Today, Microsoft announced, along with other vendors, the publication of, or their intend to publish later, a new language to model data center resources and their management in XML. This language is called Service Modeling Language, and is based on Schematron.

As a result of collaboration, the open, industry-wide specification defines a common language for expressing information about IT resources and services. Called the Service Modeling Language (SML), the specification enables a hierarchy of IT resource models to be created from reusable building blocks rather than requiring custom descriptions of every service, thus reducing costs and system complexity for customers. The group plans to submit the draft specification to an industry standards organization later this year.

This language is intended to replace Microsoft's System Definition Model

Some more information is available at SearchWebServices.com.

Technorati Tags: datacenter automation, ITIL, Service oriented Infrastructure, system management

Responses[2]

Posted by jc on 31 July 2006 13:09:38 PDT #

Today, HP announced their acquisition of Mercury Interactive.

HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Mercury Interactive Corp., a leading IT management software and services company, through a cash tender offer for $52.00 per share, or an enterprise value of approximately $4.5 billion, which is net of existing cash and debt.

This comes after the acquisition of Peregrine in September 2005.

HP portfolio in the Business Service Management, Enterprise consolidation and optimization is now very comprehensive.

Technorati Tags: system management

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 25 July 2006 15:03:47 PDT #

Interesting piece of information from this post on PushToTest :

Caucho told developers that they are seeing an astonishing 4 to 6 times performance improvement over the C-version of PHP. Quercus runs with JVM thread safety - something not available to PHP developers today - to enable things like database connection pooling in a threaded environment. Quercus is expected to ship by December 2006.

Here is another mention of this information on ServerSide :

Apparently, the PHP pages are compiled in the background to byte-code, and the resulting performance is six times that of Apache mod_php!

And this post is generating quite a few comments.

A more definitive source of information is available on the caucho forum where some actual numbers have been posted :

and, with PHP acceleration :

With more tuning, the PHP performance might match the Resin/Quercus ones, but it should be a wake up call to all the Java detractors. Java IS NOT SLOW !

Technorati Tags: java, php

Responses[2]

Posted by jc on 21 July 2006 14:11:32 PDT #

In a recent post titled OMC Should Drive a New Systems Management Taxonomy, the author makes the case for the creation of a taxonomy to classify and describe the various open source projects that the Open Management Consortium (OMC) is hosting.
This is a good idea, but I would have the following remarks :

• There should be an agreement to use a common glossary, like the version 3 of the ITIL Glossary.
• A common functional model for the OMC should be developed, and each product mapped to it, or classified in the taxonomy. I'm referring to a model like the one I developed, and published in this post. It might not be perfect, and could be definitely improved and adapted, but I found it to be a good base.
• The taxonomy should be created based on a data center management operational model, aligned with customers functional requirements.
• When this mapping is done, the consortium should drive a integration strategy to resolve overlaps and gaps, as well as defining a common integration and interoperability framework. Quite often, open source projects are duplicating efforts because there is no overall strategy, or agreements between projects, and since there is a limited supply of community members, they should be directed to maximize their impact.

So, to answer the questions in the post :

And so I'd like to get a read from the other members of the OMC, and from visitors that may not yet be participants (you can join by going to: http://open-management.com/join/) as to whether they: A) agree that such a taxonomy is needed and, B) will commit to using it to describe their projects, assuming that we establish in advance the rules for discussing and deciding what the taxonomy would be.

A : yes, the taxonomy is needed, but see my points above.
B: I cannot commit since I do not represent a member of the OMC, but this requirement is making a lot of sense.

I hope that the discussion on this taxonomy or functional map will be performed in an open forum, and I would happily contribute.

Technorati Tags: datacenter automation, system management

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 20 July 2006 13:19:05 PDT #

Saturday was spent at New Brighton State Beach near Capitola. While it was a very nice day, it started with quite a bit of fog. The light was very nice, and the resulting picture looks like chinese painting, ... well, almost :-)

Technorati Tags: photography

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 17 July 2006 20:55:59 PDT #

I stumbled on Rich Burridge's weblog post about book statistics, it has some scary numbers :

Who is Reading Books (and who is not)
One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Many do not even graduate from high school.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
42% of college graduates never read another book.
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57% of new books are not read to completion.

58% and 42% ?!?!? how is that possible !

Technorati Tags: books

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 13 July 2006 09:39:52 PDT #

• ILoad allows you to load CDs directly on the IPod without a PC
• ILoad-v connect to a cable or satellite box and allow you to record video shows directly on the Ipod, or an USB hard drive. It is integrate with a TV guide to select programs to record.
• Iload-c integrate a Cell Phone to directly load music from a music store into your Ipod Nano.

The prices seem reasonable: $199 for the Iload-v for example.

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 13 July 2006 09:14:47 PDT #

You might have seen this show in UK, or in the Google videos , like this one :

I found recently that the G4 channel Cool ... explosions, and silly experiments ...

Technorati Tags: hacks, TV

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 13 July 2006 08:32:27 PDT #

I you have an USB headphone,used on a laptop, you end up having to switch back to your USB headphone after reconnecting your headphone. This is king of annoying since you have to go in the preference/sound panel to do the operation.

I found SoundSource from RogueAmoeba. It's really cool, install in your Apple bar and let you switch with a single click :

SoundSource is a tiny tool for OS X enabling you to switch your audio input and output sources with a single click. And with the System setting, you can transfer system beeps to a secondary audio source so you won't be disturbed.

Highly recommended small application.

Technorati Tags: freeware, macOS

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 12 July 2006 08:26:41 PDT #

Today, Opsware announced their acquisition of CreekPath. it complements an already comprehensive solution with storage management automation.

Creekpath's software has many of the necessary pieces for a strong application storage automation solution. It excels in discovering and mapping an organization's entire storage supply chain, from the database through file systems, volume managers, servers, fabric switches, array controllers and down to the disk drives. Creekpath's technology also excels in the breadth of storage technologies it addresses. Its proven ability to support the largest and most heterogeneous production storage networks make it an ideal choice for becoming part of the Opsware family of products, which already offer the industry's broadest support for automating heterogeneous data center environments.

It seems that their only missing piece would be around virtualization management.

Technorati Tags: CMDB, ITIL, datacenter automation

Responses[5]

Posted by jc on 11 July 2006 09:09:23 PDT #

Ken Robinson gave a very interesting talk at TED 2006 about the role of education in innovation.
Ken is also adding a good dose of humor in his talk. Highly recommended video.

Technorati Tags: innovation, TED2006

Add a comment

Posted by jc on 06 July 2006 09:55:55 PDT #