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Pundits on parade: What’s next in tech You’ve heard of Christmas in July, that classic advertising gimmick designed to lure shoppers into stores despite the oppressive heat and humidity. We’ll, we’ve got New Year’s in August, which invites you to stay indoors and read “The next big things in IT” -- 15 predictions about the future of technology. Homegrown high-performance computing Once the domain of monolithic, multimillion-dollar supercomputers from Cray and IBM, HPC (high-performance computing) is now firmly within reach of today’s enterprise, thanks to the affordable computing power of clustered standards-based Linux and Microsoft servers running commodity Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. Many early movers are in fact already capitalizing on in-house HPC, assembling and managing small-scale clusters on their own.  April 23, 3:00 a.m. PDT Verizon to offer CaaS, computing as a service, later this year As SaaS (software as a service) permeates every corner of the user community, two companies, Verizon and Savvis, will announce later this year new services that extend the SaaS model well beyond application delivery. April 17, 3:15 p.m. PDT Nuance adds brains to voice search Carriers can give directory assistance more quickly and make the experience more natural for users with new Nuance Communications voice-recognition software, the company said Tuesday. April 11, 5:48 a.m. PDT Microsoft to buy Tellme to enhance voice services Microsoft plans to purchase Tellme Networks in an effort to bolster its voice services portfolio and add speech recognition to a broad range of its software and online services, the company said Wednesday. March 14, 12:51 p.m. PST More IT war stories Off the Record, the real-world slice of life that graces the last page of InfoWorld, is one of our most popular columns. I know this from reader surveys and from all the e-mail I receive about it. As reader Roland Sickenberger put it recently, “It’s my favorite part of the magazine, kind of like a ‘Dilbert come to life’ thing.” March 5, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM taps partners to bolster speech applications Speech-enabled applications have been around for some time, but they have never reached the level of adoption that proponents of the technology have predicted over the years. IBM is out to change all of that. February 13, 1:54 p.m. PST Women in technology: A call to action A quick scan of almost any IT department -- from the trenches to the corner office -- confirms it: Women who embrace technology as a lifelong career remain a rare breed. To be sure, opportunity for women in technology has advanced in the past few decades, as have education initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field, but for every woman rising to prominence or embarking on a profession in IT, there seems to be another opting out of her career in technology. January 29, 3:03 a.m. PST Back to school: Getting girls into IT Despite the success of various education initiatives in the past several years, there’s little doubt that the shortage of women in technology begins on the playground. As such, many industry leaders and experts believe the long-term solution to the gender imbalance in IT lies in women technologists going back to school -- way back, to high schools and even elementary schools to mentor young girls, who too often give up on math and science at an early age. January 29, 3:02 a.m. PST Activism provides competitive advantage for IT Encountering another woman working in technology was a rare event for me when I started out in IT many years ago. In the years since, women have made significant strides, sometimes against great odds, proving their mettle as both tech execs and engineers. January 29, 3:01 a.m. PST Gender crisis in IT You don’t need a degree in statistics to recognize that IT is a men’s club. Just walk the floor of any tech conference or, in all likelihood, your own office — XY chromosomes everywhere you look. January 29, 3:00 a.m. PST VoiceBox aims to improve in-car voice controls Voice control of in-car electronics is moving into the fast lane thanks to a system developed by Seattle-based VoiceBox Technologies Inc. January 8, 4:24 p.m. PST Technology of the Gods January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who reportedly was able to look both forward and back. So for our Jan. 1 issue, we pay homage to the mythological immortal with our seventh annual Technology of the Year Awards, an analysis of where IT has been and where it’s going in 2007. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST Review of reviews It’s coming up on closing time for 2006. All around us, everyone is going into holiday mode. Not to be curmudgeonly contrarians, InfoWorld will be following suit, taking a one-week break before returning on Jan. 1 with our first print issue of the year. (It’s really only a semi-hiatus; InfoWorld.com will continue to perk over the holidays with a slightly reduced slate of stories.) December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST Redefining innovation Innovative ideas are a dime a dozen, according to Jim Andrew, senior partner at big-time consultancy BCG. In fact, at most companies, coming up with great concepts for a product, service, or process isn’t even an issue. But turning those ideas into money … ah, there’s the rub. October 30, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM teaches English skills in India IBM's India Research Laboratory has developed a web-based tool to help those who speak English as a second language to assess and improve their language skills. The technology, called Sensei for the Japanese word for teacher, was developed by the lab for IBM's call center and back office transaction processing services operation in India, IBM Daksh Business Process Services. October 26, 6:49 a.m. PDT Vista voice-recognition feature needs work If its performance during a demonstration last week at Microsoft's annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) is any indication, a voice-recognition feature in Windows Vista is not quite ready for prime time. July 31, 1:55 p.m. PDT Nuance claims speech recognition breakthrough Watch what you say about your computer: It's getting better at understanding your voice. July 18, 7:07 a.m. PDT Danish parliament to use speech recognition Citizens, journalists, and others seeking quick access to speeches by Danish parliamentarians could appreciate a new speech recognition system planned by the government. June 15, 5:04 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25: Russell Daniels As CTO and vice president of HP’s software business, Russell Daniels has a service-oriented perspective normally associated with applications -- rather than, say, his flagship OpenView product. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tech startups to watch Startups are back! or at least, startup fever is back. Scan the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and you won’t find any hockey sticks -- the level of investment in enterprise-related technology startups has actually remained fairly flat, hovering between $1.5 and $2.3 billion per quarter from 2003 through 2005. May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Peer-to-peer device networking takes shape The concept of SEDs (service-enabled devices) started way back in the ‘80s with something called tuple spaces, and later took shape as Jini nder the guidance of Sun Microsystems. Jini came about when Bill Joy, Sun’s chief scientist, imagined a peer-to-peer world where every device could talk to every other device: “Hello, I’m a color printer. This is my feature set and here are my printer drivers. Would you like to access me?” May 2, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft to beta-test Speech Server 2007 next month Microsoft will release a beta of the next version of its speech and telephony server software in May, the company said Wednesday. April 5, 11:56 a.m. PDT Virtualization fever at LinuxWorld Expo The most prominent names in open source descend on Boston this week for the annual LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Highlights of the show will include a new Mobile and Embedded conference track and a Grid Solution Showcase, but the hottest trend seems to be virtualization, with several new offerings set to debut throughout the week. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT What isn't storage virtualization? Vendors often use the term "virtualization" to describe myriad products, including global name spaces, virtual storage area networks (VSANs), pooled NAS (network-attached storage), thin-provisioning software, virtual file systems, virtual tape libraries, RAID arrays and disk clusters, and virtualized application and file servers (such as EMC's VMWare). But although these technologies all use some sort of virtualization, they don't actually qualify as storage virtualization. January 12, 3:00 a.m. PST A first look at Windows Compute Cluster Server It used to be that building a usable compute cluster took plenty of money, skills, and space in the datacenter. Although creating the actual applications that run on the cluster can still be difficult, nowadays building a Linux-based cluster is generally quite simple. Commercial and open source clustering packages abound with features, open protocols, and streamlined installs. No surprise, then, that Microsoft wants a piece of this potentially lucrative market. January 9, 3:00 a.m. PST High-performance computing: Supercharging the enterprise Merlin Securities, a new prime brokerage providing trading, financing, portfolio analysis, and reporting for multibillion-dollar hedge funds, needed a competitive edge. Its larger rivals, such as Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and UBS, had the advantage of expensive mainframes that could consolidate and analyze millions of trades each day and return reports via batch processing the next morning that measured performance on a monthly basis. So Merlin outclassed its competitors by returning trade performance information in near real time with performance measured on a daily basis and performance attribution on multiple levels, including in comparison to other securities in a market sector, numerous benchmarks, and other traders in the firm. What’s more, it did it using an inexpensive compute cluster made up of four dual-processor Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers. January 9, 3:00 a.m. PST Top technologies of the year Welcome to our first issue of the year. For those of you who took a break, re-entry into the heady universe of work may be a bit discombobulating. Fortunately, last Saturday, the world’s ever-considerate timekeepers saw fit to give us an extra sliver of time -- a leap second-- to prep for the new year. And now, with the pop of the cork (or was that the buzz of a pager?), we’re ready to herald 2006, a potential banner year for the enterprise. January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST HP plugs in to utility services Enterprises with fluctuating demand for computing power will be able to dip into Hewlett-Packard's resources via new utility computing services the company introduced last week. December 5, 3:00 a.m. PST Is it time to scrap your Big Iron? See correction at end of article November 17, 3:00 a.m. PST When mainframes make sense Not everyone sees the mainframe as a relic of the past. In 1996, motor manufacturer Baldor Electric, beguiled by promises of lower costs and the desire to move to the SAP platform for all its CRM and ERP transactions, left the mainframe in favor of a Windows environment. According to Mark Shackelford, Baldor's IS director, the company was very unhappy with the results. November 17, 3:00 a.m. PST Cisco rolls out datacenter architecture for utility computing Cisco Systems on Wednesday released a new computer networking and virtualization architecture it calls VFrame. The architecture combines a set of InfiniBand-based SFSs (server fabric switches) with the VFrame virtualization software suite. Much of this is based on Cisco’s acquisition of TopSpin, though the company has gone to significant lengths to rebrand and extend the technology in time for this announcement. September 28, 2:49 p.m. PDT Microsoft serves up some miscellaneous morsels for May Ever since I began paying taxes, April just hasn't been much fun. Everything comes due in April, making May a month dedicated to grumbling and reactionary belt-tightening. Seems Redmond feels similarly, because so far Microsoft hasn't made many waves this merry month. May 12, 5:00 a.m. PDT Peering into the Big Blue haze As Lenovo completes its acquisition of IBM’s PC division, I’m set to squirt a few more tears for lost future generations of ThinkPad excellence. Rumor has it, however, that there’s still at least one generation of Big Blue-manufactured Thinkies on the way, and among these we may even find a tablet. Yowza! May 5, 5:00 a.m. PDT Sun pitches grid vision to Europe HANOVER, GERMANY --Vendors are tripping over themselves to tell customers about their grids, a top Sun Microsystems executive said Thursday, shortly before launching into a presentation on his own company's grid vision. March 10, 9:18 a.m. PST OSDL panel: Challenges ahead for utility computing BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Utility computing may be one of the hottest topics in the technology industry these days, but there is much work to be done before it will ever achieve widespread acceptance, a panel of industry experts agreed Wednesday. February 3, 4:40 a.m. PST Hands across the enterprise Viewed as a pipe dream only a few years ago, the “autonomous datacenter” gained momentum in 2004, leading some to claim IT as we know it will be dead within a decade. But that’s obvious, isn’t it? In 1994, Usenet was still useful, and Spam tasted great at 1 a.m. The question remains, How soon will we get there -- and who’s behind the wheel? December 30, 3:00 p.m. PST Virtual Server 2005 offers Windows upon Windows Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005 is probably best viewed as a direct competitor to VMware’s well-entrenched GSX Server , but the degree to which Virtual Server integrates with other Microsoft server products puts it in a class of its own. November 5, 3:00 p.m. PST The reality of virtual servers Server virtualization is one of those rare technologies that sounds too good to be true, but it’s real. Its earliest use was to consolidate underutilized server hardware onto a smaller number of machines. Since those early days, it has grown into a multipurpose solution that enables greater reliability, improved management, and other benefits that make it an all-but-indispensable tool for enterprise datacenter administrators. November 5, 3:00 p.m. PST VMware delivers a datacenter in a box VMware, now owned by EMC, created its ESX Server virtualization product for businesses that need truly enterprise-class virtualization. ESX Server 2.1.1 implements the consolidation, dynamic provisioning, resource pooling, and all-bases-covered availability assurance of expensive system and storage hardware. But ESX Server does it with ordinary servers, modular SANs, and vanilla operating systems. November 5, 3:00 p.m. PST Sizing up VoIP servers See correction at end of review September 17, 3:00 p.m. PDT Onaro delivers SAN manager Onaro on Monday will roll out what company officials are billing as the industry's first predictive change management technology for SANs (storage area networks), designed to help storage administrators increase their effectiveness. June 21, 6:00 a.m. PDT IBM delivers product life cycle service IBM on Tuesday launched an on demand-flavored PLM (product life cycle management) service designed to help standardize the design practices and improve collaboration across the breadth of a manufacturer's supply chain. June 18, 9:01 p.m. PDT HP adds more tools to on-demand product line Looking to buttress its on-demand computing strategy, Hewlett-Packard Co. this week plans to announce two OpenView management tools at a conference for users of its software products. June 14, 5:20 p.m. PDT IBM opens European supercomputer on-demand center DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY - To meet growing demand for supercomputing services, IBM Corp. opened a new high-capacity center in Europe on Friday -- its second such center and first outside the U.S. April 30, 11:55 a.m. PDT BEA, Sun advance Java app servers BEA systems and Sun Microsystems advanced their Java application servers last week, while Oracle pushed its Java development environment for grid enablement. April 16, 3:00 p.m. PDT Color printers cover the spectrum Presentations, reports, web pages -- they all look better printed in color. Monochrome printers continue to churn out crisp-looking text at a fast clip for the majority of users. Meanwhile, color laser and LED printers are popping up in sales, marketing, art, creative, graphic-design, and in-house publishing departments -- not to mention the executive suites, where products and ideas must be presented in the best light. Small offices that can afford only one printer may also turn to a color model. April 2, 3:00 p.m. PST Windows XP update to block pop-ups by default Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, in addition to providing a host of security enhancements, will block pop-ups in Internet Explorer (IE) by default, Microsoft said Wednesday. March 17, 4:36 p.m. PST Device independence Some people wear their cars. Others just drive them. If you saw my beat-up '96 Civic, you'd know I belong in the latter group. I feel the same way about computers. It's always a thrill to unpack a new one, but I hate the process of migrating applications and data, and I resent the dependency created by doing so. February 6, 3:00 p.m. PST How much IT can you manage? Let’s face it; without IT, many business transactions such as managing production cycles, purchasing over the Web, or automating order management between buyers and vendors would not be possible. And without IT, we'd gain no economic benefits from automation, which allows companies to manage the same activities more efficiently, which in essence is doing more for less money. January 23, 3:00 p.m. PST 2003: The news in review The economy grabbed a lot of headlines in 2003, but competing for space in the IT arena were lawsuits, acquisitions, security issues, and technology upgrades. December 22, 6:00 a.m. PST IBM undergoes internal on-demand overhaul When Sam Palmisano mapped out his strategic vision last year, he told clients that IBM Corp. would be its own on-demand guinea pig. Big Blue's chief executive pledged to assign a top IBM official to internally revamp the company in a bid to save billions and improve IBM's flexibility and responsiveness. In IBM's view, 'on-demand' means moving beyond mere integration of systems to create a more flexible IT infrastructure agile enough to rapidly adapt to changing business conditions. November 11, 5:04 p.m. PST At anniversary, IBM renews on-demand vows IBM Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano stood before several hundred of his company's top executives and customers last October and gave the speech that launched a thousand marketing campaigns. November 11, 5:04 p.m. PST Akamai builds on-demand strategy Adding a missing piece to the on-demand computing puzzle, Akamai Technologies this week will unwrap a set of tools and services for managing applications and content across the Internet. November 10, 8:00 a.m. PST Sun and SchlumbergerSema partner for utility computing Sun Microsystems Inc. and SchlumbergerSema on Wednesday will announce a partnership to give outsourcing clients the chance to pay for the computing resources they use as opposed to having to agree to an upfront fixed price. October 1, 4:46 a.m. PDT 2003 InfoWorld Innovator: Pat Selinger Pat Selinger worked at IBM on the very first relational database more than two decades ago. Today, she is an IBM Fellow working in data management research and specializing in database standards and the underlying technologies that form the foundation of IBM's On Demandutility computing strategy. From deep within IBM research, she has driven a number of technologies, namely autonomics, information integration, and federation. May 23, 8:00 a.m. PDT HP vision short on experience Hewlett-Packard calls it the Adaptive Enterprise, but in reality it's an elaborate strategy that's long on business process re-engineering vision and short on real-world experience. May 9, 3:00 a.m. PDT Big Guns Launch Utility Salvo The starting gun has been fired, and IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun are racing toward utility computing by rolling out products designed to give enterprises more efficient computing resources. May 5, 6:00 a.m. PDT IDC: Pain relief will drive tech opportunities Boston -- Confronting a continued downturn in the IT industry, a sluggish economy, and the recent outbreak of war in Iraq, technology executives filed into the IDC Directions 2003 conference in Boston Thursday looking for just that: direction. March 20, 2:00 p.m. PST The utility computing promise Tapping into compute resources with a simplicity equal to plugging a lamp into an outlet has been a goal of pervasive computing efforts from the start. Known as utility computing, the idea is to provide unlimited computing power and storage capacity that can be used and reallocated for any application -- and billed on a pay-per-use basis. April 12, 4:01 p.m. PDT The realities of utility ATTENTION DATACENTER STAFFERS: Utility computing is coming, but don't start planning your retirement just yet. In the utility computing dream, compute resources flow like electricity on demand from virtual utilities around the globe -- dynamically provisioned and scaled, self-healing, secure, always on, efficiently metered and priced on a pay-as-you-go basis, highly available and easy to manage. Using the latest clusters, grids, blades, fabrics, and other cool-sounding technologies, enterprises will plug in, turn on, outsource, and save big bucks on IT equipment and staff. They won't care where their J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) or Microsoft .Net resources live anymore. April 12, 4:01 p.m. PDT > Applications > Networking |
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