The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc.-sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, recently announced the availability of Fedora 12, the latest version of its free open source operating system distribution. Fedora 12 includes new features to appeal to desktop users, administrators, developers and open source enthusiasts alike.

As reported in the last edition of The Linux Executive Report, IBM's supercomputer lines are among the "greenest" in the industry. Another "super computer," System z, is also reported to lead the industry in energy efficiency. IBM has announced, for example, that it has completed installation of what it calls the "world's greenest data center" at Syracuse University.

In a recent interview with CNET's Matt Asay, Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation, discusses what is positioning Linux for growth in the coming decade, what affect industry consolidation may have on open source development, and what he sees looming ahead for Linux and open source in 2010.

Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, traveled to Brussels last week in order to present the IOUG position on the pending acquisition of Sun by Oracle to the European Union's Competition Committee. Abramson was asked by Oracle, on behalf of the IOUG, to be a part of the company's presentation to the EU. Upon arriving in Brussels, it was determined that since the IOUG and the UKOUG (represented by chairman Ronin Miles), were both there that they should combine statements, according to Abramson.

To help midsize industrial manufacturing companies streamline their IT implementations, Oracle and HP have launched the HP and Oracle Consulting Accelerate Solution for Industrial Manufacturing.

CommVault announced yesterday that it has formed a partnership with Informatica to deliver an integrated archiving solution that extends support to leading databases and applications, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel and other custom or legacy applications. This new technology partnership will enable CommVault Simpana software customers to easily archive large databases from mission-critical business applications, such as CRM and ERP systems, to better streamline e-discovery and improve database space management.

Microsoft Corporation has acquired Opalis Software, an IT process vendor. Opalis will be integrated into the Microsoft System Center product line. Opalis' IT process automation tools are designed to enable the streamlining of IT operations by removing of the overhead associated with manual response to IT problems. The acquisition "means that IT process automation will become a mainstream offering throughout all levels of IT shops, large and small," according to Todd DeLaughter, president and CEO of Opalis Software. "No coding or scripting is required to use Opalis so IT experts from operations to development teams can participate in driving IT efficiency."

Symantec Corp. has made enhancements to Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster File System and Veritas Cluster Server, which are heterogeneous storage management and high availability solutions for Unix, Linux and Windows environments. These latest releases are intended to help organizations to employ the latest storage innovations — from SSDs to thin provisioned hardware and virtual environments including Hyper-V. The new releases also provide capabilities needed to optimize any storage or server platform. Additionally, the vendor says near instantaneous recovery of applications is now possible with Veritas Cluster File System through tight integration with Oracle, Sybase and IBM DB2 - enabling faster failover of structured information and near-linear scalability.

Microsoft Corporation has acquired Opalis Software, an IT process vendor. Opalis will be integrated into the Microsoft System Center product line. Opalis' IT process automation tools are designed to enable the streamlining of IT operations by removing of the overhead associated with manual response to IT problems.

Clerity Solutions, a provider of mainframe migration, modernization, and optimization solutions, announced the availability of an application development tool that provides a graphical user interface environment for the design, creation, and maintenance of former mainframe-based 3270 "green screens" on cost-effective open systems.

SOA Software says it will soon be shipping a new product to extend the capabilities of the IBM WebSphere Service Registry Repository (WSRR). This new product called Policy Manager for IBM WSRR complements the policy management capabilities of WSRR enabling customers to define policies for services and service consumers regardless of their platform and can audit the policies implemented and enforced by the platform in a closed-loop process.

As we enter the next decade of the millennium, we will see information technology becoming more ubiquitous, driving an even greater share of business decisionmaking and operations. IT has proven its muster through the recent downturn as both a tactical and strategic weapon for streamlining, as well as maintaining competitive edge. Now, as we begin the next round of economic recovery, companies will be relying on IT even more to better understand and serve their markets and customers. Yet, there are many challenges with managing a growing array of IT hardware, software, and services. To address these requirements, businesses continue to look to approaches such as analytics, virtualization, and cloud computing. To capture the trends shaping the year ahead, Database Trends and Applications spoke to a range of industry leaders and experts.

When a company like Microsoft talks about the future of computing, you can expect a fair bit of self-serving market positioning - public software companies need to be careful to sell a vision of the future that doesn't jeopardize today's revenue streams. But, when a company like Microsoft releases a new version of its fundamental development framework - .NET, in this case - you can see more clearly the company's technical vision for the future of computing.

Listen to a group of database professionals talk for awhile and someone will eventually bring up the topic of data deduplication. Data deduplication is a means to eliminate redundant data, either through hardware or software technologies. To illustrate, imagine you've drafted a new project plan and sent it to five teammates asking for input. That single file has now been reproduced, in identical bits and bytes, on a total of six computers. If everyone's email inbox is backed up every night, that's another six copies backed up on the email backup server. Through data deduplication technology, only a single instance of your project plan would be backed up, and all other instances of the identical file would simply be tiny on-disk pointers to the original.

Corporate management is complacent about data security. Efforts to address data security are still ad hoc, and not part of an overall database security strategy or plan. Companies are not keeping up with the need to monitor for potential risks. More monitoring tends to be ad hoc or on-the-fly, versus more organized or automated systematic approaches. These are the findings from new research from Unisphere Research and the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), which shows that the recent economic downturn has taken a toll on data security efforts within enterprises.

Credit card security is a top priority - for both consumers and businesses. But what happens if there is a security breach exposing critical data to unknown sources? What can businesses do from an IT perspective to ensure they're protecting consumer information? When sensitive cardholder information resides in legacy host systems, host access technology can be a critical tool to help organizations successfully achieve PCI DSS compliance.

Unisys Corporation has announced that its Unisys ES7000 Model 7600R Enterprise Server has demonstrated record performance and reductions in cost of ownership among servers featuring more than four sockets in the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) TPC-E benchmark. The server also registered strong results in the TPC-H benchmark test.

Attachmate Corporation has achieved Common Use Passenger Processing Systems (CUPPS) certification for its INFOConnect Enterprise Edition for Airlines Print and Transaction Router (PTR32) solutions. The certification addresses a need among airlines that are working to migrate their technology to the CUPPS platform, gradually replacing the Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE), which is the current check-in and boarding standard. Attachmate is one of the first application vendors to receive this certification.

At the recent UNITE conference in Minneapolis it was announced that the 2010 conference would be in San Antonio in November. During the conference, UNITE surveyed its constituents, including members, vendors and Unisys, by using focus groups and other discussions. This initiative looked at a number of factors impacting the conference—among them timing, location and cost. The consensus from this effort showed that a spring conference would be most effective for all parties. The UNITE board of directors has therefore decided to move the conference to May 2010.

SHARE in Seattle is your opportunity to stay ahead of the latest in enterprise IT advancements, and with the early-bird rate available only until January 22, 2010, the time to register is now!

As reported in this week's edition of 5 Minute Briefing: Data Center, IBM's supercomputer lines are among the "greenest" in the industry. Another "super computer," System z, is also reported to lead the industry in energy efficiency.

SOA Software today announced its "Atmosphere" cloud services governance initiative, which creates a unifying brand for a suite of SOA and cloud services governance products that the company will deliver through 2010. Atmosphere's integrated set of products will implement, enforce and audit common policies through various stages of service life cycles, enabling cloud service platforms to automatically scale based on the SLAs and measured performance of the services and processes.

BMC Software has introduced a solution that helps IT operations managers to see impending performance bottlenecks and other issues before they actually happen. The vendor's latest product, BSM for Proactive Operations, features enhancements to its line of IT operations solutions that are part of its Business Service Management (BSM) platform. The predictive analytics capabilities have been built into the latest BMC BladeLogic, BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management, BMC Capacity Management and BMC Atrium solutions.

Xceedium, Inc., a provider of access control and audit solutions, is shipping the latest release of its security appliance, which includes full support for mainframe and virtualized environments. The Xceedium GateKeeper Version 5 appliance is designed to proactively enforces policy to protect critical infrastructure and information assets.

IBM supercomputers rank as the most energy-efficient systems in the world, according to the latest Supercomputing "Green500 List" announced by Green500.org. The list shows that 18 of the Top 20 most energy-efficient supercomputers are built on IBM high performance computing technology. The list includes supercomputers from Saudi Arabia to Germany and the United States that are being used for a variety of applications such as astronomy, climate prediction and pharmaceutical research. IBM also holds 69 of the top 100 positions on this list.

The openSUSE Project, a worldwide project sponsored by Novell, has announced that openSUSE 11.2, a Linux-based operating system that includes everything needed to get started with Linux on the desktop or server, is now available for download. The openSUSE distribution provides the foundation for SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell. "Different Linux distributions have a different focus," explains Joe Brockmeier, openSUSE community manager, noting that openSUSE is very suitable for small and home office users as well as for professionals who do development. While SUSE Linux Enterprise is designed to be on a system for 5-7 years, in contrast, says Brockmeier, openSUSE is intended to have a shorter lifecycle. "We keep up with the latest and greatest in open source software," he emphasizes, "but we still have a very firm commitment to quality, so it is not as if we are not pushing the very bleeding edge into the releases. We are trying to make sure that they still very well polished."

In the recent IBM Global CIO Study of more than 2,500 CIOs around the world, 83% of respondents identified business intelligence (BI) and analytics as the top way they will enhance their organizations' competitiveness and ability to meet client needs.

IBM supercomputers are the most energy-efficient in the world, according to the latest Supercomputing "Green500 List" announced earlier this month by Green500.org. The Green500 list is published by Green500.org. It provides a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world and serves as a complementary view to the TOP500 list of worldwide supercomputers by Top500.org.

IBM, VMware and Keepod products family manufacturer NSEC are partnering to offer IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity software suite on Keepod devices for the first time.