Understanding Lifecycle Virtualization

"Lifecycle virtualization fundamentally transforms the lifecycle and eliminates many of the common challenges faced by development and test teams…. [It] and its associated technologies assist development, test, and operations teams in cutting the Gordian Knot of schedule, cost, and quality."

That's a piece of the provocative opening statement of a new "category snapshot" report by industry analysts Theresa Lanowitz and Lisa Dronzek. Lanowitz and Dronzek are founder and co-founder respectively of market research firm voke, inc., which focuses on cutting-edge tech and emerging trends that affect enterprises, technology vendors, venture capitalist and financial analysts.

Posted by John K. Waters on December 2, 20110 comments

AMD and BlueStacks: Making the Most of Android Apps on Windows

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is collaborating with BlueStacks to optimize the latter company's App Player for Windows for tablet and notebook PCs based on AMD's Accelerated Processing Unit (APU).

The Campbell, Calif.-based startup's App Player makes it possible to run Android phone apps on Windows machines. Essentially, it's an emulated Android mode for Windows that provides exclusive access to one application at a time. The pitch for developers is, not surprisingly, that the solution expands their consumer user based dramatically. But the BlueStacks' technology can also be integrated into offerings for enterprise market segments, the company says.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 28, 20110 comments

MyEclipse Also Turns 10

The Eclipse open source community is celebrating a birthday this month, as we reported last week. So is one of the founding members of the Eclipse Foundation: Genuitec announced the availability of version 10.0 of its MyEclipse Java EE IDE.

The Flower Mound,  Texas-based Genuitec's MyEclipse, is both a Java EE IDE and a Web development tool suite for the Eclipse platform. The company promotes the tool for developers using UML, JSP, XML, Struts, JSF and EJBs. It supports Ajax, Web Services development, Java Persistence, extended database support and application server integration.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 9, 20110 comments

JetBrains Offers a New IDE for Objective-C

I keep thinking of JetBrains as a Java tool maker because of the enduring power of its IntelliJ IDEA code-centric Java IDE. But that's a mistake. The Prague-based company makes tools for software developers, some of whom are Java jocks. That fact was brought home to me this week by Eugenia Dubova, JetBrains' indefatigable marketing manager, who let me know that her company has added another dev tool to its ever growing product catalog.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 28, 20110 comments

Zend's Gutmans: 'Step-Function Improvement' Coming to Development Thanks to Cloud

Zend Technologies CEO Andi Gutmans isn't one of Silicon Valley's most dynamic executive conference keynoters, but he's still one of my favorites. Benioff and Ellison are true showmen and fun to watch, but nobody cuts to the chase like Gutmans. He just walks onstage and tells you what his company is doing, clearly and in context. No yacht race videos. No musical tributes to our 50th state. No chats with celebs or digs at competitors. It's truly a beautiful thing.

But Gutmans slipped his Zen-like reserve yesterday during a post-ZendCon-keynote sit-down with a handful of industry reporters when the topic turned to the long-term implications of the cloud for developers More

Posted by John K. Waters on October 19, 20110 comments

Chair Says Java Community Process 'Definitely Unstuck'

During the Tuesday morning keynote at last week's JavaOne conference, Rob Benson, director of runtime systems at Twitter, took the stage to announce that his company would be joining both the OpenJDK community and the Java Community Process (JCP). Twitter wants to work with members of the JCP and the OpenJDK Community, Benson said, to help evolve the Java platform.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 12, 20110 comments

Oracle Embraces JavaFX, Plans To Open Source It

JavaFX was something of a darling of JavaOne this week. Oracle not only came through on its promised update of the Java user interface (UI) platform, it delivered additional features, such as a new HTML editor and the new WYSIWYG GUI design tool, Scene Builder, with this release. And JavaFX Script (which still exists as the open source Visage) has been replaced by Java APIs, so Java jocks can use their favorite IDEs to develop, compile and debug JavaFX 2.0 applications.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 6, 20113 comments

User Group President Looking Out for Oracle Developers

I spent Tuesday morning at the Hilton on JavaOne duty, but I made the long trip back to the Moscone Center after lunch to chat with some Oracle customers. My favorite of the day was Mike Riley, president of the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG). Riley is a big, affable guy with more than 20 years of experience in the field and what you might call a self-conscious passion for Oracle tools and the community that uses them.

Posted by John K. Waters on October 5, 20110 comments

Oracle Embraces NoSQL with its Big Data Appliance

The annual Oracle OpenWorld conference got underway this week, and I was among thousands of attendees swarming into San Francisco's Moscone Center to hear Larry Ellison's keynote opener on Sunday night, and then again this morning for the early a.m. presentations.

So far, it's been kind of a pitchfest on the keynote stage, with Oracle execs flogging existing product lines, announcing some new ones and pounding on its conference theme: "Hardware and Software: Engineered to Work together."

Posted by John K. Waters on October 3, 20110 comments