Links for December 14th

A little something extra…

Several of the links below point towards Dell’s big data center announcement: hoping to move IT to rely more on super-fast ethernet for everything, including storage. As a quote from one of the pieces puts it: “Dell wants to help enterprises migrate toward unified Ethernet datacenter networks from current mixed architectures that use both Ethernet and Fibre Channel.”

There’s a race to break the chain of bottle necks in IT at the moment. Business used to move so slow that IT could take their time, and that IT stuff was complicated! The Internet came, and right up to the present companies saw things like Hotmail, Google, and Facebook and The Business started asking, “if these toy sites can do it do easy, what’s our problem?” Then software development was so impossibly slow that operations could relax; Agile software development fit that. Now, to believe the state of the art in Management by Magazine, operations staff seemingly have the technology at their hands to deliver applications rapidly. Problem is, there’s still bottle-necks like the speed it takes to actually deploy new changes over current networks, whether physical or virtual.

Dell’s moves here are to try to start speeding up with a little help from 10gigE. What’ll the next bottle-neck be?

The Links

• 22 Million 'Lost' Bush-Era E-Mails Recovered
• NoSQL No Niche – The Basho Blog
• The rumors were right: Microsoft buys management vendor Opalis | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
• The System Center Team Blog : Microsoft Acquires Opalis Software
• Todd DeLaughter: Opalis joins the Microsoft System Center product lineup
• IBM’s John Soyring talks about IBM’s Smart Planet initiatives around water — GreenMonk: the blog
  Love them transcripts!
• Generations clash over tattoos, body piercings in the workplace
• Dell Dialing For Dollars – Business News – Portfolio.com
• Salesforce Chatter: Twitter-like status updates for the Enterprise
  While I don’t question the potential of Chatter, the current craze for Twitterising everything reminds me of the hype around RSS a few years back, which which it has many parallel. In the end it is another way to communicate, with better contextualisation than email and less vulnerability to spam.
• Texas Social Media Awards '10: Return of the T'SMAckies! | Digital Savant
  This year's awards. I won one last year, and it was a fun event.
• Dell aims management software, 10G Ethernet at datacenters
  "Dell wants to help enterprises migrate toward unified Ethernet datacenter networks from current mixed architectures that use both Ethernet and Fibre Channel."
• Microsoft talks cloud computing security and plans to offer private cloud software
  "Every customer says 'where can we get a private cloud?'" Alkhatib said. "We're building them. Within a short period of time private clouds will be available with the same technology we've used to build Windows Azure."
• Sun updates Java Store beta
• Cisco: We're not a smartphone maker
  "We love the way that Apple, RIM, and Microsoft, are loading the networks and want to interop within that. But when we enter markets, we enter to be number one or number two. With our target market of 40 per cent that's really not an option."
• Dell goes on 10GbE binge
  Super-fast network connections for your private cloud clogged pipe dreams!
• 2009's Top Mid-Range Compact Cameras
• Amazon cloud computing service unveils eBay auction-style pricing
• Mobile Internet is 450 million users strong and doubling in four years | Betanews
  Wow, if you want mobile internet (smart phone) numbers, this is your round-up of them!
• Reflections on Microsoft PDC 2009
  "So how was PDC 2009? While there was a ton of good content there, and an impressive launch for Silverlight 4, there was a noticeable lack of direction; maybe that was why Ballmer decided not to show up. It should have been the Windows Azure PDC, but as I have just written elsewhere, Microsoft has little excitement about its cloud. Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie gave almost exactly the same keynote this year that he gave last year; and the body language, as it were, is more about avoiding the cloud than embracing it. Cross-platform clients, commodity pricing, throw away your servers: from Microsoft’s point of view, what’s not to hate?"
• Oracle Makes Commitments to Customers, Developers and Users of MySQL
• What To Look For In Mobile In 2010
  Some mobile world predictions, including Nokia or RIM buying Palm: "In the world of mobile operating systems, Palm has created a real asset. For large OEMs like Nokia and RIM that have solid hardware and massive distribution but legacy software, Palm may be an asset they can’t live without."
• Adobe LiveCycle gives business apps a shot in the arm
  Nice, testing-it-out overview of Adobe LiveCycle.
• On the Road – At the Airport, a Box of Cash Becomes a Constitutional Case
  When I read this, I think, "we spend billions of data for US security, and a lowly airport guard can't look up that this guy works for a reactionary Senator and harassing him will be like trying to fight a porcupine."
• My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads
  HUGS!
• Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried
• What's become of 2008's 10 IT management start-ups to watch, Part 1 – Network World

Disclosure: see the RedMonk client list for clients mentioned.