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)

Managing Cloud Infrastructure at Cloud Expo 2011 New York

Cloud Expo 2011 New York $500 Savings here! The promise of cloud computing is that of virtually unlimited computing power that expands and contracts with the needs of the user. As the number of virtual servers increase, it's unlikely that IT will be able to keep up unless they have tools that can scale and automate the management of these dynamic systems. In his session at the 8th International Cloud Expo, Mark Hinkle, Vice President of Community at Cloud.com, will cover four disciplines of systems management: patching and provisioning, configuration, orchestration and monitoring. Specific recommendations will be made as to which open source tools are best suited for managing scalable cloud infrastructure and can be combined to automate management tasks as open source toolchains. Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ! Speaker Bio: Mark Hinkle is t... (more)

Facebook, Google, and the Near-Term Future of the USA

On the day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 12,000 for the first time since June 2008, it was impossible not to correlate the eloquence and optimism of President Obama's "State of the Union" speech on Tuesday night with the restoration of a sense of perspective and hope in the USA about the future. Obama grasped the nettle full-on. "We are poised for progress," he declared, adding: "Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing." As one blogger expressed it, though - and he is a former Goldman Sachs trader called Tyler Durden, so he ought to know wheref he speaks: "There was a massive pink elephant in the room called reality though." Durden's gripe is with what he deems to be the unreality of Obama's praising Google and Facebook so highly in an Ameri... (more)

Novell Makes SUSE & Ximian Play Together

Novell, which is in the process of buying SUSE, said Tuesday that the Ximian Desktop 2, which it already owns, now support the latest SUSE client editions, SUSE Linux Desktop and Linux 9.0. The upgraded Ximian 2 also includes the Ximian edition of OpenOffice 1.1, the GAIM instant messenger client and the updated Ximian Red Carpet 2.0 configuration management client software. Ximian Desktop 2 can be had for free at http://www.ximian.com/download. The professional version with 30-days support and a few special features costs 99 bucks. ... (more)

Lindows Back in Business in Benelux

Microsoft is going to have to pay Lindows 944 euros, which works out to something like all of about 1,100 bucks, after Microsoft failed to convince a Dutch court to enjoin Lindows from any use of the name Lindows. It was Microsoft's second run at trying for a preliminary injunction against Lindows for trademark infringement, but it seems the judge though it was okay if Lindows - which adopted the name Linspire in April after he barred the start-up from doing business under the Lindows name - continued to use the name Lindows in some fine print provided it included the proviso that Lindows is not affiliated with Windows in any way. Microsoft wanted every vestige of the Lindows name expunged - including its use for corporate and copyright identification purposes - and it wanted Lindows slapped with a 100,000-euro-a-day fine until it complied. Under those circumstances, ... (more)

Opinion: Give ColdFusion Some Room to Breathe

Andrew Powell's Blog OK, so we know ColdFusion, to quote Joe Rinehart, makes it "stupid-easy" to render HTML off of dynamic data. We (CFML developers) have been using it to do this for years. Only recently, with the fast emergence of RIAs in the last 5 years, has the game changed.  My personal approach has become to to let ColdFusion do what it does best, and no more. No AJAX generation or any of that silly UI stuff. Leave that to the AJAX frameworks, or Flex, or whatever your UI is going to be on the front-end. That's what the UI tool was designed for, CF wasn't.  Let CF focus on three things: getting data into and out of RIA front-ends, rendering HTML with dynamic data, and providing services that Java and .NET cannot provide (more on that in a bit). Beyond that, let Java, .NET, or whatever do the work at the model layer. Keep your CFML to a minimum and give ColdFus... (more)

[ANN] Axl Library 0.5.6 'Bohemian like you' release is ready!

######################################## # Axl Library # # Bohemian like you # # 0.5.6 # ######################################## Advanced Software Production Line is proud to announce a new Axl Library release. Axl Library is a small and efficient XML toolkit, written in ANSI C and released under the LGPL. It allows to produce efficient and clear code that handle XML data. The library was produced to support XML requirements needed by software developed by Advanced Software Production Line, S.L. At this moment the library is being used by Vortex Library, Af-Arch, Turbulence, Shaper and Fovap. Resources ~~~~~~~~~ Axl Homepage [ http://www.aspl.es/xml ] Advanced Software Production Line, S.L. [ http://www.aspl.es ] This release in short ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Bug fix release. Added support to include any binary content based on decls by doing some automat... (more)

When is Your Small Business Ready for an ERP System?

A common question small business owners ask themselves is when their business is ready to implement an ERP software application that will replace their existing small business software. Fortunately for the small business owner, there are a number of small business ERP software solutions on the market today that serve as a viable replacement for QuickBooks, Peachtree, and other small business accounting software packages. In my experience, there are three telling signs of when a small business is ready to migrate from its existing small business software to a more sophisticated ERP system. First, the small business is operating in a multitude of software packages based on a given department within the organization. Accounting personnel make journal entries in QuickBooks; warehouse managers enter data into Excel; sales representatives use ACT, Goldmine, Salesforce.com,... (more)

Five Keys to an Awesome M&A

In the interest of balance, today I'm waxing on about the awesome opportunities presented by M&As; - and some of the lessons I've learned along the way to help things go a bit more smoothly. M&As; are one of the most powerful opportunities for a Phoenix to rise; stronger, brighter, ready to soar into a leadership. After all, you're bringing two companies together who presumably have complementary skill-sets, products, market knowledge and customer bases. What could be MORE exciting?  Instead of investing time and dollars to build these assets  - we have the opportunity to blend the best of the best and keep running! But sometimes it's easy to forget that opportunity once the deal is complete. When the deal is signed and we roll up our sleeves as the true blending begins, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the day-to-day reality of these two completely unique business entiti... (more)

Yahoo! Announces Open-Source Cloud Server

Open Cloud on Ulitzer Yahoo! has made its second major Cloud Computing announcement in five months, announcing an open-source version of its Traffic Server at the 4th International Cloud Computing Expo in Santa Clara, CA. Company SVP of Cloud Computing Shelton Shugar, who will be keynoting at Cloud Computing Expo, called Traffic Server "an essential building block," saying it is "integral to our edge services, on-line storage, and cloud serving." According to an official release from Yahoo!, Traffic Server enables session management, authentication, configuration management, load balancing, and routing for an entire cloud computing stack. It follows the company's earlier announcement of the open-source Hadoop. Yahoo! has donated the Traffic Server code to The Apache Software Foundation through the Apache Incubator, "and intends to build a robust community of develop... (more)

Commercial Add Ons to Open Source Software: aheadWorks and Magento

Here’s an open source business model that’s creeping up on us:  Selling add-ons to open source  software.    For under $100, you can buy predesigned themes, reports, and feature enhancements for a number of open source projects, including WordPress, Joomla!, and Magento.   Is there a viable business here? To find out, I recently chatted with Eugene Popovsky, one of the owners of aheadWorks, which makes several of the most popular Magento add-ons. Here’s what he told me: What made you decide to create these add-on modules for Magento? We have a great experience in ecommerce as we’ve have been working ecommerce systems since 2003. One year ago, we decided to extend our business with one more ecommerce system and considered Magento mainly because of three advantages: modern, free and very promising. What are the technical strengths and weaknesses in Magento for developer... (more)