Bladewatch.com

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oracle-unveils-oracle-vm-30-2011-08-23?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Today at an event for customers, partners and industry experts, Oracle announced Oracle VM 3.0, the latest release of Oracle’s server virtualization and management solution.
–  Oracle VM 3.0 is suitable for all datacenter workloads and features new policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-in API; centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.
–  With the centralization of storage management alongside of logical network configuration and management, Oracle VM 3.0 allows administrators to streamline and automate end-to-end virtual machine provisioning for a significant reduction in time and overhead, simplifying IT processes and helping to reduce costs.
–  Oracle VM 3.0 helps customers deploy enterprise software in a rapid, repeatable and error-free manner with immediate availability of over 90 Oracle VM Templates for Oracle applications, middleware and databases.
–  Oracle VM 3.0 is four times more scalable than the latest VMware offering, supporting up to 128 virtual CPUs per virtual machine, at a fraction of the cost. Oracle VM 3.0 demonstrated support for up to 160 physical CPUs and 2TB memory using Oracle’s Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers.
–  When compared to VMware vSphere5 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest VMs, Oracle VM 3.0 running Oracle Linux guest VMs is four times less expensive.
–  Oracle VM is free to download, has zero license cost, and affordable, enterprise-quality support is offered through a simple subscription model per server. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.

There has been quite a bit of analysis about this on many levels, regardless of what others say, that Oracle continue to invest in their virtualization offering is good news, it helps continue drive innovation in the market place and provide alternatives for the end user community which has to be a good thing. I’m off to read up more about the enhancements, it looks promising from what I’ve read so far.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110823xa.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

HP today expanded its Converged Storage portfolio with HP Peer Motion, new federated storage software that enables clients to transparently move application workloads between disk systems in virtualized and cloud computing environments.

HP also introduced new HP P10000 3PAR Storage Systems with powerful features for the delivery of enterprise IT within public and private clouds, called IT-as-a-Service. These features include multitenancy for workload consolidation, expanded thin technologies for efficient capacity utilization and autonomic load rebalancing to drive enterprise agility.

IDC estimates that by 2012, 85 percent of new applications will be specifically designed to be accessed in the cloud.⁽¹⁾ Agile delivery of these virtualized and cloud-based applications requires linking multiple storage systems together to act as a single entity. Called storage federation, this capability can eliminate the extra layer of virtualization appliances and, as a result, decrease cost, administration overhead and service-level risk within the data center architecture.

“Legacy storage systems architected 20 years ago were never designed for the dynamic IT-as-a-Service world, forcing organizations to use expensive and inefficient bolt-on virtualization approaches,” said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, Storage, HP. “The true peer-based storage federation in HP Converged Storage solutions can handle the inherent unpredictability of always-on, multitenant environments while reducing expense, management overhead and risk to service levels.”

Some exciting announcements in the HP storage which is great news. Further enhancements are brought to their 3PAR offering with the announcement of their P10000 3PAR Storage Systems, as well as further opportunities to extend storage possibilities using their HP Peer Motion software, something I confess that I will need to read more about. That HP are continuing to invest in IT-as-a-Service, providing service providers and their customers with the tools they need to create and manage an adaptive enterprise using the best features of cloud and virtualized technologies is further illustration of their alignment to delivering solutions to meet the business need and is very, very cool.

http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/news-events/news/2011/cmusv-launches-entrepreneurship-program.html

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — August 15, 2011 — Speaking to the growing controversy about the best path – university, incubator, or garage – to become a successful entrepreneur, Carnegie Mellon University today announced the launch of an Entrepreneurship Program at its Silicon Valley campus. Nestled in the global hub of technology discovery and innovation, Carnegie Mellon will launch its 12-month, intensive, full-time program on August 15th offering students a chance to learn entrepreneurship practices from one of the world’s most reputable educational institutions while simultaneously germinating their own projects from idea to fruition.

The Entrepreneurship Program is an accelerated one-year program that offers students a Masters of Science in Software Management degree and teaches key skills in management, metrics, product definition and strategy. By blending both technical and business skills, Carnegie Mellon is taking a cutting edge approach to higher education. In addition to traditional academic instruction, students will be encouraged and required to work in functional teams where they will collaboratively develop their own ideas for new products and services – all working toward the goal of becoming part of a global innovation ecosystem.

I had a great chat with Martin Griss about their new program which sounds very interesting, it is unique in combining learning by doing and academic training, something that I have written about on a few occasions, I even spoke to a few universities about it. You see I feel that for particularly IT degrees we need to be not only covering the theory, the academic learning, but the real world concepts and challenges, that’s not to say send students into a data center with an ESX dvd, but it is to explore current concepts and future trends. To be able to educate students for the next generation opportunities and enterprises.  I wrote about it here.

Key features include:

• Coursework blends world-class academic and “learn by doing” training: http://ow.ly/5Y5q1
• Accepting applications online for 2012: http://ow.ly/5ZMSZ
• Variety of partnership opportunities for Silicon Valley tech companies: http://ow.ly/5ZN1r

The course is bringing together sets of academic tools experience and education, with practical engagement and exposure to the right communities and networks. It aims to create an atmosphere of opportunity and empowerment to the students in  not only establishing and developing ideas, but also in being able to articulate them, to ask the right questions, developing ideas into reality. Establishing if you like a framework, combined with a series of networks within networks in which students can speak to the right people, examine the possibilities and be empowered to capitalize on the best of what Silicon Valley has to offer in the start-up community space.

I can see the opportunities for this course on multiple levels, a self fulfilling network of networks and communities, creating opportunity and empower students on their journey to self improvement and entrepreneurship.  It will be exciting to see how the course develops going forward, what ideas and start-ups develop from it, I wish both the university, it’s faculty and students all the very best for the future and offer to open any doors or create any opportunities if I can along the journey of entrepreneurship.

The course is something that would in fact appeal to me, not only to learn skills in the start-up or entrepreneurial space (to capitalize on the ideas I already have), but maybe to help me think outside the box, to meet smart people, and create opportunity or capitalize on opportunity that I hadn’t recognized within the constructs of the ‘here and now’, the “that’s not how we do things here”, or “there are reasons for that” (whether anyone knows what those are is an entirely different thing).

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/vmworldr-2011-brings-your-cloud-to-las-vegas-with-the-leading-virtualization-and-cloud-infrastructure-industry-event-2011-08-15?reflink=MW_news_stmp

PALO ALTO, CA, Aug 15, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — VMware, Inc. VMW -9.33% , the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today unveiled the speaker lineup and sponsorship list for the leading virtualization and cloud infrastructure industry event of the year, VMworld(R) 2011.

Underscoring the conference theme, “Your Cloud, Own It,” VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas will feature more than 175 unique breakout sessions from VMware and its ecosystem of partners and customers that are driving innovation in the virtualization and cloud computing industry. More than 250 sponsors and exhibitors are supporting the conference including Global Diamond sponsors Cisco, Dell, EMC, HP and NetApp, and Platinum Sponsors AMD, Brocade, CA Technologies, Dell Storage, F5 Networks, IBM, Intel, LG Electronics, Symantec, Trend Micro, VCE and Wyse Technology.

It will be great to see what announcements there will be at the VMworld event, as well as to see and hear about the training sessions, seminars and networking events, there is certainly a lot of buzz this year. Check out this article to read up about the speakers attending the event!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-18/hp-said-to-be-near-10-billion-autonomy-takeover-spinoff-of-pc-business.html

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ), the world’s largest computer maker, is in talks to buy Autonomy Corp. for about $10 billion and plans to spin off its personal-computer business, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Hewlett-Packard may announce the plans as early as today, said the people, who asked not to be identified before a statement. The Palo Alto, California-based company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings today after markets close.

An interesting set of announcements, I can certainly see why HP might want to spin of businesses as trends change and focus on future technologies and opportunities, the talks to buy Autonomy is interesting and we will have to see what opportunities for revenue, for parallel services and integration this will bring. Do check out the article.

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-aug.mspx

Published: August 09, 2011

Version: 1.0

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for August 2011.

With the release of the security bulletins for August 2011, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued August 4, 2011. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on August 10, 2011, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the August Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

Microsoft have released their security patches for August and there seems to be quite a bit of discussion on the web about their announcement in relation to Internet Explorer, do check out the announcements to see which of your systems are in scope and as ever remember that the first thing a service provider or vendor will ask is if all the patches have been installed.