that do not offer a clear vendor-dictated upgrade path, tooling, and supporting services.
In a previous article we introduced the JBoss JMX monitoring capabilities and the Monitis JMX agent. Since most JEE web applications store data in relational databases accessed through JDBC, and the database is the most frequently cited source of performance bottlenecks, let’s take a closer look at how Monitis can help you.
Cloud computing has found its way into many organizations as business leaders and IT departments look to capitalize on the many benefits that cloud offers. As your company considers moving all or part of its IT operation to the cloud, a key decision is whether to rely on public cloud, private cloud, or a combination. Finalizing a cloud strategy must start with understanding your objectives and how they best align with the value each offering can provide. The public cloud can be characterized by IT resources delivered via the Internet using a standardized, self-service, pay-per-use methodology. Public clouds are designed to provide compute resources virtually at will – similar to that of a utility. Public clouds are highly standardized, allow limited customization, and their respective resources can be oversubscribed and massively shared. Workloads requiring inexpensive storage or compute cycles where known response time to the user community is not critical can be a fit with the public cloud.
I was sitting in a meeting sometime ago with a company that was embracing Scrum like a ten year old being offered a warm plate of chocolate chip cookies. They were grabbing at it as fast as they're little hands could reach out and grab the goodies. Watching this made me wonder what is was about Scrum that made them embrace it so emphatically. They had claimed to be an Agile shop for years, but were still failing to deliver quality software on time with in budget. Over the past years they refused every single proposed process improvement recommendation made by dozens of consultants. They literally went from zero process (using the name Agile to execute no process at all) to zealot Scrumbots overnight. After spending some time pondering this and interviewing a few people I found the answers I was looking for. Scrum was allowing them to preform the magic trick of perceived success better than they had ever been able to before just using the generic fake Agile process. A scary realization. This of course was not the fault of the Scrum process. It was the team's refusal to truly change anything except a few timelines, titles of individuals, and a few names like iteration to sprint.
As almost any causal bystander could have predicted, Oracle and Google couldn’t come to terms after a Pollyanna magistrate judge ordered them to try to settle their differences over Java and Android one more time last week ahead of a jury trial starting April 16. It’s just a good thing there have been no reports of Oracle co-president Safra Katz picking her teeth with the bones of Android chief Andy Rubin, both of whom were told to show up for the negotiations and presumably did. The judge sent out word Monday that “Despite their diligent efforts and those of their able counsel, the parties have reached an irreconcilable impasse in their settlement discussions” and that “no further conferences shall be convened.”
You are a software service provider. You develop software for you clients. Majority of your clients are from a different city or even a different country. You are in a discussion with your client where you are exploring the option of adopting Agile Development Methodology for your next project. Does the above paragraph describe you? Are you concerned about how the whole thing will work out? If the above paragraph describes you, then I can assure you that you are not in minority. Many of us have been in a similar situation. The biggest challenge of adopting agile for an outsourced project is that there aren’t any clearly defined best practices available which you can adopt. The whole field is still evolving and the best practices are yet to emerge.
If you are planning to do build a career as a software developer, you have to be prepared to get trained and re-trained every couple of years. But how? If you’re lucky, your employer will send you to classes, otherwise you have to spend substantial amount of time self-studying. Back in the nineties I was hungry for the courseware. Going through these thick manuals on hot technologies was the shortest way to master them. Beside software developers, university professors and contract instructors are also looking for the courseware that would help them to teach the class without major surprises and failures in front of the students. No matter who you are, I’d like to offer you some extra materials that’ll help you in learning or teaching programming in Java and Java EE.
As many IT organizations continue to expand to the cloud outside of the Software as a Service space, they are faced with a significant security challenge – how do you meet your security requirements in the cloud provider's environment with its increased complexity and functionality that lies much closer to the hardware layer? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Garth Whitacre, a senior solutions architect within SHI’s Professional Service Organization, will focus on identifying a cloud provider's security controls and how to supplement them to meet your organization's specific needs.
Hmm, that’s curious. Fortune noticed that Vertica, the analytic database management software that HP bought early last year for ~$350 million, has been quietly shifted out from under Autonomy and its boss Mike Lynch, who was given information management to run when HP closed on the $10.2 billion Autonomy acquisition in October. In November HP announced its Next Generation Information Platform, a Big Data analytics platform based on Autonomy’s unstructured data analytics engine, IDOL 10, and Vertica’s analytics database. The platform combines structured and unstructured data into a unified workflow. Vertica is now under ex-Microsoftie Bill Veghte, who’s running HP’s software unit. Wonder what that says for Mike Lynch.
If you are clear about what governance means then you can skip the next section. However, if you have heard the term – Corporate Governance, SOA Governance, IT Governance – but you are not exactly sure about what it really means, then here is an explanation. Suppose you are interested that an entity works in a way you want it to work. If you are managing the entity then you have the necessity authority to ensure it. However, you don’t manage the entity directly then what do you do? To do anything you need to have some authority or influence over the entity. You can discuss with the management team of the entity and come to an agreement on what needs to be done. Then you also come to an agreement on how to ensure that what you have agreed is followed. In other words, you lay down a governance framework. Let us look at an example.
Ahead of a May 31 trial, HP and Oracle Monday separately asked the court for a summary judgment in its favor to resolve their bruising fight over whether Oracle can legally stop supporting servers based on Intel’s Itanium chip. HP, the biggest of the few Itanium users, claims Oracle is contractually obliged to continue supporting its Itanium boxes. Oracle claims it isn’t and stopped porting its software to the architecture last year claiming the chip was secretly at end of life. Oracle’s decision caused HP sales to tank. The litigation caps the dogfight HP sparked by hiring Léo Apotheker, the former CEO of Oracle’s hereditary enemy SAP, as its CEO and bringing in one-time Oracle president and now Oracle antagonist Ray Lane as non-executive chairman.
Oracle and Google have been ordered back into settlement talks. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, who tried to mediate a settlement last year over Oracle’s Java infringement beef with Google and Android, told the companies they have to sit down again before April 9, a week before the trial starts on April 16. They have to send Oracle co-president Safra Katz and Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin. The case is now pretty much an API copyright infringement case. Oracle’s patents claims having been decimated. Oracle could conceivably assert new patents in another case.
OpenXava is a framework for Rapid Java Web Development, 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 4.4 has some new interesting features
Vertica - an advanced database that is very simple to install and administer, thanks to the its modern design and purpose built architecture. Vertica is high-performing, advanced RDBMS that is very simple to install and administer, thanks to the its modern design and purpose built architecture. Once we execute all preparatory steps on database servers and download Vertica software as per Installation Guide, we are starting installation process on a two node cluster (host01, host02). You should note ease and simplicity of installation and database creation process. There are no extensive cluster and shared storage preparations on special hardware ( in sharp contrast with Oracle RAC installation, for example ). This is all happening on commodity hardware, yet we end up with extremely powerful cluster. Vertica is up to 100 times faster than classic RDBMSs like Oracle. It is truly horizontally scalable database ( scale out ) i.e., you simply scale processing power and storage capacity by adding new nodes.
If you are planning to take up TOGAF certification examination, you would definitely want to know how the release of TOGAF 9.1 impacts you. You would want to which version you need to study. Here is the simple guideline. If you are planning to appear for the exam… …before June 2012 the you should study TOGAF 9 …between June 2012 and May 2013 then you can study either TOGAF 9 of 9.1 …after June 2013 it is only TOGAF 9.1
CCC Information Services Inc. has selected an Oracle Fusion Middleware-based solution to help the company realize greater efficiency in its development environment and to deliver improved performance to its installed customer base of approximately 21,000 collision repair facilities, 350 insurance companies and a range of other claims industry participants. CCC is the nation's leading provider of advanced software, workflow tools and enabling technologies to the automotive claims and collision repair industries. CCC is a customer advisor to Oracle through the Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategy Council. With Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite 11g, Oracle Coherence and other Oracle Fusion Middleware products, including Oracle Identity Management, Oracle JDeveloper, and Oracle WebCenter, CCC can simplify its technology environment and minimize development time, improving the company's ability to quickly deliver enhanced solutions to customers.
Four-year-old Ctera Networks, which sells a hybrid cloud storage enablement suite to SMBs and enterprise branches, has gotten a third funding round, this one led by the ever chi-chi Venrock with a strategic investment from Cisco and participation by existing backer Benchmark Capital. Benchmark provided Ctera’s A and B rounds but nobody outside the Israel start-up seems to know how much has come in including this time. Venrock, which is thinking Big Data, gets a seat on the board. The new money is earmarked for expanding staff and addressing demand. Apparently Ctera has been seeing double-digit revenue growth the last seven quarters and claims to be reaching 100,000 business users.
SYS-CON Events announced today that Xsigo Systems, Inc., the leader in virtualized data center infrastructure, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Xsigo Systems provides innovative hardware and software solutions that enable IT organizations to create an agile, software-configurable fabric for the private cloud. Xsigo’s solutions are built on an open architecture that can virtualize and control the connectivity between any server, storage, and networking resource in the data center. The result is a data center fabric delivering up to 80Gbps of throughput, while reducing infrastructure costs by up to 50%, and cutting I/O complexity by 70%.
As IT Executives continue to focus on IT as a Service, how are the convergence of desktop, laptop and other intelligent mobile devices changing end-user computing? How is the rapid move to Software as a Service impacting this space? How does the end-user experience changing change our “personal computing” world through an “application store-front” interface? Will it spill over into how we work as professionals? How is cloud computing involved? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Sal Bruno, Lead Partner - Professional Services at SHI Enterprise Solution Services, will discuss these questions. The SHI Team is leveraging its initial Cloud Offering: Infrastructure as a Service to develop a follow on offering for the “workspace” to be delivered anytime, anywhere, to any device. Bruno will share a perspective of how the world of end-user computing is about to dramatically change in the enterprise and how to best prepare for it.
Amazon Web Services has been quietly reaching out to big business recently looking for business, sources have told us. And in that vein Thursday it agreed to work with open source private cloud peddler Eucalyptus Systems so companies can have an on-premise cloud that nicely migrates workloads to Amazon. It’s a big concession for Amazon which has regarded private and hybrid clouds as heretical. It’s bowing to corporate demand for personal control, fostered heavily by safety concerns and crashes, reckoning it’s just a stage that companies will eventually grow out of along with their data centers and increasingly creaky legacy investments as they get used to the cloud. While it waits, it’s going support Eucalyptus and help it extend the compatibility of its existing AWS APIs.
Much of the confusion over Cloud Computing comes from software and hardware vendors. After all, they’ve all had to scramble for a new Cloud value proposition once they realized that Cloud Computing would eventually doom the old way of selling their gear. For most such vendors, their Cloud strategies are works in progress. Yes, they may have a bona fide Cloud offering, but if you look more closely, the Cloud benefits you’re expecting may not yet be available. Our advice? Caveat emptor.
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.
Changing business dynamics make it difficult to ensure your infrastructure can adapt with the change. Learn how to leverage the best the cloud can offer by making your business completely portable. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Rich Werhun, VMware VCP, DataCore DCIE and Senior Sales Engineer at StorageCraft Technology Corporation, will show you how you can adopt the cloud and adapt to changing business needs with a portable IT infrastructure. Learn how technology that StorageCraft offers can enable your computer systems to be agnostic to underlying architecture – hypervisors, physical hardware, networks, as well as storage.
Business units' demand for speed and agility is leading them to circumvent IT and acquire cloud services, more than half of them from unmanaged clouds. Cloud computing may be taking the business world by storm, but its success could mean a "perfect storm" that endangers the role of IT. As a result, IT needs to step up now and change its approach to cloud services. This includes building trust with the lines of business, beginning to manage public cloud services, and pursuing increased automation for service provisioning and operations. These are the key findings of a survey commissioned by BMC Software and conducted by Forrester Research. The study, "Delivering on High Cloud Expectations," shows that business units' demand for speed and agility is leading them to circumvent IT and acquire cloud services, more than half of them from what were termed "unmanaged" clouds. Brian Singer, Lead Solutions Marketing Manager for BMC, said his company commissioned the survey in an effort to confirm what the company was hearing anecdotally from customers. "Cloud and software as a service (SaaS) are in enterprises in a big way," Singer said, "and we wanted to see how IT was dealing with them."
Progress Software Corporation made available the latest version of its JDBC drivers, Progress DataDirect Connect for JDBC 5.0. The standards-based, fully interoperable drivers enable organizations to enhance modern data-driven Java applications by expanding their feature set, performance, and scalability without making application code changes. Raymond Russo, Optum Development Manager at Impact Intelligence, verified driver performance: “After considerable testing, we found that the Progress DataDirect Connect for JDBC driver was able to insert a very large number of records into our database as quickly as possible using the advanced Bulk Load feature. This feature increased our time to transfer by 20 – 25 percent.”