Time to say goodbye to Windows RT tablets?
Windows RT tablets grabbed just 0.4% of the tablet market in the first quarter, a dismal result that led some tech experts to urge Microsoft to scrap the platform that's in its six-month infancy.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they do streamline and do drop [Windows RT]," said Brian Proffitt, an adjunct instructor of management at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business , in an interview. "Microsoft is going to remain heavily invested in its Surface tablet strategy, but that doesn't preclude them from making changes and cutting. Cutting Windows RT would be a smart move, unless the number of shipments suddenly improves." Read more...
IBM database strategy chief on DB2: Devs are people too
Developers are exerting greater influence on new versions of IBM’s DB2 database, according to one of Big Blue's information management strategy chiefs.
Bernie Spang, director of strategy and marketing for database software and systems, said while IBM has historically consulted DBAs on new features they’d like in IBM’s mighty database, that has changed.
In an interview with El Reg, Spang said IBM is now taking a more balanced approach. “It’s not shifted from one to the other, it’s got to be both,” he told us.
Driving the change is a need to make DB2 more comfortable for developers building web and big data apps that suck on the DB2 data store.
One recent consequence of the shifting approach was the addition of tripled graph-store capabilities for graph analytics in DB2 10.1, which was released in April.
Graph stores find connections between data, so you don’t have to search through piles of relational tables or raw info using Hadoop. Graphs are popular with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn trying to establish connections between individuals on their sites. Read more...
Dell announces ‘storage blades,’ converged data center strategy
At its annual storage conference, Dell today announced a storage array in a server blade form factor that can be combined with networking and server blades in a single chassis.
Each Dell EqualLogic PS-M4110 Blade Array comes in four models and can hold up to 14 drives for up to 14TB of data per array, up to 28TB per group (two blades) inside a blade chassis, and up to 56TB with two groups inside one blade chassis. The drives come with a native encryption option.
The Blade Arrays can be combined with the Dell PowerEdge M420 blade servers and Dell Force10 MXL switches in a Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade chassis to create a pre-tested and certified Converged Blade Data Center. Read more...
Nonprofit “Digital Public Library Of America” To Launch In April 2013
The Google Books project (just today pared down a bit) always impressed me with its sheer scope. Offering modern e-books is all well and good, but that’s more of a business problem. It’s the scanning and free availability of thousands upon thousands of old books that struck me as a worthwhile endeavor.
But publishers and booksellers have been wary of the service, knowing that Google is a fan of free, and their scan-first, ask-permission-later strategy caused some consternation as well. And while access to all that knowledge is appreciated, it is lost on no one that the data is in the hands of a for-profit company. Read more...
HP cuts 275 jobs as webOS transitions to open-source
Hewlett-Packard has cut 275 jobs in its webOS group, as part of its strategy to turn the operating system over to the open-source community, a source said Tuesday.
HP said last year that it would stop making devices that use the operating system which was developed by Palm for phones and tablets, and later decided to release the software under the Apache License 2.0. HP had acquired Palm in 2010.
As webOS continues the transition to open-source software, HP no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. "This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP's commitment to the software over the long term," it added. Read more...
Antenna Software launches cloud-based mobile app service
Antenna Software today unveiled cloud-based software called AMPchroma for designing, testing and managing mobile apps and mobile websites.
Sold as a managed service, AMPchroma will give companies access to their apps and mobile sites from a single Web-based console that can be shared by work groups and IT workers, said Jim Somers, chief marketing and strategy officer for Antenna.
Somers said part of the value of AMPchroma is to help large companies centrally manage an array of mobile-related projects. Forrester Research recently reported that some companies have dozens of mobile projects under way at any one time, including designing of custom mobile apps. Read more...
LibreOffice debugs and buffs up to v.3.5
The Document Foundation (TDF) has announced the release of LibreOffice 3.5, which it modestly describes as “the best free office suite ever.”
This latest 201MB build strips out a lot of redundant code from the OpenOffice base around which LibreOffice is built, a move which initially caused the software some stability problems. These have now been fixed – according to TDF – but in a blog post the open source group suggested that more-conservative users might want to stick with version 3.4, and recommended any companies rolling it out across the enterprise to enlist professional support.
“We inherited a 15 years old code base, where features were not implemented and bugs were not solved in order to avoid creating problems, and this - with time - was the origin of a large technical debt,” says Caolán McNamara, a senior Red Hat developer who is one of TDF's founders and directors. Read more...
Google plays the long game with ChromeOS
Google is betting that slow and steady will prove a winning strategy for its ChromeOS platform, and is reporting some successes for the system in the education sector.
It has been a little over a year since Google first showed off ChromeOS, and around six months since the first commercial systems were released for sale by Samsung and Acer. There’s new hardware scheduled for later this year, but the operating system – indeed the very notion of a browser-based operating system – appears to have found little traction in the wider industry.
However, according to Caesar Sengupta, product management director at Google, the company is playing the long game with ChromeOS, making steady improvements in the system as it stands and letting it find its market.
“As Google we haven’t really pushed these devices yet,” he told The Register. “This is so important to us, we can’t rush it.” Read more...
Up-and-coming tech jobs — and how to land one
Forecasts for IT hiring are almost universally predicting that project managers and business analysts will be in demand in 2012, but what about cloud transformation officers?
With big data, mobile computing, social media, cloud computing and the consumerization of IT all converging on IT in 2012, some new -- and intriguing -- job titles are beginning to emerge.
Computerworld went digging and unearthed a handful of positions you can expect to see popping up more and more -- along with details on what you'll need to land one of them. Read on, future chief agile officers. Read more...
Startup pushes software-defined networking
Software-defined networking startup Embrane this week came out of stealth mode to unveil its product and strategy for virtualizing network services.
Embrane was founded in 2009 by former Cisco executives Dante Malagrinò and Marco Di Benedetto, Embrane's CTO. Malagrinò and Di Benedetto were early members of the Andiamo Systems team, a storage networking company funded and acquired by Cisco, as well as Nuova Systems, the company that provided Cisco with its unified computing technology.
At Cisco, Malagrinò helped develop and market Cisco's Data Center 3.0 strategy, which stressed virtualization and a unified fabric. Di Benedetto architected the core elements of Cisco's NX-OS data center operating system.
Other Embrane executives are from 3Com, HP, Juniper, Oracle, Alactel-Lucent, Array Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. Embrane has raised $27 million since its founding. Read more...
Microsoft confirms app store in Windows 8
Microsoft has begun talking about Windows 8 in general terms, reprising a blog-based strategy that it used in the year-long run-up to Windows 7.
Microsoft kicked off the "Building Windows 8" blog on Monday, almost exactly three years after the debut of a similar blog, "Engineering Windows 7," that the company used to beat the drum.
Both blogs were launched by Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division.
Yesterday, Sinofsky essentially confirmed that Windows 8 will support an app store when he listed it as the title of one of 35 teams working on the operating system. Read more...
Apps overrated in mobile web wars
Apple' iOS has over 425,000 apps, with over 15 billion downloaded, according to Apple. Google Android? It has 250,000-plus, but that number is growing at a faster pace than iOS. According to research by Adobe and Forrester, however, a rising number of developers may decide to forego the arms apps race entirely, preferring instead to optimize their mobile web presences.
What you build, it turns out, depends on what sort of business you run. Since a minority (38 per cent) of developers have an established mobile strategy, according to Forrester's survey results, the war between apps and the web is just beginning.
As Adobe's survey of 1,200 North American mobile users suggests, some activities lend themselves to the mobile web-browser model more readily than others. The majority of shoppers (66 per cent), for example, prefer to use their browser when buying goods and services on their mobile device. An even higher percentage (79 per cent) use the mobile web for product research prior to purchasing.
Games and social networking? Apps. Product research and blogs? Browsers. (source: Adobe)
The numbers flip-flop, however, when one considers social media or games. A slim majority of survey respondents (52 per cent) prefer a dedicated app to check Facebook and other social networking services, and 60 percent look to apps to fulfill their gaming needs. Read more...
HP reshuffles executives, prompts departures
Hewlett-Packard today made some seismic changes to its top management that included the exit of its CIO, Randy Mott, who is leaving "effective immediately."
Another major change was the exit of Ann Livermore, an HP employee since 1982, as head of HP's Enterprise Business unit. But Livermore, who has been on the shortlist of potential CEOs of the company, will continue to work for HP as a member of its board, the company said. Read more...
Phone 7 Developers Limited To 20 Apps Per Day
Microsoft is restricting the certification of new mobile apps for Windows Phone Marketplace to no more than 20 a day per developer. The move is the latest sign that Microsoft's mobile-app strategy continues to be about positioning the marketplace as a source of high-quality mobile software.
Microsoft's aim is to maintain a balance between choice and customer experience by enabling customers to see a broader and more representative assortment of new Windows Phone 7 apps, noted Windows Phone blogger Todd Brix on Thursday. Read more...