Low cost suppliers more competent to deal with economic crisis, says Red Hat chief

Red Hat’s chief executive, Jim Whitehurst, says that his company is capable enough to deal with economic crisis being a low-cost supplier.

Speaking to journalists The about future of Red Hat and views on the Linux market, Whitehurst remarked that “at times like this, cheaper generally wins”. Read more

IBM announces validation programme for cloud services

IBM will soon be offering a validating programme for enhancing its influence in cloud-computing. Businesses well be allowed evaluation of cloud-based services and reliability of any provider. The programme ‘Resilient Cloud Validation’ assesses cloud-based services and applications against proven and rigorous design and benchmarking guidelines. The cloud-computing providers will be required to approach IBM for participation in the programme and only successful providers will be permitted to use the IBM logo ‘Resilient Cloud’.

Cloud computing, delivers services over network, in which user does not require any infrastructure or system and sees only the network. IBM said that since cloud is subjected to recovery events, high-profile downtime and unpredictable performance, potential customers needed to be assured that computing could be trusted. Cloud computing covers storage services and enterprise applications online.

According to IBM’s General Manager of Business Continuity & Resiliency Services, Philippe Jarre, objective of every service provider is to provide uninterrupted information to their businesses. Since other businesses are powered by these providers, it creates ‘network effect’ of downtime, it is therefore critical to build high standards of resiliency.

IBM is adopting best-practice approach with the Resilient Cloud Validation Programme. According to Julian Freedman of IBM’s Emerging Technologies group, Cloud Computing was better way of doing things.
The programme would be initiated in early 2009.

Opera releases browser for Google Android

The Google-run Android mobile platform got its first mobile browser, Mini 4.2, from Opera. It is not only the first browser making it onto Android phone but an alternative to Android browse being offered to Android users.

On the occasion of a recent beta release Opera claimed vast speed improvements in the browser version compared with past versions. Opera’s servers translate standard web content into more suitable formats for mobile delivery. The company claimed that its Mini server park in the US would enhance load times for users all over the globe. According to Opera’s spokesman, users in Asia and Europe will also get benefited from speed improvements.

Opera Mini 4.2 is enhanced with addition of supported languages and colour options for browser’s border. Opera link synchronises bookmarks between mobile version and Opera’s PC version and supports notes’ synchronisation.

Opera has claimed enhancement of ‘real-time streaming protocol’ (RTSP) in Mini 4.2 browser. It also claimed that Mini 4.2 browser increases number of phones providing support for mobile video.

Users of Android’s only device T-Mobile G1, can download Opera Mini 4.2 in the market from Android Market, free of charge. Browser would also be available to certain users of Windows Mobile handsets and BlackBerry.

Adobe responds to demands of open-source users for 64-bit Flash

Adobe ultimately bowed to the demands of open source users and announced the release of an alpha version of Flash Player technology for the 64-bit Linux software.

In comparison with Mac OSX or Windows, Linux moved much faster in supporting 64-bit processors. Technically savvy users were able to switch over to Linux easily due to its compile-your-own-software feature and developer-friendliness. But the switch has one limitation; people can make use of only 32-bit flash thereby restricting use of only 32-bit version of Firefox.

The software would be released at Adobe Max 2008 conference, to be held at San Francisco. The 64-bit support would be extended to other operating systems at later date, but Linux users, who were most vocal in their demand, would get it first, Adobe declared.

Adobe stated that this release was its first step in making Flash Player native 64-bit for all platforms. Linux was chosen as the initial platform due to numerous requests on issue-management, Flash Player bugs and also due to reasons that Linux, as a practice, was not being shipped with a 32-bit browser. The release has now made Flash Player 10 a full native participant in 64-bit distribution.

Adobe declared its commitment to bring native 64-bit flash Player to Mac and Windows in future releases.

Microsoft is ready with Silverlight 2

Microsoft has announced that its final version of Silverlight 2 media player is ready and downloading can be started from Tuesday, 21 October.

New features of Silverlight 2 include digital-rights management technology support, deep zoom technology and improved cross-platform support. Microsoft also disclosed that Blockbuster, CBS College Sports, AOL, Yahoo Japan and Toyota were its new partners.

Microsoft shared some information about its Olympics work with NBC. During a course of 17 days, NBCOlympics.com was visited by over 50 million unique visitors which resulted in 70 million video streams, 1.3 billion page views and video watch of 600 million minutes.

According to Scott Guthrie, Vice president of Microsoft’s developer unit, in a short span of one year after the launch, 25% of consumers worldwide had access to computer with installed Silverlight. He added that Silverlight had 50% penetration in some countries and hoped its deployment would accelerate nicely and millions of PCs would start running on Silverlight 2 in near future.

Guthrie clarified that existing users of Silverlight and Silverlight 2 beta would automatically get upgraded to Silverlight 2 in next few weeks. He reiterated that Microsoft was interested in seeing Silverlight running on iPhone and disclosed it held talks with Apple on this subject. He also informed that developer release of Chrome has described Silverlight’s working as fantastically well.

IBM launches major ‘cloud computing’ initiative

Aiming to challenge cloud computing pioneers Google and Amazon, IBM took a major initiative of joining the bandwagon.

IBMs offerings, which launched on Monday, include web-based social-networking and collaboration service “Bluehouse”, specifically designed for business. Its test version was available on IBM’s website.

Users could carry out many social-network activities with features such as joint projects, document sharing and online communities and meetings. The project goal is to provide businesses a way to connect to customers, suppliers, partners and outside consultants.

IBM also introduced other services including a rational Policy Tester OnDemand for scanning web content for dealing with compliance issues, Lotus Samtime Unyte for document sharing and web conferences, Telelogic Focal Point for sharing information among marketing, project management, engineering and other teams and Rational AppScan ONDemand to scan web applications for security bugs.

IBM has invested in datacentres for the delivery of cloud related services. It has opened new centres in Hanoi, Sao Paulo, Bangalore and Seoul, raising the number of hubs to 13.

IBM will help companies in running services internally while simultaneously taking advantage of the cloud. IBM partners and clients would get access to specialists sitting at all 40 centres of IBM Innovation and 13 centres of cloud-computing. These specialists would be helping organisations in testing their applications.

IBM will also be providing marketing resources to those software makers who were interested in building and selling their own cloud services.

Google launches mobile mapping service

Google announced the launch of a new version of Google Maps for Mobile (GMM) on Wednesday. This mobile mapping service, first time in the mobile format, includes Google’s Street View service.

The new version adds walking directions and business reviews which were available on Google’s desktop version for some time.

Street View is presently confined to locations in US, Australia, Italy, France and Japan. The service involves camera-equipped Google cars which drive in urban areas and photograph views seen by the driver while travelling down the street.

According to the blog posted by Google’s service product manger Michael Siliski, GMM could be used to view the storefront image after locating the store on a handset through Google search. Michael also wrote that Street view could also be launched by a simple click on the map and selecting “Street View”. Overlaid Street View could also be browsed on the map or full screen and the view could be rotated to see surroundings while moving along the street.

Street view is likely to be launched in the UK by end of 2008. Google’s vehicles have been photographing parts of the UK after getting the all-clear for the service from the Information Commissioner amid protests by privacy campaigners.

The new GMM version is presently available on Java-enabled handsets and BlackBerry smartphones, but not yet with apple’s iPhone.

Apple and NBC back together in iTunes

The relation between NBC and Apple that was going well came to an end last year after a dispute on the pricing issue. Now they have reached an agreement coinciding with ‘iTunes 8’ launch. Associated Press has said that Apple will now be distributing shows coming from NBC, in high-definition, via iTunes for an agreed price tag.

The amount charged may seem a little too expensive, but it is on the back of similar pricing of content having been brought to iTunes’ store by studios like HBO. Whether or not consumers will accept the pricing is something that is to be seen but on Apple’s part, they are doing what they can to try and broaden the availability of TV content on High-Definition quality for their users on iTunes and even Apple TV. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple, revealed that there are around 65 million users to iTunes.

Leaving aside the High-Definition/ Standard-Definition topic, iTunes is likely to benefit from the return of NBC, especially when the arrival of popular shows like “Heroes” and “The Office” are considered along with some fresh shows.

Fujitsu demands payment from NHS for its IT work

Fujitsu Services, following the termination of its contract from the National Programme in IT, has demanded payment from NHS for its IT work.

It is reported that the firm is claiming £700m of the £896m that it was supposed to have received after the completion of the 10-year contract. The two sides are not contemplating any legal action.

The Fujitsu spokesperson informed that the claim has been made as per the arbitration process laid down in its contract with NHS Connecting for Health (CfH). It has sent a procedure initiation notice to CfH to resolve the issues. The spokesperson is hopeful that the mechanism would help in resolving the issue between Fujitsu and NHS CfH successfully.

According to CfH spokesperson, the two parties, under the terms of confidentiality were prohibited from entering into discussion about the allegations which appeared in an article in The Independent. The concerned authorities were working in close co-ordination to evolve smooth transition to arrangements for trust in the South of England.

Fujitsu’s contract, as the provider of local service to NHS National Programme for IT in the South of England, was terminated in May over disagreements between two sides on future of the deal.

Virtualisation can reduce energy consumption, say experts at Energy symposium in Sydney

Speakers at the Energy Logic Symposium in Sydney have unanimously endorsed a view that virtualisation can lead to significant savings in energy consumption at data centres. Various speakers pondered over measures and alternatives which could help conservation of expensive energy at data centres, and also contribute to a greener environment.

Chris Mandahl, director of domestic sales at Emerson Network Power pointed out that electricity prices rose by 56 per cent globally, during 2002 and 2006. This led to the desire for creation of more efficient data centres, as one of the biggest overheads, business electricity cost reductions are important, especially for IT-based businesses.

Mr. Ed Lenta of VMware advised administrators not to rush for virtualisation of every server before ensuring that it does not disrupt mission-critical systems. Lenta expressed the view that unless services on virtualised infrastructure become as good or better than those offered on sprawled infrastructure, we should not think of a switchover. Lenta suggested that shift from direct attached storage to tiered SAN (storage attached network) can provide huge power savings. This could reduce business electricity requirements significantly.

Brad Engstrom, a consulting engineer at Cisco, said that virtualisation could also be implemented at the network layer. Green IT is about agility, according to Engstrom. Mandahl emphasized that while consolidating data centre equipment one must take into consideration its cascading effects where one watt of saving translates into 3 times of power saving at the infrastructural level. According to him, energy saving begins at the server and virtualisation will save 14 per cent of power at data centres. Lenta opines virtualisation would reduce carbon emissions and suggests that the best way to reduce carbon footprint is to pull servers out of data centre.

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