Related Links: Wanted: 19 More of the Top Software People in the World Sung and Unsung i-Technology Heroes Who's Missing from SYS-CON's i-Technology Top Twenty?" Our search for the Twenty Top Software People in the World is nearing completion. In the SYS-CON tradition of empowering readers, we are leaving the final "cut" to you, so here are the top 40 nominations in alphabetical order. Our aim this time round is to whittle this 40 down to our final twenty, not (yet) to arrange those twenty in any order of preference. All you need to do to vote is to go to the Further Details page of any nominee you'd like to see end up in the top half of the poll when we close voting on Christmas Eve, December 24, and cast your vote or votes. To access the Further Details of each nominee just click on their name. Happy voting!   In alphabetical order the nominees are:   Tim Berner... (more)

Application Performance Management Done Right

What is Application Performance Management (APM)? Like a lot of good questions, it depends on your business needs.  What is the goal of an ideal APM?  Does it mean 99.999% availability?  Perhaps it is a favorable overall end user experience when using the application but, as compared to what? My point is that Application Performance Management / Monitoring means different things to different businesses and it can even depend on the application involved. What is the Goal of APM “Begin with the goal in mind.” I wish I could take credit for that quote.  What is the goal of the APM? Have you listed out the objectives you hope to obtain from your APM strategy?  This approach will help your team ensure satisfaction with the final solution chosen.  Here are some examples. Minimum of 99.999% availability with lower Mean Time To Know (MTTK) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) Less ... (more)

JBoss and Microsoft Identify Mutual Customers, Interests

JBoss and Microsoft announced on September 27, 2005 that the two companies would work together to enhance interoperability between JEMS and Microsoft Windows Server products. While the announcement was just one among the many corporate tie-up news stories that have hit us of late, the dynamics relating to this one seem more complicated. Here’s the lowdown on the partnership. In order to address the needs of their joint customers, JBoss and Microsoft have identified four key technology areas that they can focus on over the coming twelve months. These areas include: Security Interoperability, Web Services Interoperability, Manageability of JEMS environments using Microsoft Operations Manager, Optimized use of SQL Server for users of Hibernate and EJB 3.0 First of all, does the announcement mean that JBoss is no longer trying to compete with Microsoft (in addition ... (more)

The Shape of i-Technology To Come: Predictions for 2006

According to SYS-CON Media's worldwide network of software development activists, evangelists and executives - including the creator of Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson  - 2006 promises to be a vintage year for software development... Take Microsoft, for example: A new client OS is on the way, Microsoft Vista, due late in 2006, giving rise to the obvious question: will the new cool 3D user interface be enough to move user to upgrade? We’ll see. Maybe the new built-in security, performance features, and integrated search will be enough to convince users – after all, why go to the Web if built-in web-enabled services and integrated information search allow the Web to come to you? Or consider the world of PDA Devices. Everyone is looking for the next killer Palm or BlackBerry.  But are they looking in the right direction for the next killer PDA? What... (more)

ERP and the Art of Action

In his book The Art of Action (2011), Stephen Bungay identifies three gaps that frustrate the ability of organizations to translate plans into actions that lead to desired outcomes. He calls them the knowledge, alignment and effects gaps. Here, I wish to reflect on Bungay’s perspective by reviewing these gaps in terms of the selection and implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. ERP software exerts a significant influence over the way an organization manages and monitors its performance. In large organizations, ERP software can touch hundreds, even thousands of people given that today’s ERP software may have a significant organizational footprint encompassing accounting, supply-chain, manufacturing, human resources (HR), customer relationship management (CRM), environmental, social and governance (ESG) and performance management activities. ER... (more)

Avnet Introduces New Vendor Neutral Archive Solutions for Medical Images

To help value-added resellers and their healthcare-focused customers take advantage of funding related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Avnet Technology Solutions today announced new solutions and service offerings to assist in the storage and management of medical images as part of electronic health records (EHR). As a solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), Avnet Technology Solutions will enable its partners in the U.S. and Canada to offer complete Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) solutions through its healthcare solutions practice – Avnet HealthPath™. “Hospitals and medical facilities need trusted IT advisors who understand the industry and their technology pain points,” said David Hutchinson, director of healthcare solutions, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. “Healthcare organizations want to work wi... (more)

Noah Education Announces Completion Of Strategic Investment In Franklin Publishers

SHENZHEN, China, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Noah Education (NYSE: NED) ("Noah" or the "Company"), a leading provider of interactive educational content and education services in China, announced today the completion of its strategic investment in Franklin Electronic Publishers, Incorporated ("Franklin"), effective February 24, 2010, and pursuant to the definitive agreement it entered into on October 8, 2009. Noah's strategic investment in Franklin consisted of US$1 million in Series B Preferred Stock and US$2 million in Series A Preferred Stock, for a total consideration of US$3 million, or approximately a 20% interest in Franklin. Noah purchased the US$2 million, or 800,000 shares, of Series A Preferred Stock from Shining Sea Limited ("Shining Sea"), an investment vehicle principally owned by a trust created for the benefit of Dr. James Simons, the foun... (more)

A Cup of AJAX? Nay, Just Regular Java Please

These days everyone is talking about AJAX. It’s supposed to be a cool way of creating Web applications. The idea is noble: instead of rendering an entire HTML page on each little change on the page, it’s much better to send an asynchronous request that will  get the data for you and refresh only the relevant portion of the screen. Every author writing on AJAX is giving the same (the only? ) example where this technology is being used: Google maps and email. (BTW, I’m a little sick of these examples). Since I’m not going to be helping Google in improving their maps, I’d like to see some real-world examples implementing  this technology.  Ajax proponents will immediately come with this exciting example of how great it is to refresh some  screen info as the user enters character in a text field. And here's  a sample conversation that might have happened between an imag... (more)

Java Developer's Journal Exclusive: 2006 "JDJ Editors' Choice" Awards

The editors of SYS-CON Media's Java Developer's Journal are in a unique position when it comes to Java development. All are active coders in their "day jobs," and they have the good fortune in getting a heads-up on many of the latest and greatest software releases. They were asked to nominate three products from the last 12 months that they felt had not only made a major impact on their own development, but also on the Java community as a whole. The following is a list of each editor's selections and the reason why they chose that product. Joe Winchester Desktop Java Editor SwingLabs SwingLabs is an open source laboratory for exploring new ways to make Swing applications easier to write, with improved performance and greater visual appeal. It is an umbrella project for various open source initiatives sponsored by Sun Microsystems and is part of the java.net community... (more)

JavaServer Faces (JSF) vs Struts

My JSF article series and Meet the Experts appearance on IBM developerWorks received a lot of feedback. I would have to say, the most common question or feedback came along the lines of comparing Struts to JSF. I thought it would be a good idea to compare JSF to Struts by evaluating various features that an application architect would look for in a Web application framework. This article will compare specific features. Those on which I will focus include: Maturity Controller Flexibility/Event Handling Navigation Page development Integration Extensibility Certainly, there are other places in which you might want to do a comparison, such as performance, but I'll focus on the set I just mentioned. I'll also spend more time on the Controller and Navigation sections because they are the heart of the frameworks. Performance of JSF is specific to the vendor implementation,... (more)

Java vs C++ "Shootout" Revisited

Keith Lea writes of the benchmark, on his results page, "I was sick of hearing people say Java was slow, when I know it's pretty fast, so I took the benchmark code for C++ and Java from the now outdated Great Computer Language Shootout and ran the tests myself." Lea used G++ (GCC) 3.3.1 20030930 (with glibc 2.3.2-98) for the C++, with the -O2 flag (for both i386 and i686). He compiled the Java code normally with the Sun Java 1.4.2_01 compiler, and ran it with the Sun 1.4.2_01 JVM. He ran the tests on Red Hat Linux 9 / Fedora Test1 with the 2.4.20-20.9 kernel on a T30 laptop. The laptop "has a Pentium 4 mobile chip, 512MB of memory, a sort of slow disk," he notes. The results he got were that Java is significantly faster than optimized C++ in many cases. "They also show that no one should ever run the client JVM when given the choice," Lea adds. ("Everyone has the c... (more)