Links for June 12th through June 14th

A little something extra…

As some folks know, I lived in a hippie co-op during college. It was pretty fantastic as far as friends and the actual time spent there – I met my wife there!

I setup the first house-wise Internet, before wifi was common so we had to drag cables around for those who wanted it. In retrospect the worrying about $70 or so a month is quaint, huh? This past Friday, we went to visit one of our friends who’d moved back in for a month before a European biking tour. I happened to open up the closet next to my old room and see they’d expanded the House of Commons “datacenter” (picture above) out pretty well, including some legless fairies to watch over the uptime.

The Links

• NetApp and Microsoft Introduce New Technology to Streamline Data Center Management and Accelerate Cloud Computing
  "Customers can now use familiar Microsoft management tools to easily monitor and manage their virtual environments that include NetApp® storage and build internal and public clouds." And: "Building on Microsoft's extensible management framework, NetApp is unveiling a new management pack that enables Microsoft customers to manage NetApp storage efficiency technologies, plus basic self-healing capabilities with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. NetApp ApplianceWatch™ PRO 2.1 includes new PRO Tips that provide granular control and include auto remediation for common storage utilization, replication, and configuration issues that can affect Hyper-V™ virtual machines (VMs). In addition, Microsoft customers can now create automated reports, troubleshoot storage issues, and view mapping of storage to individual VMs via Microsoft System Center Operations Manager." Also: "To help simplify the creation of self-service portals and automate management for public and private clouds, NetApp has integrated its best-of-breed technologies with Microsoft's Dynamic Datacenter Toolkits (DDTKs). Through this tight integration, NetApp now offers rapid provisioning and cloning of Windows® PowerShell cmdlets for the Dynamic Datacenter Toolkit, which provides a foundation for building private clouds"
• Microsoft makes the business case for Windows Phone 7
• Review: Microsoft Web Apps
  He likes it.
• Spicing up desktop management with social networking • The Register
  Hitting up the Collaborative IT Management parts of Spiceworks
• SanDisk, Symantec Lead Silicon Valley in Increasing Profit Per Employee
  "Customers bought consumer products at a faster pace than business software, helping Symantec pull out the slump, said Chief Financial Officer James Beer."
• The Anti-Web Movement Is Gathering Pace
  More from the front of publishers trying to scuttle the web's leakest abstractions: free content and publishing business model disintermediation.
• It's time to experiment with device pricing – FierceWireless
• Memo From Dell: Ubuntu Linux Is Safer Than Windows
  "Dell claims it has shipped more computers pre-loaded and pre-tested with Ubuntu than any other computer maker in the world since 2007."
• Scribd: Publishers Are Wasting Time, Money, Effort In Creating iPad Apps
  The main point of the iPad for publishers is bring able to charge for content or otherwise make more money than "free" web editions. That's all that matters for iPad, "HTML 5," or print itself.
• Willy Wonka and the Dell factory – Computerworld
• Enterprises slowly adopting social tech – BusinessWeek
• Successful Software

Disclosure: see the RedMonk client list for clients mentioned.