Microsoft released the final version of its System Center 2012 suite of components in April at a conference in Las Vegas. I've taken a hard look and used it in a variety of tests, and I find it a compelling product that has lost a lot of its licensing and complexity baggage. Let's drill down.
System Center's goal
RACKABLE SYSTEMS QUEST SOFTWARE QUANTUM QLOGIC PROGRESS SOFTWARE
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/rim-warns-of-q1-loss-194476
SPSS SPANSION SONUS NETWORKS SONIC AUTOMOTIVE SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/microsoft-ship-windows-8-release-preview-today-194492
MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT MICROSEMI MICROS SYSTEMS MICRON TECHNOLOGY
Facebook has started to roll out a new file-sharing capability -- and Dropbox shouldn't be the only worried party. The addition of a low-security file-sharing tool to the world's most popular social networking site could open a world of security pain on businesses and home users alike.
LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS LAWSON SOFTWARE LAND SOFTWARE LAM RESEARCH L1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/robozoo/
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If you ask Siri, the iPhone's voice-controlled personal assistant, to schedule a sales meeting with a potential new client at a restaurant across town, Siri will dutifully carry out your command (http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-security/should-you-care-siri-taking-notes-194136?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
INTERDIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS INTEL INSIGHT ENTERPRISES INGRAM MICRO INFORMATICA
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/r2-d2-grand-theft-auto-iv/
Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-infringing-link-removal/
ASML HOLDING ASUSTEK COMPUTER ATandT AUTODESK AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING
SAP is buying cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba for $4.3 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.
Ariba's platform focuses on business-to-business commerce transactions. It makes a natural fit with SAP's "broad customer base and deep business process expertise," SAP said in a statement.
At some point, novel and forward-thinking concepts and practices become standard and commonplace, and the terms associated with them go by the wayside. Where special terminology had been in use to differentiate the old from the new, the new becomes the old, and the specific qualifiers drop from the conversation. When was the last time you heard someone ask for unleaded gas? There's no longer a need to qualify the concept because unleaded is the new regular.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/lets-kick-virtual-the-curb-194140?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/asteroid-close-encounters/
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The Windows 8 watch cabal was aghast late last week when the Winunleaked.tk site posted screenshots of Adobe Flash run
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I usually hold my nose at Apple rumor stories since 99 percent are simply made up or otherwise false. As Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in mid-June approaches, we're getting the obligatory rumors of an iOS 6 reveal, as well as the perpetual rumors of both a 7-inch iPad and a completely new design for an "iPhone 5."
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Source: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2012/05/may-7-558-the-roof-caves-in-on-the-hagia-sophia/
I like Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango." OK, so most of you who read my column regularly are thinking, "There he goes again, just taking the Microsoft side." But wait a moment. I didn't say I love it. I didn't claim it to be better than an iPhone. I just said I like it. Here's why I like it but don't love it.
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/skydiving-without-a-parachute/
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Quickoffice rivals Apple's iWork suite as the best office productivity app for the iPad and iPhone, and it is unquestionably the best office app for Android devices. It makes sense to choose Quickoffice as the standard mobile office app in workplaces that have a mix of iOS and Android devices.
L1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY COMPANY KEY JDS UNIPHASE JDA SOFTWARE GROUP
Microsoft released the final version of its System Center 2012 suite of components in April at a conference in Las Vegas. I've taken a hard look and used it in a variety of tests, and I find it a compelling product that has lost a lot of its licensing and complexity baggage. Let's drill down.
System Center's goal
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/tomato-chemistry/
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/phil-tippett-feature/
FAIRCHILD SEMICONDUCTOR INTERNATIONAL FAIR ISAAC FACTSET RESEARCH SYSTEMS F5 NETWORKS EPICOR SOFTWARE
Source: http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/penny-de-los-santos/
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/sap_legoland/
NVIDIA NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS NOVELLUS SYSTEMS NOVELL NETWORK APPLIANCE
Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/nsa-college-students/
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Flash array startup Pure Storage, whose marketing pitch is selling flash at the price of enterprise disk, has announced the second generation of its all-flash array that now includes a highly-availability (HA) configuration.
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MICROSOFT MILLICOM INTL CELLULAR MOBILE TELESYSTEMS NANYA TECHNOLOGY NII HOLDINGS
I usually hold my nose at Apple rumor stories since 99 percent are simply made up or otherwise false. As Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in mid-June approaches, we're getting the obligatory rumors of an iOS 6 reveal, as well as the perpetual rumors of both a 7-inch iPad and a completely new design for an "iPhone 5."
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Hewlett-Packard was a no-show in the emerging world of tablets and smartphones.
DISCOVER FINANCIAL SERVICES DIODES INORATED DIEBOLD DELL CYPRESS SEMICONDUCTOR
JACK HENRY and ASSOCIATES IXYS ITRON IRON MOUNTAIN INORATED IOMEGA
No one likes to rip and replace. But sooner or later, you need to buy new stuff to upgrade or augment existing your storage infrastructure -- and each time you need to go to school on your options as if you'd never seen a SAN before. That's how fast the technology changes.
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/modern-cartoonist-daniel-clowes/
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Source: http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/photo-project-memorializes-fallen-insects/
VIRGIN MEDIA VIEWSONIC VERISIGN VERIFONE HOLDINGS VEECO INSTRUMENTS
Android is sitting pretty atop the smartphone market, accounting for more than 56 percent of the 144.4 million smartphones sold worldwide this past quarter, according to Gartner.
Your boss wants it yesterday, but it better be good when judged by the standards of tomorrow. Your customers want every feature they can imagine, but don't you dare confuse them by giving them all the buttons they want. Your fellow programmers want your code documented, but they just respond "tl;dr" to anything you write.
L1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY COMPANY KEY JDS UNIPHASE JDA SOFTWARE GROUP
YAHOO XILINX WESTERN DIGITAL VOLT INFORMATION SCIENCES VISHAY INTERTECHNOLOGY
METHODE ELECTRONICS MENTOR GRAPHICS IMS HEALTH IMATION IKON OFFICE SOLUTIONS
Virtualization continues to make huge inroads, thanks to the obvious flexibility and reliability benefits. And getting the most out of virtualization almost always requires some kind of shared storage. Otherwise, features such as live virtual machine migration and automated virtualization host failure recovery simply aren't available.
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/microsoft-visual-studio-free/
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/marooned-in-lunar-orbit-1968/
WESTERN DIGITAL VOLT INFORMATION SCIENCES VISHAY INTERTECHNOLOGY VIRGIN MEDIA VIEWSONIC
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/cooking-solutions-monterey/
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Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/clinton-hack/
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/is-cognitive-science-full-of-crap-2/
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Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/google-kicks-off-summer-of-code-2012/
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/autonomy_hp/
TERADATA TELETECH HOLDINGS TECHNITROL TAKETWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE SYNTEL
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/opinion-starwars/
NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS MOTOROLA MOODYS MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT
The lure of big data has many people in enterprise IT moving quickly to consolidate and mash up their data assets with other relevant information. The tools are here right now, including big data engines based on Hadoop, public clouds that provide rental access to a huge number of servers, and external cloud-delivered data resources to make better sense of your info.
MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY METHODE ELECTRONICS MENTOR GRAPHICS IMS HEALTH IMATION
It was fun while it lasted. In a move that frankly surprised no one, Yahoo has replaced its resume-padding CEO Scott Thompson with interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, whom one presumes has a squeaky-clean CV, some four months after hiring the former.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/yahoo-yo-yo-claims-another-ceo-193118?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/opinion-naked-sexting/
NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS NOVELLUS SYSTEMS NOVELL NETWORK APPLIANCE NETGEAR
Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/flickr-amps-up-the-social-with-new-groups-features/
ASML HOLDING ASUSTEK COMPUTER ATandT AUTODESK AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING
Facebook's year-old project to develop open source hardware designs with the aim to build efficient data centers gained momentum on Wednesday, with some top technology companies joining the effort and introducing server designs.
VARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT ASSOCIATES UNITED ONLINE UNISYS TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR TRIMBLE NAVIGATION LIMITED
MICROSOFT MILLICOM INTL CELLULAR MOBILE TELESYSTEMS NANYA TECHNOLOGY NII HOLDINGS
Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/rockie-fresh-life-on-the-otherside/
EPICOR SOFTWARE EMULEX EMS TECHNOLOGIES EMC ELECTRONICS FOR IMAGING
Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/mozilla-aims-to-build-a-better-web-with-webmakers-project/
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The knock on Amazon Web Services and other IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers is that they're not reliable enough for enterprise-class workloads. And even with recent price drops, it's cheaper over the long haul to buy and run your own infrastructure.
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Source: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/05/polo-gear-elite-saddle/
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The knock on Amazon Web Services and other IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers is that they're not reliable enough for enterprise-class workloads. And even with recent price drops, it's cheaper over the long haul to buy and run your own infrastructure.
VISHAY INTERTECHNOLOGY VIRGIN MEDIA VIEWSONIC VERISIGN VERIFONE HOLDINGS
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/rockstar/
LINEAR TECHNOLOGY LEXMARK INTERNATIONAL LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS LAWSON SOFTWARE LAND SOFTWARE
ASUSTEK COMPUTER ATandT AUTODESK AUTOMATIC DATA PROCESSING AVNET
A beta version of Red Hat Storage 2.0 was announced Monday by the Massachusetts-based open-source software company.
The product -- which is based on RHEL 6 -- provides a host of new options for software-based management of scalable storage, according to Red Hat, as well as integration with many top enterprise storage technologies like virtualization and Hadoop.
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I'm not sure many other occupations can go from normal to obscene as rapidly and thoroughly as IT. There's something to be said for having a job that presents new challenges and situations on a constant basis, but let's be honest, when the fit hits the shan in IT, it's generally an epic event.
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Source: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2012/04/april-30-1897-j-j-thomson-announces-the-electron-sort-of/
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Quickoffice rivals Apple's iWork suite as the best office productivity app for the iPad and iPhone, and it is unquestionably the best office app for Android devices. It makes sense to choose Quickoffice as the standard mobile office app in workplaces that have a mix of iOS and Android devices.
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Samsung's original 7-inch Galaxy Tab from late 2010 was an awkward animal, fusing the Android 2.2 "Froyo" smartphone operating system onto a tablet too big for the phone-sized UI and too small for Web browsing and other computer-type work.
MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT MICROSEMI MICROS SYSTEMS MICRON TECHNOLOGY
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/spacex-qa-roundup/
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Cisco Systems has surveyed more than 1,300 IT professionals to determine the top priorities and challenges they face when migrating applications and information to the cloud. Guess what? It's harder, and it takes longer than many thought.
Duh.
TERADATA TELETECH HOLDINGS TECHNITROL TAKETWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE SYNTEL
Because virtualization offers so much cost savings and agility, many organizations are going the whole hog and virtualizing mission-critical systems they wouldn't have dreamed of virtualizing a little while ago. Who would have thought, for example, that we'd see enterprises deploy Oracle virtually rather than on physical hardware?
SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS SILICON LABORATORIES SI INTERNATIONAL SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY SCIENTIFIC GAMES
You're in IT and have yet to create a cloud computing strategy for your business. Now what?
You can wing it, which is what most IT shops do. You can wait to see which way the wind blows, then create strategy around what works. But lack of planning means there will be a lot of expensive retrofitting and rework. Your risk of failure skyrockets.
SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS SILICON LABORATORIES SI INTERNATIONAL SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY SCIENTIFIC GAMES
To run a 21st-century business, you need a 21st-century workforce. Unfortunately for many organizations, last-century techniques are holding employees back -- even in IT.
NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS MOTOROLA MOODYS MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT
Tonight there's gonna be trouble I'm gonna find myself in/Tonight there's gonna be a j*****k, so woman stay with a friend.
If you're a Thin Lizzy fan, you probably recognize the lyrics to "Jailbreak," but you probably don't remember the song title featuring mostly asterisks. For a few hours last week on iTunes, however, that's how the word appeared to some people visiting the store.
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If you've ever struggled through a skiing lesson, you know exactly what the expression "too far over your skis" means: You're headed in the right direction, but you're leaning so far forward you're going to take a tumble. And that's what's going to happen to my colleague Galen Gruman, who along with other pundits is falling all over himself to bury Intel under the oncoming ARM tsunami.
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Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/twitter-improves-privacy-options-now-supports-do-not-track/
ORACLE POWERCHIP SEMICONDUCTOR PRICELINECOM QIMONDA QUALCOMM
Tonight there's gonna be trouble I'm gonna find myself in/Tonight there's gonna be a j*****k, so woman stay with a friend.
If you're a Thin Lizzy fan, you probably recognize the lyrics to "Jailbreak," but you probably don't remember the song title featuring mostly asterisks. For a few hours last week on iTunes, however, that's how the word appeared to some people visiting the store.
POWERCHIP SEMICONDUCTOR PRICELINECOM QIMONDA QUALCOMM QUANTA COMPUTER
Source: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/05/polo-gear-elite-saddle/
NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS MOTOROLA MOODYS MISCROSOFT OFFICE MICROSOFT
Facebook has started to roll out a new file-sharing capability -- and Dropbox shouldn't be the only worried party. The addition of a low-security file-sharing tool to the world's most popular social networking site could open a world of security pain on businesses and home users alike.
Mozilla Marketplace, which is Mozilla's entrant in the online application store arena, is set to move to a public beta stage in a few weeks, a company official said on Tuesday.
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What do 3D printers, the difference between process and practice, and the increased demand for luxury goods have to do with a 7-foot, 8-inch-tall basketball fan with size 25 feet?
APPLE COMPUTER APPLIED MATERIALS ARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT ARROW ELECTRONICS ASML HOLDING
Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/st_momofuku/
Satisfaction with Microsoft's software slipped last year, part of an industrywide downturn driven by U.S. consumer discontent with traditional PC programs, a national survey said today.
Microsoft scored 75 points in the poll conducted since 2006 by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), down from a record 78 last year.
Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/flickr-goes-big-with-larger-images-responsive-redesign/
UNITED ONLINE UNISYS TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR TRIMBLE NAVIGATION LIMITED TRIDENT MICROSYSTEMS
Network and security vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, and Enterasys are lining up at Interop this week with products aimed at easing security admins' <
MAXIMUS MANTECH INTERNATIONAL MANHATTAN ASSOCIATES LSI LINEAR TECHNOLOGY
Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/vendor-tokens-offer-another-way-out-of-the-css-prefix-mess/
L1 IDENTITY SOLUTIONS KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY COMPANY KEY JDS UNIPHASE JDA SOFTWARE GROUP
Java's direct responsibility in the recent Mac Flashback Trojan attacks have many calling for Java's retirement, including InfoWorld's own Woody Leonhard.
The market share battle between Android smartphones and iPhones may be turning a corner. The latest data from StatCounter on Web usage in North America shows the iPhone beating Android smartphones for the first time, though a variety of research firms say Android continues to best the iPhone in unit sales. When you factor in the iPod Touch -- enjoying steady Web traffic for a year -- the margin between iOS and Android handheld devices becomes significant.
UNITED ONLINE UNISYS TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR TRIMBLE NAVIGATION LIMITED TRIDENT MICROSYSTEMS
Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/ready-or-not-adaptive-image-solution-is-now-part-of-html/
VEECO INSTRUMENTS VARIAN SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT ASSOCIATES UNITED ONLINE UNISYS TRIQUINT SEMICONDUCTOR
In my blog post last week, as well as showing a cool video of Ubuntu for Android in action, I asserted that open source makes the perfect foundation for innovation. A sequence of news releases about open source desktop productivity suites have shown up over the last few weeks to add to the assertion. With this amount of energy, open source suites are looking more and more like interesting alternatives to Microsoft Office.
