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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
THIS WEEK'S BRIEF ANALYSES OF
RECENT GRIDtoday NEWS ITEMS
By Rolf McClellan
Following are brief evaluations of recent news stories from GRIDtoday. Rolf
McClellan has nearly 20 years of experience in the network and computer
industry. www.mcclellanconsulting.com
IBM, Cisco To Team Up On Security Technology (02/13/04)
IBM and Cisco Systems Inc announced that they would tailor their security
technology for computers and networks to make it easier for their customers to
protect their data and to detect security threats.
Comment: The agreement is part of a long-term alliance between the
companies
to improve the integration of networked IT solutions for the general
enterprise market.
Sun Announces Aggressive Developer Promotion (02/12/04)
Sun Microsystems announced the Java Enterprise Developer Promotion for the
Sun
Developer Network subscriber community. The promotion includes a free AMD
Opteron-based Sun Fire V20z Server plus tools, support and services to develop
and test enterprise applications. Sun also announced an enhanced pricing
strategy for its N1 Grid Service Provisioning System, as well as updates to
its software products -- the N1 Grid and Solaris 10 operating system.
Developers running the new 2004Q2 version of Sun Java Enterprise System (which
will now also support Red Hat Linux) can now use the Sun Java Studio
Enterprise development environment for Web services for a slight additional
charge.
Analysis: Sun continues trying to make Java environments as attractive as
possible to developers of enterprise applications and Web services.
IBM Releases Free Q104 Software Evaluation Kit (02/12/04)
IBM has released a software evaluation kit that includes the latest
middleware
tools and products that have been ported to Linux, including. Rational Rose
and PurifyPlus, WebSphere Studio Site Developer, WebSphere SDK for Web
services, WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database, Tivoli Access
Manager and Lotus Domino Server.
Analysis: This is IBM's approach to attract developers of enterprise
applications and Web services to IBM middleware attractive versus a
Windows.NET development environment.
New Sun Security Solutions Protect Against Cyber Threats (02/11/04)
Sun Microsystems Inc announced new security solutions and technologies to
address the growing tide of costly network security threats. The new offerings
include features of the next-generation Solaris Operating System, Sun Managed
Security Services, a Reference Solution for building secure global government
computing networks and advanced features for the Sun Crypto Accelerator 4000
board. New advances in Solaris 10 technology include N1 Grid Containers,
predictive self-healing technologies and important security enhancements.
Analysis: The security features, along with Sun's stateful packet filtering
technology, help strengthen the security of Solaris and Trusted Solaris OS for
mission-critical, distributed computing, including N1 Grids.
Adoption Of Web Services, Demand For SOA Increasing (02/11/04)
Westbridge Technology, a provider of Web Services Management (WSM) and XML
Firewall enterprise solutions, has released the results of an independent
market survey on enterprise usage of Web Services. The survey covered the
adoption of Web services, applications of Web servers, and the need for
integrated WSM and XML firewall products.
Analysis: The survey showed that 70 percent of WS usage is currently inside
the firewall. 43 percent plan to use WS for EAI or B2B, while 40 percent plan
to use it for STP or SOA. Fifty-eight percent plan to investigate WSM and XML
firewall solutions.
Mellanox Delivers Third Generation InfiniBand HCA With PCI Express
(02/11/04)
Mellanox Technologies Ltd, introduced its third generation InfiniBand Host
Channel Adapter (HCA) and announced shipments to OEM customers. The InfiniHost
III Ex features an 8X PCI Express interface that delivers 32 and 64-bit
InfiniBand capabilities for PCI Express based servers. The InfiniHost III Ex
includes dual 10 Gbps InfiniBand ports that deliver high throughput and
extremely low latencies in a low power single chip implementation. In addition
to the semiconductor device, Mellanox is shipping a low profile InfiniHost III
Ex HCA PCI Express add-in adapter card.
Analysis: InfiniBand is enjoying a wave of popularity as the system
interconnect for tightly-coupled Grid-enabled applications running on
clustered servers and storage. Mellanox InfiniBand provides the interconnect
for Virginia Tech Apple G5 cluster. It will be interesting to see if 10
Gigabit Ethernet HCAs that also support TCP offload and RDMA can eventually
offer competitive price/performance to Infiniband. The InfiniBand Trade
Association is already working on a 30 Gbps specification.
OSDL Releases Position Paper On SCO Lawsuit With Novell (02/10/04)
The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to
accelerating the adoption of Linux, published a position paper that indicates
Linux customers should probably ignore SCO Group's legal threats until a court
decision is rendered in the litigation brought by SCO Group against Novell on
copyright ownership. The paper's author, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia
University, is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on copyright law
as applied to software.
Comment: The paper is intended to help linux maintain its momentum by
allaying
any concerns among OSDL members and Linux customers regarding the SCO Group's
ongoing threat to sue end-users.
National Cyberinfrastructure Poised To Revolutionize Sciences (02/10/04)
The convergence of information and communication technologies into a
national
"cyberinfrastructure" is poised to revolutionize the environmental sciences
and many other disciplines in the coming years, according to researchers
presenting at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle. The NSF's larger goal for a
national cyberinfrastructure is to provide the information technology and
knowledge management resources needed to tackle the problems at the frontiers
of all science and engineering disciplines, and make those resources as
reliable and easy to use as the electricity and water in our homes
Analysis: Cyberinfrastructure Grids that integrate sensor/instrumentation
networks with data repositories and computational resources will allow
scientists to tackle grand scale problems in environmental management
including prediction of earth quakes or climate/weather.
Egenera Names Robert M. Dutkowsky Chairman, President, CEO (02/10/04)
Egenera Inc, a server virtualization and utility computing platform
company,
announced that Robert M. Dutkowsky has been appointed chairman of the board,
president and chief executive officer. He succeeds Egenera founder Vern
Brownell, who will become the company's executive vice president and chief
technology officer.
Analysis: This is the usual pattern where the technologist steps aside to
allow the seasoned marketing/business executive lead an anticipated growth
phase of the company's life cycle.
NetScreen Sets SSL VPN Industry Benchmark With Secure Access (02/09/04)
NetScreen Technologies Inc announced the next-generation release of its SSL
Secure Access product family, built upon the new Neoteris Instant Virtual
Extranet (IVE) 4.0 platform. NetScreen also announced the new NetScreen-SA
Central Manager product for unified administration of globally distributed SSL
VPN gateway deployments.
Analysis: Secure Access appliances support both SSL clientless remote
access
VPNs and SSL extranet VPNs for enterprise application integration and Web
services. In the last week, Juniper Networks has announced its intent to
acquire Netscreen.
New Specifications Look To Unify Grid, Web Services (02/09/04)
IBM has issued its own press release on the WS-Notification and WS-
Resource
Framework specifications, previously announced on 01/21/04. Additional
information on WS-Resource Framework (to which IBM contributed) is available
at:
www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-resource/index.html?ca=dgr-gridw03WSN&WSRF
Comment: A single announcement should suffice.
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