SYS-CON's Readers' Choice Awards program, widely considered to be the most prestigious award program in the software industry, is a community-driven process in which the products participating in the program are nominated by the industry's vendors, customers, and users, as well as by the readers of SYS-CON Media's industry-leading i-technology publications.

Scalix, a Linux e-mail, calendaring and messaging company, has released Scalix 11.2, with new features to support hosted multi-tenant environments, the latest Linux servers, and enhanced Microsoft Outlook facilities for mobile devices. Scalix 11.2 allows application service providers (ASPs) to host multiple customers on a single Scalix server.

Concurrent's NightStar LX debugging and analysis toolkit is now available for two additional Linux distributions - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and openSUSE 10.2 from Novell. NightStar is an integrated Qt-based GUI tool set for developing and tuning time-critical 32-bit and 64-bit applications on x86 systems. NightStar tools reduce test time, increase productivity and lower development costs.

Interface21 has partnered with Tasktop Technologies, creators of the Eclipse Mylyn project, to develop the Spring Tool Suite. This new Spring-specific tool solution will build on Eclipse and Mylyn to dramatically reduce the complexity of enterprise Java application development and maintenance.

MySQL AB has plans to optimize the MySQL Enterprise Server for the SAP NetWeaver platform. MySQL and SAP AG also announced that the sales and support of the MaxDB database will revert back to SAP, in order to unify the product's development, distribution, and support under one organization.

MySQL AB has announced that the Swedish National Police are implementing an enterprise-wide project for building all future IT systems on an open source software (OSS) infrastructure based upon Linux, MySQL, and JBoss. Several existing systems are currently being migrated and all future projects will be developed on this OSS foundation.

An international development team has announced the first official release of ProjectPier. Based on widely accepted technologies like PHP and MySQL, ProjectPier offers an open source collaboration solution that can be installed on any shared hosting server within minutes.

A company's decision to contribute to open source projects is usually business-driven. This article offers a review of the top reasons that can influence your company to contribute source code to open source or to start new open source projects.

Open source software continues to gain momentum worldwide. Low costs, high quality, and unprecedented flexibility make more and more IT decision makers favor open source over traditional packaged software. Access to bug tracking systems, development team discussions, test approaches - all the background details previously off-limits - help create software that's not only cheaper, but better, and aligned with organizational needs.

From a commercial open source company's point-of-view, open source is ideally the ultimate in 'grass roots' marketing where people learn about the project by word-of-mouth and where they volunteer their time and effort, resulting in a vibrant community that benefits the company in many ways.

The OpenVZ project has announced availability of its operating system (OS) server virtualization software as a modified version of the CentOS 4.4 bootable Live CD so that users can test drive the OpenVZ software without changes to their computer or installing anything on their hard disk.

Those swinging doors that grace the office of the head of marketing at Red Hat have slapped another exiting executive in the fanny. Old-time Unix veteran Tim Yeaton, senior VP of marketing, has been replaced by Michael Chen, seconded over from Red Hat China, where he was general manager, to be VP of corporate marketing. He reports to CEO Matthew Szulik and will work out of Red Hat's headquarters in North Carolina.

OpenAjax Alliance, an organization dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable AJAX-based Web technologies, has revealed new initiatives for secure mashups and mobile AJAX, as well as a new white paper on AJAX security.

OpenLogic Exchange is designed for enterprises that want to use open source software. Today, enterprise developers must comb through massive repositories trying to find the short list of open source products that are viable and appropriate for their enterprise needs. Standard rating schemes used on most sites can be vulnerable to 'ballet box stuffing' by project proponents or competitors.

OpenAjax Alliance has revealed new initiatives for secure mashups and mobile AJAX, as well as a new white paper on AJAX security. As AJAX and mashups continue to gain widespread acceptance under the Web 2.0 umbrella, it is critical for organizations to understand these threats and to avoid them by adhering to some best practices.

A year ago I wrote 'Howells Ten Rules for Open Source Marketing.' At Alfresco we believed that open source was different and needed a different marketing model. Geoffrey Moore was at the root of our thinking when he wrote about 'Darwin and the Demon' and markets being ripe for disruption in the form of marketing and business model disruption. We saw that there was no 'cookie cutter,' standard approach and tried to blend our experience in growing large successful enterprise software companies with some best principles from marketing visionaries such as Geoffrey Moore, who had a massive influence on all of us from Documentum.

IBM has announced 'a suite of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.' In other words, a rival to Microsoft Office. Symphony is available starting yesterday.

In the early days the sheer novelty of open source software being free had a certain allure. But actually using it meant dealing with myriad technical and support issues - more than enough to make the price tag of commercial enterprise software worthwhile. Fortunately, that's changed.

Zenoss, Inc., a commercial open source IT management company, has added a direct integration with Google Maps and struck a business agreement with Google, Inc., that makes real-time, geographical visualization of the health of distributed IT infrastructure available through Zenoss Core, its free, open source software product. This offering brings network management capabilities to the masses.

I will be attending the Ajax World Conference next week in Santa Clara. I will also be at the opening reception on Monday and the conference party on Tuesday. Over the weekend Jesse Liberty blogged about this as well 'If you are going to be at AJAXWorld, look for me on Twitter, and let's see if we can set up a meeting or a lunch.' Other faculty members, according to the Ajax World website, who will be at these parties include...

ActiveGrid, Inc., a provider of Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions, has announced the acquisition of the TurboAJAX Group, a provider of JavaScript components built on the Dojo Toolkit. The TurboAJAX Group provides components for the creation of AJAX-style Web applications.The TurboAJAX founders are key contributors to the Dojo project. With this acquisition, ActiveGrid has agreed to be a contributor to the Dojo Foundation with the intention of increasing its contribution to the open source Dojo Toolkit.

Open-Xchange has announced a new strategic partnership with Hostpoint AG in which Hostpoint will replace the webmailer for their 250,000 e-mail accounts with a new webmail module from Open-Xchange, which uses an innovative AJAX Web interface to deliver new features and improved usability. Hostpoint will also offer additional Open-Xchange modules enabling users to upgrade to a full-featured collaboration solution.

Spanair is utilizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux in two of the company's major projects. The airline is running its Carmen crew optimizer software, providing the airline with settings for crew managing, fleet scheduling and timetables, on three Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. The Red Hat platform is also used in several of the airline's optimization stations that receive information provided by the central server to execute a number of processes. Additionally, Spanair runs its Oracle 10g R2 database server on HP Proliant servers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to host its data warehouse.

While these experts differ on issues like the importance of SOA ROI, how to calculate SOA ROI (if at all), and why we don't have more/better of it, they all seem to agree on one thing: 'Enterprise-wide support for SOA hinges on the ability to demonstrate value to the business at large - more growth, revenue opportunities, and all that good stuff.' (Joe's words, not mine.) And that's where your job is at stake. Or, at least, the long-term support of your SOA efforts.

During my career I have had the privilege and the misfortune to be involved with quite a few nascent businesses. Some have been small, with no more than five or ten employees. To this day they still have that many or less. Others grew from 50 employees to over 10,000 in a very short time. In every case there was a technology component involved in my job.

The open source Dojo Toolkit is receiving a new grid widget thanks to the support and collaboration of the Dojo Community. The Dojo Grid is a key component for AJAX and Web application developers as it can handle large amounts of information efficiently and intuitively. The companies in this relationship are making a financial and/or engineering contribution to improve and update the grid in time for the Dojo 1.0 release in October.

After many months of working out the details, we?ve just announced the Dojo Grid! It took a significant amount of effort to make this happen, but we've managed to come together with a bunch of people in the community to bring an excellent grid widget to Dojo in time for the 1.0 release. SitePen, Mozilla, Nexaweb, Redfin, Snaplogic, and TurboAjax Group (prior to and after their acquisition by ActiveGrid) have come together to make this happen. Thanks to everyone involved for adding something great to the open web!

This is interesting not only because it bridges a gap in Dojo toolkit. Dojo has been the most credible offering in the Ajax marketplace so far (there are a few other good ones too, such as jQuery and EXT, though they have different design focus from Dojo). A lot of customers have been asking for a high quality 'grid' widget from Dojo. TurboAjax guys already developed one based on Dojo 0.4. It looks fairly good(though there are obvious areas for improvement, see my wishlist below). So instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, why not try to work something out with TurboAjax folks so that the entire Dojo community can benefit from their work, while enaling the recognition of TurboAjax effort and enabling them to continue to enhance their work?

After 17 months of thinking about it, 13 judges of the Court of First Instance in Switzerland are supposed to rule early Monday morning on Microsoft's closely watched appeal from the European Commission's 2004 monopoly abuse findings, sanctions and record fines. No matter how the decision goes, it's expected to wind up being appealed to the European version of the Supreme Court, the European Court of Justice.

Red Hat, in conjunction with the open source community, released JBoss ESB 4.2, a JBoss.org open source project. JBoss ESB 4.2 intermediates interactions between enterprise applications, business services, business components, and middleware to integrate and enable the automation of business processes.

What's been happening with the open source AJAX community designed specifically for Java EE developers? Actually, quite a lot. ICEfaces, the open source AJAX development platform that allows enterprise application developers to create Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) in pure Java, has been downloaded over a quarter-million times. More than 20,000 users in 36 countries have become registered users on the ICEfaces.org Web site, and are reaping the benefits of this rapidly growing community.

Most developers are intimately familiar with techniques to combine PHP with client-side JavaScript libraries to create rich user experiences. Moreover, the client-side nature of the JavaScript code offers the ability to develop these rich applications very rapidly. But unfortunately as PHP/AJAX applications are forcing applications to morph from two-tier to three-tier architectures, pushing code to the client adds inherent issues with security and code maintenance. New techniques are being developed that focus on server-side generated AJAX, allowing developers to code AJAX applications in PHP instead of JavaScript. We will discuss and demo many of these new techniques that will allow for the development of rich, AJAX user experiences without needing to code any JavaScript. We will also discuss how these techniques can be used in new IT initiatives as well as integrated with existing applications and projects.

SourceLabs announced the availability of SASH 2 complete with a major new milestone - integrated support for Apache Tomcat. Comprised of the most widely deployed open source Java technologies used by the Global 2000, new SASH 2 is a robust platform that simplifies the development of enterprise Java Applications. SASH 2 includes Spring, Axis, Struts, Hibernate and Tomcat along with all software dependencies and patches. Combined with SourceLabs' innovative Continuous Support System (CSS), SASH 2 proactively identifies key issues that enterprise application developers face when building, testing and deploying middleware software.

'Sun did not approach NetApps about licensing any of Sun's patents and never filed complaints against NetApps or demanded anything.' With those blogged words Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz has refuted the allegation by Network Appliance that Sun 'aggressively demanded' cross-licensing fees from NetApps related to the Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) file-system technology included in ZFS.

SYS-CON Events announced today that 'AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West' main sponsorship opportunities are now sold-out! Limited number of expo and event sponsorship opportunities that are still available are expected to be completely sold before the end of the month. The new sponsors who joined the conference this week, and are not yet listed on the conference Website, will also be announced later in the week.

I will be teaching a one day Bootcamp course on Ajax at the AJAXWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California on September 23, 2007. Details are at http://aja xbootcamp.sys-con.com I will be expanding the Ajax construction tools section from the Ajax Bootcamp I taught in New York at the SOA World conference. I am very impressed with TIBCO GI and Sun jMaki

SYS-CON Events announced today that the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 West, which will take place on September 23-26, 2007, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California will offer a new dedicated 'iPhone Track.' Another dedicated track will offer a comparative education opportunity for conference delegates on emerging RIA tools such as Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX. The world's leading Rich Internet Applications & Web 2.0 event is expected to attract more than 2,000 i-technology developers. AJAXWorld grew from a single track, one-day seminar, less than a year ago, into a four-day international conference & expo with more than 150 sessions delivered in ten simultaneous tracks, by more than 150 faculty members.

This introductory hands-on seminar will provide an overview of the open source OpenLaszlo architecture and development environment, as well as the basics to learning Laszlo?s XML+JavaScript based coding language, called LZX. Attendees will discover OpenLaszlo's unique development attributes, including the secrets behind creating rich, custom-looking applications; connecting to a Web service; and compiling to different runtimes. As an added bonus, you'll be able to walk away knowing how to build a simple AJAX application from scratch! No prior OpenLaszlo experience is necessary to attend this session. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own laptops so they can follow along in real-time, although the materials provided will be useful to those who do not have a computer. Note: Time to install OpenLaszlo and additional training materials will be allocated at the start of this seminar.

The inaugural iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo (November 12-13, 2007) is building out its program and the Conference Advisory Board is busy sorting through the hundreds of proposals for technical and strategic sessions that have been coming in. Final deadline for proposals is September 10, 2007.

Earthlink is getting out of the Wi-Fi business, rendering moot the fact that Google and Earthlink together won the deal last year to provide free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. The plan to provide free wireless isn't going to happen. Earthlink Chief Executive Rolla Huff called SF Mayor Newsom this week and conceded 'they were not going to be able to fulfill their end of the bargain,' according to reports by Associated Press.