enterprise

I'm still laughing as I type this. Dan Lyons is always interesting to read, but sometimes his razor wit lays bare all the silliness of our technology-centric lives.

Take this post from last week criticizing the Web 2.0 bank heist, highlighted by a Scoble-led panel of Web 2.0ers at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference and its quest to find a good Boston restaurant:

My first reaction was that in the greater scheme of things (economy in free fall, war in Iraq, global warming, energy crisis, not to mention the old reliables like cancer and poverty and AIDS, … Read more

I've been pining lately for greater enterprise participation in open source, following the lead set by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, and so was excited to see the recent news that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has joined the Linux Foundation. For CME, time is money, with a record 2.2 billion contracts in 2007 worth more than $1.2 quadrillion, all running on Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in this case).

But what does CME get from joining the Linux Foundation?

By joining the Linux Foundation, CME Group will be able to collaborate with key Linux developer and … Read more

Hi5 is one of the world's largest social networks, with over 56 million monthly visitors. It's a company that demands maximum scale and performance from its infrastructure.

As such, it's no surprise that Hi5 recently opted to go with PostgreSQL as supported by EnterpriseDB.

PostgreSQL? Isn't that an open-source database? It can handle that load?

Indeed.

Hi5 runs hundreds of PostgreSQL servers in one of the world's largest commercial OLTP PostgreSQL installations. All Hi5 subscriber data, including user profiles, metadata associated with user photos, and comments, is stored on the company's PostgreSQL databases...In June 2008, the PostgreSQL-based system delivered more than 18.5 billion page views, serving nearly 11 million visitors to the site every day.

A key challenge and requirement for Hi5 is that the social-networking site cannot be taken offline for maintenance. The company's PostgreSQL databases must deliver exceptional stability and performance 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year to serve users around the globe. Any issues must be resolved in real time, with the system still running.

That's extreme performance, and stands as a continued testament to open source and its increasingly routine ability to deliver significant performance at a lower cost, just as Red Hat announced earlier today in its Linux benchmarks.

However, the real story in Hi5's decision is its work with EnterpriseDB. The Web 2.0 world has traditionally adopted open source heavily...and paid little to nothing for it. Hence, the real news here is one Web 2.0 company's realization that buying support for open-source software makes a lot of sense/cents.… Read more

Microsoft and antitrust regulators will be back in federal court on Thursday, for a regularly scheduled status conference on the software giant's compliance with the final judgment order stemming from its historic consent decree.

In preparation for the upcoming hearing, which will be held in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Microsoft, the Department of Justice, and state antitrust regulators filed a joint status report late last week.

The parties will again address improving the technical documents that Microsoft provides to third-party licensees, which are meant to aid them in making their software interoperable with the Redmond … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Oracle on Monday unveiled a new open enterprise software application designed to improve the way users collaborate and communicate on projects.

Oracle's Beehive is a 3-year-old project that the acquisition-happy software giant built from scratch. The goal is to take a company's setup, in which various communication and collaboration software applications from a number of vendors are running on an army of servers, and integrate the offerings into one Beehive system, Charles Phillips, Oracle co-president, said during the company's annual Oracle OpenWorld developers conference here.

Beehive seeks to take communication software, from e-mail to instant messaging … Read more

A new study found that 85 percent of malware is being distributed through Web applications, which is creating a growing threat for corporations as employees increasingly do online social networking, video watching, and personal e-mail at work.

Other findings of the survey, conducted by security firm Webroot, are:

•Web-borne malware increased more than 500 percent in 2007.

•One-quarter of companies report that data has been compromised by a Web-based threat.

•Nearly one-third say their Web security was compromised as a result of employees using computers at work to access social networks, Web-based e-mail, and video sites.

•15 percent enforce Internet … Read more

NEW YORK--When News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch plunked down $580 million to buy the social networking site MySpace in 2005, C.H. Low had a reaction not that uncommon among tech industry veterans.

"I said, 'This is ridiculous! Are we in another bubble?' " said Low. "But I thought, 'Murdoch is a smart man. Something else must be going on here.' "

Three years later, Low is the CEO of the software startup Orbius, one of an estimated 50 to 100 companies selling software and on-demand tools to help everyone from automakers to traditional publishing companies add social … Read more

Oracle reported improved quarterly earnings Thursday, in part fueled by sales of its Fusion middleware.

Investors applauded Oracle's first-quarter performance, sending its stock up in after-hours trading to $19.20 a share. During regular trading, Oracle closed at $18.75 a share--up nearly 3.6 percent for the day.

Oracle posted net income of nearly $1.1 billion, or 21 cents a share, for the period ending August 31, up 28 percent from the same period a year ago. Excluding charges, Oracle posted earnings of 29 cents a share, beating Wall Street's estimates by 2 cents a share, … Read more

Longtime tech mainstay IBM has announced the creation of a Cambridge, Mass.-based research center for the development of "social software," from consumer Web apps to enterprise communication tools. At its launch, researchers from Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters' health care division have agreed to be "corporate residents" in the facility.

The IBM Center for Social Software, according to a release, will take on the lofty task of "creat(ing) a new type of collaborative environment to tackle some of the toughest questions about social software, identify new business models, help discover next-generation Web 2.… Read more