Carahsoft and Pentaho announced an exclusive distribution agreement. The companies will work together to address the large and growing demand for Pentaho's open source business intelligence (BI) software in federal government organizations. Under the terms of the agreement, Carahsoft will be the exclusive General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule distributor for U.S. Government organizations that choose Pentaho's Open BI Suite or its individual components for business intelligence.

SYSOPENDIGIA today announced that it will contribute to open-source the software created and modified for the 3G Linux smartphone. The SYSOPENDIGIA 3G Linux smartphone has been created using Linux operating system and other open-source software components, as well as commercially licensed Qtopia application platform and user interface from Trolltech.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, I/O Virtualization and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos addresses recent criticism directed at him by certain segments of the open-source community in an exclusive interview with Enterprise Open Source Magazine. Mickos also discusses his company's upcoming MySQL 5.0 release and what it means to his company and to users.

IBM and Avada Software announced a new original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement to join forces to capture a larger piece of the growing open source application server market. Under the agreement, Avada Software will deliver and support WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) as part of its messaging management solutions. IBM is also announcing that Nexxar Group Inc., a money transfer company, is using WAS CE to stay compliant with new money transfers laws and regulations in the U.S. and Europe.

Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.97. This latest release provides an open platform for customers to choose hardware, operating systems and database technologies based on their unique IT strategies and business requirements. Relying on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.97, customers may also adopt current advancements in Oracle Enterprise Linux and many components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

'It is very important to me that Acquia has a marketing leader who understands the importance of growing and sustaining a community and who is passionate about the principles of open source software,' said Acquia co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert as Jeff Whatcott joined the company as vice president of marketing, responsible for all marketing activity. Whatcott arrived from Adobe, where he led marketing for LiveCycle and Flex.

The original founder of Covalent Technologies, Randy Terbush, writes in response to last Friday's report that Covalent has been bought by 3-year old SpringSource. 'I've bit my tongue on the many inaccuracies reported about 'Covalent' over the past 5 years,' writes Randy Terbush, 'but your article and the quote 'Besides commercial Apache support, Covalent, whose founders helped develop the hysterically successful Apache HTTP Web Server...' motivates me to correct the misinformation.'

Apatar announced a technology and marketing alliance with EnterpriseDB, the Oracle-compatible database company. Under the alliance, Apatar will support EnterpriseDB's Postgres-based database products as both sources and targets of data integration initiatives.

Under a bit a pressure now that HP has open sourced its own IP identification system as FOSSology, Black Duck says it will roll out a thing called Code Center by the end of the quarter. It's described as a software component selection, approval, and tracking system eyeing reuse and aimed at early in the architecture development cycle before the code is set in stone and possibly subject to lengthy legal review.

One of the most exciting things about the software industry is how fast it moves. Software is constantly optimizing itself around the state-of-the-art. Inherent industry bottlenecks change cyclically every five years or so. Architectures and solutions change too. CPUs too costly? Enter dumb terminals. Network running slow? Build client/servers.

Sun is offering ten grants of US $11,500 - equivalent to several months of pay for developers in some countries - for the best NetBeans projects submitted by open source developers. Conceived as a means of increasing general awareness around the NetBeans project as well as rewarding good work done by the NetBeans Community, the 'Dreams of Reality' contest is described in detail by worldwide NetBeans Community Manager Bruno Souza, the charismatic Brazilian developer, in a special audio webcast currently playing on SYS-CON.TV.

Besides commercial Apache support, Covalent, whose founders helped develop the hysterically successful Apache HTTP Web Server, also sell enterprise subscription to its own Enterprise Ready Server, Hyperic HQ monitoring, Terracotta Java clustering and the WSO2 Web Services Application Server. SpringSource picked up a $10 million A round check from Benchmark Capital last year.

Google, which does not give guidance, missed both Wall Street's top and bottom expectations for its December quarter by a hair and the punters turned vicious pounding it down around 50 bucks after-hours. Consensus demanded non-GAAP earnings of $4.44 on revenues of $3.45 billion. Google came in with $4.43 on revenues $3.39 billion. Those revenues figures are net of what's called TAC, Google's traffic acquisition costs, the money it pays its partners, which it this case amounted $1.44 billion or 30% of its ad revenues.

Microsoft this morning made a $44.6 billion hostile bid for the floundering Yahoo, striking at a point when it has become evident to all and sundry that Yahoo doesn't have a pray of turning things around on its own let alone getting competitive. Yahoo's first official reaction was basically to say it'll think about it. It said it would evaluate the offer 'carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo's strategic plans.' It did not give a timeframe for a response. Although it looks pretty boxed in, it could of course try for more money.

The WSO2 ESB team announced the release of version 1.6 of the Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). The WSO2 ESB is an ultra fast, light-weight and versatile Enterprise Service Bus based on the Apache Synapse ESB. It allows you to Connect, Manage and Transform service interactions between Web services, REST/POX services and Legacy systems. This new release has clustered support built-in for the Cache/Throttle Mediators and the ability to pin Proxy services or Tasks to server instances on a cluster.

DataDirect announced the latest release of its DataDirect XQuery engine now supporting the MySQL Enterprise Server database. For the first time, users of the most popular and widely used open-source database can take advantage of the high-performance, scalability and reliability of DataDirect XQuery to access data stored in relational databases as XML. In addition to the MySQL Enterprise Server, DataDirect XQuery can be used with leading relational databases, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) applications and can handle the processing of large-scale XML documents.

Aras announced that the Aras Innovator suite of advanced service-oriented architecture [SOA] solutions for enterprise Product Lifecycle Management [PLM] is one of the first ten systems worldwide that has Certified for Windows Server 2008. Aras is the first enterprise open source provider to achieve platform certification.

Olocity Corporation is dedicated to delivering open standards based management solutions, products, and services and has acquired the StorageIM open source storage network management platform which will be integrated into its offerings. StorageIM is an open source management console for storage networks designed with the CIM and SMI-S industry standards as its architectural core. As a result StorageIM easily supports HBAs, arrays, switches, and tape libraries across vendors' products with a high degree of interoperability and reliability. Thanks to its standards based design, StorageIM has already successfully integrated with many vendors' storage networking products.

Governance is currently a key topic for many IT functions. Its definition varies, but its key themes are true for all companies: effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability. Business value and risk mitigation are also at its center and represent a significant part of enterprise governance overall.

See, HP is open sourcing widgetry very much like theirs, widgetry that it developed for itself over the last seven years at the cost of 'millions of dollars,' it says, and 60 man-years work that sorts out the various licenses that govern open source software - imagine, there are 1,700 licenses in OpenOffice alone - and lets you know if said licenses have been tinkered with in any way. It calls it FOSSology and has made it available at FOSSology.org under the GPLv2. It's designed, it says, to address the acquisition, tracking and licensing of FOSS. It can detect code reuse and provenance even if the code has been changed.

Our very favorite reaction to the Sun-MySQL acquisition came from industry pundit John Dvorak who calls it 'perhaps the worst single event I have ever witnessed in the history of tech mergers and acquisitions.' He says that given Sun's abominable track record with acquisitions and the fact that Sun can't afford to spend a billion dollars on a company with $60 million in revenue coupled the fact that MySQL is 'the most competitive and biggest threat to Oracle,' he's close to being convinced that Sun is acting as a 'stooge' for Oracle, which wants it dead. The MySQL code can be resuscitated from a fork.

High-performance databases are optimized for transaction processing and used by several industries around the world, notably financial services and health care. They are more commonly available on 32-bit Unix platforms (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux). The trend is to 64-bit-enable them and migrate them to the IA-64 architecture.

'Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market,' said Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia, as Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Norwegian software development company Trolltech.

Dramatic industry changes - including vendor consolidation, outsourcing and the growth of open source - highlight the need for a better way. When a SOA implementation costs too much, the culprit is often the old-fashioned, proprietary and expensive server or hub-based middleware. A better, distributed approach to SOA infrastructure can help reduce cost and increase the benefit of SOA implementation. This presentation includes an overview of the industry trends driving us toward SOA and explains why traditional middleware systems do not meet modern requirements as well as a distributed approach to SOA infrastructure.

As computer grids are becoming more wide spread in commercial data centers, the bottlenecks in application performance move from raw processing to searching, storing and retrieving the data. In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) technology solve this fundamental problem by acting as super-efficient application accelerator, taking advantage of unused resources readily available on the grid - disk, memory, IO - to put the data in memory of the same computer that performs the calculations. The talk will explore how IMDG can be easily integrated with existing enterprise grids to create data-aware grid applications and provide application performance acceleration while improving application scalability and reliability.

Popular assumptions can often be dangerous. We will start by considering how the many unique architectural characteristics of SOA, such as loose-coupling, can actually be a two-edged sword affecting the requirements, nature, and success of many important aspects of the architecture, especially runtime governance. In fact, the success of any SOA requires that one must gain an understanding of the true nature, performance characteristics, and availability of the business transactions that flows in real-time through these highly distributed services and their supporting IT infrastructure. Similarly, security and governance usually play a critical role in the proper operation of a SOA. Although one may support these critical SOA functions using many different technologies and standards, there is no doubt that for most users today the popular WS-* standards will play a central role. We will conclude by considering how all of these standards might best work together to solve these real-world problems in your SOA. In the process, we will speculate upon some the strengths and weaknesses in the current Web services stack, the nature of the standards process, and what trends might be most relevant to your own future success.

The ink was still drying on Sun's billion-dollar deal to buy the webby, low-end open source database house MySQL when Sun turned around and put money in the high-end open source Postgres company Greenplum, evidently what Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz meant last week when he said 'and we ain't finished yet.' Schwartz did say that Sun would continue to invest in Postgres, Oracle and JavaDB last week when Sun's MySQL buy was announced. Looks like we should have taken him literally. Greenplum also attracted SAP, which has no track record of open source investments, as another strategic investor - and SAP is fresh from closing its acquisition of Business Objects, the Franco-American BI concern.

Web 2.0 mashups are real and going mainstream. Come learn how to combine employee expertise and rich information to produce new insights and winning strategies. Learn how your employees can unlock and transform any information into just exactly what's needed to make the best possible decisions. Also learn how IT can help line of business be more self-sufficient while reducing project backlog and maintaining control over security, governance and costs. The presentation will showcase several demonstrations of customers and partners using SOA with mashups to maximize competitiveness.

We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and many enterprise development managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET or experiment with such newcomers as AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, or JavaFX. While the Internet brings a lot of noise where 'it's cool' is the most popular definition, this presentation is an overview of what's out there on the enterprise RIA market. We'll talk about the pros and cons of using various techniques and technologies for the development of the front end for complex distributed systems.

The iPhone and Google Android platform are undisputedly transforming the mobile industry by bringing smartphone capabilities to the masses. They are also making for enticing new mobile platforms for developing and deploying new types of mobile apps and services for mass market users. Yet, developing for them is not that easy. This session will focus on our experience of developing open source-based mobile messaging and sync applications for both of these platforms. It will compare and contrast the platforms in terms of the development methods and tools required, and their strengths and weaknesses from a developer's perspective. The presentation will share lessons learned as well as tips and techniques for developing for both platforms.

'Business users are starving for reliable customer information,' said Renat Khasanshyn, CEO and founder of Apatar, as Apatar today officially announced StrikeIron Email Verification connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset. Khasanshyn is an upcoming speaker at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in March in NYC.

The Web is continuously democratizing how information is consumed. Today, personal Web use has led to a rapid increase in user sophistication which is naturally reaching the Enterprise. A new mode of information visualization known as a Mashup combined with the collaborative aspects of Web 2.0 is finding success where Composite Applications struggled: cost, speed of development and interactivity. By moving the integration point from the service layer to the presentation layer, driven by the user themselves and controlled by secured processes, Mashups are gaining an Enterprise facet promoting them to be the new generation of Composite Applications.

The notion of building 'social applications' has taken the Web by storm. Today it is not only important to understand how to build Web or AJAX applications, but with the advent of the 'Social Graph', AJAX developer's must have a solid understanding of how to build social applications that operate within the context of a social environment. To this end, OpenSocial provides a set of open APIs for building applications that can run on any environment supporting OpenSocial. In this session, I will cover all aspects of building social applications using the OpenSocial APIs. A high level introduction of the social graph is given, followed by a detailed review of OpenSocial's APIs followed by demonstrations of practical examples. At the end of the session I will also review Shindig, which is an open source project that serves as a full server implementation 'in-a-box' for anyone wishing to host OpenSocial applications.

Open source, open platforms, open development environments... 'Open' can mean a lot of things, and the differences between one 'open' and another can be significant. David 'Lefty' Schelsinger will examine the various aspects and uses of the term 'open' as it relates to the current evolving mobile software space. Where does open source code make sense? Is simply being open source sufficient? Does openness necessarily mean fragmentation, and if so, what's the best way to forestall that? There are many platforms based on open source code to greater or lesser degrees, many 'open development platforms' and a number of initiatives--LiMo, LiPS, GNOME Mobile, the Open Handset Alliance, and others--dedicated to putting open source software on mobile devices. What are the differences between them? Are they competitive or cooperative? This discussion will describe the landscape, identify the players and contrast the approaches being taken. The ACCESS Linux Platform will be featured in this context as an alternative to the iPhone platform, as well as the approach to enabling third-party developers, and addressing the needs of the marketplace and the requirements of operators and device manufacturers.

Visual WebGui announced the availability of their enhanced browser-based solution. The company, whose solution has reduced enterprise application development times at companies like SAP, Network D, and others by more than 80%, also announces that Visual WebGui, which is seamlessly integrated into Microsoft's Visual Studio and .NET framework, will soon launch a Microsoft Silverlight compliant solution supported by Microsoft.

WebAssist announced iRite, a groundbreaking solution for Dreamweaver users that delivers the ability to edit text for web pages in the same way that you would edit text using a word processor like, Microsoft Word.

CA announced a series of initiatives to help customers derive maximum long-term business value from their significant investments in mainframe computing technology. The role of the mainframe continues to evolve as enterprises become increasingly dependent on scalable, available and secure IT services capable of supporting large-scale database activity and intense transaction loads.

OpenLogic announced year-end statistics on enterprise open source adoption based on an analysis of OpenLogic's enterprise customers.

It said this morning that it had reached a compromise price with BEA and that the acquisition would go through after all, having been resisted by BEA, demanded by BEA's biggest stockholder, the dangerous Carl Icahn, and walked away from by Oracle. Oracle is going to pay $19.375 a share, less than the $21 that BEA wanted but more than the $17 it put on the table back in October. That works out to $8.5 billion, less the $1.3 billion that BEA has in the bank, as Oracle pointed out, for a grand total of $7.2 billion cash to be paid for by a combination of cash on hand and a short-term loan. Oracle has $8.4 billion in the bank so the financing's no problem. Its original bid valued BEA at roughly $6.66 billion.