Updated Ubuntu server OS set for April 29 release

Linux distribution vendor Canonical will soon release an updated version of its production-ready server operating system, the company announced Monday. Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server Edition will be ready for downloading, for no charge, beginning on April 29, along with the desktop edition of 10.04. Like other Canonical LTS releases, this Linux kernel-based OS has been designed for users who require long-term support and maximum stability, said Matt Asay, the company's chief operating officer. It will be supported with free maintenance and security updates for five years. (Canonical's non-LTS releases typically are supported for 18 months.) Typically, Canonical releases a LTS server edition every two years, the last one being Ubuntu 8.04. This will be the first version of an LTS server to feature the Eucalyptus cloud platform, which is part of the company's Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

Google unveils plan to let Chrome OS users print from cloud

Google is unveiling early-stage designs, software code and documentation of a project whose goal is to let users of the company's Chrome OS operating system print documents to any printer from any application. Called Google Cloud Print, the technology would dispense with the need to install printer drivers by routing print jobs from Web, desktop and mobile applications via a Chrome OS Web-hosted broker.

IBM says it won't sue to protect open-source patents

IBM will not use its open-source patents in any potential legal actions it may bring against TurboHercules, an IBM company executive seemingly asserted on Wednesday. "IBM stands by this 2005 Non-Assertion Pledge today as strongly as it did then. IBM will not sue for the infringement of any of those 500 patents by any Open Source Software," wrote Dan Frye, an IBM vice president of open systems development, in a letter sent to Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin. Frye was responding to a question from Zemlin concerning a heated discussion in the open-source community about IBM's potential use of open-source patents in an ongoing dispute the company is having with Paris software company TurboHercules.

Intel puts Google's Android on Atom smartphones

Intel has ported Google's Android mobile operating system to smartphones based on its Atom microprocessors, an Intel executive said Tuesday. Intel already has Android running on Atom-based smartphones and certain customers are interested in using it, said Renee James, general manager of Intel's software and services group, on the sidelines of the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing. She did not provide further details of the project."Intel is enabling all OSes for Atom phones," James said. The move is part of Intel's aim to further drive its Atom microprocessors into smartphones, a market dominated by chips from Arm Holdings. Software has to be made specifically for the architecture of a microprocessor. Intel builds chips on the x86 architecture, while Arm chips are based on RISC (reduced instruction set computer).

Dell eyes Indian SMB and SOHO for better sales

Dell, despite the dismal results this quarter, in revenue, sales and profits is buoyant about the coming quarter. It is expecting increased sales from SMB and the SOHO (Small office/Home office) segment. Steve Felice, president, Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan, speaking in a conference call with APAC media persons said, “Revenue line was lightly off this quarter, but we tribute that predominantly to Window 7. And I would like to explain that our customers delayed their buying plans in wait of Windows7. He added, “A nice example of this is America. In the first two weeks of October, the sales came around 80 per cent of what we expected and post the launch it moved to 110 per cent of the expectations.”

The word "upgrade" has long been a virtual bogeyman for SAP customers, given the historical pain, time and cost of moving to a new version of the vendor's ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. For some time, SAP has been trying to entice users onto the modern ECC 6.0 through its "enhancement pack" program, which promises to let users add new features without the pain of a full technical upgrade. Customers can't take advantage of the packs until they move to 6.0. Meanwhile, a good percentage of SAP customers need to confront upgrade decisions this year, as they remain on platforms such as R/3 4.6c, for which extended maintenance ends this December, and 4.7, for which mainstream maintenance lapsed in March 2009.

What used to be the sweetest deal on the planet for ERP vendors has left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of many CIOs. With maintenance and support costs running upwards of 20 percent annually, these legacy systems are costly, complicated and customized to the max. Forrester Research reports that the global recession sent new ERP license revenue diving by 24 percent last year, which surfaced a lot of tension at vendor negotiating tables. And no wonder-about 90 percent of those outrageous maintenance fees is pure profit for the vendors. Today's ERP-the essential bedrock of your financial, HR, supply chain and manufacturing systems-does little to set your business apart from competitors or generate new revenue. "ERP is the Jack Nicholson of software," as Senior Writer Kim S. Nash puts it in our cover story (" Reviving ERP"). "Its repertoire hackneyed, the old and expensive dog finds it hard to learn new tricks." The ones learning new tricks are the customers who just can't take it anymore.

The potential benefits of public clouds are obvious to most IT execs, but so are the pitfalls -- outages, security concerns, compliance issues, and questions about performance, management, service-level agreements and billing. At this point, it's fair to say that most IT execs are wary of entrusting sensitive data or important applications to the public cloud. But a technology as hyped as cloud computing can't be ignored either. IT execs are exploring the public cloud in pilot programs, they're moving to deploy cloud principles in their own data centers, or they are eyeing an alternative that goes by a variety of names -- enterprise cloud, virtual private cloud or managed private cloud. We're using the term enterprise cloud to mean an extension of data center resources into the cloud with the same security, audit, and management/administrative components that are best practices within the enterprise.

Subex Ltd, a provider of Operations and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) for communications service providers, announced today the launch of ROCcloud, an on-demand ROC (Revenue Operations Center) offering suited for small and medium telcos. Subex believes the BSS (Business Support System) needs of small and medium telcos are very different from those of larger telcos. In the same vein, most BSS products are developed to address the needs of large telcos, said a press release. All the features in standard BSS products may not be required by smaller telcos, and hence it becomes difficult for them to justify the cost of procuring such products and realize the full ROI (Return on Investment).

Cloud based ERP is the way forward

Ramco Systems has come a long way since its inception in 1989. When in the late 80s the IT services boom had just begun. Ramco took a route thats least taken. It chose to develop enterprise apps and came out with its first full-fledged ERP in the early 90s called Marshal. Since then the product has evolved into a platform and all products are now meshed into Virtual Works. Ramco today is into a whole lot of enterprise apps cutting across ERP, HRMS, business analytics, SaaS among others. In the last two decades Ramco has stood firmly on its product initiatives.

HP unveils remote printing service for BlackBerry devices

Hewlett-Packard on today added mobile printing to its enterprise services offerings, giving BlackBerry users a new way to print documents on the go. A new services offering called ePrint will let BlackBerry users securely print documents from printers at public locations like hotels, airports or libraries, said John Tomesco, vice president of marketing and development for HP's Imaging and Printing Group. Users will be able to print e-mail messages, images, presentations and documents in file formats such as PDF. HP is providing an ePrint application for BlackBerry smartphones to locate and select the closest printer, after which users can finalize printing of the document. An e-mail with a security code is sent that authorizes printing of the document. Users need to reach the print and punch in the code.

Microsoft offers hosted PC management tools to beta testers

Microsoft is beta testing a PC management service aimed at supporting midsized businesses, the company announced Monday. The service, called Intune, will be available to 1,000 users in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The service streamlines administrative functions by moving common administrative tasks to a hosted environment, eliminating the need to set up and manage in-house software for these tasks, said Microsoft group product marketing manager Sandrine Skinner. From a browser console, an administration can manage all the Windows 7 PCs in the organization. "You can update any PC, no matter where it is located," Skinner said. The service includes features such as the ability to manage Windows updates, to install and manage malware and virus protection measures, to set security policies, and to assemble an inventory of PCs and their configurations.

Microsoft's cloud-enabled Office 2010 set to join battle with Google

Next month, Microsoft Corp. will release Office 2010 into an IT world that Google Inc. has been reshaping as use of its Google Apps services has spread to organizations like the Los Angeles city government and Genentech Inc. With its release of Office 2010 on May 12, Microsoft will complete an effort to move its extensive portfolio of applications to the cloud, offering its business and government customers a new way to deliver services to users. But while Microsoft has a vast installed base of customers who use its Office suite of products heavily, its mindshare is clearly declining as more and more users embrace Google Apps. Google moved early to make this a contest over which company offers the best contract terms and legal protections in cloud environments. The city of Los Angeles, which may be Google's marquee government user, has been frank in disclosing details of its agreement.