I took a couple of days away from Redmond Report and immersed myself in the topic of datacenter efficiency. You can reap the fruits of my labor in the March issue of Redmond magazine. And if you have datacenter efficiency/green tips and experiences, please e-mail me at [email protected].
This distraction meant I couldn't take Google's Eric Schmidt to task for his inane, insane, imbecilic, illogical, insipid and idiotic comments (and no, I didn't look up those words on Google).
More
Posted by Doug Barney on December 15, 200913 comments
Doug's still out, so covering once again is Jeff Schwartz.
Last week, I moderated a webcast exploring the topic of business intelligence and the growing trend of enterprises rolling it out to the masses, referred to by some as self-service BI.
The majority of those surveyed in a quick spot poll during the webcast said they see it as a priority to extend BI throughout their organizations to give stakeholders the ability to query and share data. Still, that only represented 32 percent of those responding. Another 23 percent said they had no BI infrastructure to date and 17 percent aren't yet sure. About 21 percent will beef up their BI offerings for a more restricted user base.
More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 14, 20090 comments
Doug's still out, so covering once again is Jeff Schwartz.
Amazon this morning said it's testing a new service called Spot Instances that will let customers and developers apply the auction model to acquire capacity.
In a nutshell, here's how it works: Amazon will let those with non-mission-critical tasks bid for available capacity residing on Amazon's EC2 service. Spot Instance prices can fluctuate depending on supply and the demand for capacity at the time a bid is placed. The customer must place a request specifying the region, instance type, number of instances and the maximum price he or she is willing to pay per instance in a given hour.
More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 14, 20091 comments
Doug is out today, so covering for him is Jeff Schwartz, editor at large for Redmond magazine and executive editor at RCP magazine:
Microsoft was among those that said it will participate in the Enterprise Cloud Buyers' Council (ECBC), a consortium of software, hardware and telecom providers gunning to forge interoperability, security and common service levels among cloud providers. The consortium was brought together by the TM Forum, a telecom industry association.
More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 11, 20090 comments
Doug is out today, so covering for him is Jeff Schwartz, editor at large for Redmond magazine and executive editor at RCP magazine:
The controversial health care bill seems to be progressing its way through the Senate, and while anything can still happen, it's looking like something might reach President Obama's desk after all.
More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on December 11, 20090 comments
Reports have been circulating that Microsoft would pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to make content exclusive to Bing, keeping it off Google. The deal would satisfy two needs: Microsoft wants traffic and Murdoch is sick of Google stealing -- I mean aggregating -- his hard-earned content.
On the other hand, paying to build search market share isn't the best approach. Let the technology speak for itself, I say. Microsoft apparently agrees, and isn't currently pursuing such a deal, it now says.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on December 09, 20091 comments
Tomorrow, Microsoft will crack open a six-pack of patches. While not as tasty as a nice Hefeweizen, these patches at least won't leave you with a hacker-induced hangover. Half the patches are critical, while the other three are merely "important."
The most important is a roll-up of fixes for Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Those that can't move to IE 8 due to custom apps or other compatibility issues are well-advised to download and install this puppy.
Posted by Doug Barney on December 07, 20092 comments
Intel last week showed off a 48-core processor. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the chip giant has no plans to ship this puppy; it's for research only.
I'm excited about this breakthrough, but also a bit frustrated. With today's software, most of our extra cores remain idle because the programs are largely sequential -- not parallel. Microsoft, Intel and many others are now pushing parallel development. That means future software may take advantage of this enormous processing. For now, it's only specialized programs -- such as engineering, animation, rendering, video and design -- that are truly multicore-aware. Oh, and high-end gaming software!
More
Posted by Doug Barney on December 07, 20098 comments
By now you've heard that Los Angeles is going with Google's cloud e-mail solution rather than Exchange. Deals like these are game changers. If implemented successfully, L.A.'s e-mail plan is a lesson to IT: The cloud messaging water is safe.
What I'd like to see is some real analysis of costs, manageability, usability, and data security and availability. This is the kind of insight you need to truly evaluate a cloud approach.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on December 04, 200910 comments
Redmond Report readers are an awesome bunch. When I need help with a technical problem, answers fly my way. And if I'm writing a major story, your thoughts drive the entire process.
So here's a personal thanks to the many who wrote about your Bing experiences. My son David actually wrote the story and quotes about a dozen readers. It came out great, in my opinion. So I'd like you to take a look at the story, which was a close partnership between Dave and you, the Redmond Report reader.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on December 04, 20090 comments