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On the road to the virtual desktop Click ‘n’ run. It seems like such a simple concept. Surf up to a Web page, select the desired application from a list, and click. Voila! Microsoft Word appears on your desktop. Or Excel, or Adobe Photoshop… you name it. Herd behavior demonstrated at Demo "Whatever happened to working alone?”  September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Credit Suisse plans virtualization a massive scale With 20,000 servers to manage, financial services powerhouse Credit Suisse had a long list of reasons to consider server virtualization: reducing the number of physical servers to manage, cutting power needs, improving software provisioning time, and deferring expensive datacenter buildouts. But it also needed a clear set of guidelines to determine when to virtualize, plus a clear set of procedures for managing a virtualization initiative. September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Trust key to Internet security A few of my previous columns discussed my vision of creating a more secure Internet. It involved replacing the Internet's default anonymity with pervasive authentication, from the hardware initialization, through the OS and all applications, the user, and ending with a verifiable network stream. It is my strong belief that without a complete overhaul of default authentication, malicious hacking is going to continue indefinitely. September 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT SMB technology: Replacing in-house software with applications in the cloud In the near future, there's only one way to go for SMBs when it comes to purchasing business software -- and that's out of house. Whether it's full-on SaaS (software as a service), where users access all facets of the application through a browser, or a hosted product (including hosted Exchange, where only the server component is off-site and users employ a standard desktop client such as Outlook), either model is simply too cost-effective for SMBs to ignore. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Processors: Dividing chips into many virtual cores The current approach taken by x86 CPUs -- to stuff as many processor cores and as much cache memory as will fit on one chip -- will prove impossible to scale beyond a certain point. And adding more, big, hot processor cores may not be the best fit for server roles that call for managing large workloads over long periods of time. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT EMC strikes first partnership with Indian outsourcer EMC Corp. will train more than 1,000 Wipro Ltd. staff in the use of its storage technologies as part of an alliance announced by the companies on Wednesday. June 13, 4:09 a.m. PDT Startups class of '06: Where are they now? In 2006, InfoWorld uncovered 15 startups that emerged after the nuclear winter that followed the dot-com bust with cool, useful technologies. Well, another year has brought a new crop of startup darlings, such as the companies we're profiling each day in May for our Month of Enterprise Startups (MOES) feature. But MOES got us thinking about last year's startups. In the year that has followed, how have these innovators fared? May 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT Huddle: MySpace for the enterprise crowd Why not infuse the organic simplicity of MySpace-like social networking into the enterprise knowledge management world? That was the question Andy McLoughlin and Alastair Mitchell posed to one another a year ago. Their answer was huddle.net, a burgeoning Web-based project collaboration solution. May 2, 3:00 a.m. PDT Innovation, startups hot again in the enterprise Five years ago enterprise startups hit the skids, stung by a perfect storm of commoditization, vendor consolidation, and the IT spending downturn. In the intervening years, however, the skies have cleared and, to paraphrase Ronald Regan, "It's morning again for enterprise startups." May 1, 7:00 a.m. PDT Web 2.0 Expo draws startups, superstars If anyone knows about the potential of what has been dubbed "Web 2.0" it's the folks over at O'Reilly Media. Heck, company founder Tim O'Reilly himself coined the phrase back in 2003 to describe the emergence of a new generation of Web-based business models in the wake of the dot-com collapse. And if this week's first-ever Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is any measure, the Web 2.0 phenomenon is on track to exceed expectations. April 16, 4:00 a.m. PDT The smart business of diversity Carly Fiorina served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company. After she was ousted, along with a $21 million exit package, Fiorina did what a lot of us would do if we had millions of dollars in the bank and some time on our hands: She wrote a book. In Tough Choices, published in October, Fiorina talks about rising to the top of a male-dominated culture. Fiorina spoke with InfoWorld correspondent Carmen Nobel for our upcoming feature on the issues women face in IT. January 22, 3:00 a.m. PST 2006 Year in Reviews: Storage In EMC’s march on the enterprise NAS market, two big feet fell this year in the form of the company’s Rainfinity (global file system) and Infoscape (file classification) releases, which we took for early spins in EMC’s labs. The year also brought a smooth rev of Windows Storage Server, a swell mid-range SAN from Compellent, and a slick tape library from Spectra Logic. 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 Technology with no past To the extent that it’s possible, I’m declaring today the beginning of recorded history in information technology. On this day, the phrase “information technology,” abbreviated IT, came into being as shorthand for electronic devices that aid humans in storage and sharing of, analysis of, protection of, and access to significant amounts of digitized content. Content? That’s anything you’re capable of holding in your brain for even a nanosecond. IT is not a department or a group of people. It’s a smart phone. It’s a room full of SPARC servers. A telephone headset? A keyboard? I don’t know. They’re new terms. We’ll work that out as we go. I do know that if we didn’t have such things, information technology would be inaccessible. September 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT The case for altruism The first timeI heard about Wikipedia, I thought, This has no shot. Why would highly qualified people devote their energies to an encyclopedia they couldn’t make a dime on? September 4, 3:00 a.m. PDT Inside IBM DB2 Viper The viper has struck. August 14, 3:00 a.m. PDT Does “built to last” apply to IT? Over the weekend, I bought an amazing antique chair: a fancy wooden office swivel chair in practically mint condition, including all its original cast-iron hardware. Although probably made between 1900 and 1915 (the patent date is 1897), it’s remarkably modern, with fully adjustable height, tilt, and back support, like the best Aeron chairs of today (well, its wooden surfaces are a tad stiffer). With any luck, it will last another 100 years and be just as functional. August 11, 3:00 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25 The top technology slot in the enterprise has changed. Once, forward-looking CTOs and CIOs scanned the horizon for new technologies that would improve the lot of IT. Today, as many of this year’s top 25 CTOs can tell you, technology leaders must also focus on understanding the business goals of the enterprise -- and then craft technology strategies to meet those objectives. 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 Accessing the web of databases I've just posted the fourth installment in my new series of Friday podcasts. It’s an interview with Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software. OpenLink’s flagship product is a universal database and application server, Virtuoso, which I last wrote about in 2003. May 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM DB2 "Viper" revs XML engine Code-named "Viper" and due for release in early summer, will be more worthy of its “Universal Database” tagline than previous versions. Not only does Viper contain an extensive list of enhancements that cover everything from security and development to storage and administration, but topping the list is a newly integrated XML storage engine that Big Blue says will put Microsoft and Oracle to shame. May 1, 3:00 a.m. PDT Speeding retrieval with in-memory data management My first real Java application, back in 1997, was a servlet-based group scheduler. It wasn’t quite the smash hit that Hanson’s “MMMBop” was that summer, but as some of you may recall, it had its charms. February 15, 3:00 a.m. PST Communications panel studies lessons of Katrina An independent panel to study the effects of Hurricane Katrina on communications networks, convened by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), met for the first time Monday. January 30, 2:10 p.m. PST SQL Server bulks up To call SQL Server 2000 a 90-pound weakling because it lacks certain high-end features is a bit like calling Hercules a wimp because he never ran a marathon. Not every strongman can perform every feat, and not every company needs every heavyweight feature. Many enterprises, large and small, have been running their businesses on SQL Server for years. January 16, 3:00 a.m. PST SQL Server 2005 piles it on Microsoft's first major release of SQL Server in many years includes such sweeping improvements that it's sometimes hard to see the old SQL Server underneath. Not a single area of the database remains untouched, and many portions have been rewritten from the ground up. Wherever you look -- performance, programmability, security, monitoring, tuning, diagnostics, BI, or system integration -- you'll find significant new features and greater capability. November 7, 3:00 a.m. PST Managing metadata When we talk and write about IT issues, we use certain words to mean many different things: "Platform," "architecture," and "integration" are among the worst offenders. But the most overloaded term in the IT lexicon may well be "metadata." October 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Surprise! Microsoft's WinFS beta arrives The surprise beta release of Microsoft's WinFS file system on Monday has attracted intense scrutiny. WinFS was one of the three pillars of Microsoft's next-generation version of Windows announced two years ago, then code-named Longhorn and now morphed and downsized into Vista. All three pillars -- WinFS, the Avalon GUI, and the Indigo Web-services protocol stack -- have been detached from any specific forthcoming release of Windows and will be offered as separate technologies. Microsoft developers were happy to discover that the WinFS beta really does install on Windows XP and includes an array of supporting development tools. August 31, 3:30 p.m. PDT IT's seven dirty words Remember the George Carlin routine “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”? (No, I’m not going to print them here; if you’re really curious, Google ’em.) I got to thinking the other day that IT has its own set of dirty words. Try saying any one of these in polite IT company, and someone will hand you a bar of soap to wash your mouth out. My filthy seven: August 15, 5:00 a.m. PDT XQuery blankets the enterprise thanks to major collaboration Back in 1998 there was no consensus that anyone would need a full-fledged XML query language. Today, XQuery is being implemented by all the major relational databases, by middleware vendors, in content management systems, and by open source projects. It’s even becoming part of the SQL standard. “You’ve got to consider that success for a language,” says Jonathan Robie, one of the prime movers in the development of XQuery. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Memory Firewall monitors apps at run time When it comes to foiling hackers, Saman Amarasinghe views the world in stark terms. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT That Aha! moment You gotta love Greg Raleigh’s attitude. The man who invented the technology behind the forthcoming 802.11n Wi-Fi standard insists that solving problems is easy. The real challenge, he says, is “deciding what problems are interesting to solve.” August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Sonic’s ESB takes new approach to fail-over If the SOA movement had an official flag, on that flag would be a diagram of an ESB (enterprise service bus) — an open and distributed integration platform that provides interfaces to a wide variety of systems and applications and ensures reliable messaging among them. And if you dotted the flag with the logos of leading SOA vendors, Sonic Software’s would surely have to stand out from the rest. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT XML databases evolve Attention in the wide universe of databases and content management has been drawn lately to XML and, specifically, XML databases. You’ll get a good indication of the state of XML-based content management technology by examining developments at the ground floor: the XML database libraries that form a base for larger content management applications. May 23, 5:00 a.m. PDT XQuery takes center stage in eXist database eXist is an open source XML database that has matured into an impressive XML content search and storage system. In eXist, unlike in Apache Xindice or Berkeley DB XML, XQuery plays a central role, but eXist is not quite as scalable as these databases. Nevertheless, its easy installation, slick documentation, and comprehensive API set make eXist an excellent choice for anyone who wants to get a powerful XML database up and running quickly. May 23, 5:00 a.m. PDT Paving the information footpaths I’m sure there are dozens of versions of this story, but I heard it from Larry Wall, the father of Perl, and it goes like this: Instead of laying down sidewalks, the builders of a new university campus waited for footpaths to emerge on the lawns. Then they paved the footpaths. Larry designed Perl around this idea of structure emerging from use, but that was an unusual case. We typically lay down the sidewalks first, and when footpaths emerge we profess surprise or try to ignore them. May 4, 5:00 a.m. PDT Databases rev up There's nothing like the human brain. No nonbiological entity can process massive amounts of different types of data, integrate the data, analyze it, and respond to it in a split second. Yet to hear the major database vendors tell it, they're coming close. April 11, 5:00 a.m. PDT Separating code from its environment Programming languages and environments are an abiding passion of mine. I'm always on the lookout for a better mousetrap, and lately I've been working with three relative newcomers: the PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor)-based plug-in architecture of the WordPress blogging engine; the Ruby on Rails framework; and Mark Logic's XQuery-based Content Interaction Server. March 30, 6:00 a.m. PST Implementing real-world structured searches In the early days of XML, smart search was often cited as a key benefit. Instead of just trawling for single-celled keywords in an ocean of undifferentiated text, the story went, we'd navigate islands of structure looking for more evolved creatures. Product descriptions, calendar events, and media objects are all examples of the kinds of things we were meant to be finding by now. February 25, 3:00 p.m. PST RIAA files 762 new file-trading lawsuits The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed 762 new lawsuits against alleged file-traders using P-to-P (peer-to-peer) services, with the total number of lawsuits filed since September 2003 now reaching more than 5,500. October 1, 2:33 p.m. PDT Update: IBM donates Cloudscape to the ASF SAN FRANCISCO -- Hoping to accelerate the delivery of more innovative Java-based applications to market, IBM on Tuesday at LinuxWorld Conference announced along with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), plans to donate its Cloudscape relational database to the open source community. August 3, 12:00 p.m. PDT IBM extends DB2 Content Manager with open standards SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- IBM on Monday extolled the value of open standards as it revealed plans to expand Web services, XML, and Java interoperability in the next version of its DB2 Content Manager. July 26, 5:05 p.m. PDT Tools to tame XML content IBM later this month will demonstrate Project Cinnamon, the company's content management technology designed to ease document management and storage through XML tagging. July 9, 3:00 p.m. PDT Thin clients and rich data In the rich vs. reach debate, rich usually means a user interface more responsive and more coherent than a browser’s. Prime contenders in the rich-client struggle are Java, .Net, and Flash. All three can be used natively or as renderers for a new breed of tools — from Altio, Digital Harbor, Droplets, Laszlo, among others — which create GUI applications for these platforms. Meanwhile, developers in the trenches know that rumors of the browser’s death are greatly exaggerated. The browser continues to deliver a killer combination of reach plus ease of learning and use, with simplicity of development, no-touch deployment, and continuous update. June 11, 3:00 p.m. PDT XML database futures As SQL and XML capabilities converge in the leading relational engines, you might conclude that there's no future for dedicated XML databases. A year ago, in his keynote at the InfoWorld CTO Forum, BEA Chief Architect Adam Bosworth explained why they're still relevant, and what their new mission will be. Coarse-grained XML messages are the wefts of the service-oriented fabric we're now weaving. We're going to be pumping a lot of those messages, and the pumps won't merely route messages. They'll also scan SOAP headers, correlate messages, enforce security policies, and respond to XPath-style queries -- all this in a real-time environment that can't tolerate the slightest delay. April 23, 3:00 p.m. PDT Will Yukon strike XML gold? Expected to ship by mid-2005, Yukon represents a major step forward for Microsoft in the XML arena. Striving to match the native XML storage capabilities in IBM’s, Oracle’s, and Sybase’s relational databases, Yukon will finally store XML data in a structured fashion, along with supporting the shredded and unstructured storage methods already available in Microsoft SQL Server 2000. April 23, 3:00 p.m. PDT Databases flex their XML If you could do one thing to improve integration and automate processes with customers and business partners, it would be to implement XML, which has become the standard for exchanging information between disparate systems because it is easily transformed into any format. With very little effort, the same file can be sent to several different customers with their own specific needs. XML eases the development effort for the transmitting company and gives recipients a safety net for altering the way they use the data without having to alter how they receive it. April 23, 3:00 p.m. PDT Visio schemas link data in diagrams Microsoft has released documentation that allows corporate and third-party developers to take full advantage of the XML-based schemas, called DatadiagramML, in its Office Visio diagramming tool. April 16, 6:00 p.m. PDT Microsoft opens up Visio schemas Microsoft on Thursday announced it has released documentation that allows corporate and third-party developers to take full advantage of the XML-based schemas, called DatadiagramML, in its Office Visio diagramming tool. April 15, 6:00 a.m. PDT Berkeley DB adds XML smarts Berkeley DB XML is a database library built on the venerable Berkeley DB engine. Sleepycat engineers erected a layer atop Berkeley DB, extending that engine and creating a new one that provides XML document storage, management, and querying. April 9, 3:00 p.m. PDT UPDATE - CTIA - Verizon Wireless talks high-speed data rollout ATLANTA - Verizon Wireless plans to make its BroadbandAccess mobile data service available to one-third of its U.S. wireless customers this year, the company announced Monday at the CTIA Wireless trade show in Atlanta. March 22, 1:30 p.m. PST > Application development > Applications > Databases > Data management > Databases > Data management > XML standards > Platforms > Databases > Platforms > Open source standards > Standards > Open source standards > Standards > XML standards > Storage > Databases > Web services |
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