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Wednesday 18 June 2008, 10:23 PM
More on Novell's cheeky tricks at Red Hat show...
More info on the mention I made in an earlier post to the little tricks that vendors get up to at a rival's conference.
I'm over in Boston at the moment reporting on Red Hat's annual shindig which the Linux specialist claims has had the most attendees of the four events it has held thus far- not bad going considering the state of the US economy – or maybe the Linux fans here just don't have anything better or anything at all to do, like a job for example. (But then the fees aren't cheap so I guess the attendees need to be employed or independently wealthy to afford to come here)
Anyway, rival Novell wasn't going to let Red Hat have things all its own way, and as I pointed out in an earlier post, has hung a massive banner extolling the virtues of Suse Linux right outside the main entrance to the Red Hat show.
Chatting to new Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst, which I am in the process of writing up, it turns out that Novell had more than just the banner planned.
Me: We saw the cheeky little banner that Novell managed to hang outside the conference…
Whitehurst: You like that…you should have seen the big floor thing they had. They had a big sticker on the floor but it turns out…not sure who had rights to that area but it wasn't supposed to be there so it's gone.
Red Hat PR minder: Cheeky, that's a very nice way to put it…very diplomatic.
This is not the first time that I've seen this kind of behaviour. Back in the late 1990s when the Outlook vs Notes war was raging, Microsoft decided to hold its Outlook conference in Boston, which also happened to be the stopping ground of Lotus, maker of Notes. Lotus hired a fleet of vans embossed with its logo to drive round and around the Microsoft exhibition to show the Redmond boys it wasn't going to take such provocation lying down. Juvenile but amusing.
Wednesday 18 June 2008, 9:36 PM
Red Hat backs new virtualisation strategy
Linux specialist Red Hat has announced that is developing an embedded hypervisor product that it claims will compliment rather than compete with its existing virtualisation strategy.
Launched at the first day of the company's annual user conference in Boston, the Embedded Linux Hypervisor is currently in beta with no commitment to when the product will eventually ship or how it will be distributed to customers.
"This is the first Linux based fully open source hypevisor. We see this announcement as one way to extend virtualisation into the entire enterprise," said Paul Cormier, president of products and technology at Red Hat.
The Embedded Linux Hypervisor is based on the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) project which has been integrated into the Linux kernel since 2006. Red Hat claims KVM supports live migration of virtual machines from system to system in real time and also has high availability features.
Full news story to follow...
Wednesday 18 June 2008, 2:32 PM
New chief exec makes first Red Hat conference keynote speech
Newly appointed Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst claims that his employer's future lies in becoming an open source advisor to end-user companies to allow them to share internally developed software with the rest of industry.
Speaking on the first day of the Linux specialist's annual user conference in Boston, Whitehurst said that the company had done very well so far with a business model of making community developed software enterprise-ready but there is still a whole lot more that could be achieved.
"One thing is clear, we have built a great business around open source but a specific sliver of open source," he said. "But that is the tip of the iceberg, the vast majority of software is written in the enterprise and not for resale."
Whitehurst claimed that Red Hat's future lies in helping and encouraging companies to share internally developed software with other businesses – and therefore enriching the number of open source applications and platforms available.
"We need to get customers as not just as customers of open source but truly engaged with the development model. Red Hat needs to be an open source advisor," he said.
Rival Novell also made its presence known at the conference with a subtle banner hung right outside entrance to the conference.
Tuesday 10 June 2008, 2:12 PM
Steve Jobs looks very thin
Although it was good to see that Apple might finally be staging a significant assault on the enterprise with the 3G iPhone, the one thing that struck me immediately from Steve Jobs's latest product launch is how thin he is looking.
There is speculation on the web (isn't there always) that Jobs weight loss could be anything from the return of the pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with in 2004, to the results of a strict vegan diet. Some rather black humour, (if illness is the cause) has also suggested that Jobs has simply adopted the thinner strategy that he seems to apply to all of Apple's products.
Jobs as he was at the World Wide Developers conference in 2007
Jobs on stage at this year's event.
Whatever the reality, and we very much hope this is diet-related, the hard truth is that given the way Apple is managed, Mr Jobs' health is a matter of public interest. If he was to leave the company for any reason it would have a massive impact on Apple and its shareholders. Media reports following the notification Jobs gave the Apple board around his cancer diagnosis appear to indicate that he was not as forthcoming as some would have hoped – and even chose to explore alternative treatments for a significant time before finally relenting and listening to the advice of conventional clinicians.
Friday 30 May 2008, 9:39 AM
Video blog: UN ICT survival training exercise
Last week I was lucky enough to get invited on a training course run by the UN Foundation and the World Food Programme (WFP) aimed to train UN ICT staff to become field managers in some of the most hostile conflict zones and disaster areas in the world.
Along with the initial security teams, the UN ICT staff are the first people on the ground when a disaster hits – such as the current crisis in Burma – so have to know how to handle themselves.
One of the exercises I witnessed, held on a military base just outside Pisa, involved the participants – from agencies such as UNICEF and the WFP – having to take cover from paint bullets fired from automatic weapons by Italian paratroopers.
The aim of the exercise was to find out how the trainees cope under pressure as well as teaching them how to react if they find themselves under attack or ambushed.
In this clip, the paratroopers put on a mock ambush for the participants:
Next up, a group of three of four participants are told to walk through a fake town and after finding themselves under fire, from paint bullets, find a way back to their starting point using all the cover available.
The troops also demonstrated how to react if your convoy comes under attack:
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