Links for December 15th through December 16th

A little something extra…

One of the linked items below is a story about Microsoft settling up with EU by Jeffrey Schwartz – a nice summary of the event. Here’s the full comment emailed him if you’re interested:

The browser wars have certainly been heating up again (Apple Safari,
Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft IE, etc.). And with things
like the different UI platforms in the mobile space and non-HTML RIAs
from Adobe and Microsoft, we’re set for a lot going on in the
application development space over the coming years.

With Google in the browser game with Chrome, you have to think (and
hope) that they’re looking at the EU’s demands on Internet Explorer as
guidance for how to avoid sticky situations with Chrome and their
other efforts. Chrome is annoyingly up-front (which is good, in this
context) about asking you for browser and search engine defaults.

Between the US and the EU, governments have gotten much more
aggressive in the technology world (check out the rumblings in the
mainframe space), and I suspect that “government meddling” will start
to come as a rude shock to the tech-heads out there who’re used to a
more hands-off, “business-friendly” approach.

The Links

• HP products target hybrid cloud computing
  HP "is expected to introduce an updated version of its Operations Orchestration software, which can now extend the product's automated provisioning and de-provisioning capabilities into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The software, sold as a license and deployed on customer premises, enables IT administrators to automate the process of provisioning virtual resources. HP executives say the added features will let companies using both internal and external clouds standardize on provisioning and de-provisioning workflows."
• Dell begins integrating Perot Systems
• What's become of 2008's 10 IT management start-ups to watch, Part 2 – Network World
• The Mobile Internet Report, Dec 2009 – Morgan Stanley – Institutional Services
  659+ pages of good bed-time reading.
• San Francisco News – The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S. – page 1
  "It's time to face facts: San Francisco is spectacularly mismanaged and arguably the worst-run big city in America. This year's city budget is an astonishing $6.6 billion — more than twice the budget for the entire state of Idaho — for roughly 800,000 residents. Yet despite that stratospheric amount, San Francisco can't point to progress on many of the social issues it spends liberally to tackle — and no one is made to answer when the city comes up short."
• Adobe – Flash Player Version Penetration
• Exciting Flash Platform Advancements
  James rounds-up some enterprise centric news and papers from Flash-land.
• PG&E smart meter communication failure – lessons for the rest of us — GreenMonk: the blog
  You can't half-ass change that involves monthly bills for commodities: "It seems that PG&E’s smart grid rollout is woefully under-resourced at the back-end. What PG&E should have is a system where customers can see their electrical consumption in real-time (on their phone, on their computer, on their in-home display, etc.) but also, in the same way that credit card companies contact me if purchasing goes out of my normal pattern, PG&E should have a system in place to contact customers whose bills are going seriously out of kilter. Preferably a system which alerts people in realtime if they are consuming too much electricity when the price is high, through their in-home display, via sms,Twitter DM, whatever."
• Lombardi Acquired by IBM
• bp-3 | A Business Process Company | About Us
  Austin-based (?) BPM consulting outfit.
• Microsoft Settles with EC, Agrees to Offer Choice of Browsers
• uShip ready to move onto global stage
• Q&A: Lombardi Software | AustinStartup
• Microsoft Statement on European Commission Decision: Brad Smith, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, on the European Commission’s decision in favor of formal adoption of measures Microsoft has offered to address competition law issues.
  Browser wars, part II. And Microsoft opening up docs and integrations with "our Windows, Windows Server, Office, Exchange, and SharePoint products."
• Home – Feedcry
  Someone hacked together some full-text feeds for some major news sources.
• Rajaratnam, Chiesi Indicted in New York for Conspiracy, Fraud
• Woman Who Sank Galleon Was Beauty-Queen-Turned-Analyst Insider
• Technology predictions 2010 « Technobabble 2.0
  Nice round-up of analyst predictions for 2010, including an excellent summary of us RedMonk's predictions, distilled down to a tight list.
• Company / Project Commit Details
  List of companies that commit to IBM with frequency, etc.
• IBM to Acquire Lombardi
  A good, technical fill in for IBM. They should use Lombardi's assets – including a SaaS one – to speak to more fluid, rapidly changing, Agile business in their Smart Planet talk.
• James N Maiocco Esq – Online classes on SaaS
• Spiceworks v4.5: Your Network Management Tool for Everything IT
  These guys are doing gangbusters.

Disclosure: see the RedMonk client list for clients mentioned.