Red Hat News Desk

Adaptivity “Platinum Plus Sponsor” of World's Largest Cloud Computing Event

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:15:00 EST

SYS-CON Events announced today that Adaptivity, the IT transformation company, has been named "Platinum Plus Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 5th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. Adaptivity's CEO Tony Bishop will be offering major thought leadership in a Morning Keynote.

Rackspace Offers Its First-Ever Showcase for Retailers

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:45:00 EST

Rackspace Hosting announced a new service to assist its e-commerce customers this holiday season. The Rackspace Holiday Shopping Mall, a promotional area hosted on NoMoreServers.com will offer discounts and coupons to encourage holiday shopping and highlight the benefits of using e-commerce. Rackspace counts more than 2,000 e-commerce stores among its customers. The Rackspace Holiday Shopping Mall is the first of its kind for Rackspace Hosting. The website will feature offers from retailers who are also Rackspace customers, like Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss, and ULTA as well as firms like Bonobos, TeeFury, and ChristmasLightsEtc. A complete list of offers is available at http://nomoreservers.com/mall.

Migrating from UNIX / RISC to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Intel® processor-based servers helps your customers reduce TCO, while providing a better foundation for growth. This white paper provides a guide to planning and conducting a strategic and successful transition.

Red Hat Aims to Drive Virtualization Innovation

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

Red Hat, in an effort to openly collaborate with partners to drive the future of virtualization, has open sourced its SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment) hosted virtual desktop protocol. SPICE is a core component of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops product that is currently in beta. Through the Spice project, Red Hat will collaborate with its partners and the open source community to expand the development of the protocol in an effort to help break down barriers to virtualization adoption.

Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens Will Host Cloud Computing Forum

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

“Open Source technology provides the foundation for many of today's cloud computing deployments, and will be an important driver for the future of the cloud,” said Brian Stevens, CTO and vice president, Engineering at Red Hat. “Open source software by its nature provides a robust and interoperable foundation for today's clouds by enabling an open, democratic debate about specifications through the openness of its source code. With the high levels of customer interest around cloud computing and the importance of open source technology as part of this evolving computing paradigm, we see great value in bringing together our partners, community members and fellow technology leaders to discuss open source in the cloud.”

Virtualization Expo Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:00:00 EST

Delegates will leave Virtualization Expo with a full understanding of the interaction between virtual servers and the rest of the data center infrastructure. Indeed our overall aim is to ensure that all attendees leave the Jacob Javits Convention Center with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization in their own corporate datacenter, on the desktop, and elsewhere. If you wish to submit a speaking proposal for the 8th Virtualization Expo, April 19–21, 2010, then you can do so right here

StorageIO Debuts at Top 400 Analyst List

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST

Following on the heals of being named one of three EcoTech warriors earlier in the year, and then number 5 in the top ten independent bloggers at StorageMonkeys earlier this year (plus appearing on InfoSmack), the momentum continues more recently being named as the 23rd out of the top 30 influential virtualization bloggers by Cloud Computing Expo (www.cloudcomputingexpo.com) and Ulitzer (www.ulitzer.com). If that were not enough, I was also surprised to learn recently that I have also made a debut appearance at number 79 in the Technobabble top 400 analyst and independent blogger lists as well.

Open Systems Provide Way to Exit Money Pit

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:15:00 EST

Now is the time to examine the TCO migrating from Unix to the more cost-effective open systems platforms. This white paper explores the costs associated with legacy data centers and the benefits of migrating to an open systems architecture.

The Next Sea Change Is Cloud Computing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:30:00 EST

I've been at this 35 years and I've seen sea changes come and go. If you step back for a moment and look from a broad perspective, we've lived through the mainframeclient/server world and the Internet world. And now, the next sea change is cloud computing. The reality is that visionaries talk about sea changes before things change at the enterprise or SMB level. The way we look at the cloud is there's potential for sea change there, centralizing the capacity to lower costs and improved efficiencies. Yes, there will be change there. Is it going to happen overnight; that today we're in a world of data center solutions and tomorrow we're in the cloud? It's not going to work that way.

Enterprise Virtualization From Red Hat is GA'd

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:20:00 EST

Red Hat recently announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers, the newest product set in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers is designed to enable pervasive adoption of virtualization, with a comprehensive end-to-end solution combining a standalone hypervisor and powerful virtualization management.

Greylock Raises $575m Fund

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:30:00 EST

In these times of VC austerity and penury, Greylock Partners in the space of four weeks raised a new, over-subscribed $575 million early-stage software, services and infrastructure investment fund – its first new fund in four years – and enticed Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman to join its inner circle as an investment partner while remaining executive chairman of the networking site. Besides Linkedin, Greylock has money in Facebook and Digg and once upon a time backed Red Hat.

Cloud Expo and The End of Tech Recession

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:15:00 EST

Cloud Expo is the new PC Expo, Comdex or InternetWorld, and will be the next global IT event for the decade starting with 2010. This year's West Coast conference had 1,700 pre-registered delegates on the Friday before the conference opened. More than 500 additional registrations came in over the weekend and on-site registrations, which brought the number of delegates who registered and attended for the conference to roughly 2,250, more than double a year ago. As far as the expo floor goes, out of 50 sponsors and exhibitors, 46 companies confirmed during the conference that they will participate in the 2010 Cloud Computing Expo at the same or higher level. Most exhibitors on the expo floor highlighted the quality of the leads they got from the conference, which is due to the fact that we had no free expo option on the registration page. I personally believe Cloud Computing Expo had the most qualified audience of any technology event in recent years.

Hitachi Gets Serious About Linux

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:15:00 EST

Hitachi has joined Red Hat’s year-old Advanced Mission-Critical Program and offer high-end to mission-critical workloads on Linux to customers in Japan. The program is meant to mimic the kind of workloads, services levels, support and long lifecycles previously thought to be supported only on more expensive legacy platforms and should reduce customer costs. Its expanded support options include a 10-year lifecycle, the ability to standardize on a single update release for up to 18 months and proactive notification to reduce system disruption.

The Case for Market Based Patent Reform

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:15:00 EST

In the wake of the financial crisis and its attendant repercussions across the global economy, the U.S. Congress stands poised to address the issue of patent reform. Much debated and long anticipated, patent reform legislation is back under consideration with the bill possibly coming up for vote, prior to the end of 2009. Under the stewardship of a set of legislators well sensitized to the salient issues and with the thoughtful counsel of David Kappos, President Obama’s business savvy head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the stars are aligning to usher in legislation that promises to offer significant advances in an arena that has been overdue for reform.

Red Hat Virtualization for Servers Goes GA

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST

The company says “extensive collaboration with large enterprise beta customers, such as Comviva, Host Europe, NTT Communications, Qualcomm and Swisscom, resulted in enhanced product capabilities designed to meet enterprise requirements for deploying and managing heterogeneous virtualization and cloud environments.” It didn’t say what exactly. The widgetry includes a standalone, lightweight, secure, high-performance KVM hypervisor designed to host Linux and Windows virtual servers and desktops whose memory-sharing technology reportedly permits more efficient guest consolidation and enterprise features such as live migration.

The Cloud Has Cross-Border Ambitions

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:45:00 EDT

There is now a thing called EuroCloud, for the moment a French-based SaaS and cloud community whose 70-odd members include IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, France Telecom and SAP and whose 30 supporters include Amazon. The object of the name is to share best practices and expand their business across the continent.

Red Hat Says Windows and KVM Are Talking to One Another

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:15:00 EDT

Red Hat said Wednesday that its KVM hypervisor, its pet virtualization scheme, can talk to Microsoft’s Windows Server and that customers can now deploy jointly supported server virtualization environments that combine Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The two companies have done the tests and validated the widgetry.

Red Hat and Microsoft Expand Virtualization Interoperability Options

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EDT

Red Hat announced that customers can now deploy fully supported virtualization environments that combine Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In response to customer demand for interoperability in their IT environments, Red Hat and Microsoft have completed testing and validation for mutual customers using server virtualization. Joint support from Red Hat and Microsoft for these configurations is available today. In February 2009, Red Hat and Microsoft announced agreements to validate and support the companies' corresponding virtualization and operating system platforms. The agreements have enabled today's delivery of expanded virtualization interoperability through the cross-certification of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows Server.

Improve Employee Collaboration with Open Source Solutions

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:45:00 EDT

The Ministry of Housing, Construction and Sanitation's goal is to promote and improve the development of housing, water and sanitation services throughout Peru by facilitating access to adequate housing and basic services, facilitating the management, growth, preservation, maintenance and protection of population centers. The Ministry's aging and limited e-mail communications platform was based on SUSE Enterprise Linux with Postfix and Horde for Web customers. Users also relied on different versions of Microsoft Outlook to check their email, resulting in challenges due to the platform age and configuration. The platform also caused the need to add an exclusive server allocated to this service. The Ministry’s main problem consisted of the lack of scalability and security, and limited flexibility in management and constrained the user interface.

Tactical Cloud Computing Panel at 1st Annual GovIT Expo

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:00:00 EDT

I'm proud to announce that representatives from Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and Unisys will join me in a "Tactical Cloud Computing" Panel at SYS-CON's 1st Annual Government IT Conference & Expo in Washington DC on October 6, 2009.

As Technical Chair of this conference, my goal has been to provide useful and actionable information to the conference attendees. While the industry has engaged in a rigorous discussion around "enterprise" cloud computing, information on tactical or deployable cloud computing possibilities has been scarce. To address this, I've asked Dataline partners to join me and share their views on this issue.

Tactical Cloud Computing refers to the use of cloud computing technology and techniques for the support of localized and short-lived information access and processing requirements. Use cases could include:

“Cloudbursting” to support cyclic data processing requirements
Establishing a cloud-based collaboration environment in order to coordinate firefighting resources during a wildfire
Virtually binding shipboard IT infrastructures in order to create a battlegroup infrastructure-as-a-service platform
Virtually binding land vehicle based servers and storage resources into a battlefield data center
Dynamic provisioning of virtual cloud-based servers in order to automate exploitation and dissemination of unmanned air vehicle (UAV) streaming video feeds
This discussion panel will explore how defense, homeland security and law enforcement organizations are looking to leverage this new and exciting IT capability.

Please register and join us for this unique opportunity. First 50 registrants are eligible for a VIP pass !!

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Red Hat Navigates the Summer Doldrums Well

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:30:00 EDT

Red Hat did slightly better than the Wall Street pundits supposed it would in its last quarter, the dreaded summer months of June through August in the midst of an awful year. Boosted by a tax benefit, earnings were up 29% to $27.5 million, or 15 cents a share or 16 cents (non-GAAP), on revenue up 12% year-over-year to $183.6 million against expectations of 15 cents on $179.1 million.

The Curious Case of Build Release Management eBook

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:15:00 EDT

Build Release Management (BRM) is truly the next generation of IT Change Management. With BRM, you can get compliant and implement total process automation while continuing to work with whatever version control tool, testing application or IDE you are currently using. Download this essential eBook "The Curious Case of Build Release Management" and learn the basics of what BRM is, why users love it and why every application development team should consider it.

Jailed Satyam Founder Has Heart Attack

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Founder and former Satyam Computer Services CEO Ramalinga Raju, 54, the admitted bad boy of India who overstated the company's revenues by a billion dollars more or less, suffered a reported heart attack Monday afternoon while in the calaboose awaiting imminent trial. He's in the hospital. He's also got type C hepatitis, common in intravenous drug users from sharing of contaminated needles and also seen in hemophiliacs and people who have had blood transfusions or treatment with blood products. Most of the time the medical establishment has no idea were it comes from. He's looking at life in prison.

Product Evaluation: JBoss TCO Calculator

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Are you still using expensive, proprietary middleware? Tired of rising license costs? Enterprises such as Priceline.com, Citistreet, and many more have decided there is a better way. There are compelling reasons to switch to JBoss Enterprise Application Platform including more capability for less cost, no vendor lock-in, award-winning support, performance, and modular architecture that enables superior agility and flexibility.

The JBoss SOA Assessment Tool: Spend Less, Do More

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

SOA does not have to be overly complex or expensive. This white paper shows you how the JBoss SOA Assessment Tool can help you chart a course to a successful SOA implementation. And the broad portfolio of JBoss Enterprise Middleware can help you get there, with fully supported platforms for service development and deployment, content aggregation and presentation, rules management data integration, and service integration and orchestration integration.

SYS-CON White Paper: Velociti Partners Customer Survey

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

JBoss' expert technical support services are clearly acknowledged by its client base as well as the comprehensive nature by which their service is unsurpassed. Every category that was evaluated resulted in JBoss rating higher than the competition. More important, JBoss' performance has yielded unprecedented customer loyalty as evidenced by its favorable quantitative loyalty rating.

White Paper: Open Source Middleware Reference Architecture

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

As open source development expands and deepens its innovative capabilities, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, by Red Hat, continues to deliver enterprise-class alternatives to expensive, cumbersome proprietary solutions at additional levels of the software stack. These go beyond the application server, to middleware for application integration, data integration, development tools, business rules management, even management and monitoring tools.

Eucalyptus Enables First Private Cloud for vSphere Users

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Eucalyptus Systems, the creator of the eponymous open source private cloud platform, has pushed out its first commercial product, the Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EEE), which will let customers implement an on-premise cloud using VMware’s virtualization widgetry, including vSphere, ESX and ESXi. Eucalyptus says EEE is the only private cloud computing solution available today for vSphere customers.

Red Hat Commercializes KVM Virtualization

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:00:00 EDT

In competition with VMware this week Red Hat trotted out Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, the commercial point upgrade that includes its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) mojo, which is integrated into the Linux kernel, a factor that should give it operating efficiencies like the 16 virtual CPUs it can support, double VMware, not to mention the added memory. RHEL 5.4 is supposed to be the foundation for the company’s real thrust into virtualization and its portfolio of virtualization solutions.

Red Hat Aims To Grind a Magic Key To Unlock All Clouds

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Red Hat Thursday unveiled Deltacloud, a new open source project aimed at enabling an ecosystem of developers, tools, scripts and applications that can interoperate across the public and private clouds complements of a common REST-based API that developers can write to once and manage anywhere. Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens claims the breakthrough will be “epic.” Currently, he said, each infrastructure-as-a-service cloud uses a unique API that developers and ISVs have to write to in order to consume the cloud service. Red Hat imagines using Deltacloud to start an instance on an internal cloud, then with the same code start another on EC2 or Rackspace. It says it will protect apps from “cloud API changes and incompatibilities.”

Red Hat Targets Cloud Computing with Next Generation Java Platform

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

Red Hat has delivered on its JBoss Open Choice strategy and announced availability of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0. This core middleware product represents next generation Java application platforms and will be integral to Red Hat's cloud foundation. JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0 supports developer choice and aims to provide a consistent foundation to support the wide variety of Java programming and component models, including Plain Old Java Objects, Java EE, Spring Framework, OSGi, Google Web Toolkit and a variety of Rich Internet Application frameworks and dynamic languages.

Red Hat Launches Catalyst Program

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:34:00 EDT

Red Hat has announced the North American launch of the Red Hat Catalyst Program, aimed at leveraging all of Red Hat's routes to market through a collaborative and innovative marketing program that plans to include an interactive web portal to facilitate the formation of a community around Red Hat's entire partner ecosystem.

Red Hat Executives Live from Red Hat Summit on September 2

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:15:00 EDT

Red Hat announced that members of Red Hat’s executive team will host a press conference that will be broadcast live via webcast from the Red Hat Summit in Chicago on September 2, 2009 at 12pm EST. To view the webcast, please visit here.

Platform as a Service Journal Launched on Ulitzer

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:15:00 EDT

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a big piece of the cloud computing puzzle, the other pieces being Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Application software as a service (SaaS). PaaS enables the delivery of solution frameworks and components as on-demand, pay-as-you-go services. Some examples of these are Google Apps Engine, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Windows Azure platform, SalesForce Force.com platform, Cisco WebEx Connect platform. PaaS will allow developers to create SaaS applications with agility and will be critical to the success of cloud computing. Also launched by Vinay Singla are IT as a Service, and Saas Journal.

Linux Foundation Updates Study on Linux Development

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:30:00 EDT

The Linux Foundation has updated its April 2008 study on Linux kernel development, the one called “Linux Kernel Development: How Fast is it Going, Who is doing it and Who is Sponsoring it?”. The updated study found that since April 2008 there’s been a 10% increase in the number of developers contributing to each kernel release and that a net of 2.7 million lines of code have been added.

Red Hat Remakes Its Reseller Program

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Red Hat Monday kicked off its redesigned Partner Program, meant to give its resellers more financial, sales, marketing and technical help. It’s added a new Premier Business Partner level above the existing Advanced and Ready classifications and it will also feature specializations in Red Hat’s infrastructure, middleware and virtualization that require a certain number of certified employees.

Moonlight 2 Beta Out

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:30:00 EDT

The open source Mono Project sponsored by Novell has put out a beta release Moonlight 2, the Linux equivalent of Microsoft’s Silverlight 2, which gives users a platform to view and use Silverlight and Windows Media content on Linux. The beta offers improved functionality compared to Moonlight 1, including support for adaptive video streaming and audio playback, which means better streaming of multimedia content based on the quality of the user’s connections.

Best Practices for Switching Application Servers

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:45:00 EDT

Thinking of moving to a different Java application server? Need to better understand the impact of your move? The state of the economy is driving a re-evaluation of all major technology decisions. As a result, more and more organizations are switching to a more flexible and cost-effective application server platform. In this webinar, Red Hat migration experts cover key technical differences between JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the proprietary alternatives from IBM and Oracle.

Oracle To Keynote Cloud Computing Expo

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:15:00 EDT

Enterprises large and small are drawn by the advantages of cloud computing - pay-for-use, self-service, elastic scalability and the elimination of hardware management – resulting in very low barriers to entry and exit and high agility. However, enterprises are also concerned about security, quality of service, integration, compliance, lock-in, and the long-term costs of public clouds.

Best Practices for Switching Application Servers

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:30:00 EDT