Sean Michael Kerner

Cisco is paying $180 million for Composite, with the deal expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal 2014. Composite’s solution provides a data virtualization platform intended to make it easier to manage data from different sources. “As customers increase their adoption of big data, analytics, cloud, and mobile, traditional enterprise data warehouses […]

Cumulus Network takes a different approach than the typical model, in which the hardware switch vendor bakes in its own operating system. The startup wants hardware vendors to build whitebox networking gear, which can then be imaged with an operating system. Cumulus wants that operating system to be its own Cumulus Linux. The idea of […]

Linux vendor Red Hat announced its first quarter fiscal 2014 earning results late Wednesday, showing continued growth across multiple fronts, including the cloud. While Red Hat is now all in on OpenStack as a cloud platform, CEO Jim Whitehurst cautioned financial analysts that it is still early days. For the quarter, Red Hat reported revenue […]

From the ‘Why are you reading this? Update NOW’ files: In recent years, the open source WordPress content management (nee Blog) platform has emerged to become the dominant player in web CMS space. That’s why when there is a security update you should RUN DON’T WALK to patch. WordPress 3.5.2 is out today fixing 12 […]

From the ‘Who Needs Windows XP Anyways?’ files: One of the biggest open source PHP releases in years is now out and you can count me among those that are excited and eager to deploy and use it. Among the big ticket items in this release is the inclusion of the Zend Optimizer+ Opcode cache, […]

The Wi-Fi Alliance’s Certified 802.11ac certification program launched this week. This will provide both vendors and end users with a certifiable way to ensure interoperability across compliant 802.11ac devices. “Vendors go through the certification program because it gives users the assurance that their product will work with other devices, and it also serves as a […]

Oracle is out with its latest Critical Patch Update (CPU) release with Java SE 7 Update 25. The June release is part of Oracle’s regularly scheduled plan for Java updates, though don’t let that fool you; this update fixes some very high-risk issues of immediate importance. In total, of the 40 flaws in the Java […]

The Oracle MySQL Cluster solution, is being updated this week to version 7.3. For most of its history, MySQL Cluster has been getting much of its traction in the telecom space. With the 7.3 release, Oracle wants to further expand usage into the mass market of web use-cases. MySQL Cluster now supports Joins as well […]

The Apache Subversion (SVN) open source version control system is out with its 1.8 release this week. The new release follows the prior SVN 1.7 release by some 20 months and introduces a host of new features for developers. One of the area where robustness has been improved is in the storage of metadata. SVN […]

Pexip aims to solve the challenge of distributed video conferencing at scale. That’s where Pexip’s Infinity platform comes in. Pexip is a scalable, virtual software platform that provides meeting rooms for video and voice collaboration. Distributed Architecture One of the key differentiators for the Pexip Infinity platform lies in its distributed architecture. Dahle explained that […]

In a session at the Red Hat Summit (last week) a panel of defense contractors detailed some of what they have seen within U.S .defense agencies as they consider the move toward virtualization and the cloud. John Barrette, Senior Acquisition Specialist at Odyssey Systems consulting group, said that in the USAF, what he has seen […]

The semi-annual TOP500 List of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is out this week , crowing a new champion. The Tianhe-2 is now the fastest supercomputer on the planet, clocking in at a record-breaking 33.86 petaflops per second. But the real champion, once again is Linux. Linux continues to dominate the Top500 list, now representing […]