Articles by Maureen O'Gara

Is VMware Buying Red Hat?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:30:00 EDT

Because of its slow growth - a factor of the freebie open source business model - Red Hat has become fodder for Wall Street acquisition speculation, BusinessWeek says, and offers VMware as a possible suitor. Such an acquisition would give VMware the operating system it's lacking, make its products cheaper and make it a more viable competitor against Microsoft - or so the theory goes. BusinessWeek claims to have heard from "some industry executives" that VMware is looking for an operating system and says ousted VMware CEO Diane Greene "had set up meetings with Red Hat in part to position VMware as friendly to open source and possibly as a prelude to a buyout discussion." Red Hat also needs the virtualization halo for growth.

Virtualization Update: Microsoft Lightens Up on its Virtual Migration Rules

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:30:00 EDT

Microsoft Tuesday liberalized its virtual machine policies, as expected, and said that starting September 1 its big customers will be able to move Microsoft virtualized server applications between servers “in a server farm” as often as they want without paying additional licensing fees. The company is overturning its existing customer-irritating “90-day reassignment rule” that has restricted virtualized Microsoft applications to the physical servers they were assigned, allowing them be moved only every three months.

Appeals Denied, OOXML Inches Toward Apotheosis

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:30:00 EDT

ISO said Friday that the appeals made by Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela protesting the standardization of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format hadn’t gone anywhere – it was unclear whether any of them had any standing anyway – but since they “failed to garner sufficient support” from the ISO/IEC technical committees, as ISO put it – the standards body is going to go ahead and publish OOXML as an ISO/IEC International Standard, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 – or it will provided another, effective appeal isn’t registered.

GraphOn Sues Google & YouTube for Patent Infringement

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:45:00 EDT

GraphOn, the old-line Citrix wannabe, has sued Google and its little friend YouTube in the Eastern District of Texas for patent infringement. That particular district court is partial to patent holders and their complaints. This one charges Google’s Base, AdWords, Blogger, Sites and YouTube online services with trespassing on four GraphOn patents, to wit Nos. 6,324,538 (the ‘538 patent), 6,850,940 (the ‘940 patent), 7,028,034 (the ‘034 patent) and 7,269,591 (the ‘591 patent).

Cloud Computing Expo - Lenovo To Field Netbook

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:00:00 EDT

Lenovo has gone into the netbook business with a one-inch-deep 2lb XP-based Atom IdeaPad S10 with a 10.2-inch screen. The company says it intends to add other models that target students. The widget can be had in black, white or glossy ruby red.

Cloud Computing Expo - Cloud Spotting

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:15:00 EDT

Since Microsoft's forecast - and its margin implications - is nothing to sneeze at, we asked industry analyst and cloud spotter Amy Wohl what she has been seeing. 'The first thing to keep in mind is that we have some semantic confusion, as is usual at this stage of a new market, around just what is a cloud. We are now pretty sure that what we used to call grids and what we now call clouds is the same thing. But we also have things called 'platforms' that seem to be very much like a kind of cloud (and are sometimes called clouds) and then there is SaaS itself which looks very much like a cloud with some application software (and some SaaS vendors describe their offering just that way). I'd say we can agree that a cloud is managed computing power, often with applications, accessed across the Internet. And I'll agree that a company can have its own cloud, if it wants one.

Cloud Computing Expo - Schmidt Speaks

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Jim Cramer’s been doing a stint on CNBC in the middle of the trading day and, being a Google booster, managed to entice Google’s usually standoffish CEO Eric Schmidt on the air the other day. Schmidt said Google’s stock wouldn’t split and that Google wouldn’t start issuing guidance (it would distract Googlers from “trying to change the world,” he said).

LinMin API Adds Bare Metal Provisioning All Around

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:45:00 EDT

A new API is supposed to integrate LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning 5.2 into environments that haven’t been able to do bare metal provisioning of Windows, Red Hat, Novell, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora or Asianux on physical systems or virtual machines before. The rev also features single-command installation.

Virtualization Expo - Microsoft Schedules Virtualization Party To Spoil VMware’s

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Microsoft is inviting its nearest and dearest – (and probably VMware’s nearest and dearest too) to a great one-day virtualization launch event on Monday September 8 in Bellevue, Washington. It’s the beginning of a six-month drumbeat.

Sun Nabs OEM for its VirtualBox Desktop Virtualization

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Sun has got multi-year OEM deals with Avanquest Software, Q-layer and Zenith InfoTech to move its bought-in cross-platform xVM VirtualBox widgetry. The stuff is free from Sun and runs multiple operating systems on the same desktop at the same time, which means OEMs can use virtual machines as self-contained distribution mechanisms for their solutions. Sun claims five million VirtualBox downloads since January 2007 although it only bought the stuff in February.

Intel Brands Nehalem

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Intel Corporation says its upcoming Nehalem desktop chips, due to start rolling out in Q4, will be branded Intel Core processors. The first members of the new architecture family, including an Extreme Edition, will have a telltale “i7’ handle attached so they’ll officially be Intel Core i7 processors.

Virtualization Expo - New Release of VMware Lab Manager Announced

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:00:00 EDT

VMware has announced the pending availability of VMware Lab Manager 3, which is supposed to provide greater automation and control for IT lab environments. Software developers and QA engineers use VMware Lab to provision multi-VM environments and it’s also meant to give IT departments more control over policies. The new release supports multiple organizational units – like helpdesk operations, training organizations and sales teams – advanced networking capabilities, and tighter integration with VMware Infrastructure.

Cloud Computing - E7 Is Born

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 04:00:00 EDT

At least 16 or 17 months ahead of the appearance of Windows 7, the next generation of the operating system, Microsoft has set up a blog hosted by senior engineering managers Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky to discuss the project and ostensibly get feedback.

Cloud Computing Expo - Dell Rejigs its Commercial Laptops

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:00:00 EDT

While everybody is really waiting for Dell to push into the small and cheap market and go mano a mano with the Asus Eee, Dell unveiled the strategic redesign of its Latitude and Precision business laptops, a move that has to prove Dell’s back in the game or its heralded turnaround will fizzle – corporate sales being Dell’s biggest money maker and the shift from desktops to laptops pushing inexorably on.

Cloud Computing - Yahoo Raises Geo-Awareness

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:15:00 EDT

Yahoo has opened up its Fire Eagle platform – in private beta since March – to all and sundry. It gives users a place to store and manage information about their location, and offers developers protocols for updating or accessing that information.

Appeals Court Overturns Injunction-Denying Open Source Ruling

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 06:00:00 EDT

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Wednesday overturned a year-old San Francisco district court decision that deprived the aggrieved plaintiff in a dispute over open source software governed by the Artistic License of the right to sue for copyright infringement and get an injunction against the defendant.

Chi-Chi Cloud Computing IPO Fails and Drops 20%

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:30:00 EDT

Rackspace Hosting, the rare high-tech IPO these days and a chi-chi cloud purveyor at that, failed to hold up its end after it debuted Friday in a Dutch auction and dropped 20% to $10.01 from its offering price of $12.50, the low end of its $12-$16 range. Fifteen million shares were sold – all but 2.3 million coming from the company – and raising a total of about $187.5 million. It wants to expand outside the US. It started pushing toward $11 Monday. Rackspace, which is backed by Sequoia and Norwest Venture Partners, was going to go public in 2000 then thought the better of it.

Virtualization, iPhone and Microsoft

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:19:00 EDT

Speculation is making the rounds again that AMD’s long-promised asset lite strategy will see the company split in two: a chip development operation under AMD’s new CEO Dirk Meyer and a manufacturing entity.

Cloud Computing Expo - Google’s Now in the Encryption Business

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:11:00 EDT

Google has waded into the encryption business with an open source cross-platform toolkit called Keyczar that’s supposed to make it easier for ISVs to put cryptography in their applications. It says Keyczar supports both encryption and authentication with both symmetric and asymmetric keys as well as Java and Python implementations, promising C++ soon.

Cloud Computing & Google - The Cloud Needs Some Duct Tape

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:15:00 EDT

Google’s Gmail fell over and died Monday, serving up only a temporary 502 error message to both free and paid accounts and bringing life as they know it to a grinding halt for a lot of people – including Google corporate.

Virtualization / Cloud Computing - Nvidia Hits the Wall

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:00:00 EDT

Nvidia fiscal Q2 revenues were down and that’s why it lost $120.9 million, 22 cents a share, in the second quarter. Well, that and the $198 million one-time charge it took to cover costs stemming from those previously admitted defective notebook chips coupled with – its CEO said – a supposedly weaker worldwide PC market and Nvidia’s miscalculations of AMD’s pricing pressures on its desktop GPU business.

Amazon Backs Cloud Server Start-up Elastra

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Elastra, a 40-customer SMB-directed start-up that provides a legacy-embracing configuration management service for Amazon Web Services (AWS) – your basic in-a-click virtual deployment, monitoring and accounting beginning with RDBMSes like MySQL, Postgres and EnterpriseDB – has picked up a $12 million second round from – surprise, surprise – Amazon, Bay Partners and existing investor Hummer Winblad.

Mistake Cripples VMware Servers

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:15:00 EDT

A time bomb reportedly left over from the beta of VMware’s two-week-old update to ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (Update 2) caused product licenses to expire yesterday. It also happened with a patch to ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 Update 2.

Google’s Position in AOL Turns Rancid

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Google has told the SEC that its billion-dollar acquisition of 5% of AOL, made in 2005 to prevent Microsoft from doing it and giving AOL a $20 billion over-the-top valuation, “may be impaired,” accounting-speak for it ain’t worth what it was (if it ever was).

Virtualization: VMware Joins the Linux Foundation

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:15:00 EDT

VMware, which seems to be as far from open source as you can get these days, has joined the Linux Foundation, promising to make more contributions to the Linux community. It's cultivating the Linux crowd as adoption of Linux expands as a result of its position as a platform for cloud computing and in virtualized environments.

Rackable To Resell IBM BladeCenters in Shipping Containers

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Rackable Systems is going to include IBM’s BladeCenter servers in its ICE Cube modular data center offering, its idea of what you can do with a shipping container. Under its deal with IBM, BladeCenter T or HT systems will be the only blade server platforms available for custom ICE Cube implementations globally.

Microsoft Contemplates a Post-Windows World

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Starting with a clean piece of paper, Microsoft is having a go at building a non-Windows operating system. Code named Midori, it may never be released but if Midori isn’t heir to Windows Microsoft better have something else like it up its sleeve.

Cloud Computing - AT&T Takes to the Cloud

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:30:00 EDT

AT&T broke into the cloud business Tuesday with the “global launch” of what it calls AT&T Synaptic Hosting and describes as a next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses. It’s talking about a complete pay-as-you-go turnkey hosting package using either a virtual or dedicated platform. It’s planning to put a billion dollars into this global network this year dedicating five so-called super-IDCs or Internet data centers in the US, Europe and Asia and using technology it acquired from USinternetworking (USi).

Apple, Google, Yahoo & Cloud Computing

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Industry gadfly John Dvorak is advancing a theory culled from the blogosphere that Microsoft wants Yahoo for some all-important patent or another that would give it an edge in cloud computing, SaaS and portable search advertising.

Cloud Computing - Yahoo, HP & Intel Embark on Joint Cloud Research

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Yahoo, HP and Intel are going to do cloud research together using a global, multi-data center, open source Cloud Computing Test Bed bigger than anything put together for such a purpose before, they said. The whole testbed could potentially scale to 24,000 cores, 18 terabytes of memory and 9 petabytes of disk, roughly 164 teraFLOPS of power, big enough, the threesome said, for Internet-scale tests, at least tests of short duration. There will be six – God willing always-available – sites: one at each of the vendors and one each at the state-run Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.

It's Official. Icahn's on the Yahoo Board

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:15:00 EDT

Microsoft hugger Carl Icahn is now officially on the Yahoo board. Under the deal that ended his proxy fight, two more directors from Icahn's original "oust-the-incumbents" proxy slate are supposed to be elected by mid-month. The list was supposed to include ex-AOL CEO Jonathan Miller but Time Warner is enforcing his non-compete.

Symantec Acquires nSuite Virtualization

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:00:00 EDT

Symantec is building out its endpoint virtualization widgetry by acquiring nSuite Technologies, a privately held virtual workspace management company that has specialized in hospitals and healthcare, on undisclosed terms. The buy will give Symantec presentation virtualization and connection brokering technologies so users can access a personal Windows workspace running on a remote server as though it were local and move it to any widget.

Steve Jobs Eats Humble Pie

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:15:00 EDT

In an internal e-mail leaked to Ars Technica, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe, Apple’s panned flirtation with the cloud, was launched prematurely and was “not up to Apple’s standards.” Remember? Even the Apple-loving Walt Mossberg over at the Wall Street Journal branded it “ragged” and unreliable.

IBM and Linux Distros Gang Up on the Microsoft Desktop

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:00:00 EDT

IBM, Canonical, Novell, Red Hat and the distributions’ hardware partners are ganging up on Microsoft, intending to push a Microsoft-free desktop alternative involving Linux, Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony. They think they see an auspicious constellation of stars in the sky – like PC margins – paving the way to making Linux-on-the-desktop mainstream – well, more mainstream anyway.

Intel Hikes Up Its Skirt

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Ahead of Siggraph next week Intel decided to lift its skirt and pass around the paper it’ll read there describing Larrabee, its new hydra-headed x86 graphics accelerator architecture meant to take on Nvidia and AMD’s graphics arm ATI in late ’09-early 2010. The operative word that is supposed to make Nvidia and ATI quake in their boots is x86.

Dell Wants Cloud Computing Trademark

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:15:00 EDT

Dell, it appears, put in its papers with the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of last year to trademark the buzzword “Cloud Computing.” Its application quietly passed through the Opposition Stage a few months ago unopposed and thus it is now at the point that it’s been allowed but hasn’t been registered. Dell has six months to use it or lose it. Presumably it could do that in connection its Dell Cloud Computing Solutions consultancy unless somebody successfully points out that it’s a generic expression.

Yahoo Stockholders Don’t Like Jerry Yang THAT Much

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:15:00 EDT

Turns out the vote that overwhelmingly returned Yahoo’s board to office last Friday by a surprise three-to-one margin was seriously miscounted. The official tabulation claimed that CEO Jerry Yang got 85.4% of the vote (14.6% withheld) and Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock got 79.5% (20.5% withheld). By that count the pair that ran off Microsoft and its billions fared better than last year.

Virtualization - AMD Loses Share

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

According to Mercury Research by way of Lehman Brothers AMD lost share in both desktops and notebooks in Q2 measured in both units and revenue. Intel was up two points to 87.5% in notebook units aided and abetted by AMD's slower-than-expected Puma ramp, which took 6% off of AMD's notebook units while Intel's pushed up 11%.

Cloud Computing Start-Up Creates PowerPC-Based Cloud Desktop

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:15:00 EDT

There hasn't been a PowerPC-based computer since Apple abandoned the dingus and bolted to Intel, a move that did wonders for Apple's volumes. Now a Mountain View start-up called CherryPal is about to introduce a $249 Debian-based desktop that's about the size of a dime store paperback built around the 2W MPC5121e mobileGT PowerPC chip that Freescale usually sells to Detroit for navigation devices.

Big Yahoo Stockholder Demands a Recount

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:30:00 EDT

The surprise three-to-one margin that overwhelmingly returned Yahoo’s board to office last Friday at the shareholders meeting proved too big for Capital Research & Management to swallow. It’s demanding a recount, according to the Wall Street Journal blog All Things Digital, which has been all over the Yahoo story for months.