Microsoft confirms SQL Server 2008 R2’s

science Daily January 19th, 2010

due dateEven though it was buried in a chart, I considered the May 2010 due date for SQL Server 2008 R2 to be “official.”But on January 19,

Microsoft made it officially official.

Microsoft is confirming that the latest version of its database will be out “by May” and will be on the May price list.A new  posting on the Microsoft Data Platform Insider blog confirmed the May date.

According to that blog, there have been 150,000 downloads by testers of the R2 release.

The November Community Technology Preview (CTP) release was the last test build Microsoft is planning to issue for the product, officials said.

SQL Server 2008 R2, codenamed Kilimanjaro, will come in a number of new flavors, including a Datacenter edition and a Parallel Data Warehouse edition (formerly codenamed “Project Madison”).

The Datacenter edition builds on the SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise product, but adds application and multi-server management; virtualization; high-scale complex event processing (via StreamInsight); and supports more than 8 processors and up to 256 logical processors.

The Parallel Data Warehouse version will be sold preloaded on servers as a data warehouse appliance. Using the DataAllegro technology Microsoft acquired in 2008, it will scale customers’ data warehouses from the tens of terabytes, up to one petabyte plus range, according to the company.

All versions will be available commercially in May except Parallel Data Warehouse, a spokesperson said. All Microsoft will say there is it will be out in the first half of 2010 (so I guess that means it could be in June).

Synergetics is Awarded as the “Best. NET Training Service Provider” by    Microsoft.

Features in Visual Studio 2010 drive tool makers

By David Worthington, January 18, 2010

New application life-cycle management (ALM) and testing features found in Visual Studio Team System 2010 are broadening the number of Microsoft partners that are building tools and services for the platform.

For ALM, Microsoft introduced architectural tools for model-driven development, a new approach to how Team Foundation Server (TFS) handles hierarchal work items and work item linking. The company also modified Visual Studio’s licensing scheme to broaden customers’ access to Visual Studio’s ALM tools.

“Work Items can have parents and children, and work item links can have types (e.g., a bug can be linked to a test by a ‘tested by’ link type),” said Terry Clancy, business development manager for Microsoft’s developer tools ecosystem.

Those changes, combined with increased use of Visual Studio Team System and TFS, have led to an increase in requests from tool ISVs to integrate with Visual Studio, he said.

Third parties are offering a crop of new process templates for Visual Studio Team 2010 , Clancy said. “Process templates are an emerging space and a big ALM thing. The [Visual Studio] ALM ecosystem will bear fruit in 2010.”

Those third parties include EMC Consulting, which is releasing a new edition of Scrum for Team System; Object Consulting, which develops Process Mentor, a suite of modifiable process templates for TFS; and Ivar Jacobson Consulting, which produces a process template for Essential Unified Process.

“VS 2010 is a far more sophisticated product, which enabled us to build a far more sophisticated template,” said EMC advisory practice consultant Simon Bennett.

Microsoft is also seeing a rise in requirements management solutions from companies like eDev, IBM Telelogic, Personify Design and Ravenflow, Clancy said.

Visual Studio’s new testing features are manual testing support, lab environment management with automated test deployment to virtual machines, test case management, and UI test automation.

Odin Technology, an automated software testing company, is a new Microsoft partner that previously only supported IBM Rational and HP Mercury products, Clancy said.

“Axe is in use in a number of high-profile companies across the globe, albeit producing code for tools from other vendors, e.g. HP, IBM, Micro Focus,” said Duncan Brigginshaw, owner and director of Odin.

“We’re aiming to ship with VS 2010 for use with their new testing and coded UI features. We think MS has a different and exciting slant on the [test] market.”

Fortify Software, Micro Focus, Quest Software and most of Microsoft‘s component vendors (with components that work with record and playback) are among other partners producing testing tools for VS 2010, Clancy said.

There are also one or two partners that will be integrating IntelliTrace, a historical debugging feature introduced in VS 2010, into their monitoring and diagnostics products, he added.

The very nature of Microsoft’s enhancements, such as build and release management tool integrations, custom reports, and custom templates, creates a larger “surface of engagement,” said Forrester principal analyst Jeffrey Hammond.

“Not lost on these folks is that .NET developers still seem willing to pay for development tools and services, something that’s not always the case for other application platforms.

Synergetics is Awarded as the “Best. NET Training Service Provider” by    Microsoft.

The data interoperability challenge for cloud computing

Cloud computing won’t have as much value unless we get the data-integration mechanisms right

In a recent InfoWorld article by Paul Krill, Vint Cerf, who is a co-designer of the Internet’s TCP/IP standards and widely considered a father of the Internet, spoke about the the need for data portability standards for cloud computing. “There are different clouds from companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, and Google, but a lack of interoperability between them,” Cerf explained at a session of the Churchill Club business and technology organization in Menlo Park, Calif.

Interoperability has not been a huge focus around the quickly emerging cloud computing space. Other than “we support interoperability” statements from the larger cloud computing providers, there is not a detailed plan to be seen. I’ve brought it up several times at cloud user group meetings, with clients, and at vendor briefings, and I often feel like I’m the kid in class who reminds the teacher to assign homework.

[Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in the InfoWorld editors’ 21-page cloud computing Deep Dive PDF special report, featuring an exclusive excerpt from David Linthicum’s new book on cloud architecture. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld’s cloud computing Report newsletter. ]

Data interoperability is not that hard. You’re dealing with a few key concepts, such as semantic interoperability, or the way that data is defined and stored on one cloud versus another. Also, you need to consider the notions of transformation and translation, so the data appears native when it arrives at the target cloud, or clouds, from the source cloud (or clouds). Don’t forget to add data governance and data security to the mix; you’ll need those as well.

There has been some talk of concepts such as the Intercloud, or a data exchange system running between major cloud computing providers. Also, a few cloud standards organizations, such as the Open Cloud Consortium, are looking to drive some interoperability standards, including a group working on standards and interoperability for “large data clouds.”

So how do we get down the path to data interoperability for the clouds? Don’t create yet another standards organization to look at this by committee. They take too long, and this is something that’s needed in 2010 to drive cloud computing adoption. Instead, the larger cloud computing providers should focus on this behind the scenes and create a working standard enabling technology to solve the data interoperability problem. If the larger providers are all on the same page, believe me, the smaller providers will quickly follow.

This article, “The data interoperability challenge for cloud computing,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments on cloud computing at InfoWorld.com.

cloud computing is here. Running applications on machines in an Internet-accessible data center can bring plenty of advantages. Yet wherever they run, applications are built on some kind of platform. For on-premises applications, this platform usually includes an operating system, some way to store data, and perhaps more. Applications running in the cloud need a similar foundation. The goal of Microsoft’s Windows Azure is to provide this. Part of the larger Azure Services Platform, Windows Azure is a platform for running Windows applications and storing data in the cloud.

cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. To deploy a new solution, most of your time and energy is spent on defining the right infrastructure, hardware and software, to put together to create that solution, Cloud computing allows people to share resources to solve new problems. cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use.

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Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry with an experience base of over 15 years in the area of people   competency development;   engaged in delivering it thru  its   training and consulting interventions , primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand .     Its primary differentiator has been its  solution centric approach and its comprehensive client focused service portfolio.

About Technical Debates

On ScottGu’s Blog  24th jan 2010

Technical debates are discussed endlessly within the blog-o-sphere/twitter-verse, and they range across every developer community. Each language, framework, tool, and platform inevitably has at least a few going on at any particular point in time.

Below are a few observations I’ve made over the years about technical debates in general, as well as some comments about some of the recent discussions I’ve seen recently about the topic of ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC in particular.

General Observations About Technical Debates

Below are a few general observations independent of any specific technical debate:

a) Developers love to passionately debate and compare languages, frameworks, APIs, and tools.  This is true in every programming community (ASP.NET , Java, PHP, C++, Ruby, Python, etc).  I think you can view these types of religious technical debates in two ways:

1. They are sometimes annoying and often a waste of time.
2. They are often a sign of a healthy and active community (since passion means people care deeply on both sides of a debate, and is far better than apathy).

Personally I think both points are true.

b) There is never only “one right way” to develop something. As an opening interview question I sometimes ask people to sort an array of numbers in the most efficient way they can.  Most people don’t do well with it.  This is usually not because they don’t know sort algorithms, but rather because they never think to ask the scenarios and requirements behind it – which is critical to understanding the most efficient way to do it.  How big is the sequence of numbers? How random is the typical number sequence (is it sometimes already mostly sorted, how big is the spread of numbers, are the numbers all unique, do duplicates cluster together)? How parallel is the computer architecture?  Can you allocate memory as part of the sort or must it be constant?  Etc. These are important questions to ask because the most efficient and optimal way to sort an array of numbers depends on understanding the answers.

Whenever people assert that there is only “one right way” to a programming problem they are almost always assuming a fixed set of requirements/scenarios/inputs – which is rarely optimal for every scenario or every developer.  And to state the obvious – most problems in programming are far more complex than sorting an array of numbers.

c) Great developers using bad tools/frameworks can make great apps. Bad developers using great tools/frameworks can make bad apps. Be very careful about making broad assumptions (good or bad) about the quality of the app you are building based on the tools/frameworks used.

d) Developers (good and bad) can grow stronger by stretching themselves and learning new ideas and approaches.  Even if they ultimately don’t use something new directly, the act of learning it can sharpen them in positive ways.

e) Change is constant in the technology industry.  Change can be scary.  Whether you get overwhelmed by change, though, ultimately comes down to whether you let yourself be overwhelmed.  Don’t stress about having to stop and suddenly learn a bunch of new things – rarely do you have to. The best approach to avoid being overwhelmed is to be pragmatic, stay reasonably informed about a broad set of things at a high-level (not just technologies and tools but also methodologies), and have the confidence to know that if it is important to learn a new technology, then your existing development skills will mostly transition and help.  Syntax and APIs are rarely the most important thing anyway when it comes to development – problem solving, customer empathy/engagement, and the ability to stay focused and disciplined on a project are much more valuable.

f) Some guidance I occasionally give people on my team when working and communicating with others:

1. You will rarely win a debate with someone by telling them that they are stupid – no matter how well intentioned or eloquent your explanation of their IQ problems might be.
2. There will always be someone somewhere in the world who is smarter than you – don’t always assume that they aren’t in the room with you.
3. People you interact with too often forget the praise you give them, and too often remember a past insult –  so be judicious in handing them out as they come back to haunt you later.
4. People can and do change their minds – be open to being persuaded in a debate, and neither gloat nor hold it against someone else if they also change their minds.

g) I always find it somewhat ironic when I hear people complain about programming abstractions not being good.  Especially when these complaints are published via blogs – whose content is displayed using HTML, is styled with CSS, made interactive with JavaScript, transported over the wire using HTTP, and implemented on the server with apps written in higher-level languages, using object oriented garbage collected frameworks, running on top of either interpreted or JIT-compiled byte code runtimes, and which ultimately store the blog content and comments in relational databases ultimately accessed via SQL query strings.  All of this running within a VM on a hosted server – with the OS within the VM partitioning memory across kernel and user mode process boundaries, scheduling work using threads, raising device events using signals, and using an abstract storage API fo disk persistence.  It is worth keeping all of that in mind the next time you are reading a “ORM vs Stored Procedures” or “server controls – good/bad?” post.  The more interesting debates are about what the best abstractions are for a particular problem.

h) The history of programming debates is one long infinite loop – with most programming ideas having been solved multiple times before.  And for what it’s worth – many of the problems we debate today were long ago solved with LISP and Smalltalk.  Ironically, despite pioneering a number of things quite elegantly, these two languages tend not be used much anymore. Go figure.

a) Web Forms and MVC are two approaches for building ASP.NET apps. They are both good choices. Each can be the “best choice” for a particular solution depending on the requirements of the application and the background of the team members involved. You can build great apps with either.  You can build bad apps with either. You are not a good or bad developer depending on what you choose. You can be absolutely great or worthless using both.

b) The ASP.NET and Visual Studio teams are investing heavily in both Web Forms and MVC.  Neither is going away.  Both have major releases coming in the months ahead.  ASP.NET 4 includes major updates to Web Forms (clean ClientIDs and CSS based markup output, smaller ViewState, URL Routing, new data and charting controls, new dynamic data features, new SEO APIs, new VS designer and project improvements, etc, etc).  ASP.NET 4 will also ship with ASP.NET MVC 2 which also includes major updates (strongly typed helpers, model validation, areas, better scaffolding, Async support, more helper APIs, etc, etc).  Don’t angst about either being a dead-end or something you have to change to.  I suspect that long after we are all dead and gone there will be servers somewhere on the Internet still running both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based apps.

c) Web Forms and MVC share far more code/infrastructure/APIs than anyone on either side of any debate about them ever mentions – Authentication, Authorization, Membership, Roles, URL Routing, Caching, Session State, Profiles, Configuration, Compilation, .aspx pages, .master files, .ascx files, Global.asax, Request/Response/Cookie APIs, Health Monitoring, Process Model, Tracing, Deployment, AJAX, etc, etc, etc.  All of that common stuff you learn is equally valid regardless of how you construct your UI.  Going forward we’ll continue to invest heavily in building core ASP.NET features that work for both Web Forms and MVC (like the URL Routing, Deployment, Output Caching, and DataAnnotations for Validation features we are adding with ASP.NET 4).

d) I often find debates around programming model appropriateness and abstractions a little silly. Both Web Forms and MVC are programming web framework abstractions, built on top of a broader framework abstraction, programmed with higher level programming languages, running on top of a execution engine abstraction that itself is running on top of a giant abstraction called an OS.  What you are creating with each is HTML/CSS/JavaScript (all abstractions persisted as text, transmitted over HTTP – another higher level protocol abstraction).

The interesting question to debate is not whether abstractions are good or not – but rather which abstractions feels most natural to you, and which map best to the requirements/scenarios/developers of your project.

e) As part of that we will be posting more end to end tutorials/content (for both Web Forms and MVC).  We will also be providing tutorials and guidance that will help developers quickly evaluate both the Web Forms and MVC approach, easily learn the basics about how both work, and quickly determine which one feels best for them to use. This will make it easy for developers new to ASP.NET, as well as developers who already know either Web Forms or MVC, to understand and evaluate the two approaches and decide which they want to use.

f) Decide on a project about whether you want to use Web Forms or MVC and feel good about it.  Both can be good choices.  Respect the choices other people make – the choice they have made is also hopefully a good one that works well for them.  Keep in mind that in all likelihood they know a lot more about their own business/skills than you do.  Likewise you hopefully know a lot more about your own business/skills than they do.

g) Share ideas and best practices with others.  That is a big part of what blogs, forums, listservs and community is all about.  What makes them work great is when people know that their ideas aren’t going to be ripped to shreds, and that they will be treated with respect.  Be constructive, not snarky. Teach, don’t lecture. Remember there is always someone else out there who you can also learn from.

Synergetics is Awarded as the “Best. NET Training Service Provider” by    Microsoft.

VMware to Buy Zimbra From Yahoo In Cloud Computing Play

On CRN.In, By Joseph F Kovar, ChannelWeb, January 13, 2010

VMware said it planned to purchase Zimbra from Yahoo, a move that gives the virtualization leader a strong, cloud-based, open-source collaboration suite with which it could attack rival Microsoft‘s Outlook and Exchange e-mail applications.

Financial details of the acquisition were not released. However, several speculations over the past week or so estimated the price to be about $100 million, much lower than the $350 million Yahoo paid when it bought Zimbra in 2007.

Zimbra is the developer of the open-source Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which includes applications to coordinate, manage, and share e-mails from multiple vendors, including Microsoft‘s Outlook, in a single interface; perform group scheduling; and handle desktop and mobile device synchronization.

The company currently serves 55 million mailboxes, with overall mailbox growth of 86 percent and SMB mailbox growth of 165 percent in 2009, VMware said.

The acquisition, once it closes, would be the second open-source acquisition for VMware.

The company in August acquired SpringSource, a developer of applications based on open-source technologies and a leader in such open-source communities as the enterprise Java programming model Spring Framework, the Apache Tomcat Java application server environment, and the Groovy and Grails dynamic language and Web application framework.

In a blog post on the acquisition, VMware CTO Steve Herrod wrote that Zimbra will help VMware enhance its cloud computing offerings in two ways.

First, Herrod wrote, it will help VMware simplify IT. Zimbra is the most popular software for developing virtual appliances, Herrod wrote. “Once deployed onto VMware vSphere, the Zimbra virtual appliance will automatically benefit from the built-in VMware vSphere scalability, availability, and security services,” he wrote.

The acquisition also lets VMware expand on its vCloud cloud computing technology and SpringSource platform-as-a-service capabilities by adding an integrated portfolio of applications, giving VMware a software-as-a-service offering.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite also competes in some ways with some of arch rival Microsoft‘s key products, including Office, giving VMware another tool for competing with Microsoft.

However, Herrod wrote in his blog, VMware does not want to alienate Microsoft Office users from working with VMware’s vSphere virtualization technology, which competes with Microsoft’s Hyper-V

“VMware vSphere is and will continue to be an outstanding platform for the deployment of Microsoft Exchange. We have heavily optimized our virtualization offerings specifically for the deployment of Microsoft Exchange, and thousands of companies are benefiting from the increased flexibility, availability, and security that comes from running Microsoft Exchange on top of VMware vSphere,” he wrote.

VMware brings the opportunity to become more involved in cloud computing, wrote Jim Morrisroe, Vice President, Sales for Zimbra, in a blog on the acquisition.

“Private and/or public cloud computing networks can work together and applications can be deployed and managed seamlessly across those clouds. Zimbra products were designed from the ground up with virtualization and the cloud in mind, with a modular architecture and APIs to allow distributed access to data and storage,” Morrisroe wrote. “Email and collaboration services have always been ubiquitous to organizations, but now the barriers to transitioning them to efficient virtualized environments will be much more seamless.”

Synergetics is Awarded as the “Best. NET Training Service Provider” by   Microsoft.

Microsoft probes Windows 7 laptop battery problems

By Gregg Keizer | Computerworld

Laptop users claim the new Windows 7 OS has permanently crippled their batteries

Microsoft said Tuesday it is looking into battery problems apparently affecting Windows 7 notebooks.

Users have complained of battery issues — including premature warnings that the power is exhausted, as well as more dire demands to replace the battery — for months, long before Windows 7 went final.

[Get InfoWorld’s 21-page hands-on look at the new version of Windows. | The real-world state of Windows: Check out InfoWorld’s live Windows Pulse monitors of users’ app preferences and PC configurations. | Looking for the ultimate laptop? It doesn’t exist yet, so InfoWorld designed the perfect notebook. See how close your laptop comes to our dream machine. ]

Microsoft claimed that the problem was in the Windows 7 tool that decided when the battery had been drained, or was unable to hold a charge. “We are investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners, which appears to be related to system firmware (BIOS),” a Microsoft spokeswoman said today, referring to the firmware that boots the PC and initializes the hardware components. “The warning received in Windows 7 uses firmware information to determine if battery replacement is needed.”

A very long thread on Microsoft’s support site dedicated to Windows 7 battery problems kicked off in early June 2009, and remains active; more than a dozen new messages were posted on Tuesday, for example.

While some users on that thread agree with Microsoft that the warnings are spurious, others believe that the new operating system has permanently crippled their batteries.

“I have tried charging the battery while the computer is off or in another OS, and it does not work,” said someone identified as “DanLee81” today. “It will charge for a few minutes, then stop. The battery will say it’s full when it actually only has a few minutes of charge, and when you take out the A/C, it will either last for a few minutes, or completely shut off your laptop. This behavior happens in all [OSes] after Windows 7 damages the battery, not just within Windows 7.”

Others reported that their batteries underperformed, even after they abandoned Windows 7 and returned their notebooks to running Windows XP or Vista, or switched to Linux. “Rolling back does not work either,” said “Dreklia” in another message on Tuesday. “I feel rip[ped] off!”

In some cases, Windows 7 claimed that brand new notebooks were unable to hold a charge. “Until yesterday it used [to] state that I had 7 hours battery life after a full charge; today after a full charge, it states that I have 4 hours left,” said “tigger1962” of a three-week-old Toshiba Satellite T110. “I’ve only had it on now 15 minutes and my charge has now gone down to 2 hours 24 minutes.”

Users reported a wide variety of affected makes and models, including laptops from Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba.

Laptop owners are not the only ones who have noticed battery irregularities in Windows 7. Last summer, reviewers for several publications and sites said that Windows 7 slashed battery life by almost a third when compared to XP. That ran counter to Microsoft’s promise that Windows 7 would actually increase battery endurance.

Microsoft said it was looking for a common cause to the battery complaints. “We are working with our partners to determine the root cause and will update the [support] forum with information and guidance as it becomes available,” the spokeswoman said.

Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry with an experience base of over 15 years in the area of people   competency development;   engaged in delivering it thru  its   training and consulting interventions , primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand .     Its primary differentiator has been its solution centric approach and its comprehensive    client focused    service portfolio.

Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

Project Kenai will still be used internally, but external users must move elsewhere as Oracle consolidates hosting sites

In the wake of its merger with Sun Microsystems, Oracle is discontinuing access to Project Kenai, which was developed by Sun as an open source project-hosting site.

Kenai, Oracle said in an updated FAQ statement for developers on Tuesday, will be discontinued for public use. “Oracle will continue to use it internally and look for ways that our customers can take advantage of it,” the Oracle FAQ said.

[InfoWorld’s Paul Krill reported last week that Oracle canceled plans for the Sun Cloud public cloud service announced by Sun last year. ]

The phasing-out is being done to consolidate project-hosting, according to the Project Kenai Team in a Web posting about the future of Kenai. “Minimizing the number of current project-hosting sites is a start in this direction,” the team said.

At the Kenai beta site, users were advised to being migrating repositories and content to other locations.

“The complete shutdown of the site and the removal of the domain will be completed in the next 60 days (April 2nd 2010). This should provide ample time for all projects to be moved to a new home of the project owners choice,” the Kenai team said.

“Any projects that remain after the 60 day limit (April 2nd 2010), will be removed when the site is turned off,” the team said..

“While it has come time to close the domain of Kenai.com, the infrastructure, which is already used under Netbeans.org, will live on to support other domains in the future,” the team said.

Oracle also lauded in the FAQ the combination of the OTN (Oracle Technology Network), the Sun BigAdmin system administration portal, and the Sun Developer Network, which includes the java.sun.com Web site.

This combination will “result in the largest and most diverse community of developers, database administrators, sysadmins, and architects,” Oracle said.

For the near future, Sun Developer Network and BigAdmin will remain in current forms, Oracle said. The company foresees an integration of these sites into a redesigned and re-architected OTN.

Also, Oracle plans to continue to offer certifications for Sun technologies including Java, SPARC, Solaris, and MySQL as part of the Oracle University program.

Oracle one week ago today detailed ambitious plans for its newly acquired Sun technologies.

This story, “Oracle shutting off Sun project-hosting site,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest news in software development at InfoWorld.com.

Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry in the area of  people competency development   engaged in delivering it thru  its training and consulting interventions; primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand  Its primary differentiator has been its solution centric approach  and its comprehensive client focused service portfolio.

Windows 7 Compatibility: Still a concern for enterprises?

on ITVOIR News

According to research firm, Windows 7 reaches yet another milestone as market share passes ten percent mark. Since its launch, the operating system surpassed various milestones. It had reached the 4 percent market share in just one month; in contrary to Windows Vista, who took about seven months to reach there.

The Redmond giant, Microsoft Corp has recently announced record revenues of $19.02 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2009, which is a jump of 14 percent helped by a rebound in PC sales and Windows 7 operating system. As of January, all Windows versions accounted for about 92% of devices accessing the Web.

Windows 7 Compatibility with enterprises

Despite good initial reviews of the operating system, many organizations are still waiting for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 to resolve all the probable compatibility issues with legacy hardware and software. Microsoft’s Windows 7 is the most secure version from the software giant’s desktop operating system. Also, various research firms have provided their consent to adopt new operating system from the software giant.

With Windows 7, the SMBs questioned about the compatibility with the thousands of Windows-based third-party programs and applications already in the market.

Recently, it is reported that the software giant has prepared the code for the new operating system’s first service pack and included various already-issued security patches as well as new bug fixes.

Availability of wide choices

It is suggested that the availability of different versions of Windows 7 may create problem to various companies for adoption. Further, 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 have different requirements for the existing system like memory and graphics card configurations.

The systems based on Windows 7 come with Internet Explorer 8, which could not display web pages that are written for IE6. In addition, companies have to invest in relatively new hardware products such as Web cams, printers, and even sound cards.

Microsoft offers discounts

To increase the market share of Windows 7, Microsoft is aiming SMBs by providing the new operating system and the Office 2007 productivity suite up gradation at half of the suggested retail pricing. However, to avail the offer, customers have to be a part of Microsoft‘s Open Value Subscription (OVS) program and presently using one of the listed prior versions of these products.

Synergetics is Awarded as the “Best. NET Training Service Provider” by    Microsoft.

 

Oracle buys SOA management vendor AmberPoint

Oracle on Monday fattened up its already burgeoning middleware stack, announcing Monday that it has purchased SOA (service oriented architecture) management vendor AmberPoint. Terms were not disclosed.

SOA refers to a systems design approach that eschews monolithic applications and instead designates various processes, such as running a credit check on a customer, as interoperable “services” that allow code to be flexibly reused.

AmberPoint’s software is used to monitor the performance of SOA-driven applications and help users solve problems. It is “highly complementary” to Oracle‘s own SOA software and will “enable increased control and performance of critical applications across the enterprise,” according to an FAQ document Oracle released Monday (PDF).

It is not clear how the deal will affect road maps for AmberPoint’s products. A review is under way and more details will be forthcoming, Oracle said. Investment in the products is expected to increase, according to the FAQ.

“AmberPoint was one of a dwindling group of still-standing independents delivering runtime governance for SOA environments,” analyst Tony Baer said on the OnStrategies Perspective blog.

The move “patches some gaps in its Enterprise Manager offering, not only in SOA runtime governance, but also with business transaction management — and potentially — better visibility to non-Oracle systems,” he added.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of this year.

In 1995  Synergetics envisioned  OWS as an engagement format to extend its “Cutting Edge Technology” competency building   training programs to individual software professionals to enhance their knowledge and skills as per their career aspirations and project delivery needs.

Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry with an experience base of over 15 years in the area of people   competency development;   engaged in delivering it thru  its   training and consulting interventions , primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand .     Its primary differentiator has been its        solution centric approach and its comprehensive    client focused    service portfolio.

Top Ten Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010

USA: Virtual Global, provider of cloud-enabled enterprise solutions and the TeamHost online platform for creating SaaS applications, released its “Top ten cloud computing predictions for 2010″.

“Cloud computing‘s time has come,” said Cary Landis, CEO of Virtual Global.

Landis cites multiple factors driving the adoption of the cloud, including costs, entrepreneurship, telecommuting and the more collaborative workspace.

“In 2010, we’ll see infrastructure prices fall, platforms become the norm, and big IT companies struggle for new identities,” noted Landis. “Ultimately, the cloud is more than just a piece of technology. It’s changing the way we do business, the way we work, and even the way we think.”

Virtual Global calls cloud computing “the biggest shift in business since the Industrial Revolution.” The top ten predictions include:

1. Cloud infrastructure commoditizes, and prices fall. cloud computing already provides a price advantage. The underlying hardware prices are decreasing as data center competition is increasing. Prices will fall, making it easier for thousands of SaaS providers to enter the market.

2. Open standards emerge as dominant in cloud platforms. As the Platform as a Service space gains acceptance, the proprietary shakeout will give way to more open platforms in the cloud. This will simplify development, allow for more customization, and address the question of what happens to a company’s applications if a cloud provider goes out of business.

3. Homesourcing becomes mainstream. The era of the cubicle is over. Because applications and data no longer need to reside on the computers in front of us, the physical office is quickly becoming redundant.

4. Corporate processes become decentralized. Larger companies take advantage of the decentralization made possible by cloud computing. This leads to more of outsourcing, which in turn triggers the need for more small companies to fill the need for those outsourced services.

5. A new wave of entrepreneurship emerges. Cloud computing ushers in the next great dotcom boom, only this time things are different. Cloud computing has lowered the barriers to entry so entrepreneurs won’t need to be programming wizards or venture backed. They only need an idea, ambition and a credit card.

6. Smart phones evolve with cloud apps. Smart phones continue to gain functionality, and their reach extends further with access to wireless broadband. This makes smart phones more attractive as an actual working machine, and a tool for accessing productivity apps over the cloud for corporate use.

7. The days of multi-million dollar enterprise software projects dwindle. Enterprise-level cloud computing apps will gradually replace huge on-premises implementations. The Platform as a Service space will become the norm, rather than exception for new software projects. The days of multi-million IT projects will eventually fall by the wayside along with the fall of ground-up Web 2.0 engineering.

8. Cloud computing penetrates all areas of business management. Cloud applications will evolve to accommodate more mission-critical needs, delivering full-fledged management systems to the largest government agencies and corporations in the world.

9. Big-name companies will struggle for new identities. The emergence of new cloud offerings will drive competition in the cloud infrastructure arena. Several new brands will emerge, both from established players and newcomers to the market.

10. Social networking systems will give way to collaborative management systems. The future of collaboration will be more focused on the emerging needs of mangers who are coping with increased complexity and reporting demands. The future will be less focused on social needs.

Cloud computing is here. Running applications on machines in an Internet-accessible data center can bring plenty of advantages. Yet wherever they run, applications are built on some kind of platform. For on-premises applications, this platform usually includes an operating system, some way to store data, and perhaps more. Applications running in the cloud need a similar foundation. The goal of Microsoft’s Windows Azure is to provide this. Part of the larger Azure Services Platform, Windows Azure is a platform for running Windows applications and storing data in the cloud.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. To deploy a new solution, most of your time and energy is spent on defining the right infrastructure, hardware and software, to put together to create that solution, Cloud computing allows people to share resources to solve new problems. Cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use.

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