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)

In 2014 Big Data Investments Will Account for Nearly $30 Billion - Eventually Accounting for $76 Billion by 2020 End

DALLAS, Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Amid the proliferation of real time data from sources such as mobile devices, web, social media, sensors, log files and transactional applications, Big Data has found a host of vertical market applications, ranging from fraud detection to R&D.; Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140821/138541 "Big Data Market: 2014 – 2020 – Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals & Forecasts" Key Findings: In 2014 Big Data vendors will pocket nearly $30 Billion from hardware, software and professional services revenues Big Data investments are further expected to grow at a CAGR of nearly 17% over the next 6 years, eventually accounting for $76 Billion by the end of 2020 The market is ripe for acquisitions of pure-play Big Data startups, as competition heats up between IT incumbents Nearly every large scale IT ven... (more)

Massachusetts Approves Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) Document Format

In a decision that will distress OpenDocument Format (ODF) fans, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ODF's biggest booster, has gone ahead and approved Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an acceptable format for state records alongside ODF. So now all those state office workers can go right on using Office. Meanwhile, it looks like INCITS, the International Committee for Information Technology Standards, which represents US interests in ISO, may not necessarily be led by its advisory committee and could still throw its support to OOXML as an ISO standard come the vote September 2. INCITS' executive committee reportedly approved the draft specification "with comments" whereas the advisory committee couldn't muster the two-thirds needed for approval. INCITS support still isn't in the bag, however. It said in a press statement that it has yet to dete... (more)

db4o in the Mirror of JPA/EJB and Hibernate

db4o, an open source object database system with broad industry applicability, belongs to a popular database management systems that has close to 2 million downloads to date. Here we'll illustrate the features and application areas of such a database and compare db4o against relational DBMS/object relational (OR) mappers. It seems as if object databases are enjoying a rebirth. After the disastrous but probably quite purifying hype of the '90s, many providers now offer sophisticated products. Besides db4o, the products by Intersystems, Objectivity, Gemstone, and Versant deserve to be mentioned. At this point the most important question is: When or why should I use an object database? There are many studies available that compare the benefits of object database management systems (ODBMS) and relational database management systems (RDBMS): Because of their independen... (more)

Windows Azure PHP Development Kit

Microsoft announced at TechEd India — a show running simultaneously with TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles, a new software development kit for people interested in building apps in PHP for Windows Azure cloud. The PHP SDK for Windows Azure, a.k.a. PHPAzure, is an open source project, available for download from Microsoft CodePlex. The SDK provides consistent programming model for Windows Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables, Queues). Program Manager, Peter Galli, said Microsoft also is announcing “the launch of a series of projects that offer samples and a toolkit that enable PHP developers to include Silverlight controls, Microsoft Virtual Earth maps and IE Webslices and Accelerators in PHP web applications; as well as automatically generated a simple Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) PHP application from a table in SQL Server.” A Technology Preview of the PHP SDK for Windows Az... (more)

Ex-IBM Honcho Claims He’s Innocent

Early Bird at Clod Expo The rumor mill says that Apple could be out with that tablet it’s supposed to have up its sleeve in March or April. According to Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner, it’s supposed to have a 10.1-inch iPhone-style multi-touch screen and a $1,000 price tag. It would compete with Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. Reiner says Apple’s been pitching book publishers on a non-executive deal giving them 70% of the money, more lucrative for them than Amazon, which is thought to demand 50% of the take. Reiner thinks Apple means to make a million of the widgets a month to start. Robert Moffat, the former high-ranking IBM executive arrested in October in the Galleon insider trading roundup, asked a New York court Wednesday to dismiss the SEC's civil charges against him. He claims he didn't pass material insider information on IBM and Sun earnings or AMD's sale... (more)

Study: Cloud Computing Becoming Pervasive

Cloud computing may be taking the business world by storm, but its success could mean a "perfect storm" that endangers the role of IT. As a result, IT needs to step up now and change its approach to cloud services. This includes building trust with the lines of business, beginning to manage public cloud services, and pursuing increased automation for service provisioning and operations. These are the key findings of a survey commissioned by BMC Software and conducted by Forrester Research. The study, "Delivering on High Cloud Expectations," shows that business units' demand for speed and agility is leading them to circumvent IT and acquire cloud services, more than half of them from what were termed "unmanaged" clouds. Brian Singer, Lead Solutions Marketing Manager for BMC, said his company commissioned the survey in an effort to confirm what the company was hearing a... (more)

Getting Started with Hyper-V Server 2012

With all the news this week around the launch of Windows Server 2012, you may have missed that Hyper-V Server 2012 has also launched! I've provided details on this equally important launch milestone along with helpful resources to get started below ... What is Hyper-V Server 2012? Hyper-V Server 2012 is a FREE (yes, completely free!) purpose-built product that includes the core of Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V. The result is a streamlined Type-1 hypervisor that provides the same virtualization scalability and high availability features as the Hyper-V role in the full version of Windows Server - including up to 320 logical processors per Hyper-V host, up to 4TB of physical memory, Live Migration, Storage Migration, Virtual Machine Replication, Clustering and more! Do It: Learn about the specific improvements in Hyper-V Server 2012 over Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Lear... (more)

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of April 14, 2013

Welcome to Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility in Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016. Also read Field Mobility News Weekly Also read Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5 Also read M2M News Weekly Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly Also read Mobile Health News Weekly Also read Mobility News Weekly Also read SMAC News Weekly India’s IT service providers are focusing on mobility solutions as mobile devices become more popular than desktop PCs in the workplace.  Smart mobile devices will be the biggest driver of worldwide IT spending in 2013, growing by almost 20 percent, according to an IDC research report.  Read Original Content Indian IT services provider HCL Technologies will exit a joint venture... (more)

When “Just Works” Just Doesn’t Work Well Enough

I’ve been having computer issues this week, and I’m not sure what the problem is. During my iTunes debacle last week, one of the steps suggested by the Senior Apple Tech I was speaking to was to make sure my Windows Updates were, well, up-to-date. I updated video drivers for my NVIDIA card, functionality drivers for my Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse and about a dozen non-essential Microsoft odds and ends. In the past few days, though, I’ve had weird lock-ups and glitches and freezes, and I’ve had to hard shutdown or hard restart my desktop more times than I’ve had to since I got it at the start of 2010. (And while that’s a long time for a computer to last, the hardware in here should last at least that much longer still.) I’ve run anti-virus programs and spyware removers, I’ve un-installed and re-installed both drivers and programs, and I’m still running in... (more)

Enterprise Mobility and Network Centric Management Strategies

Some of the most technologically advanced organizations in the world today are utilizing strategies based on the concept of the Network Centric Organization. These strategies, methodologies and concepts are important for just about any organization that is geographically dispersed and requires the organization and management of remote and mobile workforces and assets. The concept of the "network centric" organization relates to the fact that people, objects, events, activities, assets, inventories, locations, fleets, equipment, tools, etc, are all connected to the Internet (aka network), monitored, and most often visible on a map.  All of these connected components are providing data in real-time that can be used to manage operations.  This collected data is wirelessly sent to a central server where it forms a real time and unified view of operations that can be used... (more)