Showing headlines posted by thevarguy2

Digium, promoter of Asterisk (the open source IP PBX), is making a deeper unified communications push into Europe. The Digium effort leverages EntaTech, a telephony distributor in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The big question: Can Digium expand its international pipelines to maintain the company’s growth? Here's the update.

SugarCRM, which competes with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has raised $33 million in funding to push deeper into the enterprise market. SugarCRM is available both on-premises and via SaaS partners. And that strategy sounds like it’s working. Here's why.

Ring, ring. Collect call to Research In Motion and the BlackBerry team. You lost more executives this week. Your stock is down 80 percent since February 2011. And you’re seeking a chief marketing officer and a chief operating officer. Other than that, things are just dandy. So what exactly should RIM and the remaining BlackBerry team do? Here are five pieces of urgent advice.

Multiple readers asked me today if I suffered from a “new” Mac OS X virus. Let’s slow down, folks. The alleged Mac virus reports spreading across the web have little to do with Apple and Mac OS X, and a lot to do with a small security hole in Java — which is owned by Oracle. And by the way, there’s a simple security fix. Here are details.

When it comes to OpenStack and open source cloud computing, here’s the key question I keep asking: Are any companies or customers actually profiting from OpenStack? Perhaps Mirantis can offer the answer. Here's why.

In the battle of Citrix CloudStack vs OpenStack, Umbee Ltd. is choosing sides. Indeed, Umbee Ltd. claims to have launched the world’s first cloud hosting service based on CloudStack 3.0, an open source cloud alternative to OpenStack. Here are details.

When it comes to Ubuntu, Canonica’s Linux distribution, most pundits keep close tabs on April and October. Like clockwork, Canonical always releases Ubuntu upgrades during those months. Indeed, Canonical is beta testing Ubuntu 12.04 (code-named Precise Pangolin) now and expects to ship the new Linux release on April 26. Ubuntu 12.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means it may appeal to businesses. But is Canonical doing enough to catch on with corporations? Here is some perspective.

The transformation of open source projects into business ventures doesn’t always proceed smoothly: Witness Mandriva Linux and OpenOffice.org, to name just a couple examples. But ownCloud, which began the launch of a commercial entity in December 2011, seems to be off to a decidedly successful start, with the release of the company’s first commercial products. Here are the details.

When Citrix Systems submitted its CloudStack solution to the Apache Software Foundation — a popular home for open source projects — plenty of folks took notice. The Citrix CloudStack effort aims to accelerate “open source in the cloud era.” The big question: Can the Citrix CloudStack effort steal momentum from OpenStack (another fast-growing open source cloud platform)? Here's some perspective.

Dell remains on an acquisition binge. The latest deal involves Dell acquiring Clerity Solutions, which helps customers migrate applications from IBM mainframes to x86 servers running Linux and Windows. It's a safe bet the Dell-Clerity deal will give Linux server and Linux applications a boost. Here's why.

SUSE has delivered a Linux distribution upgrade that could benefit VARs in the retail vertical. The new release, dubbed SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 11 SP 2, specifically targets retail customers — including general merchandisers, specialty retailers, food and drug stores. Here are details.

Wondering what comes after the cloud? Literally, usually sunshine — haha. But metaphorically speaking, the next great frontier may well be big-data. And Hadoop, an open-source project enjoying ever-increasing buzz as of late, will likely be at the fore as that niche evolves. If you don’t know much about Hadoop, it’s time to learn. Here are the basics.

When Red Hat (RHT) announced strong quarterly results yesterday, the figures essentially ended a recent debate about Red Hat Enterprise Linux vs. Ubuntu Server. Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth recently suggested Ubuntu is more popular than RHEL for some server applications. But when it comes down to dollars and cents, business-centric applications, and partner engagement, most evidence still points to Red Hat as the overwhelming Linux market leader. Here's why.

ownCloud Inc., which develops open-source software for building cloud infrastructure, has existed as a commercial entity for only a few short months. But a partner program is emerging now, and competition with DropBox and iCloud could emerge. Here are details.

When Red Hat announces Q4 2012 results on March 28, the company will finally become the first independent open source firm generating at least $1 billion in annual revenues. But can storage and other emerging opportunities fuel Red Hat's continued growth? Here are some insights.

Digium, promoter of Asterisk (the open source IP PBX) has introduced new VoIP gateways to help integrators and partners deliver end-to-end communications solutions. The key twist: The new gateways could help Asterisk customers to move their IP PBXes onto VMware systems or into the cloud. Here's why.

When Amazon and Eucalyptus finally announced plans to partner on cloud computing, the big winners were cloud integrators seeking to move workloads between on-premise IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and Amazon Web Services. But ultimately, Talkin’ Cloud believes Amazon and Eucalyptus were reacting to OpenStack — which is available as both an on-premise or public cloud platform. Here's the update.

If Android is Linux’s prodigal son, the two parties came a little closer to reconciliation recently with the release of the Linux 3.3 kernel, which merges Android back into the Linux mainline. Despite all this geeky jargon, this is a change that could actually matter even to people who aren’t programmers. Here are the details in plainer English, and why they’re worth noting.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Android is open source and built on Linux. Fortunately for Android enthusiasts and independent developers, however, Sony has made life a little easier by releasing the open source archive for the Xperia S device. Of course, there are some catches. Read on for what this announcement means for the juncture of Android and free software. Here are the details.

We may never know every detail about Ubuntu’s user base. But some of its characteristics became a little clearer this week as Canonical’s Gerry Carr began releasing the results of the company’s recent survey of people running Ubuntu, the Linux distribution. Don’t get too excited just yet, as we’ll have to wait a few more days for the full survey findings. But if you’re interested in what’s been learned so far, here's the update.