As sick as Steve Jobs is he left Apple Monday in great shape and his departure only created a ripple in the stock. The company, now the second most valuable in the world, ended December with a record $26.74 billion in revenues, up 71%, and record net profits of $6 billion, up 78%, or $6.43 a share, with gross margins at 38.5%, down from 40.9% but better than the expected 36%. Estimates called for earnings of $5.38 a share on revenues of $24.4 billion. Jobs left behind a message saying, “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year.” Nobody asked about him on the conference call and Apple executives ignored the dire unplumbed situation.
This time it’s the European Commission that’s been between a rock and a hard place. It’s reportedly been teetering on the brink of a full-blown investigation of the Intel-McAfee deal but if it derailed Intel’s $7.7 billion acquisition of McAfee it would look like a Luddite with its foot on the neck of progress and if it waved it through it could get hauled into court by a McAfee rival complaining about it. However, Reuters said Thursday that to overcome the EC’s hesitancy Intel sweetened the pot and added more concessions to the ones Intel and McAfee supposedly already made.
The word to describe Mark Hurd’s departure from HP is changing from head-scratching to investigated. In response to a shareholder suit complaining about his handsome $40 million-$50 million exit package when he could have simply been fired for cause, HP is proposing to have members of its board who weren’t there last August when Hurd was ousted hire a fresh crop of lawyers and open a new investigation. That’s on top of the SEC investigation now going on. Until HP overhauled its board Thursday, the only new directors were Hurd’s replacement CEO Léo Apotheker and non-executive chairman Ray Lane. Not exactly your most objective team of inquisitors. Lane has already called Hurd a liar in print and both men are nursing deep-seated grudges against Oracle, Hurd’s current place of employment.
With the emergence of cloud computing, enterprise Java applications need to be easy-to-use, provide access anywhere/anytime, and enable collaboration. Until recently, developers were in the dark when it came to navigating cloud application development. VMware’s Application Platform helps developers meet the ever changing demands of this growing industry by driving Java innovation through portability and productivity. In his session at the 8th International Cloud Expo, Rod Johnson, senior vice president of the Application Platform Division at VMware, will explain how to tackle the challenges of Java applications development in the private, public or hybrid cloud, and walk away with a keen understanding of what it takes to push application development forward in this new era.
Jinfonet Software, a provider of Java reporting, on Tuesday announced reporting solutions for Salesforce.com’s cloud database, Database.com. This new development provides the ability to create reports and dashboards to directly access Database.com, an enterprise database built for the cloud. As a result of this support, JReport can now access Database.com using SQL, just like accessing any other data source. Providing business intelligence solutions for Database.com simplifies the development of cloud-based enterprise applications.
There are two major drivers behind the need to embrace parallelism: the dramatic shift to commodity multicore CPUs, and the striking increase in the amount of data being processed by the applications that run our enterprises. These two factors must be addressed by any approach to parallelism or we will find ourselves falling short of resolving the crisis that is upon us. While there are data-centric approaches that have generated interest, including Map-Reduce, dataflow programming is arguably the easiest parallel strategy to adopt for the millions of developers trained in serial programming. The blog at http://www.thevirtualcircle.com/2010/01/why-should-we-care-about-paralle... gives a nice summary of why parallel processing is important. Let’s start with an overview of the supported parallelism available today in modern processors. First there is processor-level parallelism involving instruction pipelining and other techniques handled by the processor. These are all optimized by compilers and runtime environments such as the Java Virtual Machine. This goodness is available to all developers without much effort on our part.
The restrictions JPA imposes on callback methods made them practically useless in real-life applications. Surely these restrictions have a good technical reason behind them, but from a business application developer perspective they mean that JPA callback methods are practically useless. The section 3.5 of JPA specification states: "In general, the lifecycle method of a portable application should not invoke EntityManager or Query operations, access other entity instances, or modify relationships within the same persistence context. A lifecycle callback method may modify the non-relationship state of the entity on which it is invoked."
Reader Alex posted this comment on my Java on the client…again post (I’m only quoting Alex’s last paragraph). This is a very interesting part: "For good or ill, the debate is becoming moot as mobile takes over. The future of “client-side” Java is most likely on Android. What remains on the desktop will either be in the browser or split among increasingly irrelevant technologies like Swing, .NET, and Flash. The degree to which Sun/Oracle has screwed up Swing at this point is truly epic."
There are a number of developers that know some programming language, but adding Java and Java EE (formerly J2EE) to their resumes could increase their chances to find a better paid jobs. For example, I'm dealing with lots of Adobe Flex developers, and about half of them have no or little understanding of what's going on the Java servers, which "somehow" respond to the requests of the well done rich Flex UI. There are legions of low-paid Web developers who know PHP and nothing else.
If only they knew Java...But they often just can't get off billing to learn Java. Besides, what does it mean to learn Java? Learning the syntax of the language? There's no demand for people who just know the syntax of Java, or as a matter of fact any other language. So what to learn? The Java ecosystem is huge - there are lots of technologies and frameworks. People get scared. People don't want to boil the ocean.
Employers are looking for people for solid understanding of Java and Java EE technologies. So if you are looking for the guidance and are motivated, enroll in my online training class that I'll be teaching starting from March 8. The classes will take place on Tuesdays and Fridays from Noon to 2:30PM New York time (GMT-5). Resident of the Eastern states of the USA can take a long lunch twice a week and attend these classes without leaving their offices. For people who live in Europe, India, or Middle East this is an evening training (sorry Australia, Japan, and China). You'll be surprised, but not every person who lives in India knows Java yet.
It doesn’t matter in which country you live now, as long as you have stable Internet connection (e.g. watch American youtube videos without pauses), you may benefit from this training.
You’ll hear my voice and see my computer screen. You'll be using the fresh Java Tutorial that I wrote for Wiley. You’ll be able to ask questions and do the homework. Visit this Web page for the program description and registration.
Interested? Then enroll in this class and get in charge of your career.
Gartner now figures that global IT spending will rise 5.1% this year and hit $3.6 trillion, more than the 3.5% increase it previously projected. The researcher has also recalculated 2010 to show a 5.4% gain to $3.4 trillion rather than the 3.2% increase it thought. It cited the weakness in the dollar as it rationale but warned that the 2011 forecast “is far from certain, given continued macroeconomic uncertainty.” Recovery in the US and Europe is slow and the emerging economies may not be able to maintain relatively high growth rates. Telecom equipment is supposed to be up 9.1% this year to $465.4 billion, IT service 4.6% to $817.9 billion and computer hardware and enterprise software 7.5% to $391.3 billion and $235.9 billion, respectively.
Nvidia says it’s going to spin the ARM chip it licenses into high-performance parts for PCs, workstations, servers and supercomputers. It calls the initiative Project Denver. It’s hoping to construct a major challenge to Intel – which is threatening Nvidia’s graphics business – and it’s got the support of Microsoft along with the tacit support of the cloud crowd if it can pull it off. It describes the thing as an Nvidia CPU running the ARM instruction set fully integrated on the same chip as the Nvidia GPU. It said it’s gotten “rights to develop its own high performance CPU cores based on ARM’s future processor architecture.” It thinks that by combining a revved-up ARM chip with its massively parallel GPU cores it’ll create a new class of processor. Nvidia also licensed ARM’s current Cortex-A15 processor for its future-generation Tegra mobile processor.
Especially in small business environments, there is a general feeling that if management does not keep it all in check, the business will fall apart. For a moment, let’s assume that this theory is true. By this definition, the more management controls, the better work gets done. Expanding further, it then behooves us to give management control of everything to ensure it is done the best it can be done. Now, we have just bound the growth of the company to the availability of management. Since the hours of the day are limited, the growth of the company is now limited. Therein lies the fundamental flaw in “control by management”.
Last July, I was asked to review JSF 2.0 Cookbook by Anghel Leonard. I finally found time to finish reading the book and wrote a review. (If you are interested, back in April I reviewed another book from Packt Publishing: JSF 1.2 Components.) Chapter 1 – Using Standard and Custom Converters in JSF The chapter [...]
Every year, I like to decompress a bit and take a break. Usually, I like to go scuba diving – the dive sites I like are usually far removed from email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and it gives me a chance to actually unplug, defrag, and think a bit. This year, the family went to Grand Cayman to experience some of the world’s best diving. Within Grand Cayman is Hell, a small township dedicated to tourism and aptly named given the attached photo.
The power the cloud brings is extremely influential as it can change the impact of IT services. In his general session at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Cisco’s Simon Aspinall provided insight into what is happening in the cloud and why the it’s is critically important for enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, and service providers in the teleco sector. He also provided insight into what is driving those changes in cloud and what some of the opportunities are.
As cloud adoption continues to gain industry momentum, the focus turns increasingly toward practical application of this new model of computing, and how businesses should approach it in the context of their existing portfolio of software. In his lunchtime keynote at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Microsoft's Tim O'Brien delved into how Microsoft views the cloud, the unique aspects and requirements of cloud, and strategies for businesses ready to make the move.
Much is talked about the benefits of Cloud Computing in terms of the provision of IT resources, including cost reduction, increased efficiency, flexibility, and resilience. But implemented the right way, cloud computing also brings significant operational benefits to the application groups that consume those IT resources, particularly in the areas of agility, flexibility and autonomy. In his general session at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Pete Malcolm, CEO of Abiquo, introduced the Virtual Enterprise, a next-generation concept for consumers of cloud resources that brings them unparalleled levels of functionality and control – at no risk to the IT infrastructure. Whether you are an enterprise looking to empower your application teams or a hosting provider looking to provide next generation services to your customers, the Virtual Enterprise is the answer.
GigaSpaces Technologies, a provider of a new generation of application platforms for Java and .NET environments, and Protogen Technologies Pty Ltd of Sydney have joined forces to bring high-speed processing and linear scalability to Australian companies with GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP). “No other major players on the market can offer the depth and wealth of features and services GigaSpaces delivers out-of-the-box,” says Omer Ingber, Director of Protogen. “GigaSpaces as a partner fits very well with the verticals we are dealing with, especially financial services and distribution logistics.” Financial sector applications need to process massive amounts of data from a growing number of sources in real-time in order to make better decisions, achieve a competitive edge and customer satisfaction, and comply with growing regulation for best trade execution
Back in the nineties, I was helping Russian immigrants living in the greater New York area to acquire the right skills and become software developers. Majority of the immigrants had Bachelor or Masters degrees in disciplines not related to IT. But high motivation to get an interesting and well-paid job did miracles. People were able to make serious turns in their careers and most of them survived economic crisis and still remain productive members of the American IT workforce.
2011 will be a big year for IT change and growth, especially as IT budgets are back on the rise - Gartner has even predicted that spending, specifically on IT, will increase by 60% (per employee). Here is a look at a few predictions on how the IT industry will change and grow over the next year: A new hybrid desktop world is emerging, where users interact with multiple sessions (or "screens"). The primary screen for most users is still their local rich desktop that resides at their physical workstation, but more and more that's being supplemented with a form of a virtual desktop. These can be hosted in the data center on Terminal Services, directly on a hypervisor, or on the client through type-1 or 2 hypervisors. In addition, multiple models for application delivery have emerged (i.e. application virtualization and streaming), which also cannot be effectively managed with legacy product sets. With all these new forms of desktop "screens", hosting centers and application delivery mechanisms coming together, IT is facing major management challenges. Organizations need to look at a more strategic desktop management platform to help streamline the oversight of their desktops and also increase the automation functionality used in making updates and/or changes to this part of their environment. Most current models do not support this type of management. Some of the major technology providers, like Microsoft and Citrix provide multiple desktop and application delivery products, yet they do not currently provide a unified way of managing these related, yet disparate models. Now imagine trying to manage a multi-vendor delivery environment? The need for a unified management solution becomes crystal clear.
Modern enterprise IT infrastructure must keep pace with dynamic needs. As business changes, it allows customers to react quickly to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace, often by leveraging new technologies to improve the bottom-line performance. Oracle WebLogic Server11g provides customers with expanded capabilities for interoperability, improvements in implementation and maintenance, and a wide array of performance enhancements. Customers can gain significant cost savings in operations, development and license management. Based on our experience acquired in a large-scale enterprise J2EE project, here are some of the best practices, known issues, and practical tips to make the upgrading work efficiently. This article contains information for technical managers, administrators and developers looking for the latest business and technical details about WebLogic upgradation.
First, there was One Tier, and it was good. Back in the eighties, there was one mainframe and users’ dumb terminals were connecting this one and only Big Iron. These 3270 terminals were called dumb because they had only a keyboard and a monitor. No CPU. It was simply an I/O device. Two Tiers. Thanks to Bill Gates, PC’s with their own CPUs came to masses, and in the end of 80th and early 90th I was developing Client-Server applications with fat clients – part of the calculations was done locally and the data was sitting in the remote DBMS server. Life was simple. The resumes of the developers were simple too. You’d only need to know SQL to manipulate the data and some programming language. C++ would do. Too difficult to learn? Use SQLWindows, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, or Delphi instead.
While the Myriad Group, which looks like a Google surrogate, was busy suing Oracle in Delaware, Oracle in the name of Sun was busy suing Myriad in California. It’s charging copyright infringement – a claim it’s had some success with lately – ask SAP – breach of contract, unfair competition and that old favorite violation of the Lanham Act, aka the Federal Trademark Act of 1946. Oracle’s 22-page suit’s not a countersuit. It started with a clean piece of paper, only the timing suggests it knew Myriad was going to do something. And Myriad in its suit against Oracle never did get around to telling the court that it’s been withholding those quarterly per-unit Java royalties it claims are unfair for roughly the last year and a half.
Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc. and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of technology enabling high-speed exhaustive verification of Java software using parallel processing. In order to ensure the quality of ICT systems, it is critical that software programs be sufficiently tested. By employing this new technology that leverages the power of cloud computing, on previous technologies enabling exhaustive verification of programs developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, time required for verification can be dramatically shortened, leading to expectations that the technology will result in enhancement of program quality.
Jahia, the premier provider of web content integration software combining web, document, and portal features, opens Jahia 6.5 beta, the first open source, Java-based Composite Content Platform based on the latest open source frameworks. The new beta enables developers, webmasters, and advanced users to create sophisticated web projects in as little as one-fourth the time by using any programming language with zero coding, making it easy to manage, author, and embed content composites from any source.