SOA News Desk

Rackspace Acquires SharePoint911

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Rackspace Hosting, the service leader in cloud computing, on Thursday announced its acquisition of SharePoint911, an industry leader in SharePoint consulting, training, and "JumpStart" services within SharePoint. The unification of both companies provides capabilities to deliver unparalleled SharePoint hosting solutions along with expert services to the enterprise market. "For several years, Rackspace has focused on providing managed SharePoint infrastructure," says John Engates, chief technology officer at Rackspace. "We are thrilled to have the world-class expertise of SharePoint911 on our team to give us greater application delivery service capabilities. SharePoint911 will add the talent and expertise to our teams to make SharePoint deployments easier for our customers while increasing their scalability and performance through better integration of the workload and infrastructure."

Cloud Expo Sponsor Adaptivity Raises $7.2 Million

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:30:00 EDT

Adaptivity, The IT Blueprint Company, provides an intelligent IT blueprinting software suite to help companies manage and optimize enterprise technology infrastructure, announced today that it has raised a $7.2 million round of venture capital financing. The Series A round of funding, which is the company’s first institutional financing, was co-led by Noro-Moseley Partners and Intersouth Partners. The funding will be used to accelerate product development on Adaptivity’s Blueprint 4IT Lifecycle SuiteTM and build out sales and marketing infrastructure to support growing market demand. Katrin Burt of Intersouth Partners and Mike Elliott of Noro-Moseley will join the company’s Board of Directors. Additionally, George Mackie, a venture partner with Noro-Moseley with 25 years of experience in the technology industry, will join Adaptivity as non-executive chairman working closely with the executive management team.

Crosscheck Networks Drives Business-Critical SOA

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 02:00:00 EDT

Crosscheck Networks, Inc. (http://www.crosschecknet.com) today introduced the next generation of its flagship product, Forum Sentry v8.0, helping organizations seamlessly migrate their enterprise SOA deployments to the cloud while capitalizing on the cloud computing model for business and competitive advantage. The company unveiled the latest version of Forum Sentry at the International SOA & Cloud Symposium (http://soasymposium.com), the world's largest international SOA and cloud computing conference.

3PAR Sued for Patent Infringement

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:45:00 EDT

Within hours of 3PAR maybe finding out who its daddy's gonna be, it got sued by a little Austin, Texas outfit with a litigation trail behind it by the name of Crossroads Systems. The publicly traded Texas company accused 3PAR along with six other storage houses of infringing on its router and data storage patents in the Western District of Texas court in Austin Wednesday, according to the Austin Business Journal. Whether Crossroads wins or not - and it has succeeded in wresting settlements before - it's just jacked up 3PAR's price for either HP or Dell by whatever the legal bills run.

HP’s Golden CEO Quits Amid Sex Scandal

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:00:00 EDT

HP chairman, president and CEO Mark Hurd, 53, the buttoned-down golden boy the company brought in to clean up the mess left by his ousted predecessor Carly Fiorina, the guy who delivered on that charter beyond the company’s wildest expectations, quit suddenly this evening after a weeks-old company investigation by outside and inside legal counsel of sexual harassment charges.

Oracle Surviving Sun Just Fine, Thank You

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:00:00 EDT

Oracle doesn't look like it's choking on Sun any. It beat the Street and its own projections Thursday when it reported its fiscal Q4 numbers. Revenue was up 39% and income was up 25%. That translates into a record 46 cents a share on $9.5 billion - 60 cents non-GAAP on expectations of 54 cents - with new software licenses up 14% to $3.1 billion. License updates and product support revenues were up 12% to $3.4 billion. Oracle estimates that Sun reduced its $3.3 billion operating income by approximately $100 million, including $176 million of amortization, and contributed about $400 million to non-GAAP operating income, which was up 26% to $4.4 billion.

B2B Cloud Start-up Gets $10.2M To Enter the US

Tue, 18 May 2010 08:30:00 EDT

Huddle, the three-year-old UK cloud collaboration start-up, has closed a $10.2 million B round from Matrix Partners and existing investors Eden Ventures and Huddle chairman Charles McGregor. Huddle, which recently went cash flow positive, according to co-founder Andy McLoughlin, has already been through a $5 million first round. It means to use the new money to push deeper into the United States, which will entail quadrupling its current 40-man staff in the next year. McLoughlin has just moved to San Francisco from London to head the effort.

BMC Claims $100 Million in Cloud Deals

Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:00 EDT

More and more customers are seeking to unify the management of their physical, virtual, cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) initiatives. Customers typically define the "foundation" for successful cloud computing as the implementation of tightly integrated service management and datacenter automation solutions, the clear prerequisites for subsequent cloud services implementations. BMC has seen a steady strengthening pattern of significant wins in cloud management platform deals.

CA's McCracken: Cloud Computing is Happening Now

Mon, 17 May 2010 02:18:00 EDT

"When economic conditions, technology advances, and customer needs align, transformation happens," said McCracken. "As we emerge from the global economic downturn, we have a tremendous opportunity to leap forward and embrace change, or risk being left behind." McCracken also described a vision for how all businesses will evolve. "People still ask if I think the cloud is really going to happen. I say no; I don't think it's going to happen. I know it is going to happen because it is happening now. Virtualization and cloud computing will enable businesses to adapt to rapidly changing market and customer needs.

Cloud Computing Reaches a "Coming of Age" Says Oracle at Cloud Expo

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EDT

Enterprise IT must constantly evolve to respond to rapidly changing business requirements and new technologies. Cloud computing promises to accelerate that evolution with far-reaching, convergent principles such as self-service, pay-for-use, rapid deployment, elastic scalability and efficient management of physical and virtual environments. What are the key enabling technologies? What is the role of management systems for cloud computing? How can complex, multi-tier applications be packaged and deployed on clouds? This keynote will explore how enterprise IT can evolve to a cloud computing model, building on a foundation of grid computing, virtualization and management automation.

Cloud Computing Bootcamp Returns to Cloud Expo in New York April 20, 2010

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:15:00 EDT

No one can properly understand anything related to enterprise-level Cloud Computing without having first gained a deep understanding of the capabilities of different Cloud players. Cloud Expo's pioneering Cloud Computing Bootcamp is designed with that in mind. It is a one-day, fully immersive deep-dive into the Cloud, in which the sessions during the day seek to give delegates a deep understanding of the capabilities of different Cloud players and how they address rapidly changing market demands. The ever-popular Bootcamp, which is now held regularly around the world, is being held next in conjunction the 5th Cloud Expo in New York, NY (April 20, 2010). It is led by our 2010 Bootcamp Instructor Larry Carvalho.

Cloud Expo New York, Prague, and San Francisco Sponsors

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EDT

Cloud Computing in 2010 will be a paradigm shifting technology trend and Cloud Expo is where the Cloud change will form as the single most significant industry event we enter a new decade. Since we announced Cloud Expo three years ago in 2007 and launched it in March of 2008 in New York City, I have been personally working with the companies that are in leadership positions as the Cloud technologies form. We recently presented the 4th International Cloud Computing & Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California. The expo floor was packed for three days. Today, we have close to a 100% resign rate among our sponsors for the upcoming Cloud Expo, which will take place April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. I would like to take this opportunity to share some tips with all our valued sponsors, exhibitors, our rock start faculty, as well as our delegates.

Colin Clark Launches CEP Topic on Ulitzer

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:45:00 EST

Colin Clark launched on Wednesday "CEP Complex Event Processing" topic on Ulitzer. Colin has been processing events in event processing for over 20 years and has both founded a couple of companies and held executive positions at others in the space. Complex event processing, or CEP, is primarily an event processing concept that deals with the task of processing multiple events with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within the event cloud. CEP employs techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes. CEP is to discover information contained in the events happening across all the layers in an organization and then analyze its impact from the macro level as "complex event" and then take subsequent action plan in real time.

The Service Orientation of IT

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:45:00 EST

We are entering a new phase of IT where organizations must orient delivery of service across the entire IT supply chain to behave and operate in a real-time manner. Those organizations that don’t embark on this transformational journey will not deliver the desired business growth and maximized shareholder value that is the fiduciary responsibilities of IT executives in support of their businesses.

WSO2 Debuts Cloud Computing Identity Authentication

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:30:00 EST

WSO2, the lean enterprise middleware company, on Wednesday announced the debut of WSO2 Cloud Identity. The newest hosted WSO2 Cloud Service helps companies eliminate the complexity of deploying identity management and authentication across multiple SaaS (software as a service) applications as well as internal and traditional systems. By supporting a broad set of authentication and security standards, WSO2 Cloud Identity gives administrators a central identity management system while users gain single sign-on access to different cloud applications. Initial cloud application support includes Google Apps, which is available with today’s beta release of WSO2 Cloud Identity, and Salesforce.com, which will be added at the end of the month.

Staples Moves from Paper Clips to Maybe the Cloud

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST

Staples, the big office supplies outlet, is going to start offering “enterprise-class” tech support to SMBs through to Fortune 1000s. It’s even considering putting cloud computing on the menu. According to Jim Lippie, VP of the company’s network services, IT accounts for the SMBs’ second-largest fixed cost after people. Staples thinks it can be a low-cost provider. It figures it can run an SMB’s entire IT operation, if it likes. The newfangled Staples Technology Solutions will offer consulting and hardware; managed services like onsite and remote server and desktop support for Macs, Windows and Linux platforms as well as Cisco and Citrix widgetry; printer fleet management; data center assessments and solutions including 24/7 disaster recovery; and network services.

Global Technology M&A Shows Growth for Third Consecutive Quarter

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:30:00 EST

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the global technology sector grew for the third consecutive quarter in Q4 2009, bringing optimism for continued growth in 2010, according to a new report by Ernst & Young. Global technology M&A update found that deals done in the technology sector rose by 13% to 553 in the quarter, compared with 488 in Q309. This followed consecutive rises in Q309 and Q209, after bottoming out in Q109 (at 405). The final quarter of 2009 was also the first quarter for deal volume to top its year-earlier counterpart, increasing by 32% compared with 418 deals in Q408. However, full-year activity was down 29%, dropping to 1,886 deals in 2009 from 2,665 in 2008.

Good News for SOA - Oracle Buys AmberPoint

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST

AmberPoint and Oracle share a vision of providing customers with comprehensive SOA management capabilities that support modern IT environments and are also complete, open, and integrated," said Thomas Kurian, Oracle Executive Vice President, Product Development. "We expect the addition of AmberPoint's products to Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite will provide stronger end-to-end governance that allows customers to manage the entire lifecycle of SOA-based solutions, providing visibility and management across heterogeneous environments.

TIBCO to Deliver Enhanced Cloud Computing Services

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:30:00 EST

TIBCO Software on Monday announced COLT, a leading European provider of data, voice and managed services, has selected TIBCO's cloud software to provide organizations throughout Europe with the ability to deploy and manage enterprise applications across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures in real-time. The enhanced Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings for cloud services, offered by COLT, will rapidly bring flexibility and scalability into the business, especially for organizations operating applications in high performance computing environments.

Survey Says: IT Budgets in 2010 To Be at 2005 Levels

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST

IT budgets will essentially be flat in 2010, increasing by a weighted global average of 1.3 percent in nominal terms, compared with 2009 levels where IT budgets declined 8.1 percent, according to results from the 2010 CIO survey by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP). 2009 was the most challenging year for IT since the survey began in 1999, and CIOs had faced multiple budget cuts wiping away four years of budget increases, giving CIOs basically the same level of resources as they had in 2005. While there are some signs of recovery in the 2010 projections, these will not overcome last year's cuts.

Verari Gets Bought by Founder

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:45:00 EST

Within barely an inch of its life, blade pioneer Verari Systems – or at least most of its assets have been bought at auction by its original founder and CTO David Driggers and an investment group that means to restart it. There was no hint of a price. The company will now bypass bankruptcy court.

Layer 7 Technologies Achieves Record "SOA in the Cloud" Growth

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:15:00 EST

As organizations adopt SOA and cloud computing, concerns about security and management are becoming top of mind. Layer 7 Technologies, a long-standing leader in SOA and Web services security, is leading the way with new security and management innovations to help customers share application services across the extended enterprise and now the cloud. “Despite the economic downturn, Layer 7 was able to attract more new customers and partners in 2009 than at any time in its history, owing to the strength of its products, team and vision,” explained Paul Rochester, CEO of Layer 7 Technologies. “We’re in a strong position to continue to accelerate growth in 2010, as SOA implementations continue to rise and more organizations embrace the cloud.”

Jaspersoft Aims To Woo Large Enterprises With New Release

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:30:00 EST

Adoption of open-source business intelligence software is doubling every year because the products are viewed as "good enough" for routine applications, according to a recent report by Gartner Inc. analyst Andreas Bitterer. Commercial BI software vendors still have superior BI technology, he wrote, but "open-source is slowly becoming just another sourcing option for everyday BI requirements." No longer just an option for cash-strapped organizations, open-source BI tools are going mainstream, Bitterer said.The report cited five successful open-source BI organizations one of which is Jaspersoft.

Software Industry 2009 M&A Trends Show Rising Multiples

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST

Today, Berkery Noyes released its "2009 Software Industry Merger & Acquisition Trends" report. Software Industry M&A activity experienced a significant half-to-half gain as exhibited by the 83% increase in the median EV/revenue multiple from 1.2 in 1st Half 2009 to 2.2 in 2nd Half 2009. This rise brings the median EV/revenue multiple back to its 2007 level. 2nd Half 2009 exhibited a moderate increase in both aggregate volume and aggregate value, versus 1st Half 2009. Half-to-half, aggregate value increased by 17% from approximately $18 billion to $21 billion, and aggregate volume increased by 5% from 341 deals to 358.

Mamoon Yunus Launches "SOA Testing" Topic on Ulitzer

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:00:00 EST

Forum Systems founder Mamoon Yunus launched today "SOA Testing" Topic on Ulitzer. This topic is all about SOA Testing techniques used for testing IT assets that are part of a Service Oriented Architecture and a Cloud-based deployment. As SOA and Cloud Computing begins to tie the fabric of IT infrastructure, actively and aggressively testing XML, REST, SOAP and Web Services has become crucial. Comprehensive Functional, Performance, Interoperability and Vulnerability Testing form the Pillars of SOA Testing.

JaxView and jUDDI for End-to-End SOA Governance Solution

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST

Managed Methods Inc. a leader in SOA visibility and SOA runtime governance announced the integration with Apache jUDDI. Managed Methods excels in lightweight and cost effective governance and visibility solutions that compliment registry and repository products. Managed Method’s JaxView offers various deployments for managing SOA and cloud environments including proxy, patent pending agent-less and agent based. “The jUDDI registry integration was an important addition and request from our customers. This integration will allow companies with smaller budget to govern their SOA life cycle from design to production at a cost-effective yet comprehensive manner.” states Al Aghili Chief Technology Officer of Managed Methods Inc.

Social Media in SOA and ERP

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

IFS North America today released results of a study of ERP trends that suggest strong demand for both social media and environmental management functionality in business software used in manufacturing and other industrial settings. The study is now available for download directly at www.ifsworld.com/us. The study, based on a survey of more than 260 U.S. manufacturing executives conducted for IFS by a third-party research organization, also asked manufacturers about how their ERP software could help them adjust as large numbers of experienced managers and engineers retired.

TIBCO Software Reports Q4 GAAP EPS of $0.18, Non-GAAP EPS of $0.23

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:45:00 EST

TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) today announced results for its fourth quarter, which ended on November 30, 2009.

Progress Software Announces 2009 Fourth Quarter Results

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST

Progress Software Corporation on Tuesday announced results for its fourth quarter ending November 30, 2009. On a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, revenue for the quarter was $136.8 million, down 2 percent (5 percent at constant currency) from $139.4 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008. On a non-GAAP basis, revenue totaled $136.9 million, representing a 4 percent decrease (7 percent at constant currency) over the year ago period. Software license revenue decreased 7 percent (10 percent at constant currency) to $52.0 million from $56.1 million in the same quarter last year.

TIBCO Software to Release Q4 2009 Results on Tuesday

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST

TIBCO Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX) will release the fourth quarter earnings for 2009 on Tuesday, December 22. The financial results will be posted on the company’s website, http://www.tibco.com/. The company will hold a conference call at 4:30 pm ET that afternoon to review the financial results for the period ended November 30, 2009. Interested parties may hear the presentation by dialing 888.213.3752, or 913312.0947. A webcast will also be available on the company’s website.

WSO2 Delivers Middleware for Heterogeneous SOAs

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

WSO2 announced that it is delivering the first complete middleware platform specifically built to support and extend a heterogeneous service-oriented architecture (SOA). WSO2 offers a lean approach to middleware that covers the complete requirements of an enterprise architecture, including connectors, mediation and governance, all the way to the executive business dashboard—all available as open source and in the cloud

TIBCO Unveils tibbr the First Workplace Communication Tool

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:15:00 EST

TIBCO introduced tibbr, a communication tool specifically built for the workplace that allows the right information to find you. Unlike other social networking applications that focus on the concept of "following people," tibbr is the first to take an entirely new approach to social computing by allowing you to follow granular subjects and machines as well. Conventional social utilities are typically used to build a network of real-world social connections based on relationships with people.

Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

OMG has approved the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN(TM)) 2.0 specification beta submission. OMG's Board of Directors approved the specification at the OMG Technical Meeting held in San Antonio, TX in September 2009. The finalization process for BPMN 2.0 is underway and the final version of the specification is expected to be adopted in mid 2010. The initial version of BPMN provided a graphical notation for specifying and documenting business processes with an emphasis on defining "orchestration processes." BPMN 1.x has been broadly adopted by the industry. OMG lists more than 60 implementations.

Business Commerce Clouds

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:00 EST

Welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Vol. 46. Our topic for this episode of BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition centers on "business commerce clouds." As the general notion of cloud computing continues to permeate the collective IT imagination, an offshoot vision holds that multiple business-to-business (B2B) players could use the cloud approach to build extended business process ecosystems. It's sort of like a marketplace in the cloud on steroids, on someone else's servers, perhaps to engage on someone's business objectives, and maybe even satisfy some customers along the way. It's really a way to make fluid markets adapt at Internet speed, at low cost, to business requirements, as they come and go.

OpSource Secure Cloud Computing Storage

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:30:00 EST

Mezeo Software and OpSource announced that OpSource Cloud will offer the Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform, enabling OpSource Cloud users to enjoy online sign-up and immediate provisioning of cloud storage service, speeding enterprises' cloud deployment and offering flexible, secure storage options to help ISVs differentiate themselves. OpSource Cloud, which combines the availability, flexibility and community of the public cloud with the security, performance and control that the enterprise demands, is in public Beta and available for on-line purchase by the hour from www.OpsourceCloud.net. The Mezeo Cloud Storage Platform will be available to OpSource Cloud users in the first quarter of 2010.

Cast Iron Systems to Simplify Cloud Computing Integration

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:45:00 EST

PROS enterprise pricing software company announced on Thursday that it has teamed with Cast Iron Systems, SaaS and Cloud Integration Company, to simplify application integration for their customers. PROS is now a Platinum-level Powered By Cast Iron partner, offering dramatically simplified interface development and integration between its profitability management and optimization software product, PROS Pricing Solution Suite, and the wide variety of business applications, including SAP, Oracle eBusiness Applications, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics. PROS customers can use Cast Iron’s integration solutions to rapidly connect the PROS Pricing Solution Suite with hundreds of applications in real-time to access information locked away in these applications.

Oracle Earnings Up 15%

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:30:00 EST

Oracle on Thursday announced fiscal 2010 Q2 GAAP earnings per share of $0.29, up 15% compared to last year. Second quarter GAAP total revenues were up 4% to $5.9 billion, while quarterly GAAP net income was up 12% to $1.5 billion. GAAP new software license revenues were up 2% to $1.7 billion. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 14% to $3.2 billion. GAAP operating income was up 10% to $2.2 billion and GAAP operating margin was up 200 basis points to 37%. Oracle also intends to build and sell complete systems for private cloud computing platforms, combining Sun hardware and storage with Oracle's.

Sun Microsystems Releases NetBeans IDE 6.8

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

With complete Java EE 6 and GlassFish v3 support, the NetBeans IDE 6.8 makes language and platform improvements easily available to developers and helps accelerate application development. The NetBeans IDE 6.8 enables developers to take advantage of the latest Java EE 6 language features that simplify Java application creation, including POJO-like development, more annotations and less XML configuration. Additionally, developers can easily target and deploy to GlassFish v3, including the new lightweight GlassFish v3 Web Profile

Sun Microsystems Launches GlassFish Enterprise Server v3

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Sun Microsystems and the GlassFish community announced the immediate availability of Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3, the latest release of Sun's commercial Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server and its open source counterpart, GlassFish v3. Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 provides customers with an enterprise grade, open source based application server solution focused on reducing application and deployment complexity. Download and begin development with Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 today at: http://www.sun.com/glassfishv3.

WSO2 Launches WSO2 Business Activity Monitoring

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST

WSO2, the open source SOA company, announced the launch of the WSO2 Business Activity Monitor (WSO2 BAM), which provides real-time visibility into service-oriented architecture (SOA) processes, transactions and workflows. The WSO2 BAM system is designed to support the heterogeneous SOAs that dominate the enterprise landscape—providing a lightweight, efficient and easy-to-deploy alternative to traditionally large, complex business activity monitoring solutions.