Application Development Trends' News


Massachusetts Promotes Open Standards as SOA

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is promoting an Enterprise Open Standards policy that advocates using open-source office applications while at the same time it sets guides for moving to a service-oriented architecture.

SOA in One Neat Package

If you’re one of the many IT pros who are still trying to figure out the business value of service-oriented architecture and what you need to do to build one, take a look at “Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design,” by Thomas Erl.

Enterprise Service Bus Enters the Mix

The ServiceMix project team has released ServiceMix 1.0, an open-source enterprise service bus and SOA toolkit built from the ground up on the semantics and APIs of the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification JSR 208 and released under the Apache license.

Seven Habits of Highly Successful Business/IT Aligners

Dr. Tushar Hazra, a senior consultant with analyst group Cutter Consortium, contends there are at least seven best practices organizations pursuing alignment initiatives should follow. Because these practices are interrelated, Hazra says, skimping on any one of them might doom the best-laid IT plans.

Saving Money from Outsourcing Beats Expertise

Cost savings from outsourcing development trump acquiring special expertise, according to a new survey by Evans Data, a market research firm.

Apache Leads Synapse Project to Cross the Divide Between Web Services

The Apache Software Foundation has been talking up Synapse, an open-source project to develop an interoperable framework for Web service infrastructure software, including an enterprise service bus, Web services brokers and Web services management products.

Study: APM Tools Saving Legacy Apps

CIOs are smitten with legacy apps again, but keeping decades-old behemoths running is extremely costly. IT departments rely on application portfolio management tools to ease this burden, so sales for APM tools skyrocketed 280 percent in 2004, according to a recent Forrester Research study.

SHARE: SOA Knocking on Exec Doors

Because service-oriented architecture is catching the eye of CEOs and other senior executives, mainframe pros should expect to have SOA plans ready to go.

SHARE: Businesses Still Not Taking Spyware Seriously

Most businesses have tackled viruses, hammering best practices into their users and implementing anti-virus software. However, these same enterprises and their users still don’t realize spyware’s potential damage, according to a session at a recent SHARE user conference in Boston.

Sybase Launches Beta Versions of its App Dev Tools

At the Sybase Techwave 2005 Conference this week, Sybase unveiled the beta versions of PowerBuilder 10.5, PowerDesigner 12, PocketBuilder 2.0.3 and DataWindow .NET 2.0, which it says will enable developers to rapidly design, develop and deploy apps.

Low-Power Processors Net High-Power Handhelds

The tech industry is on a new "performance per watt" course that will deliver powerful Intel-based computers that are increasingly smaller, sleeker and more energy-efficient, says Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Wily Intros Upgrade of its Web App Monitoring Solution

Wily Technology has released Wily 6, a solution for monitoring the availability and performance of Web applications as they cross from browser to backend.

Software to Cloak Code from View of Bad Guys

Cloakware has expanded language support for its Cloakware Security Suite to include C, C++ and Java, extending the range of code that can be protected from reverse engineering when the software is stored on a disk, and against tampering when the software is stored on disk or running in memory.

Sun Dreams about a Participation Age

Sun Microsystems President and COO Jonathan Schwartz has been talking up the company’s Open Media Commons initiative, an open-source community project developing a royalty-free digital rights management standard. Schwartz is calling for immediate cross-industry collaboration in developing an open, safe and business-friendly approach to the free creation, duplication and distribution of digital content.

Spare Backup Bid to Sell Monthly Backup Service in a Box

Spare Backup began shipping a monthly backup service in a box this week. It is aimed at small-to-medium businesses and home workers. The service is packaged as a product for retail store shelves.

IT’s Most Influential Person Is No Surprise

It’s not much of a surprise, but according to a survey of attendees at this week’s SHARE user meeting in Boston, the person to have had the greatest impact on IT in the last 50 years is no other than Bill Gates.

EnterpriseDB’s Database Rolls into General Availability

EnterpriseDB is on a roll. The company won an award in the best database solution category at LinuxWorld and announced the general availability of EnterpriseDB 2005 in only a little more than 2 months after emerging from stealth mode.

Virtualization Momentum Underscored at LinuxWorld

VMWare, which nearly single-handedly revived interest in technologies that provide a logical, rather than a physical view of computing resources, has plans to support paravirtualized Linux and Sun Microsystems’s Solaris x86 operating systems in future releases of its infrastructure platform products, Workstation, GSX Server and ESX Server.

Perens Knocks OSDL Patent Pool

Bruce Perens led his biannual “Open Source State of the Union” talk at the recent LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco with a hard knock on the plan to create a “patent pool” to protect open-source projects from patent lawsuits.

Retailer Busts Lines with New Inventory System

Sales associates at Gordmans, an apparel and home fashions retailer, found they were spending more time waiting for inventory data than they were spending on customers.