Articles by James Hamilton

CA's Swainson Gets Cloud Computing as Much as Larry Ellison Does

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:45:00 EST

Okay, here's the deal. When you observe the big software guys and see how quickly they adopt emerging technologies, which will change IT the way we know it today, here is what we see. Larry Ellison invested millions in old SaaS / cloud companies, which gave him zippo in return, and he now, together with Richard Stallman and Raul Castro, is a cloud hater. Don't expect Oracle to do anything meaningful in the cloud space.

1105 Media Cancels "Virtualization Live" Conference Due to Recession, It Says

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:30:00 EST

This is the sentence that screams "We don't get it, we don't get it, someone please help us, we don't get it!" Hello my friends at 1105 Media, hello there! There have not been "print issues " or "print magazines" or print anything for the past five years in technology media. IDG does not do print; CMP does not do print; SYS-CON does not do print.

Is Jerry Yang the Dumbest CEO in Silicon Valley?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:00:00 EST

Please read the news story below filed today by my colleague Maureen O'Gara and think about the once-in-a-life-time lottery ticket this man had last February with Microsoft's acquisition offer, and then again through Carl Icahn's unasked-for help. He blew it and in my Wikipedia, this man is the dictionary definition of an IDIOT!

Why Cloud Computing Will Save IT From the "Recession of 2008"

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:30:00 EDT

Well, ignoring what Larry Ellison and Richard Stallman think about it, Cloud Computing will be "the" technology that gets Wall Street and other IT organizations out of the “Recession of 2008” and it will be "the" ultimate cost-cutting solution for every IT organization around the world, small or large. We recently moved our mid size blog site from five Dell blades which were housed in the data center of a hosting company to the Amazon Cloud, simply and smoothly. Never mind the actual cost we initially paid for the hardware and we won't have in the future, guess what happened to our $1,700 per month hosting fees? Went down to pennies overnight!

Web 2.0, Enterprise Mashups and Social Computing Are No Longer Software Business Models

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:45:00 EDT

What is a mashup? Nothing. What are you mashing up with what? If you take Google Earth from under your feet what is left to mash with what and where is the business model to make money? Nowhere. Who will you sell your mashup software to after the election is over and how many companies does CNN need to mash them with Mr. King's election maps mashup magic show? None.

Cloud Computing Is for Capitalist Pigs - Raul Castro

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:45:00 EDT

Castro continued: "In Cuba we provide free health care, free food coupons, free housing and if we had any computers on the island, we would provide free laptops and Internet too. So, I agree with Richard Stallman that Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and all American companies pushing this new Cloud Computing concept are among the axis of evil who want to hook you like Coca-Cola and McDonald's. Why would you pay Amazon for their cloud computing service, if you can hassle them to give it to you for free? Americans should join the Cuban revolution and make hardware and software, including cloud computing, free. By doing this, the government can hand out laptop coupons in supermarkets next to the bread aisle. Think about it!"

Don Quixote, Larry Ellison, Richard Stallman, Raul Castro vs "Cloud Computing"

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:00:00 EDT

A lot has been written recently about Larry Ellison and Cloud Computing. I attached a few of the stories posted on this subject in the related stories section of this blog post. If you read these related stories and the ones posted elsewhere, you'll have a pretty good idea about the subject. In a nutshell, both Ellison and Richard Stallman do not like the clouds, but they seem to be the only two. I summarized my personal view in the title.

Gartner's Top 10 List is Incorrect and Stupid ...

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Lisa Schmeiser this morning filed an InfoWorld story in which she writes about the results of her research on recession-proof IT jobs. Three skill sets appear in her story: Virtualization first, then AJAX, and then Ruby-on-Rails, among the Web 2.0 technologies. Virtualization and Cloud Computing are emerging as the top recession-proof technologies globally that will play a huge role during this economic downturn and recovery. 2009 will be the year of Virtualization and Cloud Computing, as well as SOA in its reincarnation as Web Oriented Architecture.

Microsoft Starts Distributing Drupal

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:00:00 EDT

Also coming up before the end of this year is Ulitzer, the largest Drupal deployment anywhere. Ulitzer is being built on Drupal with more than two million nodes, including more than 6,000 author home pages leading to over a million original articles. Page views of Ulitzer following its launch are predicted to be 3-5 million per month. As I wrote about this before, Ulitzer will most likely be one of the biggest scalability challenges for Drupal yet.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Invites Governor Sarah Palin to Russia

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:15:00 EDT

Her Dubai vacation was fully paid for by Dick Cheney's Dubai-based oil company Halliburton, which also sells $1,000 dollar-a piece-lobsters and Haagen Dazs ice cream to 250,000 troops in Iraq. The Iraq bill for taxpayers is currently running at $5 billion per month. If Sarah Palin is elected, she needs to meet with Halliburton executives in Dubai more often as she will be taking over this defense duty from Dick Cheney.

Cloud Computing One-Day Event in Toronto Cancelled

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Plum Communications has moved its one-day Cloud Computing event and CloudCamp to a future date. This event was supposed to take place on November 12, 2008. If it ever actually takes place in a future date, the event is aiming to offer "knowledge-based" seminars with round-table discussions between users and industry experts, spanning a range of topics including Cloud Computing - is it ready for prime time?; Assessment of Platform as a Service and Infrastructure Models; The Challenge of Scale; and Migration Risks and Rewards.

Alessandro Perilli Cancels His Virtualization Congress

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:00:00 EDT

This morning I finally got a chance to plan my travel arrangements for Alessandro Perilli's Virtualization Congress, which was supposed to take place next week in London, England. When I went to his website, to my surprise I found out that he had canceled his show. According to the vmblog: "Evidently, it is being canceled because of low registration and a tough macro-economic climate. And it's a shame too, because the event was being backed by a number of big names in the industry, with nearly 30 sponsors willing to pony up to help support the show. That's a clear sign that the vendor community is ready for an independent virtualization event, and after listening to the folks on the show room floor at VMworld, attendees are ready for something new and different as well."

Does Boston Need Another "Web Experience Forum"?

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

This morning as I was reading the newswire feeds flashing across my screen, I saw one and clicked on it, "Web Experience Forum 2008 Opens in Boston." The opening paragraph of the press release continues: "Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty…" which translates to "no one showed up."

NASDAQ Down - Virtualization & Cloud Computing Stocks Up

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:00:00 EDT

This morning I took the 7:00 am JetBlue flight out from Ft. Lauderdale to JFK. The emergency row where I was seated was empty. I waited until the markets opened before I took my 90-minute nap. The Dow lost its gains after the rate cut news and at the open it was almost down 200, for the sixth day in a row. When they went to the NASDAQ side, Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and the rest of the techs were all down, considerably. The reporter named a number of NASDAQ winners of the day including Citrix Systems, Symantec and a few other pure Virtualization players. Can you believe that? The end of the world as we know it is here and Virtualization stocks are going up 3-6% on a day like today. Unbelievable!

Rupert Murdoch Embarrassed by Fox News and Bill O'Reilly; Will Vote for Obama

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:45:00 EDT

Michael Wolff, Rupert Murdoch's authorized biographer said during a CNBC interview on September 3, 2008 that the conservative media baron is quite embarrassed by Bill O'Reilly and by his Fox Television network, and he will vote for Senator Obama in the upcoming elections. CNBC's "Power Lunch" team interviewed Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff about his Vanity Fair piece and his upcoming book.

SEO Search Engine Optimization Criminals Shoud Be Jailed Like Nigerian Email Crime Gangs

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

These email spammers with fake gmail addresses are clearly breaking the law and I personally believe that they should be found and jailed. The last time I looked at my inbox I found more than 700 emails from these people who do not have real names, company websites or company emails. Even before I was able to write this sentence I received yet another email from a person signed as Steve Doody. As the industry, can we police our own criminal elements such as this example? If not, our next stop will be what Wall Street is going through now.

TechTarget Gets Caught Spying on SYS-CON Media

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events' sales team replied to Scott Kelly's exhibitor inquiry, but when they never heard back from Scott, they decided to do a little Googling and here is what they found out. Mr Kelly is actually the 'Director of Product Management at TechTarget,' a technology media company that is struggling to produce a competitive show (with no luck) and compete with AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo. No wonder TechTarget is in pitiful shape as a competitor of SYS-CON Events. Look at the actions of their senior management - they can't even spy on their competitors, forget about putting together a show. :- ))

$3.5 Billion Criminal Hedge Fund Scam to Surface This Week?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:30:00 EDT

Apparently, one of the most brilliant multi-billion dollar financial scams of this decade is unfolding as we speak, and one since Senator John MacCain's close friend Charles Keating puled one together in 1980s, who at the time stole roughly $8 billion and spent less than two years in jail for his crime.

Do Not Buy Your BlackBerry From AT&T

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:45:00 EDT

I am one of the very first BlackBerry users - I've been one since 1997 when it was first introduced at the annual JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. Since then I went through more BlackBerries probably than even JetBlue founder David Neeleman. With all the love and around-the-clock use, comes basic maintenance as well, I guess. Recently, the trackball in my Pearl jammed. We called AT&T support, they rushed me a replacement unit, overnight. (After all my monthly BlackBerry charges as a world traveler/CEO run to around $1,500 each and every month.)

The End of VMware

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:00:00 EDT

The Democrats had their convention, followed by the Republicans. As VMware gets ready for its own convention, Microsoft has rained on their parade by holding its 'Get Virtual Now' Virtualization party one week ahead of VMware's. I am looking at the news headlines this morning and all I see is that every possible Virtualization company, large and small, is rushing to declare its tools are either ready or will be ready very soon to play in Microsoft's Virtualization Olympics.

Is Virtualization the Biggest Hype Ever?

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:00:00 EDT

David Marshall in his InfoWorld 'Virtualization Report' blog writes: 'Despite a sharp slowdown in U.S. business software spending, an April 2008 survey report from ChangeWave Research shows that virtualization may be spared as virtualization software spending has increased.' Marshall continues: 'The fact is, a troubled economy is probably yet another reason why virtualization software sales continue to grow. Virtualization is a technology that helps a company reduce its datacenter costs, such as less spending on server hardware, server maintenance, datacenter space, power, and cooling. So it makes sense for companies to continue to spend IT budget on virtualization software during troubling economic times.'

Crackpot CBS Blogger Attacks SYS-CON Media and Its Founder Fuat Kircaali

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:30:00 EDT

This man who writes for CBS / CNet / ZDNet sounds like he is out of his mind. Not a single person among SYS-CON's management team has ever heard of his name, had any business relationship with him, or knows who this person is. He was never asked to write for SYS-CON, he was never considered to write for SYS-CON, and he will never write for SYS-CON. Because SYS-CON does not think he is fit to write for the world's leading tech media company, he wants to boycott the company's advertisers? SYS-CON's advertisers are listed and updated on the company's website, which pretty much includes every significant technology player in every segment of today's software technology branches. So Mr. Blankenhorn wants to boycott the entire software industry because SYS-CON offended him? No one at SYS-CON has any idea who he is.

Cuil is Stupid and Has No Chance to Compete with Google

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Associated Press reported this morning the launch of Cuil. IMHO, as much as the search results are displayed on a slick and 'cool' page, these guys have little or no chance to compete with Google but a real chance to be bought by Microsoft for 500 bucks before the end of this week. What Microsoft does with it is another matter no one knows.

You Can Not Make Money Online With Kontera

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:45:00 EDT

SYS-CON Media ripped all Kontera links off of its website yesterday, after a brief trial period. SYS-CON's circulation manager Engin Sezici said: "It was not worth for us to mess up our Website and pages for the actual amount of revenue share we observed during the trial period. Google advertsing has been generating roughly 16 times more revenue for us ass compared to Kontera, for the same time period, same page views, and visitor traffic."

The Next Cloud Computing Company To Be Acquired

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Yesterday we read the news of B-hive's acquisition by VMware. Also this week Microsoft closed the Kidaro acquisition, which had been announced earlier in the year. Both of these companies participated in SYS-CON's second international Virtualization Conference & Expo last November in San Francisco. This event was also the last conference BEA Systems sponsored, days before their Oracle acquisition news hit the press. PlateSpin is one of the Gold Sponsors of the upcoming 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo in New York City. Novell bought the company before this event has even taken place. In the past six months, four out of nine Virtualization Conference sponsors were acquired.

Remember the Monkey Business? McCain Is History!

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:30:00 EDT

The New York Times quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain. Donna Rice Hughes (born January 7, 1958) was a figure in the 1987 sex scandal that ended the first 1988 presidential campaign of Gary Hart. Since the mid-1990s, she has worked as an anti-pornography activist.

Virtualization Conference Keynote Webcast Live on SYS-CON.TV

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:45:00 EDT

Brian Stevens, the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering of Red Hat, delivered his Virtualization Keynote 'The Future of the Virtual Enterprise' at SYS-CON's Virtualization Conference & Expo 2007 West in San Francisco. 'Virtualization is the hottest subject today,' said Stevens, an industry luminary, who is credited with having pioneered new technologies that contributed to the rise of Linux as an industry-standard operating platform.

Citrix Virtualization Exec Hired as CEO to Sell Sourcefire?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:45:00 EDT

Burris, who joined Sourcefire's board in March, is head of worldwide sales and services at Citrix Systems. Sourcefire CEO Wayne Jackson said in February that he would step down, with the company saying he was leaving to pursue other opportunities. In a statement, Sourcefire chairman Joseph Chinnici said Burris would bring to the company the discipline and inspiring leadership it needs to grow profitably. Chinnici called Burris' selection 'the culmination of a thoughtful and disciplined process of succession planning.'

Free Guest Passes for the Virtualization Conference & Expo in New York City

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:45:00 EDT

as: Al Aghili (Managed Methods), Alan Chhabra (Egenera), Andi Mann (Enterprise Management Associates), Andrew Conte (APC), Andy Astor (EnterpriseDB), Ariel Cohen (Xsigo Systems), Bill O'Conell (IBM), Bob Lozano (Appistry), Bob Quinn (3Leaf Systems), Brian Martin (IBM), Carlo Innocenti Ph.D. (DataDirect Technologies), Chris Shayan (Ashna Samane), Chris Wiborg (Cisco), David Kleidermacher (Green Hills Software), Doc D'Errico (EMC Corporation), Donato Buccella (Certeon), Dror Gill (Ceedo), Etay Bogner (Neocleus), George Pradel (Vizioncore), Geva Perry (GigaSpaces), Gordon Hunt (Real-Time Innovations), Gregory Brail (Sonoa Systems), Greg Lyon (Egenera), Harry Petty (Brocade), Hezi Moore (Reflex Security), Hubert Yoshida (Hitachi Data Systems), Ian Thain (Sybase), Jacek Kruszelnicki (Numatica Corporation), Jeremy Geelan (SYS-CON Media), Jerry Melnick (Marathon Technologies), Joe McKendrick (WebServices.org), Johan Nordin (Software AG), John Goodson (DataDirect), John Senor (iWay Software), JP Morgenthal (Avorcor), Julian Weinstock (Desktone), Keith Swenson (Fujitsu), Ken North (Computing, LLC), Kenon Owens (VMware), Kevin Epstein (Scalent Systems), Koen Aers (Red Hat/JBoss), Kurt Daniel (Parallels), Kurt Ziegler (SIMtone), Kyle Gabhart (Web Age Solutions), Mark Davydov Ph.D. (Blue Cross Blue Shield), Mark Hapner (Sun Microsystems), Mark Milligan (VirtualLogix), Matt George (Fidelity Investments), Michael CareyPh.D. (BEA Systems), Michael Gorman (Whitemarsh Information Systems), Mike Pizzo (Microsoft), Miko Matsumura (Software AG), Nikita Ogievetsky (Morgan Stanley), Parviz Peiravi (Intel), Paul Lipton (CA), Paul Vasquez (VMware), Peter Manca (Egenera), Phil Morris (Sun Microsystems), Pierre Fricke (Red Hat / JBoss), Ravi Gururaj (VMLogix), Rich Lechner (IBM), Rich Schreiber (Nastel Technologies), Richard Mark Soley (OMG), Rick German (Stoneware), Robert Steward (DataDirect), Ron Williams (Tivoli Software), Sean Derrington (Symantec), Shai Fultheim (ScaleMP), Simon Crosby (Citrix), Stefanos Damianakis (Netrics), Stephen Herrod (VMware), Stephen Pollack (PlateSpin), Tom Bishop (BMC Software), Ursula Sinkewicz (Fidelity Investments), Victoria Livschitz (Grid Dynamics), Yakov Fain (Farata Systems).

Virtualization Conference Keynote Webcast Live on SYS-CON.TV

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:30:00 EDT

Microsoft Will End Up Buying Yahoo Anyway

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:15:00 EDT

Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo received stupid advice from their investment bank advisers and blew their chance to close the deal with Microsoft as of this Sunday morning. Neither Yang nor Filo are experts on how to sell a company in a multi-billion dollar deal. They have relied on their investment bankers and advisers since the negotiations started with Microsoft. The difference between the offered price of $33 and the asking price of $40 per share is roughly $1.4b per share, so it's not small potatoes.

Red Hat Named "Platinum Sponsor" of Virtualization Conference & Expo

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:30:00 EDT

Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

Steve Jobs Loses His Mind - Sues "The Big Apple"

Tue, 27 May 2008 21:15:00 EDT

Friday morning the local Fox television station in New York City broke the news - Apple was suing New York City. Six out of 100 of their viewers thought Apple had the right to sue the City, but 94 out of 100 viewers are now calling for New Yorkers to drop Apple and its products, including the iPhone and Macs. New Yorkers are pissed off! New York City, universally known as The Big Apple, is facing a lawsuit from Steve Jobs' Apple Computer Inc. for, of all things, copyright infringement.

This Man Should Be Fired from His Job as a Magazine Editor

Thu, 22 May 2008 08:15:00 EDT

This man, whose name is Keith Ward, should be fired from his job for basic incompetence as the editor of a magazine, and here's why. He posts a blog entry on May 6, 2008, in which he writes: 'Virtualization Journal, coming in second, declares itself the winner,' and he continues 'I have no problem with competition. I think it's good for Microsoft, VMware, Cisco and AT&T. It's just as good, and healthy, for IT publications. I do have a problem, however, with publications that either a) Outright lie, or b) Are woefully ignorant, and don't check facts before they publish something.' What are you Keith, are you on drugs?

Wal-Mart To Sell $399 Ubuntu Linux-based Laptop with Google Operating System

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:45:00 EDT

The Ubuntu Linux-based gOS operating system from Good OS LLC (www.thinkgos.com) includes so many Google applications like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google News Google Maps and YouTube that it's often referred to as the Google operating system. It also includes Firefox, Skype, Facebook and OpenOffice 2.3.

1105 Media Wishes to Launch Virtualization Website and Conference

Wed, 07 May 2008 16:30:00 EDT

So, the geniuses in Chatsworth, California, who picked up the remains of Fawcette Technical Publications from the bank in Virginia, and the remains of 101 Communications, another platform play that went seriously south, sat down in a room this afternoon and said 'What is SYS-CON up to these days?' The guy left over from Fawcette days and still employed said, 'Well we used to follow their news announcements and announce the same products, but by the time we could get around to what needs to be done, we were usually one year behind SYS-CON. And then we went out of business pretty much.' So the guy who makes the decisions in the room, as in the FedEx commercial, said: 'OK, we will announce a Virtualization Website and a Virtualization Conference!'

European RIA Technology Leader Canoo Releases Java RIA Library, UltraLightClient for AJAX

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:30:00 EST

AJAXWorld Conference & Expo, March 18-20, 2008, in New York City will provide an overview of Canoo's RIA technology as compared to its other European competitors. Upcoming AJAXWorld Conference is demonstrating a stronger interest and participation from delegates around Europe. Canoo announced a new release of its Java library for Rich Internet Applications (RIA), UltraLightClient (ULC). This new 6.2 version offers addons to test UltraLightClient-based applications more easily.

The Next SOA Company to Be Acquired After Oracle's BEA Dinner

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:30:00 EST

Since we last looked at the SOA marketplace this past April, BEA has finally found its match, in spite of their fearless leader and leftover CEO. After the ORACLE / BEA news we now read rumors that TIBCO may be the next target; perhaps Microsoft should be taking a good look at them so they don't miss the enterprise SOA opportunity completely. IONA is still trying very hard to get some attention; however, one of their biggest problems is perceived to be a weak management team as well as their positioning too far over the edge with open source. You are either a pure open source player like JBoss or MySQL, or you're not. You either vote Republican or Democrat. The following are our observations from nine months ago:

Android Competitor Adds Members to Deliver a Mobile Linux Platform

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:30:00 EST

Trolltech, Acrodea, ETRI, Huawei and Purple Labs have joined the LiMo Foundation started a year ago by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone to deliver a mobile Linux platform. Said platform would perforce have to compete against the Linux-based Google-organized Android platform.

As Enterprise RIA Development Market Mushrooms, Marc Fleury Joins Board of Appcelerator

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie is quoted as saying about Fleury, 'We believe the knowledge he developed building JBoss, to the point where it quickly became a true challenger to much larger competitors and a substantial industry force, will be invaluable to Appcelerator as we look to achieve similar dominance in our pursuit of the enterprise RIA development market.' According to Fleury the company delivers cross-platform functionality on the server side, supporting the .NET, Java, Ruby or PHP architectures. On the client side, its RIA widgets are standards-based and portable across browsers.