Posts tagged AMI
Is ‘cloud computing’ the future of video games?
Jun 16th
Los Angeles, California (CNN) — Playing high-profile video games quickly from portable devices such as your iPad might get easier after this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.
While the E-3 “game changer” tag has been reserved largely for innovations such as 3-D and motion-sensor systems, several companies hope using cloud computing to store games will be the real shift by letting gamers play high-end titles anywhere, on almost any machine.
If fully realized, they say, cloud gaming could be a console killer.
Gaming company OnLive announced Tuesday that it will make 23 popular console games, including “Assassin’s Creed II,” “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Mass Effect 2,” available through an online subscription service.
“Today we’re taking the first step toward a future where video game content is increasingly free from the restrictions of device and location, while showcasing the ability to instantly play the latest, most advanced games at the touch of a button,” said OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman.
Cloud gaming uses rapid data compression to let users store their games “in the cloud” — on Web servers — and then pull them down and play them using a regular Web browser. It’s the same concept as storing photos on a site such as Flickr or music videos on a MySpace page.
The user doesn’t actually have those files on any one particular computer but can access them from anywhere.
OnLive has partnerships with gaming companies such as Electronic Arts, UbiSoft and Warner Bros. Interactive and announced several new ones, including Sega, on Tuesday. More titles were expected to be available as they are released.
OnLive’s service, which launches Thursday, will offer free subscription for a year, with an announced price of $4.95 a month for an additional year. Individual games will, of course, cost extra.
OnLive isn’t the only one in the cloud-gaming business though. Rival Gaikai announced this year it had raised $10 million for a streaming game service that will let users sample games before buying them.
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SOA Software Announces Enterprise and Cloud Service Federation
Jun 8th
Service Manager 6.0 Delivers Enterprise and Cloud Services Virtualization, Management and Mediation
LOS ANGELES, CA–(Marketwire – June 8, 2010) – SOA Software, a leading SOA and Cloud Services Governance provider, today announced its award winning Service Manager product version 6.0. Service Manager 6.0 provides advanced virtualization, management, security, monitoring and mediation capabilities for SOA and Cloud Service, implemented using a state-of-the-art OSGi-based architecture. SOA provides the foundation for a successful transition to an Enterprise Cloud Operating Model. SOA Software products allow customers to confidently share services between commercial SOA platforms like IBM WebSphere, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle, as well as Red Hat and other open source providers. Service Manager is the industry’s leading SOA Management and security product. It delivers comprehensive standards-based security, routing, mediation, monitoring, and management. Service Manager implements and enforces policies, generates usage, performance and policy compliance metrics used to enable a closed-loop process for auditing and making sure policies are being correctly enforced.
Service Manager 6.0 delivers:
- Policy-based Mediation for integration with multiple platforms: Policy sharing and enforcement between commercial platforms becomes easier with Service Manager. Service Manager enforces and implements policies through advanced service virtualization, allowing declarative enterprise service federation to create relevant and consumable service interfaces across any platform, policy, message type and transport.
- Extensible binding framework: Service Manager provides out of the box support for SOAP, REST and POX services with an extensible framework allowing customers to add other binding with ease.
- Security Federation: Service Manager supports advanced security federation standards, providing enterprise-class token, authorization, and PKI capabilities for SOA and Cloud Services.
- Open Architecture: Service Manager leverages an OSGi-based architecture providing a flexible, reliable, and high-performance solution for the most demanding enterprise environments.
“Enterprise Services initiatives are about more than just SOAP Web services, they need to include REST, RSS, Atom and other web 2.0 and emerging technologies, such as Cloud Computing,” said Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software. ”Service Manager 6.0 provides an extensible operational governance solution that allows customers to implement and enforce uniform policies across a wide array of service types, message exchange patterns, and transports, helping ensure the security and availability of critical assets across a wide range of business initiatives.”
Policy-based Mediation between SOA Platforms
Service Manager 6.0 enforces and implements policies through advanced service virtualization, allowing declarative enterprise service federation with SOA platforms like IBM WebSphere, Microsoft, Red Hat, SAP, and Oracle to create relevant and consumable service interfaces across any platform, policy, message type and transport. It provides support for a range of policies compliant with WS-Policy including:
- WS-Security Policy
- WS-Addressing Policy
- WS-Auditing Policy
- WS-TransactionTracking Policy
- WS-HTTPSecurity Policy
In addition to the advanced support for policy enforcement and implementation, Service Manager 6.0 provides dynamic policy mediation, accepting messages for virtual services enforcing one policy, and send messages to physical services implementing different policies. This provides some sophisticated security token mediation capabilities, encryption and decryption, and signature verification and signing. Additionally, Service Manager 6.0 provides declarative binding and message exchange pattern mediation through its built-in JSR-208 JBI bus.
Extensible binding framework
Enterprise services are increasingly developing beyond SOAP Web services, REST is increasingly important, along with many other binding types. Service Manager provides out of the box support for SOAP, REST and POX services with an extensible framework allowing customers to add other binding with ease. Service Manager 6.0 allows customers to create virtual services with multiple different interfaces, providing REST interfaces to SOAP services and vice versa. Service Manager 6.0 allows customers to create virtual services with multiple different interfaces, providing REST interfaces to SOAP services and vice versa.
Security Federation
Service Manager 6.0 provides a powerful security federation solution with a security token server for authentication and token exchange, an authorization server for distributed SOA and Cloud services authorization policy enforcement, and a built-in Certificate Authority and Public Key Infrastructure solution allowing for public/private key-pair generation, management and automated distribution. Amongst other things, Service Manager 6.0 includes:
- A SAML authority for the generation and signing of SAML assertions, and comprehensive SAML processing and validation capabilities.
- A WS-Trust service for authentication and token exchange enabling sophisticated security token mediation use-cases such as exchanging username/password tokens for SAML assertions or X.509 certificates.
- An XACML service for processing authorization requests against a local authorization policy store or via distribution to most common identity and access management systems.
- WS-SecureConversation support for high-performance, session-based secure SOA and Cloud service consumption.
OSGi-based
Service Manager 6.0 is based on the OSGi specification delivering exceptional operational readiness with automated online update capabilities, easy extensibility and proven performance and scalability for the world’s most demanding enterprise and cloud services environments.
Pricing and Availability
Available in Q2 2010, Service Manager 6.0 starts at $50k USD.
About SOA Software
SOA Software is a leading provider of unified SOA and Cloud Service Governance products that enable organizations to plan, build, and run cloud and enterprise services. Our SOA Software Atmosphere Products are built using our Portfolio Manager™, Repository Manager™, Policy Manager™, and Service Manager™. They form a unified SOA Governance Automation solution, with SOLA™ providing a governable Mainframe SOA platform. The world’s largest companies including Bank of America, Pfizer, and Verizon use SOA Software solutions to transform their business. For more information, please visit http://www.soa.com.
SOA Software, Atmosphere, Policy Manager, Portfolio Manager, Repository Manager, Service Manager, and SOLA are trademarks of SOA Software, Inc. All other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
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iPhone 4 and the Cloud
Jun 8th
There is a race going on among the suppliers of smartphones, such as Apple Computer’s recently announced iPhone 4, to create handheld devices that can replace both a mobile telephone, a GPS, a music and video player and, for some functions, a mobile computer. My colleagues here on ZDnet are all over this announcement (see iPhone 4: Apple raises the bar; AT&T pushes it back down and Good job with iPhone 4, but the Sprint HTC EVO 4G is staying for a couple of examples).
Although I have some strong opinions about the device and AT&T’s terms and conditions, pricing and overall customer service, I’ll just focus on one aspect this announcement and announcements of competitive devices coming from RIM, HTC, Nokia and others. That aspect is that these devices are introducing cloud computing offerings to many who might not otherwise care. The folks purchasing these devices don’t really care about all of that, however. They just want a slick looking, highly functional device.
Most of these devices rely heavily on network based applications and services to deliver the experience the device suppliers flog. Easy and instant access to everything from telephone directories, lists of local restaurants, directions and maps are only the beginning.
We’re seeing for-pay access to television, streaming movies and other entertainment services. We’re also seeing Software as a Service products, such as customer relationship management, banking and other applications, being made available through these devices. Suppliers, such as Citrix, have made access to corporate applications easily available as well (their demo showing an executive getting an alert on the smartphone, looking up data on their laptop computer, and finishing the deal on the desktop system is outstanding).
If we look at survey data that explores how organizations are adopting cloud computing, we see that small and medium size organizations and developers have rushed in where large companies fear to tread. They’re not as concerned about compliance, security and integration with a large number of established systems. The large companies say that they’re holding back until these issues are addressed.
If we look at what they’re doing and ignore what they’re saying for the moment, however, we see that many of their employees have personally purchased devices such as the iPhone and competitors. Whether the IT organization likes it or not, important company data and contact lists are already in the cloud.
The iPhone 4 and its competitors are like a siren song calling staff to take steps into the cloud. The promise of anytime, anywhere access to just about everything is leading them on.
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ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Form New Company to Speed the Rollout of Linux-Based Devices
Jun 3rd
Company Press Release
Linaro unites industry leaders to foster innovation in the Linux® community through a common foundation of tools and software
- ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments have created the not-for-profit company, Linaro, committed to providing new resources and industry alignment for open source software developers using Linux on the world’s most sophisticated semiconductor System-on-Chips (SoCs).
- Linaro will invest resources in open source projects that can then be used by Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.
- Linaro will provide a stable and optimized base for distributions and developers by creating new releases of optimized tools, kernel and middleware software validated for a wide range of SoCs, every six months.
- Linaro’s base of software and tools will be applicable to a wide range of markets, helping reduce time-to-market for products such as smart phones, tablets, digital televisions, automotive entertainment and enterprise equipment.
- Linaro’s first software and tools release is due out in November 2010, and will provide optimizations for the latest range of ARM® Cortex™-A family of processors.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – June 3 2010 – ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI), today announced the formation of Linaro, a not-for-profit open source software engineering company dedicated to enhancing open source innovation for the next wave of always-connected, always-on computing. Linaro’s work will help developers and manufacturers provide consumers with more choice, more responsive devices and more diverse applications on Linux-based systems.
Linaro aligns the expertise of industry-leading electronics companies to accelerate innovation among Linux developers on the most advanced semiconductor SoCs (System-on-Chip). The current wave of “always-connected, always-on” devices requires complex SoCs to achieve the performance and low power consumers demand. Linaro was formed to increase investment in open source, address the challenges in developing products for sophisticated consumer markets and provide the support of a broad array of semiconductor products from multiple companies. By providing the common foundations of tools and software for other distributions and stacks to build upon, Linaro enables greater operational efficiency for the electronics industry.
Background
Traditionally, the Linux and open-source software communities focused on solving the software problems of enterprise and computing markets with a limited choice of processor platforms. The open source community is transitioning to create advanced Web-centric consumer devices using high profile open source based distributions and a wide range of high-performance, low-power ARM®-based SoCs. Linaro will make it easier and quicker to develop advanced products with these high profile distributions by creating software commonality across semiconductor SoCs, from multiple companies
Consumer Benefits
In addition to providing a focal point for open source software developers, consumers will benefit by the formation of Linaro. Linaro’s outputs will accelerate the abundance of new consumer products that use Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS in conjunction with advanced semiconductor SoCs to provide the new features consumers desire at the lowest possible power consumption.
“The dramatic growth of open source software development can now be seen in internet-based, always-connected mobile and consumer products,” said Tom Lantzsch, executive officer, Linaro. “Linaro will help accelerate this trend further by increasing investment on key open source projects and providing industry alignment with the community to deliver the best Linux-based products for the benefit of the consumer.”
Linaro Software and Tools
Linaro will work with the growing number of Linux distributions to create regular releases of optimized tools and foundation software that can be used widely by the industry, increasing compatibility across semiconductors from multiple suppliers. As a result, Linaro’s resources and open source solutions will allow device manufacturers to speed up development time, improve performance and reduce engineering time spent on non-differentiating, low-level software. Linux distributions, open source and proprietary software projects will benefit from Linaro’s investment, with more stable code becoming widely available as a common base for innovation.
To further its mission, Linaro aims to unite the open source engineering resources within its member firms with the broad open source community. Linaro engineers, leveraging their extensive embedded knowledge, will contribute to a wide range of open source projects covering areas such as tools, kernel, graphics and boot code. Linaro intends to work in partnership with the Linux Foundation to align on core operating principles.
The company’s first release is planned for November 2010 and will provide performance optimizations for SoCs based on the ARM Cortex™-A processor family.
In addition to ARM and IBM, four of the world’s leading application processor companies, Freescale, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, will align open source engineering efforts within Linaro.
Linaro is a growing organization with additional partners expected to join, thus expanding the range of expertise that is brought to the open source community. Companies interested in joining are invited to discuss membership with Linaro executives. For more information on the company and future access to software and tools, visit www.linaro.org
Founding Member quotes
“ARM and our partners have a long history of working with, and supporting, open source software development for complex SoCs based on the ARM architecture,” said Warren East, ARM CEO. “As a founding member of Linaro, we are working together with the broader open source community to accelerate innovation for the next generation of computing, focusing on delivering a rich connected experience across the diversity of devices in our daily lives.”
“Freescale is taking a leadership position in shaping the future of consumer electronics by enabling entirely new categories of smart mobile devices based on processors,” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Networking and Multimedia Group. “Linaro represents an important step forward in developing the ecosystem for these smart mobile devices through dramatically speeding and simplifying software development cycles and leveraging the power and strength of the open source community.”
“IBM believes that leadership with Linux solutions begins with effective collaboration in the community, and IBM’s ten year history of working with the Linux community has resulted in a strong, mutually beneficial relationship,” said Daniel Frye, vice president, open systems development, IBM. “IBM’s ongoing collaboration has contributed to the widespread adoption of Linux throughout the data center. We are strong proponents of working with partners such as ARM to further our commitment, ensuring Embedded Linux is the leading platform for innovation in the mobile and consumer electronics markets.”
“Samsung is an industry leader in high performance, low power application processors for mobile handset and other consumer devices. We fully appreciate the significance of having an optimized Linux software foundation and tools for our ARM CPU core base products, to support our customers’ needs with high quality solutions,” said Yiwan Wong, vice president, System LSI marketing, Samsung Electronics. “We are pleased to join Linaro as a foundation member and work together with ARM to serve the interests of our customers.”
“Open source has become an engine for innovation in the smart phone and consumer electronics market,” said Teppo Hemia, vice president, 3G Multimedia Platforms Business Unit of ST-Ericsson.” Being an active contributor in the open source community, we are excited to be one of the founding members of Linaro and expect our combined efforts to accelerate the development of Linux-based devices.”
“Linaro is intently focused on delivering critical open source components to enable developers building on ARM-based processors. An important element of that delivery is a more complete, higher quality development toolset that increases performance. In our leadership role, TI will support Linaro’s efforts by leveraging our open source expertise–evidenced by our participation in Linux kernel enhancement submissions and our support of popular industry development boards,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager, OMAP Platform Business Unit, TI.
Industry quotes
“The existence of Linaro will significantly simplify the process of making Linux-based consumer devices available to market,” said Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical. “By standardising many of the core software components, companies can focus on creating great user experiences on embedded devices through to smart phones. Canonical is delighted to participate in what will be a significant driver of the success of Linux on ARM, in the consumer electronics market.”
“We welcome the launch of Linaro as a new industry organisation with similar values and a complementary focus to LiMo Foundation,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. “We look forward to working collaboratively with Linaro to deliver greater efficiency within the mobile Linux value system.”
“The Linux Foundation is happy to see ARM and Linaro increase their investment in Linux,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “We are supportive of any investment that contributes to the mainline kernel and the many upstream open source projects that make up Linux based operating systems today.”
Linaro Press Contacts
Racepoint Group – Europe
Kersti Klami
Tel: +44(0)7891 796 473
kersti.klami@racepointgroup.com
Racepoint Group – U.S.
Leslie Clavin
Tel: +1 (415)694-6717
lclavin@racepointgroup.com
Candice Huang
Tel: +1 (415) 694-6703
chuang@racepointgroup.com
About Linaro
Linaro™ is a Not-For-Profit (NFP) software engineering company that works with the open source community to make it easier and faster to develop open source based devices. Linaro has the aim of investing new resources and aligning efforts from the industry to continuously improve and optimize open source software and tools on the ARM architecture with the goal of accelerating industry innovation.
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Asus Kickstart Computex 2010 With Cloud-computing And Gaming Showcases
Jun 1st
Asus are exhibiting at computex 2010 this week, showcasing the latest innovations and products across five major categories – cloud computing, gaming, pc components, green computing and multimedia
As leaders in cloud-computing solutions, ASUS offer a superior mix of devices, rich in quality and performance, to users who demand real-time connectivity and multimedia sharing – including the brand new Eee Pad and Eee Tablet aimed at the mobile user and 4th generation Eee PC models which bring function and fashion closer together.
ASUS ROG products have been the choice of gaming champions since the brand’s inception in 2006. Through close contact with players around the world, the ROG maintains unwavering dedication to meeting the needs of the gaming community. The latest 3D innovations in the G73Jw, G53 and G51 3D demonstrate how real life and gaming are closer than ever before, and extreme solutions in motherboard and graphic card designs ensure optimum stability and performance for serious enthusiasts.
ASUS will be at Computex between 1st and 5th June 2010 – exhibiting at the Taipei International Convention Center, Booths TF1B and 1F1I.
For information about ASUS at Computex 2010 please visit:
http://event.asus.com/2010/Computex/Press
For more details on products please visit: www.techinstyle.tv
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Proformative Hosts ‘Cloud Computing’ Seminar Series for Corporate Finance and Accounting Professionals
May 28th
Events Will Address Financial Industry’s New ‘Software as a Service’ Business Model
SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwire – May 27, 2010) – Proformative (www.proformative.com), the resource for corporate finance, accounting, and treasury professionals, recently announced a series of free seminars that will examine ‘Cloud computing’ and ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) for finance, accounting, and related functions.
The seminar — “Cloud Computing and SaaS for Finance and Accounting” — has been designed to provide CFOs, Controllers, and other financial professional with critical information concerning what could be the largest change in their technology platforms since the emergence of the Internet.
With the emergence of “Cloud computing”, computing power can essentially be purchased like a utility, similar to electric power from the grid. Users, which include companies of all sizes, can order virtually any size server infrastructure without the burden of up-front hardware or software costs, or the expense of server operations or people to manage the data center. As a result, many companies are moving to or contemplating the outsourcing of computing to simplify operations and cut costs.
Similarly, the delivery of software applications is transitioning to a “rental” model where users can use what they need when they need it. Core accounting and finance applications are rapidly developing and growing in this flexible, scalable model.
“The Cloud and SaaS can offer a steep drop in information-technology costs, from both a capital and operational expense perspective,” says John Kogan, CEO of Proformative. “It’s extremely important for CFOs and Controllers to know their options around leveraging this new way of doing business. These seminars cover the latest in how smart companies are learning about and putting themselves in the Cloud and into SaaS.”
According to market-research firm IDC, companies are expected to spend some $100 billion this year on complex data centers, and many have plans to build in-house computing utilities called “private clouds” or outsourcing their computing to operators of “public clouds”. Microsoft plans to enter this field, in effect offering to run companies’ computer systems for them inside its own giant data center, and Google is gradually expanding its suite of Cloud-based offerings. Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, has been offering Cloud-computing services for some time.
SaaS companies such as Salesforce.com and Netsuite are also growing very quickly in response to the tremendous demand to outsource even mission-critical corporate applications.
The Proformative seminars will speak directly to the benefits and pitfalls of adopting Cloud and SaaS solutions, as well as the economic and risk factors driving adoption. Specific to finance and accounting systems, the seminars will cover:
- A primer on the Cloud, to answer the questions you have in terms you can relate to,
- The real risks and rewards of the Cloud and SaaS, from varying perspectives, and
- Real-world insight from professionals who have implemented many such systems.
The U.S. tour starts in Dallas on June 1, with subsequent stops in Denver on June 3, Phoenix on June 8, Atlanta on June 10, Boston on June 15, New York on June 16, Washington, DC on June 22, Chicago on June 23, Minneapolis and Houston on June 24, Seattle on July 21, Orange County on July 27, and San Diego on July 28. Each of the event sponsors, which include global companies like DLA Piper, SunGard Availability Services, NetSuite Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and others, are prepared to help seminar attendees in every element of their respective Cloud computing and SaaS programs.
“Few things are as critical to corporate finance, accounting and related professionals as the technology that drives their operation’s efficiencies,” says Kogan, “and those systems are moving online. This shift represents the largest change in this generation of the profession’s technology.”
Information and registration for the seminars can be found at www.proformative.com/events. The events are free.
About Proformative
Proformative (www.proformative.com) is a free and open resource and community dedicated exclusively to serving the needs of corporate finance, accounting, treasury, and related professionals. Founded in 2009 in Silicon Valley, Proformative is community-driven and delivers a productive, ‘noise-free’ environment for its members. Proformative’s members find free resources and a community of their peers that enable them to learn and get work done. Privately funded and privately held, Proformative was created by co-founders John Kogan, CEO, and Greg Stout, CTO.
Source: MarketWire
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Cloud computing: We don’t understand it or we don’t need it, say SMEs
May 21st
The smaller a business, the less likely it is to make use of cloud computing services, according to a new report.
The poll by developer GFI Software found that while 86 per cent of businesses employing between 100 and 249 people use IT services hosted offsite or managed by a third party, such services were used by just 39 per cent of companies with less than 10 employees.
The survey, released yesterday, canvassed the views of up to 250 small organisations with fewer than 250 employees.
The main reasons cited by businesses for not taking up hosted or managed services was either that their needs were met by their existing in-house infrastructure, or that the cloud service was too expensive.
With cloud computing commonly regarded as a way for businesses to save money – due to the fact the organisation no longer needs to buy and maintain its own back-end IT infrastructure – the finding that SMEs believe a move to the cloud would be too expensive suggests a lack of understanding about the cloud computing model.
The notion that SMEs are unfamiliar with cloud is reinforced by the survey finding that 62 per cent of business decision makers at SMEs claimed not to have heard of the term ‘cloud computing’.
“The majority of SMEs are resisting what should be an inexorable shift towards the cloud,” Continue… Story Source: Silicon.com
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Top Cloud Computing Companies Providers to Watch
Jan 5th
Here is the List of Top “Cloud Computing Companies to Watch″
Fantastic list the we came across over at: OnCloudcomputing.com
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Cloud computing for the enterprise: Part 2: WebSphere sMash and DB2 Express-C on the Amazon EC2 public cloud
Aug 13th
This article looks specifically at the public cloud
and how you can use the IBM® WebSphere® sMash and IBM DB2® Express-C Amazon Machine
Images (AMI) to deliver Web applications hosted on the EC2 public cloud infrastructure. This content
is part of the IBM WebSphere Developer Technical Journal.
