ITEC

Technology Advances Mean More Efficiency & Less Hardware

Key Points

• Smaller, more efficient cooling units allow more precise, flexible placement of cooling within the data center facility, reducing the mixing of hot and cold air and allowing for more effective use of limited floor space.

• More capable hardware designs and converged network architectures reduce both power and cooling needs; for example, servers that run on DC power are simpler to build and waste less energy to AC/DC conversion.

• Natural gas co-generation holds promise as both a power generation and cooling technology. Increased efficiency over conventional grid-delivered power is an added bonus.

As energy prices continue their in-evitable climb, data center managers increasingly look to improvements in power and cooling technologies and processes to hold the line on cost and risk. New approaches to delivering power and keeping temperatures in check can help IT keep everything running without risking a meltdown.

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New DocVerse functions will offer editing of Google Docs to Office users -- and later to iPad and Android phone users -- without using Sharepoint collaboration

Google is developing a way for Microsoft Office users to edit documents collaboratively without using Microsoft's Sharepoint collaboration server. It also has plans to extend the ability to edit Google Docs documents to mobile phones and iPads too.

The move further blurs the line between Google's Web-client approach to document editing, and Microsoft's traditional desktop application. While Microsoft continues to develop its desktop applications, it also launched a Web-app version of its Office suite in June.

Now Google is taking the battle for business apps back onto Microsoft's home turf by developing a "ribbon" for Office that links the application to Google Docs online storage and collaboration tools.

Google's DocVerse ribbon allows Office users to save their documents directly to Google Docs, to track multiple revisions of a document and to collaborate on a document with other users of DocVerse and Office, seeing one another's changes in real time. Google acquired the company behind the ribbon, also called DocVerse, in March. DocVerse had previously worked on a tool for linking Office users to one another without using Google Docs.

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Windows HPC Server update hits general availability

Microsoft made its latest Windows HPC Server software available Monday, saying new features that integrate with Excel workbooks and harness the power of idle Windows 7 desktops will expand the reach of high-performance computing to smaller customers.

Supercomputing is generally the domain of universities, national labs and other large organizations, but Microsoft says it is aiming for "a broader set of customers" with the availability of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2.

Microsoft tries to simplify supercomputing with Windows HPC Server beta

Notable additions to the software include integration with Excel 2010, allowing calculation of complex spreadsheets. While calculating an Excel workbook with 1,700 records could take 14 hours on a desktop computer, doing so within a Windows HPC cluster would take less than three minutes, according to Microsoft.

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Microsoft PowerPivot is equipping an army of Excel users with business intelligence chops

Could the age of self-service BI (business intelligence) finally be near? And, if so, are organizations ready?

For years, BI vendors have promised a way for managers to easily build their own reports from scratch, without the help of IT staff. Now, with the release of Microsoft Office 2010, managers are finding they can do these tasks using a powerful new Excel feature, called PowerPivot. And, by its ease of availability if nothing else, this feature is promising to shake up the field of BI.

"It will spread like wildfire. As organizations upgrade to Office 2010, Excel users will adopt PowerPivot, whether the [IT staff] likes it or not," said Gartner analyst Rita Sallam.

And thus far BI professionals seem ambivalent about PowerPivot. At a packed PowerPivot birds-of-a-feather session at the Microsoft TechEd conference last June, many admitted that the feature is powerful, even as they worried about the repercussions of its use within their own offices.

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How To Bring Your Cloud Computing Strategy In-House

Key Points

• An enterprise should determine whether to set up a private cloud based on such factors as business need, service access, ownership costs, and risk management.
• Like any major IT project, private cloud setup requires working with key man-agement personnel, setting up testing, ensuring hardware compatibility, and training users.
• The new system should have intelligent governance to deal with issues related to resources, systems, and changing business conditions.

As a way to exercise greater control over security and application availability, some enterprises are moving toward building private clouds. With the right approach and expertise in place, this type of setup can offer the best of both worlds: the cost-effectiveness of cloud computing and the assurance that comes with the ability to manage data and applications more closely. Here are some insights into determining if a private cloud is right for your enterprise and what’s involved in setting one up.

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Two-thirds of the world's Windows machines still run XP, which can't run IE9

Microsoft may have a tough time building significant market share for its new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser because eligible users are in the minority.

Several analysts agreed that Microsoft has its work cut out for it, at least in the short term, because IE9 won't run on Windows XP, the aged-but-still-dominant operating system.

Microsoft omitted the still-popular XP from the supported OS list because, among other things, IE 9 speeds up page rendering and composition by tapping the graphics processor in newer PCs. Windows XP lacks support for the Direct2D API, which IE9 uses to accelerate content rendering.

The decision means that only a subset of machines will be able to run IE9, either in its preview or final form, until those systems and Windows XP are replaced by new hardware and Windows 7.

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'Padding oracle' vulnerability found in ASP.Net framework behind millions of Web sites, applications

Microsoft on Friday warned users that a critical bug in ASP.Net could be exploited by attackers to hijack encrypted Web sessions and pilfer usernames and passwords from Web sites.

The vulnerability went public that same day when a pair of researchers outlined the bug and attack techniques at the Ekoparty Security Conference in Buenos Aires.

According to Microsoft's advisory, the flaw exists in all versions of ASP.Net, the company's Web application framework used to craft millions of sites and applications. Microsoft will have to patch every supported version of Windows, from XP Service Pack 3 and Server 2003 to Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, as well as other products, including its IIS and SharePoint server software.

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New version is 17% faster than Chrome 5, 2.5 times faster than Firefox 3.6

Google's Chrome 6 is 17% faster than the version it replaced, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the speed leaders, Opera and Safari, according to benchmark scores.

When Google celebrated the second anniversary of Chrome's launch last week, Brian Rakowski, the browser's director of product management, said: "A lot of things have changed in the last two years [in browsers], but the one thing we've learned is that speed matters."

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Cisco, Verizon take on the challenge of networking 82,500-seat megaplex

The New Meadowlands sports complex has once again proven that a gigantic stadium also requires a gigantic IP network.

In less than two-weeks, when the New York Giants inaugurate the New Meadowlands stadium with its first regular-season game, fans will have the benefit of using a massive IP network that will be responsible for HD video displays, processing credit card transactions and delivering Wi-Fi connectivity to fans' wireless devices.

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VMware customers attending VMworld are taking a look at Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software, but say the Microsoft technology falls a bit short and that it would be problematic to start over after investing heavily in VMware.
The investment in VMware involves not only money but also the time and training it takes to build institutional knowledge about the IT world's most-used x86 virtualization platform.

"I suppose we are a VMware shop, so we kind of stick with what we know more than anything else," said Chris Bennett, a VMware ESX administrator at Linklaters, a law firm in London, England.

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