Archive for April, 2007
April 30, 2007 at 10:45 am · Filed under Abn Amro merger
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6606677.stm
Bank of America is reported to be threatening one of the biggest lawsuits in history if its deal to buy LaSalle Bank from ABN Amro falls through.
A Dutch court will rule on Thursday on whether ABN Amro was allowed to sell LaSalle without shareholder approval.
Several papers report that Bank of America will sue for $220bn (£110bn) of damages if the deal is blocked.
Some ABN investors say LaSalle was only sold to deter rival bids for ABN, which had agreed a merger with Barclays.
Very interesting, whether though the threat of legal action has an effect on the decision of the board is another thing, keep in mind that the shareholders probably want the best value from an economic standpoint, the board might want the deal that has the least impact from an organization standpoint. In the meantime, the deal, the issues and the activities surrounding it goes on.
April 29, 2007 at 11:10 pm · Filed under How IT works, Other things, Technical stuff
http://www.galwayfirst.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=475%20%3Chttp://www.galwayfirst.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=475
In 1990 two gentleman, a British man called Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Tim) and a Belgian called Robert Calliau, co-developed what is now known as the World Wide Web (WWW, or just “The Webâ€) over in CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), a particle physics laboratory north of Geneva in Switzerland. Tim became the better known of the two; he went on to play an active role in the development of many of the standards and technologies that build the foundation of the Web as we know it today.
Every now and again, someone will say to me something about Web 2.0, and I’ll smile and agree, Web 2.0 is a little bit advanced for me you see, I kind of get it, the web version with the extra bits, content/community type stuff?
I kind of stopped getting involved in web around FrontPage 2000 and dreamweaver 4 was it? Ask Ewan my brother he’s commander at all that.
Anyway in my quest to be ever more informed, here’s an article that it explains it all for you, sounds very interesting, it’s something I’ll need to read up on, as the applications move on, as does the infrastructure. Check it out, it’s also got a great post on RSS amongst other things here: http://www.inao.blogspot.com.
April 29, 2007 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Other things
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/13431/
“I have consistently moaned about my Lenovo X60S since I received it 9 months ago. Well, after a few more crashes, an ever looser WiFi toggle switch and a few other issues, I finally made the move. 3 weeks ago I ordered a MacBook Pro. Today I received it from IT after I went through a tutorial yesterday,” Michael Eisenberg writes for SeekingAlpha.
The apple platform is very smart, and yes with virtualization you can run everything very easily, however the technology still needs to evolve a bit more for it to become mainstream, and there are those people who having a mac with virtualization software to run Visio, Project etc seems a bit too difficult, in the meantime then the mac remains an effective platform for many, just as with anything deployed in the right way to the right people.
April 29, 2007 at 10:49 pm · Filed under Other things, rackmounts
http://www.itjungle.com/breaking/bn042607-story01.html
Server maker Sun Microsystems this week used the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City as a springboard to launch its new Streaming System, a cluster of application servers and storage servers and a new video stream switch, marking its entry into a market that one of the company’s co-founders and current chief X64 system architect, Andy Bechtolsheim, was getting set to chase when Sun acquired a startup that he founded called Kealia.
Bechtolsheim was Sun’s original chief technology officer when the workstation originator and Unix server giant was founded back in 1985. A decade later, he left Sun to start a company called Granite Systems, which made Gigabit Ethernet switches, which he sold in 1996 to Cisco Systems for $200 million. Bechtolsheim stayed on at Cisco for a few years, but then left to start Kealia in February 2001, which was rumored to be working on video server and networking technologies. Until Sun bought Kealia in February 2004, just before announcing its broad support for Opteron processors and its plans for the “Galaxy” line of servers, no one knew anything else about Kealia except for its address in Palo Alto, California.
Very cool, check out Sun’s new streaming system? It’s Linux based using X64 system architecture, haven’t read up that much about it, but it does look very cool, and offering it on X64 architecture running Linux has to open new markets in the new media market away from Mac/IBM (in particular their QS20 Cell blade). Check it out.
April 29, 2007 at 10:44 pm · Filed under Grid, Other things
http://mndoci.com/blog/2007/04/26/mainframes-vs-the-grid/
Nick Carr has an interesting post on his blog about some new iron from IBM and Sun. What I found interesting was the comment towards the end about specialized machines of the kind IBM and Sun excel at and the large global grid of the kind Google has built.
Check out this post it raises some interesting thoughts, I remember Chris once said to me mainframe is dead, that grid will take over, however, I’m not so sure, there are those in-house designed/bought in applications that are written for mainframes that work, the cost of migrating them might be significantly more than supporting the mainframe, can both co-exist then? Absolutely, it’s all about what’s right for your business and your application - whatever works, mainframe, desktop or a typewriter…
April 29, 2007 at 10:42 pm · Filed under Other things, environment
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20070430/servers01.shtml
The ongoing economic boom across verticals has sent IT heads into a tizzy over growth inside their data centres particularly on the server side. Servers are considered to be among the building blocks of a data centre. Enterprises are looking to save money and enhance production by consolidating workloads onto more power yet energy-efficient servers that can bring down the cost of operating a data centre.
Check out this article on the data center and the ability to host more servers with the business need, its very cool. It mentions performance per watt, does this mean Gerald (my Proliant 1600) is not going to fare so well against a DL380G4?
April 29, 2007 at 10:38 pm · Filed under Other things
http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cfm?featureID=3337&pagtype=samecatsamechan
For engineers developing the next generation of servers, the CPU is no longer the biggest design obstacle to controlling power and cooling costs, which is a major issue for many data centres. “It used to be that the processor was our main concern,†says Roger Schmidt, chief thermal architect and distinguished engineer in IBM’s server and workstations division.
Check out this very cool post about the challenges vendors are having with memory in the ongoing demand for more efficient servers, it’s very interesting…
April 29, 2007 at 10:35 pm · Filed under Other things
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=17F125FE-F821-4D28-8629-511F000EB231
Six months after Oracle announced plans to undercut Red Hat with its Unbreakable Linux support plan, the company has revealed the names of first hardware and software vendors supporting its Oracle Enterprise Linux variant.
Under the Unbreakable Linux plan, the company has taken Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux code and added its own patches and bug fixes to create OEL, which it is supporting alongside standard Red Hat installations, via Unbreakable.
Will need to read up on this, it looks very cool, will be interesting to see how this affects the other Linux/Unix distributions, but by aligning with one platform, Oracle can create a Linux based Oracle configuration which is optimized for its software applications, very cool.
April 29, 2007 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Other things
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070429/GPG0101/704290711/1207/GPGnews
MADISON — State Sen. Rob Cowles says a recent audit of the state’s Information Technology projects has exposed government waste and that tighter management controls are needed.
The Republican lawmaker from Allouez said “tens of millions” of dollars have been lost on some high-risk computer projects that were outlined in a report released more than a week ago by the state Legislative Audit Bureau.
The audit identified 184 IT projects that have begun or been completed in the last three years, and found that some state agencies experienced “widely reported difficulties” in completing complex and costly IT projects within budget and on time.
It’s always difficult getting an IT project just right particularly on a large scale, the difference between the private sector and the public sector is that the private sector tends to hide things, as a bank I’m not going to admit we spent $400k on a system that didn’t work, we’ll simply utilize the hardware elsewhere and announce the success that way. I don’t have a solution in this respect, it’s dependent on an effective team, realistic budget and in many cases starting off small and scaling up..
April 29, 2007 at 10:30 pm · Filed under Other things, blades, rackmounts, vmware
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=82335
I am aware of two things, that this link is to the vmware site, that also it’s a forum post about blades and rack mounts for vmware. However, you’d be amazed at the number of people I speak to that are having long conversations about this very question, but blades have small drives and two processors, and besides I need many network connections.
Let’s step back for two seconds.
Blade servers for me for virtualization make sense if you’re virtualizing in volume, if you’re wanting to move to a kind of ESX farm, where Bill says I want a machine on Network3, you then have one enclosure with Network3 connections, and whichever blade is least busy has that new virtual machine allocated to it.
Rack mount servers make sense equally in volume deployments, but the blades can give you more volume (though I admit you can debate this), anyway, they can provide you with more network cards for connectivity, and are ideal for consolidating several servers on to one main box, for example all of Capital Markets dev on to three or four DL585s.
Which is right for you, you’ll need to decide, in the meantime any views, email me or post a comment.
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