August 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Pimp my datacenter wrap-up: Photos and words II
The Pimp My Datacenter project wasn't confined to increasing the cooling in the room. Everything from rack management to the locks on the door was upgraded to the latest and greatest technology. One of the major areas of upgrade was the electrical system. We put together a slide show with narration from Brian Chee to show you the highlights of more power in the datacenter.
Posted by Curt Franklin on August 12, 2008 05:11 PM
November 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Shacking up with Leopard: Apple's OS X Leopard hit the North American market one week ago this evening, prompting Tom Yager to swing by the Apple store, MacBook Pro in hand, then make a beeline for an isolation chamber (the local Holiday Inn) for an intensive evaluation. (Nothing gets between Yager and a new Mac OS.) While we wait for the resulting review, you can track his progress on Enterprise Mac. For the quick-and-dirty on what Leopard will mean to users, the best places to start are two of Tom's recent posts to Ahead of the Curve, "Apple OS X Leopard: A beautiful upgrad" and Tom's "Leopard: Not an OS, but a system you operate".
Small (and cheap) project management: If Microsoft Project is more than enough, free and open source OpenProj might be just enough. Curt "Dr. Gantt" Franklin takes the tidy project manager for a spin in SMB IT.
Help your datacenter help itself: The self-checking and "phone home" features in many server and storage systems use the Axeda ServiceLink service-monitoring system. A new offering from Axeda, called ServiceLink for Datacenters, brings these remote access links under a central management portal -- reducing the risk of data exposure, reports Storage Insider Mario Apicella.
Welcome to Estonia: If you think your business is immune to the kind of massive distributed denial of service attack that shoved Estonia off of the Internet, think again, advises our Security Advisor, Roger Grimes.
Posted by Doug Dineley on November 2, 2007 12:05 PM
October 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Preview: OpenProj brings free, robust project management to the desktop
Microsoft Project 1.0 for Windows (my very first InfoWorld review assignment, by the way) didn't score high. In fact, during the late 1980's Scitor's Project Scheduler – with its speed, usability, and accurate scheduling – consistently won our project management shootouts. Fast forward 20 years. Like other Microsoft Office applications that underwent extensive rework, Project is now a desktop fixture. Plus, it connects to the formidable Microsoft Project Server 2007. As a result, many early desktop project managers have disappeared.
Well, not entirely. Key Scitor staff moved on to form Projity, keeping alive their scheduling engine in the form of Project-ON-Demand (a $19.99 per month SaaS application that also integrates with Salesforce.com) and the open source OpenProj application. It's particularly timely, with more enterprises considering open source, to see how OpenProj compares to commercial offerings.
I tested OpenProj Beta 4 (a Java application) under Windows XP and found generally stable software with extensive project scheduling and resource management capabilities. Compared to Microsoft Project, OpenProj is miniscule (less than 10MB to download, not counting the Java runtime software) and it runs fast. Without errors, I opened a 500-task Microsoft Project file in OpenProj, which then recalculated the schedule in less than one second on my aging single-core-processor laptop.
OpenProj's user interface provides easy access to a full complement of scheduling, charting, and resource functions. As expected, the default Gantt (timeline) let me enter tasks – and then link them, adjust duration, and indicate percent complete by merely dragging around in the charting pane. Clicking icons immediately switched the display to any of a dozen other views, which include a network diagram, Work Breakdown Structure, and task usage reports.
Like high-end project management applications, OpenProj doesn't hold back on the type of data you can enter. Besides handling standard budget information, I customized OpenProj to compare up to ten variations of my plan and compute many important metrics, such as remaining cost and project duration.
One aspect of project management that's sometimes hard to fathom is resources, which OpenProj does a great job demystifying. After easily creating a list of staff members and assigning them to different tasks, I displayed a resource chart to see where people were working over their limits. Then, by interactively adjusting the timeline, I reallocated people so assignments fit within their available hours. OpenProj also does an excellent job of automatically leveling resources, finding the best fit so resources are neither over-worked nor standing idle.
I didn't find any significant feature gaps. Displays and reports can be filtered and sorted in many ways. For instance, I limited the Gantt chart to only over-budget items. Moreover, context-sensitive menus appear as you right-click in expected places – which let me quickly change formatting and other display options. Yet, as you expect with beta software, there's still cleanup coding to do: Sometimes when I zoomed or resized panes, text didn't display properly.
Overall, OpenProj performs all the essential tasks you'd do with a desktop project management application. That, and cross-platform availability, would justify Projity charging even a portion of Microsoft Project's $999 price tag. But with OpenProj's free access, it's just one more compelling case for going open source on the desktop.
OpenProj Beta 4
Availability: Open beta download; final release date to be announced
Platforms: Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows
Verdict: OpenProj, an excellent open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project, reads native Project files while providing an especially precise scheduling engine. The OpenProj solution has essential project management tools, including Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing – all surrounded by a customized user interface.
Posted by Mike Heck on October 9, 2007 06:01 AM