Apple CEO Tim Cook is in China, the company’s second-largest market, meeting with unnamed government officials as well as Vice-Premier Li Keqiang, who may be running the country next year. The Chinese said they chatted about IP issues and greater cooperation. Seems China wants to enhance its “innovation capacity,” nurture and develop “emerging strategic industries” and speed up “the building an innovative country.” Bloomberg says Apple in the last couple of days has been talking about “greater investment” in the country. The news service imagines that might mean catching up with its retail store plans. Apple’s behind its own forecast. It’s got two stores in Beijing, three in Shanghai and one in Hong Kong. It should have 25 according to a two-year-old plan. It could reportedly support 100.
OpenXava is a framework for Rapid Development of Web Applications for iPad, 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 such as: Totals, row count and add action in the collection frame when the collection is folded. The frames are folded using a slide effect. It's possible to filter by range in list and collections. Support for Java 7.
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.
Apple has failed to shake coveted information about Google’s development of Android and its $12.5 billion planned acquisition of soon-to-be Google satellite Motorola Mobility out of MMI. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner, who will hear Apple’s patent complaints against Motorola this summer, said in a ruling the other day that Apple’s discovery motion was “vague and overbroad and Motorola’s objections are persuasive.” Apple will have to “narrow its request to a manageable and particularized set of documents” if it wants a new court order.
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.”
The butcher, the banker, the drummer… everyone can create apps, and so many are saying, ‘why not?!’ and giving it shot. Everyday people all over the world from all different backgrounds are going beyond simply being an app consumer to being an app creator. A fundamental change in power and organizational structures is currently taking place; it’s an exciting revolution. It’s fast-paced, too. At the beginning of January, my #1 top prediction for apps in 2012 was that, “By the end of 2012, people will begin to switch from being App Consumers to App Creators!” Well, it’s already begun! It’s APPENING, now.
Before I start talking about using Groovy's capabilities to create a DSL (mostly in Java), let's take a few minutes to go over what Groovy is. Groovy is a general purpose scripting language that runs on the JVM, and can largely be viewed as a superset of Java. Is this a Groovy program or a Java program? Yes, it is - it will compile and run in both. This basic program is a bit wordy, and we can certainly do things more simply in Java, but this contains a number of patterns that you'd commonly see, including the use of the bean pattern, as well as the use of the main method to make the class executable via the java command line program. When we run it, it simply prints out "Hello world!", as is customary in these sorts of things.
Somewhere in between the foggy mists of management consultancy jargon and the babbling verbiage of business analytics specialists there may, quite possibly, lay an untouched land where real business change discussions take place. The problem with business change and IT innovation is that it too often succumbs to the hijacked efforts of non-technical management figures who fail to understand the real issues at the coalface of application transformation, IT performance management and data optimization. What factors make business change through technology possible? What does it take to bring hard and fast application transformation programs to bear in the new service-based computing world of the cloud? How do we make IT innovation really real?
After Apple said early Monday that it would start paying a $10.60-a-year dividend and buy back stock to spend down its massive cash horde – something some people say Steve Jobs would never have done – and after its stock closed at over $600 for the first time ever – you watching this up there, Steve – the company put a figure on the initial sales of the new iPad, something it wouldn’t do during the dividend call. It said it sold three million of the slabs since they went on sale Friday. Worldwide marketing chief Philip Schiller called it a “blockbuster – the strongest iPad launch yet.”
Breaking with tradition – and changing the definition of a growth company in the process – Apple Monday morning said it would start paying a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share in the September quarter. At $10.60 a year that would currently be about a 1.8% yield, putting it among the highest dividend payers in the US, but disappointing analysts who thought it could easily afford 3% or more. It will also start buying back shares in the December quarter. It means to buy back $10 billion worth of its shares over three years. Many people regard buybacks as a waste of money. Apple’s got more than $100 billion in the bank – twice what Google had at the end of last year – and equal to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 a share – but two-thirds of it is offshore in the Cayman Islands where it’s paying next to nothing in taxes.
In the chattiest Apple’s been about the iPad trademark mess it’s in in Mainland China it said Tuesday that the financially squeezed Shenzhen Proview Technology, which claims to still own the mark there, insisted on selling the IP in 2009 through its Taiwan affiliate so its many creditors wouldn’t know it got the money. Apple claims it was snookered into dealing with the Taiwan subsidiary, which represented that it controlled two iPad marks in China even though they technically belong to Proview Shenzhen.
Swiss Post has reneged on statements it explicitly made to the Commercial Court in Zurich last year claiming it stripped the proof-of-delivery functionality that infringes an RPost patent out of its IncaMail secure e-mail service. After RPost touted Swiss Post’s apparent concession last week, Swiss Post sent an e-mail to IncaMail users and put a copy of the statement on its web site denying that any changes had been made and assuring them that they will continue to get digitally signed delivery confirmation receipts. The e-mail was also sent to RPost, which last week said that based on Swiss Post’s assurances to the court it dropped its motion for a temporary injunction against IncaMail. In its statement Swiss Post imputes a different reason to the American company.
A Dutch court Wednesday told Samsung it couldn’t have an injunction against Apple’s iPhone 4s based on patents it pledged to ETSI and 3G/UMTS standards. Not when Apple is willing to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. It especially can’t have an injunction or otherwise call Apple to account because it’s already getting paid by Qualcomm for the patents; Apple’s just buying covered baseband chips from Qualcomm; it’s covered by extension. Samsung’s trick of terminating its Qualcomm agreement as far as Apple goes didn’t work in Holland because the widgetry was irrevocably pledged to ETSI.