Riverbed Technology announced that its Riverbed Steelhead appliance running the Riverbed Optimization System (RiOS) version 4.0 has achieved SAP Certified Integration for third-party networking appliances that interoperate with SAP solutions using the SAP NetWeaver platform and an enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA). Enterprise SOA enables customers to create a highly-flexible, open IT architecture for developing services-based, enterprise-scale business solutions. With SAP's certification of integration of the Riverbed Steelhead appliance, customers can be assured of interoperability within SAP application-based landscapes.

For the past ten years application developers have been stuck with only two desktop client choices. Traditionally, they can choose either a very thin Web-client technology implemented in HTML and CSS, or a very heavyweight thick client experience implemented using traditional client/server (C/S) technologies (e.g. Java Swing, MFC). It wasn't until the introduction of RIA technologies (e.g. AJAX, Adobe Flex, Curl, and Silverlight) and widget engines (e.g. Yahoo! Widgets and Google Gadgets) that we were given more options.

Acquia has yet to price its maintenance and support subscriptions - there should be a variety of SLAs - but they're supposed to include an electronic update notification system code named Spokes for updates that have been reviewed for security and compatibility and are supported by Acquia. Acquia is currently at 12 people, expecting to be 25 by the end of the year. Its Series A money comes from Northbridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. According to Dries' blog, Drupal 7 should offer the ability to create, share and mashup managed content, letting Drupal be a data repository accessed by tools and web sites across the network.

Doesn't Oracle have its own virtualization scheme? Isn't it Xen? Well, Oracle's soon-to-be takeover, BEA - the feds just okayed the merger - said Wednesday that it had teamed with VMware to deliver Java virtualization to the enterprise.

One of the big challenges to success with enterprise application deployments is securing active user participation. Applications have historically been difficult to use, and user interfaces have been slow to catch up with modern Web 2.0 and Smartphone technologies. Dispelling this stodgy image of enterprise software applications, SAP recently released a revolutionary new product update for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in December 2007. A key feature bridging the gap between powerful enterprise applications and ease of use and coolness of modern technologies is SAP CRM's compatibility with Apple's iPhone. This session will feature SAP CRM's approach to the iPhone platform, and the experiences gained so far.

Esker announced its Esker DeliveryWare 4.0 - Esker's Document Process Automation solution - has achieved SAP Certified Integration for SAP's new Enterprise Services-based (enterprise SOA) interface, thus achieving 'Powered by SAP NetWeaver' status. Esker is among the few vendors to complete certification for this new interface, demonstrating and broadening its support of its Document Process Automation solutions for customers using SAP solutions worldwide.

Security Weaver announced that Siemens AG has selected Security Weaver for managing segregation of duties (SoD) violations in the area of P2P processes to ensure SAP systems are free of SoD conflicts and inappropriate access to sensitive transactions.

The advent of SOA and standard-base Web services together with Internet based delivery models has provided the essential base for facilitating new software platform innovations. One of these innovations is a breakthrough software componentization technique that we have coined Service Oriented Programming (SOP). While SOA focuses on communication between systems using 'service operations,' SOP provides a new technique to build agile application modules using in-process, native service operations as the 'units of assembly.'

and Service Division that will include the four-year-old start-up EMC just agreed to buy off of him. EMC is paying cash for the Seattle-based Pi Corporation and its 100 engineers. EMC didn?t say how much but Pi was founded using Warburg-Pincus ($$$) money and EMC says the acquisition will likely dilute its EPS this year by a penny.

Microsoft today attempted to exorcize the interoperability bogeymen that have haunted it since it was first discovered to be using secret APIs 20 years ago, bogeymen that now quote European antitrust law at it and carry writs from the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. To avoid further confrontation with the European Commission, which opened a broad investigation of Microsoft's interoperability last month, the company said it would voluntarily open up all the APIs and communications protocols in its biggest revenue producers now and forever. To be clear, it said that these are the APIs and protocols 'used by other Microsoft products.'

HCL Technologies announced an expanded global services partnership with SAP that underscores SAP's focus on extending its industry lead in ecosystem innovation, and HCL's focus on delivering value to its customers through collaboration. HCL's new global services partnership with SAP is aimed at enabling companies of all sizes to access the business benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA ) and draws upon HCL's strengths in emerging geographies, strong domain experience, risk taking and service innovation capabilities. This announcement is a milestone in a growing relationship between the two organizations, which further evidences their close links.

I am glad to introduce you to a new set of resources to help surface scalability and performance issues in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA.) The SOA Knowledge and Performance Kit is a free open-source resource to show you what it really takes to build services using today's leading SOA development platforms. The Kit delivers an SOA use case design, source code to the implementations of the use case on Oracle, IBM, BEA, and TIBCO platforms, developer journals describing our experiences step-by-step, a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator, and performance and scalability tests that leverage the PushToTest test automation platform.

Capgemini was ranked in the 'Leaders' category among SAP implementation providers by Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research firm.

Cúram Software announced its market-leading Cúram Business Application Suite 5.0 has achieved 'Powered by SAP NetWeaver' certification status. Endorsed by SAP in 2007, the Cúram Business Application Suite, which is Cúram Software's Social Enterprise Management (SEM) solution, provides client-centric business processes and outcomes-driven, integrated service delivery on the newly released SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE) offering Release 7.1. Cúram Software is pleased its Cúram Business Application Suite has achieved Powered by SAP NetWeaver status, which leverages the open-standard Java platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5), for enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA)-based composition and deployment. SAP NetWeaver 7.1 CE provides a complete standards-based platform and runtime environment for developing, deploying and efficiently managing composite applications using enterprise SOA.

Camstar Systems announced the release of its eDHR Intelligence version 4.2 application for Medical Device manufacturers. It is an application on SAP's xMII platform to provide an out-of-the-box method for Medical Device manufacturers to measure performance of the manufacturing operations with real-time KPIs delivered from Camstar Manufacturing, the leading Manufacturing Execution System in the Medical Device industry.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Server Virtualization, Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, I/O Virtualization and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Google, which does not give guidance, missed both Wall Street's top and bottom expectations for its December quarter by a hair and the punters turned vicious pounding it down around 50 bucks after-hours. Consensus demanded non-GAAP earnings of $4.44 on revenues of $3.45 billion. Google came in with $4.43 on revenues $3.39 billion. Those revenues figures are net of what's called TAC, Google's traffic acquisition costs, the money it pays its partners, which it this case amounted $1.44 billion or 30% of its ad revenues.

Asigra announced that the company's flagship product, Asigra Televaulting 8.0, has achieved 'Certified for SAP NetWeaver' status from SAP AG. Asigra Televaulting has been certified for integration with the SAP NetWeaver platform Release 7.0 via the SAP integration scenario BC-BRI HPUX 64 7.0 on Oracle 10g databases. Asigra's powerful agentless backup and recovery solution is used in multi-national enterprise environments for centralized control and assurance of business continuity and certification with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 expands interoperability.

SAP AG announced that Florida Power & Light Company has selected the SAP for Utilities solution portfolio. FPL will consolidate numerous disparate systems to better manage corporate planning, asset management and compliance reporting, and provide a standard platform to support the company's growth strategy. Expanding on its existing SAP footprint in financials, supply chain and human resources, FPL will standardize on the SAP NetWeaver technology platform to more quickly and easily integrate new systems as its business continues to expand.

The ink was still drying on Sun's billion-dollar deal to buy the webby, low-end open source database house MySQL when Sun turned around and put money in the high-end open source Postgres company Greenplum, evidently what Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz meant last week when he said 'and we ain't finished yet.' Schwartz did say that Sun would continue to invest in Postgres, Oracle and JavaDB last week when Sun's MySQL buy was announced. Looks like we should have taken him literally. Greenplum also attracted SAP, which has no track record of open source investments, as another strategic investor - and SAP is fresh from closing its acquisition of Business Objects, the Franco-American BI concern.

Attenda Limited announced that it has been re-certified by SAP as an SAP hosting partner at Advanced level. As a certified SAP hosting partner, this re-accreditation confirms that Attenda fulfils all of the technical audit requirements and its business model meets SAP's stringent quality parameters, ensuring that its hosted solutions are operated effectively.

Neoris announced that it has been recognized as a 'strong performer' in a December 2007 report from Forrester Research, titled 'Forrester Wave: SAP Implementation Providers, Q4 2007.' Neoris was among the select companies that Forrester invited to participate in this report, which evaluated 16 leading SAP implementation providers based on 108 criteria including their current product offering, strategy and overall market presence.

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.

SAP is going to support VMware ESX Server in 64-bit Windows and Linux production environments. The German software maker, many of whose customers have been using VMware for a while now anyway, said Wednesday that it had certified hardware from Dell, Fujitsu, HP and IBM, something SAP's rival Oracle doesn't do because it's also competing with VMware. VMware says it's been working for 'quarters' on the certification project with SAP, ascribing the time it took to SAP's finicky testing of its mission-critical business apps. Anyway, VMware Infrastructure is the only virtualization platform that supports SAP on both Windows and Linux on industry-standard boxes - particularly Windows since there's little SAP on Linux, the company said.

Capgemini is helping Beam Global Spirits & Wine, Inc., achieve a leadership position in the spirits industry through SAP Business Suite implementation. Beam Global is leading the spirits industry through its innovation and achievement of a single-instance of SAP across its assets in the U.S. and Europe, helping the company to deliver on its global growth strategy.

For several years, SAP has successfully encouraged members of the SDN and Business Process Expert communities to share their knowledge and experience with other members through a member recognition program that awards points for contributions to the community, such as blog posts, articles, code samples, tutorials, videos or forum posts. Now comes a new initiative.

In keeping with the longstanding SYS-CON tradition of being at the very forefront of software development with all its online and offline resources, SYS-CON Media & Events jointly today announced a double whammy, launching both 'Open Web Developer's Journal' (htt p://openweb.sys-con.com) and 'Open Web Developer Summit' (http://openweb.s ys-con.com) - to be held for the first time in New York City April 21-22, 2008.

SAP, in a Salesforce-beware move, has Web 2.0'd its next-generation CRM 2007 kit so it'll work on Apple iPhones and load business contacts, info on prospects and account data. It told Reuters, which was in Boston for the unveiling, that it was responding to demand and that businesspeople prefer the iPhone to the Blackberry, Treo or Microsoft-based devices. The widgetry, which uses a drag-and-drop interface adapted from Google's iGoogle, is due out later this month. SAP will do the hosting. CRM 2007 also runs on more conventional devices like PCs.

For building applications, BundleWorks includes ant tasks and command line tools to allow developers to build standard bundles for both custom and third-party applications. For testing, BundleWorks allows a developer to create and manage multiple environments to test multiple versions of applications. For deployment, BundleWorks supports local and remote deployment and provides a library of functions to handle common deployment tasks. For maintentance, BundleWorks tracks all bundle actions and configuration changes providing a complete history of activity.

Software virtualization is the ability to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same computer. The basic premise is that for most of the day your server is basically idle and the CPU and memory are not tasked with processes all day long, the server has excess capacity and virtualization allows you to maximize your investment by installing another full version of an operating system on your hardware at the same time.

See, IBM refuses to allow z/OS to run on PSI's Open Mainframes and so PSI is suing IBM for antitrust, hitting it with both barrels of the Sherman and Clinton Antitrust Acts in a plethora of monopoly charges that include tying the z/OS software to mainframe hardware, a serious antitrust no-no and something IBM is specifically forbidden to do under the lingering terms of its now dissolved 1956 consent decree with the Justice Department. It is also suing IBM for coming between it and its acquisition by HP and for threatening PSI customers with 'being drawn into the lawsuit,' PSI says. It claims damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the loss of its acquisition alone and is in 'dialogue' with the Justice Department.

Reminding people of how its backing was the making of Linux, IBM, to no one's surprise, has thrown its support behind cloud computing, that delicious nexus of every chi-chi buzzword technology currently in vogue: Web 2.0, rich Internet applications, software-as-a-service, SOA, grid computing, Web Services, virtualization and utility computing. IBM calls its initiative Blue Cloud - like it could have another name - and claims it's a 'game-changing model for Internet-scale computing,' providing customer with just the right size computer power while at one and the same time being 'green' as well as 'self-healing and self-managing' based on open standards and Linux. Lordy, if this thing was a cute guy with money, it would be every mother's dream.

I asked what she did for a living. She said she was a software engineer working with SOA. I did not think about my plane ride much until I arrived in San Francisco to attend the SOA World Conference & Expo this past Monday and Tuesday. The first day of the conference as I walked into the hotel, guess who I saw? My friend who I met on the Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. What a small world, isn't it? Her company was one of the sponsors of the event.

BEA's Deputy CTO Theo Beack, who joined the San Jose, CA-based company in May to do 'all the cool stuff,' according to an exclusive interview with SYS-CON at the time, shared with delegates at SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco today his current thinking about Web 2.0, SOA, and Virtualization technologies, and how all three fit within BEA's evolving 'blended' application strategy.

The three-year-old Dojo Foundation has put out version 1.0 of Dojo, an open source JavaScript toolkit for AJAX development meant for building rich Web 2.0 applications without proprietary plug-ins or single-vendor solutions. The widgetry makes use of Google Gears, Google's solution for making applications work both on- and offline. What Dojo calls Dojo Offline is based on it. The toolkit is all of 25K in size and supports progressive enhancement and animations and is supposed to open the door to a wealth of high-quality widgets and extension modules. Dojo also supports the Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera browsers and the OpenAjax Alliance Hub 1.0 to guarantee interoperability with other toolkits IBM, Sun, BEA and AOL are Dojo backers.

Egenera, which claims it's the archetype Virtualization 2.0 company to VMware's Virtualization 1.0 - and is going put its PAN Manager software on other people's hardware to prove it - has convinced Fujitsu Siemens, which OEMs Egenera's BladeFrame servers, to put PAN on its own industry-standard Primergy servers. It's Egenera's first PAN partnership since the American company said last week that it was setting up a software line of business around PAN and would move the software out through fellow OEMs. Fujitsu Siemens says the widgetry will form part of its FlexFrame Infrastructure, its latest milestone in its Dynamic Data Center strategy of creating business-responsive IT using the latest virtualization and automation technologies.

Watching VMware stock and its market cap spike since it IPO'd must have had Red Hat positively pea green with envyWatching VMware stock and its market cap spike since it IPO'd must have had Red Hat positively pea green with envy - so green in fact that it's gonna try taking VMware on by pushing the Xen virtualization integrated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat's new goal is to underpin 50% of the world's servers by 2015. And since virtualization is projected to take over the world by then that's a lot of Xen virtualization - and there's no extra cost in it like there is with VMware since it's bundled with RHEL. (Red Hat's telling people they'll save $20,000-$30,000 a server.) Red Hat claims it's got its first 18,000 virtualized servers - although it's a little fuzzy about whether those 18,000 are actually in production - anyway, it's confident they'll get there eventually after all the testing and evaluating is done.

The infamous Microsoft-Novell interoperability/patent protection deal that FOSSers love to hate just passed its first birthday and, bragging that it's exceeded their original business targets, the pair has extended the arrangement. They're going to create a cross-platform accessibility model that links the existing Windows and Linux frameworks used to build assistive technology products that enable people with disabilities to interact with computers. At the same time they disclosed the names of 30 new customers, including Costco, Southwest Airlines, the City of Los Angeles and Zabka Polska, one of the largest retail chains in Poland, that will be getting Microsoft certificates for three-year priority support subscriptions for SUSE.

SAP is recommending SUSE as its preferred Linux platform, the stuff of which stacks are made, and Novell is going start being the first line of defense for people running SAP applications on SUSE. SAP's great rival, Oracle, of course is now peddling its own anti-Red Hat Linux.

Kagermann detailed how business network transformation is happening globally, is transcending every industry and requires IT to take a strategic role in the business as collaboration and integration cross boundaries. Although business network transformation has been broached in the past, only now, with the mass adoption of enterprise SOA, can IT support change, collaboration and integration at the speed and cost required. The industry has embraced enterprise SOA because it provides a competitive advantage to the companies who leverage its architecture to work with their business networks across heterogeneous landscapes, to collaborate among people and communities and to connect using events and services.