Michael Hickins

NEW YORK—IT industry leaders signed a memorandum of understanding Sept. 18 with the Department of Energy that puts in place a process for creating metrics that can be used to measure the energy efficiency of data centers. Leaders of the 92-member Green Grid alliance, most of whom are IT industry executives, say the data center […]

The “touch of death” is a martial art that supposedly allows its practitioner to apply a deadly blow without his opponent even feeling it, sometimes succumbing hours or days later. Is it possible that server virtualization market leader VMware has dealt Microsoft such a blow? VMware sought to extend its lead in the server virtualization […]

Forgive Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers if he wasnt impressed with the size of VMwares flagship VMworld user conference, held this week in San Francisco. VMware claimed attendance was more than 10,000, but fewer than half as many were in attendance when Chambers gave his keynote on Sept. 12, the second day of the conference. […]

SAN FRANCISCO–VMware announced today that it has acquired Dunes Technologies, a vendor specialized in software that allows customers to automate workflows for managing their virtual environments. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The move comes at a time when virtualization is moving speedily from leading edge to mainstream, with VMware positioned as the vendor […]

NEW YORK-Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff isnt spitting fire like he used to. That may not be a bad thing. There was a time when Benioff wouldn’t spare Microsoft a bit of criticism and wouldn’t stint Google a bit of praise. Microsoft, after all, represents the antithesis of the business and software delivery model Salesforce.com champions. […]

Microsoft revealed Aug. 29 that it will not release Windows Server 2008, the successor to Windows Server 2003, on time. In a posting to the companys TechNet site, a Microsoft spokesman confessed that “Windows Server 2008, which we have been saying would Release to Manufacturing (RTM) by the end of the calendar year, is now […]

Having had the opportunity to travel abroad this summer, I found myself comparing things: How good is their food compared with ours? How good is their public transportation system? How safe are they? From terrorism? From disease? From voter fraud? Those are very different questions, of course, with very different degrees of importance. But it […]

Uneasy sell for Dell You can imagine what the honchos down in Round Rock, Texas, may have been thinking: How hard can it be to sell computers to small-business people? Theyre desperate for efficient technology solutions to give them a competitive edge. Weve got the resources—lets scoop them up! So, on July 11, Dell bought […]

SAP has agreed to include metadata management tools from Informatica with some of its enterprise resource planning and analytics products. The combination of the two products is intended to help customers analyze data stored in third-party or legacy systems. It also solves a marketing problem for SAP, as the applications from Informatica will help the […]

NEW YORK—An explosion just south of Grand Central Station interrupted Internet service for Manhattan customers here today. In the hours following the incident, Verizon had already determined that major switches located underground had not been affected, and was preparing to inspect the cables underground. But it could not provide an estimate of whether or how […]

NEW YORK—Michael Dell doesnt think that making inexpensive laptops for underprivileged kids is very helpful. According to Dell, those so-called $100 laptops wont be powerful enough to make much of a difference in their lives. “The issue is not so much what does it cost, but what does it do,” he said during a question […]

On the face of it, open-source software has been gaining ground of late. The much-anticipated draft of GNU GPLv3 (GNU General Public License Version 3) has been finally published, giving the open-source community an opportunity to finally get out of its own way. State and local governments have latched onto the idea that having their […]