web-services news

A 2012 New Year’s Resolution for Developers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:16:02 GMT

People often believe that if a developer is capable of creating clean, functional code that they will by default be writing secure code. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Security vulnerabilities can result from poor code, functional bugs can be security bugs too, but the trickiest security issues result from code that does more than you expect.. The application may test all of its functional tests but in addition it may have additional unintended functionality that can result in a vulnerability. For instance, a web site with a SQL Injection vulnerability could work perfectly well for a normal user and then work a little too well for a malicious user! It's important to think of abuse cases, not just us

Quit Your Addiction to Pushing Paper

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:35:01 GMT

While it may seem a little late to consider New Year's resolutions, you should try and identify as many opportunities for reducing paper use as possible. In any given SAP-centric business environment it is likely that there are already a number of measures in place for the creation of electronic documents rather than paper requests and forms that will be transcribed meticulously (or carelessly) into the main system of record and then either shredded or filed.

Advanced Load Balancing for Developers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:45:00 GMT

It has been a while since I wrote an installment of Load Balancing for Developers, and now I think it has been too long, but never fear, this is the grad-daddy of Load Balancing for Developers blogs, covering a useful bit of information about Application Delivery Controllers that you might want to take advantage of. For those who have joined us since my last installment, feel free to check out the entire list of blog entries (along with related blog entries) here, though I assure you that this installment, like most of the others, does not require you to have read those that went before.

ZapNGo! Is still a growing enterprise, now with several dozen complex applications and a high availability architecture that spans datacenters and the cloud. While the organization relies upon its web properties to generate revenue, those properties have been going along fine with your Application Delivery Controller (ADC) architecture.

Now though, you’re seeing a need to centralize administration of a whole lot of functions. What worked fine separately for one or two applications is no longer working so well now that you have several development teams and several dozen applications, and you need to find a way to bring the growing inter-relationships under control before maintenance and hidden dependencies swamp you in a cascading mess of disruption.

With maintenance taking a growing portion of your application development manhours, and a reasonably well positioned test environment configured with a virtual ADC to mimic your production environment, all you need now is a way to cut those maintenance manhours and reduce the amount of repetitive work required to create or update an application. Particularly update an application, because that is a constant problem, where creating is less frequent.

With many of the threats that your ZapNGo application will be known as ZapNGone eliminated, now it is efficiencies you are after. And believe it or not, these too are available in an ADC. Not all ADC’s are created equal, but this discussion will stay on topics that most ADCs can handle, and I’ll mention it when I stray from generic into specific – which I will do in one case because only one vendor supports one of the tools you can use, but all of the others should be supported by whatever ADC vendor you have, though as always, check with your vendor directly first, since I’m not an expert in the inner workings of every one.

There is a lot that many organizations do for themselves, and the array of possibilities is long – from implementing load balancing in source code to security checks in the application, the boundaries of what is expected of developers are shaped by an organization, its history, and its chosen future direction. At ZapNGo, the team has implemented a virtual test environment that as close as possible mirrors production, so that code can be implemented and tested in the way it will be used. They use an ADC for load balancing, so that they don’t have to rewrite the same code over and over, and they have a policy of utilizing a familiar subset of ADC functionality on all applications that face the public.

The company is successful and growing, but as always happens in companies in that situation, the pressures upon them are changing just by virtue of their growth. There are more new people who don’t yet have intimate knowledge of the code base, network topology, security policies, whatever their area of expertise is. There are more lines of code to maintain, while new projects are being brought up at a more rapid pace and with higher priorities (I’ve twice lived through the “Everything is high priority? Well this is highest priority!” syndrome while working in IT. Thankfully, most companies grow out of that fast when it’s pointed out that if everything is priority #1, nothing is). Timelines to complete projects – be they new development, bug fixes, or enhancements are stretching longer and longer as the percentage of gurus in the company is down and the complexity of the code and the architecture it runs on is up.

So what is a development manager to do to increase productivity? Teaming newer developers with people who’ve been around since the beginning is helping, but those seasoned developers are a smaller and smaller percentage of the workforce, while the volume of work has slowly removed them from some of the many products now under management. Adopting coding standards and standardized libraries helps increase experience portability between projects, but doesn’t do enough.

Enter offloading to the ADC. Some things just don’t have to be done in code, and if they don’t have to be, at this stage in the company’s growth, IT management at ZapNGo (that’s you!) decides they won’t be. There just isn’t time for non-essential development anymore.

Utilizing a policy management tool and/or an Application Firewall on the ADC can improve security without increasing the code base, for example. And that shaves hours off of maintenance projects, while standardizing on one or a few implementations that are simply selected on the ADC. Implementing Web Application Acceleration protocols on the ADC means that less in-code optimization has to occur. Performance is no longer purely the role of developers (but of course it is still a concern. No Web Application Acceleration tool can make a loop that runs for five minutes run faster), they can allow the Web Application Acceleration tool to shrink the amount of data being sent to the users’ browser for you. Utilizing a WAN Optimization ADC tool to improve the performance of bulk copies or backups to a remote datacenter or cloud storage… The list goes on and on.

The key is that the ADC enables a lot of opportunities for App Dev to be more responsive to the needs of the organization by moving repetitive tasks to the ADC and standardizing them. And a heaping bonus is that it also does that for operations with a different subset of functionality, meaning one toolset gives both App Dev and Operations a bit more time out of their day for servicing important organizational needs. Some would say this is all part of DevOps, some would say it is not. I leave those discussions to others, all I care is that it can make your apps more secure, fast, and available, while cutting down on workload.

And if your ADC supports an SSL VPN, your developers can work from home when necessary. Or more likely, if your code is your IP, a subset of your developers can. Making ZapNGo more responsive, easier to maintain, and more adaptable to the changes coming next week/month/year. That’s what ADCs do. And they’re pretty darned good at it.

That brings us to the one bit that I have to caveat with F5 only, and that is iApps. An iApp is a constructed configuration tool that asks a few questions and then deploys all the bits necessary to set up an ADC for a particular application. Why do I mention it here? Well if you have dozens of applications with similar characteristics, you can create an iApp Template and use it to rapidly bring new applications or new instances of applications online. And since it is abstracted, these iApp templates can be designed such that AppDev, or even the business owner, is able to operate them Meaning less time worrying about what network resources will be available, how they’re configured, and waiting for operations to have time to implement them (in an advanced ADC that is being utilized to its maximum in a complex application environment, this can be hundreds of networking objects to configure – all encapsulated into a form). Less time on the project timeline, more time for the next project. Or for the post deployment party. One of the two. That’s it for the F5 only bit.

And knowing that all of these items are standardized means less things to get mis-configured, more surety that it will all work right the first time. As with all of these articles, that offers you the most important benefit… A good night’s sleep.

Technorati Tags: Application Delivery Controllers,VPN,Security,Applicaiton Development,Acceleration,WAN Optimization,Encryption,F5 Networks,Load Balancing For Developers,Don MacVittie,blog

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Information Creation, Interpretation and Extrapolation Needs Optimization

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:14:00 GMT

The world is packed with information in the form of data. This is not news of course, but the undeniable groundswell of data creation, interpretation, extrapolation and perhaps even interpolation driven by Internet-based services is beyond the normal limits of human comprehension. Worthy enough web sites such as internetworldstats.com estimate the total number of web users on the planet to be 2,095,006,005 as of March 2011. If that number is out of date, it’s not that important – after all, this is a figure that we can not really make sense of in our own minds due to its sheer size.

Book Review: The Definitive Guide to HTML5

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:43:41 GMT

Although I started with Cold Fusion for application development, I did plenty brochureware sites with HTML. I believe the version was HTML 2.0 for IE 2.0. I lived in the browser world for years doing Cold Fusion, ASP, and HTML sites. When winforms and Smart Client with Web Services emerged I changed my religion. I have been avoiding the browser whenever possible since. For the past couple of years my extent of using simple HTML has been limited to writing blogs and book reviews. Simple HTML means no ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC. With all the HTML5 hype I figured I would take some time and read a few books on it. This one is my third and I have one more on the way.

Information Builders and Infobright Announce OEM Partnership

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:03:00 GMT

Infobright on Monday announced that Information Builders, an independent leader in business intelligence (BI) solutions, has entered into an OEM agreement with Infobright for its Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) analytic database. Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence platform is installed in tens of thousands of locations, servicing millions of users worldwide. With the huge growth of data volumes being captured and the expanding need for real-time reporting and analytics, IEE adds value to Information Builders' products as an embedded database for applications that capture and store large quantities of data. IEE enables very fast query performance without any manual effort and compresses data at rates averaging 10:1 to 40:1, allowing users to store far more data in a small hardware footprint. "Many of our customers are experiencing the challenges associated with Big Data," said David Sandel, senior vice president, Business Intelligence Product Group and Worldwide Customer Services, of Information Builders. "Embedding Infobright's analytic database into our product offerings will provide the performance they need without the work other databases require, and will significantly reduce hardware and operational costs while storing much greater volumes of data."

SOA Software Announces Year-on-Year Growth of 60%

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:01:00 GMT

SOA Software, a provider of SOA governance, cloud and enterprise API Management products, announced year-over-year business growth of 60% in 2011, spurred by the increasing need for effective cloud computing and mainstream SOA solutions. The company also expanded to new locations, significantly increased its employee base, and built exciting new partnerships while enjoying widespread industry recognition from analysts and awards for achievement. "It is very gratifying to see the planning, collaboration and hard work result in such positive gains," said Paul Gigg, President and CEO, SOA Software. "The company is delivering tremendous value to our customers with our products being recognized as best of breed around the world. I am excited about the trajectory of continued growth, innovation and product excellence; SOA Software can rightly claim to be a leader among the world's premier software vendors in SOA and Enterprise API Management." SOA Software's business growth reflects expansion of its client base to include significant new clients as well as expansion of business with existing customers. In 2011 the Company increased its personnel by 50% and opened centers of operations in the Middle East and South Africa to complement existing business centers in North America and Europe. SOA Software is succeeding in being a step ahead of customer demand for automated governance solutions for services that are either entirely cloud-based or hybrid on-premise/cloud instances.

Do You Need to Monitor Your Mobile Apps?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:00:00 GMT

The increasing adoption of mobile applications as part of a company’s online services leads to the question of whether we need to monitor it like other parts of our IT infrastructure. As they are part of our shipped application services we need to ensure they are working properly. However, not every application must be monitored the same way. In addition, monitoring always comes at a certain cost. We need people to take care of the monitoring, we have to prepare our applications to be ready for monitoring and we potentially also have to buy or at least integrate new monitoring tools. Before talking about how we have to monitor them we need to figure out whether and how much to invest in monitoring. As with classical applications, not every application is worth the effort of detailed production monitoring. An obvious decision criterion is business value. If the cost of monitoring exceeds the business value or if no specific requirements for uptime exist, then we shouldn’t invest in monitoring – at least not beyond basic monitoring.

Assange Awaits Verdict on His Fate

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

WikiLeaker Julian Assange could be on a plane headed for a jail cell in Sweden in a couple weeks if his two-day appeal to Great Britain’s Supreme Court this week fails. Assange claims the arrest warrant issued by Sweden’s public prosecutor instead of a judge has no weight and his lawyer reached back as far as the sixth-century Byzantine Codex Justinius to try to prove that the concept that “no one can be a judge in his own case” is a “fundamental principle.” Unfortunately for Assange prosecutors often play a judicial role in Sweden and elsewhere on the continent and Britain generally defers to other European systems.

Cloud Computing: Andreessen Horowitz Raises New $1.5 Billion Fund

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:07:00 GMT

Novice venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, which wouldn’t be near so influential if Netscape survivor Marc Andreessen wasn’t at the helm, has raised another $1.5 billion fund in these days of not-so-scarce money. That means it’ll have $2.7 billion under management. Andreessen, who’s accorded rock star status and gets early access to plum investments, says it’s a “very opportunity-rich environment right now.” Naturally he’s looking for the disruptive start-ups. Andreessen Horowitz started in 2009 with $300 million. It’s in all the chi-chi firms like Zynga and Facebook and sold Skype to Microsoft for a pretty penny, $8.5 billion in fact.

Spring 3, Spring Web Services 2 & LDAP Security

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:06:26 GMT

Creating and securing a Spring 3 , Spring WS 2 web service using multiple XSDs and LDAP security.

Tilera’s New Server Chips Arrive

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:54:00 GMT

Tilera, the wannabe many-core Intel server replacement, said Monday that it’s delivering the expected 16- and 36-core versions of its new 64-bit low-power proprietary TILE-GX processors along with evaluation systems it hopes will give Intel something to worry about. The things should be in volume by mid-March. They’re Tilera’s first 64-bit chips capable of using more memory than its original 32-bit widgets – like 512GB or 1TB. They’ve been shipping in limited quantities – alphas – since September. The start-up claims to have 20 design-wins and 80 “deep” engagements for the GX family that it expects will turn into design-wins – probably this year – because they’re do-or-die mission-critical projects. Forty-seven are in the US, 13 in Europe, and 20 in APAC, mostly China.

Stop Buying Database Licenses: You Have All the Capacity You Need

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:08:00 GMT

Any organization that has deployed a business application has experienced the joy of procuring database licenses. Most database software licensing models are based on the quantity and type of compute processing cores in the underlying database server – the more cores in the processor and the more processors in the server box, the higher the cost of the database software license. Depending on the application and the business’s expectations, the tolerance threshold for performance can vary. This is typically considered during the design and testing phases of an application deployment lifecycle. Once the application goes into production and data accumulates in key areas supporting mission-critical business processes, performance starts to take a hit. Performance tuning is an art, requiring the skill and experience of the highly coveted and paid performance database administrator (DBA) – an employee who has been, incidentally, identified by industry research as being problematic to retain. [1] That performance guru will add database indexes, rearrange queries, or add additional database objects solely targeted at improving application performance. At some point, performance tuning will only get you so far and returns will start to diminish. DBAs will request more processing power to meet SLAs; more processing power turns into more database licenses not only in production but for every copy of the data. When data is copied to a data warehouse for reporting, to a test or development environment for product support activities, or to a disaster recovery site and there is a corresponding performance expectation for that environment, the production server upgrade now turns into several server upgrades – each with a corresponding increase in database license upgrades.

Like Cars on a Highway

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Every once in a while, as the number of people following me grows (thank you, each and every one), I like to revisit something that is fundamental to the high-tech industry but is often overlooked or not given the attention it deserves. This is one of those times, and the many-faceted nature of any application infrastructure is the topic. While much has changed since I last touched on this topic, much has not, leaving us in an odd inflection point. When referring to movies that involve a lot of CGI, my oldest son called it “the valley of expectations”, that point where you know what you’d like to see and you’re so very close to it, but the current offerings fall flat. He specifically said that the Final Fantasy movie was just such a production. The movie came so close to realism that it was disappointing because you could still tell the characters were all animations. I thought it was insightful, but still enjoyed the movie.

Amazon Web Services: The new Microsoft Windows

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:17:45 GMT

The news hit this week : "As of the end of 2011, there are 762 billion objects in Amazon S3 .

IBM Buys Worklight

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:00:00 GMT

IBM is buying a privately held 12-year-old Israeli outfit called Worklight for its write-once-run-anywhere application platform and tools for smartphones and tablets. The price IBM is paying wasn’t disclosed. Worklight’s widgetry, which can be used to create and run HTML5, hybrid and native apps, is supposed to put new and existing consumer and employee-facing apps on multiple mobile devices – including iPhones, BlackBerries and Androids – and then securely connect them to a company’s data center. It includes an IDE, middleware, management and analytics and is supposed to reduce time to market, cost and complexity. The apparently key acquisition is expected to close this quarter and be part of IBM’s Software Group.

Data Services: the Cloud and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:15:00 GMT

Enterprises AND software companies seeking competitive advantage through IT innovation should be aware of this technology shift and actively defining strategies for capitalizing on it. The principles behind Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) were established long before the Internet became a force, and certainly before the appearance of Cloud infrastructure. Although many people consider SOA as well as Cloud to all about ways of building, deploying and managing applications, these technologies and methodologies are also important in making "big data" useful and manageable. Indeed, SOA and Cloud are increasingly becoming so intertwined as to cause major confusion in the marketplace. Let's be clear - there's SOA, and there's Cloud and there's the intersection of SOA and Cloud. That intersection is a very exciting place to be. I remember long discussions on things like CICS which embodied many of the principals behind SOA, and I'm sure there are technologies (and methodologies) older than that which similarly embody various principals of Cloud as well as SOA). Like so many things in this industry, the more things change, the more they seem strangely (though never entirely) similar. I suppose that's evolution for you.

Tucows Officially Launches Ting, A More Thoughtful Wireless Carrier

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:14:57 GMT

Tucows is probably best known for their slew of web services and their extensive reseller network, but CEO Elliot Noss sees room to grow in another space: mobile. After spending the past few months conducting a private beta for a hundred users, Tucows has officially opened up their Ting wireless service to all comers. The goal? To offer wireless customers "a whole different type of carrier relationship." "Big name carriers have services meant to maximize their profitability, not their service to customers," Noss told me.

Enterprise Architects Play Key Role in Transformation, Data Analytics

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:53:23 GMT

Good data management, analytics, and helping to shape the goals of the business are keys to transforming the enterprise through impactful enterprise architecture (EA). Coming from the siloed past in IT, companies are now moving to business service-driven processes across various resources, Ross said. But they need to recognize the forces around consumption of such services, not just the implementation. Making good data management a priority, a "single source of truth" is also at the heart of making EA valuable, said Ross. Ensuring the quality of data and the speed of data refresh will help enterprise architects rise in performance appreciation more than just about anything else, she said. Ross studies how firms develop competitive advantage through the implementation and reuse of digitized platforms.

CFO Defends Amazon From Analyst Skepticism

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:15:28 GMT

Investors seem pretty disappointed with Amazon's fourth quarter results (as of 3pm Pacific, the company's stock is down 8.6 percent in after-hours training), yet for most of this afternoon's analyst conference call, that disappointment was largely hidden in the normal stream of numbers and financial terminology. Finally, a few minutes before the call ended, one analyst asked CFO Tom Szkutak to directly address the concern that earlier questions had hinted at — namely, that the company seems to be seeing "diminishing return" on its spending. Szutak's initial response? "I'm not sure how to answer that." Yes, he said Amazon is investing heavily (for example, hhe said Amazon had opened 17 fulfillment centers during the quarter, bringing the total to 69), but that's because the company is seeing so much growth — in its own retail business, in fulfillment for third-party retailers, in Amazon Web Services, and so on. As evidence, he pointed to Amazon's 46 percent growth in overall unit sales. (He talked in more detail about media sales earlier in the call.)

Remote Data Center Management

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:15:00 GMT

It’s just been an accepted fact of the life of an IT professional (and of a data center manager in particular) that sometimes you have to go into the data center to fix things. A single phone call at 3 a.m. means you’re tooling down the road half-awake, hoping to find an open coffee shop on the way to the data center so you can approach the problem with at least some semblance of logic and attention. Remote tools have been somewhat lackluster, and only able to handle certain types of problems. While you can probably connect remotely to restart a given virtual machine or a server, there are countless data center components you can’t access from home.

SmartBear CodeCollaborator 7.0 Transforms the Agile Code Review Process

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:05:00 GMT

SmartBear Software on Tuesday announced Code Collaborator 7.0, a major release that makes peer code review more productive and automated than ever before. Featuring revamped navigation, a streamlined, intuitive user interface, and a new SOAP API, CodeCollaborator enables teams to align their code review process with the core principles of agile development and deliver quality software faster. Kirk Poore, Software Engineer at DeniServ, LLC, a subsidiary of Delta Dental, said, “CodeCollaborator 7.0’s newly simplified review screens make it much easier to ensure everyone has reviewed and approved all documents and bug fixes. It also blends easily with Subversion 1.7 to form a nearly seamless process.”

GridIron Systems Joins the NetApp Alliance Partner Program

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:46:11 GMT

GridIron Systems, a pioneer in Big Data acceleration, has announced its membership in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program. GridIron is collaborating with NetApp to integrate its TurboCharger SAN acceleration appliance into NetApp unified storage environments. This collaboration will enable customers to increase application performance and support more concurrent users and applications without disrupting operations, while preserving limited budget dollars. Customers can analyze extremely large, data-intensive workloads with boundless and secure storage for better decision-making and business advantage. The GridIron TurboCharger is a SAN-attached appliance that provides a high-performance, transparent access layer between servers and storage to significantly boost the performance of applications and databases with no changes to existing servers, storage, applications or processes. By bridging the I/O gap between servers and storage, the TurboCharger delivers solid-state performance from existing storage and satisfies the concurrent bandwidth and IOPS requirements of demanding applications. By combining TurboCharger with NetApp unified storage systems, customers can leverage their current multi-protocol, multi-vendor storage investments by improving performance and simplifying the management of multi-vendor disk arrays to obtain advanced storage efficiency, data protection, and data management features.

Apple Unseats HP in Client PCs: Canalys

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:23:00 GMT

Apple was the leading worldwide client PC vendor in Q4, pushing HP off its perch, according to Canalys, which unlike Gartner and IDC, doesn’t hesitate to lump tablets in with desktops, netbooks and notebooks. It says that since Apple shipped over 15 million iPads and five million Macs last quarter it did 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped globally, up 6% year-over-year. Canalys also figures that if tablets are thrown in, the total client PC market grew 16% year-on-year. If they aren’t, the client PC market declined 0.4%. Canalys predicts that “HP will struggle to compete with Apple following the end of its Touchpad” given doubts about how Windows 8 will do on HP tablets once it’s out.

Amazon Web Services Adds New Features to Gold and Platinum Level Support

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:44:04 GMT

Cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services has added third-party support for operating systems running Amazon EC2, and some system software as well, according to a blog post on Monday .

HP Cloud Services (Beta) Open for Business

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:48:00 GMT

It’s been described as the "Wild West of Cloud Computing" — no slick "urban" services like Amazon provides, but HP is in beta with its cloud services, and the time is ripe to make your land grab with free real estate (for now) hosted by the world’s second-largest PC maker, looking to move into Web services in a big way.

Read full story...

Goodbye Defense in Depth. Hello Defense in Breadth

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:45:00 GMT

Over the past few years we’ve seen firewalls fail repeatedly. We’ve seen business disrupted, security thwarted, and reputations damaged by the failure of the very devices meant to prevent such catastrophes from happening. These failures have been caused by a change in tactics from invaders who seek no longer to find away through or over the walls, but who simply batter it down instead. A combination of traditional attacks – network-layer – and modern attacks – application-layer – have become a force to be reckoned with; one that traditional stateful firewalls are often not equipped to handle. Encrypted traffic flowing into and out of the data center often bypasses security solutions entirely, leaving another potential source of a breach unaddressed. And performance is being impeded by the increasing number of devices that must “crack the packet” as it were and examine it, often times duplicating functionality with varying degrees of success. This is problematic because the resolution to this issue can be as disconcerting as the problem itself: disable security. Seriously. Security functions have been disabled, intentionally, in the name of performance.

Five Questions You Need to Ask Before You Outsource an Agile Project

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:45:00 GMT

If you think that the following points are an oversimplification of a very complex subject of outsourcing agile project – you will be right and I agree with you. However, I think these questions are a good starting point for your research before you actually go ahead and outsource an agile project. You are already engaged in outsourcing and have established a good working relationship with the outsourced vendor. You have tried agile way of working internally and it has worked for you. You want to extend it to outsourced projects.

When Was Your Last Enterprise Architecture Maturity Assessment?

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:57:00 GMT

Every company should plan regular architecture capability maturity assessments using a model. These should provide a framework that represents the key components of a productive enterprise architecture process. A model provides an evolutionary way to improve the overall process that starts out in an ad hoc state, transforms into an immature process, and then finally becomes a well-defined, disciplined, managed and mature process. The goal is to enhance the overall odds for success of the enterprise architecture by identifying weak areas and providing a defined path towards improvement. As the architecture matures, it should increase the benefits it offers the organization. Architecture maturity assessments help to determine how companies can maximise competitive advantage, identify ways of cutting costs, improve quality of services and reduce time to market. These assessments are undertaken as part of the Enterprise Architecture management.

CloudPassage launches new security product for public clouds

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:19:30 GMT

CloudPassage is launching a new security product for virtual servers in public clouds such as Amazon Web Services that it says takes care of the all-important need for security when using services from infrastructure providers.

Is Your Integration Platform a Relic?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:14:49 GMT

As companies increasingly adopt more and more SaaS/Cloud based applications, as more and more data are cloud-based, and as social networking data becomes increasingly critical to sales, marketing and customer satisfaction applications, the "old style" integration stacks that were originally created to run on PCs or On-Premises Servers will be a non-optimal solution. This is the normal evolution of things. The mainframe-centric nature of computing gave way to Client/Server which in turn gave way to Internet and then SaaS/Cloud. Just like Mainframe-based applications could never really be retrofitted to be good client/server applications, or how non-relational databases never really worked well with SQL front-ends slapped on, Older architectures (Server or LAN-based application integration suites) can't simply been retrofitted or wrappered to become sky-based.

Intel to Buy RealNetworks IP

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:52:00 GMT

Intel last year bid billions trying to get the Nortel patents. Thursday RealNetworks said Intel was paying it $120 million cash for 190 “foundational media” patents, 170 patent applications and next-generation video codec software good for stuff like streaming. The IP is apparently supposed to brace Intel’s Ultrabook, smartphone, tablet and digital media interests. Intel’s also picking up Real’s video codec engineering team. Real retains “certain rights to continue to use the patents in current and future products.” RealNetworks and Intel signed an MOU to collaborate on future support and development of the next-generation video codec software and related products.

Enterprise Security and Gaining Insightful Insight into “Insight”

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:14:00 GMT

Security specialists are fond of using expressions like “robust protection” and “multi-layered defenses” when it comes to setting out their stall and telling us exactly how they are able to protect our data and applications. Looking closer at enterprise security, we see that lower down the buzzword pecking order for some reason is the word “insight” in its various forms. It seems insight means more than one thing in information technology these days, but perhaps it’s no coincidence that every meaning or interpretation of the term essentially falls somewhere under the umbrella of enterprise security.

InfoQ: Amazon Launches DynamoDB

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:09:00 GMT

Amazon Launches DynamoDB On January 18th, Amazon Web Services launched DynamoDB, which as explained by Werner Vogels, AWS’ Chief Technical Officer in his blog, is an NoSQL database designed for Internet scale web applications. By JP Morgenthal

AWS Offers Storage Gateway for Automated Backups

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:11:06 GMT

Amazon Web Services announced Tuesday that it was releasing a public beta of its Storage Gateway, enabling companies to schedule automatic backups to the Amazon cloud. Storage Gateway is a software appliance currently optimized for VMware, although other virtual environments will be supported in the future.

The gateway sends backup snapshots of data to the cloud, while also storing the data locally. Snapshots can be used to readily restore the data to local hardware, and can be accessed as Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes for mirroring data between on-premises and Amazon apps that are based in the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2.

Disaster Recovery, Data Migration

In a statement, Amazon said the gateways make it easy to use its EC2 "for additional capacity during peak periods, for new projects, or as a more cost-effective way to run normal enterprise workloads."

The company said it expected the AWS Storage Gateway would be used primarily for disaster recovery and business continuity, backup, and data migration. AWS cited the advantages of reducing costs for hardware by emphasizing a cloud strategy, and avoiding any concerns about running out of storage space or managing off-site facilities.

Storage volumes created with the gateway can be attached as iSCSI devices to on-site app servers. Amazon said the standard iSCSI interface worked with existing apps and on-premise architecture. Gateway-Stored volumes, available now, maintain a complete copy on local storage, while uploading backup snapshots to Amazon. Gateway-cached volumes, available soon, can use local storage as a low-latency cache for frequently used data, while the clean copy lives in the cloud.

Each gateway can support as many as 12 iSCSI volumes and a total of 12 terabytes, and there can be multiple gateways for each account. If different configurations are needed, users can request special arrangements. Users can choose to store data in...

Amazon Storage Gateway Bridges Cloud, On-Premise Data

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:46:00 GMT

Amazon Web Services launches the AWS Storage Gateway, a cloud storage service that links on-premise and cloud data for disaster recovery.

Amazon Web Services moves backups to cloud with new appliance

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:16:19 GMT

Amazon Web Services has launched a public beta test of AWS Storage Gateway, which allows enterprises to back up application data in Amazon's cloud using a software appliance, the company said on Tuesday.

If You Think Your Data Is a Mess Now...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:50:08 GMT

If you think your data is a mess now...just wait. It will get worse, if you're not careful. Maybe even if you ARE careful. That loud rumbling sound you hear isn't thunder, or an earthquake--it's the noise from an avalanche of exploding volumes of data, in places and formats that never existed before. This explosion is making a difficult situation even more challenging, and what's worse, it has a direct impact on business productivity. Only 21% of CEOs have the comprehensive information they need about their customers to make strategic decisions, according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers CEO report. As with so many other data challenges (such as data quality), the best approach to managing exploding volumes of data--data in a multiplicity of new places and formats--is planning. The avalanche of disparate data, formats and applications has exacerbated a classic organizational challenge: critical data about customers stored in a myriad of different places and formats inside the enterprise, ranging from spreadsheets to databases to various enterprise systems (such as CRM or ERP) as well as various types of structured and unstructured data files.

The Consumerization of IT – What It Means for the Architect

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Consumerization is described as the trend for IT to first emerge in the Consumer space and subsequently makes its way into the enterprise world. But what exactly in the consumer world, that is making the users, demand the similar things from the enterprise IT. To understand the underlying need, we need to first examine the basic requirements of the user. Kathy Sierra, co-creator of the Head First series of books and founder of javaranch.com, describes the hierarchy of needs from the user(s) perspective. The needs are stacked in the order of increasing engagement from the user. Starting with the basic needs of a defined functionality and its correctness, moving on to the learnability, efficiency & usability and finally culminating in intuitiveness and enchantment. Merely provision of correctly working functionality is not guarantee of the success of the application(s). The idea is to hook the user; the application needs to do something extra.

InterDigital Gives Up Looking for a Buyer

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:32:00 GMT

Remember InterDigital? That’s the Pennsylvania patent-licensing company that hired Evercore Partners and Barclays Capital last summer to sell its patents, raising punters hopes that Google would buy it to console itself for losing the $4.5 billion Nortel mobile patent auction to Apple, Microsoft and friends. Players bid its stock up 50 bucks to a high of $82.50 in three days on such speculation little suspecting Google would turn around and buy Motorola Mobility and its patents a few weeks later for $12.5 billion. Well, Monday evening InterDigital’s board announced that it was giving up the hunt for a buyer and would try to increase the firm’s cross-licensing and patent sales instead.

Apple Loses Samsung Tablet Appeal

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:53:00 GMT

A Dutch appeals court Tuesday rejected an injunction-seeking Apple bid to overturn a lower court’s decision last August that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 isn’t a copy of the Apple iPad and doesn’t infringe Apple’s design rights. Apple was also denied a preliminary injunction in the United States on a design-related patent equivalent to its European Community Design IP and is appealing the decision. FOSS Patents says the Dutch appeals court, like the US district court, narrowed the scope of the Apple IP based on prior art and so came to its conclusion. Apple got a preliminary injunction in Germany using the design IP last summer, a decision a German appeals court could lift for the same reason next week. Last Tuesday Apple filed two more design-related suits against Samsung phones and tablets in Germany but didn’t ask for injunctions.

Why Alerts Suck and Monitoring Solutions Need to Become Smarter

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:15:00 GMT

I have yet to meet anyone in Dev or Ops who likes alerts. I’ve also yet to meet anyone who was fast enough to acknowledge an alert, so they could prevent an application from slowing down or crashing. In the real world alerts just don’t work, nobody has the time or patience anymore, alerts are truly evil and no-one trusts them. The most efficient alert today is an angry end user phone call, because Dev and Ops physically hear and feel the pain of someone suffering :) Why? There is little or no intelligence in how a monitoring solution determines what is normal or abnormal for application performance. Today, monitoring solutions are only as good as the users that configure them, which is bad news because humans make mistakes, configuration takes time, and time is something many of us have little of. It's therefore no surprise to learn that behavioral learning and analytics are becoming key requirements for modern application performance monitoring (APM) solutions. In fact, Will Capelli from Gartner recently published a report on IT Operational Analytics and pattern based strategies in the data center. The report covered the role of Complex Event Processing (CEP), behavior learning engines (BLEs) and analytics as a means for monitoring solutions to deliver better intelligence and quality information to Dev and Ops. Rather than just collect, store and report data, monitoring solutions must now learn and make sense of the data they collect, thus enabling them to become smarter and deliver better intelligence back to their users.

RIM Replaces CEOs

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Research In Motion late Sunday named Thorsten Heins, 54, one of its co-COOs, president and chief executive, replacing co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie in the hopes the move reverses the company’s dramatic nosedive and calms irate investors whose stock lost three-quarters of its value last year. Heins’ appointment is the succession plan Lazaridis and Balsillie presented to the board. Both Lazaridis and Balsillie, who reportedly weren’t pressured to hand over the reins, mean to stay on the board so there’s no clean break, which may be one of the reasons why RIM’s stock dropped more than 6.8% at the open to ~$15.83. Lazaridis, RIM’s co-founder and co-chair, will become vice-chair and head the board’s new innovation committee. He is supposed work closely with Heins “to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide.”

Cross-Platform Mobile Visual Development – a Tool Comparison

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Mobile development tools are changing rapidly. I had started work on comparing cross-platform mobile tools about a month back. I had initially started with a list of 26 tools. Few got added on the way. However, what is most interesting is that in this short period of time one of the tools (Open Plug) was … Read more

BearingPoint Acquires Business Analytics Software "Hypercube"

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:13:00 GMT

Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint on Monday announces the acquisition of business analytics solution Hypercube. With the transaction BearingPoint reacts on an increasing challenge many companies face regarding their business performance and perspectives: how to handle and use a growing amount of available data in business processes. Hypercube offers a solution to quantify 'big data' with very high precision, to identify opportunities and hedge risks along the entire value chain. The software generates easy to understand formal rules immediately usable by end-users and thus improves the way companies make decisions. By acquiring the technology BearingPoint expands its service portfolio in the fast growing asset based consulting field and offers market-specific analytics applications. "The integration of the software is important for meeting future needs of our customers in handling and using 'big data' in their business processes", says Peter Mockler, Managing Partner at BearingPoint. "Business analytics will become one of the most challenging prospective corporate requirements. Thus, with the transaction we are taking another important step in extending our role as one of the leading business consultancies internationally."

Should NoSQL startups be afraid of DynamoDB?

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:41:10 GMT

Top executives at NoSQL startups are putting on a brave face in response to Amazon Web Services' new DynamoDB offering.

How-Tos: Entrepreneurs Talk Customer Acquisition, Social Media & More In New Video Series

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:14:26 GMT

Building on their education and training video platform for startups and SMBs, Grovo is today launching an "Expert Series" that aims to "shed light on the evolving world of Web 2.0," in which entrepreneurs, small business owners, celebrities, journalists, and investors will offer insights into successful operation strategies, brand building, differentiation, how to leverage social media, and everything in between. The goal is to not only help others understand how to use popular web services and tools, but why they're important and how they've helped grow their own businesses.

Court Finds RPost Patent Valid

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:09:00 GMT

A federal court in California has upheld the validity of a key RPost patent reinforcing the company’s claims to own the technology for registered, legally recognized, court-admissible evidence of e-mail content and delivery going back to 1995. RPost’s 35 patents, granted in 21 countries, broadly cover verifiable proof of e-mail delivery and value-added outbound e-mail processing. On December 27 the District Court for the Central District of California granted RPost a summary judgment finding its US patent 6,182,219 valid. The decision is a lead-up to RPost’s infringement suit against Trustifi Corporation but the 20-page ruling is expected to impact the suits RPost also has pending against Swiss Post, Canada Post, Adobe-Echosign, DocuSign, Zix Corporation, RightSignature, Farmers Insurance and Telarix, among others. They are all being sued for treading on ‘219 as well as other RPost patents.

Intel, IBM, Microsoft & Google & Only Google Bums Out

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:44:00 GMT

A rare, if not unheard of, confluence of stars Thursday meant that IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Google all reported their calendar Q4 numbers after the market closed. Of the lot only Google came a cropper, losing $57 after-hours, down 8.9% when last we looked to $582.58, on a scary drop in its search advertising. Paid clicks were down 8% while costs were up 35%. Earnings were up 6.3% but that still counted as a miss by Wall Street’s lights. Google was supposed to return $10.49 a share on revenues of $8.41 billion. Instead it did $8.22 on record-breaking $10.58 billion, up 25%, which worked out to $8.13 billion after paying commissions. The reaction may, in part, be a way to punish Google for buying Motorola Mobility, which delivered a disappointing quarter on January 6 on depressed device sales. The purchase, if regulators wave it through, will likely play havoc with Google’s income statement.

How to Measure IT's Relative Impact

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:45:00 GMT

The research I've been conducting and writing about for the past several months provides a relative, “pound-for-pound” look at the IT expenditures of 80+ nations of the world. This image is popular among the people I meet in the Philippines, the home of pound-for-pound champion boxer/congressman/national hero Manny Pacquiao. But my work seeks to find “torque” within societies, on the premise that IT is disruptive and furthermore that a highly aggressive commitment to it may be aggressively disruptive. Thus I've named it the Tau Index, as the Greek letter Tau is used to measure torque (and related characteristics throughout the sciences.) Comparative images that work here include a motocross cycle, a Formula 1 car, and the Space Shuttle. All are powerful, with plenty of torque. All are to be taken seriously. It's just a matter of degree – what type of market are you living in, hiring in, developing in, sourcing in, or investing in? Torque is “twisty” (and therefore, potentially disruptive) power that must be handled carefully. And to be sure, several nations listed in my original Top 25 list in late 2010 became headline-grabbers during the Arab Spring in 2011. Other top finishers included Ukraine (which maintains a tenuous peace among two rival factions) and Vietnam (which is starting to make headlines with rumblings of labor unrest). I've modified the list since its original publication, adding a few more dimensions and working to smooth out the data integrations within the index. I've also focused more on the achievements of developed nations, after focusing more on developing nations in the early stages of my research. The stars among the developed nations are less likely to undergo the revolutionary change found in the most highly rated developing nations, but are clearly in transformative phases that could leave their neighbors in the dust some day. I embarked on the Tau Index to answer questions I've had about the “look and feel” of places I've visited. Why does Southeast Asia feel more energetic and vibrant than Latin America, even though the economies throughout these regions are similar? Why does Sweden seem more dynamic than neighboring Norway? Why do the BRIC nations not impress me with their dynamism as much as many other places? What in hell is wrong with the United States these days? This year, I'll be focusing on the presence and impact of cloud computing within the nations of the world. There are easy ways to measure its presence, but a more difficult task to determine its impact. I'm confident my formulas and calculations will let us discern at least a measure of said impact. For now, here are the most highly rated countries in my current calculations, tiered up within income levels: Developed Tier A (per capita income $30K+) 1. Sweden 2. United Kingdom 3. Japan 4. Singapore 5. Canada Developed Tier B (PCI $16K-$29K) 1. Czech Republic 2. South Korea 3. Slovakia 4. Hong Kong 5. Slovenia Developing Tier A (PCI $7K-$16K) 1. Hungary 2. Romania 3. Saudi Arabia 4. Poland 5. Russia Developing Tier B (PCI $3K-$7K) 1. Malaysia 2. Bulgaria 3. Thailand 4. South Africa 5. Tunisia Developing Tier C (PCI <$3K) 1. Bangladesh 2. Ukraine 3. Morocco 4. Egypt 5. Honduras 6. Senegal 7. Vietnam 8. Pakistan 9. India 10. Kenya, Philippines (tie) Follow me on Twitter

Be Nice and Share - Ten Tips for the Shared Services Team

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:45:00 GMT

Sharing code across teams poses many challenges. Each team will have its own release schedule and agenda and will not be aware of each other’s day-to-day activities. Sharing code successfully across teams requires proper planning and infrastructure. In this article I share ten suggestions that have come from lessons learned from my real world experience as the lead on a large-scale infrastructure project.

Amazon Rolls Out Ultra-Scalable DynamoDB

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:45:31 GMT

Amazon Web Services just rolled out a fully managed NoSQL database service that promises fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability. DynamoDB aims to compete with Oracle, Salesforce.com and Database.com, as well as Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine.

With DynamoDB, Amazon's big idea is to help enterprises offload the admin burdens of operating and scaling distributed databases. In Amazon's view, that means no hardware provisioning; no set up; no configuration; no replication; no software patching; no partitioning; and no cluster scaling. DynamoDB offers pay-as-you-go pricing.

"Amazon has spent more than 15 years tackling the challenges of database scalability, performance and cost-effectiveness using distributed systems and NoSQL technology," said Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon. "Amazon DynamoDB is the result of everything we've learned from building large-scale, non-relational databases for Amazon.com and building highly scalable and reliable cloud computing services at AWS."

Low Cost, Low Complexity

Amazon is hammering its differentiator: scalability. While traditional databases aren't designed to scale to the performance needs of modern applications, which can experience explosive growth and cause a single database to rapidly reach its capacity limits, Amazon said DynamoDB mitigates the risk of automatically partitioning and re-partitioning data as needed to meet the latency and throughput requirements of highly demanding applications.

"We are always evaluating new technologies that will enable us to handle our large, varying workloads," said Darren Person, chief architect of Elsevier. "Operating a distributed data store on our own is orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive to manage than traditional databases. DynamoDB delivers a high-performance service that can be easily scaled up or down to meet our needs, helping us eliminate complexity and lower costs."

Amazon said customers typically witness single-digit millisecond latencies for database read and write operations. DynamoDB stores data on solid-state drives and replicates it synchronously across multiple AWS Availability Zones in an AWS...

REST Style Web Services with Binary Content (Google Protocol Buffers)

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:24:58 GMT

Representational State Transfer (REST) style web services are very popular. They offer simplicity and flexibility of choosing the content in which they can be consumed. This session focuses on the pros and cons of using binary format as a content for the RESTful web services. In this talk, Google Protocol Buffers will be used as [...]

Code 42 Gets $52.5 Million in Funding

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:49:00 GMT

Code 42, the Minneapolis start-up that peddles CrashPlan, the automatic real-time PC and mobile backup and recovery service aimed at consumers, SMBs and the enterprise, has gotten a $52.5 million investment from round leader Accel Partners and Split Rock Partners. It’s the company’s first investment. It’s reportedly been profitable since it launched the widgetry in 2007. Accel dipped into its new $100 million Big Data Fund for the first time for its share. Code 42 says it’s got some 4,000 enterprise customers including Adobe, Google, Groupon, HP, LinkedIn and NASA and 100PT of data stowed in the cloud: its cloud or private clouds, other computers or devices or some combination or all of these options. That represents a total of 100 billion file and it reportedly gets 250 million unique new files a day.

Amazon Adds Managed NoSQL Database To AWS Cloud Services

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:42:00 GMT

Amazon Web Services launched a new, fully managed NoSQL cloud database the cloud services giant said handles all of the database heavy lifting with rapid scalability.

Creation and Consumption of Web Services with PowerBuilder

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:09:00 GMT

PowerBuilder 12.5 introduced a number of significant enhancements to web services support, both for creation and consumption. We’re going to look at what those new features provide and how to use them. We’re also going to look at how we can package some of that functionality so that it can be used from PowerBuilder Classic applications as well. First though, some background. When support for a web service client was first introduced in PowerBuilder 9, it was done based on an open source library called EasySOAP. There were some limitations with that implementation, primarily because the EasySOAP library only supported SOAP 1.1, was limited to XML over HTTP transport, and provided no support for ancillary web services standards such as WS-Security.

Amazon launches home-grown NoSQL database

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:12:39 GMT

Amazon Web Services is adding a home-grown NoSQL database to its ever-expanding roster of cloud computing offerings.A DynamoDB is what Amazon CTO Werner Vogels called a "fully managed" NoSQL implementation that the company built and tested over the years.

Samsung Touted as Possible RIM Buyer

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:00:00 GMT

An unattributed rumor put in play Tuesday by the Boy Genius blog has RIM interested in selling out and Samsung interested in buying it, or some piece of it, if RIM’s co-CEOs weren’t asking so much. The other possibility is that RIM will license its IP to other companies. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek thinks it more likely RIM will license its newfangled Blackberry 10 operating system for 10 bucks a pop to Samsung and HTC. He also thinks RIM might finally get an independent chairman, who could kick off a formal strategic review of the floundering company’s options and set in train a major hardware restructuring. BGR thinks the BlackBerry Messenger and several other Blackberry enterprise features would be a swell way for Samsung to differentiate Android, make it a bigger threat to Apple and lessen Google’s control. It said, “We have heard that [RIM co-CEO] Jim Balsillie is actively meeting with almost every company that might be interested in either a part or all of RIM, in addition to having talks about licensing. ‘Jim is going hard after Samsung,’ said a source with knowledge of the negotiations.’” The speculation tickled RIM’s stock price 8%-10%. RIM’s market cap is about $9 billion. BGR thinks RIM is looking for $12 billion-$15 billion or between $22.90 and $28.60 a share. Its stock, which closed at $17.47 Tuesday, lost 75% of its value last year. Meanwhile, Samsung is planning to merge its internally developed bada mobile operating software with Tizen, the open source successor to Intel’s Meego Linux OS, in the search for an alternative to Android. It might try to license the combo to other Android OEMs who might be interested since Google is buying hardware rival Motorola Mobility. The Linux Foundation is supposed to be putting HTML5 support in Tizen. Unavailable in the US, Bada owns 2.2% of all smartphones according to Garter.

CVE-2011-3569

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Unspecified vulnerability in the Oracle Web Services Manager component in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11.1.1.3, 11.1.1.4, and 11.1.1.5 allows remote attackers to affect confidentiality via unknown vectors related to Web Services Security.

CVE-2011-3568

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Unspecified vulnerability in the Oracle Web Services Manager component in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11.1.1.3, 11.1.1.4, and 11.1.1.5 allows remote authenticated users to affect confidentiality and integrity via unknown vectors related to Web Services Security.

CVE-2011-3531

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Unspecified vulnerability in the Oracle Web Services Manager component in Oracle Fusion Middleware 11.1.1.3, 11.1.1.4, and 11.1.1.5 allows remote attackers to affect availability via unknown vectors related to Web Services Security.

Why SSL VPN Still Matters

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:15:00 GMT

We were very excited to announce recognition of our hard work on our SSL VPN solutions: F5 Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of SSL VPN Magic Quadrant. Second, we were even more excited to announce adding industry-leading support for Android’s 4.x OS, enhancing its SSL VPN capabilities. Why would be excited about that? Because mobile devices and virtualization (desktop, a la VDI, and server, a la cloud) continue to drive the need for secure remote access at a scale never before experienced by most IT organizations. While web monsters and primarily web-focused organizations have long understand the critical nature of scalability to their business, IT shops for whom a web presence was only somewhat important have not necessarily invested in the infrastructure or architecture necessary to truly scale to meet the increasing demand. It is increasingly the case that IT orgs of all shapes, sizes, and concerns must look to the scalability of its infrastructure to ensure its ability to service users inside and outside the data center via an often times dizzying array of clients and technologies.

Apple Sues Samsung Again

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:22:00 GMT

Apple has filed two new lawsuits in Germany citing 10 Samsung smartphones and five Samsung tablets with infringing its design IP, the kind of peculiarly European intellectual property it used to get the Galaxy Tab 10.1 outlawed in Germany last year. Apparently the Düsseldorf Regional Court will hear the phone case in August and tablet case in September. The FOSS Patents blog figures Apple’s design rights assertions may make it impossible for the two companies to structure a mutually acceptable settlement and that they “may just need the courts to clarify the boundaries of Apple’s exclusive design-related rights.”

Do People Lie More on Email?

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:22:00 GMT

Yes, if you are to believe the study done by Mattitiyahu Zimbler and Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts. (See this) “…some degree of deception present in all three forms (face-to-face, instant messenger, email) of communication, it was increased in both instant messaging and e-mail, with e-mail messages the most likely to contain lies…” The author goes on to draw the conclusion that “deindividualization” effect leads to lying. When people grow psychologically and physically further from the person they are in communication with, there is a higher likelihood of lying. No, if you go by what is written in the book “59 Seconds: Think a Little – Change a Lot” by Richard Wiseman.

Amazon Web Services Adds Microsoft Windows Server Instances to Free Usage Tier

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:26:02 GMT

Windows Server applications within the AWS Free Usage Tier - a program designed to help new AWS customers get started in the cloud.

Information Technology Forecast for 2012

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:13:00 GMT

"The IT development potential in healthcare is huge," said Jerry, Exist CEO. Much of this can be attributed to increasing demands to provide better quality of care, streamline operations, gain more administrative visibility and clinical insight, and improve access to healthcare. In the Philippines itself, a couple of healthcare IT developments, such as PhilHealth's eClaims project, are already underway. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. "Exist will be very active with Philippine healthcare stakeholders as an authority in technology." “Our problems here are not unique,” noted Jerry, sharing feedback from a healthcare IT forum in the United States. “There are lessons which we can take from America’s healthcare system -- from improving workflows to data integration, as well as from health reform to putting the right tools in place."

Microsoft Windows Server Coming To Amazon Web Services

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:20:02 GMT

Amazon has announced that customers taking advantage of the free usage tier of their Amazon Web Services can now run their Windows Server applications in their AWS cloud. Amazon Web Services is ...

Agile Practice and Work-Life Balance

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Do you really believe that adopting agile practices will help you achieve work life balance? One of the principles behind agile manifesto hints that it is possible: “…Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely…” However, the real world is different. We live in a world where we have an obsession with “Growth” … obsession with “Achieving more with less” … obsession with “Goal orientation” … obsession with “Stretch target”. To this you add the fast pace of change in everything around us – you will find that status quo is something which is very difficult to maintain.

Web Server Recommendations

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:00:00 GMT

was asked this question last week at our TechNet Event in Kansas City. “What is Microsoft’s best practice recommendation for web server deployment to support a web site that has variable demands from day-to-day? Network Load-Balancing? Private Cloud? Clustering?.. or something else?” -Don G. Clouds lead to rain which causes the flowers to grow!That’s a very big question, Don. Smile To answer it of course involves knowing a lot about your application, your customers, the amount of infrastructure that you want to support in-house or are willing to purchase as a hosted solution, etc. And of course all have to be balanced with your budget and your staff (local expertise).

Amazon Web Services Adds Microsoft Windows Server Instances to Free Usage Tier

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:17:07 GMT

SEATTLE - Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced in a press release that customers can now run their Microsoft Windows Server applications within the AWS Free Usage ...

Amazon Web Services Adds Microsoft Windows Server Instances to Free Usage Tier

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:51:37 GMT

Amazon Web Services LLC , an Amazon.com company , today announced that customers can now run their Microsoft Windows Server applications within the AWS Free Usage Tier - a program designed to help new AWS customers get started in the cloud.

U.K. Telco May Get Head Start in Web Services

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:21:26 GMT

Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA’s U.K. mobile-phone venture may get a head start in high-speed mobile-phone services as the watchdog revised its design of a 2.6 billion-pound ($4 billion) frequency auction.

AT&T Joins OpenStack, Floats Cloud Architect

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

AT&T has joined OpenStack. It’s the first US telecom service provider to sign up for the free Rackspace-NASA-spawned open source cloud initiative. AT&T CTO John Donovan said AT&T has been participating in OpenStack for more than a year and has contributed a blueprint for a potential new function in OpenStack focused on transactional task management. Donovan said the OpenStack IaaS is housed on dedicated infrastructure in AT&T data centers in Dallas, San Diego and Secaucus, New Jersey, to start. The company means to more than double the number of centers with open source capabilities this year. Evidently AT&T is using OpenStack – or elements of it – underneath a new commodity-style cloud for developers called Cloud Architect that’s presumably intended to compete with Amazon Web Services et al.

AT&T Joins OpenStack, Floats Cloud Architect

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

U.K. Telco May Get Head Start in Web Services

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:49:41 GMT

CVE-2011-1377

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The Web Services Security component in the Web Services Feature Pack before 6.1.0.41 for IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) 6.1 does not properly handling the enabling of WS-Security for a JAX-WS application, which has unspecified impact and attack vectors.

U.K. Telco May Get Head Start in Web Services

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:57:39 GMT

Google Wins Biggest Enterprise Deal with BBVA

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:59:11 GMT

Google Inc., vying with Microsoft Corp. for corporate customers, will provide Web services to the Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA in the Internet- search giant’s biggest enterprise contract ever.

Why Android will die

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:58:48 GMT

IA used to think A that, as with Linux and web services in the early part of last decade, Android was going to be the mortar for the Internet of post-PC devices - an essential ingredient to put stuff together.

Amazon adds more spots for connecting directly to its cloud

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:26:31 GMT

Amazon Web Services has added four locations where enterprises can use its Direct Connect network service to communicate with its cloud, the company said on Tuesday.

AT&T Is Going To Try To Blow Away Amazon's Cloud

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:38:01 GMT

There's already no shortage of companies with their own "clouds" trying to blow up Amazon's popular web services.

Samsung and Best Buy choose Appolicious to power app discovery (Appolicious)

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:11:00 GMT

Appolicious - Appolicious is the "Intel Inside" of app discovery and through web services provides algorithmic-based app search and recommendation technology to third parties. Samsung and Best Buy are among the most recent companies to license Appolicious services, which are informed by the deepest and widest set of app metadata available today. Learn more below.

ASP.NET Web Services Dependency Injection using Unity

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:55:39 GMT

Recently, I had to setup Unity IoC container in an existing ASP.NET 3.5 Web Forms application.

AT&T says will complete wireless network upgrade by end 2013

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:53:42 GMT

AT&T Inc is on track to finish its wireless network upgrade with faster mobile Web services by the end of 2013, having exceeded its target for 2011, a top executive said.

AT&T says will complete wireless network upgrade by end 2013 (Reuters)

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:44:41 GMT

Reuters - AT&T Inc is on track to finish its wireless network upgrade with faster mobile Web services by the end of 2013, having exceeded its target for 2011, a top executive said.

Check Point Takes Security Products To Amazon

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:49:00 GMT

Check Point is making all of its security products available to companies using Amazon Web Services. Options include a firewall, intrusion and data loss prevention and URL filtering.

Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c, NetBeans, and MySQL (Screencast #39)

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:00:00 GMT

Oracle WebLogic Server 12c is now available and comes with a zip installer. This video shows how to develop and deploy a Java EE 6 application on WebLogic 12c using NetBeans. It builds a simple application using Java Persistence API 2.0, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.1, Servlets 3.0, Java API for RESTful Web Services 1.1, Java Server Faces 2.0, and Contexts & Dependency Injection 1.0. The video also explains how to configure MySQL database in NetBeans and use it for accessing the database tables in the Java EE 6 applications. Enjoy! You can also check out the sample code built in this application from here. What kind of Java EE 6 applications are you deploying on WebLogic ? What else would you like to see on this blog relating to Java EE 6 and WebLogic ? Follow the complete series here.

Facebook Timeline Doesn't Show in Internet Explorer 7 (Mashable)

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:49:11 GMT

Mashable - If you don't like Facebook Timeline, all you have to do to get rid of it is use Internet Explorer 7 -- but be prepared for a buggy experience. Facebook's latest profile redesign is not visible in IE7, and the company might soon completely phase out support for the aging browser, ZDNet suspects. It took Facebook quite awhile to cut support for IE7's ancient predecessor, Internet Explorer 6. In August 2010, Facebook had announced that its chat feature will no longer support IE6, joining many other web services that gave up on the bug-ridden browser.

Free The Cloud: Part Ivreaching the Pinnacle: Truly Open Web Services and Clouds

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:07:36 GMT

Free software in the cloud isn't just a nice-sounding ideal, or even an efficient way to push innovation forward.