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A future without programming
A few years ago, self-proclaimed nondeveloper Kevin Smith worked for a software company that tried to build a project tracking tool using Microsoft .Net. Some 15 developers spent a year with little success. "After burning though a million dollars and still without a product, the company called it quits," says Smith, now managing partner of NextWave Performance, a consultancy in Denver, Colo.NextWave took up the idea but ran into similar timetable and budgetary overruns. "I said, 'I'll learn to code and do it myself,'" a frustrated Smith recalls. His search eventually led him to Coghead, a Web app for code-free development of Web apps -- and Smith built key components of the tracking tool in less than 30 days.[ InfoWorld Test Center shows the pros and cons of Coghead in an in-depth review; for an online app builder with a Microsoft twist, see the review of Caspio Bridge. | Read about other "Application builders in the sky." ]"I was showing my business partner some of this stuff the other day and he turned to me and asked, 'How do traditional developers stay in business?'" Smith says. "It's such a game changer. I think it turns developers from wizards who read the magic book and know the syntax into business analysts who understand the processes and goals of what they're trying to achieve."Such views may be a bit far-fetched, but it's true that do-it-yourself application development has never been more appealing. With IT budgets being squeezed, along with the growing dysfunctional relationship between IT staff and managers, it's no wonder the promise of cheap "codeless" development that sidesteps IT resonates loudly with businesspeople. "We also have a whole new wave of business users that are not intimidated by the notion of application development," says Mike Gualtieri, analyst at Forrester.Coghead and others, such as Caspio, Zoho, and Wufoo, are just the latest attempt to bring application development to the masses. From Cobol to 4GL to scripting languages to, recently, Microsoft's Oslo for model-based software development, the Holy Grail is to make it easier for nonprogrammers to program. Now Coghead CEO Paul McNamara believes cloud computing tools increase the number of potential software builders in the world tenfold.Whipping up a Web app There are areas where codeless software development makes sense, mostly with business apps that have multiple records, business logic, notifications, and other straightforward features. For instance, Jim Heagney, an accounting and systems consultant, tapped his experience with Great Plains and other ERP integration projects to develop a virtual-events scheduler, called Inexpo.Using Coghead, Heagney, another self-described nondeveloper, built Inexpo to manage all of the activities that go into producing a virtual, Web-based event, including order entries, invoices, expenses, purchase-order requisitions, and other transactions. Inexpo even interfaces with an accounting system "in all the right spots," Heagney says. Working part time, he built the application in only six months.?Anyone who is comfortable writing macros or sophisticated Excel spreadsheets has what it takes to create apps with Coghead, says McNamara. A person needs a basic understanding of relational databases, such as an account record that has many invoices stored against it. Sounds easy enough, yet the problem is that even seasoned business executives who know how to operate intricate database applications have no idea what goes on in the background, adds Heagney.Moreover, Heagney acknowledges some of Coghead's limitations today. For instance, the tool lacks simple ways to make mass changes and to create complex fields, he says. As with all cloud systems, reporting is a drawback because there's limited access to the back end. "One part I couldn't write was the general ledger -- the core piece of ERP -- which is a challenge right now because of the way the tables work," he says.InfoWorld Test Center analyst and software developer Peter Wayner, who authored the Coghead and Caspio reviews, takes it a step further: "In essence, [Coghead] is a fancy front end to a spreadsheet." Wayner, though, is quick to point out its potential, saying, "We're reaching a space where people can quickly build Web applications on top of any kind of database tables."Into a wall of disillusionment But don't count your applications before they hatch. Codeless software development is not as easy as the examples of Heagney and NextWave's Smith suggest, contends Forrester's Gualtieri. Rather, nonprogrammers heading down the do-it-yourself route should expect to confront a number of trials.Gualtieri believes many business users will get in over their heads and become frustrated, which will lead to disillusionment. That's because they'll have made mistakes along the well-trodden developer's path of identifying what they want to do, selecting the right tools, and architecting the project appropriately. Or, more simply, they'll pound their heads on the desk because they won't be able to insert a table with an image in one of the cells."It didn't take me long to generate an inscrutable error message, the kind that leads to panic in mere mortals but inspires real programmers to roll up their sleeves," Wayner writes in his Coghead review. "The drag-and-drop tool may look nice, but I think most serious Coghead programmers will need to learn BPEL syntax and then work backward to figure out why something isn't working." In other words, the Cogheads may eliminate the coding, but they still require you to think like a developer.The average business executive will hit a wall trying to do this himself, agrees Heagney. For this reason, 60 percent of Coghead's sales flow through the channel where at least some level of technical expertise and guidance is available.A simple Web app can also grow into a monster, with more users and features added daily. It may become so large and so unwieldy that intervention by the IT department is needed to save it. Or a company may need to hire a Coghead programmer to support the app. "Somebody has to understand the internal architecture of applications in order to protect integrity," says Yefim Natis, distinguished analyst at Gartner.Coding futures Natis scoffs at the idea that codeless software threatens the livelihood of traditional developers. "When apps are designed with heavy use of metadata -- it's highly productive and easy to use -- then you're doing configuration, not programming," he says. "Programmers had to create the environment in which some of the parameters could be manipulated by the business users."Everyone agrees that the gap between the business analyst and the software developer is closing, and thus developers should become more business savvy. But programmers won't really be affected by business analysts who fool themselves into thinking they can write business applications without programmer know-how. "People still have to understand how to create algorithms to deal with data and process," says Natis. "The means of expressing the algorithms may change, but the algorithms themselves do not."Even as business users become comfortable around technology and seize a greater role in application development (as well as managing their own PCs), the fact is programmers haven't been marginalized. Life may in fact get more interesting for programmers, says James Owen, an InfoWorld Test Center reviewer and founder of Knowledge-Based Systems, a consultancy specializing in business rule management systems.Codeless programming, which includes business rule-based systems, is sold on the idea that "business analysts will be able to insert their business logic without knowing the first thing about the underlying code," Owen explains. "When upper management realizes they now can do more with the same personnel, they begin to dream" of software skyscrapers that reach infinitely upward.But codeless programming can only do so much, and so IT programmers will be tasked with architecting and creating frameworks that support these lofty dreams. "And the dreams will lead to even more jobs for the IT programmers," Owen says. "Now the fun begins."
posted on November 20, 2008 06:00:00 am
Yahoo OneSearch coming to T-Mobile USA
T-Mobile USA will provide Yahoo's OneSearch search engine on its phones, a Yahoo executive said Wednesday.T-Mobile is placing a OneSearch button on its phones in a deal that is to be announced soon, said Marco Boerries, executive vice president and head of Yahoo's Connected Life Division, at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco. The carrier's decision to place a OneSearch button in the software of its subscribers' handsets is a much-needed win for Yahoo as it struggles against Google and Microsoft for search advertising dollars and looks for a successor to outgoing CEO Jerry Yang.[ Take InfoWorld's guided tour of T-Mobile's G1, the first phone to carry Google's Android operating system. | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]Yahoo's latest partner has a close relationship with Google in at least one area. Last month, T-Mobile USA became the first mobile operator to offer a phone based on Google's Android software platform when it put HTC's G1 handset on sale. T-Mobile could not immediately be reached for comment, and Yahoo's Boerries didn't say specifically whether the OneSearch button would appear on the G1.Yahoo let Google take away most of its market share in PC search and is working with carriers to make sure the same thing doesn't happen in mobile, Boerries said. So the company is working through mobile operators to get OneSearch set up on their phones in hopes that subscribers will go straight to Yahoo's search engine rather than calling up a competitor's, he said. Yahoo has deals with 26 mobile operators around the world, which have 850 million subscribers, he said.OneSearch is available by download to users of many phones. However, since mobile users traditionally don't download applications to their phones often, Yahoo can reach more users by preloading the button on their phones.In March, T-Mobile in Northern and Central Europe dropped Google search for Yahoo, and the U.K. carrier O2 also is a partner, Boerries said. Those deals have helped Yahoo gain a market share of 25 percent in Europe and more than 30 percent in the U.K., he said. The company had "lost all footprint on search" on PCs in Europe, he said.OneSearch is designed to return useful answers, instead of just a series of links, for easier use on mobile devices, and earlier this year was opened up to allow content from third parties such as reviews site Yelp. Voice search, which just this week became available from Google as an iPhone application, already was available for OneSearch, Boerries said.In 2009, Yahoo will concentrate on making it easier for advertisers to set up effective mobile advertising, Boerries said. For example, it's hard to make ads look good on a wide variety of mobile devices, and Yahoo wants to help solve that problem, he said. The company is exploring how to give advertisers the tools they need to create the right ad experience for consumers and to reach as many people as they want without having to make deals with many operators, he said.Mobile search advertising has to be built from the ground up, and not all Web search advertisers will want to make the leap, Boerries said.
posted on November 19, 2008 07:02:20 pm
Ruby hailed as economic solution, offering smaller investment and less risk
Advocates for the Ruby programming language on Wednesday hailed its usefulness as an enterprise application development option, especially in a down economy.The Merb framework for Ruby also was championed, during a session at the QCon conference in San Francisco. Speakers also defended Ruby and the Ruby on Rails framework against critics citing slow performance and scalability problems.Ruby serves as an alternative for companies seeking more affordable software development, said speaker Greg Pollack, CTO at Rails Envy, which offers Rails-related services."With Ruby, I can write less code to do more things, and I can probably give them a more affordable option," offering a smaller initial investment and less risk, Pollack said.Rails applications can be scaled via techniques such as the memcached application, Pollack said in an interview after his presentation. "Really, the way you scale Rails is just like you scale any other Web app," he said.Ruby reaches beyond the Web, Pollack said. It is being used to generate music and to maintain Linux boxes, as well as for graphics and desktop clients, he said.Merb, which is based on Model View Controller (MVC), offers an option to the widely known Rails framework, according to speaker Matt Aimonetti, a Merb evangelist."Merb meets the enterprise needs because of the cost, adaptability, and scalability," said Aimonetti, who nonetheless defended Ruby on Rails in benchmark tests he detailed. Aimonetti said he tested it against other frameworks such as the PHP-based CodeIgniter. Rails scored 88 requests per second (rps), while CodeIgniter was 98.2 rps, he said."Really, Rails is not that slow. It's actually pretty close to the fastest PHP framework," Aimonetti said.Ruby, meanwhile, is fast in real-life Web benchmarks, he said. "Ruby as a language might be a bit slow, it's true, but when you use it on the Web, it's actually fast," said AimonettiMerb, he said, is "very suited for the enterprise world but not only [the enterprise]." It is "the fastest Ruby framework we have right now," Aimonetti said.The technology offers the concept of Merb "slices," which serve as stand-alone miniature applications that can be mounted inside other applications, he said. Merb offers modularity and flexibility, said Aimonetti.Merb 2.0, due within a year, will feature optimization in how requests are served and also target rapid prototyping.
posted on November 19, 2008 05:05:00 pm
Toshiba sets high storage capacity for small drives
Toshiba Storage Division? announced a breakthrough half-terabyte hard disk drive in a 2.5-inch form factor on Wednesday.The mini-drive is targeted for inclusion in mobile devices by OEMs.?The high-capacity drives are expected to enhance the capabilities and thus the interest in the new class of sub- and mini-notebooks coming into the market.Toshiba Model MKxx55GSX? will most likely also be included in game consoles and printers.The drive might also be designed as an external storage devices if an OEM is willing to wrap a plastic shell around the drive, add a connector like USB, and sell it as an external storage device. Weighing only 3.6 ounces as produced by Toshiba even with the additional weight of an external shell, the device could be easily packed in carry-on luggage.Although the units will ship in volume in December, OEMs may not have products incorporating the devices until the spring.The Serial-ATA 2-platter drive features 8MB of buffer memory, 3Gbps transfer rate, and a rotational speed of 5,400 RPM.Additional drives using the same form factor in the product line will include 400GB, 320GB, 250GB, 160GB, and 120GB models.
posted on November 19, 2008 04:06:10 pm
How much does spam cost you? Google will calculate
How much is spam costing your company? Google unveiled a nifty little calculator Wednesday to help you add it up.It's part of a marketing campaign for Google Message Security, the online spam-filtering service based on the Postini technology Google acquired last year. "We know in these tougher economic times that companies are trying to figure out how they can save," said Adam Dawes, a Google product manager.[ Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]To figure out the cost of spam, you enter things like the number of workers at your company, how much you pay them, how much spam they have to deal with, and presto: Google figures out how many days (and dollars) in lost productivity this represents. Of course it also tells you how long it would take for Google's service to pay for itself at your shop.For companies doing their spam-fighting in-house, there's also a "Total Cost of Ownership" calculator to show how inexpensive Google thinks its service really is.Last year, Nucleus Research reported that spam costs U.S. companies $712 per employee each year. A $31,000-per-year employee spending 16 seconds each on 21 spam messages per day would cost about this much, according to Google's calculator. That adds up to about $70 billion per year in lost productivity, Nucleus said.While Google may be helping people figure out how much spam costs, the company could do a thing or two to lower spam itself, said Richard Cox, chief information officer with the Spamhaus antispam group.He would like to see Google do more to block spammers from using Gmail service and to start including the IP addresses of Gmail senders in its message headers. "If you could see how many anonymous Gmail drop boxes are being used as the registration addresses for domains that are being used in spam, you'd understand just how much this is costing the community," he said of Gmail spam.
posted on November 19, 2008 03:43:29 pm
Microsoft, Novell eye Moonlight beta, system management
Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.The November 2006 agreement has had the two companies cooperating in having Microsoft offer Suse Linux support certificates from Novell and agree not to sue each other's customers over intellectual property issues. Some have protested that the agreement legitimized Microsoft's claims that Linux violates its patents.[ For a two-year retrospective on the agreement, featuring comments from Microsoft, Novell and an opponent of the arrangement, see The Microsoft-Novell Linux deal: Two years later. ]But the two companies are marching on with the two milestones. Moonlight is an open-source implementation of Silverlight, offering Linux users high-definition media capabilities, according to a Microsoft representative. The project is being shepherded by Novell.Moonlight will be provided as an open-source plug-in for the Firefox Web browser, Microsoft and Novell said. The first source code for the project was released in May. The beta release will be available free of charge.Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 is due the first half of 2009.Microsoft and Novell have collaborated on systems management to ease customers' management tasks associated with mixed IT environments, Microsoft and Novell said. Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise extends cross-platform Linux monitoring capability of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. It enables management of Windows and Linux servers from a single console.In another development in the open-source realm, Yahoo said this week that its BrowserPlus Web development technology will be offered in an open-source manner.BrowserPlus features a plugin framework for building Web applications that contain desktop capabilities. It can be extended with JavaScript APIs to access desktop facilities."By releasing BrowserPlus as an open source project, Yahoo will enable open development on the platform for in-browser desktop applications across the Web," a Yahoo representative said. "This will allow developers to rapidly extend the platform in a distributed fashion. Yahoo's hope is that community contributions and review will ensure BrowserPlus stays a secure, robust platform running on all popular operating systems and browsers."Yahoo said that the two-year-old project was a failure in some respects. The company had been looking to uncover innovative ideas in native clients applications and massage them into reusable client libraries. Yahoo was extracting good solutions to problems with wide appeal and making them easy for anyone in the company to apply, Yahoo said."At the end of our two-year run we had many C++ libraries, which ran on every operating system under the sun, to perform tasks ranging from the mundane (say, logging) to the exotic. To our dismay, we didn't have client teams all over Yahoo scrambling to use the stuff we built. We did, however, learn a lot from this experience," Lloyd Hilailel, of the Yahoo BrowserPlus team, said in a statement.
posted on November 19, 2008 01:42:09 pm
Update: SAP slashes NetWeaver developer subscription price
Citing the weak economy, SAP has cut the cost of developer subscriptions for its NetWeaver platform by roughly 50 percent, according to a post this week on an official company blog.SAP began offering individual developer subscriptions for the technology about a year ago, in an apparent effort to draw additional interest. The company has been trying to move customers still on older systems onto NetWeaver-based platforms like ERP 6.0, and also working to resolve an SAP skills shortage in the job market.[ Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]"You may be curious as to the reasons behind this reduction," wrote Claudine Lagerholm, senior product manager for SAP Developer Network subscriptions, on Monday. "Since the launch, many of you have been vocal about the subscriptions program, particularly how it should evolve over time, the geographical expansion needed, and to some extent the pricing. We've heard some subscribers say that they've received a great deal of value for the money; however, we've also received feedback from others that the financial burden for individual subscribers was rather high.""As you are all aware, the economic landscape has changed very drastically in the last few months, so we've decided now was a good time to adjust the pricing," she added.NetWeaver Development License subscriptions now cost $1,170 and €1,071, down from $2,300 and €2,082.50. A lesser-featured NetWeaver Composition License is now priced at $520 and €476, a reduction from $1,100 and €1,011.50.The reduced-cost subscription package includes the same features and components as before, Lagerholm wrote. Customers who signed up or renewed on or after Sept. 1 will get a six-month extension to compensate for the price change.Subscriptions are still only available to users in Germany and the United States. SAP is not ready to give a date for other country launches, Lagerholm said.SAP's move brought a thumbs-up from the U.K.-based SAP consulting firm Pixelbase. "On the whole a very good move by SAP, enabling more developers to gain access to the full dev suite at a much reduced price," states a post on the company's blog. "The only remaining fly in the ointment now is the restriction to Germany and the US."Additional comment from SAP could not immediately be obtained on Wednesday.SAP made the right call in dropping the subscription rates, said Jon Reed, an independent analyst who monitors SAP skills trends and runs the Web site JonERP.com."The issue is that they want more people using this [technology]," Reed said. "I think at the pricing levels they had before, it was a little more cost-prohibitive for the individual who might benefit most from this kind of thing."Changes in the overall IT landscape are also affecting how proprietary platform vendors market their development tools, Reed added: "You have this whole open source Internet culture that feels you shouldn't have to pay to be a developer for a company."This story was updated on Nov. 19, 2008.
posted on November 19, 2008 01:23:17 pm
Ballmer: Yahoo acquisition won't happen
A change at the helm of Yahoo won't revive a Microsoft takeover offer, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said during the company's annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday."Acquisition discussions are finished," he said.[ For complete coverage of the Microsoft-Yahoo merger talks, see InfoWorld's special report. | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]But he continues to leave the door open to another sort of deal with Yahoo. Microsoft is still interested in doing some sort of search collaboration deal, as it proposed before negotiations between the companies fell apart.On Monday, Yahoo announced that CEO Jerry Yang intends to step down from that role after the company finishes its search for a successor. Yang has been heavily criticized for his resistance to Microsoft's takeover offer earlier this year. Yang will continue to remain on the board.Microsoft executives, including Bill Gates who appeared for the first time at an annual shareholders meeting since his transition to working for Microsoft only part time, discussed a wide range of other subjects during the meeting.Ballmer hinted that Windows 7, the next iteration of the operating system, could come next year. The company hasn't nailed down an exact timeframe for its availability but Ballmer referred to the release of Windows 7 "in the year ahead."Ballmer described the earnings growth the company experienced this year, but warned that the economic downturn will pose challenges in the future. "Our industry and our company won't be immune," he said."We are looking at every aspect of our business to reduce costs," he said. That involves a close inspection of all aspects of the business that can be run more efficiently and includes slower growth particularly in headcount for the rest of the financial year and even into the next year, he said. Microsoft has recently denied an official hiring freeze, despite reports from employees who say they've been told that open positions were being reconsidered and no new positions would be created.Microsoft advised against and shareholders voted down a couple of proposals that would have required the company to do more to protect freedom of speech rights in countries with oppressive governments and refuse to work with such governments to identify Internet users. Formal policies would do more than Microsoft's recently announced involvement in a group that has defined a code of conduct related to freedom of expression, said Larry Dohrs of Newground Social Investment who presented the proposal at the meeting. That agreement contains too many loopholes that let companies like Microsoft circumvent or ignore its commitments, he said.China is notorious for its censorship of the Internet and for its harsh reaction to people who speak against the government online. But Microsoft sees great potential in China, despite that and heavy piracy rates in the country. While two to three years ago Microsoft saw a significant reduction in piracy rates in China, it hasn't seen the same level of progress in the past year, said Brad Smith, general counsel at Microsoft.But the sheer size of the market makes it promising if the industry can stamp out piracy. "It will maybe take some patience but China looks like a bigger net opportunity for the company since they're not participating as fully as we'd like in the market because of piracy but it's an upside that hopefully we can realize over time," Ballmer said.
posted on November 19, 2008 01:13:52 pm
Microsoft launches Dynamics NAV 2009 ERP
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, the latest generation of one of the company's midmarket ERP products, will be generally available Dec. 1 in 14 countries, the company said Wednesday at its Convergence conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.The release features a "role tailored" design that fine-tunes the system for a given employee's needs and job responsibilities. NAV 2009 also includes a range of BI (business intelligence) features employees can use to analyze data as well as .Net Web Services, for connecting Dynamics with other applications and functionality, such as a credit check system.[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]Also Wednesday, Microsoft plans to announce:-- eService Accelerator, a new feature for Dynamics CRM 4.0 that will be available by the end of the year. It enables companies to provide Web-based, self-service features for customers, cutting down on call center costs. The accelerator is compatible with a customer's existing Web portal or a prebuilt one from Microsoft.-- New peer networking features for the Microsoft Dynamics Community Web site. Members of the site will be able to search the community according to factors like industry and location.Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 will be generally available on Dec. 1 in the following countries: U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada (in English and French), Denmark, France, Germany, India (in English), Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. Microsoft plans to announce availability in 28 more markets over time."It's a major release for the NAV customers," said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang. The combination of the role-tailored user design -- which is already featured in Microsoft's Dynamics AX ERP product -- along with the new BI capabilities, "is really where applications are moving," he added.But Microsoft is still not ready to embrace another major trend of late -- on-demand enterprise software -- for its ERP lineup, although it did launch an on-demand CRM product earlier this year."Running an on-demand business is a lot different than running an on-premises software business," said Chris Caren, general manager of product management and marketing for Microsoft Dynamics, in a recent interview. "We feel good about the [ERP] business model. We have a great partner channel to help us sell to market and deploy the software. ERP is a lot harder than CRM to host. With CRM, one application can serve much broader needs."
posted on November 19, 2008 11:07:24 am
ISO publishes Office Open XML specification
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the specification for a Microsoft-created file format that caused bitter debate during its path to become an international standard.The documentation for Office Open XML (OOXML) runs 7,228 pages and can be ordered on CD from the ISO for 342 Swiss francs ($285). The specification is named ISO/IEC DIS 29500:2008.[ Microsoft isn't the only productivity suite in town; see how rivals Google Docs, Zoho, OpenOffice, and IBM stack up in InfoWorld's "Test Center's review: Office killers pack some heat" ]Microsoft won a hard-fought battle in April when the ISO announced enough countries voted to approve OOXML as an international standard.OOXML was opposed by many on grounds it was unneeded, as software makers could use OpenDocument Format (ODF), a less complicated office software format that was already an international standard.The debate became so embittered that IBM, which backs ODF, threatened in September to consider leaving standards bodies that allowed dominant companies such as Microsoft to wield what it perceived as undue influence. Microsoft was accused of leaning on countries in order to secure enough votes for OOXML to pass.OOXML's publication means software developers can begin implementing the specifications into their products for free. Some developers have already used parts of OOXML in their products, mostly to operate better with other Microsoft software.Microsoft uses a version of OOXML in its Office 2007 productivity suite. Company officials have indicated that future software products would adhere to the ISO-approved OOXML specification.The ISO said the specification "is intended to be implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms."
posted on November 19, 2008 10:27:06 am
Windows HPC hits top 10 among supercomputers
Microsoft on Tuesday hit another high-performance computing milestone by placing its server for the first time in the top 10 on the list of the Top 500 supercomputers as judged by Top500.org.Just a year ago, the best Microsoft could do was 116th place based on rankings from Top500.org, which has been benchmarking supercomputers since 1993 with its bi-annual tests it calls "runs."[ Read more on how pressure from Microsoft is affecting the HPC market. And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]Windows HPC Server 2008, a 64-bit system that shipped Nov. 1, came in at No. 10, achieving 180.6 teraflops with 77.5 percent efficiency at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Dawning Information Industry Co.Despite the high ranking, Microsoft's biggest high-performance computing challenge is likely in front of the vendor -- creating easy-to-use developer tools for writing applications for the platform.The company's HPC strategy is to simplify high-end computing by cutting cost and complexity, and surrounding the platform with Microsoft's collection of applications, management wares, development tools, and independent software vendor (ISV) community.Microsoft currently lays claim to less than 5 percent of HPC server market revenue, according to IDC. Those numbers compare with 74 percent for Linux and just over 21 percent for Unix variants.In addition, competitors such as Red Hat have been offering its Enterprise Linux for HPC Compute Nodes since last year. IBM is also in the mix and Sun late last year re-entered the HPC fray with its Constellation System.The next major milestone for Microsoft will come in the next year when it releases Visual Studio 2010, which was introduced last month at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and includes features that make it easier to design for parallel computing."The importance that development tools play in all of this can't be overestimated," says Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT. "The money and the effort Microsoft is putting into developing Visual Studio and other tools is really critical to making this work. Clustered systems have been around quite a bit, but one reason Linux has been such a popular platform is due to the complexity of writing for environments and the easy customization of Linux allowed people in the know to get in there and design, build and tweak the system to maximize performance."One of the HPC-related features coming in Visual Studio 2010 is .Net Parallel Extensions, which is designed to exempt developers from having to have specialized knowledge to write parallel code. Also included for transitioning to parallel code are Task Parallel Library, Parallel LINQ, and Coordination Data Structures for managed code.Microsoft also released a preview last month of its F# language, which is a specialty language that will help developers to easily write parallel code.Microsoft has added an SOA broker to HPC Server 2008 to aid in running cluster-enabled applications and the vendors has doubled in the past year the number of ISVs committed to its HPC platform.With the release of HPC Server 2008 a few weeks ago, Microsoft also offered an academic version priced at $15 per node to generate interest. By comparison, a commercial license runs $450 per node.Microsoft also recently unveiled a hardware-software partnership with Cray on the CX1 "personal" supercomputer aimed at financial services, aerospace, automotive, academia, and life sciences priced at $25,000.Microsoft also has plans to include IT in the equation. The company integrated its System Center tools for application-level monitoring and rapid provisioning by releasing on Oct. 29 the HPC Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager."The big discussion here is around productivity," says Vince Mendillo, director of the HPC division at Microsoft. "It's not an OS play. We are bringing to bear all the technology to take productivity up a notch for information workers, scientists, financial analysts, and others."Microsoft is betting users such as engineers will combine workflows running on their Windows workstations with Windows-based back-end HPC clusters, or move those workloads off the desktop altogether and into an HPC infrastructure.Microsoft also envisions such desktop/back-end combinations as Excel users performing a function call from their desktop that in the background executes an agent that runs some computational algorithms on a networked HPC cluster and returns an answer. The user would have no concept of the back end tied to Excel, which is widely used in financial services.Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
posted on November 19, 2008 09:02:49 am
CA unveils simplified suite, SaaS portfolio
CA this week introduced a slew of product enhancements that industry watchers say reflect how enterprise IT executives want to buy management software now: as integrated bundles and via subscription.The company, while hosting 5,000 attendees at its CA World 2008 conference in Las Vegas this week, unveiled upgrades across several product suites and expanded its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings by hosting more management applications and adopting subscription pricing options. Industry watchers says the company's move toward advanced integration -- to the point of selling the applications as a cohesive package -- shows CA hears customer complaints and is working to address them.[ For more news from CA World 2008, see "CA to discuss 'Mainframe 2.0'." And keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]"CA is simplifying how companies can buy integrated capabilities. Instead of buying four different CA products, you have one package that incorporates the four products, you get everything at a lower per-user price point and you get the package implemented in a standardized way," says Jasmine Noel, a principal analyst at Ptak, Noel and Associates.For instance, CA Service Desk Manager 12 unifies service desk, change management, configuration management database, application dependency mapping, knowledge management, remote support automation and reporting capabilities. The product should help customers looking to adopt best-practices and move away from ad hoc tasks to more streamlined processes."Customers are starting to buy all products related to a specific process, such as incident management, from a single vendor," Noel says. "Customers are shifting from a task-based approach to managing IT to a process-based approach. They don't want to deal with integrating a bunch of task-based tools into a cohesive solution supporting a repeatable process."CA has incorporated new features into the bundled product as well. Now the software includes role-based user interfaces based on the ITIL best practice framework that can be personalized depending on an individual's position. It also features a change management schedule that lets all users of the application see scheduled changes in a calendar view to better assess potential impact and minimize downtime due to changes. And the software now segregates data, processes and roles in a multi-tenancy manner to reflect IT support organizations that service multiple internal and external customers, CA says."We simplified the licensing of the product and included playbooks that detail repeatable methodologies based on years of experience to help companies support ITIL or other best practice frameworks," says Kathy Shoop, vice president of CA Service Management.Scheduled to be available in December, Service Desk Manager 12 will be priced "as an attractive upgrade for existing customers" of the previously stand-alone applications that are now bundled together.CA gets SaaS-yCA also announced at the conference that it will broaden its SaaS offerings with the release of Clarity PPM (Project & Portfolio Manager) On Demand, a hosted pay-per-use version of the vendor's Clarity PPM 12 enterprise project management software. This release marks the third application CA delivers via a SaaS model -- the other two being CA GRC Manager On Demand and CA Instant Recovery On Demand -- and company officials say a hosted services model currently works for more than 1,000 customers worldwide."Customers don't want to operate a lot of infrastructure and don't have the staff to learn new management applications or the time to maintain them," says Jules Ehrlich, senior vice president of CA On Demand. "It provides a rapid time to value for customers and frees them from worrying about how to operate the application technically."The appeal of SaaS is amplified with the current economic climate, but industry watchers argue management software is an ideal candidate for hands-off implementation. That's why CA -- along with competitors HP, IBM and BMC -- has ramped up its efforts in this market. According to Forrester Research, SaaS makes up a little more than 1 percent of the $18 billion IT management software market in 2008. But by 2013, the research firm estimates SaaS will represent 10% of the same market."Incumbent software vendors are setting up new business units and adding SaaS offerings to existing portfolios," Forrester's "How big is SaaS in IT management Software?" report reads.The management heavyweights are on-board with the delivery model to ease deployment and maintenance of their suites, but still analysts say they will be challenged to compete with pure-play SaaS offerings."It will take more time and commitment from these vendors to replace their existing product architectures with a more typical SaaS-facing solution -- one that is truly multitenant, billable based on usage and with a Web 2.0-style user interface," the report reads.Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate
posted on November 19, 2008 08:34:18 am
Zend adds Flash links to PHP
Concentrating on rich Internet applications, Zend Technologies is backing Adobe's Action Message Format (AMF) in Zend Framework 1.7.Version 1.7 is the latest release of the company's framework for building PHP Web applications; it is being announced at the Adobe Max 2008 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. With AMF support, PHP developers can exchange data between PHP applications on a server and Flex and Flash applications on the client.[ For more about Adobe Max, see "Adobe accommodates Visual Studio, Eclipse" ]"It makes it much easier to develop [Adobe] Flex and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) applications in PHP," said Wil Sinclair, development manager in the advanced technologies group at Zend.Other features in Zend Framework 1.7 include performance enhancements to increase load times by 25 to 50 percent, the company said. Also featured is a native DB2 adapter to access DB2/400 data on the IBM i platform and an update to the Dojo AJAX toolkit, including a new dijit editor. Also, Zend will offer integration with the jQuery AJAX library, although Zend has chosen Dojo as its supported JavaScript library.Version 1.7 supports Twitter, in which Twitter can be used within a Zend-based application instead of requiring the Twitter interface.With the upcoming Zend Framework 1.8 release due in early 2009, Zend will focus on RAD (rapid application development) to build applications more easily. Tools such as a command line interface tool will be provided.Zend Framework 1.7 is available for download here.
posted on November 19, 2008 08:00:00 am
Asustek to launch iMac rival
Asustek Computer plans to launch an all-in-one PC built into a monitor designed to rival Apple's iMac on Thursday at a news conference in Taipei, according to a company e-mail.The Eee Top, apparently the new name for what Asus once called the Eee Monitor, will sport a slender 15.9-inch touchscreen, use Microsoft Windows XP, and have an 1.6GHz Intel Atom microprocessor inside.[ Asustek scored a hit with its ultra-light $199 Eee PC; will the Eee Top duplicate that success? | Get the analysis and insights that only Randall C. Kennedy can provide on PC tech in InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blog. And download our free Windows performance-monitoring tool. ]Asustek has already listed two versions of the Eee Top on its Web site, the ET1603 and the ET1602.The ET1603 is clearly designed to be a more expensive device. It boasts an ATI HD3450 graphics card and has a battery, apparently to make it easy to carry around. The device weighs 4.4 kilograms, according to Asustek.The ET1602 does not include a specialized graphics card nor battery, but most of the rest of its specifications are the same as the other model, with 160GB hard disk drive, 1GB of DRAM, wireless Internet capability via Wi-Fi 802.11n, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, two 4-watt speakers, and several choices of ports, including USB and three audio ports.Pricing and availability are not yet known, but the make-up of the devices suggests a low price tag. In an interview earlier this year, Asustek CEO Jerry Shen said the all-in-one PC would be a low-price device.The components on the two Eee Tops are certainly not expensive by PC standards. They are similar to the parts used in netbooks, including the same microprocessor and OS.Apple's iMac, by contrast, is a high-end device running on a 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo inside either a 20- or 24-inch screen.Dell offers an all-in-one PC in monitor more similar to the iMac in its XPS One, which also comes in 20- or 24-inch screen sizes and Intel Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad microprocessors.The devices are priced similarly as well, with an iMac starting at $1,199 and the XPS One at $999.
posted on November 19, 2008 06:33:24 am
Sun adds query analysis tool to MySQL Enterprise
Sun has upgraded MySQL Enterprise, its subscription-based service for the open-source MySQL database, adding access to a query analysis tool for tracking and fixing problematic code and performance issues.The tool allows users to perform real-time analysis of "all queries across all servers," as well as search and sort them according to metrics such as content, date/time, and query type, according to Sun.[ InfoWorld's bloggers take a hard look at recent developments with Sun in "Should Apple aquire Sun Microsystems?" and "Sun shines dimly in Big Blue's shadow" | Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog. ]MySQL users can already investigate poor query performance through the database's "slow query" log, but the new tool makes the process much more efficient, said Rob Young, senior product manager for MySQL Enterprise.One analyst said the tool is a welcome addition to the service, but not groundbreaking."MySQL Query Analyzer is just one of many ways in which MySQL is playing catch-up with more mature DBMS products," said Curt Monash, founder of Monash Research, via e-mail. "It should be helpful to smaller enterprises that do their reporting on MySQL."The tool has been integrated with MySQL Enterprise Monitor, which helps database administrators track the health of their servers.Subscribers to the MySQL Enterprise service get monthly software updates, service packs each quarter and "emergency hot fix builds," as well as 24-7 support.The updated service is scheduled to be available within a month. Pricing ranges from $599 to $4,999 per server per year, or as an "unlimited site-wide agreement" that starts at $40,000 per year. Sun is also offering free 30-day trial subscriptions.The company, which announced it was laying off up to 6,000 employees last week, is banking increasingly on software assets like MySQL as its high-end server business continues to struggle.
posted on November 19, 2008 06:16:11 am

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