Bladewatch.com

Information Week

Cloud computing isn’t another name for “utility computing” or just a buzzword that will be replaced by another term. “The cloud is the next evolution of the Internet,” declared Russ Daniels,Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)’s CTO for cloud computing and VP of cloud strategy. Part of Daniels’ responsibility is explaining to customers how they should think about their future and cloud computing.

Check out this article talking about cloud computing. It’s always good to see what the different vendors and service providers think about the different technologies. Cloud computing solutions represent an opportunity as much as a challenge, that I as a vendor can continue to offer my existing products and services, but bring online new services that I might offer at the same time. That I can’t sell you a blade, a software solution, can I offer you compute capacity, a virtual disaster recovery solution down a fixed line or using the Internet? Exciting times are ahead, we’ll have to see.

Share and Enjoy

Business Wire

King of Prussia, PA- February 23, 2009 – Devon IT today announced its new line of thin client solutions orderable with IBM part numbers.  Devon has worked directly with IBM to launch this complete line of thin client solutions that complements IBM’s Virtual Client Solutions (VCS) infrastructure.

“We are committed to providing industry-leading and cost-effective thin client technology for users,” explained Joe Makoid, President, Devon IT. “When a market and technology leader like IBM is progressing thin client/hosted client architecture and collaborate with leaders such as Citrix and VMware it is obvious that the current approach to desktop computing is shifting. We have always been proponents of server-centric computing and centralized management as a way for IT managers to reduce costs dramatically. Devon Thin Clients provide IBM customers an easy and cost-effective way to order complete hosted desktop solutions from one source.”

The shift to virtualization of the desktop is something that can bring real benefits in terms of support costs and in ‘time to deployment’. The example I always like to use is that with the virtual desktop, the desktop follows you, not the user following the desktop. That to move an end user from one desk to another might costs hundreds of pounds as we have to physically move and re-patch the desktop, or the time it takes to request a ‘new’ pc from the helpdesk. That I can dynamically provision and scale up the desktop infrastructure to meet the business need can not only transform the user experience, it can transform the way we do business. I wonder if we’ll the blade trader pc, the blade desktop be deployed in line with those trading desk upgrades, and at the same time what range of technologies we’ll use with this new hardware. Do we have a virtual pc hosted on a blade desktop, or a blade desktop which we can re-deploy and re-provision on demand?

Share and Enjoy

Rpath.com

RALEIGH, N.C. — February 24, 2009 — Many organizations have dramatically accelerated application development through agile methods and other dynamic approaches. But despite the progress made, certain aspects of development, testing, deployment, and maintenance typically remain stuck in the dark ages.

In the two-part, End-to-End Agility <http://www.rpath.com/corp/agility-series>  webinar series sponsored by rPath <http://www.rpath.com/> , key innovators and practitioners in application delivery will offer a close look at how agility can be extended across the complete application lifecycle, with a specific emphasis on agility in downstream phases. Part 1 of this webinar series, detailed below, will explore how agility can be effectively applied to iterative development and testing. Part 2 will explore how agility can be extended to deployment, maintenance, and other production phases.

Anything we can do to aid rapid development and testing, to improve the ability of IT to bring online functionality has to be a good thing. That I can scale up or down the infrastructure in line with my projects could be a freeing activity, that we can scale up the infrastructure for that Documentum go-live, or to test that new web application, can be the difference between functional testing and real end user testing.

Share and Enjoy

MSNBC

SAN JOSE, Calif. and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 18, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bell Microproducts Inc. (Pink Sheets:BELM)one of the world’s largest value-added distributors of storage and computing technology, and BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced today that Bell Microproducts (Bell Micro) will distribute BLADE’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet RackSwitch(tm) product family in North America.

According to a recent report by Dell’Oro Group, 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the data center is a “bright spot” in the Ethernet switch market, with significant new product introductions helping to propel 10 Gigabit Ethernet growth as those products begin to ramp in 2009. (See: “Ecosystem in Place for Strong 10 Gigabit Ethernet Server Adoption” and “10 Gigabit Ethernet in the Data Center a Bright Spot.”)

It will be interesting to see how blade servers as a platform might further the move towards 10GB Ethernet, anything the vendors can do to improve the availability, functionality and affordability of 10GB Ethernet has to be a good thing.

Share and Enjoy

Information Week

Voltaire on Thursday said it plans to design a 40-Gbps InfiniBand switch module for IBM (NYSE: IBM) BladeCenter systems.BladeCenter is the brand for IBM’s blade server chassis and related technologies. Voltaire claims its custom switch will deliver 100% faster connectivity than current technology.

Anything we can do to improve performance and functionality in the blade platform has to be good news, whether it’s for a virtualization or grid solution, as well as consolidating servers to blades. The more functionality and innovations of the blade platform, the more we can illustrate the blade as part of a solution, as an empowerment tool as part of your project, be it a hardware refresh project, or a new ‘green’ virtualization solution on blade technology.

Share and Enjoy

Apple

CUPERTINO, California—March 3, 2009—Apple® today announced updates to its iMac® and Mac® mini desktop lines, including a 24-inch iMac that is priced more affordably than ever before and a Mac mini with powerful new integrated graphics. For the same $1,499 price as the previous generation 20-inch iMac, the new 24-inch iMac delivers a 30 percent larger display, twice the memory and twice the storage. Delivering up to five times better graphics performance, the updated Mac mini now features the same groundbreaking NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics introduced with the aluminum unibody MacBook® family.* The Mac mini is the world’s most energy efficient desktop, drawing less than 13 watts of power when idle.** All iMac and Mac mini systems come with Mac OS® X Leopard®, the world’s most advanced operating system, and iLife® ’09, Apple’s unparalleled suite of consumer applications for managing and organizing photos, making movies and creating and learning to play music.

“Our flagship 24-inch iMac with twice the memory and twice the storage is now available for just $1,499,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. “The Mac mini is not only our most affordable Mac, it’s also the world’s most energy efficient desktop computer.”

I am still a fan of the Mac Mini, it’s an ideal size, energy efficient and the new video card should further enhance it’s performance in video/multimedia. I’m very tempted to replace my wife’s G5 iMac, and the new Mac Mini is increasingly interesting.

I wonder also (in a geek style way) if we could utilize this NVIDIA card in grid computing if I were to have a grid of Mac Mini’s, could we use this gpu with the right code?

The iMAC has also been updated which is very cool, I’m off to read up more.

Share and Enjoy

IT Pro

Dell delivers a highly scalable enterprise server platform well suited to virtualisation – are 24 Xeon cores enough for you?

Targeting a range of enterprise applications including server virtualisation and database services, Dell’s latest PowerEdge R900 is touted as its most powerful server yet. This 4U chassis supports the complete range of X7400 Xeons and the review system came kitted out with four of the latest high-performance six-core X7460 modules delivering a total of twenty-four cores.

The 7400 family of multi-core Xeons represents the end of an era as these are the last of Intel’s Penryn generation. Along with four quad-core models, the family has been expanded to offer three six-core versions. The X7460 processors in the review system each offer a full 16MB of shared L3 cache shared across all six cores – the E7450 and L7455 only have 12MB of L3 cache to share around.

It’s always good to see what people think about the different servers, in this case the Dell PowerEdge 900. I remain a fan of the Dell servers, regardless of your preferences HP vs IBM, Dell vs HP, it’s important to know what the different vendors are offering if only so that you can ensure you’re getting the best value/functionality from the vendor you buy servers from. As an end user the more competition and innovation we see, the more opportunities and possibilities for the platform, which has to be a good thing.

Share and Enjoy

BBC Podcasts – In Business

GlobalBiz: John Chambers: Tx: 02 Mar 09

CEO of Cisco talks to Peter Day about intergrating acquired companies, innovation and the infinite bandwidth future for his ‘plumbing’ company. Producer: Editor: Stephen Chilcott

Duration: 27mins | File Size: 13MB

Check this podcast out, it’s talking with the CEO of Cisco John Chambers, it was great to hear his thoughts on IT, technology and business integration.

Share and Enjoy

Information Week

IBM (NYSE: IBM) said Wednesday that it plans to use Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com’s Web services infrastructure to deliver software to customers via the Internet. Under the so-called cloud computing arrangement, IBM will offer a number of products through Amazon Web Services, including DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Web Content Management, WebSphere sMash, and Novell (NSDQ: NOVL)’s SUSE Linux operating system.

How cool is this? Anything IBM can do to aid it’s customers need for buying in the services they need, in giving the end user a more dynamic or flexible infrastructure has to be a good thing, that it’s offered through Amazon Web Services might bring more exposure and opportunities for IBM, which has to be a good thing for choice and competition.

Share and Enjoy

Information Week

Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) on Tuesday expanded its switches portfolio with products optimized for cloud-computing environments.Along with new Nexus switches, the networking company added the Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extender to help IT managers dealing with an increasing number of servers and a growing demand for bandwidth from each server, particularly as virtualization is used to run more business applications in one machine.

I was speaking with a networks guy about the Nexus switches and he seemed genuinely excited about them and had been reading up about their new os. He’s been using the existing Cisco Catalyst series switches so it will be interesting to hear his feedback.

Anything Cisco and the other networks companies can do to improve the infrastructures ability to manage virtual workloads, to aid in reporting and resolving issues, or improve functionality/performance has to be a good thing, I’m off to check it out.

Share and Enjoy