ZDNet UK Enterprise applications Toolkit

Oracle details fate of Sun software

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:10:01 +0000

A recently published document has shed more light on Oracle's product plans for key products, including the GlassFish open-source application server and the NetBeans IDE

Context is Everything

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:54:41 +0000

Were all used to applications that are at best frustrating, and at worst infuriating. They just dont seem to do what we want, when we want it. After all, theres all that processing power...

IBM launches Tivoli Live Monitoring Services

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Larry Dignan) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:45:01 +0000

Tivoli Live Monitoring, a cloud computer offering designed to better monitor infrastructure, will reside on IBM's cloud platform

Microsoft at The Mall

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:26:15 +0000

Not surprisingly, the Microsoft Stores run on Windows. Over the last few months Apple has been switching from using Windows CE handhelds to modified iPod Touches for its EasyPay system in the Apple...

How I create a blog entry

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:00:30 +0000

Even if I say so myself, I've managed to hone my blog-writing into a lean number of minimal of keystrokes, from which somebody may glean something useful. Maybe. 1. Come up with an idea. This is...

IE9, Silverlight 4, Office 2010 in the PDC spotlight

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:46:01 +0000

Day two of Microsoft's PDC saw clients take centre stage, with browsers, rich internet applications and productivity tools in the spotlight

Oslo transforms into the underlying application model of the...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:10:01 +0000

Microsoft only used the codename Oslo once in the PDC keynotes today, talking about SQL Server Modelling Services with the throwaway reference that "you may have heard this called the Oslo...

Adobe offers new Flash, AIR betas

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Stephen Shankland) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:45:02 +0000

Flash Player 10.1 gets a hardware video boost, and AIR 2 gets tighter integration with desktop computing resources such as USB drives and multitouch interfaces

Bing integrates Wolfram Alpha results

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:45:01 +0000

Microsoft's search engine will use Wolfram Alpha computation engine APIs for results in areas including nutrition, health and advanced mathematics

A perspective on business analytics

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:02:55 +0000

Am in the middle of some research into storage, and the latest technologies that help to ensure that storage doesn't exist as an island or silo. No, don't switch off! It gets interesting later......

UK companies put ERP on hold

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:02:01 +0000

ERP systems are difficult and time-consuming to implement, and more than 60 percent of UK companies are postponing them temporarily or indefinitely, according to a new study

Microsoft cuts a third off hosted-software prices

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:32:02 +0000

The company says it is reducing the monthly subscription fee for hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications Server

At what point should Microsoft get scared?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:53:55 +0000

A programmer was talking in a tech support forum about some GMail problem he had that was linked to YouTube. "I haven't tried it in Chrome", he said. "That's a little too much Google for me." ...

IBM aims to connect corporate mashups and BI

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Larry Dignan) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:39:02 +0000

A new service can expose content from IBM's Cognos 8 business intelligence suite as a web service, so the data can then be used in other applications and mashups

Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:28:02 +0000

The open-source web browser has rapidly gained new users over the past two months, according to Mozilla

IBM pitches flexible package at mid-size firms

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:02:02 +0000

The new line-up is aimed at helping smaller companies build a more flexible IT infrastructure that can respond to load increases and decreases

UK software industry thriving

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:43:32 +0000

The UK's software industry is flourishing according to research firm TechMarketView. Last year, the top 50 UK software companies reported revenue growth of around 20 percent, together with...

Can cloud savings just evaporate?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:44:08 +0000

We've been at the SharePoint conference this week and I was thinking about Google in the session about using the FAST search engine in SharePoint, in terms of the tweaks administrators can do to...

Offline SharePoint tool promised for Mac users

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Mary Branscombe) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:32:03 +0100

While Microsoft is not planning to produce a version of Groove for the Mac, the new tool will make SharePoint access much easier for Mac users, company executives say

Free, you say?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:54:41 +0100

I'm confused aobut a trend in the Free Software world: subscription fees as a way of raising money for software. Specifically I've seen this with the Joomla Content Editor and JXtended Joomla!...

Dell offering Salesforce integration services

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (David Meyer) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:58:01 +0100

Dell and Salesforce.com are selling a joint offering to businesses in the US, combining Salesforce CRM with Dell's integration services

Oracle OpenWorld: Ellison takes aim at IBM

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Chris Duckett) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:01:02 +0100

Oracle chief Larry Ellison has taken several potshots at IBM, denigrating the power efficiency of its hardware and opening fire on its 'Smarter Planet' campaign

VMware hits back at Microsoft cost criticism

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:10:02 +0100

The company has responded to comments by Steve Ballmer, saying while cost comparisons of virtualisation products are complicated, Microsoft may be more expensive

Steve Ballmer and licensing: the video

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:58:10 +0100

ZDNet UK was at Microsoft's London HQ yesterday, listening to Steve Ballmer talk about Windows 7, Server 2008 R2 and matters appertaining. We weren't allowed to ask questions, although customers in...

Ballmer describes the 'new normal'

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:12:04 +0100

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer on Monday sent one of his periodic public emails, outlining the business realities of what he called "the new normal", Ina Fried of CNET News.com reports. ...

Free Software is dead!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:48:02 +0100

Long live free software! Last week I gave a workshop on Markdown, the lightweight markup language used for writing for the web (the S5 presentation is available for download). The Open...

Microsoft Windows Cafe to open in Paris

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:53:02 +0100

The software giant plans to allow the general public to discover Windows 7 while enjoying a cup of coffee

Sage CRM joins Microsoft, Salesforce in the cloud

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Andrew Donoghue) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:39:02 +0100

The business-software maker is trialling a cloud version of its CRM software, following other providers such as Microsoft and Salesforce

MapOSMatic - city maps from OpenStreetMap

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:32:18 +0100

A group of French developers and contributors to OpenStreetMap have created MapOSMatic which creates maps with grids and street indexes for a given area. It's a fantastic example of what can be...

Salesforce taps into Facebook and Twitter

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Toby Wolpe) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:41:02 +0100

The web services company has added social-networking features to its Cloud Service platform

Red Hat hypervisor tools to run on Windows only

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:31:02 +0100

The open-source company's desktop and server hypervisor management tools will initially be available only for Microsoft Windows-based systems

Linux buoys up Novell earnings

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Tom Espiner) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:28:02 +0100

Novell's third-quarter financial results show its Linux business up, while its enterprise applications are sinking

Salesforce sees strong second quarter

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Larry Dignan) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:12:02 +0100

The SaaS specialist delivered better-than-expected revenue in its second quarter and has set higher earnings targets for its next financial year

Virtualisation - is there an alternative?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:43:31 +0100

Another thought about virtualisation - following my last blog, I started to think about mainframes. Should the mainframe be an option when considering virtualisation projects? I'd argue that the...

Moonlight 2.0 moves into beta

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:30:01 +0100

The new test version of the Silverlight-on-Linux software incorporates Silverlight 2.0 as well as a few features from Silverlight 3.0

The risk that Social CRM will exclude small businesses

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:56:28 +0100

The CRM 2.0 train is gaining steam, but most of its first uses are of little relevance to small businesses. Might they get looked over by one of the most exciting business web iniatives ever? ...

Microsoft, Internet Pirates and Web 2.0+

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:57:12 +0100

Microsoft needs to do something truly pro-active to rid the Internet of Windows zombies. The programming design of Windows from the beginning has been flawed. Consider the resulting bot-net zombies...

Leaving Windows behind

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:39:39 +0100

I have spent a happy morning installing Windows XP on the computers at the Youth Centre. Windows XP is really showing its age, in terms of speed of installation and hardware support. The...

Fedora 11 Release Slips Another Week

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:31:07 +0100

The release of Fedora 11 (Leonidas) has been delayed by another week, until 9 June. The reason for the delay is, of course, the discovery of another potentially serious bug. It's good to see that...

Scrabbling with Scribus

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:40:29 +0100

I'm trying to get to grips with the Free publishing software Scribus, as I want to update the artwork for the OpenDisc DVD. But I have hit what appears to be a brick wall, although I'm sure it's...

GNU Windows 7?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:10:16 +0100

I found something in Windows 7 that seems to have been around awhile, Unix Application Services. Please ignore the white space between the front part and back parts of that sentence. It...

ERP suppliers are slow to adopt SaaS, says Gartner

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:50:47 +0100

Just about everybody is agreed that software-as-a-service (SaaS) is being adopted quickly but, according to the analysts Gartner, some are decidedly quicker than others. In a survey conducted...

Microsoft opens SaaS to others

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:01:49 +0000

On Sunday, Microsoft said it was moving towards the idea of opening up its online business applications so that its partners can directly bill their customers. Up to now, Microsoft has sought to...

xG, xG, xG - silence is not good in a phone company

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:17:31 +0000

The curious business of xG Technology is getting curiouser and curiouser. The Floridian miracle VoIP company's been silent since the new year, despite having promised that all sorts of things would...

Windows 7 variants revealed

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:04:15 +0000

According to Paul Thurrott, Microsoft is just about to tell all on how many different sorts of Windows 7 it'll ship. There'll be five variants: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and...

Unified login, CRM 2.0 take small steps forward

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:42:53 +0000

Important announcements this week to help OpenID catch Facebook Connect; and to help bring Facebook and Salesforce.com closer to delivering CRM 2.0. I wrote at the end of last year about how...

Ubuntu barrel scrapings

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:28:29 +0000

I'm working on a couple of killer blog entries, one about Xubuntu and the Aspire One, and the other about the Data Cloud. Alas, neither project has reached fruition, so I am having to stave off...

HP and Salesforce could be made for each other

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:08:35 +0000

Sometimes an executive can deny something while opening the door to speculation. HP offices did that on Tuesday when while maintaining they could see no reason why their company would have an...

HP's Hogan glories in growth

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:19:47 +0000

The biggest issue facing Tom Hogan, the senior vice president of HPs software division, could well be avoiding smugness. Not that Hogan seems to be a smug man or that HP is a smug company. It is...

More cloud tales - what happens on rainy days?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:33:51 +0000

Cloud computing has its elephants. One of the biggest is the threat of your cloud provider disappearing overnight, taking your data with it. Right now, that's an elephant with plenty of PR with...

Software Jihad

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:04:06 +0000

I've been reading an article/blog over at CNN talking about the Chinese lawyer that has filed suit on Microsoft for putting black desktop backgrounds every hour on pirated copies of XP Pro. I like...

Viral Anti-Virus?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:04:09 +0100

Here's some viral marketing - ironically enough for an anti-virus company. Norton Fighter is a Japanese superhero, saving the world from viruses in black body-stockings. ...

OpenOffice 3 reads MS Office 2007 Files

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:31:06 +0100

The release of OpenOffice.org 3 must be getting very close now; Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is available for download, and it looks very, very good indeed. The best news about this release, at least...

Ecma: So why is our process suddenly broken?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:40:41 +0100

The standard maker Ecma has responded to the harsh criticism it's had from within IBM, among other places. Essentially, people objecting to Ecma's fast track standard process are actually...

On Alphas and Betas

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:04:01 +0100

There seems to be a rash of Alpha and Beta test software available at the moment. I currently have, or have very recently had, the following on my laptops: - Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 5 - Firefox...

This post written in Chrome

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:07:22 +0100

The download opened about fifteen minutes ago, and I'm now watching the Chrome press conference in Chrome - and I'm also writing this post in another Chrome tab I dragged onto the desktop. ...

Vista downgraded to XP on third of machines...?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:39:26 +0100

According to various reports, Vista has been downgraded to XP on a third of machines globally. Both TGDaily and TechNewsWorld are reporting claims that approximately 35 percent of Vista machines,...

The little things that make virtual computing such fun...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:48:46 +0100

Dialogue Box filming day, and I'm busy preparing some bits and pieces at home before dashing into work. At least, that was the plan. Today's DB (and if you haven't seen any of the new series...

Test your ISP's net neutrality!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:31:52 +0100

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a tool, dubbed 'Switzerland' (net neutrality - geddit?), that's designed to help web users check if their ISPs are doing nasty things with...

Vote Bill Gates on Clerihew Day!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:37:39 +0100

Technologists figure prominently as the subjects of amusing poems, in a competition to celebrate Clerihew Day, july 10. Miss Conduct is running a Clerihew competition , and the five finalists...

Delphi HTMLParser

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:43:23 +0100

HTMLParser is really easy to use. I have made an sample project for anyone who likes to use HTMLParser for their project. ...

Gartner: Analysts always get it right

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:45:10 +0100

The Gartner Symposium and IT Expo for Spring 2008 kicked off on Monday. Held in the home of US trade shows, Las Vegas, around 2,000 delegates sat down on Monday to four days of analysis and future...

Google: OOXML still insufficient and unnecessary

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:50:43 +0100

I'd write this up as a story proper, except it's a no-change statement. Google's response to the passage of Microsoft's OOXML as an ISO standard (pending appeals) is: Along with much of the...

OOXML officially an ISO standard!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:42:39 +0100

Well - it's as official as we're going to get it before ISO makes its public announcement tomorrow. According to a Microsoft press release, the standard won support from 75 percent of the P...

Perfect fault free software: finally launched

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:07:56 +0100

In a shock press release this morning I learn that Perfect Programming Inc. has launched version 1.0 of its Superb Software Suite (SSS). Finally, we can get our hands on a fault free piece of...

OOXML result will come Wednesday

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:26:39 +0100

Reuters is reporting that the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) will announce the result of the OOXML vote on Wednesday. This is apparently to give them time to let all the...

OOXML standard will tarnish ISO

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:27:48 +0100

From what I can read, there were enough irregularities in the process, that ISO should refuse to accept Microsoft's Office Open XML as a standard - but I expect ISO will press right ahead and...

OOXML clears ISO voting

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:48:50 +0100

That's it. An official announcement is awaited, but it seems certain now that Microsoft's OOXML specification has made its way through the ISO fasttrack process, albeit with many serious concerns...

OOXML process in deranged finale

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:59:31 +0000

Catching my breath, I thought it might be worthwhile to recap a bit on the insane flurry of updates coming through about the ISO votes on Microsoft's OOXML spec. Remember, the deadline is the end...

Apple Crumble Grumble

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:38:13 +0000

OK I know; Apple doesn't get a whole lot wrong does it? (Although I drafted this blog before seeing the lead story Firefox chief fumes over Apple Safari update on ZDNET this morning.) So it's...

Microsoft presses on regardless with OOXML SDK

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:27:20 +0000

OOXML is in the balance as a formal standard, but that's no reason for Microsoft not to launch tools for the document standard. However, the OOXML kit which is on its way could cause confusion, as...