Latest News from Dana Gardner

TIBCO Rolls Out Spotfire 3.1 with Spotlight on Predictive Analytics

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:45:00 EST

In a move to mainstream predictive analytics, TIBCO Software this week rolled out the latest version of its Spotfire platform. Dubbed Spotfire 3.1, the latest iteration promises a natural language statistical experience. Spotfire 3.1 aims to help anyone in an organization get fact-based answers to questions that help drive revenue. The company says its software is not just for analytics gurus but also marketing professionals, business development managers and others who need forward-looking business intelligence in a hurry.

Cast Iron Launches Integration Platform

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:45:00 EST

In a move to tackle a persistent cloud computing challenge, Cast Iron Systems just rolled out a new platform that aims to help companies large and small securely integrate public clouds, private clouds and on-premise applications. Dubbed OmniConnect, the cloud integration solution offers a single platform rather than multiple products or on-premise tools to accomplish cloud integrations. Five pillars undergird OmniConnect: complete integrations, a complete cloud experience, reusability of connectivity and processes, and portable, embeddable, and brandable environments, and centralized cloud management.

Cloud Computing Services Are the Next Generation of IT

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:45:00 EST

It's one of the major issues that keeps cloud computing from working its way deeper and more quickly into the enterprise IT mainstream. But what are the potential threats around using cloud services? How can companies make sure business processes and data remain secured in the cloud? And how can CIOs accurately assess the risks and benefits of cloud adoption strategies? Hewlett-Packard (HP) and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) answer these and other questions in a new research report entitled, "Top Threats to Cloud Computing Report."

Open source solutions for SOA: Check your bias at the door

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:45:58 EST

Why is it then that so many IT organizations prematurely discard Open Source Software (OSS) from their SOA implementations? While OSS may not be suitable for all implementations all the time, they are increasingly becoming suitable and feasible for an increasing number of SOA implementations.

Citrix Acquires Paglo, Launches GoToManage Cloud Computing Platform

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:15:00 EST

In a move to enter the burgeoning SaaS-based IT management market, Citrix Online announced its acquisition of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Paglo Labs on Wednesday. The first fruits of the acquisition is an integrated web-based platform for monitoring, controlling and supporting IT infrastructure. Dubbed GoToManage, the new service lets Citrix Online tap into the growing demand for software-as-a-service (Saas)-based IT management, a market Forrester Research predicts will reach $4 billion in 2013. Citrix Online is positioning the latest addition to its online services portfolio as an affordable alternative to premise-based software

Executives Experimenting With Mostly 'Private' Cloud Architectures

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST

If you want a realistic view of cloud computing adoption – along with an understanding of what motivates IT executives to invest the cloud, what concerns remain, and what initiatives are planned – you can’t limit your frame to a single industry. The full picture only becomes clear through a cross section of research, manufacturing, government and education fields. “When deploying a private cloud, organizations will need a management framework that can leverage existing hardware and software investments and support key business applications,” says Peter Nichol, general manager of the HPC Business Unit at Platform Computing. “This survey reaffirms the benefits that private clouds offer – a more flexible and dynamic infrastructure with greater levels of self-service and enterprise application support.”

UShareSoft's On-Demand Application Delivery Platform

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST

UShareSoft is working its way deeper into the cloud this week with two new software-as-a-service (SaaS) products that promise to make the lives of IT admins a little easier by cutting engineering costs and speeding time to value. The UForge Appliance Factory helps IT pros assemble software appliances while the Open Appliance Studio serves as a framework for automatically deploying solutions in the field. Designed to work hand in hand, UShareSoft is hoping its duo of new products will become the means of choice for building and assembling optimized technology stacks for virtual data center and cloud offerings.

SOA and Cloud Computing Builds Productivity

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST

The latest BriefingsDirect podcast discussion comes in conjunction with The Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference held earlier this month in Seattle. We assembled a panel to examine service-oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing -- the relationships, the inter-reliance and the realities. Three years ago, the IT transformation poster child was SOA, and now we're well into the hype curve around cloud computing, but has one actually given way to the other? Are they linear in their relationship, or perhaps mutually dependent in some ways, and to what degree? We’ll explore now whether SOA has found new value and relevance as a foundation and perhaps catalyst for cloud computing, especially for so-called private clouds. And, we'll see how the emergence of SOA and cloud may be happening in different places inside of enterprises. Shouldn’t one hand get to quickly know what the other is up to and perhaps even work together?

Electric Cloud Updates Software Offerings

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:45:00 EST

Electric Cloud has accelerated the software production management field today with improvements to two key products: ElectricAccelerator and ElectricCommander 3.5. ElectricAccelerator boasts a new feature that provides parallel processing and subbuild technology. Dubbed "Electrify," the patented technology promises to speed development on private or public compute clouds by applying the benefits of parallelization to new development tools and tasks. With Electrify, developers can conduct parallel testing or data modeling on their desktop, in a private cloud or on a dedicated server. Meanwhile, the subbuild technology works to help developers avoid unnecessary or broken builds by identifying only the components required for the current project. [Disclosure: Electric Cloud is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

HP Builds Advanced Workflow Tools

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:00:00 EST

Today’s enterprises are creating web-based content at breakneck speed. Much of this digital content becomes bona fide business records that demand document management with regulatory compliance and legal discovery demands in mind. The latest version of HP’s advanced records management solution aims to help organizations transparently manage Microsoft SharePoint Server records in a single environment.

Data Centers Need an Energy Diet

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:15:19 EST

Very little energy capacity analysis and planning is being done on data centers that are five years old or older. It's now time for IT leaders to gain control over energy use -- and misuse -- in these enterprise data centers. Nowadays, CIOs need to both cut costs and increase performance. Finally, smarter, more comprehensive energy planning tools and processes are being directed at this problem. It reqiures a lifecycle approach from the data centers to more toward fuller automation.

ArchiMate gives business leaders and IT architects a common language to describe how the enterprise works best

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:58:48 EST

ArchiMate provides ways to develop visualizations and control of IT architecture to more swiftly obtain business benefits. To learn more, we interview an expert on this, Dr. Harmen van den Berg, partner and co-founder at BiZZdesign.

Defining Business Architecture

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:36:24 EST

Enterprise business architecture is a set of artifacts and methods that helps business leaders make decisions about direction and communicate the changes that are required in order to achieve that vision. To me, so many organizations have great vision and strategy. It comes from their leadership. They understand it. They think about it. But, there's a missing linkage between that vision, that strategy, that direction, and the actual activities that are going on in an organization. Decisions are being made about who to hire, the kinds of projects we decide to invest in, and where we're going to build our next manufacturing facility. All those are real decisions and real activities that are going on on a daily basis.

Crystal Balls For Latest IT Growth and Impact Trends

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST

The cloud crashes make major new stories. We've got two things occurring right now. We've got a massive move into the cloud. That was my first prediction. We have the cloud providers trying to scale up, and perhaps they’ve never scaled up to the levels that they are going to be expected to scale to in 2010. That's ripe for disaster. A lot of these cloud providers are going to over extend and over sell, and they're going to crash. Performance is going to go down -- very analogous to AOL’s outage issues, when the Internet first took off. We're going to see people moving to the cloud, and cloud providers not able to provide them with the service levels that they need. We're going to get a lot of stories in the press about cloud providers going away for hours at a time, data getting lost, all these sorts of things. It's just a matter of growth in a particular space. They're growing very quickly, they are not putting as much R&D into what these cloud systems should do, and ultimately that's going to result in some disasters.

It's Time To Redefine Enteprise Architecture

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:45:00 EST

There are basically five words or phrases; mission, solution, environment, fitness for purpose, and essentials. Those capture all the ideas behind the definition of enterprise architecture. This live event podcast discussion comes to you from The Open Group’s Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference in Seattle, the week of Feb. 1, 2010. We examine the definition of enterprise architecture (EA), the role of the architect and how that might be shifting with an expert from the Open Group, Len Fehskens, Vice President of Skills and Capabilities. The interview is moderated by Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Google-China Tiff: A Clash of Cyber Civilizations?

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST

This ongoing tiff between Google and the Internet control authorities in China’s Communist Party-dominated government have uncorked a Pandora’s Box of security, free speech and corporate espionage issues. There are human rights issues and free speech issues, questions on China’s actual role, trade and fairness issues, and the point about Google’s policy of initially enabling Internet censorship and now apparently backtracking. But there are also larger issues around security and Internet governance in general. Those are the issues we’ll be focusing on today. So, even as the U.S. State Department and others in the U.S. federal government seek answers on China’s purported role or complicity in the attacks, the repercussions on cloud computing and enterprise security are profound and may be long-term.

Work Group Advances Cloud's Business Relevance

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:45:00 EST

In many ways, cloud computing marks an inflection point for many different elements of IT, and forms a convergence of other infrastructure categories that weren’t necessarily working in concert in the past. That makes cloud interesting, relevant, and potentially dramatic in its impact. What has been less clear is how businesses stand to benefit. What are the likely paybacks and how enterprises can prepare for the best outcomes? We're here with an executive from The Open Group, as well as the new co-chairmen of the Cloud Work Group, to look at the business implications of cloud computing and how to get a better handle on the whole subject. Please join David Lounsbury, Vice President for Collaboration Services at The Open Group; Karl Kay, IT Architecture Executive with Bank of America, and co-chairman of the Cloud Work Group, and Robert Orshaw, IBM Cloud Computing Executive, and co-chair of the Cloud Work Group. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Technology, process and people must combine smoothly to achieve strategic virtualization benefits

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:51:55 EST

Many people have probably heard the term "virtual machine sprawl" or "VM sprawl," and that's one of the risks. Part of the reason VM sprawl occurs is because there are no clear defined processes in place to keep the virtualized environment under control.

Security, simplicity and control ease make desktop virtualization ready for enterprise uptake

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:49:34 EST

Enterprises are looking for ways to save on costs, and they are constantly looking for different ways to more efficiently manage their distributed PC environments. All of these things are driving the high level of interest in virtualizing PCs.

Storage Virtualization Comes of Age

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:30:00 EST

The latest BriefingsDirect podcast discussion hones in on storage virtualization. You've heard a lot about server virtualization over the past few years, and many enterprises have adopted virtual servers to improve their ability to manage runtime workloads and high utilization rates to cut total cost. But, as a sibling to server virtualization, storage virtualization has some strong benefits of its own, not the least of which is the ability to better support server virtualization and make it more successful. We'll look at how storage virtualization works, where it fits in, and why it makes a lot of sense. The cost savings metrics alone caught me by surprise, making me question why we haven't been talking about storage and server virtualization efforts in the same breath over these past several years.

Consulting, Security Dominate IT Job Opportunities for 2010

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:30:00 EST

We interview David Foote, CEO and chief research officer at Foote Partners on the IT job landscape for 2010, and gain his findings of where the recession has taken IT hiring and where the recovery will shape up. The latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Volume 48, centers on the IT job landscape for 2010. We interview David Foote, CEO and chief research officer, as well as co-founder, at Foote Partners LLC of Vero Beach, Fla.

Apple and Oracle on Way to Do What IBM and Microsoft Could Not

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST

I was a bit distracted from the Apple iPad news due to the marathon Oracle conference Wednesday on its shiny new Sun Microsystems acquisition. But the more I thought about it, the more these two companies are extremely well positioned to actually fulfill what other powerful companies tried to do and failed. Apple and Oracle may be unstoppable in their burgeoning power to dominate the collection of profits across vast and essential markets for decades.

Alternatives Now Easier for Costly Mainframe Applications

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:55:00 EST

The challenge now is how to free up the applications that are not offering any differentiation -- and do not need to be on a mainframe -- and which could be running on a much more lower cost infrastructure, or come from a completely different means of delivery, such as software as a service (SaaS). A growing number of technical and economic incentives are mounting that make a strong case for modernizing and transforming enterprise mainframe applications -- and the aging infrastructure that support them. IT budget planners are using the strident economic environment to force a harder look at alternatives to inflexible and hard-to-manage legacy systems, especially as enterprises seek to cut their total and long-term IT operations spending.

Time For Cloud-Based Online Google Bank?

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

I have had it with credit cards, banks, mutual fund companies, PayPal, debit cards, MasterCard and Visa. As far as I'm concerned they are all fired. They do a lousy job, have suspect security, charge too much, stiff you with hidden fees and raise their rates whenever they want. Why pay 15 percent interest on a credit card when money can be borrowed for less than 2 percent? For their service? For their security? Because they can do a basic two-phase commit?

Business Commerce Clouds

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

Welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Vol. 46. Our topic for this episode of BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition centers on "business commerce clouds." As the general notion of cloud computing continues to permeate the collective IT imagination, an offshoot vision holds that multiple business-to-business (B2B) players could use the cloud approach to build extended business process ecosystems. It's sort of like a marketplace in the cloud on steroids, on someone else's servers, perhaps to engage on someone's business objectives, and maybe even satisfy some customers along the way. It's really a way to make fluid markets adapt at Internet speed, at low cost, to business requirements, as they come and go.

TIBCO Takes Social Software to Work

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:45:00 EST

This is a clear sign that the enterprise software and social software worlds are munging. Get ready to see a lot more. TIBCO Software will release in 2010 software that lets people search for and then track corporate information by subject matter in a similar way to how they might follow people on Twitter. This is a clear sign that the enterprise software and social software worlds are munging. Get ready to see a lot more. The idea behind the tibbr – the name an obvious play on “Twitter” -- helps people find information related to their particular tasks and jobs quickly and easily by searching for information based on its subject matter, and then subscribing to relevant feeds on those topics, the company said.

Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0 and SOA

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:30:00 EST

Our topic this week centers on how to define, track and influence how people actually adapt to and adopt technology. Any new information technology might be the best thing since sliced bread, but if people don’t understand the value or how to access it properly -- or if adoption is spotty, or held up by sub-groups, agendas, or politics -- then the value proposition is left in the dust. Perceptions count ... a lot.

HP Makes Cloud Computing Safe

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST

HP has correctly identified a weakness in the SaaS and cloud markets. In many cases, applications and productivity services came to market first, but lacked the enterprise-caliber infrastructure, management, and auditing and fiscal control mechanisms. Now, HP is bringing these traditional IT requirements to the cloud domains, and making them available to the large market of existing providers.

Seeking Mainframe Alternatives For Agility and Profit

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:45:00 EST

Many IT architects are discovering that technical and economic incentives are mounting for exploiting alternatives to mainframe computing applications and systems. As enterprises seek to cut their total IT costs, they examine alternatives to hard-to-change and -manage legacy systems. There are a growing number of technical and economic incentives for modernizing and transforming applications -- and the data center infrastructure that support them. Here with us now to examine alternatives to mainframe computing, is John Pickett, Worldwide Mainframe Modernization Program manager at HP; Les Wilson, America's Mainframe Modernization director at HP, and Paul Evans, worldwide marketing lead on Applications Transformation at HP. The panel is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Oracle Faces Growing Price for MySQL

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST

The irony is that Oracle has advanced MySQL, lost money in the process, and helped its competitors - all at the same time. When Oracle buys Sun and controls MySQL the gift (other than to Microsoft SQL Server) keeps on giving as the existential threat to RDBs is managed by Redwood Shores. Oracle has uncharacteristically found itself maneuvered (by its own actions).

HP Gets Real on Client Virtualization

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST

The thin-client offerings from the Palo Alto, Calif. company include the HP t5740 and HP t5745 Flexible Series, which feature Intel Atom N280 processors and an Intel GL40 chipset. They also provide eight USB 2.0 ports and an optional PCI expansion module for easy upgrades. The Flexible Series thin clients support rich multimedia for visual display solutions, including the new HP LD4700 47-inch Widescreen LCD Digital Signage Display, which can run in both bright and dim lighting while maintaining longevity, and can be set in either a horizontal or vertical position. With the new HP Digital Signage Display (DSD) Wall Mount, users can hang the display on a wall to showcase videos, graphics or text in a variety of commercial settings where an extra-large screen is desired.

IBM Sitting Pretty on Oracle-Sun Debacle

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:30:00 EST

It's my contention that we're only now entering the true data-driven decade. And all that data needs to run somewhere. And it's not going to be in MySQL, no matter who ends up owning it.

Survey: Virtualization and physical infrastructures need to be managed in tandem

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:31 EST

Virtualization is seen as a key enabling technology. But on its own it does not address the most important operational and management challenges in a shared infrastructure.

Aster Data architects application logic with data for speeded-up analytics processing en masse

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:23 EST

When both data and applications reside in the same system, they are independent of one another, but both execute as "first-class citizens" with their respective data and application management services.

HP tackles application transformation pay-offs in series of free virtual conferences

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:52:15 EST

Internet Acceleration Supports Data Center Consolidation

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Data-center consolidation and modernization of IT systems helps enterprises reduce cost, cut labor, slash energy use, and become more agile. Infrastructure advancements, standardization, performance density, and network services efficiencies are all allowing for bigger and fewer data centers and strategically architected and located facilities that can efficiently carry more of the total IT requirements load.

A Lot of Legacy Code Can Be Jettisoned

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:10:00 EDT

A widening cost and productivity division exists between older, hand-coded software assets and replacement technologies on newer, more efficient standards-based systems. Somewhere in the mix, there are also core legacy assets distinct from so-called contextal assets. There is legacy wheat and legacy chaff.

Application Transformation Case Study

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:00:00 EDT

The ongoing impact of the reset economy is putting more emphasis on lean IT -- of identifying and eliminating waste across the data-center landscape. The top candidates, on several levels, are the silo-architected legacy applications and the aging IT systems that support them.

Global study: Hybrid model rules as cloud heats up, SaaS adoption blazing

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:14:35 EDT

Nine months ago, 61 percent of respondents indicated that they were using only internal IT systems and today, that number has dropped to 41 percent.

SOA Survey Compares OSS, Commerical Brands

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:58:50 EDT

Forgive my harping on this, but I keep hearing about how powerful social media is for gathering insights from the IT communities and users. Yet I rarely see actual market research conducted via the social media milieu. So now's the time to fully test the process. I'm hoping that you users and specifiers of enterprise software middleware, SOA infrastructure, integration middleware, and enterprise service buses (ESBs) will take 5 minutes and fill out my BriefingsDirect survey. We'll share the results via this blog in a few weeks.

What's on your watch list? Forrester identifies 15 key technologies for enterprise architects

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:06:38 EDT

Forrester Research has tried to sort things out with a new report, “The Top 15 Technology Trends EA Should Watch.” And, if even limiting the selection to 15 sounds like a lot to keep your eye on.

Workday's Bhusri on SaaS ERP

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

The thing that Dave and I both took away from PeopleSoft is that you have to stay on top of innovation, and that's what Workday is doing. We are innovating where the large ERP vendors have stopped.

Architects to Cloud: Get Real

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:45:00 EDT

The popularity of the concepts around cloud computing have caught many IT departments off-guard. While business and financial leaders have become enamored of the expected economic and agility payoffs from cloud models, IT planners often lack structured plans or even a rudimentary roadmap of how to attain cloud benefits from their current IT environment.

Successful data center transformation usually requires overdue rethinking of the network

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:37:40 EDT

Nowadays, we see that network requirements have, and are, shifting as IT departments adopt improvements such as virtualization, software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing, and service-oriented architecture (SOA).

HP roadmap dramatically reduces energy consumption across data centers

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:46:20 EDT

We're talking about collapsing infrastructure requirements by factors of 5, 6, or 10. You're going from 10 or 20 old servers to perhaps a couple of servers running much more efficiently. And, with modernization at play, you can actually increase that multiplication.

BI Gets Better with Managed Web Data Services

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:15:00 EDT

The more relevant and useful content that enters into BI tools, the more powerful the BI outcomes -- especially as we look outside the enterprise for fast shifting trends and business opportunities. That's what web data services can bring. As the recession forces the need to identify and evaluate new revenue sources, businesses need to capture such web data services for business intelligence (BI) to work better and fuller. In Part 1 of our web data series we discussed how external data has grown in both volume and importance across internal Internet, social networks, portals, and applications in recent years.

Cloud Computing By Industry

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:45:00 EDT

As enterprises seek to exploit cloud computing, business leaders are focused on new productivity benefits, on how to make the most of cloud computing for innovative solving of industry-level problems.

Kapow and StrikeIron Team-Up to Offer Web Data Services Capabilities to SMBs

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EDT

Under Kapow's strategic partnership with StrikeIron, Web Data Services 7.0.0, which is available immediately, will be offered on StrikeIron's Web Services Catalog. Under the terms of the agreement, Kapow will maintain full technical and operational responsibility for Kapow Web Data Services, including enhancements and upgrades. StrikeIron will provide the commercialization capabilities, handling all customer relationship management functions, including sales, billing, and account support.

Open Mashup Alliance Makes Debut

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:45:00 EDT

The latest consortium on the technology scene, the OMA’s mission is to foster the successful use of web data services and enterprise mashup technologies and the adoption of an open language that promotes enterprise mashup interoperability and portability. This is a high priority for more and more enterprises, which is why the OMA could gain momentum. In fact, it already has on one level. The founding members of OMA is a diverse list of software vendors, consultants, tech service provides and other industry leaders that share a common interest: promoting the open, free-to-use Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML) for the development, interoperability and compatibility of enterprise mashup offerings.

Doing nothing can be costliest IT course when legacy systems and applications are involved

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:13:36 EDT

The cost of legacy systems and the cost of supporting the mainframe hasn’t changed in 12 months. What has changed is the available cash that companies have to spend on IT.