DevOps is speeding towards the IT world like a freight train and the hype around it is deafening. There is no reason to be afraid of this change as it is the natural reaction to the agile movement that revolutionized development just a few years ago. By definition, DevOps is the natural alignment of IT performance to business profitability. The relevance of this has yet to be quantified but it has been suggested that the route to the CEO's chair will come from the IT leaders that successfully make the transition to a DevOps model. If this still seems foreign to you, I recommend reading up on DevOps Blog from IT Revolution, the OpsCode Blog, and check out The Phoenix Project. Despite all the talk around simple monitoring tools, breaking through the walls between Dev and Ops still poses a real challenge. This is because of a misunderstanding around Operations real pu... (more)

The i-Technology Right Stuff

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)

i-Technology's All-Time Top 100?

Gene Amdahl: Implementer in the 60s of a milestone in computer technology: the concept of compatibility between systems Marc Andreessen: Pioneer of Mosaic, the first browser to navigate the WWW; co-founder of Netscape John Vincent Atanasoff: Inventor of an electronic computer in the late 1930s not for fun or glory, but because he had problems for it to solve Charles Babbage: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1828; inventor of the 'calculating machine' John Backus: Inventor (with IBM) of FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslator) in 1956 Ralph Baer: "The man who invented video games" (Pong) Kent Beck: Creator of JUnit and pioneer of eXtreme Programming (XP) Bob Bemer: One of the developers of COBOL and the ASCII naming standard for IBM (1960s) Tim Berners-Lee: "Father of the World Wide Web" and expectant father of the Semantic Web D J Bernstein: Author of qmail Jos... (more)

Evaluating a Software Asset | @CloudExpo #Cloud #DigitalTransformation

Are you evaluating a software asset for a  potential purchase, investment, decision making for the future, possible termination, etc? Here are some questions you should consider: 1. Is this a revenue generating asset? How much revenue does it generate? - Establishing the true business value of a software asset is a critical piece of the evaluation process. 2. Is this a cost saving asset? How much cost does it save? - While cost-saving measures can indeed be a viable goal, it is important to understand the true cost savings: time, money, and any future versions necessary. 3. Does this asset have some other value? What is its value? - If you are evaluating this asset beyond business value, project leaders must discern exactly what that additional value may be. 4. How many clients use this system? How many users do I have?  How do I value each client/user of the syst... (more)

Swing Is Swinging Java Out of the Desktop

Over the last few months I have made more than a passing reference to the fact that I personally feel that, in its present state, Java doesn't stand much chance on the desktop against the march of Microsoft's WinForm technology from the .NET Framework. A view, I have discovered, shared by many of you. Before I go on, let me clarify my position here so we are all on the same page. The frameworks currently available to the Java developer from the standard JDK, of course, are AWT and Swing. Naturally we are not talking about other client-side technologies, such as SWT, Thinlets, and Droplets to name a few, but more on them later. The less said about AWT the better. It doesn't even stand up to the functionality of an HTML page with a basic FORM embedded in it. But we were told not to despair, Sun promised a much better technology was in the works. We were then presente... (more)

Marc Fleury's Viewpoint: Enterprise Java Made Easy

Simplicity is the key driving force behind the success of Java. When Dr. Gosling invented the Java language in 1995, the goal was to make life easier for software developers. Java's elegant language design, simple API, and vendor-independence have made it the platform of choice for many developers. However, as Java evolves to address enterprise needs for scalability and flexibility, developer friendliness has taken a back seat. The complex programming model in EJB 2.1 and J2EE 1.4 has hindered Java's adoption, and it's the root cause for many slow-performing and error-prone Java applications. Fortunately, help is on the way. The upcoming EJB 3.0 and J2EE 1.5 servers greatly simplify enterprise Java development without compromising scalability and flexibility. Unlike many other third-party commercial and open source J2EE alternatives, EJB 3.0 is completely standard-... (more)

Bye Bye Traditional Webmastering, Hello "Web Manager 2.0"

CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content management technologies, released research today finding that a new breed of web manager is emerging to link content management more closely to website visitor satisfaction.  This analysis stems from CMS Watch's 2008 "Web CMS Report," released today, which evaluates 30 major Web Content Management (WCM) offerings. As part of its ongoing research, CMS Watch interviews hundreds of web managers around the world. Web teams have traditionally emphasized webmaster roles with layout and production skills, sometimes using first-generation WCM tools to automate the HTML conversion process. Automated or not, "shovel and forget" editorial processes frequently led to bloated sites. Says CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne, "The new web manager looks at information from the consumers' perspective and more often than not, as... (more)

ICEsoft Named "Gold Sponsor" of AJAX World Conference & Expo

ICEsoft Technologies is a leading provider of standards-compliant, AJAX-based solutions for developing and deploying Java EE, rich Internet applications. The company's portfolio of enterprise level Java products includes ICEfaces, an AJAX application framework that enables Java EE application developers to easily create and deploy thin-client rich Web applications in pure Java. ICEfaces is professional open source software specifically engineered to meet the unique challenges of enterprise application development and deployment. The solution extends JavaServer Faces, enabling Java software developers to more easily create and deploy thin-client rich Web applications in Java technology. It leverages the entire standards-based Java EE ecosystem of tools and execution environments and resolves mission critical deployment issues such as scalability, availability, and red... (more)

JGAP 3.4 released (Java Genetic Algorithms Package)

JGAP is a genetic algorithms package written in Java. It is designed to require minimum effort to use out of the box, but is also designed to be highly modular. It allows custom components to be easily plugged in. ... (more)

Hardware Scaling in the Cloud - Part 3 of 5

In the previous two weeks, I wrote about why the cloud is important to you as a business leader and provided some rationale for economic justification of cloud adoption. Over the next three weeks, I will take apart the three key components that comprise the cloud: infrastructure, platform and software as a service. Each is delivered as a cloud-based service. With an understanding of these components, you will be able to keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to significantly impact your organization's top and bottom lines. The main topic of this week and the most fundamental component of the cloud is infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This component refers to all the elements of delivering a Web-based service including servers, Internet connectivity, transport routing and sometimes higher-level functions for enhanced performance and scalability. The bottom ... (more)

High Availability, Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery in AWS

Amazon Web Services – Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Fault Tolerance Abbreviations used: AWS - Amazon Web Services AMI - Amazon Machine Instance DR - Disaster Recovery FT - Fault Tolerance HA - High Availability Non-technical introduction. High Availability and Fault Tolerance – the requirement that a computer application be seemlessly available to users without interruption, literally “no (or very little) fault will be tolerated”. In simple speak, this means that I am able to use a computer application even though in the background there may be outages, for example hardware failure, network congestion or maximum CPU utilization.  The application is “highly available”, it  is available “(almost) all the time.” Disaster Recovery – what it takes for your organization to recover from a computer disaster and be operational again. Simple example: suppose a har... (more)