Neon Enterprise Software, the Texas mainframe ISV suing IBM for antitrust, isn’t exactly leaning back in the saddle waiting for the trial to start next June, thanking its lucky stars that the district court – sua sponte – moved the proceedings up nine months. Nope. It’s just asked the court for a partial summary judgment in the case as a matter of law based on evidence it collected during discovery. Now, unfortunately, because there’s one of those consarn confidentiality agreements between the parties – you know how companies love to hide all the juicy embarrassing bits – the 10-page motion and all its attachments are under seal and the seal is so big nobody’s even supposed to know what part of the multi-charge case Neon thinks can be resolved without troubling to empanel a jury.
Novell, which was put in play in March when Elliott Associates, a hedge fund, offered to buy it for $2 billion, has struck an agreement-in-principle to break in two and spin off SUSE Linux to a strategic buyer with most of the rest of the company going to a private equity house, the New York Post said Wednesday. The Post said it got it from “people close to the process” but the paper couldn’t shake the names of either potential buyer out of them only that the deal was at a “sensitive stage,” still three or four weeks away from being signed, and could fall apart at any minute. Both sides of the deal are supposed to close simultaneously.
VMware’s response to this week’s arrival of Parallels’ rival Desktop 6 for virtualizing Windows on a Mac was to cut the dickens out of its own pricing and offer to migrate Parallel users to VMware Fusion 3 for a mere $9.99, at least until the novelty of the new Parallels’ kit wears off and everybody who’s going to upgrade to 6 for $49.99 does. You know VMware’s really worried because it’s offering to upgrade users of its own older Fusion 1 and 2 software to Fusion 3 for the same $9.99, sacrificing 30 bucks a throw. It claims the myriad new features in Desktop 6 are already in Fusion.
September 21st, JetBrains will host a free community party at the 21st Amendment Brewery Restaurant in San Francisco. Meet with friends and enjoy lively conversation in a relaxed atmosphere over free food and drinks, just a few blocks from the Moscone Center. The party begins at 8PM and we welcome all JetBrains fans to join in the action, as you do not need to be registered or attending JavaOne to take part.
Java developers might want to think about hoisting Terracotta on their shoulders and marching around JavaOne this weekend. The company thinks it's overcome the garbage collection-created impasse preventing Java apps from using lots of memory just when lots of memory has gotten terribly fashionable in modern servers. And the solution is a lot cheaper and simpler than buying what amounts to a mainframe for Java from Azul. It'll be at JavaOne showing off the beta of its new BigMemory pure Java add-on for Enterprise Ehcache. The widgetry, compatible with all the popular JVMs, offers an off-heap cache that frees Java applications from the memory and performance restraints of garbage collection by managing the memory directly.
HP confirmed Monday morning that it means to buy ArcSight, the 10-year-old anti-hacking house, for $43.50 a share or around $1.5 billion all told, a 24% premium for a company that it reputedly wanted to buy for $800 million a couple of years ago before it went public. Since the unconfirmed report in the Wall Street Journal Sunday afternoon suggested an auction, the punters bid ArcSight’s stock price up over the $43.50 HP said it’s going to pay, hoping for a repeat of the 3PAR run-up. The Journal said it heard ArcSight was shopping itself around to a bunch of big technology companies and looking for $42 a share. It was at $28 on August 26 when the paper first reported it was for sale and closed Friday at $35.10.
Privately held Arizona-based GoDaddy.com, the world’s largest registrar of Internet domain names, figures it’s time to cash out and has put itself up for auction. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, says it could fetch more than a billion dollars.
Fresh from its acquisition of 3PAR for $2.35 billion, HP Sunday afternoon was reported close to buying ArcSight for around $1.5 billion by the Wall Street Journal. That would be something like a $300 million premium on ArcSight’s market cap lately.
NetApp and Oracle have called off their ZFS litigation, settling without telling anybody what the terms of the settlement are or if anybody’s licensing anything from anybody or paying any royalties. However, NetApp said Thursday that it and Oracle want the lawsuits dropped without prejudice, meaning neither of them is retreating from their position and the thing could flair all over again or presumably with somebody else. In case you’ve forgotten the muddle, NetApp sued Sun Microsystems back in 2007 claiming that the vaunted Zettabyte File System (ZFS) that Sun open sourced in 2005 infringed on seven of its patents.
Let’s imagine that Microsoft made a statement that if a Web page was not developed in .Net, Internet Explorer won’t display it? This would make vendors of all other Web browsers very happy, because herds of developers who don’t plan to switch to .Net would start developing for Firefox and Safari. Well, maybe some developers would sucked it up and learned .Net, but this wouldn’t become a trend – most likely the market share of Firefox, Safari and other browsers would start increasing.
This was not obvious for Steve Jobs when earlier this year he announced that iTunes wouldn’t be playing mp3 files that were not created in GarageBand. Oops, sorry, he said that Apple store wouldn’t accept applications that were not created in C-like language or JavaScript.
Six months later, Apple realized that this was announcement was plain stupid and admitted that it was made while smoking pot. Was the decision to ban Flash Player has been also made under the influence? Lame arguments about technical issues of Flash Player may sound reasonable for housewives and farmers from Alabama. “Have you heard that Flash Player can crash your computer? I’m telling you! It was on TV!”
Adobe’s software has issues, so does Apple’s, and so does anyone else’s. The real reason of this conflict is that both companies are trying to present their software as THE ultimate platform for slave-developers that would help them make money. Both companies don’t give a damn about sticking to open standards – they care about making money, and I don’t see Adobe as a company that’s being bullied by Apple.
On mobile devices Apple doesn’t won’t any other platform but iOS. Have you noticed that Apple didn’t let hugely popular Java platform on their devices either? The reason is the same – developers can use any platform as long as it’s iOS. But why Oracle doesn’t make a stink about it? Is it because they’re larger than Adobe? Not at all. The difference is that after Sun Microsystems has neglected Java ME for mobile devices and didn’t deliver on JavaFX, Oracle has no platform to offer. If Oracle had just a little shot there they wouldn’t keep it quiet.
Does Oracle care about developers? Not really. Otherwise they wouldn’t sue Google over Java that was supposedly open sourced. They want Google to use Java on Android, but for a fee.
So what us, poor developers should do? What’s THE platform for development? What the next programming language to learn? If you are a professional developer working for money, stay away from development for mobile devices regardless if it’s iOS or Android. There is no money there – people want either free or $.99 applications. If you’re an enthusiast software developer who’s ready to work for food, just pick a programming language you like – Objective-C, ActionScript, Java, or anything else that has an if-statement and have fun. Just don’t take very seriously what big shots from California are trying to sell you.
Apple’s unyielding and highly vocal opposition to Adobe Flash moderated Thursday morning when all of a sudden it opened up its vaunted App Store to iPad and iPhone programs written using other people’s widgetry. Although it wrapped the surprise announcement up in “we’re listening to developers” ribbons, its real reason for changing parts of its iOS Developer Program license is more likely the reportedly parallel investigations of its business practices in the mobile software market by the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission.
With the Intel Developer Forum practically upon us, Intel is mere hours away from showing off Sandy Bridge, its first processor with integrated graphics and a hex sign to ward off advances by AMD/ATI and purveyors of discrete graphics in general. The widget, whose meddle still has to be proved, goes into production in Q4. It should mean better performance, lower power consumption and lower costs – at least for Intel. AMD’s competing Fusion chip should be in boxes in Q1.
Labor and IP lawyers have started handicapping the chances of HP’s suit keeping former HP CEO Mark Hurd from working at Oracle. Apparently they’re pretty dim because California, a right-to-work jurisdiction, doesn’t buy the doctrine of inevitable disclosure that it’s based on. Canon law says all it takes to commit a sin is intent so if you meant to rob that bank and chickened out you’re still liable. In California you actually have to rob the bank.
SAP's Business ByDesign solution is designed to address its SME customers' specific business opportunities and challenges in building a business set up to successfully scale over time. In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Prasad Akella, Vice President, SME Solution Marketing at SAP, will discuss how SAP is addressing the need for an easy-to-implement, low-cost solution for small and growing businesses.
Intel has bought four-year-old Israeli start-up called Neocleus – at least its people and technology – a rare albeit market-sputtering Xen-based bare-metal client hypervisor designed for security and focused on the enterprise. Apparently it can deliver VDI offline. Intel paid a sub-million dollar pittance according Globes although Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel poured a reported $22 million into the joint. BigFix, recently bought by IBM, was its first OEM.
Social media is about people accessing information anywhere and anytime and it's a fast evolving market. Apple have now announced they are jumping on the social media wagon, no surprise when we measure the success it has had for those companies who are utilizing the benefits of a well formed social marketing campaign. The announcement at yesterdays Apple event saw the CEO Steve Jobs unveil ‘Ping' a social media application which would allow users to follow their favourite artists and friends, something which Spotify have been offering since is revolutionary rise as a music provider and sites such as LastFM and Myspace already allow its users to access. iTunes already has over 160 million users and as the new ping will be an add on it will already find itself playing with the big boys.
Sun’s last CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, the guy who nominally sold the joint to Oracle, has started a new company called Informed Biometry to do something – exactly what is still unclear – but it appears to have something to do with health because it’s got a web site at www.pictureofhealth.com and offices in San Francisco – where Schwartz apparently is – and Seattle – where the start-up’s other founder CFO Walter Smith, an ex-Microsoft, ex-Apple developer, apparently is. They have a manifesto on the web site that reads: “Most places on Earth, the Internet is more accessible than electricity, clean water, or basic sanitation. That’s an amazing proliferation, and an outstanding opportunity to apply simple technologies to some of the world’s most pressing problems. We’re setting out to do exactly that, focusing on the intersection of innovation and public health.”
First in a series of interviews dedicated to learning more about JetBrains Development Academy Experts. In this interview we have a conversation with Academy Board Member Michael Hüttermann begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Michael is Cologne JUG leader, author, senior coach, consultant, and freelancer for Java/JEE, SCM/ALM and agile software development.
That is the big news this morning. Mark Hurd, former CEO of HP who resigned abruptly last month, has landed at Oracle as co-president replacing Charles Phillips. Larry Ellison publicly defended him and said in a letter to the NY Times that this was a big mistake by HP’s board to let Mark Hurd go. Clearly, Mark joining Oracle is good news for the future of Oracle. He proved to be a very effective executive at HP over the last five years. Under his watch, HP made the largest acquisition (EDS). Mark is operationally a very effective executive and Oracle will benefit greatly from that experience. I think he may be groomed to become Oracle’s CEO when Larry is ready to leave that role. Given Oracle’s move into hardware and storage (besides its traditional software business), an executive like Mark Hurd would be the most appropriate to provide leadership. He will also continue the aggressive acquisition streak of Oracle. Rumor has it that Oracle is likely going to acquire Netezza and may even go after EMC.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is increasingly considered “enterprise grade” by many IT buyers, and a viable choice to achieve reduced costs, improved service, and ongoing timely functional currency. Customers are looking for "just what I need" solutions – in terms of pricing, functionality, simple on-boarding and minimal infrastructure hassle. Demand for SaaS Delivery is therefore continuing to grow while sales of traditional on-premise solutions are declining. Thus the Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) need to decide whether and when to develop SaaS-based offerings, identify the potential changes to the customer relationships, demand, etc. for a SaaS-based offering, and determine the best architecture and infrastructure options available to provide these offerings. Based on these decisions, the ISVs need to create a roadmap to “SaaS-ify” the existing offerings.
Anybody starting a war with Red Hat better watch out. Its board has named General H. Hugh Shelton (US Army Retired), a two-term former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as its chairman replacing former CEO Matthew Szulik. Shelton’s been on the Red Hat board since 2003 and was previously its lead director. He currently serves on the audit and compensation committees.
HP Tuesday sued its ousted CEO Mark Hurd to block him from going to work for Oracle as co-president, a job just announced Monday night. HP has taken its civil case to California’s Superior Court in Santa Clara alleging misappropriation of trade secrets. It claims Hurd can’t possibly do his new job at Oracle without putting HP in peril and complains that it paid him tens of millions of dollars in severance to sit on the sidelines and keep its secrets for two years. It is suing him under a confidentiality agreement, not a non-compete agreement. Non-competes generally don’t get very far in the California courts. Oracle of course must have anticipated that HP would sue and just decided to brazen it out.
In a breathtakingly unprecedented move never before seen in the Valley, Oracle very late Monday - and on a national holiday in the US - swapped the ex-Morgan Stanley guy who was supposed to be responsible for its blazing trail of acquisitions for ex-HP CEO Mark Hurd, a month to the day since Hurd was ousted by the HP board for reasons that are still incomprehensible to everyone outside of the HP boardroom, an event that has led to speculation that HP was somehow played. Anyway, it's safe to say that the ex-CEO of a major OEM has never skipped to a competitor before - or so quickly - or trailing sexual harassment charges, however bogus. Ain't life grand. According to the official statement out of Oracle Hurd will be an Oracle co-president, reporting to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and a member of the Oracle board. He will be responsible for Oracle's sales, marketing and support.
How can organizations use enterprise/private cloud capabilities to improve information-sharing? In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Ira A. (Gus) Hunt, CTO to the CIO of the Central Intelligence Agency, will discuss how the Intelligence Community has been using enterprise/private cloud capabilities to improve information-sharing across the entire community. Ira A. (Gus) Hunt currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the Chief Information Officer in CIA. In this capacity he is responsible for setting the strategic technology direction to enable CIA’s missions, actively engage across the IC to share and communicate IT solutions, and drive solutions for the rapid insertion and adoption of new capabilities to keep pace with technology change in the commercial sector.
HP’s got a private cloud-in-a-box scheme that it trotted out Monday ahead of VMworld called HP CloudStart that’s supposed to provide the cloud-smitten enterprise that’s hanging back everything it needs to get cloud-borne in a mere 30 days complements of HP’s Cloud Consulting Services, so what it’s gonna cost is anybody’s guess. It’s also promising that the platform will push out into a hybrid environment down the road. HP will sell CloudStart, which is for compute services, in Asia-Pacific and Japan to start, expecting to go global in December.