Green Hills Software in Santa Barbara, Calif., is introducing runtime- and software-development tools for the IBM Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA), which is a multicore processor that includes a 64-bit Power Architecture processor (PPE) core and eight synergistic processor (SPE) cores that is appropriate for applications like digital signal processing (DSP), graphics, and similar complex computational tasks.

Software developers can use the eight co-processors in the CBEA for parallel vector processing. Green Hills CBEA support includes the Integrity real-time operating system (RTOS) with 16 megabytes of page size; middleware with GHS CBEA API, file systems, network stack, backplane networking, standard POSIX system interfaces, and optimizing C/C++/EC++ compilers and optimized runtime libraries for the PPE and all the SPEs.

The Green Hills software tools also come withy the company’s MULTI development environment; JTAG probe; overlay management system for partitioning and running large tasks; run mode debug server; stop-mode debug server; and tools to visualize and debug large-scale heterogeneous multicore systems, including system-wide breakpoints that enable the developer to halt tasks on all CBEA and non-CBEA cores.

Source:http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2012/02/software-tools-for-cbea-power-architecture-based-microprocessor-introduced-by-green-hills.html

Ornate embellishments on cabinetry are one of the top 10 trends in kitchen design. “Gone are the days when cabinets were unembellished boxes,” says Better Homes & Gardens. “Today’s most interesting styles take their finishing touches from furniture and architecture.” No wonder software makers are adding wood component libraries to their design applications.

The latest is KCD Software, which has added Classic Designs by Matthew Burak’s library of furniture components to its cabinet and closet software suite.

Classic Designs, located in St. Johnsbury, VT, offers a wide array of made-to-order wood components from table legs to columns and bun feet, which are shipped ready-to-finish. Founded in 1995 by cabinetmaker Matthew Burak, Classic Designs’ numerous table leg styles range from turned to tapered.

Sustainable business practices are also an important aspect of Classic Design’s philosophy. It adapted an existing, abandoned structure into its manufacturing facility and supports the Hardwood Forestry Fund, which establishes sustainable forests.

With the integration of Classic Design’s catalog into KCD’s software suite, cabinet designers can choose from an extensive list of antique style furniture legs, columns, custom turnings, bun feet, corbels, brackets, among other items.

KCD has also included the catalogs of other furniture component companies into its Cabinet/Closet Software suite, including White River, Adams Wood Products and Osborne Wood. The incorporation of these libraries like the one from Classic Designs into offers cabinetmakers a way to find affordable choices in furniture components and ornate embellishments.

“Having product libraries included in your design software saves time and money,” says John Murphy, founder of KCD Software. With KCD’s built-in feature, cabinetmakers can choose from product lists and easily show a 3-D rendered image complete with embellished details to its customer. Other features include actual countertop colors, floorings and wallpapers, as well as all elevations, floorplans, photo-realistic 3-D and birds-eye-view.

Source:http://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/articles/woodworking-machinery-technology/Wood-Component-Catalogs-In-Cabinet-Design-Software-136279653.html?ref=653

Perten supplies online NIR sensors for a wide range of applications, and now offers the NIRView process monitoring software.
With NIRView the measurements from the NIR sensor are presented graphically to operators in real-time, giving instant knowledge of the process.

NIRView shows trend charts as well as currently measured values. Each constituent measured is presented in a separate graph, with up to 8 graphs displayed simultaneously.

Chart timelines are fully user selectable, and it is easy to add upper/lower control limits and specification limits.

Additional features include reports, alarms, recipe handling and more. The reports feature provides a number of statistics such as min, max and process capability indexes, calculated per constituent and presented in a table.

Source:http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/perten-offers-nir-process-monitoring-software-12540.html

Magic Software Enterprises, a global provider of mobile and cloud- enabled application and business integration platforms, announced that Shlomo Sixt, the Israel-based company involved in private and commercial operational car leasing, rental, and sales, has chosen Magic Software’s uniPaaS application platform to develop a mobile system for managing the fleet of vehicles used by its fieldworkers.

According to a release, the software was developed by the Shlomo Group IT department using the uniPaaS platform, which supports application deployment on multiple device types and mobile operating systems from a single development effort.

The new system enables company employees to use their smartphones to manage in real time the process of car delivery and return, including recording the exact location and condition of the vehicles, and also to integrate the data with other back-end systems.

“Thanks to the uniPaaS application platform and the close support provided by Magic Software, we were able to develop a complex system in a short amount of time and with a relatively small development team,” said Yuval Shani, manager of the Shlomo Group IT department.

Shlomo Sixt has been involved in operational leasing for many years. It provides a full suite of services targeted at commercial customers, including service and maintenance, road services, car replacement, fleet management, insurance, 24/7 call center, and more.

Magic Software Enterprises is a global provider of mobile and cloud-enabled application and business integration platforms.

Source:http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=298572

Oracle’s Fusion Applications are finally generally available to all customers, the company announced Wednesday at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco as part of the most extensive public demonstration of the long-awaited software to date.
Fusion Applications are the result of a massive engineering effort spanning more than six years. They constitute a superset of the best elements of Oracle’s JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel systems, along with a theme of “pervasive” BI (business intelligence) throughout the user experience.

Oracle wants to make upgrading to Fusion “a business-value-driven decision rather than a vendor-forced decision” for customers, said Steve Miranda, senior vice president of application development, during a keynote on Wednesday.

They will be made available in on-premises, hosted and SaaS (software-as-a-service) form, but some details of the latter option, including subscription pricing information, haven’t yet been released. The same codebase is used for all versions, meaning customers can switch as their needs change, Miranda said.

For some time, Oracle has discussed how its installed base can “coexist” with Fusion Applications, running the new software side-by-side. This week at OpenWorld, Oracle announced a series of “coexistence processes” that tie various E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel applications with like-featured Fusion modules.

Oracle’s strategy is pragmatic for a number of reasons. One, a more aggressive attempt to push upgrades could frighten or anger customers who are heavily invested in older Oracle software suites. Secondly, Oracle will continue to collect lucrative maintenance dollars from those users even if they don’t move to Fusion.

Also, Fusion Applications are still new, and after years of delays getting them to market, Oracle is probably happy to have a relatively small number of customers check out version 1.0, so any final kinks can be worked out before the software is sold at significant scale.

In the meantime, on Wednesday Oracle sought to dazzle customers with Fusion Applications’ new capabilities.

Oracle spent a lot of time talking to customers to figure out how best to embed BI within the Fusion experience, according to Miranda.

“We really want to change the way people think about BI,” Miranda said. It’s not just dashboards, KPIs and metrics. It’s sometimes just simple things you need to move your job forward.”

He showed how a manager working inside a Fusion human-resources application could mull whether a solid employee would leave the company by visually drilling into her personnel file to find historical pay-increase and promotion information and contrasting that with performance reviews. The manager could then initiate a salary bump or promotion process directly from the same workflow.

Fusion Applications will also target two of the hotter areas in enterprise software of late: social media and mobility.

Enterprise applications being built today have to follow a new set of rules thanks to the usability of today’s consumer Web services and sites, Miranda argued.

“All of us in this room expect search to work in a certain fashion,” he said. “We all know and expect how the [Web] shopping experience should work. And we all know how it should work and feel in the context of mobile applications.”

All Fusion Applications are available on the iPad through its Safari browser, but Oracle has also developed a native iPad interface called Fusion Tap, which was demonstrated during the keynote.

The embedded social components of Fusion are “similar to what you might see on a personal social site … with a couple of key differences,” Miranda said. For one, they are secure, and secondly, “it’s not just person-to-person interaction, it’s person-to-business.”

For example, a salesperson could have any changes to an account they work on fed to them as updates.

Oracle ran through a number of scenarios with the social-software components, which bore some resemblance in form and function to Salesforce.com’s Chatter.

Also demonstrated was Fusion Applications’ extensibility layer, which anyone from business users to developers can use to make tweaks to the software.

“We pushed the envelope from customization to configuration,” Miranda said.

It was especially important to have a robust configuration layer given the on-demand versions of Fusion, he added. “One of the table stakes as you move to SaaS applications is the ability to tailor.”

Oracle CRM (customer relationship management) chief Anthony Lye demonstrated how users could build reports on the fly “within the browser, at runtime,” and then add them to their homepages or share them with others.

“I didn’t need to ask IT, it didn’t need to take six months,” he said. Users can do with Fusion “what I can do in my Yahoo or my iGoogle.”

Some 400 early adopter Fusion customers and partners were at the show, all wearing red vests. “We couldn’t have built this release without our customers. It was very customer-driven,” Miranda said.

A number of customers joined Miranda onstage to share their experiences and rationale for adopting Fusion Applications.

Principal Financial Group is “very good at managing our financial resources and we wanted to apply the same level of rigor and analysis to our human resources,” said Kathleen Souhrada, assistant vice president of recruiting and diversity. The company believes Fusion’s HR software “could deliver a more holistic view” of metrics and data and improve the company’s understanding of employee performance, she added.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is one of the world’s fastest-growing companies, said CIO Jim Prevo. “It presents some really interesting challenges. We had 2,000 people last year, 5,000 this year, and we’re adding about 50 a week.” Green Mountain is also opening new plants and a slew of new production lines, he said.

The company had a number of CRM applications, and given its “desire to stick our toe in the Fusion waters,” decided to implement Fusion CRM, Prevo said. The system will “align the sales forces and let them talk off the same database.”

Source:http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/241175/oracle_fusion_applications_are_finally_generally_available.html

Thermo Scientific’s Iteva Precision software integrates with the Thermo Scientific Icap 6000 series of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometers (ICP-OES) to deliver analytical results.

Designed for the metallurgy industry, the module is claimed to enhance the Thermo Scientific Iteva software by delivering a simple workflow for high-precision analysis, with real-time data processing using the bracketing standards approach.

According to Thermo Scientific, ICP-OES is a popular elemental analysis technique due to its rapid, robust and multi-element capabilities.

It can, however, be challenging to analyse elements in samples of high financial value, or with analytes at high-percentage concentrations on a daily basis.

The Iteva Precision software module is designed to meet this challenge by using bracketing algorithms (as stipulated by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) for data processing) to generate high-quality ISO-compliant data in real-time.

Thermo Scientific claims that Iteva’s automated data processing capability makes external calculations unnecessary and eliminates the potential for human transcription errors associated with performing manual off-line calculations.

The software module is also able to perform required post-run data reprocessing without re-analysing samples, thus accelerating workflows and conserving high-value samples.

Multi-language support is offered, including English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

Source:http://www.laboratorytalk.com/news/thb/thb360.html

SCADA Software Suite – Wizcon for Windows and Internet

SCADA Wizcon for Windows and Internet

WIzcon is a fully integrated open SCADA architecture software suite, combining Operator interface, Supervisory control, Soft logic, Web technology and Information Systems interface.

Designed to deliver secured business intelligence in Real Time over the Web using standard Web browsers.

SCADA Wizcon Benefits

* Web Technology – Wizcon is fully web enabled allowing remote access to the SCADA reporting through a secure connection.

* Fault Tolerant Reliability – Ensured data integrity both in real time and historical archives through a hot backup system.

* Database and ODBC connectivity – Simple to use access to Microsoft Access databases as well as a user choice function for optional databases.

* Soft PLC, ETHERNET and OPC Connectivity – Over 150 serial and ethernet drivers are inbuilt into the software suite providing connectivity to multiple hardware platforms.

* Online development – The application can be updated and amended online without the need for a shutdown process.

* Easy import of existing drawings – Save application development time of graphical images by importing existing drawings from AutoCAD DXF and Windows metafile format files

Features of Wizcon SCADA Systems Suite

* Develop Windows and Internet Applications

* Support HTML, JAVA, XML and ASP

* Control process from Windows or Internet browsers

* On-line engineering

* High resolution vector graphics editor

* Pre-drawn objects and symbol library

* Alarm notifications with time and date stamp

* Historical data with time and date stamp

* Control and scheduling procedural language

* Macro commands

* Free format production and management reports

* Historical analysis of data loggers

* Historical analysis of alarms and events logger

* Trends, Bar-Graphs and XY Charts

* Recipes manager and batch control

Source:http://www.ferret.com.au/c/Conlab/SCADA-Software-from-Conlab-p17843

Security developers are one of the two software sectors most likely to write insecure code, an analysis of applications submitted to code-testing outfit Veracode has found.

According to the company’s State of Software Security (SOSS) Report volume three, 72 per cent of security software and services applications seen by the company were deemed ‘unacceptable’ on the first analysis of their code, a result that was ahead of only one sector, customer support, which failed 82 per cent of the time.

For comparison, the financial sector failed only 52 per cent of the time, with the score across all development sectors, including internal, bespoke and commercial developers, being a mediocre 58 per cent.

Veracode first published the SOSS in mid-2009, since when it has updated the analysis every six months based on the accumulated number of applications submitted by its customers. That total now stands at 4,385, of which 13 per cent are security-related.

On a positive note, security vendors were the best sector at fixing the flaws, with an average remediation time of only three days.

The findings might count as surprising if it weren’t for a recent spate of security woes suffered by companies in the sector, including RSA Security, HBGary Federal, Comodo, and Barracuda Networks, the report’s authors note.

Two security flaws that can commonly afflict web applications remain about as common as they were in the two previous SOSS reports, which suggests a deeper complacency in the developer community.

60 per cent of web applications are affected by easily-fixed cross-site scripting (XSS) flaws, a number that has remained static since Q1 2009. SQL injection flaws have improved somewhat over time, but are still currently around the 30 per cent mark.

“When you consider these statistics in the context of the ever strengthening threat environment these application security weaknesses translate into real and present danger for the risk-free operation of your software infrastructure,” say the authors.

Where the services offered by Veracode and companies like it first into this environment is interesting. The company sells its ability to detect security problems in code, mainly using an automated mixture of ’static’ and ‘dynamic’ analysis. It is clear, however, that many of the problems it detects would not be there at all were developers to adopt better security review during the stage applications are planned and written.

Source:http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/383816/security_apps_full_common_software_flaws_report_finds/

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) will have problems getting traction from the lower-level software enterprise. It faces obstacles in major spheres of software like operating system, database, software for internal IT management, data management and securities transaction processing system.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a set of capabilities and engagement models in the IT industry,particularly in the emerging world of cloud computing. Question has been raised earlier, “Is SaaS a truly disruptive technology?” Moreover, some new and emerging software products like blog and wiki platforms began as SaaS products with no disruption of existing vendors. Speculations were made that SaaS will only be a disruptive force in software products that make up about 25 percent of the total global software market, especially in customer relationship management, human resource management, IT management, and security software, Forrester said.

SaaS is raiding in mature application areas such as SCM (supply change management), particularly when the customer hasn’t already purchased such functionality from an on-premises vendor. Products where SaaS has taken hold of at least 50 percent of revenue amount to only 3 percent of the total software market. In other categories, SaaS is now “the majority model for software sales and delivery,” the report states. Those include e-purchasing, expense reporting tools, and blogging and wiki platforms. The emergence of new product variants has also given SaaS vendors who sell them a chance to mature while legacy players catch up.

SaaS is typically billed on a subscription basis and is generally considered easier for a customer to migrate away from than an on-premises product, a situation compounded by the fact that many SaaS contracts are year-to-year.

On the contrary, the likes of SAP and Oracle are now moving quickly to bring more SaaS products to market, particularly for their largest customers. SAP is planning to deliver a series of add-on SaaS extensions for its Business Suite software, while Oracle has said its upcoming Fusion Applications will be available in SaaS form according to the taste of customers.

Source:http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/SaaS_inappropriate_for_major_software_applications_Forrester-nid-78469.html

Diamond Sierra Software, a developer of application monitoring and diagnostics software, announced today the immediate release of their Paul Bunyan 3.0 software product. The core benefit of version 3.0 is support for Windows 7 and Server 2008 64 bit. Additional support for .NET 3.5 Framework is also included in this release. Paul Bunyan 3.0 is designed to help businesses (1) increase the performance of their mission critical applications and systems and (2) improve the software development process by providing real-time performance monitoring and notification of errors or slow-downs.

“Our current customers have saved considerable time and money with Paul Bunyan” says Teo Leonard, VP of Sales and Marketing. “Using real-time analysis and notification enables them to identify and correct problems immediately, rather than by customer complaints hours later. One customer was able to detect a performance glitch and double performance in less than an hour”.

Software providers can improve service to their customers through the use of Paul Bunyan 3.0. Real-time monitoring and analysis of systems enables businesses with custom Windows applications to decrease downtime and optimize technical personnel by quickly identifying and correcting performance problems. Performance problems can jeopardize the customer relationship by leading to slow-downs, down-time, and incomplete business transactions.

Paul Bunyan 3.0 is available immediately via download on the company’s Web site at www.diamondsierra.com. Paul Bunyan 3.0 runs on Microsoft Windows 2000 and above including support for windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 x64. It provides for easy integration into: C, C++, C#, .NET, VB, Java, SQL, batch files, shell scripts, and more.

Source:http://www.openpr.com/news/160715/Diamond-Sierra-Releases-Paul-Bunyan-3-0-Software-A-Comprehensive-Applications-Development-Monitoring-Tool.html

Industry observers have found that applications for Android smartphones had increased significantly since October last year. According AndroidLib site, as quoted by Yahoo News, on Saturday (01/01/2011), more than 100 thousand applications are already available in Android Market. Even sites that track such statistics Android found that in November, Google’s platform has reached approximately 24 thousand new applications in November, while this month there are approximately 26 thousand new applications.

Compared to the number of applications on Apple’s AppStore is now a total of 300 thousand, this figure is still too small. Even 40 thousand between applications in the AppStore this can only be opened on the iPad. But the growth of Android apps is quite rapid recall in March and July, the successive application only has a row of 30 thousand to 70 thousand applications. In addition to the store application, the Windows Phone 7 also showed significant growth. In the past two months since Windows 7 Phone application store launched, of 5,000 applications have been crowded into the store. Well this is a very good news for them.

“In other words, Windows 7 Phone gets faster than Android. Windows only took two months to have approximately 5000 applications from 10 devices across 30 countries in the world,” said director of applications development software firm IDC, Al Hilwa.

Source:-http://homedailynews.com/windows-7-applications-keep-rockin/2015/

ORSYP, a provider of IT Operations Management solutions and services, announced it will be attending the HP Software Universe 2010 in Barcelona this month as a member of the HP ISV Marketplace Referral Program.

According to ORSYP, HP Software Universe Barcelona 2010 will provide the opportunity to meet and hear from HP executives and keynote speakers, focusing on business and technical industry topics.

ORSYP, a Silver Sponsor of the event, will be exhibiting their solutions to conference attendees. Jordi Serras Marques, Director of Presales will be hosting a technical session on December 2 at 9 a.m.

The session, titled “On Earth or in the Cloud: HP’s recommended solution for Job Scheduling and Workload Automation with ORSYP”, will demonstrate how IT Operations can widen the supervision scope of HP Operations Manager (OM) to include workload automation and ensure that service levels are met through advanced job scheduling features under the control of HP Operations Manager. ORSYP’s Smart Plug-In for HP OM provides deep visibility into operational enterprise job scheduling across all applications and platforms.

Source:http://cable.tmcnet.com/news/2010/11/30/5164110.htm

Delivering extended hypervisor support for both VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as application infrastructure management for Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange, the Company said vFoglight 6.5 provides increased automation of virtual infrastructures, delivering on the promise of virtualization: simplifying VMware management to increase efficiency to drive lower costs. Download a free 30-day trial of vFoglight.

As our infrastructures become increasingly complex and we move critical applications to virtual infrastructures, it was becoming a challenge for us to keep control and understand performance and capacity-related metrics,” said Chadd Warwick, a systems architect with CSS Hosted Systems. “vFoglight answered those critical needs for me. In a single tool, I can manage the virtual layer and get visibility “up the stack” into our infrastructure and applications. It’s much simpler and has been a quick ROI for us.”

Mary Johnston Turner, research director, system management software for IDC, said, “As the number of production applications and workloads running on virtual servers increases, IT teams reach a point where traditional configuration, provisioning, monitoring and optimization tools can’t scale to keep up with the dynamic needs of these environments. Our research indicates that effective virtualized data center operations require more integrated and automated workflows plus real time end-to-end performance visibility to adequately manage these resources. vFoglight 6.5 directly targets these requirements.”

Source:http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/qsft_quest-software-rolls-out-vfoglight-1332667.html

A software application firm has teamed up with the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany to extend an ancillary course in the enterprise resource planning application to students in emerging market countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, EMEA, allowing them to obtain an official SAP certification.

The students are expected to be trained in several courses for 10 days. The courses will offer up to 300 participants the chance to acquire valuable SAP competencies during the period in Germany. This will enable the students to enhance their career opportunities in emerging markets with strong demand for qualified SAP professionals.

The Learning materials and tutorial support will be provided completely online via e-learning through the University while the final certificate examination will be held by SAP Education on site at local SAP training centers.

The training is designed to provide participants with broad, well-founded knowledge of SAP ERP, its core business processes and their operational interrelations.

Heimo Adelsberger, head of the department, Production and Operations Management, Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems at the University, explained that theoretical knowledge is put into practice and further deepened by means of case studies on integrated business process scenarios that participants carry out independently in the SAP system, which according to him, enables them to use and reinforce their training and fundamentally understand the system’s integration within complex business processes.

“After the successful completion of all case studies, participants receive a course certificate from the University of Duisburg-Essen. It emphasizes the practical application of know-how in addition to theoretical and methodical knowledge,” said Adelsberger.

Source:http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/11/12/5134201.htm

Hot on the heels of the public break-up between GPS giant Garmin and handset maker ASUS, the navigation company has announced that it will still work with the

Taiwanese handset providing its GPS software and some location-based service applications on select ASUS, Android handsets.

The exact verbiage of the statement looks like this:

Source:http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/27/garmin-to-offer-navigation-software-exclusively-on-asus-for-android-coming-to-blackberry-ios-with-free-app/

BTX Technologies, a distributor and manufacturer of interface and integration products, today announced a major update to its free Pro Plate and Panel Designer software.

To make it easier than ever for customers to configure, specify, and order the company’s professional line of custom wall plates and panels, the software solution has been bolstered with a convenient new quoting feature, powerful alignment and connector distribution tools, and more than 100 new connector symbols in its drag-and-drop library.

For cleaner and more professional plate designs, the software also features new, easy-to-use alignment and rectangle tools, as well as a new connector “Distribution” tool that allows users to evenly space connectors across a panel by specifying where the first and last connector should be positioned.

The software does all the work.

Furthermore, the addition of 100 new connector symbols located in the drag-and-drop library makes it easier to design the custom wall plates and panels.
BTX Pro Plate and Panel Designer Software

BTX designed its plate and panel software to complement the company’s bolstered in-house wall plate and panel manufacturing capabilities.

The company’s goal is to provide an ordering and configuration application that is so simple that anyone – from administrator to engineer – can start using it within a matter of minutes.

Users simply drag a wall plate or rack panel from BTX’s extensive product library and then start designing and configuring.

Connector options appear in an easy-to-navigate menu and users simply drag and drop their choices to the desired spot on the plate or panel.

Optional engraving may also be added if desired.

Once an item number and quote have been generated, users may conveniently place an order right from the software.

Source:http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/btx-plate-panel-designer-software

Cloud Computing – and indeed the whole concept of “Software as a Service” – is continuing to grow in popularity. Already, these new Web-based models of software distribution are completely transforming the way in which companies access and store their business-critical applications and data.

With traditional “off-the-shelf” software packages, an application is normally installed on the company’s main server, and then on each computer in the office. With the SaaS model, however, key business applications are typically stored and accessed securely from a central, off-site location, often referred to as “the cloud”.

One key benefit of cloud computing focuses on the IT infrastructure itself; a strong SaaS provider will have highly sophisticated systems that offer a much greater level of resilience than most businesses could ever create for themselves.

As a result, as long as a reputable SaaS vendor is chosen, businesses will be much more resilient to failure, and their business continuity plans will be much stronger. In fact, companies should view the switch to SaaS as a perfect opportunity to undertake a comprehensive review of their existing policies and procedures in this area.

Companies considering cloud computing need to make sure that they understand how to retrieve their data from the SaaS provider if/when necessary, and should also check whether their data will be returned in an accessible format that will allow them to return to normal operations.

Other things to consider should include a thorough check of the provider’s indemnity cover in case of any problems, as well as a careful review of any Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure they meet the business’ service needs and that they are heavily UK focused.

With so many clear benefits, cloud computing and the use of a robust SaaS solution can make it much easier for an organisation to continue operating if it suffers a disaster, since all of the key applications and services being delivered via SaaS will continue to run automatically, and in accordance with the company’s business continuity plan.

Source:http://www.supplychaindigital.com/blogs/editor/increasing-popularity-cloud-computing

Azul Systems this week began what may turn out to be an orderly retreat from its high-priced high-maintenance hardware – appliances based on ever so chi-chi many-core proprietary chips and 10 rounds of VC funding that tops $200 million.

By fielding software that runs on 64-bit garden-variety x86 commodity servers and does essentially the same thing as its six-year-old Vega boxes, which is to tickle the performance of ye ole stodgy, garbage collection-constricted Java applications, the company could wind up in the arms of some sugar daddy with a fat pocketbook.

The software is the Zing stuff Azul said it was developing over the summer and now it’s here, an elastic runtime platform for all kinds of configurations of Java apps, especially those high-volume ones like web portals, trading platforms and e-commerce web sites, where response times just might be important.

And since we live in cloud times it’s only natural that the stuff is supposed to be optimized for virtualized and cloud environments, making Java-in-the-cloud and Platform-as-a-Service offerings practical.

The trick is in virtualizing the Java runtime in a Zing VM and liberating Java from the underlying operating system.

Under Zing’s tutelage Java apps are supposed to run better virtualized than not, which is odd since virtualization and its added complexities and overhead isn’t, well, isn’t Java’s cup of tea.

The widgetry currently supports VMware’s ESX Server and Red Hat’s KVM hypervisor. Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen will follow.

By eliminating those consarn garbage collection pauses with their unpredictable responses that limit scalability, Java application instances are supposed to dynamically scale in real-time and under peak loads to dozens of CPU cores and hundreds of gigabytes of memory.

Normally words like this aren’t used in the same sentence but Zing can accommodate a heap size of up to 1TB.

And because it uses larger, highly elastic JVMs, Azul says 90% fewer Java instances are needed for application throughput, response time and availability requirements. That implies 5x-10x server consolidation.

Azul claims Zing has sustained consistent service levels while carrying 18 times as many concurrent users and simultaneously improving response times by seven times in comparative tests of a commonly deployed portal workload.

The software is reportedly 100%-compatible with existing infrastructure and applications and won’t require any operating system, virtualization or application coding changes.

Included in what is called the Zing Platform is a DTrace kinda thing called Zing Vision that Azul describes as a “zero-overhead” – well, that’s what they say – always-on production-time diagnostic and monitoring tool administrators can use to diagnose application problems in production, reduce tuning iterations and shorten development lifecycles.

There’s also a Just-in-Time Java compiler and a Resource Controller console for centralized monitoring and management.

Source:http://www.sys-con.com/node/1580751

Offering integrated application acceleration capabilities to its customers, Radware announced the availability of its Alteon OS 27 software.

According to the company, this new release decreases latency and server hardware costs.

Alteon Application Switch Series 4-5 provide breakthrough performance, advanced application acceleration capabilities and on-demand scalability needed to effectively meet contemporary network and business needs, stated Radware in a press release.

To better address server performance issues, response time bottlenecks and security risks, customers deploying the Alteon series 4 and 5 will be able to experience a wide range of application acceleration capabilities including SSL offloading, web compression, caching, HTTP multiplexing and TCP optimization with Radware’s Alteon OS 27.

Minimizing the need for additional investment in hardware to support application processing requirements and thus, further decreasing costs, this will free server CPUs to handle additional requests.

“Application acceleration capabilities in the datacenter are essential to ensure the smooth working of mission critical applications,” said Nir Ilani, product marketing director of Application Delivery at Radware.

“Additionally, these capabilities have greater importance in virtual data centers where applications suffer from increased latency caused by a virtualized infrastructure.

Alteon switches reduce application latency and improve the QoE of virtual and non-virtual applications.”

End-users will benefit from enhanced QoE as a result of faster response times and accelerated web browsing with the deployment of OS 27 on the Alteon series 4 and 5.

Allowing customers to scale up though a simple software license upgrade, Radware’s Alteon 4 and 5 series based on Radware’s OnDemand platform delivers on demand scalability in throughput and services.

Recently, the company introduced its Virtual Application Delivery Infrastructure (VADI) Strategy in a bid to bring full agility and efficiency of virtualization to application delivery solutions.

The company was exploring ways to aid its customers, avoiding the pitfalls of transitioning from a fully physical environment to a hybrid or fully virtual data center.

The efforts resulted in Radware’s VADI, which easily transforms computing resources.

Source:http://dns.tmcnet.com/topics/internet-security/articles/108434-radware-releases-alteon-os-27-software.htm

NASA has teamed with Harvard University to set up a virtual lab where software programmers can compete with each other to create NASA system applications.

According to NASA, the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL) will let software developers compete to create a winning application, as measured by internal code quality, performance against benchmarks, and the ability to be integrated into NASA systems.

All member activities are tracked in real-time and performance statistics are made available for all to see.

There will be a Web site that offers a town square with discussion boards to review code and a wiki to share information.

The competition will provide the researchers with a finished software solution at a lower cost than if they hired an individual developer or team, NASA stated,

Through Harvard the NTL will conduct basic research on the appropriate contest design parameters.

This will enable the routine use of innovation tournaments as a problem solving approach within NASA and the public.

Harvard will collaborate with TopCoder, a company that administers contests in software architecture and development, to manage and conduct the tournaments.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/67467