Chris Preimesberger

Kindle Family Is Branching Out, Big Time With the Sept. 6 addition of three different-sized and different-purposed tablet PCs, Amazon now has five devices from which buyers can choose as alternatives to competitors from Apple, Google, Motorola, Asus, RIM and many others. Frontlit Display for New Paperwhite Device Many Kindle users were frustrated that their […]

The global disk-based storage market, rebounding from a big hiccup a year ago following Thailand floods that knocked out several key hard-disk drive manufacturing facilities, appears to be back on a healthy revenue track. Industry researcher Gartner reported Sept. 7 that worldwide external controller-based disk storage vendor revenue amounted to $5.5 billion in the second […]

Five months after it announced the acquisition of photo-sharing application provider Instagram for a little more than $1 billion, Facebook closed the deal Sept. 6 for $730 million. Facebook in April offered $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of common stock for Instagram, making the deal worth $1.174 billion at the time. Facebook […]

In the face of Google/Asus’ impressive Nexus 7 tablet and the eternally popular Apple iPad, Amazon appears to have risen to the challenge in the tablet PC wars. In what amounted to Amazon’s biggest and most strategic connected-device announcement in its 18-year history, the online retailer and Web services provider Sept. 6 unveiled and demonstrated […]

Determine the Purpose of Your Data Analyze the information environment, identifying where and how the data will be leveraged—and who will actually use the data—while thoroughly assessing the information environment. Determine how data could be used differently tomorrow, in analytics, for example. Take an As-is Assessment Before Moving Data Data is dynamic—changing all the time—and […]

The 2-year-old intellectual-property case over which Oracle sued Google for allegedly stealing Java software to use in development of its Android mobile operating system certainly didn’t turn out the way Oracle had hoped it would. Instead of banking a multibillion-dollar settlement or fine levied against the world’s largest Internet search provider, Oracle now may end […]

Most IT people already know that the sky’s the limit in the cloud and that subscription services are getting more specialized all the time. At first, functions such as human resource management, health care services, accounting, sales applications, and other business use cases were the pioneers in enterprise clouds, and they remain standard use cases. […]

Perfect Late Summer Setting for a Big Show VMWorld, held in late summer each year, is the fall season kickoff event in the IT world. San Francisco’s Moscone Center, located in the center of the city, is abuzz for virtually the entire week as a result. The weather cooperated nicely with blue skies and mild […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Even though there wasn’t what anyone could describe as blockbuster news at VMworld 2012, there were a large number of smaller news items — mostly involving new products — introduced at the show. In addition, several key industry partnerships were announced that will result in other new products in the future. One […]

SAN FRANCISCO – VMware on Aug. 28 at its VMworld 2012 event launched a new management package for data centers called VMware vCloud Suite. The world’s largest virtualization software provider also introduced a new community group, the Cloud Ops Forum, whose purpose will be to promote cloud-based IT from VMware’s point of view. The announcements […]

Gain Strategic Insight When all systems refer to hardware and software by the same names, you gain strategic insight into a vastly simplified IT estate. A common language of IT makes it easier to aggregate disparate sources when they all use the same conventions. Achieve Functional Agility With a common language, it is much easier […]

SAN FRANCISCO — On the first day of its week in the sun here at VMworld 2012, VMware started its ninth annual worldwide users conference Aug. 27 by introducing a new product that fits right into the latest IT hot trend: software-defined networking. This isn’t a new hypervisor or random piece of data center middleware. […]