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- COBOL in the cloud. No, seriously
- Blast from the past: project ‘Asparagus’, anyone?
- Lawson CEO says SaaS is doomed inside of two years
- Oracle buys Primavera, Symantec buys MessageLabs, TCS buys Citigroup services
- The Process Factory seeks mashers for mashup fest MashApps09
- IT to blame for Bradford & Bingley woes?
- Progress will merge Iona Artix, Sonic ESBs
Jason Stamper's Blog: October 2008 Archives
COBOL in the cloud. No, seriously
October 30, 2008
While the jury is still out on just how big a change ‘cloud computing’ represents, Microsoft’s announcement of its Azure Services Platform will inevitably have the effect of bringing more credibility to the concept. Already companies like Google, Yahoo, IBM and Sun have made plenty of noise about cloud computing, but now the largest software firm in the world has started to outline its own cloud computing strategy.
Microsoft has said it expects to boost the number of data centers it operates by three times, its power usage by 15 times, and the Internet traffic going out of its data centers by nine-fold, as it hosts more of its own and third party applications on its Azure Services Platform.
But perhaps lost in the noise that this announcement generated was the news that one company, Micro Focus International, intends to enable COBOL applications to run on the Azure Services Platform. In other words, COBOL applications that run in ‘the cloud’. Now if that’s not a sign that ‘cloud computing’ will be an evolution of existing computing paradigms rather than a revolution, I don’t know what is...[click continue reading to learn why you want your COBOL apps in the cloud]...
Blast from the past: project ‘Asparagus’, anyone?
October 28, 2008
Your starter for ten: which server maker once had a joint venture with Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NTT) to build a data and speech communications hub, with the rather sexy code-name ‘Asparagus’?
Some clues: The year was 1987. The server maker in question was working with NTT on a communications hub built around its Eclipse MV minicomputer. Got it now?
Ok some more clues. The server firm was ultimately sold to EMC. CEO at the time was Ron Skates. Most famous engineer was Tom West, who was the subject of Tracy Kidder’s bestseller The Soul of a New Machine...[click continue reading for more on the mystery server maker and project Asparagus!]...
Lawson CEO says SaaS is doomed inside of two years
October 09, 2008
In a staggering interview by ZDnet with the CEO of client/server ERP firm Lawson, CEO Harry Debes said the Software as a Service (SaaS) market will collapse within two years.
“People will realize the hype about SaaS companies has been overblown within the next two years,” he said. “An industry has to have more than just one poster child to overhaul the system. One day Salesforce.com will not deliver its growth projections, and its stock price will tumble in a big hurry. Then, the rest of the [SaaS] industry will collapse.”...[click continue reading for more of Debes' surprising comments]...
Oracle buys Primavera, Symantec buys MessageLabs, TCS buys Citigroup services
October 08, 2008
A busy day for acquisitions: first it came across the wires that Tata Consultancy Services is buying the business process outsourcing arm of Citigroup for $505m. Then Symantec announced the acquisition of online messaging and web security firm MessageLabs for $695m, and in the last hour or so Oracle announced it is buying project portfolio management firm Primavera.
An interesting point to note is that against the backdrop of the credit crisis and spiralling stock market valuations, both the TCS and Symantec buys are being paid for in cash. The price or specific terms of Oracle’s Primavera acquisition have not been disclosed...[click continue reading for more on this entry]...
The Process Factory seeks mashers for mashup fest MashApps09
October 03, 2008
The Process Factory, an online business process management maven that delivers BPM technology as a service, has launched MashApps09 – a competition to develop, “New, innovative, practical ‘mashup’ applications, which can be used to improve day-to-day business operations.”
What are mashups?
‘Mashups’ are applications created by piecing together existing components to create composite applications. They are usually built with web services standards in mind and are usually available in a hosted fashion over the Internet.
So what are MashApps?
According to The Process Factory, MashApps (a term it has copyrighted) refer to ‘mashups’ that are user-friendly and bring value to the end-user: we’re thinking there is also the sense that these are composite applications with value to an enterprise, rather than ‘mashups’ that perhaps only offer value to consumers.
Think ‘mashup applications’ and you won’t be far out....[click continue reading for more details and the entry process]...
IT to blame for Bradford & Bingley woes?
October 02, 2008
Just before the UK’s Bradford & Bingley Building Society launched a £400m rights issue in the first half of this year in the hope of shoring up its finances, it had said that trading was roughly in line with its expectations and that it would not need to do a rights issue.
Then on May 14 it announced it was doing a rights issue after all, offering existing shareholders the opportunity to buy 19 new shares for every 25 they already held, at a cost of 55 pence per share.
But in an almost unprecedented announcement half way through the rights issue process – just nine days after it began -- Bradford & Bingley changed its mind again, this time saying that investors could only buy 16 shares for each 25 they held, at a far costlier 82 pence per share.
The reason for the change? The company said that trading conditions had deteriorated very quickly, and that it would make an £8m loss in the first four months of the year, helping to send its share price tumbling. But what has the building society's IT got to do with all of this? ...[click Continue Reading for more on this entry]...
Progress will merge Iona Artix, Sonic ESBs
October 01, 2008
Following its acquisition of fellow middleware vendor Iona in June this year, Progress is working on integrating its own Sonic enterprise service bus (ESB) with the acquired Iona Artix ESB, CBR has learned…[click Continue Reading for more on this entry]…
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