New Media on Ulitzer Last week we were accidentally copied in on an internal e-mail from a software company with a market cap in excess of five billion dollars. As I read through this long e-mail thread, which included references to our company, I couldn't help but reflect on the past. I forwarded this e-mail to their CEO and he acknowledged its receipt. History is repeating itself, I realized, and I wanted to share my thoughts with our readers and with the CEO of this software company. In 1985-86 I worked at IBM as a market research analyst in White Plains, NY, at the company's Information Systems and Communications Group headquarters. Our big boss then was Mike Armstrong. He often held staff meetings in our building at 44 South Broadway. On the day we found out from the Wall Street Journal that he had been appointed the head of IBM Europe, he held his last staff... (more)

Understanding JSSE

The Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) is a set of packages that enable secure Internet communications. It implements a Java version of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. It includes functionality for data encryption, server authentication, message integrity, and optional client authentication. Although the JSSE guide provides detailed information on the JSSE API and its use in application programming, this article dives deeper into the different message exchanges involved when a programmatic Java client communicates with a server over the SSL. It will help developers understand the fundamental but often overlooked JSSE concepts of keystore, truststore, cipher suites, certificates, and the public key infrastructure and help them solve some of the common programmatic and configuration issues that arise when developing Java ... (more)

Cloud CEOs, CTOs & SVPs to Speak at 4th International Cloud Computing Expo

What do the following industry executives have in common: the CTOs of Citrix, EMC and Sybase, the Founders of ParaScale and CloudSwitch, the CEOs of Zetta and Kaavo, the Chief Security Architect at Sun, the President of Hubspan and the Chairman of NComputing? The answer is that, along with another 100 or so experienced and industry-savvy speakers, they are all members of the distinguished Speaker Faculty at the upcoming 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which is co-located with the 7th International Virtualization Conference & Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center, November 2-4, 2009. The lineup includes plenty of other CEOs too, such as the CEO of Bycast, and of Grid Dynamics, newScale, JRapid, Adaptivity, and RocketLawyer.com. As for CTOs, the Santa Clara Convention Center will be playing host to breakout sessions from not just those already ... (more)

Commentary: Sun’s Oracle Merger

Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer With only the ‘you may now kiss the bride’ custom to follow, the Oracle/Sun marriage (or dare I say Sun/Oracle) is now finally complete. After months of legal wrangling which has caused nothing but embarrassment and dwindled Sun’s stature within the market sphere, reports also came out that half of Sun's 27,000 staff will be made redundant. Thus initial indications are clear that Oracle, known for its past agnosticism to open source has an eye for the merger being based on maximizing profit. In the meantime Sun’s competitors are probably smiling wryly as the delay of the merger played into their immediate interests but what threats and challenges does this partnership now pose to the once great open source vendor which did so much for developing the tech and e-commerce industry. One thing which Oracle will most probably do is addres... (more)

The Next Chapter in the Virtualization Story Begins

Cloud Expo Europe €550 Savings here! Cloud Expo West $800 Savings here! Cloud Computing Journal recently caught up with Pete Malcolm, CEO of cloud management innovators Abiquo - a major new player in the fast-emerging Cloud ecosystem and Platinum Plus Sponsor of 6th Cloud Expo being held in Prague, the Czech Republic, 21-22 June 2010. Malcolm is keynoting at the event. His theme will be "An Open Cloud Ecosystem - the Gathering Storm." Explore Cloud Expo Sponsorship & Exhibit Opportunities ! Abiquo was also Platinum Plus Sponsor of the 5th International Cloud Expo held April 19-21, 2010 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City Cloud Computing Journal: How would you define the difference between Private clouds and Public Clouds, and why is the distinction so important in the context of Cloud Computing? Pete Malcolm: Actually, I think people get rather too hun... (more)

Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Keynote Speaker Profile: Jonathan Bryce – OpenStack

With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in two weeks' time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA - co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo - let's introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the West Coast conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing & Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud and/or Big Data solutions that are transforming the world of Enterprise IT? CLOUD EXPO SPEAKER NAME: Jonathan Bryce TWITTER: @jbryce ORGANIZATION: OpenStack Foundation 11TH CLOUD EXPO OPENING KEYNOTE TITLE: Open Cloud – Place Your Bets! SESSION DESCRIPTION: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/23909... (more)

Spread Your Wings with Cocoon

Apache Cocoon is one of the most interesting, innovative, and powerful platforms for dynamic content generation, though not as well known as the others. A subproject of the Apache XML project, Cocoon is one of the lesser-known offerings from the folks at the all-open-source Apache Software Foundation, having garnered less attention than some of its more popular cousins like Struts. But Cocoon is worth a look. It's not just Cocoon's use of XML in content generation that makes it so interesting; it's how it uses XML. Cocoon's authors clearly have a deep experience with and an understanding of XML - what it is and isn't good for - and Cocoon's simple but powerful architecture reflects that experience. XML isn't used here just "because everyone's using it." Rather, Cocoon exploits XML's strength for separating content from presentation. (As we know now, the lack of tha... (more)

JBoss Could Be "Sun's Best Defense Against .NET," Says Marc Fleury

(August 27, 2002) - It all began earlier this month when Scott McNealy implied in an interview that the Open Source model would hamstring Sun completely in its attempt to out-gun Microsoft in the enterprise-level computing arena by threatening the licensing revenue Sun and others need to finance J2EE's advertising and R&D.; Now the founder of JBoss, one of the most widely spread OS implementations of all, a full-fledged application server already in its 3.0 version, has published an online rebuttal of McNealy's remarks. Writing on the main page of the JBoss site, www.jboss.org, Marc Fluery - who is also president of JBoss Group LLC - claims that OS in general "and JBoss in particular" are on the contrary "Sun's best defense against Microsoft .NET." Can OS Help Save the App Server Tier from .NET? "Only Open Source," Fleury argues, "has proven uniquely resilient to a ... (more)

An Exclusive JDJ Interview With Sun's Jonathan Schwartz

Java developers will have noticed in the past few weeks that Sun has already begun to crank up a new "unified" approach to its software business. Sun gave JDJ an exclusive chance to ask questions, offering you the reader the opportunity to ask Jonathan Schwartz, the dynamic young executive VP of Sun's new Software Group, what's going on at Sun. : I've been working exclusively with Java since its birth. I'm a big fan, especially of Sun's Java. However, this past year I noticed that Sun's stock wasn't doing well. Many people, Microsoft folks included, have started to claim that Sun won't be around in five years. I'm really concerned; I know Java will be fine because of broad support from the industry, but I would like to see the creator of Java always be the leader of Java. : Sun has plenty of staying power. We are coming off a seasonal low per... (more)

So, Could Microsoft Ever "Own" XML?

Last month,  Microsoft applied for a patent to cover a word-processing document stored in a single XML file. That was in Europe and New Zealand. "The present invention," it said in its accompanying Summary submitted to the European Patent Office,  "is directed at providing a word-processing document in a native XML file format that may be understood by an application that understands XML, or to enable another application or service to create a rich document in XML so that the word-processing application can open it as if it was one of its own documents." At LinuxWorld we speculated whether this was  "either a preemptive move against IBM's plan to migrate to Linux on the desktop, a direct challenge to software vendors who want to interoperate with Word through XML, or just a more general confirmation that it is worried about Open Source." While the XML standard itsel... (more)

"Semantic Web" Is Getting Closer and Closer, Says Tim Berners-Lee

In February, unnoticed by many, two standards became W3C recommendations: the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL). This was the signal that Tim Berners-Lee's next project, the "Semantic Web" - an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation - is considered by the W3C to be ready now for more widespread adoption. Bringing his keynote audience up to date at the 13th annual WWW Conference, Berners-Lee reported that attendees could go straight out and "Semantic Web-enable" anything they can online - though "We're going to have to bootstrap things in the short term," he conceded. Referring to the process of getting RDF and OWL to the point where each could become a standard, Berners-Lee admitted that "There was a lot of pain and sweat ... (more)