Cloud development ties code to dollars

From SDTimes, By Alex Handy

Writing applications for cloud environments is a different affair that writing for in-house hosting. At the All About the Cloud summit in San Francisco this week, the focus was on what changes developers need to make to their applications to enable their optimal use in the Cloud. Perhaps the most interesting revelation offered during the event was that of the direct correlation between billing and the quality of source code.

Treb Ryan, CEO and founder of OpSource, said in a keynote talk that Cloud hosting offers “the best margins I have seen in the hosting business.” He added that Amazon has largely played down the profitability of Cloud hosting, and he suggested they have done so to scare off potential competition. OpSource has been offering hosting for software-as-a-service applications for more than five years and has relatively recently entered the Cloud hosting business.

Ryan said that applications hosted in the Cloud are under a performance microscope. If they send too many requests to the database, that will be reflected by a higher bill at the end of the month. He said that developers writing applications for deployment in the Cloud need to realize that “bad code costs me twice as much as good code. I can cut my op costs in half” by optimizing the code.

Thus, said Ryan, developers can see a direct correlation between the code they've worked on all month and the reduction in their Cloud hosting bill. That's something developers haven't really been able to do since the days of mainframes and time-sharing.

Elsewhere at the All About the Cloud summit, attendees and speakers discussed the remaining problems of the Cloud. Integrating Cloud applications with on-site systems was one of the first and most painful points discussed.

Paul Daugherty, chief technologies architect at Accenture, said, “We are at an inflection point where integration becomes more critical. Increasingly we're seeing a big increase in data sources used. Initially integration was about two different applications, but now it's getting into the 10s and 20s.

"There was an interesting piece of research Gartner did: They looked at companies using SaaS applications. One of the less obvious data points out of their sample respondents was that 14% or 15% adopted SaaS, then reversed back out onto on-premise. The No. 1 reason for that is cost of integration, and cost required was too great."

Another remaining Cloud issue is security, said Ryan. “We're still addressing security. The idea that the vast majority of Cloud environments have the same user name and password for all users is ridiculous."

He added that most Cloud providers do not currently offer a way to tie multiple accounts together, and thus whole companies sometimes use the same login and password for their Cloud environments. Instead, Ryan would prefer accounts that could be used by each user, but could also be tied together for collaboration on the same virtual machines within the Cloud.

Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry with an experience base of over 15 years in the area of people competency development; engaged in delivering it thru its training and consulting interventions , primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand

Oracle acquires AmberPoint

By David Worthington

Oracle today has announced its acquisition of AmberPoint, a maker of SOA management software.

AmberPoint's SOA Management System solution is focused on resolving issues in application performance and transaction monitoring. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close during the first half of this year, according to Oracle.

AmberPoint has partnerships with HP, Microsoft, Parasoft, SAP and TIBCO. Oracle will continue to support multiple platforms "even if the relationship ends," and it will support OEM agreements going forward, the company said in a conference call with the press.

"My guess is that Oracle will terminate many of these relationships," said Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director for Burton Group. AmberPoint, which is the "clear leader" in the SOA management market, is an "excellent acquisition" for Oracle, she added.

"I view SOA management as the most useful piece of SOA infrastructure an organization can buy, yet very few organizations have bought one," Manes said.

"The big vendors have universally promoted ESB as the foundation of a SOA infrastructure, and they've traditionally played down SOA management. I have the opposite perspective; SOA management should be the foundation of the infrastructure, and ESBs are less important."

Oracle intends to integrate data from AmberPoint’s governance runtime into its Fusion middleware products, including Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle SOA Governance and Oracle SOA Suite, the company said.

"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 life cycle of SOA-based solutions, providing visibility and management across heterogeneous environments," said Thomas Kurian, Oracle executive vice president of product development.

"I doubt that Oracle will start to downplay ESBs, but I expect they will start to aggressively promote SOA management," Manes said.

Synergetics is a premium brand in the Indian IT industry in the area of people competency development engaged in delivering it thru its training and consulting interventions; primarily focusing on their productivity with regards to the project and deliverables on hand . Its primary differentiator has been its solution centric approach and its comprehensive client focused service portfolio

Gaining Insights – Part I - By Sanjay Jotwani

Introduction

We live in a digital world!! Every interaction is a “transaction”, and recorded into the computer’s storage.

So, what is the primary need of capturing this transactional data?

· Proof of Interaction

· Grain for Business Analysis

· Case for Predictive Analysis

As we have digitized every piece into a bit, the challenge faced today is more in terms of

· Volume of Data and,

· The disparate forms of Data in a Domain.

As mentioned, data has a purpose to serve; the major is that of participating in analysis, leading to the intelligence required by the business to make informed decisions.

In this multi part blog series, we will try to cover the need, along with the design & implementation practices for a Business Intelligence Application.

The Framework for Business Intelligence

A Business Intelligence Application, from a layered architecture perspective would be represented as shown in Figure 1.

This framework is conceptual, and technology agnostic.



















Figure 1.

1. The Data Integration will result in the Consolidated Data Storage

2. Data Analysis and Rich Visualization such as decomposition trees will use this Consolidated Data

3. The Consolidated Data can be termed as Data Warehouse OR Data Mart.

In the next blog, we will explore the Application Data Layer.

Until then; Cheers!!

Synergetics is Awarded as the "Best. NET Training Service Provider" by Microsoft.

Oracle Announces the Integration of Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle’s Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning

On beye networks 19th Jan 2010

OracleAnnounces the Integration of Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle’s Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning

• To improve operational alignment and financial performance, Oracle recently announced the integration of Oracle Hyperion Planning and Oracle’s Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning.

• Linking Hyperion Planning and Oracle’s Demantra Sales and Operations Planning gives CFOs and supply chain executives a direct path to evolve from a disconnected enterprise and operational planning environment to integrated business planning.

• As a result, CFOs get a reliable revenue forecast that has been validated against the current operating plan. On the operations side, supply chain and manufacturing managers can reconcile current operating plans against updated financial targets and budgets.

• With its top rated Enterprise Performance Management applications now linked to its best-in-class Real-time Sales and Operations Planning application, Oracle is first to provide customers with true integrated business planning capabilities.

Integrated Business Planning Improves Visibility and Profitability

• Leveraging Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA), (AIA), this integration enables Oracle Hyperion Planning to publish the financial targets for revenue, profits and other metrics to Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning. This improves decision-making through increased visibility into financial goals and helps improve the quality and profitability of the supply chain operations and demand shaping activities.

• Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning provides the current operating forecast and cost of goods sold data to Oracle Hyperion Planning. This operating forecast is delivered in monetary units and enables financial analysts to identify any gaps between the financial plan and current operating plan.

• Customers will gain additional benefits from adopting Demantra Demand Management, which enables a global demand planning process that senses local demand changes, generates an accurate forecast and supports a cross-functional consensus planning process.

• With this integration, data can be moved seamlessly, preserving the user interfaces from Hyperion Planning and Demantra so that new training or re-implementation is not required.

Supporting Quote

• “One key aspect to developing a strategic, actionable operations plan is to integrate it with validated revenue forecasts and to be able to reconcile the operating plans against a real-time budget,” said Gartner Research Director, Tim Payne. “Today, integrated business planning is becoming a valuable strategy as companies are realizing the importance of aligning their operational, strategic and financial plans.”

• “CFOs are continually looking to improve the accuracy of their financial forecasts," said Oracle Vice President, John O’Rourke. "This unique combination of Hyperion Planning and Demantra Sales and Operations Planning helps ensure that the financial plan is feasible, and will provide more accurate financial results.”

• "One of Oracle's core principles is to improve alignment across the enterprise,” said Oracle Vice President, Applications Strategy, Jon Chorley. "Oracle Demantra Sales and Operations Planning is a proven, best-in-class solution to achieve cross-line-of-business alignment at the operational level. Hyperion Planning does this from a financial perspective. This integration combines these two powerful capabilities to deliver alignment across the entire enterprise."

General Availability

The integration between Oracle Hyperion and Oracle’s Demantra Sales and Operations Planning is available today.

Supporting Resources

* Oracle Hyperion Planning
* Oracle’s Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning
* OracleValue Chain Planning Applications
* Oracle Value Chain Planning Blog
* Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence
* Oracle Application Integration Architecture
* Cabot Microelectronics Reduces Forecasting Cycle Time by Nearly 50 Percent with Oracle’s Real Time Sales and Operations Planning Solution
* Gartner Market Scope for Sales and Operations Planning

Synergetics is Awarded as the "Best. NET Training Service Provider" by Microsoft.

Oracle-AMD Acquisition Speculation Flares Once Again

By Zewde Yeraswork, CRN

"AMD is not for sale, but we are happy to listen to any proposal which is in the interest of our shareholders," Meyer said at an industry conference in Barcelona, as reported by Reuters.

The speculation was sparked by comments Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made last month at Oracle's annual financial analyst meeting, in which he said Oracle could soon acquire a chip company in addition to software acquisitions.

But at the Oracle annual stockholders' conference earlier this week, Ellison reiterated his interest in acquiring additional semiconductor and software companies, more so than new service offerings.

"My point really was that we are interested in buying intellectual property of all kinds," Ellison said, as reported by The Wall Street Journal . "We would be interested in certain kinds of semiconductor companies and software companies. Most of our acquisitions and the bulk of our strategy are in creating and acquiring intellectual property, including chips."

By acquiring AMD, Oracle would gain access to the chip company's IP portfolio, adding hardware to its software acquisitions and moving closer to end-to-end control of the entire IT stack.

Oracle couldn't be reached for comment Thursday. An AMD spokesperson offered the following comment to CRN: "As a matter of policy, AMD does not comment on speculations or rumors, but I can confirm that AMD is not for sale."

Synergetics India: IT consulting and Training services on .NET 4.0, SQL server 2008 BI. Awarded as the Best. NET Training Service Provider by Microsoft.

SPTechCon focuses on 2010, embraces MOSS 2007

By David Rubinstein

New features and functionality in SharePoint 2010 will be the focal point, but SharePoint Server 2007 instruction will be plentiful at SPTechCon—the SharePoint Technology Conference—being held Feb. 10–12 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, Calif.

SPTechCon, produced by BZ Media LLC, which owns SD Times, will feature more than 80 workshops and technical classes spanning three full days. The 39-member faculty features some of the brightest minds in SharePoint today, including a Microsoft Certified Master in SharePoint as well as numerous Microsoft MVPs and a host of experts with very specific knowledge about all aspects of SharePoint.

The first day will feature full-day workshops for people just getting started with SharePoint. “SharePoint 101” sessions will be offered for developers, IT administrators and business users. Other workshops include “Become a SharePoint 2010 Power User,” "SharePoint Site Planning: Get it Right the First Time,” and “15 Things Developers Should Know About Migrating to SharePoint 2010.”

The opening keynote will again be presented by Tom Rizzo, Microsoft’s director of SharePoint. Rizzo, who delivered the keynote address at the two SPTechCon events in 2009, will speak on the delivery of SharePoint 2010. A second keynote will be given by Ted Pattison, a SharePoint consultant who recently founded Critical Path Training.

A special session called “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (About SharePoint)” gives Microsoft’s SharePoint partners an opportunity to present important information to conference attendees in an entertaining, lightning-talk style, while “Pizza and Answers” gives attendees a chance to talk to our expert faculty members in a very informal setting

Synergetics is Awarded as the "Best. NET Training Service Provider" by Microsoft.

Cloud, Virtualization Gurus: What Title Is Right?

By Kevin Fogarty

CIO - IT people with skills and experience in server virtualization, cloud computing or both have a far greater chance of getting and keeping jobs than most other IT people now, according to recruiters and analysts. But what do you call these gurus? There's no accepted standard for what to call either virtualization or cloud-computing specialists, so jobseekers will have to look for a range of keywords-and include those in their resumes-to find a match with particular employers, says Dice.com spokesperson Jennifer Bewley.

If you are searching for a virtualization or cloud role, watch your search terms, she says.

Just using "virtualization" as a keyword, for example, pulled up 880 jobs on Dice.com on one day last week, for example, according to Bewley.

"However, there are another 900 jobs that include 'VMware' as a keyword with no mention of virtualization," Bewley found. "That leads us to conclude that searching based on vendor is particularly important in virtualization jobs."

Common terms for virtualization specialists include: Architect SAN/Virtualization; Citrix / VMware specialist or administrator; Data Center Virtualization Systems Analyst; and Product Manager for Large Scale Virtualization.

Cloud Job Searching Tricky People looking for new jobs described using "cloud computing" may not be completely out of luck, but they're not far off, according to M. Victor Janulaitis, CEO of IT job-market researchers Janco Associates, which published this month a survey of CIO hiring plans for 2010.

"I have seen some people just use 'cloud specialist' to describe themselves," Janulaitis says. "There's not really a set of terms yet that are common to refer to cloud computing skills-they just refer to them as architecture or infrastructure skill sets."

[For timely cloud computing news and expert analysis, see CIO.com's cloud computing Drilldown section. ]

Other people just add "cloud" or "virtualization" onto more common titles such as system administrator, systems engineer, architect, or network engineer, Bewley says.

Remember, it's not unusual for employers or prospective employers to use the name of a particular vendor or new technology as a primary identifier in a job ad, especially if they're looking for someone certified in that vendor's technology, according to Tom Silver, senior vice president of tech-job ad site Dice North America.

Normally a company would look for technical skills in a particular technology, not just one vendor's products, Janulaitis says.

"With the economy the way it is, and now people are talking about the possibility of a double-dip recession, a lot of companies are just looking for basic skills and experience," Janulaitis says.

That means plugging holes where they have to-by hiring one person with experience managing VMWare servers, for example-or a lot of junior-level generalists who can be trained in the skills that company needs, Janulaitis says.

Virtualization Salaries Flattening? Salaries for virtualization specialists have also hit a plateau, though the ads for them increased 30 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, Silver says.

After surging 10 percent in 2008 and into 2009, salaries for virtualization experts were flat this year at an average of $84,777, Dice.com data shows.

That's still a premium compared to the national average of $78,845 per year for other tech workers, however, Bewley says.

Synergetics India: IT consulting and Training services on .NET 4.0, SQL server 2008 BI. Awarded as the Best. NET Training Service Provider by Microsoft.