What will 2009 hold for Australia's ICT industry? We asked dozens of local leaders for their predictions; and this is what they came up with.
How do you manage something that's constantly growing fast, with no end in sight? That's the question many Australian IT managers are currently asking themselves, as they size up their storage and data management strategy going into 2009. Unfortunately, there's no easy answer.
Linux vendor Red Hat has predicted that virtualisation software will be included in all operating systems for free, while setting out the roles of the two hypervisors it is working on for its own product range.
Linux vendor Red Hat has bought its way further into the virtualisation market, to compete against VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, with a US$107 million purchase of Qumranet.
The Queensland state government has initiated a pilot roll-out of an application virtualisation solution intended to deliver HR and finance apps to 150,000 users across multiple agencies.
More than a week has passed since EMC boss Joe Tucci answered some of my questions on virtualisation, and I'm still pondering them.
What will 2009 hold for Australia's ICT industry? We asked dozens of local leaders for their predictions; and this is what they came up with.
The talk of this year's VMworld conference in Las Vegas was how much of a competitive threat Microsoft, which weeks earlier announced the free release of its hypervisor product, will prove to virtualisation leader VMware.
In the world of processors, attention seems firmly focused on the fast-paced desktop and mobile markets. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing going on in server-land.
The current buzz around virtualisation may sound familiar to anyone with experience of high-end computing's origins " so what makes today's scenario so different?
Virtualisation was high on the list of important technologies at the Windows Server 2008 launch yesterday and not just one or two sorts of virtualisation. By the time the show was over, seven distinct flavours were on display. Some of them looked oddly familiar.
Cesare Tizi, ZDNet Australia CIO of the Year 2007, says that using a server for multiple tasks on different operating systems not only reduces datacentre clutter, it makes deploying new applications easier -- and also has "green benefits".
Windows 7 looks like the operating system that we've all been waiting for. Despite its imperfections, it shows a lot of promise for the future while presenting a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X.
Early releases of the Xen hypervisor showed promise but had lots of rough edges. Citrix's XenServer 5, however, is very much a production-class virtualisation solution with features that match, and in some cases exceed, what's available on rival platforms.
VMware Workstation is an excellent product, having the potential to save IT managers many hours of work. And at only AU$257.23 per seat, it is also good value for money.
Acer has taken standard Intel OEM components to put together a highly configurable and very scalable 1U server, capable of handling a variety of tasks. It's more than a match for similar products from the big-name vendors.
Production-quality XenSource virtualisation is the main selling point here, with optional clustering and storage virtualisation to go with it. But there's a lot more besides, making the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux a compelling solution for businesses of all sizes.
2009 in review
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Google Chrome OS demonstration
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Sun shining on Ajnaware
Holiday IT to-do lists
Chapman's rough end of the pineapple
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