The world's fastest computers are Linux computers

There are fast computers, and then there are Linux fast computers. Every six months, the Top 500 organization announces "its ranked list of general purpose systems that are in common use for high end applications." In other words, supercomputers. And, as has been the case for years now, the fastest of the fast are Linux computers.

As Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group points out, Linux is only growing stronger in supercomputing. "When considered as the primary OS or part of a mixed-OS supersystem, Linux is now present in 469 of the supercomputer sites, 93.8% of the Top500 list. This represents about 10 more sites than in November 2007, when Linux had presence in 91.8% of the systems. In fact, Linux is the only operating system that managed gains in the November 2008 list. A year ago, Linux was the OS for 84.6% of the top supercomputers. In November 2008, the open source OS was used in 87.8% of the systems. Compare this to Unix, which dropped from 6% to 4.6%, mixed-OS use which dropped from 7.2% to 6.2% and other operating systems, including BSD, Mac OS X and Windows, which were all down this year from the November 2007 list."

Microsoft is proud that a system running Windows HPC Server 2008 took 10th place... behind nine supercomputers running Linux. Even then, this was really more of a stunt than a demonstration that the HPC Server system is ready to compete with the big boys.

You see, there are no Microsoft programming tools to write supercomputer compatible applications. That will come years from now with Visual Studio 2010 and when Microsoft's F# is more than a research project language. In short, Windows HPC isn't ready for prime-time.

In the meantime, the real work is being done on the Linux computers. The number one supercomputer? Once more it's IBM's Linux-powered Roadrunner That's the same supercomputer, which this summer broke supercomputing's sound barrier: a sustained run of more than one petaflop per second or 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. Beat that Microsoft!

The Roadrunner does have competition now though. The Cray XT Jaguar also recently busted the petaflop wall. The Cray also, of course, runs Linux. In the XT's case, it's running CNL (Compute Node Linux). CNL is based on SUSE Linux.

Needless to say, all the Linux systems do have working parallel-processing languages, like GCC, PGI and PathScale. For now, and the foreseeable future, Linux will not only stay the fastest computers, they'll also be the most useful fast computers.

Source:- blogs.computerworld.com/

The quest for the perfect Content Management System

As the Web has grown, the problem of content management seems to have absorbed more time and energy than even the effort required to create actual content. As a consequence the quest for the perfect Content Management System (CMS) has become high on the list of many corporations.

One of the more highly regarded CMS solutions is Joomla, a free, open source, cross platform product that has developed a huge following and is now used by the likes of the United Nations, MTV, Harvard University, and Citibank.

Joomla requires PHP and MySQL along with Apache or Microsoft IIS and can manage any kind of content including text, photos, music, and video. What’s even more impressive is that Joomla is also a content management framework that can be augmented to support other content and process management goals.

These modifications are provided by extensions and the Joomla Extensions Directory currently lists a total of 3,996 extensions that cover everything from adding CAPTCHA support through to file managers and RSS syndication to CRM, help desk, shopping carts, and wiki integration.

One of the extensions that is currently receiving a lot of attention is Teamlog published by YOOtheme GmbH, a Joomla development company.

Teamlog, which is currently in beta and free, adds an AJAX-driven time tracking interface to Joomla for project management. Designed to be very simple to use, Teamlog supports tracking of tasks and to-do items and is designed to be “foolproof” – essentially providing a working plan for multiple projects along with extensive reporting and statistics for teams of any size.

Teamlog is very impressive and I’ve heard from other users that it quickly becomes indispensable particularly in distributed environments.

If you are looking for a CMS, Joomla is worth considering; and if you need project-based time tracking, Teamlog is definitely worth considering.

Footnote: I have to note that on its Web site, materials promoting Teamlog YOOtheme includes some video tours of Teamlog. These are awful!

Here you have a terrific application and the voice over sounds like the speaker is disinterested and totally unenthused with what he’s presenting. Worse still the narrative is disorganized!

If your organization has any kind of presentation materials on line you must make sure that the effect of them is to sell and excite otherwise you are simply squandering opportunity.

Source:- networkworld.com/

Microsoft "Not Against" Open Source

The division between proprietary software vendors and open-source providers is not as clear as some industry players perceive it to be. As more enterprises consider adopting open source technologies, even traditional software vendors such as Microsoft have taken steps in responding to such customer needs.

"Open source is not a product but an approach to software development," said Matthew Hardman, platform strategy manager at Microsoft Singapore. "Microsoft does not compete with open source, just as Nike does not compete with running."

Hardman said the software giant seeks to provide the best possible platform' for open source applications to run. "We believe that enterprises and vendors should have a choice of software development methodology, and open source is one such choice."

The platform strategy manager noted however, that Microsoft will compete with open source-based providers, just as it also competes with other proprietary vendors.
Open-source contributions

According to Hardman, Microsoft has contributed to technologies that are deemed open source. "PHP, a technology used to build web pages, ran into multiple issues around performance and scalability on Windows Server 2003," he said. "With the introduction of Windows Server 2008 and host technology such as Fast CGI, we are now able to run PHP up to 200 per cent faster than Linux."

Hardman said the company has contributed code to PHP libraries for database support, making it easier for PHP developers to connect to Microsoft databases.

"Linux is open source, but open source is not Linux," Hardman noted. "PHP was designed to make it easy for people to build web pages, not specifically to run only on Linux."

As part of its open-source strategy, the company hosts a website called CodePlex, where Microsoft employees and the developer community work on some 6,000 open-source projects. "Examples of such projects include the AJAX Control Toolkit, SugarCRM, .Net, and code that can interact with the 'World of Warcraft,'" Hardman said.

CodePlex includes more than just projects that Microsoft has released, according to Hardman. "It's a hosting platform where people can create and share projects, and we have also used it to share some of our technology to encourage further innovation."

Some five million developers worldwide have created various applications using Microsoft platform technologies such as Windows, .Net, Windows Server and Microsoft Xbox, according to the software giant.
Different business models

Unlike Red Hat, Microsoft does not have a subscription-based model for open-source solutions. "When we want to share source code, we will share it for free," Hardman said. "For example, if someone took the AJAX Control Toolkit, embedded it into a project and commercialised it, that's fine with us."

"It's not so much an issue of opening up the source code," Hardman said. "Rather, it's about how to make open-source technology work for the enterprise, without it having to change its existing platform or infrastructure."

In short, interoperability among solutions, whether open source or not, is very important, Hardman noted.
Other open-source issues

Enterprises need to consider several other issues when deciding whether to adopt open-source technologies, according to Hardman. Knowledge about the level of support provided by the service provider, such as ready availability of security patches, is crucial.

"It's not enough to only have technical expertise in building the open-source solution," Hardman said. "Business knowledge is also essential to ensure the solution works for the enterprise."

Additionally, the open-source provider must be confident that the contributing community can ensure adequate information security. "There must be no weak links in security features," Hardman said.
Open source and SaaS

According to Gartner's State of Open Source report for 2008, software-as-a-service (SaaS) will eclipse open source as the preferred enterprise IT cost-cutting method by 2012.

The report stated that both the open source and SaaS business models price by subscription, operate on low profit margins and can reduce enterprise IT costs. Gartner contends however, that SaaS reduces enterprise requirements for IT technical skills, while open source tends to increase such requirements.

Gery Messer, president of Red Hat Asia Pacific, disagreed: "Open source does not increase the requirement for IT technical skills within the enterprise."

Messer said Red Hat's subscription model provides enterprises with a predictable cost structure and allows them to outsource IT development and support requirements.

"Open source is an infrastructure platform on which many enterprise applications run," Messer said. "Its community-based accelerated innovation approach multiplies software development capacity many times over, providing enterprises better, more innovative solutions."

Messer agreed however, that like open-source software (OSS), SaaS can also help enterprises, especially small- and medium-sized businesses, cut IT costs.
Defining open source

"While I agree with Red Hat's general definition of SaaS, I wouldn't agree with their definition of open source," said Brian Prentice, Gartner's research vice president for emerging trends and technologies. "Open source is not just an infrastructure platform, it can be a lot more than that and is."

According to Prentice, Gartner's definition of open source is software governed under a licence agreement recognised by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). OSI is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting open-source software. "It is the licence agreement, and specifically the rights to modify and redistribute the code, which is the most important component of open source."

As a co-author of the Gartner Open Source report, Prentice explained that OSS tends to increase skills requirements because new technologies require new skills in an organisation.

"If, for example, my organisation uses Windows Server, the addition of Linux, regardless of distribution, would require new skills," Prentice said. "If I am currently using a mix of Oracle 11g and SQL Server, and then introduced MySQL, that needs a new set of skills."

Prentice said SaaS tends to avoid this problem because it is "run on someone else's infrastructure".

"I concede there is some nuance in this area particularly as we start looking at platform-as-a-service capabilities like Force.com from salesforce.com," he noted.

Source:- cio.com/

BizTalk gets surprise reprieve

Microsoft has reversed course on the fate of BizTalk Server, re-naming the next version and setting a roadmap that calls for a major releases of the middleware every two years.
The decision to continue developing the middleware came as a surprise to some, as BizTalk was to be a launching pad for Microsoft's forthcoming "Oslo" technologies that include messaging (Windows Communications Foundation), workflow (Windows Workflow Foundation) and modeling tools.

Rob Helm, an analyst with independent analyst firm Directions on Microsoft, says: "It is pretty surprising and I have not seen this big a reversal from Microsoft in a while.

"They might be reluctant to yank what is now a fairly successful product for an unproven technology platform."

Microsoft says what was supposed to be BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will now be called BizTalk Server 2009. The full release is slated to ship in the first half of next year. In addition, the company says it will provide details on another new version, code-named BizTalk 7, in the early part of next year.

"We will continue to enhance and extend enterprise activity scenarios" in BizTalk, says Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the connected systems division at Microsoft. "We will make it simpler, add new capabilities around [business-to-business], build in our new RFID work and expand it to more general purpose asset-tracking, like tracking laptops or servers in your company, and provide a complete end-to-end asset management view. There will also be enhancements around [business intelligence] and business activity monitoring."

Company officials say Oslo will be discussed further during Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October. "We will talk about linking composite applications you build with Oslo to the existing services you may have already built using BizTalk," Kawasaki says.

In essence, Microsoft plans for now not to isolate current BizTalk users, which would have been the case with a wholesale move to Oslo.

"Our commitment is you can use BizTalk today with R2 and 2009 with our Oslo modeling technology without needs to upgrade," Kawasaki says.

BizTalk 2009 will deliver support for platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. Microsoft also has improved failover clustering so BizTalk can be deployed in multi-site clusters that eliminate the need for virtual LANs.

Source:- computerworld.co.nz/

Microsoft Debuts 'Dublin' App Server in .NET 4.0

Microsoft has announced new application server technology, codenamed “Dublin,” that will surface in Windows Server. The company also announced enhancements to its Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technology. Microsoft’s Dynamics applications will be first to use the new technology, while independent software vendors (ISVs) such as Amberpoint also have pledged to use the new Microsoft technology that will be unveiled at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in late October.

As part of its release of the .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft is enhancing its Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation technology as well as delivering new application server capabilities into Windows Server in an offering codenamed "Dublin."

Burley Kawasaki, director of Product Management, Connected Systems Division, said the enhancements were needed because the development of composite applications has become increasingly complex, particularly with the need to build, deploy and manage a variety of Web services. The enhancements to the core .NET technologies include new messaging and REST (Representational State Transfer) capabilities in WCF, new workflow models, seamless integration between WF and WCF to support stateful and conversational services, and a new visual designer, Microsoft officials said. In addition, Kawasaki said “Dublin” will offer greater scalability and easier manageability and provide a standard host for applications that use workflow or communications. 

"WCF is the foundation for our service-oriented investments in .NET," Kawasaki said. "We're adding in pre-built templates inside Visual Studio to make it easier to build REST and Atom and POX [Plain Old XML] extensions and we'll be releasing that on Codeplex [Microsoft’s community development site] at the same time as the PDC [Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference, which will be in Los Angeles in late October]."

Also at the PDC, Microsoft will deliver CTPs (Community Technology Previews) of the enhanced and new technology for building composite applications: WCF 4.0, WF 4.0 and "Dublin," Kawasaki said.

The WCF REST Starter Kit is an early preview of capabilities that will be shipped with WCF in the .NET Framework 4.0, Microsoft officials said. The Starter Kit provides Visual Studio project and item templates for common RESTful scenarios:  REST Singleton Service, REST Collection Service, Atom Feed Service, Atom Publishing Protocol Service and HTTP Plain.

And in addition to the templates, the Starter Kit will include support and guidance around caching, security and error handling in REST servers and early ideas around a REST client as well.

"WCF 4.0 will tighten integration between WCF and WF, with a unified declarative model underneath it with XAML [the Extensible Application Markup Language]," Kawasaki said. "You can now build an entire application in XAML."

Meanwhile, Microsoft has improved the performance and scalability of WF, Kawasaki said.

"Providing a host process for WF applications, as Dublin does, together with the easier-to-use WF 4.0, should go a long way toward making WF a more widely used technology, said David Chappell, principal at Chappell & Associates and a software development expert familiar with Microsoft's plans.

Moreover, Kawasaki said part of Microsoft's goal with the new technology is to preserve customers' investment in skills and training in .NET technologies. The enhancements to the Windows Application Server will simplify the deployment, configuration, management and scalability of composite applications while allowing developers to use their existing skills with Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and Internet Information Services (IIS), Microsoft officials said.

Kawasaki also said "Dublin” will be the first Microsoft server product to deliver support for the company's “Oslo” modeling platform. “Dublin” does not require “Oslo” in order to operate and provide benefits of hosting .NET applications; however, administrators will be able to deploy applications from the “Oslo” repository directly to the “Dublin” application server, the company said.  “Dublin” provides model-driven “Oslo” applications with a runtime environment, out of the box.

"Oslo--which now refers only to the modeling technologies--can be used to define WF-based applications that run in Dublin," Chappell said. "All three of these things [WF, WCF and Dublin] can be used together, which is perhaps why Microsoft originally put them all under the 'Oslo' banner. Still, they can be used separately, and so to me, narrowing the 'Oslo' name to refer just to the modeling technologies is a good thing. It makes the independence of these technologies clearer."

And Microsoft's internal teams already have begun using Dublin and the enhanced WCF and WF technologies, Kawasaki said.

Among the first products that have announced plans to support Dublin is Microsoft Dynamics, Kawasaki said. Microsoft has announced that future versions of both the Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications will leverage both .NET 4.0 and “Dublin.” In particular, the next version of Microsoft Dynamics AX is being specifically designed to take full advantage of the enhanced capability and scale delivered in Windows Server by the enhanced “Dublin” application server technologies, he said.

Also, Kawasaki said that among third-party ISVs (independent software vendors), line-of-business applications such as Dataract, Eclipsys, Epicor, Red Prairie and Telerik and software infrastructure providers such as Amberpoint, SOA Software, Frends Technology and Global360 have announced plans to leverage the .NET Framework 4.0 and “Dublin” technologies.

Google Apps tops 1 million businesses

Google is well known as a one-trick pony.

Almost all of the company's revenue comes from its search engine, which last quarter accounted for more than $5 billion. New initiatives, such as the Chrome browser, Google Gears, and Google Friend Connect, are focused on building a mostly open-source Internet operating system out of Google technology in order to funnel more user data and targeted advertising opportunities into the Googleplex financial engine.

It's easy to draw parallels to Microsoft, which gradually built the dominant 20th century operating system and applications platform. Bill Gates and company realized that attracting developers to the Windows platform was key. Google is following that advice with its open-source projects and allowing its mad scientists to try to remake the early 21st century software world and take on Microsoft.

Microsoft has led the way with productivity software, gaining a more than 90 percent share of market with Microsoft Office. Google is hoping to replicate Microsoft's office suite success with Google Apps. It's far less feature-rich than Microsoft Office, but Google Apps Premier edition is far cheaper at $50 per user per year.

For some companies, Google Apps is "good enough," and its cloud-based, collaborative core is an advantage--no Microsoft SharePoint server required. Even with a few enterprise wins, Google Apps is a puny business. According to a Fortune article, Google brought in about $4 million with its Google Apps business in 2007, compared with $12.2 billion for Microsoft Office. Google Apps is a profitable business, according to Matthew Glotzbach, enterprise product management director at Google.

Since early this year Google has been touting 500,000 active business customers, primarily small businesses, using at least one of the Google Apps, and more than 10 million active users. In addition, thousands of universities, with more than one million active users, are using Google Apps, the company said. So far, Google's biggest wins are Valeo, a leading automotive suppliers, with 32,000 users, and the District of Columbia, with 38,000 employees.

However, the vast majority of Google Apps users are not paying customers. The company maintains that "hundreds of thousands" of users are paying the $50 annual fee. The $50 per-user-per-year Premier Edition offers several features lacking in the free Standard Edition, including Postini messaging security, APIs for integrating Google Apps with IT infrastructure, 24x7 support, 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for e-mail, Google Video and 25GB of storage per account.

At this point, Google is underplaying the number of Google Apps business customers. The company has been saying that it is adding 3,000 businesses a day, which amounts to over 1 million per year. The reality today is that Google has more than a million Apps business customers. In addition, the Apps suite continues to fill out, most recently with Google Video.

It took Microsoft years to build a base of applications and developer ecosystem for Windows and Office. Google faces the same uphill climb for Apps and its fledgling Web operating system. The company hopes to ride on the backs of the younger generation that has grown up on the Web and identify with the Google brand. As the Google generation moves into positions of purchase authority within businesses, Google is betting that those decision makers will shun Microsoft, especially as Apps product features improve. Of course, the resilient and relentless Microsoft will respond to Google's challenge when it is more than a $4 million or even $20 million blip.

source:- news.cnet.com/

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Microsoft has launched the latest generation of its business software in SA, saying that it signals a new chapter in enterprise resource planning (ERP) user productivity by providing an easy-to-use interface and information tailored to specific roles within a company.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 was released locally this week. Jumana Helal, who heads up the Dynamics business at Microsoft SA, says AX 2009 aims to help businesses thrive in a competitive global marketplace by controlling costs, managing risk and increasing employee productivity.

"Our vision of ERP is that it will actually start to prompt its users to take certain actions, instead of merely being a reactive tool that people use to pull weekly reports from," says Helal.

"Employees using traditional ERP systems have had to wade through inefficient, time-intensive steps - enter transactional data, run reports, analyse reports - before they can do their jobs effectively. Through Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009’s Role Centre, employees from the executive suite to the warehouse have access to role-relevant business intelligence to help them make decisions more efficiently."

Adcorp CIO, Kobus Pienaar, says the group has a clear road map for rolling out AX technology to all 15 of its subsidiaries. Adcorp has 1700 full-time employees, and administers 70 000 full and part-time staff for its clients at any given time, paying R2,2bn a year in salaries, and processing 70 000 timesheets and 60 000 payslips per week.

Source:- mybroadband.co.za/

Independents Seize On Success Of Microsoft's SharePoint

SharePoint is finding a growing role in offices and departments as a collaboration tool for small business units.

Swiss software supplier Day Software announced Wednesday that it is opening SharePoint to the larger world of Java applications in the enterprise. It has produced CQ Connector for SharePoint, which is based on the Content Repository standard for Java. The connector can tie SharePoint into an enterprise portal, swap information from the portal to SharePoint, or vice versa.

With Day's connector, SharePoint becomes "much more enterprise ready than it tends to be on its own," said Santi Pierini, senior VP of marketing.

Day is a little-known implementer of Java standards and offers the Communique suite of enterprise portal and Web content management applications. It has a large library of connectors to enterprise software, including one toSAP (NYSE: SAP)'s NetWeaver API for connecting to SAP applications. Its CTO is Roy Fielding, a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and one of the originators of the Apache Web Server. Day has headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, and Newport Beach, Calif., where Fielding works.

Its CQ Connector for SharePoint, built following the Java community's JSR 170 repository standard, can exchange information between Communique's repository used to store Web site content and a departmental SharePoint repository.

The connector can search the content of a SharePoint repository, using either SQL query language or Xpath, which allows relevant data to be extracted without necessarily retrieving the whole document. It can observe changes in SharePoint content, restrict access to a SharePoint repository by imposing certain views, and impose an Access Control List to enforce enterprise security restrictions.

"We're seeing high demand to make SharePoint more effective for global, enterprise-scale companies," Pierini said.

Day also makes connectors to Vignette, OpenText LiveLink, Interwoven, EMC (NYSE: EMC) Documentum, FileNet P8, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) Lotus Notes Domino.

A second product, from Alfresco Software, implements Microsoft's SharePoint protocol to produce a compatible collaboration server, but one that it also says functions on more of an enterprise scale.

Alfresco already offers an open source content management system and it's making Alfresco Labs 3, its SharePoint-compatible collaboration server, available as open source code as well. Labs 3 was announced July 31. The Labs 3 repository can extract information from SharePoint and Office applications and manage content on a more enterprise level, said John Newton, chairman and CTO, in an interview.

"Microsoft was forced to release the protocols under European Union agreement," he said, referring to the March 2004 European Commission ruling. Newton said Alfresco is the first independent vendor to implement both the SharePoint and Office application protocols, as allowed under the ruling.

In the Alfresco Labs 3 implementation, however, customers can use the SharePoint protocol with non-Microsoft databases, operating systems, and portal products, he noted.

source:- informationweek.com/

Microsoft releases 14,000 pages of Office suite protocols

Microsoft has taken a serious step towards fulfilling its interoperability and openness promises for developers, partners, customers and competitors, by releasing significant protocol data. .

The organisation posted more than 14,000 pages on MSDN covering preliminary versions of technical documentation for its protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft, points out that this brings the total to more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation now released and freely available – even to ISVs (independent software vendors), open source developers and developers in user IT departments.

Says Robertson: “We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions. The implementation of Microsoft’s interoperability principles is an important component of our overall efforts to promote interoperability in the marketplace.”

He gives the example of developers working with SharePoint protocols, who now have resources to develop products that work with Office client applications and SharePoint Server products.

source: mcsolutions.co.uk

Microsoft upgrades robotics development tools

Microsoft’s efforts in developing tools for robotics took another step forward recently when the company released a preview of the next version of its programming platform.

Robotics Developer Studio 2008 builds on the original release, Robotics Studio 2006, according to Microsoft robotics group general manager Tandy Trower, and is due for release later this year. The company made a community technology preview of Robotics Developer Studio available for download on April 9. The name change lines up with existing product lines and better reflects its role as a development tool, the announcement noted.

The updated developer tools now allow the use of distributed LINQ queries to reduce network utilization and simplify service authoring. Runtime performance has also seen a boost, according to Trower, with the company estimating interservice throughput gains of 150% to 300%, between nodes as well as within a node. According to the company, services now load twice as fast as they had before.

The tools themselves have seen other work as well. The Visual Programming Language tool now allows users to visually define computational domains for managing distributed program execution. Meanwhile, the simulation environment tool now can record and play back simulations, and its floorplan editor simplifies the definition of complex interiors and building structures.

Since the launch of Robotics Studio 2006, more than 200,000 copies of the software have been downloaded, according to Microsoft. The software is free for noncommercial applications and must be licensed for commercial use.

The company also announced a virtual robotics competition, called RoboChamps, which was expected to launch April 21; details are available at www.robochamps.com.