Amazon Web Services wants to move further up-market and service more of the HPC crowd so it’s publicly beta testing a Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large (CC2), its biggest, most powerful cloud service to date. The thing has 16 Xeon cores (a pair of eights with Hyper-Threading enabled), 60.5GB of RAM, 3.37TB of storage and 10 gigabit Ethernet for cluster communication. Users can have it with Linux or Windows Server 2008 R2. It costs $2.40 an hour per instance or $4,146 for a reserved instance on a one-year contract. Cheaper pricing might be had on the EC2 Spot Market. An array of 290 CC2 instances good for 63.07 teraFLOPS would run $1,000 an hour. Amazon fashioned a Linux cluster of 17,024 cores (1,064 instances) that ranked 42 on the latest Top 500 list just out. It hit 240.09 teraFLOPS.
General Electric must have gotten the memo from McKinsey’s research arm calling Big Data the “next frontier” and promising untold riches to those who unlock its secrets. The company is going to pour a reported billion dollars over the next three years into a new global software headquarters that it’s moving into San Ramone in San Francisco’s East Bay where it will build the “Industrial Internet,” a sub-category of the Internet of Things and create intelligent connect systems to harness Big Data. It means to hire 400 more software architects, engineers, biz dev and user experience people, presumably folks who don’t want to cross the bridge to Silicon Valley proper.
JRE 6 was released in 2006, five years after a major JRE version was released. For the past few years Java was looking stagnant, and many Java developers began to worry; this concern was amplified when Oracle purchased Sun. We will try to discover if there's a big refactoring or maybe many features were added that can explain the time span between these two releases. In this first part we will focus on design and implementation changes, and the second part will focus on added features and breaking changes. With JavaDepend we can compare two versions and detect any modifications concerning architecture, design or implementation. We can provide a summary of the changes using the following views.
Now, using the next-generation platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering Jelastic, it is possible to build and run any Java application in the cloud instead of from a personal computer -- speeding development time and maximizing computing resources. Jelastic allows developers to make code changes and rebuild applications in the cloud, removing the lag time caused whenever files are updated and uploaded from a personal computer. Jelastic can take application source code directly from version control repositories, via either the Git or SVN protocol. Using Jelastic, developers can easily swap test and production environments with simple point-and-click. The same is true for cloning an exact copy to test or prepare an application for production deployment. Jelastic is fully compatible with existing Java applications and libraries.
HTML5 is a draft specification for the next major iteration of HTML. It represents a break from its predecessors, HTML4 and XHTML. Some elements have been removed and it is no longer based on SGML, an older standard for document markup. HTML5 also has more allowances for incorrect syntax than were present in HTML4. It has rules for parsing to allow different browsers to display the same incorrectly formatted document in the same fashion. There are many notable additions to HTML, such as native drawing support and audiovisual elements. In this excerpt, we discuss the features added by HTML5 and the associated JavaScript APIs.
You don’t agree with that? Have you ever looked at the details of your page load time and analyzed what really impacts Page Load Time? Let me show you with a real life example and let me explain that in most cases you only control 1/3 of the time required to load a page as the rest is consumed by third-party content that you do not have under control. When analyzing web page load times we can use tools such as dynaTrace, Firebug or PageSpeed. The following two screenshots show timeline views from dynaTrace AJAX Edition. The timelines show all network downloads, rendering activities and JavaScript executions that happen when loading almost exactly the same page. The question is: Where does the huge difference come from?
Most Java performance opportunities fall into one or more of the following categories: Using a more efficient algorithm. The largest gains in the performance of an application come from the use of a more efficient algorithm. The use of a more efficient algorithm allows an application to execute with fewer CPU instructions, also known as a shorter path length. An application that executes with a shorter path length generally executes faster. Many different changes can lead to a shorter path length. At the highest level of the application, using a different data structure or modifying its implementation can lead to a shorter path length. Many applications that suffer application performance issues often use inappropriate data structures. There is no substitute for choosing the proper data structure and algorithm. As profiles are analyzed, take notice of the data structures and the algorithms used. Optimal performance can be realized when the best data structures and algorithms are utilized.
After the market closed Tuesday, Apple said that Disney CEO Bob Iger had joined the Apple board and that Genentech chairman and former CEO Arthur Levinson, a long-time Apple director, would replace the late Steve Jobs as chairman. Jobs of course became Disney’s largest shareholder when Iger bought his other company, Pixar, in 2006. Levinson, Apple’s co-lead director since 2005, has been on the board since 2000 and has served on all three of its committees, audit and finance, nominating and corporate governance, and compensation. He will continue to serve on the audit committee. Iger, who’s also on the board of the US-China Business Council and the President’s Export Council, will also serve on the audit committee. In a statement Apple CEO Tim Cook said of Iger’s appointment, “His strategic vision for Disney is based on three fundamentals: generating the best creative content possible, fostering innovation and utilizing the latest technology, and expanding into new markets around the world which makes him a great fit for Apple.” Iger is currently building a theme park in Shanghai and to break ground in April reportedly took 10 years of talks with the Chinese government.
A student, Jonathan Mak, a student enrolled at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in graphic design, was surprised when his tribute to Steve Jobs went viral. "We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep on humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. (see wikiquote) "Want to stay alive in the new world? You better get tech savy. Things are more complicated these days when it comes to all aspects of life thanks to the amazing technological advances we are all enjoying. Business is one of life's aspects that has been greatly affected by this surge in new technology. Those who familarize themselves, at the very least and submerging themselves even better, in the new technology will be the winners even if unintentional successes as was the case with Hong Kong student, Jonathan Mak who gave tribute to Steve Jobs by incorporating his profile into the existing bite out of apple logo. http://www.researchhistory.org/2011/11/12/apple-icon-with-steve-jobs-pro... This example is a perfect illustration of the power of the web.
Jelastic Inc., the company behind the next-generation Java hosting platform Jelastic, has announced that it has been incorporated in the U.S. and has established operations in Palo Alto, Calif. Jelastic is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that runs any Java application in the cloud without code changes. “We are seeing tremendous interest in the U.S. following our announcement last month of beta availability with our first U.S. hosting partner, ServInt,” said Ruslan Synytsky, CEO, Jelastic. “Our base in the U.S. helps us work closely with developers and hosting providers. We expect rapid growth as Jelastic is the only platform that makes it easy to run Java code from the cloud without vendor lock-in.”
Project management software provider Project Insight announces the release of version 9.3. The focus of this software update was to make Project Insight more customizable while maintaining the same high level ease of use. Project Insight is a mid-market online project management software that allows experienced project managers and new team members to access real time project data from any supported browser. Project Insight version 9.3 includes over 20 new features and fixes. All new additions to the project software enhance the navigation experience for the end user. For example, project managers may add team members as resources to a project directly from the project add/edit form, reducing the number of clicks when initiating a project in the software.
This morning ZD Net published an article stating the Adobe will cease development of Flash Player on Mobile in favor of packaging mobile applications in Adobe AIR. The Flash Player haters quickly picked up this news and to draw attention to their blogs/tabloids started to cash on Steve Job’s name starting that he won the battle with Adobe since Steve was the one who didn’t let Flash Player on iOS. As of now, I don’t know if these rumors are valid, but even if they are, this ain’t breaking news. Let me explain why in three simple sentences.
Cloudability has gone to open beta with its widgetry for tracking cloud costs. It says it can follow and analyze a user’s complete cloud spend across 80 cloud and application providers and across multiple vendors. The mix includes Amazon, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, Google and Heroku. Cloudability claims over 350 companies are already actively using the service through its closed beta version. That apparently works out to more than $10 million in cloud spend. It describes the calculator as “a new layer of the cloud stack.” It’s supposed to suggest ways cloud users can increase the efficiency of their cloud use and provide actionable insight into unnecessary overages and unused instances. It claims its private beta identified an average of $2,000 in efficiency gains per customer.
2011 has seen the move to cloud computing gather speed, as companies start to commit budget to the technology that will change the landscape of IT. In an effort to capture the extent to which cloud has already penetrated the IT market, and at what rate we should expect it to grow, analysts have raced to release the most up-to-date market data. The latest, from Gartner, revealed that an enormous 95% of organisations are planning to invest in software as a service (SaaS), while more than a third has already started the migration from on-premise services. Furthermore, Gartner has claimed that businesses will commit to spending between 40% and 80% of their IT budgets on the cloud in the next five years. These are exceptional statistics considering that 70% of the organizations using SaaS have only begun doing so in the last three years.
Kroll Ontrack, the litigation technology, computer forensics and data recovery arm of Kroll Inc, which is probably best known for its private detectives and security consultants, is taking the widgetry it developed for finding the “gotchas” in discovery to the cloud. Lawyers often subcontract discovery processing to third parties like Kroll. In Kroll’s case it’s generally big companies. Turning it into subscription-based do-it-yourself e-discovery will help Kroll go down market to more of the mid-sized law firms and in-house legal departments at smaller firms. It will also give the high-powered types a more predictable leash on their costs. Kroll calls the hosted SaaS platform Verve.
Calxeda unwrapped its brand new 32-bit ARM-based “Server-on-a-Chip” (otherwise a SoC), dubbed the EnergyCore ECX-1000, Tuesday while HP started preparing the market for Redstone, HP-built proof-of-concept development platforms based on the Calxeda device. The Texas start-up says its quad-core chip clocking at 1.4GHz can create a server that takes less than five watts to run. It imagines HP putting 1,600 of its servers in a half a rack with two switches and 41 cables. It says it would take all of 9.9kW to run the thing and cost $1.2 million. An x86 system with 400 Xeon servers in 10 racks with 20 switches, 1,600 cables and a 91kW power budget would cost $3.3 million. Calxeda claims it can do what the x86 rig does for 89% less energy, 94% less space and 97% less complexity for 63% less money.
As soon as the market closed Thursday, AMD said it was going to lay off 1,400 people, upwards of 10% of its worldwide staff. Seems they are the wrong people and it wants to trade them in for people who can get it into low power, the cloud and emerging markets, all deemed more profitable. Otherwise the restructuring is supposed to create a more competitive cost structure and accelerate future growth, according to AMD’s new CEO Rory Read, who gets to play the heavy although AMD hinted at layoffs earlier this year. Supposedly his predecessor Dirk Meyer was ousted in January because he didn’t have a mobile strategy. For once it’s a problem Intel shares. It can’t get traction in mobile either.
When we searched for design pattern articles, we found documentation concerning "Gang of Four" patterns. They are very useful and contribute to a well-designed application. But when I discovered GRASP principles , I advised any one interested to improve his skills design to look at these principles. It gives the fundamental rules of design. In this article we will discover some GRASP principles used by Spring, and the advantages of using them. Spring is one of the most popular application developement framework for entreprise Java. The Spring Framework does not impose any specific programming model, it has become popular in the Java community as an alternative to, replacement for, or even addition to the Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) model.
Samsung wants Apple’s source code for the iPhone 4S firmware so it can see if it trespasses on three Samsung wireless 3G standard-essential patents. The move is part of an attempt to get the iPhone 4S outlawed in Australia. Samsung told the Australian court that banned its own Galaxy Tab 10.1 from the country pending trial that it also wants copies of the subsidy deals Apple signed with Australian carriers Vodafone, Telstra and Optus to see if Samsung is in any way frozen out. Apple has denied any patent infringement and claims to be using the IP under the Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory doctrine via its chip purchases from Qualcomm, which has a license. Patent holders can’t double-dip.
Facebook Thursday set up a non-profit foundation to run its six-month-old Open Compute Project (OCP) aimed at defining the cheapest and most efficient massively web-scale infrastructure possible using the open source model. Its first OCP data center in Prineville, Oregon, managed a 38% increase in energy efficiency for 24% less than other Facebook facilities cost. The idea is to push the envelope. The Open Compute Foundation (OCF) is reportedly well enough funded to start. There is a board of directors. Hardware designs and source files will be published, IP contributed and many eyes will look for ways to improve the standard à la Linux. The idea is to speed innovation by commoditizing the baser elements.
“As more and more people become comfortable with the idea, businesses will move more workloads to Public Clouds,” stated Joe Seibel, CFA, CFO & VP of Strategic Development at Hexagrid, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “I like to compare it to the history of electricity when every business had its own generator even though there was a central utility,” Seibel continued. “Eventually, as businesses saw the stability and became comfortable, they got rid of the generator. For the immediate and mid-term future, I believe private clouds, including hosted private clouds, will be the preference.”
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.
Microsoft has persuaded yet another Android shifter to pay it patent royalties. This time it’s ODM Compal Electronics, which has agreed to pay Microsoft’s patent tax on its tablets, mobile phones, e- readers and other consumer devices running Android or Chrome. Microsoft said Sunday that it’s now got more than half of the world’s ODM industry making Android and Chrome devices under license. Compal is the tenth company to cut an Android license with Microsoft for its mystery patents. Others include Samsung, HTC, Acer and most recently Quanta, which is making the Android-based Kindle Fires for Amazon and the poorly selling PlayBooks for RIM.
HP has reversed the unpopular, hastily considered, board of directors-blessed decision to dump its $40 billion PC unit that its now purged CEO Leo Apotheker announced in August. The company said Thursday afternoon right after Wall Street closed that it would keep the business, expecting it to “deliver greater customer and shareholder value.” The new decision has the “full support of the board,” a statement that only gives HP’s much vilified board another black eye. Ostensibly HP did an “objective” evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG), an exercise that reportedly involved about 100 “subject matter experts across the businesses and functions,” 18 teams that supposedly looked at all the angles of spinning the unit off.
The RichFaces team has been doing an amazing job on RichFaces 4.1 and today released Milestone 3. Many components in 4.1 have been optimized for mobile. You can see the Milestone 3 components showcase deployed to OpenShift – Red Hat’s PaaS. It uses device detection and will show the mobile optimized version if you access from a mobile device. Staying on mobile topic, if you want to build HTML5 and native mobile apps using cloud services, try Tiggr Mobile Apps Builder. With mobile support, resource handling has been improved. The goal is to reduce the number of requests as well as reduce the size of JavaScript, and CSS sent to the browser. Performance improvements will not limited to mobile, but will also give a standard Web app a boost in performance.