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Living in a VM world

The big industry event about virtualization is VMworld, usually held in late Summer / early Fall. You don't have to wait for VMware's conference, however, to find yourself in VM World. We now live in it, every day.

It's really quite amazing how quickly virtualization has swept through, and become ensconced in, IT. Data centers have--for decades--been famously conservative when it comes to introducing changes that might threaten to disrupt production applications. For years, whenever we'd ask operationally focused IT managers about introducing new control software--for workload management, service provisioning, automated orchestration, and so on--we always heard … Read more

SUNY to get Microsoft's Live@edu program

Microsoft is now providing e-mail, calendaring, and instant-messaging programs for students of the State University of New York.

SUNY's 64 campuses are part of a university-wide Live@edu agreement that covers more than 465,000 students with Microsoft's online productivity suite. Besides the aforementioned tools, this includes things like online storage, video conferencing, and access to Microsoft's Office Web Apps--all of which are offered up free of charge.

In a post yesterday announcing the rollout, Microsoft U.S. Education CTO Cameron Evans said that the deal is saving Monroe Community College--one of the SUNY schools involved with … Read more

In clean energy, U.S. innovates but builds slowly

If you follow the money, the numbers show that the U.S. is being outpaced by China and other countries in a global race to develop green-technology industries.

The Pew Charitable Trusts, in conjunction with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, is publishing a report on Thursday that characterizes different countries in developing and adopting clean-energy technologies.

The U.S. is strong when it comes to technical innovation, with venture capital and private equity outpacing other countries. But China last year took the lead in "asset financing," or investment in renewable-energy projects. It also is poised to pass the U.… Read more

Apps and ops don't meet--but they will

My CNET column is called Apps Meet Ops for a reason. It's about the time and place where the creative, development side of IT meets the disciplined, operational side of IT.

This isn't to say that there isn't discipline in development, or that there's no creativity in operations. But the gestalt of the apps world is about creating new functionality; writing software that embodies new or updated business logic; making things. The gestalt of the ops side is about building and running infrastructure; managing logistics; keeping things up and running smoothly; operating things. The two zones … Read more

Second Life for returning veterans

Veterans are often reluctant to seek therapy for service-related conditions, but rather than write them off, scientists are creating a virtual online community where servicemembers can find the camaraderie and resources to ease their return to civilian life.

The "Transitional Online Post-deployment Soldier Support in Virtual Worlds" created by the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) will be ensconced within a corner of the virtual landscape of Second Life, a popular online 3D grid where people interact through avatars (PDF).

Also known as Coming Home, this world will contain three main areas: one for … Read more

"Smart" wastewater bio-treatment takes over where porta-potty leaves off

In wars of yore, the slit-trench was state-of-the art field sanitation, filled to the brim and then maybe backfilled; but today, when even losers are litigious, it's not a good idea to leave that kind of mess.

Now, the Texas Research Institute for Environmental Studies (TRIES) at Sam Houston State University and PCDworks, a technology innovation firm, have developed a self-sustaining, portable and "smart" wastewater treatment system that promises to take over where the porta-potty leaves off. (PDF)

Housed in the ubiquitous 40-foot shipping container, the Deployable Aqueous Aerobic Bioreactor (DAAB,) can convert a battalion's worth … Read more