CrownPeak announced how it is the first web Content Management software as a service (SaaS) to announce support for many of the new social networking standards -- especially Google's Open Social, Google Gadgets and other content published for inclusion on social networking sites.

Sangoma Technologies Corporation announced that they have partnered with PeopleTech, a provider of open source technology services and solutions, to expand distribution of Sangoma's premium telephony and data cards throughout India. Through this partnership, PeopleTech will provide a valuable sales channel and first line of support for Sangoma's Indian customers.

For BEA, I was hoping they would succeed at combining the power of JRockit with AquaLogic to build scalable workflow (a la BPM) services. Instead, we users and developers will be waiting for years to see WebLogic and AquaLogic integrated into the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack. For MySQL, I was hoping for an IPO.

Sun, Oracle's sometimes best friend, turned into an Oracle competitor this morning when it said it was buying MySQL, the open source database that's part of the famous LAMP stack. It's paying a billion dollars. MySQL was supposed to go public this year but picked the easier monetization route. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates MySQL?s financial position at breakeven on $60 million-$80 million on trailing 12-month revenues although over 100 million copies of the database have been downloaded. Sun is paying $800 million cash for MySQL's stock and assuming about $200 million in options. But Sun has been known to overpay for acquisitions before. Remember its fatal $2 billion Cobalt Networks deal?

As developers continue to migrate to NetBeans from other IDEs, the NetBeans community has experienced tremendous growth. To date there have been more than 16 million downloads and a 300% increase in email list subscribers during the past three years, and now NetBeans 6.0 has been released, a historic milestone celebrated in this exclusive SYS-CON.TV interview with NetBeans Technology Evangelist Gregg Sporar, during which Sporar gives an in-depth glimpse into the many new features of this release by means of five meticulously prepared live demos.

Efforts to modernize enterprise infrastructure have never been more complex. While the need is certainly there on multiple fronts - competitive edge, cost savings and new business initiatives, to name just a few - new hurdles seem to pop up no matter where an IT administrator might look. That includes not just management issues such as cap/ex costs and user resistance, but also an increasing pancake stack of integration layers within and among applications.

The introduction of Linux into the data center has brought with it the promise of a new level of cost-efficiency and flexibility for enterprise data center environments. IT professionals prefer Linux for their data centers because it's highly customizable and can be adapted to address specific issues more easily than any other operating system.

'MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation,' said Sun's CEO and president, Jonathan Schwartz, as Sun today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, the open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration.

Evolve Technologies unveiled its new Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) and Offsite Backup services, designed for multiple Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 servers. This latest addition to Evolve Technologies' service portfolio is a continuation of the company's targeted strategic growth initiatives started in 2007.

OpenMake Software announced a new consulting program, Build Mentoring, designed to assist organization in defining the build process beginning with development builds and ending with production releases.

The main concern of any project manager is if there are enough people in the pool of Flex developers to staff the project. Yes, there is a pool of Flex developers, but let's look at the creature called 'Flex Developer' under the microscope. If you are considering adding Flex to your set of skills, it?s still early in the game and you can join the fast growing Flex community. Decide which group of the Flex developers looks most appealing to you. Set a goal and go for it. Be what you can be.

There's a great deal of interest in open source software development these days. While the concept of open source (if not the name itself) is hardly new - people have been freely sharing source code since the beginning of the computer industry - the convergence of commercial interest in open source participation along with the maturation of open source development processes and governance models have greatly raised the visibility of open source development during the past several years.

Daybreak Intellectual Capital Solutions announced the availability of its latest release of eCapture Suite. eCapture Suite 2.0 is the industry's first integrated solution that combines distributed document capture with the ability to deliver content to multiple ECM repositories from a single interface. This release supports EMC Documentum 5.3 and 6, as well as eRoom. Support for additional ECM repositories is under way.

MKS Inc. announced that RWE npower has selected MKS Integrity to automate the software release process for the company's most critical software application - its customer billing system. Part of the RWE Group, the fifth largest industrial firm in Germany, RWE npower generates electricity and supplies gas, electricity and related services to around 6.8 million customers through its retail business, npower. The company operates and manages a flexible portfolio of power stations and is a market leader in renewable energy development, through its wind and hydro business, npower renewables.

Tidal Software announced that a premier provider of software and managed datacenter services for credit unions, Galaxy Credit Union Solutions, a business unit of Fiserv Inc., has deployed Tidal Enterprise Scheduler as part of their solution. Galaxy uses Tidal Enterprise Scheduler as their job scheduler of choice because of its ability to simplify the central management of complex job processing schedules.

The guy who created Gentoo Linux, Daniel Robbins, has offered a solution to the remarkable situation created by the revoking of the Gentoo Foundations's charter several weeks ago: he is offering to return as President. 'I have received permission from my employer to return and serve as President of the Gentoo Foundation, renew its charter, and then work in some capacity to help to get Gentoo going in the right direction from a legal, community and technical perspective.'

Sonasoft announces that Ubisoft has successfully implemented Sonasoft's SonaSafe solution to protect Microsoft SQL servers. Sonasoft provides a One-Stop Shop for the Backup, High Availability and Disaster Recovery needs of Ubisoft.

IT Mill Ltd has released version 5.0 of its IT Mill Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 open source license. With IT Mill Toolkit 5 developers now have the building blocks for RIAs that will allow them to work with Java alone. Toolkit 5.0 unites client-side AJAX tools with server-side Java tools, shortening the RIA development cycle.

Acronis, Inc. announced a new family of backup and recovery software specifically designed for databases, including SQL Server, Oracle and MS Exchange. Initial shipments of Acronis Recovery for MS SQL Server will be in the United States, with Europe and Asia/Pacific Rim releases later this quarter.

Managed Methods announces the latest release of its free solution for monitoring Web service availability. Managed Methods enhances its offering to customers looking for simple availability in smaller environments.

As interest in mobile AJAX gathers in the wake of the Apple iPhone release, the ICEfaces open source project is poised to deliver mobile AJAX solutions. This presentation talks about why the server-centric nature of the ICEfaces technology provides inherent advantages in the mobile space. You will get a brief overview of the ICEfaces technology and see how it is applicable to resource-constrained mobile devices. There is also a demonstration of a mobile ICEfaces application running on both the Safari and Opera mobile browsers. Finally, you will learn about some of the emerging best practices for mobile AJAX application design, and get a glimpse of the ICEfaces roadmap for mobile AJAX.

SpringSource, formerly known as Interface21, has announced the final release of Spring.NET 1.1, an application framework for the development and deployment of enterprise .NET applications. With roots in the widely used Spring Framework programming model for Java, Spring.NET extends the features of the Spring Framework to the .NET environment.

The success of open source software has been placing pressure on the business models of proprietary software vendors. In response, many software vendors have shifted from a paid-for license model to an open source business model. This presentation will explore the emerging trend of proprietary software vendors transitioning to an open source business model - the elimination of software licensing fees, source-code transparency, and a reliance on services as the revenue engine. It will cover the impact on software vendors and end users alike, and will include best practices from a number of companies that have already made the transition, including failed attempts.

'Our member CEOs have given us important insights into what they expect for the coming new year,' said Dominic Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) - a nonprofit, vendor neutral consortium dedicated to driving the interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open solutions - as the OSA today announced the findings of its 2008 Predictions Survey, which polled open-source CEOs on their forecasts for the coming year.

While enterprise open source vendors continue to debate the definition of 'open,' customers are listening. Not because they care as much about what open source business model a particular vendor uses but because our debates give them reason to be confused and to consider the FUD that is pushed into the marketplace. The Open Solutions Alliance is a nonprofit vendor neutral organization that exists for one purpose: to address CIOs most pressing issue today - interoperability among open solutions. While the customers have been listening to us, the OSA has been listening very intently to them. This session will discuss what CIOs are looking for in open solutions vendors and how they expect it to be delivered based on real discussions and work sessions.

The City of Sherwood is one of the fastest growing communities in the State or Oregon. As the City continues to grow, pressure is placed on City staff to better manage and maintain infrastructure as well as information in order to improve efficiencies and decision making. Part of becoming more efficient was the decision to implement Enterprise GIS.

Data corruption is an insidious problem in storage. While there are many forms of corruption, there are also many ways to prevent them. For example, enterprise class servers use error checking and correcting caches and memory to protect against single and double bit errors. System buses have similar protective measures such as parity. Communications going over the network are protected by checksums.

Google's new-year special logo, which went live briefly as 2008 began, celebrated the 25th anniversary of TCP/IP - adopted by Arpanet on January 1st, 1983. While 'invisible' to most users, many of the layers built on top of TCP/IP are well-known even to laymen: HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), FTP (the File Transfer Protocol), SMTP and POP3, and IRC.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has set Jan. 7 as the launch date for his open-source search project, dubbed Wikia Search. According to the Washington Post Wales, who has described Yahoo! and Google as opaque services that don't explain how results are arrived at, says the project will allow technology enthusiasts to help filter sites and rank search results, using a community model akin to that of Wikipedia.

The OpenVZ project announced that using its open source virtualization software in combination with virtual machine open source Xen software, users can effectively create many virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server. The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process

The Vector Linux Team has announced the release of Vector Linux v5.9 GREEN. Bleeding edge Open Source at the speed of light. We do our part to GREEN the planet so you can do yours. Every purchase helps us continue our work, we have been serving the computing public with Vector Linux for almost a decade. We have worked the bugs out long ago, and could not have done it without the countless volunteers and supporters like you.

Adobe is open sourcing the remoting and messaging technologies in its commercial LiveCycle Data Services ES - Adobe's route to the Internet - as a new product called BlazeDS. The widgetry, along with the Action Message Format (AMF) protocol specification, is being sent into the wild under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL v3), making Adobe the first major company to use the little-used new license. Public betas are out at labs.adobe.com.

JavaFX is a scripting language that provides more powerful client applications in term of features for the user interface experience as well as being incorporated with server platform technology such as RMI, Web Services, and EJB. Its ability to reuse all Java libraries opens an opportunity for JavaFX to create flexibility and ease the integration and reuse of existing Java applications.

Adobe earned $222.2 million, or 38 cents a share, up 21%, on record fourth-quarter revenues of $911.2 million, up 34% year-over-year, exceeding the company's revenue target of $860 million-$890 million. It attributed the results to Acrobat, its Creative Suite 3 products and momentum in its enterprise business. Creative Suite 3, which started coming out in April, includes upgrades to Photoshop, Illustrator and software acquired with Macromedia like Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. On a non-GAAP basis Adobe earned 49 cents in Q4, a penny more than Wall Street expected.

Canonical, the Ubuntu people, has pushed out a version control system called Bazaar 1.0 so hundreds of globally dispersed developers can kick in to software projects independently without utter chaos ensuing. Canonical says the traditional centralized VCS doesn't suit outsourced software development or even development spread across multiple locations in the same company. Bazaar supports the new distributed, disconnected development lifestyle.

In a surprise move Thursday Red Hat named the former COO of Delta Airlines Jim Whitehurst president and CEO, replacing Matthew Szulik who remains chairman. Szulik said he was stepping down after almost 10 years with the company because of serious health issues with his family that he has to pay attention to, a noble thing to do considering he'd rather be CEO of Red Hat. Well, if nothing else, it'll give Dell vice-chairman and CFO Donald Carthy somebody to talk to. Cathy was president of American Airlines before being pluck from Dell's board amid its crisis and given his current job.

Software AG announced the acquisition of the application modernization business of Jacada for $26M in a cash transaction. The asset deal expands Software AG?s application modernization portfolio with additional products for modernizing the user interface of mainframe and mid-range-based applications. In addition, eight of Jacada?s R&D and support staff will join Software AG ensuring continuous product development and customer support. Software AG will gain over 200 enterprise customers, mostly in the United States, as a result of the acquisition. These customers will benefit from direct access to Software AG?s comprehensive business infrastructure software portfolio.

Actuate Corporation announced today the results of a benchmark test conducted at the IBM Innovation Center, reaffirming Actuate as the industry's highest performing and most scalable platform for generating information applications. The tests focused on the collaborative reporting capabilities of Actuate iServer 9, which is based on Eclipse BIRT, the Eclipse Foundation's open source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools project - initiated and co-led by Actuate.

Quark Inc. and Alfresco Software, Inc. announced a new partnership to develop integrated enterprise-class publishing and content management solutions for professional and corporate publishers. With 15 years of workgroup publishing experience, Quark has designed technologies such as Quark Publishing System 7 (QPS® 7) to streamline the editorial and creative workflow processes while improving production. Alfresco, the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management (ECM), couples the innovation of open source with the stability of an enterprise-class platform.

Lombardi announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the 'Leaders' quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Business Process Management Suites, 2007 report. Gartner positions vendors in the magic quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.