'Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market,' said Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia, as Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Norwegian software development company Trolltech.

Dramatic industry changes - including vendor consolidation, outsourcing and the growth of open source - highlight the need for a better way. When a SOA implementation costs too much, the culprit is often the old-fashioned, proprietary and expensive server or hub-based middleware. A better, distributed approach to SOA infrastructure can help reduce cost and increase the benefit of SOA implementation. This presentation includes an overview of the industry trends driving us toward SOA and explains why traditional middleware systems do not meet modern requirements as well as a distributed approach to SOA infrastructure.

As computer grids are becoming more wide spread in commercial data centers, the bottlenecks in application performance move from raw processing to searching, storing and retrieving the data. In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) technology solve this fundamental problem by acting as super-efficient application accelerator, taking advantage of unused resources readily available on the grid - disk, memory, IO - to put the data in memory of the same computer that performs the calculations. The talk will explore how IMDG can be easily integrated with existing enterprise grids to create data-aware grid applications and provide application performance acceleration while improving application scalability and reliability.

There is plenty of discussion about virtualization, but who does it really benefit? How can enterprises adopt virtualization technologies to address real business problems? Is virtualization just another consolidation technology? How are other businesses using virtualization? Is there more that it can do to drive competitive advantage, business efficiency, security and compliance? Drawing on the industry's most in-depth independent research into virtualization to date, Andi Mann, senior analyst from Enterprise Management Associates, will help you to understand what are the key business drivers for virtualization, where to expect significant benefits, and how to make sure that virtualization delivers strategic advantages.

Popular assumptions can often be dangerous. We will start by considering how the many unique architectural characteristics of SOA, such as loose-coupling, can actually be a two-edged sword affecting the requirements, nature, and success of many important aspects of the architecture, especially runtime governance. In fact, the success of any SOA requires that one must gain an understanding of the true nature, performance characteristics, and availability of the business transactions that flows in real-time through these highly distributed services and their supporting IT infrastructure. Similarly, security and governance usually play a critical role in the proper operation of a SOA. Although one may support these critical SOA functions using many different technologies and standards, there is no doubt that for most users today the popular WS-* standards will play a central role. We will conclude by considering how all of these standards might best work together to solve these real-world problems in your SOA. In the process, we will speculate upon some the strengths and weaknesses in the current Web services stack, the nature of the standards process, and what trends might be most relevant to your own future success.

There has been much speculation about the security posture of virtualized environments. One identified vulnerability is the 'hypervisor' threat in which a hacker can break out of a guest OS and onto the host OS of a server. How great a danger is the hypervisor threat? What security barriers should IT erect before and after they implement their virtual environment? Virtual security expert Hezi Moore will help attendees separate the virtualized wheat from the real chaff.

The ink was still drying on Sun's billion-dollar deal to buy the webby, low-end open source database house MySQL when Sun turned around and put money in the high-end open source Postgres company Greenplum, evidently what Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz meant last week when he said 'and we ain't finished yet.' Schwartz did say that Sun would continue to invest in Postgres, Oracle and JavaDB last week when Sun's MySQL buy was announced. Looks like we should have taken him literally. Greenplum also attracted SAP, which has no track record of open source investments, as another strategic investor - and SAP is fresh from closing its acquisition of Business Objects, the Franco-American BI concern.

Web 2.0 mashups are real and going mainstream. Come learn how to combine employee expertise and rich information to produce new insights and winning strategies. Learn how your employees can unlock and transform any information into just exactly what's needed to make the best possible decisions. Also learn how IT can help line of business be more self-sufficient while reducing project backlog and maintaining control over security, governance and costs. The presentation will showcase several demonstrations of customers and partners using SOA with mashups to maximize competitiveness.

We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and many enterprise development managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET or experiment with such newcomers as AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, or JavaFX. While the Internet brings a lot of noise where 'it's cool' is the most popular definition, this presentation is an overview of what's out there on the enterprise RIA market. We'll talk about the pros and cons of using various techniques and technologies for the development of the front end for complex distributed systems.

The iPhone and Google Android platform are undisputedly transforming the mobile industry by bringing smartphone capabilities to the masses. They are also making for enticing new mobile platforms for developing and deploying new types of mobile apps and services for mass market users. Yet, developing for them is not that easy. This session will focus on our experience of developing open source-based mobile messaging and sync applications for both of these platforms. It will compare and contrast the platforms in terms of the development methods and tools required, and their strengths and weaknesses from a developer's perspective. The presentation will share lessons learned as well as tips and techniques for developing for both platforms.

'Business users are starving for reliable customer information,' said Renat Khasanshyn, CEO and founder of Apatar, as Apatar today officially announced StrikeIron Email Verification connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset. Khasanshyn is an upcoming speaker at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in March in NYC.

The Web is continuously democratizing how information is consumed. Today, personal Web use has led to a rapid increase in user sophistication which is naturally reaching the Enterprise. A new mode of information visualization known as a Mashup combined with the collaborative aspects of Web 2.0 is finding success where Composite Applications struggled: cost, speed of development and interactivity. By moving the integration point from the service layer to the presentation layer, driven by the user themselves and controlled by secured processes, Mashups are gaining an Enterprise facet promoting them to be the new generation of Composite Applications.

As governments and corporations intensify their focus on reducing energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions, pressure to improve data center energy efficiency will continue to grow. We believe that the following four Rs must play an essential role in the development of any initiative to create a green data center: Regain power and cooling capacity, Recapture resiliency, Reduce energy costs and Recycle end-of-of-life equipment. Successful organizations will make these four Rs their mantra. And in doing so, their ongoing efforts to think green will help keep their companies operating in the black.

The notion of building 'social applications' has taken the Web by storm. Today it is not only important to understand how to build Web or AJAX applications, but with the advent of the 'Social Graph', AJAX developer's must have a solid understanding of how to build social applications that operate within the context of a social environment. To this end, OpenSocial provides a set of open APIs for building applications that can run on any environment supporting OpenSocial. In this session, I will cover all aspects of building social applications using the OpenSocial APIs. A high level introduction of the social graph is given, followed by a detailed review of OpenSocial's APIs followed by demonstrations of practical examples. At the end of the session I will also review Shindig, which is an open source project that serves as a full server implementation 'in-a-box' for anyone wishing to host OpenSocial applications.

Open source, open platforms, open development environments... 'Open' can mean a lot of things, and the differences between one 'open' and another can be significant. David 'Lefty' Schelsinger will examine the various aspects and uses of the term 'open' as it relates to the current evolving mobile software space. Where does open source code make sense? Is simply being open source sufficient? Does openness necessarily mean fragmentation, and if so, what's the best way to forestall that? There are many platforms based on open source code to greater or lesser degrees, many 'open development platforms' and a number of initiatives--LiMo, LiPS, GNOME Mobile, the Open Handset Alliance, and others--dedicated to putting open source software on mobile devices. What are the differences between them? Are they competitive or cooperative? This discussion will describe the landscape, identify the players and contrast the approaches being taken. The ACCESS Linux Platform will be featured in this context as an alternative to the iPhone platform, as well as the approach to enabling third-party developers, and addressing the needs of the marketplace and the requirements of operators and device manufacturers.

Visual WebGui announced the availability of their enhanced browser-based solution. The company, whose solution has reduced enterprise application development times at companies like SAP, Network D, and others by more than 80%, also announces that Visual WebGui, which is seamlessly integrated into Microsoft's Visual Studio and .NET framework, will soon launch a Microsoft Silverlight compliant solution supported by Microsoft.

WebAssist announced iRite, a groundbreaking solution for Dreamweaver users that delivers the ability to edit text for web pages in the same way that you would edit text using a word processor like, Microsoft Word.

CA announced a series of initiatives to help customers derive maximum long-term business value from their significant investments in mainframe computing technology. The role of the mainframe continues to evolve as enterprises become increasingly dependent on scalable, available and secure IT services capable of supporting large-scale database activity and intense transaction loads.

OpenLogic announced year-end statistics on enterprise open source adoption based on an analysis of OpenLogic's enterprise customers.

It said this morning that it had reached a compromise price with BEA and that the acquisition would go through after all, having been resisted by BEA, demanded by BEA's biggest stockholder, the dangerous Carl Icahn, and walked away from by Oracle. Oracle is going to pay $19.375 a share, less than the $21 that BEA wanted but more than the $17 it put on the table back in October. That works out to $8.5 billion, less the $1.3 billion that BEA has in the bank, as Oracle pointed out, for a grand total of $7.2 billion cash to be paid for by a combination of cash on hand and a short-term loan. Oracle has $8.4 billion in the bank so the financing's no problem. Its original bid valued BEA at roughly $6.66 billion.

CrownPeak announced how it is the first web Content Management software as a service (SaaS) to announce support for many of the new social networking standards -- especially Google's Open Social, Google Gadgets and other content published for inclusion on social networking sites.

Sangoma Technologies Corporation announced that they have partnered with PeopleTech, a provider of open source technology services and solutions, to expand distribution of Sangoma's premium telephony and data cards throughout India. Through this partnership, PeopleTech will provide a valuable sales channel and first line of support for Sangoma's Indian customers.

For BEA, I was hoping they would succeed at combining the power of JRockit with AquaLogic to build scalable workflow (a la BPM) services. Instead, we users and developers will be waiting for years to see WebLogic and AquaLogic integrated into the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack. For MySQL, I was hoping for an IPO.

Sun, Oracle's sometimes best friend, turned into an Oracle competitor this morning when it said it was buying MySQL, the open source database that's part of the famous LAMP stack. It's paying a billion dollars. MySQL was supposed to go public this year but picked the easier monetization route. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates MySQL?s financial position at breakeven on $60 million-$80 million on trailing 12-month revenues although over 100 million copies of the database have been downloaded. Sun is paying $800 million cash for MySQL's stock and assuming about $200 million in options. But Sun has been known to overpay for acquisitions before. Remember its fatal $2 billion Cobalt Networks deal?

As developers continue to migrate to NetBeans from other IDEs, the NetBeans community has experienced tremendous growth. To date there have been more than 16 million downloads and a 300% increase in email list subscribers during the past three years, and now NetBeans 6.0 has been released, a historic milestone celebrated in this exclusive SYS-CON.TV interview with NetBeans Technology Evangelist Gregg Sporar, during which Sporar gives an in-depth glimpse into the many new features of this release by means of five meticulously prepared live demos.

Efforts to modernize enterprise infrastructure have never been more complex. While the need is certainly there on multiple fronts - competitive edge, cost savings and new business initiatives, to name just a few - new hurdles seem to pop up no matter where an IT administrator might look. That includes not just management issues such as cap/ex costs and user resistance, but also an increasing pancake stack of integration layers within and among applications.

The introduction of Linux into the data center has brought with it the promise of a new level of cost-efficiency and flexibility for enterprise data center environments. IT professionals prefer Linux for their data centers because it's highly customizable and can be adapted to address specific issues more easily than any other operating system.

'MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation,' said Sun's CEO and president, Jonathan Schwartz, as Sun today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration.

Evolve Technologies unveiled its new Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) and Offsite Backup services, designed for multiple Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 servers. This latest addition to Evolve Technologies' service portfolio is a continuation of the company's targeted strategic growth initiatives started in 2007.

OpenMake Software announced a new consulting program, Build Mentoring, designed to assist organization in defining the build process beginning with development builds and ending with production releases.

The main concern of any project manager is if there are enough people in the pool of Flex developers to staff the project. Yes, there is a pool of Flex developers, but let's look at the creature called 'Flex Developer' under the microscope. If you are considering adding Flex to your set of skills, it?s still early in the game and you can join the fast growing Flex community. Decide which group of the Flex developers looks most appealing to you. Set a goal and go for it. Be what you can be.

There's a great deal of interest in open source software development these days. While the concept of open source (if not the name itself) is hardly new - people have been freely sharing source code since the beginning of the computer industry - the convergence of commercial interest in open source participation along with the maturation of open source development processes and governance models have greatly raised the visibility of open source development during the past several years.

Daybreak Intellectual Capital Solutions announced the availability of its latest release of eCapture Suite. eCapture Suite 2.0 is the industry's first integrated solution that combines distributed document capture with the ability to deliver content to multiple ECM repositories from a single interface. This release supports EMC Documentum 5.3 and 6, as well as eRoom. Support for additional ECM repositories is under way.

MKS Inc. announced that RWE npower has selected MKS Integrity to automate the software release process for the company's most critical software application - its customer billing system. Part of the RWE Group, the fifth largest industrial firm in Germany, RWE npower generates electricity and supplies gas, electricity and related services to around 6.8 million customers through its retail business, npower. The company operates and manages a flexible portfolio of power stations and is a market leader in renewable energy development, through its wind and hydro business, npower renewables.

Tidal Software announced that a premier provider of software and managed datacenter services for credit unions, Galaxy Credit Union Solutions, a business unit of Fiserv Inc., has deployed Tidal Enterprise Scheduler as part of their solution. Galaxy uses Tidal Enterprise Scheduler as their job scheduler of choice because of its ability to simplify the central management of complex job processing schedules.

The guy who created Gentoo Linux, Daniel Robbins, has offered a solution to the remarkable situation created by the revoking of the Gentoo Foundations's charter several weeks ago: he is offering to return as President. 'I have received permission from my employer to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation, renew its charter, and then work in some capacity to help to get Gentoo going in the right direction from a legal, community and technical perspective.'

Sonasoft announces that Ubisoft has successfully implemented Sonasoft's SonaSafe solution to protect Microsoft SQL servers. Sonasoft provides a One-Stop Shop for the Backup, High Availability and Disaster Recovery needs of Ubisoft.

IT Mill Ltd has released version 5.0 of its IT Mill Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 open source license. With IT Mill Toolkit 5 developers now have the building blocks for RIAs that will allow them to work with Java alone. Toolkit 5.0 unites client-side AJAX tools with server-side Java tools, shortening the RIA development cycle.

Acronis, Inc. announced a new family of backup and recovery software specifically designed for databases, including SQL Server, Oracle and MS Exchange. Initial shipments of Acronis Recovery for MS SQL Server will be in the United States, with Europe and Asia/Pacific Rim releases later this quarter.

Managed Methods announces the latest release of its free solution for monitoring Web service availability. Managed Methods enhances its offering to customers looking for simple availability in smaller environments.