IBM Acquires Cloud Computing Integration Company Cast Iron Systems

IBM has acquired cloud computing startup Cast Iron Systems to “broaden the delivery of cloud computing services for clients.” Cast Iron Systems provides a SaaS cloud integration software. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cast Iron Systems’ software-as-a-service provides cloud computing integration appliances for large and midsize companies, including Allianz, NEC, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Dow Jones, Schumacher Group, ShoreTel, Sports Authority, Time Warner, Westmont University and others. The company has capitalized on the growing trend of companies running key business applications through software as a service models and cloud deployments.
Clearly, the acquisition represents IBM’s strong push to the cloud, with IBM expecting the global cloud computing market to grow to $126 billion by 2012.Cast Iron’s offerings will help IBM customers integrate their cloud-based applications and on-premise systems and advance IBM’s capabilities for a hybrid cloud model.
This year, IBM bought up health care data management firm Initiate and Intelliden. Last year, IBM acquired six companies, including Guardium, RedPill Solutions, SPSS, Ounce Labs, Exeros and Outblaze.

Google Android on Apple iPhone

Android ported on iPhone

A hacker who goes by the name of David Wang has just done something to prove that platforms of competing smartfone companies can indeed be compromised. 

David posted a video on the 'Linux on the iPhone' blog demonstrating how Google Android can be booted onto a first-generation iPhone. He suggested that Android could be ported to all versions of Apple’s smartphones, a move that seemed greeted positively by many of the blog’s supporters.

In his blog, David also said, "At some point this summer, Apple will release the iPhone OS 4, which will include features such as multitasking and an 'iAd' mobile applicationadvertising platform. Lack of multitasking has been one of the traditional complaints lodged against the iPhone, and used as a selling point for smartphones running the multitasking-capable Google Android."

CSS announces suite of cloud tools

CSS Corp, a provider of IT operations optimization, announced a suite of tools and services to help enterprises, independent software vendors (ISV) and services providers to levearage public, public and hybrid cloud infrastructure.


The CSS suite of Cloud management tools include:
CSS CloudSmart: CloudSmart is an ANT-based automated deployment tool to automate complex enterprise application deployment process on the cloud. ANT tasks and run book automation for deployment on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Eclastic Compute Cloud EC2 are part of the feature set.


CSS Cloud Buddy Enterprise: Cloud Buddy Enterprise is a tool that helps organizations take advantage of the capabilities of AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) storage.


Also Read: Storage-as-a-service: Cloud Storage 

It features an Enterprise Administrator console that manages access privileges/storage limits at the group and user levels. Cloud Buddy Enterprise has multi-mode access such as web, WebDAV, web services and Native Client for Windows to the AWS S3 storage.

It also has an integrated indexing engine, to index all the ?les that get stored on the AWS S3.


CSS CloudBuddy Analytics: Cloud Buddy Analytics is an Open Source web based tool to generate reports about S3 Bucket access. It has an intuitive interface for a rich user experience.

Cloud Buddy Analytics takes care of enabling logging, fetching logs and generating reports and can be con?gured for Multiple S3 Accounts, and could be made available on the network as a multi-user tool.


CSS also announced availability of its cloud enablement services, which include:
· Cloud design, orchestration, automation and testing services
·Cloud monitoring and management services
· Cloud support services

“Nick Sharma, CEO of CSS Corp. “Our cloud computing suite of tools and services are helping our customers truly benefit from the private, public and hybrid infrastructure.”

Wireless services: The race is not about speed but reach

Bridging the last mile broadband connectivity gap seems to be the latest craze among Indian telcos. No one, not especially the giants of the the likes which include Bharti, Vodafone, Reliance Communications (RCom) and Tatas, wants to be left behind. They want to try their hands on every technology they can afford to.

Gone are the days of dial-up connections, where one used to get an Internet connectivity speed of up-to 56 Kbps, that too over a wireline. Today one talks of megabits over kilobits, and that too over wireless connection, for data, voice and text.

Also Read: WiMAX: The wireless Broadband

Be it LTE (Long Term Evolution), WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), 3G (Third Generation)or WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), the wireless future of India shines bright.

On one hand, where the second generation of communication technology, 2G/2.5G, is set to give way for the third generation (3G). On the other, 4G technologies, such as LTE (the surprise factor of the BWA spectrum) and WiMAX, have also booked themselves a berth in India's race for wireless networks. Not to be left behind is WiFi, one of the longest serving wireless technologies in India today.

Theoretically, WiFi (IEEE 802.11g) can transmit up to 54 megabits per second (Mbps), whereas, WiMAX ((IEEE 802.16e) can provide a speed of up to 70 megabits per second. Coming to LTE, it will be more and and 3G will speed of up to 3 Mbps.

Considering the advanced versions of these technologies, Wireless N ((IEEE 802.11n) of WiFi, which will be rolled out this year, is said to give a speed of 300 Mbps, whereas, WiMAX 2.0, (IEEE 802.16m) will provide a throughput of over 350+ Mbps. Now coming to LTE (Rel 10 and Advanced) they are said to give much more speed than its predecessor.

So, among these technology siblings, who will win the race?

Sudarshan Boosupalli, country head, Ruckus Wireless, notes: “All technologies will co-exist. Today, the question is not about speed, but who will reach the market first and how affordable will their technology be for masses.”

links - text based web browser

links - text based web browser

Registration open for Google developer conference

The Google I/O 2010 would be held in San Francisco on May 19-20, 2010
Google on Tuesday announced that the registration is open for its developer conference, Google I/O 2010 to be held  in San Francisco on May 19-20, 2010.
Google I/O features 80 sessions, more than 3,000 developers, and over 100 demonstrations from developers showcasing their technologies. Talk shop with engineers building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications.
According to their blog, The event will be focused on building the next generation of applications in the cloud and will feature the latest on Google products and technologies like Android, Google Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Google APIs and more.
It also said that they are bringing back the Developer Sandbox, where developers from more than 100 companies will be on hand to demo their apps, answer questions and exchange ideas.
To register log in to code.google.com/io.

Google opens Docs for all files, over cloud

Google Docs will support files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications
Google in its Google Doc Blog announced that it will roll out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs.
Moreover, Google Docs will support files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications. Apart from this, Google Docs also offers 1 GB of free storage for files which need not be converted to one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and for more space, Google offers additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.
Google Doc would now on support backing up large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives etc.