Open Source News Desk

Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Mark Hinkle – Citrix Systems

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) just four months away, what better time to start introducing you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses...?

Open Source CloudStack 3.0 Is Coming

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:30:00 EST

Over the last year I have been working on the CloudStack Open Source Cloud Computing project. This month we are getting ready to launch CloudStack 3.0 which really raises the bar for cloud computing platforms. So what is CloudStack? It is an infrastructure-as-a-service(IaaS) platform that orchestrates virtualized servers into an elastic compute environment.

Red Hat Sets Up GlusterFS Advisory Board

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:00:00 EST

Red Hat Storage (née Gluster) has recruited open source experts at Facebook, OpenStack and Eucalyptus for an independent GlusterFS advisory board meant to push the open source GlusterFS project and foster contributions and participation from third-party sys admins, developers and ISVs. Board members include chairman John Mark Walker, GlusterFS Community Manager at Red Hat; GlusterFS project co-founder Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy; Facebook storage engineer Richard Wareing; Citrix Xen engineer and OpenStack core contributor Ewan Mellor; Citrix CloudStack community manager and Fedora advisory board member David Nalley; Picture Marketing senior system administrator Louis Zuckerman; Ed Wyse Beauty Products senior system administrator Joe Julian; Red Hat Filesystem engineer and HekaFS project founder Jeff Darcy, and Eucalyptus community VP Greg DeKoenigsberg. Walker said, “We have established this advisory board to help ensure the future success of GlusterFS and facilitate communication between community members and the project. Each of these board members was selected based on their past contributions to GlusterFS or their standing in related communities.” Examples of items that will be voted on soon include approval or modifications of the board charter, approval of new initiatives for GlusterFS and approval of release schedules and roadmaps.

CloudLinux Announces Support for Atomia

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:30:00 EST

CloudLinux, Inc., developers of the only commercially-supported Linux server operating system made specifically for shared hosting, today announced that CloudLinux OS is now fully compatible with the Atomia software automation platform. "Now, Atomia customers can easily upgrade their operating system to CloudLinux OS greatly enhancing the security and efficiency of their shared hosting businesses," said Igor Seletskiy, CloudLinux CEO. "Better control over computing resources leads to a better overall customer experience and results in lower churn." CloudLinux cages each user account within its own Lightweight Virtual Environment (LVE), allowing system administrators to limit CPU, memory, and the concurrent connections available to each server tenant. LVE effectively prevents the "bad neighbor effect," wherein one tenant can slow or take down an entire server. By limiting abuse, shared hosters can substantially increase server density, bringing far greater efficiency to their business.

Cloud Expo Speaker Profile: Sheng Liang - Citrix

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:00:00 EST

With Cloud Expo Silicon Valley (9th Cloud Expo) starting today Monday November 7 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let's introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the conference... We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT?

Early Bird Registration Savings for Cloud Expo New York to Expire Friday

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:45:00 EDT

Cloud Expo New York, June 6-9, 2011 early bird registration will expire on Friday. Register now for a Gold Pass for the 8th International Cloud Expo on June 6–9, 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City and save $500 on your full conference pass. Gold Pass Delegates will receive full conference access for four days to all conference sessions at Cloud Computing Conference & Expo as well as the Virtualization Conference & Expo June 6-9. Gold Pass registration includes: lunch on Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Welcome Reception on Day 1, and refreshment breaks, collectible conference bag and access to all conference sessions including all technical sessions, the exhibit floor, keynotes, vendor technology presentations, Cloud Computing Bootcamp and SYS-CON.TV Power Panels.

Cloud Computing: Rackspace Acquires Anso Labs

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:45:00 EST

"This acquisition marks a significant step forward in our investment in the success of OpenStack," wrote OpenStack's GM Jim Curry Wednesday as he confirmed that Rackspace has acquired Anso Labs, best known for its work with NASA to help build their Nebula cloud platform, the code behind which NASA contributed to the open source community as the basis for OpenStack Compute last summer.

OpenNebula Selected as the Most Popular Cloud Management Toolkit

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 07:00:00 EST

In July 2010 the StratusLab project conducted two surveys to collect requirements for the StratusLab cloud distribution and to understand the existing experience with virtualization/cloud technologies in Europe. Funded through the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), StratusLab is a two year project aimed to successfully integrate ‘cloud computing' technologies into ‘grid' infrastructures. The survey results are presented in project deliverable D2.1 Review of the Use of Cloud and Virtualization Technologies in Grid Infrastructures. The project conducted two online surveys, one aimed at system administrators and the other at users. Over two-thirds of sysadmins, and over three-quarters of users surveyed intend to use cloud. Perhaps more surprisingly, over one third of both groups are already using cloud technologies right now. The most popular public clouds are Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine, while OpenNebula is the most popular open source tool for cloud computing management.

Putin Says "Da" to Free Software

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:15:00 EST

A few months back, in a story mostly about Microsoft’s complicated relationship with the Russian government and its seemingly dualistic role in the ongoing suppression of various free speech and human rights organizations, we also surfaced contemporaneous reports in the Russian language media about an indigenous, government-funded Linux initiative, called Linuksovskaya. The new “national operating system” was reported to be on an aggressive schedule and expected to be released some time in 2012. Fresh reports this week from inside the country now indicate that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is now personally involved in making sure that happens in the second quarter and that by 2015 the whole government is running on free software.

Eucalyptus & Red Hat: The Cloud’s New Best Friends

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:30:00 EST

Eucalyptus Systems and Red Hat are now partners. Red Hat has a lot of cloud ambitions and delivers the infrastructure but it doesn’t have a cloud platform. Eucalyptus has an open source-based private cloud platform that does the heavy lifting and provides the cloud’s signature elasticity.

Unix Copyrights Will Remain with Novell

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:00:00 EST

It took Novell more than two days after the announcement that it's being bought for its chief marketing officer John Dragoon to say on the company's web site that Novell's Unix copyrights will stay with Novell. God knows it wasn't answering the phone. What Dragoon says still means control passes to Attachmate's owners and it is still unclear what control Microsoft has over them - considering the acquisition seems to have Microsoft's fingerprints all over it - or how interested Attachmate might be in preserving those rights against SCO, whose case still exists. Oral argument in its appeal of the jury decision award Unix ownership to Novell will be heard January 20.

CA Revs 3Tera AppLogic

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:00:00 EDT

Having had 3Tera in its possession since February, CA Technologies has revved its AppLogic turnkey cloud infrastructure widgetry and come out with a 2.9 platform to broad its appeal. It's supposed to let cloud-minded managed service providers or large enterprise themselves look like Amazon, Rackspace or Azure by creating composite business services with all the tools needed for an application to run, including optimized infrastructure, configurations, software, code and data. Customers are now supposed to be able to build cloud infrastructure in as little as four hours, and use a "drag and drop" model-driven catalog of reusable applications - out of the "build once, reuse many times" school - to rapidly compose, deploy and manage complex online applications, significantly reducing time-to-market for new business services.

New Owner of Novell Might Be Cloud Expo Sponsor VMware

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 03:15:00 EDT

Who is buying Novell? The Wall Street Journal is reporting that VMware is in talks to acquire Novell's Linux software unit. Novell, adds the Journal, is in "advanced talks with at least two buyers." VMware's primary interest would be in purchasing Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business, experts agree.

OpenNebula Selected to Build a EU-funded Multi-site Cloud

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:45:00 EDT

The OpenNebula Project has just announced that OpenNebula has been selected as cloud management tool for the EU's BonFIRE project. OpenNebula will provide this new strategic European project with a powerful technology to build and operate a multi-site cloud facility to support applications, services and systems research targeting the Internet of Services community within the Future Internet.

Oracle Rolls Over & Smothers OpenSolaris

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:00:00 EDT

Oracle has apparently rolled back Solaris to its pre-open source days. The company hasn’t made an official announcement, and may never, but an internal e-mail ostensibly to its own remaining Solaris engineers outlining its position on OpenSolaris just happened to fall into the hands of OpenSolaris contributor Steven Stallion last Friday. He posted it under the headline “OpenSolaris is Dead.”

OpenSolaris Forks in Defiance of Oracle

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EDT

In case Oracle takes it into its head to abandon or shut down OpenSolaris, a bunch of disgruntled developers led by Nexenta Systems Inc. means to ensure the open source code survives and prospers under a breakaway project independent of Oracle called Illumos, whose rebel flag reads “Hope and Light Spring Anew.”

Rackspace Wants to Define the Cloud

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EDT

Rackspace Hosting wants to be the one that defines the public and private commodity cloud, denying bigger competitors the chance to do it. So the other day – in the name of fostering standards, ensuring cloud interoperability and defeating vendor lock-in – it set in play OpenStack, an open source cloud platform to which it immediately contributed the code to its Cloud Files Amazon S2-like storage widgetry and promised to kick in its Amazon EC2-like Cloud Servers code once it’s ready.

Building Hybrid Clouds with OpenNebula and Deltacloud

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:00:00 EDT

OpenNebula has just released a Deltacloud adaptor to build Hybrid Clouds. A Hybrid Cloud is an extension of a Private Cloud to combine local resources with resources from one or several remote Cloud providers. The remote provider could be a commercial Cloud service or a partner private infrastructure running a different OpenNebula instance. Hybrid Cloud computing functionality enables the building of cloudbursting and cloud federation scenarios.

Clustrix Emerges from Stealth with Highy Scalable Database Solution

Sat, 08 May 2010 02:00:00 EDT

Founded by Isilon founder Paul Mikesell and Sergei Tsarev, who led the Internet Operations Systems Infrastructure team at AOL, San Francisco-based Clustrix emerged from stealth mode today and announced the Clustrix CLX 4010, a highly scalable database solution that addresses the infrastructure scalability challenges facing Internet companies, enterprises, and cloud service providers. The new appliance brings to database administrators the best of both worlds: the high-performance, high-scalability of NoSQL key value stores and the relational, ACID-compliant and robust functionality of SQL while providing drop-in interoperability with the MySQL protocol. They are targeting sites such as social media, photo sharing, gaming, and travel. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), and ATA Ventures. Their website went live today and you can check it out here: http://www.clustrix.com.

Abiquo Launches Thunderflash at Cloud Expo

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:53:00 EDT

New Site Open for Free Search and Download from Thousands of Virtual Machine Images for any Hypervisor, Speeding the Deployment of Virtualization and Cloud Computing. The virtual machine images available through Thunderflash are vitally important to IT professionals, as they contain pre-installed operating systems, applications and other tools, which can then be deployed as a unit in one simple operation. Such images can save IT professionals hours of valuable time building and configuring application servers from the ground-up. Thunderflash's advanced searching tools allow for the selection of exactly the right virtual machine image, which can then be directly download, enabling new application servers to be deployed in a fraction of the usual time.

Gosling Out of Oracle

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:38:00 EDT

James Gosling, acknowledged as the father of Java, has left Oracle, apparently unable or unwilling to make the transition from Sun. In a blog post Friday he said he resigned on April 2, the Friday before. His only comment on why he left was more provocative than explanatory. “As to why I left,” he wrote, “it’s difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I’ve had the privilege to work with over the years.”

IBM Reads Orwell’s “1984,” Tries Rewriting History

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:30:00 EDT

Once the news got out that it had welched on its 2005 patent pledge to the open source community and had threatened TurboHercules (TH) with patent infringement, IBM had to come up with some cover story or another to contain the fallout. So it switched places with many of its observers and turned conspiracy theorist, accusing Turbo Hercules of guilt by association. Besides calling TurboHercules a couple of dirty names - a stock response to any threats to its monopoly in order to scare away its rivals' customers...

Cloud Expo Sponsor OpSource Helps European Companies to Comply

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EDT

OpSource, the leader in SaaS hosting and enterprise cloud, and Irish declaration customs management software developer ABM Data Systems have teamed together to help companies easily fulfill new excise goods movement requirements for European companies. The combination of CustomsWare's enterprise-class customs declaration management and OpSource On-Demand's powerful, SAS-70 Type II audited infrastructure provides both manufacturing and logistics service businesses with a flexible, secure and cost-effective solution for their customs declaration management needs.

Novell Rejects Elliott’s $2 Billion Bid

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EDT

Novell broke its 18-day silence late Saturday morning and rejected the unsolicited $5.75-a-share offer to take the company private that Elliott Associates plunked on the table March 2. Novell wants more money. Bearing in mind that Novell currently has close to a billion dollars in the bank that Elliott would theoretically get, Novell calls the offer “inadequate” and claims it “undervalues the company’s franchise and growth prospects.”

Memcached Goes Commercial

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:45:00 EDT

Described as optimized for web applications and cloud computing, NorthScale's solution is already being leveraged by web properties such as Zynga’s FarmVille, Café World, Mafia Wars and other games that have over 235 million active users a month as well as Korea’s number one search portal, Naver.com, a $1.2 billion operation.

SpringSource Gets Insight

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST

Now seven months under VMware’s wing, SpringSource trundled out tc Server Spring Edition Wednesday. It’s advertised as the best place to build and run Spring applications because of the end-to-end visibility that SpringSource has added to the thing not only for the Java developer, but for the poor neglected admin, giving them both tools to manage the health, performance and quality of their Spring apps. VP of product management Shaun Connolly says, “We’ve knocked down the brick wall between the admin and the developer.”

$2 Billion Offered for Novell

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST

After Wall Street closed yesterday, Elliott Associates LP, a hedge fund with $16 billion under management, made a reportedly unsolicited bid to buy Novell, the Linux operating system’s lackluster number two champion, for what looks like about $2 billion and take it private. It’s offering $5.75 a share cash, a 20% premium over Novell’s $4.75 closing price Tuesday.

Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the 2010 "We're Linux" video contest. The contest seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it.

‘Save MySQL from Oracle’ Petition Delivered to 3 Antitrust Regulators

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST

MySQL creator Monty Widenius’ petition to stop Oracle from getting the MySQL open source database along with Sun Microsystems collected more than 14,000 signatures before Widenius started circulating the results to “regulators, governmental bodies, parliaments and journalists” in the wee hours of Monday morning European time. According to campaign organizer Florian Mueller, “The numbers collected so far are phenomenal given the holiday season in large parts of the market. They will go up a lot in the days to come further dwarfing whatever Oracle has presented.”

Rackspace Teams with MySQL-Toting DaaS Start-up

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST

The Rackspace Cloud, Rackspace Hosting’s cloud computing unit, has added FathomDB, a MySQL-based Database-as-a-Service (DaaS) start-up, to its ecosystem. FathomDB is now built on Rackspace Cloud’s standards-based API. FathomDB claims to have helped start the DaaS industry by offering an interactive user interface and analytics engine to support relational databases in the cloud initially on EC2 and S3. 10 favorite Time Wasters from 2009 to kick off your 2010 gaming! I've played some of them & yes they [...]

View Cloud Power Panel on SYS-CON.TV Live From Times Square

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

View the live panel discussion taped on December 8, 2009 at SYS-CON.TV's 4th-floor studio overlooking Times Square in New York City a very special "Power Panel" in which Cloud Computing Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan and three top industry guests from EMC, Intel and Unisys will be looking “under the hood” of the fastest-growing new trend in all of Enterprise IT – Cloud Computing.

Most Popular Computer Language Keywords

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:13:00 EST

Koders.com issued a summary of the most popular computer language keywords, files and projects used by developers in December, 2009. Analyzing search engine trends in a number of different computer languages, the "12 Days of Code Search" is based on hundreds of thousands of searches and downloads performed by thousands of users. Results were compiled and analyzed by Black Duck Software, the leading provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software at enterprise scale.

Enterprise BI: Snaplogic and Mindtouch Team Up

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

Sophisticated and advanced analytics tools that can strategically aggregate relevant data is key to the success of every business. The right solution can be challenging to find considering that we grab information from a multitude of platforms today – enterprise, web, social networks, SAAS, you name it. Snaplogic and Mindtouch have decided to combine their respective offerings in a package that they call Business Application Integrations (BAI) which they say will work out cheaper to meet enterprise integration requirements for medium sized businesses.

EclipseCon Submissions

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Oisín Hurley is one of the smartest, funniest and best looking people in the Eclipse community*. So when he says jump, I jump. That's right it is the last day to get your EclipseCon submission for a talk in. If you have been doing anything interesting with BIRT that you would like to share with the Eclipse community, we would love to hear about it. There are lots of opportunities to present at different lengths. Head on over to the EclipseCon submission site and make a proposal about how you are using BIRT. *And totally immune to blatant attempts at flattery.

MySQL Marks a Milestone

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:45:00 EST

The MySQL developer community has announced "a Milestone release", 5.5.0 of the popular open source, relational database software. The release it says are of beta quality but leaves scope for more frequent subsets releases of tested functionality akin to JBoss and OpenSuse who follow a similar release model. Users are encouraged to test the MySQL Server 5.5.0-m2, code-named "Betony" but are also cautioned that MySQL Server 5.5-M2 isn't production ready yet .

Oracle Claims Victory Over EC; Says Sun Will Sell Clouds

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

Oracle expects the European Commission to wave its acquisition of Sun through next month MySQL and all without any annoying conditions. Oracle president Safra Catz, who’s been wrestling with the EC, said so when the company posted its fiscal second-quarter results Thursday, another reason Oracle’s going to have a Merry Christmas. Catz took a bunch of Oracle users to an EC hearing a week ago to buttress the company’s claims that the EC had put words in users’ mouths to support the theory of harm it manufactured to try to stop Oracle from getting MySQL. Catz took a bunch of Oracle users to an EC hearing a week ago to buttress the company’s claims that the EC had put words in users’ mouths to support the theory of harm it manufactured to try to stop Oracle from getting MySQL.

Sun Unveils Cloud Computing Security Tools

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:15:00 EST

As part of its overall strategy to help customers and partners build public and private clouds that are open and interoperable, Sun Microsystems on Thursdsay unveiled innovative open source cloud security capabilities and announced support for the latest Security Guidance from the Cloud Security Alliance. Sun is steadfast in its commitment to providing best practices and technologies that help users safeguard their critical data in the enterprise and in the cloud.

Continuous Integration in Cloud Computing

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Continuous Integration topic launched today on Ulitzer. Continuous integration describes a set of software engineering practices that speed up the delivery of software by decreasing integration times. Ulitzer is a "new media" social journalism platform that revolutionizes how we create, deliver, and consume content on the Web. Ulitzer authors can get started with their first article in a few minutes and may start a new "Topic" on any subject or write a story and post it both to their Ulitzer author page and to any existing Ulitzer topic.

Alfresco Moves CMS to Cloud Computing

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:15:00 EST

Alfresco Software open source enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, and RightScale, cloud computing management, announced the availability of a joint solution that speeds deployment time and automates scaling of Alfresco software in the cloud. Utilizing RightScale's software-as-a-service (SAAS) cloud management platform, it is now even easier for content management software (CMS) users to implement, manage and scale Alfresco's open source ECM solution in the cloud.

Black Duck Software Expands on Code Search Functions

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST

Black Duck Software has launched a code search technology called Black Duck Code Sight to provide advanced search capabilities to developers. BlackDuck is a company that facilitates open source software management for client companies. It recently re-launched Koders.com ;a free search site for open source code which gives access to over 2.4 billion lines of code, written in 33 languages.