Oracle Keynote at Cloud Expo SYS-CON Events announced today that Oracle was named exclusive "Diamond Sponsor" of Cloud Expo 2010. Cloud Expo was announced on February 24, 2007, the day the term "cloud computing" was coined. That same year, the first Cloud Expo took place in New York City with 450 delegates. Next April, Cloud Expo is returning to New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors. An Exclusive Interview with Oracle's Richard Sarwal "Cloud" has become synonymous with "computing" and "software" in two short years. Cloud Expo is the new PC Expo, Comdex, and InternetWorld of our decade. By 2012, more than 50,000 delegates per year will participate in Cloud Expo worldwide. Oracle Maps Its Cloud Computing Strategy The cloud is certainly a compelling alternative to running all applications within a traditional corporate data... (more)

Oracle buys BEA - Nice time to get a check-up

The biggest news in software may have already hit this year, but it's not like we didn't hear it coming for the past few months. Oracle finally makes good on its intent to buy BEA at $8.5B: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120048691486294361.html To us, this is good news -- like when SoftwareAG and webMethods merged - it combines a strong integration firm with a global presence, with a technology leader in the SOA space. It's also a good move for Larry. Aside from increasing their customer base, it really moves Oracle more into the SOA mainstream - almost every customer we know has some Oracle apps, databases and integration inside their enterprise, but adding some leading AquaLogic ESB and Governance aspects of BEA will make a huge difference in advancing Oracle FUSION as an SOA platform. Oracle getting JRockit from BEA also bodes well for performance, as now they... (more)

VMware's Virtual Data Center OS pitch not credible?

My quick analysis: When you want to encapsulate everything in your data center in one box and call it "VDC-OS", it is wither a great ambition or a fool's dream. Why a great ambition? xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx Why a fool's dream? xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx Maritz passed us both by, though, by declaring not only that VMware would continue as the high-end virtualization vendor of choice, but that the entire IT ecosystem was evolving past its dependence on the operating system into a kind of mesh world in which applications, data, servers and security are all handled behind the scenes and IT departments would have godlike powers of integration and management based on cloud computing, virtualization and a firm reliance on VMware management technology. That's a bold claim no matter how often it's been made (by Novell, IBM, Microsoft, HP and others, under various buzzwords and in va... (more)

Revolution Health Gets A Mercy Sale, Turns $200+ Million Into $100 Million

Revolution Health finally found someone to merge with - Waterfront Media - in a transaction that values the combined companies in the $300 million range. Our sources say that Revolution Health was valued at around $100 million in the transaction. That comes after burning over $200 million in capital supplied by founder Steve Case as well as celebrity investors like Jim Barksdale (former CEO Netscape), Carly Fiorina (former CEO HP) and Colin Powell (former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff). Everyday Media, which is the primary site under the Waterfront Media brand, is a general health and wellness site with a particular emphasis on popular diets. Revolution Health has had trouble keeping costs down with around 200 employees and has failed to become profitable despite a rumored $20-$30 million in annual revenue. The company hired Morgan Stan... (more)

StorageMojo - WTH? - RU Spreading RAID FUD Too?

Two posts ago I sent my props to Robin Harris (Storagemojo), now I'm feeling the bloggers biteback.  Robin - what are you doing?   In his most recent post, Storagemojo links over to a post of Jon Bach's (dated Feb 5, 07) from Puget Custom Computers  where Jon discusses the problems of using cheap RAID controllers in desktop systems and he gives failure numbers for drives that he has been working with in his business.  Jon argues that RAID in desktop system is a royal pain because repairing an array on these systems is more of a problem than restoring from backup. I'm not going to argue much with Jon here and I certainly don't have a bone to pick with him, but I can tell you with some certainty, that my own experience on my own desktop systems has been different.  I would much rather replace and remirror a disk drive than restore an entire system. Then again, I only ... (more)

StorageMojo - WTH? - RU Spreading RAID FUD Too?

Two posts ago I sent my props to Robin Harris (Storagemojo), now I'm feeling the bloggers biteback.  Robin - what are you doing?   In his most recent post, Storagemojo links over to a post of Jon Bach's (dated Feb 5, 07) from Puget Custom Computers  where Jon discusses the problems of using cheap RAID controllers in desktop systems and he gives failure numbers for drives that he has been working with in his business.  Jon argues that RAID in desktop system is a royal pain because repairing an array on these systems is more of a problem than restoring from backup. I'm not going to argue much with Jon here and I certainly don't have a bone to pick with him, but I can tell you with some certainty, that my own experience on my own desktop systems has been different.  I would much rather replace and remirror a disk drive than restore an entire system. Then again, I only ... (more)

Talking with Hewlett Packard in Madrid

Image via CrunchBase I am in Madrid this week, as a guest of Hewlett Packard. The company’s European roadshow, [email protected], is in town for two days, showing existing and prospective customers some of the ways in which HP’s Converged Infrastructure can help them meet the growing challenge of continuing to grow IT capacity as data centres fill, power grids reach capacity, and budgets fall. A few of us took the opportunity to sit down with Iain Stephen (VP Enterprise Storage and Servers, UK & Ireland) and Martin Riley (Programme Manager for [email protected]) from HP yesterday evening, and the result is now available as a podcast. Also participating in the conversation were HP’s Becca Taylor,  Martin Macleod, Massimiliano Galeazzi, Patrick Husband, and Hans Vredevoort. The conversation was recorded on a shiny new Ivy Worldwide Blue Snowball microphone that none o... (more)

ABBYY Raises the Bar for Mobile Document Capture with its New Mobile Imaging SDK

New Product Enables Developers to Integrate Powerful Image Processing Functions into Their Own Mobile Applications Theale, UK (December 6, 2012) — ABBYY®, a leading provider of document recognition, document capture, and linguistic technologies and services, today announced the availability of the ABBYY Mobile Imaging Software Development Kit (SDK) for Apple® iOS and Google® Android®. The ABBYY Mobile Imaging SDK provides developers with smart tools for enhancing the viewing quality of images of documents captured with a mobile device's camera. As document capture scenarios involving mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular, the new SDK also offers special instruments used to determine whether or not photographed documents are suitable for Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The ABBYY Mobile Imaging SDK is an ideal technology for solutions combining cloud... (more)

Lessons Learned: VA Cloud Email Termination

According to a Federal Computer Week article by Frank Konkel, The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated its five-year, $36 million cloud computing contract for email and calendaring services with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services. Citing a material change in the agency’s requirements, VA officials declined to elaborate on the requirement changes that were actually made. Although I have no personal connection or first hand knowledge of the specifics of this deployment, this failure was apparently caused by failure to first build and understand the business case for supporting the cloud transition. “In November — after the agency announced its cloud deal with HP Enterprise Services – VA’s Deputy CIO for Architecture, Strategy and Design, Paul Tibbits, told an audience at 1105 Media’s Enterprise Architecture Conference that h... (more)

ABBYY Sponsors AIIM Survey: Winning the Paper Wars – Capture the Content and Mobilize the Process Troops

Half of those adopting paper-free processes report a payback within 12-month time period Munich, Germany (7th August 2013) - ABBYY Europe, a leading provider of document recognition, data capture, and linguistic technologies, announced it has sponsored the recent AIIM report - Winning the Paper Wars. AIIM's mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and Big Data. The report, which was generated from findings of a survey taken by the AIIM community from May 10 to June 26, found that spending on mobile capture, optical character recognition (OCR), business process management (BPM)/workflow and accounts payable/accounts receivable technologies is anticipated to increase sharply over the next 12 months. The goal of the survey was to evaluate companies'... (more)

HP Strengthens its Project Management Portfolio With G2G3 Simulation

EDINBURGH, Scotland, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- G2G3, (www.g2g3.com), the leading global provider of business simulations, has announced the availability of Race to Results, a new Project Management simulation developed exclusively for HP. Race to Results is a high-impact experiential learning simulation set in the context of motor racing. The simulation effectively demonstrates the application of Project Management best practice in the context of a live production environment. HP will be offering this exciting simulation as an integral part of its Project Management Education Services. Mark Ross Sutherland, Managing Director at G2G3, said: "Participation in this exhilarating event will offer participants breakthrough understanding of best practice Project Management techniques and how they can be applied to improve organizational performance." Gerry Nolan, Director o... (more)