December 2, 2009
Internet: A threat to government or the other way around?
ZD Net
Doug Hanchard writes about the impact the Internet has on the government.
“Could the Internet pose a threat to government as an institution and create significant problems that shape how governing in the future occurs around the globe? Or are government a danger to users of the Internet – and vice versa? The answer is maybe both. The internet has plunged government institutions into a very steep learning curve; creating new frontiers that many bureaucrats believe help how they run the country. For many departments, it’s been a windfall in financial savings such as publishing news, services, and many other programs. But for the actual governors of a country, it’s become quicksand or worse: the death knell for an elected official.”
IBM hoists Tivoli Monitoring onto Amazon cloud
The Register
Austin Modine writes that IBM has now put its Tivoli monitoring solution onto Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.
“IBM’s Tivoli Monitoring is available on EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running as a virtual computer, Amazon announced Tuesday. The software joins a host of IBM business kit already on EC2m, including IBM’s DB2 and Informix Dynamic Server relational databases, WebSphere Portal and sMash mashup tools, and Lotus Web Content Management program. Similar to IBM’s previous offerings on EC2, the company will let companies transfer their on-site software license to run the software on the EC2 cloud.”
Virtualization Expanding in the Workplace-for Good Reason
Network World
Robin Gareiss discusses virtualization in the workplace.
“As organizations expand their network borders, or eliminate them altogether, virtualization becomes a more important and relevant technology. Nemertes’ virtualization research shows mass-adoption of server virtualization: 93 per cent of companies have virtualized at least some of the servers in their data centres. Those companies have virtualized 38 per cent of their workloads, and 78 per cent use virtual servers for customer-facing applications-a testament to the reliability of server virtualization. There still is plenty of room for growth within companies, though, as only 27 per cent of physical servers is hosting virtual servers.”