As interest in mobile AJAX gathers in the wake of the Apple iPhone release, the ICEfaces open source project is poised to deliver mobile AJAX solutions. This presentation talks about why the server-centric nature of the ICEfaces technology provides inherent advantages in the mobile space. You will get a brief overview of the ICEfaces technology and see how it is applicable to resource-constrained mobile devices. There is also a demonstration of a mobile ICEfaces application running on both the Safari and Opera mobile browsers. Finally, you will learn about some of the emerging best practices for mobile AJAX application design, and get a glimpse of the ICEfaces roadmap for mobile AJAX.

SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21, has announced the final release of Spring.NET 1.1, an application framework for the development and deployment of enterprise .NET applications. With roots in the widely used Spring Framework programming model for Java, Spring.NET extends the features of the Spring Framework to the .NET environment.

The success of open source software has been placing pressure on the business models of proprietary software vendors. In response, many software vendors have shifted from a paid-for license model to an open source business model. This presentation will explore the emerging trend of proprietary software vendors transitioning to an open source business model - the elimination of software licensing fees, source-code transparency, and a reliance on services as the revenue engine. It will cover the impact on software vendors and end users alike, and will include best practices from a number of companies that have already made the transition, including failed attempts.

'Our member CEOs have given us important insights into what they expect for the coming new year,' said Dominic Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) - a nonprofit, vendor neutral consortium dedicated to driving the interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions - as the OSA today announced the findings of its 2008 Predictions Survey, which polled open-source CEOs on their forecasts for the coming year.

While enterprise open source vendors continue to debate the definition of 'open,' customers are listening. Not because they care as much about what open source business model a particular vendor uses but because our debates give them reason to be confused and to consider the FUD that is pushed into the marketplace. The Open Solutions Alliance is a nonprofit vendor neutral organization that exists for one purpose: to address CIOs most pressing issue today - interoperability among open solutions. While the customers have been listening to us, the OSA has been listening very intently to them. This session will discuss what CIOs are looking for in open solutions vendors and how they expect it to be delivered based on real discussions and work sessions.

The City of Sherwood is one of the fastest growing communities in the State or Oregon. As the City continues to grow, pressure is placed on City staff to better manage and maintain infrastructure as well as information in order to improve efficiencies and decision making. Part of becoming more efficient was the decision to implement Enterprise GIS.

Data corruption is an insidious problem in storage. While there are many forms of corruption, there are also many ways to prevent them. For example, enterprise class servers use error checking and correcting caches and memory to protect against single and double bit errors. System buses have similar protective measures such as parity. Communications going over the network are protected by checksums.

Google's new-year special logo, which went live briefly as 2008 began, celebrated the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP - adopted by Arpanet on January 1st, 1983. While 'invisible' to most users, many of the layers built on top of TCP/IP are well-known even to laymen: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), FTP (the File Transfer Protocol), SMTP and POP3, and IRC.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has set Jan. 7 as the launch date for his open-source search project, dubbed Wikia Search. According to the Washington Post Wales, who has described Yahoo! and Google as opaque services that don't explain how results are arrived at, says the project will allow technology enthusiasts to help filter sites and rank search results, using a community model akin to that of Wikipedia.

The OpenVZ project announced that using its open source virtualization software in combination with virtual machine open source Xen software, users can effectively create many virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server. The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process

The Vector Linux Team has announced the release of Vector Linux v5.9 GREEN. Bleeding edge Open Source at the speed of light. We do our part to GREEN the planet so you can do yours. Every purchase helps us continue our work, we have been serving the computing public with Vector Linux for almost a decade. We have worked the bugs out long ago, and could not have done it without the countless volunteers and supporters like you.

Adobe is open sourcing the remoting and messaging technologies in its commercial LiveCycle Data Services ES - Adobe's route to the Internet - as a new product called BlazeDS. The widgetry, along with the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol specification, is being sent into the wild under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL v3), making Adobe the first major company to use the little-used new license. Public betas are out at labs.adobe.com.

JavaFX is a scripting language that provides more powerful client applications in term of features for the user interface experience as well as being incorporated with server platform technology such as RMI, Web Services, and EJB. Its ability to reuse all Java libraries opens an opportunity for JavaFX to create flexibility and ease the integration and reuse of existing Java applications.

Adobe earned $222.2 million, or 38 cents a share, up 21%, on record fourth-quarter revenues of $911.2 million, up 34% year-over-year, exceeding the company's revenue target of $860 million-$890 million. It attributed the results to Acrobat, its Creative Suite 3 products and momentum in its enterprise business. Creative Suite 3, which started coming out in April, includes upgrades to Photoshop, Illustrator and software acquired with Macromedia like Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. On a non-GAAP basis Adobe earned 49 cents in Q4, a penny more than Wall Street expected.

Canonical, the Ubuntu people, has pushed out a version control system called Bazaar 1.0 so hundreds of globally dispersed developers can kick in to software projects independently without utter chaos ensuing. Canonical says the traditional centralized VCS doesn't suit outsourced software development or even development spread across multiple locations in the same company. Bazaar supports the new distributed, disconnected development lifestyle.

In a surprise move Thursday Red Hat named the former COO of Delta Airlines Jim Whitehurst president and CEO, replacing Matthew Szulik who remains chairman. Szulik said he was stepping down after almost 10 years with the company because of serious health issues with his family that he has to pay attention to, a noble thing to do considering he'd rather be CEO of Red Hat. Well, if nothing else, it'll give Dell vice-chairman and CFO Donald Carthy somebody to talk to. Cathy was president of American Airlines before being pluck from Dell's board amid its crisis and given his current job.

Software AG announced the acquisition of the application modernization business of Jacada for $26M in a cash transaction. The asset deal expands Software AG?s application modernization portfolio with additional products for modernizing the user interface of mainframe and mid-range-based applications. In addition, eight of Jacada?s R&D and support staff will join Software AG ensuring continuous product development and customer support. Software AG will gain over 200 enterprise customers, mostly in the United States, as a result of the acquisition. These customers will benefit from direct access to Software AG?s comprehensive business infrastructure software portfolio.

Actuate Corporation announced today the results of a benchmark test conducted at the IBM Innovation Center, reaffirming Actuate as the industry's highest performing and most scalable platform for generating information applications. The tests focused on the collaborative reporting capabilities of Actuate iServer 9, which is based on Eclipse BIRT, the Eclipse Foundation's open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools project - initiated and co-led by Actuate.

Quark Inc. and Alfresco Software, Inc. announced a new partnership to develop integrated enterprise-class publishing and content management solutions for professional and corporate publishers. With 15 years of workgroup publishing experience, Quark has designed technologies such as Quark Publishing System 7 (QPS® 7) to streamline the editorial and creative workflow processes while improving production. Alfresco, the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management (ECM), couples the innovation of open source with the stability of an enterprise-class platform.

Lombardi announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the 'Leaders' quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites, 2007 report. Gartner positions vendors in the magic quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.

After suddenly canceling its earnings release last week because - come to find out - the SEC has been poring over last year's 10-K and this year's Q2 10-Q since this summer, whatever mysterious 'accounting matters' provoked the agency's review just as suddenly got resolved and Novell posted its Q4 results after the market closed Thursday. Novell hinted the SEC's concerns might have had something to do with Novell's admittedly complicated arrangement with Microsoft, which at the end of year one was said to have realized $122 million, 51% of their bogie. Anyway, Novell lost $17.9 million, or five cents a share, on revenues up 5% to $244.9 million, a figure that excludes $6 million in revenue from its Swiss-based breakeven consulting unit, which it agreed to sell during the quarter, costing it three cents a share.

Compiere has unveiled Compiere 3.0, which includes numerous functional and stability innovations to its open source ERP and customer relationship management (CRM) core. Compiere 3.0 also marks the introduction of Compiere Professional Edition, a new offering targeted at larger organizations that require more advanced services and commercial licensing from Compiere.

Visual Numerics announced an OEM agreement with SAP AG. Under the terms of the agreement, the Visual Numerics' IMSL C Numerical Library version 6.0 will be embedded into the SAP NetWeaver platform. The IMSL C Library will be integrated into TREX - a structured and unstructured data processing component of SAP NetWeaver - providing the TREX engine with functions for data analytics such as outlier detection, dependency analysis and forecasting. SAP applications that use the TREX engine will benefit from this new embedded functionality.

Jinfonet Software announced the release of JReport 8.2. JReport 8.2 delivers enhancements in three key areas: Performance improvements for large reports, greater developer flexibility and an enhanced user experience. Working in conjunction with the IBM Innovation Center to develop performance benchmarks, Jinfonet was able to demonstrate performance improvements in on-demand reporting, batch reports, and viewing pre-generated reports.

ILOG announced ILOG JViews 8, the latest version of ILOG?s award-winning Java-based visualization suite that enhances the creation of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and desktop applications for supervision and monitoring. ILOG JViews 8.1 introduces a new presentation layer for the Eclipse platform and dramatic performance improvements for both desktop and Web applications to enhance the user experience of the most demanding applications.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that Japan has chosen Sun to create an open, Web 2.0 architecture that will better leverage IT to deliver better government services to citizens. Japan, Singapore and Norway each join the growing list of governments that have already turned to Sun for efficient, scalable architectures that accurately manage global information flow and help maximize productivity.

Tidal Software announced that Albany International Corp. is deploying Tidal solutions to assist in the rollout and to automate the ongoing operation of its new worldwide implementation of SAP. Albany is consolidating all worldwide data center operations onto a global implementation of SAP?s ERP solution. The consolidated solution is targeted not only at IT cost savings, but also at providing better support of global operations for the company.

Business Objects and SPSS announced the companies have entered into an original equipment manufacturer agreement in which Business Objects will offer its customers the ability to use SPSS predictive analytics data mining technology as part of the market-leading BusinessObjects XI platform. Users of BusinessObjects XI with predictive analytics data mining technology will be able to leverage business predictions to make more informed decisions that can help generate revenue, control expenses, and mitigate risk.

Perforce Software announced that Ixonos Plc, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, has chosen Perforce, the Fast Software Configuration Management (SCM) System, to manage software development projects for its leading smartphone customers. Ixonos' telecommunications business unit specializes in the development, verification, maintenance and project management of software applications and information systems for licensees of the Symbian OS and smartphone manufacturers.

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced a partnership that will make it possible to obtain print and word processor copies of articles from Wikipedia and other wiki educational resources. The development of the underlying open source software is supported by the Open Society Institute and the Commonwealth of Learning, and led by PediaPress.com, a start-up company based in Germany.

In my opinion this is THE biggest announcement that I?ve heard from Adobe since the release Flex 2 in the Summer of 2006. This is bigger than open sourcing Flex. This is bigger than AIR. Here's the news: Adobe is open sourcing AMF protocol and messaging under LGPL V3. Christophe Coenraets, a Senior Flex Evangelist from Adobe, told me about this new free product called BlazeDS. While many people are using Flex for creating cool widgets that can make your Web page prettier, enterprise Flex developers have to deal with such boring things as bringing data to the client. And they want to do this as fast as possible. AMF3 protocol allows your Web application to send the data over the wire at lease 10 times faster than a regular HTTP.

As a small start-up, Interface21 has developed a large, loyal community around the Spring Framework and Spring Portfolio projects. Venture capitalists have invested millions in open source companies and large vendors like IBM and BEA have spent millions of dollars attempting to crank up their marketing machines around their open source projects. In general, these efforts have not resulted in successful communities. In this presentation, we will explore the characteristics that all successful open source communities share as well as unsuccessful open source projects and how these characteristics are changing over time.

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21, has announced a strategic partnership with Hyperic. Under the terms of the agreement, SpringSource will use Hyperic's flagship open source software, Hyperic HQ, as the foundation of its new systems management offering. The joint offering provides users of the Spring Framework with a single view into the performance and health of their Web-based infrastructure.

Day Software has expanded its presence in the social media and open source markets with the acquisition of the founders and key innovators of Mindquarry, an open source collaborative software platform provider. Alexander Klimetschek, Alexander Saar and Lars Trieloff, experts in social media and collaboration, have joined Day's product development team.

IONA Technologies will use Hyperic's flagship product, Hyperic HQ Enterprise, as the foundation for its new monitoring and management system, FUSE HQ. FUSE HQ is available now as part of IONA's latest version of its FUSE family of open source SOA products. The FUSE family of products is IONA's tested and certified releases of SOA open source projects at the Apache Software Foundation.

IONA Technologies has released a new version of its FUSE family of open source SOA products and updates to the FUSE community. The FUSE products are IONA's tested and certified releases of SOA Open Source projects at the Apache Software Foundation. IONA selects specific releases from each project, which it tests, fully documents, and distributes under the Apache License.

My seven-year-old daughter thinks that there is a knowledge genie that her teacher 'Googles' for answers. While cute, the anecdote also exemplifies how much Google's obsession with simplicity has helped build brand awareness, making their name literally synonymous with search. I can foresee generations X and Y being followed by generation S - one that will rely on search to accomplish almost any task.

Application development organizations lag behind their business and IT peers when it comes to their use of metrics, according to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Borland Software. Despite the pivotal role of IT in enabling business agility and supporting innovation and growth, subjective estimates and postmortem metrics that do little to ensure project success are still the norm for managing the delivery of software.

At one of the world's largest FOSS events, held annually in India, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer Simon Phipps, announced last week a multi-year award program in support of fostering innovation and advancing open source within open source communities. 'We'll be providing a substantial prize purse and working with the communities involved to develop the approach that works best,' Phipps declared.