Eclipse users developing on Linux, considering cloud

The open-source Eclipse development environment has become one of the mainstay options for developers thanks to its extensibility and support from a broad range of organizations, both open-source and private.

Every year, the Eclipse Foundation publishes the results of its community survey and this year's report shows that open-source adoption is continuing to grow, with a number of projects emerging as clear leaders among Eclipse developers.

The primary takeaway from the results is the shift in how engineers are choosing to develop and deploy. Linux, especially Ubuntu, has taken market share from Windows on an ongoing basis, and is … Read more

Turn your iPad into a Web server

Japanese software development shop FreeBit recently announced "ServersMan HD," an application that makes your iPad act like a Web server--allowing documents and files to be uploaded, downloaded, and viewed on the device.

Currently, the primary way to get files on and off of the iPad is through iTunes syncing or e-mail, or by using an online service such as Google Docs that stores your files in the cloud.

And while odds are you won't be building an iPad-based data center anytime soon, this application, like others, helps to prove the use case of cloud-based storage for tablets … Read more

'R' language bringing statistical analytics to the masses (Q&A)

I recently had the chance to discuss the open source 'R' programming language with Revolution Analytics CEO and founder Norman Nie.

Revolution is the commercial organization supporting the open-source project and contains a number of technology bigwigs, including Nie himself, who was the co-founder of analytics firm SPSS and led the company as CEO/chairman of the board for more than 40 years before selling it to IBM in 2009 for $1.2 billion. The company has enjoyed some outstanding press mentions, despite the fact that the product appeals to a very specific user base.

R is similar to other programming languages like Java and C, but holds particular appeal for statisticians because it contains a number of built-in mechanisms for organizing data, running calculations, and creating graphical representations of data sets.

Considering predictive analytics is not on the tip of most people's tongues, I set up a Q&A with Nie to get a basic overview of why R matters and how Revolution plans to commercialize the software. The edited transcript follows:

Q: What exactly is 'R' and why does it matter? Nie: Simply put, R is the most powerful statistical computing language on the planet; there is no statistical equation that cannot be calculated in R. This gives it unparalleled ability to sort through data sets and do predictive modeling. This is particularly relevant in today's business intelligence environment, given the explosion of big data and the increased emphasis organizations are putting on advanced analytic techniques.

R is also open source, so there is a community that is over 2 million users strong behind it. It is particularly well entrenched in academia, where today's university students (and tomorrow's future statisticians) are being trained almost exclusively on R. … Read more

NoSQL goes mobile with the help of CouchDB

If there is one aspect of mobility that has yet to live up to user expectations, it's the ability for data to be accessible in near real-time across multiple devices.

Despite all the advances in technology, including a wealth of Wi-Fi and 3G networks, many devices become impotent without an Internet connection.

This issue becomes even more apparent when you are dealing with browser-based applications and smartphones that don't have multithreading functionality to maintain state across applications and data stores.

I recently had the chance to chat with Damien Katz, the creator of CouchDB and CEO of Couchio, … Read more

Sourceforge eats its open-source dogfood

You might not recognize the name Geeknet, but you probably know its popular tech sites such as Sourceforge, Slashdot, Ohloh, Think Geek, Freshmeat, and the recently acquired Geek.com.

When Geeknet opened a new data center in Chicago two years ago, the network operations team wanted to centralize management of hundreds of systems serving the Geeknet Web network.

Geeknet's servers run 100 percent open-source software, including CentOS Linux, and a number of open-source Web servers, mail servers, databases (MySQL, Postgres, Memchache), along with a large number of source code repositories running Subversion.

The company needed a monitoring and management … Read more

How Google is redefining the enterprise

With all of the talk about Android, the open Web, and video taking place at this week's Google I/O conference, big software vendors could have easily been lulled into underestimating how much Google is actually targeting enterprises with new and updated offerings.

That would be a mistake.

Google has become such a prolific creator of technology that suits its own business needs, somewhere down the line it crossed over into the future of the enterprise, or at least a version of the future--one that develops software to consume and manage IT services and resources without having to build … Read more

HP brings performance testing to the cloud

With more applications being built for the Web, performance testing is critical to determining the proper approach to scaling both applications and infrastructure. But for many years performance testing was largely a rich-man's game, primarily because of the expense of setting and maintaining a large server infrastructure that can simulate real-world traffic.

Hosted testing solutions make a lot of sense from both the user and provider perspective. Considering the vast computing power available at your fingertips there are few reasons why you would want to own the infrastructure, or not take advantage of the latest offerings from providers both … Read more

IBM chooses Hadoop to analyze big data

IBM on Wednesday is set to announce a new portfolio of solutions and services to help enterprises analyze large volumes of data. IBM InfoSphere BigInsights is based on Apache Hadoop, an open-source technology designed for analysis of big volumes of data.

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights is made up of a package of Hadoop software and services, BigSheets, a beta product designed to help business professionals extract, annotate, and visually uncover insights from vast amounts of information quickly and easily through a Web browser, and industry-specific frameworks to help clients get started.

IBM has been aggressive in consuming and repackaging open-source projects … Read more

Cloud.com software stack goes open source

Cloud.com--which until now was known as VMops--is launching on Tuesday the latest salvo in the battle for cloud computing adoption and mindshare as it releases a new product and changes its name.

In addition to rebranding the company as Cloud.com, the company is releasing the latest version of its CloudStack software under both open-source and commercial licenses. (Note: I struggled with both the .com in the name and hitching entirely to "cloud" until they explained that it's great for market and search results.)

Cloud.com describes CloudStack as "an integrated software solution that … Read more