Clint Boulton

IBM , HP , Microsoft  and several other top technology vendors are hoping the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will develop a new standard specification for describing computer services in XML. The vendors said the W3C has acknowledged the Service Modeling Language (SML), which uses XML  to describe how computer networks, applications, servers, storage and […]

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) today said it would close its manufacturing plant in Mexico by mid 2008, a move that will eliminate 4,500 jobs, or 11 percent of the company’s workforce. The hard disk drive (HDD) maker, facing stiff competition from rivals Toshiba, Fujitsu and Seagate, as well as the ascendance of Flash memory, […]

Liberty Alliance has released blueprints that will allow users to manage identity information on handheld computers, laptops, printers and televisions. Called Advanced Client, the specs let programmers write software that will safely store identity data on a device to make single sign-on, Web services, authentication and user-controlled provisioning possible when the device is connected to […]

Computer-chip memory makers Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor have settled all pending patent litigation between them in the U.S. and Japan and have agreed to work together. Toshiba and Hynix said in a statement they have signed patent cross licensing and product-supply agreements that will allow each company to use one another’s semiconductor patents. “The signing […]

Analysis: Cisco Systems’ $3.2 billion bid for WebEx is another gauntlet thrown at the feet of Microsoft, which analysts say has been moving in on Cisco’s communications turf. WebEx  is the leading purveyor of Web conferencing, allowing users to conduct real-time meetings over the Internet. WebEx also offers, thanks to its purchase of Intranets.com, software […]

Cisco Systems  agreed to pay $3.2 billion in cash for WebEx, a deal that will make Cisco a power in the burgeoning market for communicating via the Web. In an indication of how seriously Cisco views the Web collaboration market’s potential, the networking giant will pay WebEx shareholders $57 per share, a 23 percent premium […]

IT analysts have been saying for the last few years that companies can leverage greater computing efficiencies by plugging virtualization technologies into a service-oriented architecture (SOA). IBM is ushering virtualization to the SOA altar this week by splicing virtualization capabilities from its System p servers with SOA middleware to help customers boost hardware and software […]

NEW YORK — Those who don’t know any better will hear about Sun Microsystems’ magical Blackbox datacenter tour and think the company created a rock star. Company officials are currently grinding through a U.S. tour in which they show off the 20-by-8-foot datacenter in a container that sits on a trailer as it gets carted […]

Despite the headaches that record-retention rules and compliance have caused, companies are still spending the money to play by the rules. Financial services businesses were the top spenders on computer servers last year, accounting for 25 percent of worldwide server sales. The communications market came in No. 2, with 13.5 percent of global server revenue, […]

Oracle  President Charles Phillips introduced Enterprise Manager 10g Release 3 in a move designed to increase sales of the management software pack. A multi-billion-dollar market, management software is a crucial part of any IT stack at a time when Web services and grid computing are throwing more applications into the service-oriented architecture (SOA) hurly-burly and […]

The concept of the data warehouse has been a simple one — create data and then sock some of it away in a software vault. IBM  is offering a new approach to this business intelligence (BI) process, introducing its Dynamic Warehousing strategy for using advanced analytics to support business transactions. Unveiled today at the Gartner […]

Datacenter consolidation comes in many forms. Some companies use virtualization running multiple pieces of software on one box, or storing a ton of data in a pool. Other times, it’s as simple as running data stored with two different protocols on a single machine. Following that format, startup agámi Systems introduced a so-called “hybrid” storage […]