- Test Center Tracker: Do DRM dreams come true?
- Citrix: Time right for GoToWebinar
- Preview: Veritas Storage Foundation Management Server
- RIP, ProdBlog; long live Test Center Daily!
- TechExcel offers project planning for app dev
- Scalix touts email for Linux
- JOnAS app server advances
- SpikeSource bolsters open source apps stack
August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Do DRM dreams come true?
New on the Reviews Docket: If you've got sensitive information floating around your company (and who doesn't), clamping down on who can read, edit, and share which documents is a must. Check out Mike Heck's review of two enterprise DRM solutions from SealedMedia and Liquid Machines that control document access and manage policy compliance.
Windows Marketplace Open for Business: Oliver Rist takes a stroll through the newly-refurbished Windows Marketplace in this week's installment of Enterprise Windows and likes what he sees -- well, some of it at least.
The Ever-Changing Vista: Looks like Vista's ship date is still blowing in the wind, despite Amazon posting dates of Jan. 30 yesterday. Want to reminice about Vista's past, including our examination of Longhorn Beta 2? Check out the Vista Special Report.
Blog Roundup: Paul Venezia is having fun with OpenVZ in The Deep End.
Brian Chee and the rest of the Geeks in Paradise out at the ANCL in Hawaii dig into NTP servers.
And Mario Apicella wonders on the Storage Network blog whether Napoleon would be an iSCSI fan.
Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on August 31, 2006 10:46 AM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Citrix: Time right for GoToWebinar
Citrix Online launched its GoToWebinar service on Wednesday with the hope that the time was right for the Webinar technology, which was first introduced by other companies in the heady late-1990s but failed to gain traction.
Citrix told InfoWorld times had changed, and pricing was key to its expected success. Familiarity with the company's GoToMeeting technology, on which it's based, should help too.
"The market's enthusiastic response to our June announcement of GoToWebinar has been very exciting and interest continues to build as companies see the value of easy, affordable do-it-yourself Web events," said Brett Caine, general manager of Citrix Online.
The service joins a strong field of Webinar products, including ON24 and WebEx.
Citrix said GoToWebinar has a leg up because the service is easy to set up, allowing on-demand use via the Web. But the clincher is flat-fee licensing of $99 per month, which covers unlimited usage for the service, which includes application sharing, annotation tools, desktop session-recording, and playback, the company said.
GoToWebinar allows one-click attendee entry, and the company stressed its planning, presentation and reporting functionality. One feature allows a presenter to know when an attendee has tuned out by minimizing their screen. (Ahem, time to step up the presentation a notch.)
Aimed at presenting to large audiences, the company said GoToWebinar is designed for holding marketing, sales and training sessions, as well as for delivering product presentations and demos.
A free 30-day trial is available here.
Posted by Mike Barton on August 30, 2006 02:30 PM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Preview: Veritas Storage Foundation Management Server
Veritas Storage Foundation has been for many years a way to grapple with the increasing complexity of managing a variety of storage devices across multiple operating systems. Last years' acquisition by Symantec has not slowed Foundation down any, as Symantec just recently released a new version, Storage Foundation 5.0, and a global management application for Foundation. Storage Foundation Management Server brings multiple Foundation servers under a common, centralized administration console.
The first thing to clarify about Storage Foundation Management Server is that it doesn't manage storage directly, but is able to collect all the information seen by each Storage Foundation server via SQL queries. The system includes the Central Management Server (CMS) and Symantec Authentication Services, the latter a suite of applications to ensure controlled access to the CMS.
The remote administration capabilities of Storage Foundation Management Server were the first thing that impressed me during a demo prepared by Symantec. The demo was conducted by an admin based in Florida accessing a Foundation Management Server in India and controlling a geographically dispersed storage network with Foundation servers in India and the U.S.
The system can manage both Storage Foundation 5.0 and 4.1 servers, which facilitates a gradual update to the new version. The CMS conveys the data collected by remote agents into a dashboard that sums up possible errors or changing conditions using numbers and color codes.
The Dashboard has three different sections for storage, applications, and hosts, each presenting the number of objects present on the network and their status. In our demo, for example, 20 out of 572 volumes assigned had experienced errors.
It's worth remembering that in Symantec speech an application is the logical intersection of one or more objects such as databases, hosts, files systems, and disk groups, which creates an aggregated element not founnd anywhere else in the datacenter and must therefore be entered manually.
Naturally, the storage section totals the amount of space managed, listing also the overall amount of available and used space. From this overview, it's easy to dig for more details. In fact, selecting a segment, say applications in error, opens a list of applications affected and the errors that triggered that status.
Moving further down the path, it was easy to find that the reason for a certain error was a disconnected volume. On the same page the admin can access a variety of volume provisioning and maintenance tools to recover from a storage error, or shrink or expand a volume, without having to access the specific tools of each device.
Other standout features:
-- Intelligent provisioning, essentially the ability to select storage for a new group from aptly named volume organizations such as "mirrored-raid5" or "striped-mirrored." This should be useful both to experienced and rookie admins.
-- Global queries, which can find almost instantly answers that would otherwise require manually polling each server on the network. Take for example dynamic multi-pathing: A simple query will find all the single path exposures in your network, showing the volumes, applications, and storage devices affected. CMS can save those results to several formats, including Excel spreadsheets, a popular choice for many system administrators.
-- The Inventory view, a live picture of the system that can easily zoom to hard to find but important details such as the level of firmware and the port name of each HBA in your network.
-- The ability to monitor the progress of a replication task. This is unfortunately limited to Symantec solutions, but includes the recently released "bunker replication" that creates simultaneous mirrors at multiple locations.
Like previous versions, Storage Foundation Server 5.0 has a powerful rule creation system that can capture troublesome conditions such as a hardware error or a volume getting low on space and automatically start actions such as sending an e-mail message, adding to an SNMP queue, or running a script. Also worth noting is the effort by Symantec to give the CMS a friendly UI. For example, error codes are hyperlinked to Web documentation that explains in more detail possible causes and remedies.
Existing customers that have many Storage Foundation for Windows machines may want to wait; at the moment Storage Foundation Management Server doesn't handle Windows servers. Otherwise, my suggestion is to dive in. If the demo I saw is an indication of what the suite can do, you won’t be disappointed.
Veritas Storage Foundation Management Server
Symantec
Price: Free, but customers need a valid license for Veritas Storage Foundation; Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 license starts at $695 per processor per socket
Verdict: Storage Foundation Management Server brings together dispersed storage environments for customers that have already adopted the Veritas Storage Foundation paradigm. In addition, the ability to control the space managed by just about any OS and a large variety of storage systems makes the offer from Symantec particular intriguing.
Posted by Mario Apicella on August 30, 2006 12:23 PM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
RIP, ProdBlog; long live Test Center Daily!
Die-hard fans of the InfoWorld ProdBlog may have been a little bit confused to discover that it's been replaced by the Test Center Daily. Well, fear not, productphiles: Think of this as ProdBlog Deluxe. Or maybe ProdBlog 2.0. ProdBlog Reloaded?
Wait. Just forget the name ProdBlog. This is the Test Center Daily, and it's going to give you not only the important product announcements you crave, but also analysis and daily updates on what the InfoWorld Test Center crew is working on.
First off, go fetch yourself some popcorn and Raisinettes (or Goobers), turn down the lights, and watch Test Center Lead Analyst Jon Udell's latest screencast over in his Screening Room. Today's feature: IronPython 1.0, not to be confused with "Snakes on a Plane." "As IronPython 1.0 nears final release, we got together to review the synergies that emerge from deep integration between Python and .NET," Udell writes.
Also, be sure to check out the latest Ahead of the Curve column by InfoWorld's Chief Technologist Tom Yager. Tom is never one to duck controversy. In fact, he has a flare for stirring it up, as evidenced by his prediction that Windows and Apple are going to shove Linux right out of the server and client space by the end of the decade.
That's not to say the Linux is going the way of the Atari 2600; he says it's going to fulfill its destiny and become the de facto embedded platform. "I believe Big Software vendors such as IBM and Oracle will use Linux to give unwieldy enterprise solutions the George Jetson treatment: Push a button, you've got an enterprise database, configured, loaded with sample data and listening for connections. Want a J2EE server with that? Flip this switch, it'll unpack itself, sniff out that database you installed and mate with it," Yager writes.
If Yager's comments push any of your buttons (or flip any of your switches), let him know in Talkback.
Posted by Ted Samson on August 30, 2006 11:28 AM
August 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)
TechExcel offers project planning for app dev
TechExcel on Wednesday is announcing availability of DevPlan, a project planning tool to manage application development.
DevPlan features a Gantt chart view, resource management, baseline comparisons and integrated knowledge management. Team-based planning and calendaring also are included. The product works in conjunction with the company's DevTrack tool for issue-tracking and defect management.
All work done in DevTrack is done within the context of DevPlan's project breakdown structure.
TechExcel's DevPlan offering is similar to what Rational is providing in the application lifecycle management space but Rational does not provide a way to track a project plan, according to a TechExcel representative.
DevPlan costs about $1,500 per user while DevTrack is approximately $700 per user.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 16, 2006 03:19 PM
August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Scalix this week at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco announced its Scalix 11 email, calendaring and messaging platform for Linux, featuring Web services capabilities and a mobile client.
New in version 11 are two Web services: Scalix Messaging Services and Scalix Management Services. Messaging Services features REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs for email and calendaring application integration; users can integrate Linux messaging with applications such as content management, mobile solutions, CRM and ERP. Management Services features SOAP-based APIs to enhance the ability to manage resources from the Scalix Administration Console.
Also highlighted is Scalix Web Access, which is a Web client featuring a server-side search capability for finding information across mailboxes. A Google-style user interface lets users locate information such as attachments. Performance has been improved as well.
Scalix Web Access Mobile, meanwhile, is a lightweight Web interface enabling mailbox access for cell phones, PDAs and hotel set-top boxes.
New SmartCache technology insulates mobile users form fluctuations in their network by keeping information flowing continuously.
Scalix includes transparent Outlook support, featuring indexed search and improved mobile performance. Version 11 also features a migration tool to migrate data from the 5.5, 2000 and 2003 versions of Exchange and from other legacy systems.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 15, 2006 07:21 AM
August 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)
JOnAS, an open source Java application server, is being updated with clustering enhancements, said a developer working on the project at Groupe Bull in France.
A release candidate of JOnAS 4.8.1 was made available this week as a prelude to a general release planned for late-September or October. "The main functionality [improvement] is cluster monitoring," for functions such as starting and stopping of servers, said Florent Benoit, a lead developer at Groupe Bull.
Also planned in the new release are Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) replication framework enhancments, in which the SFSB (Stateful Session Beans) replication framework ensures transaction and global consistency in clusters. A remote deploy/start improvement allows for deploying of the same application on several nodes.
JOnAS is available via a Lesser GPL open source license. The project is hosted on ObjectWeb.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 11, 2006 09:01 AM
August 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
SpikeSource bolsters open source apps stack
SpikeSouce on Thursday is adding the Centric CRM open source CRM package and the Open-Xchange Server messaging and collaboration platform to its open source software stack.
Working through resellers, SpikeSource provides open source software in a stack and certifies that the components work together. Centric CRM Spike Certified features common CRM modules and adds capabilities such as Web site authoring and enterprise content management. Open-Xchange Server Spike Certified integrates messaging and collaboration tools into a single solution.
Other applications certified by SpikeSource include SugarCRM and the Drupal Web content management system.
SpikeSource distributes, integrates, manages and supports open source solutions. The company generates revenues by subscriptions, with portions of the funds going to the channel partner, the ISV and SpikeSource. The company also sells maintenance and support services.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 10, 2006 10:49 AM