Web Services

Microsoft’s Oslo connections begin to bud

Microsoft took another step in unveiling its “Oslo” SOA strategy, with a sample application intended to not only demonstrate the vendor’s interoperability as a SOA platform, and also show how it can automatically scale to meet the increased and unpredictable workloads SOA will bring to data centers.

Jeffery Schwartz, writing in Application Development Trends, described how Microsoft took its .NET StockTrader application, announced last summer, linked it up to a Web services layer managed by Microsoft Configuration Service 2.0 to interoperate with IBM’s WebSphere Trade 6.1 sample capacity planner for distributed applications.

Configuration Service — built into .NET and is based on managed C# code — is “a general purpose set of tiered libraries that provide the ability to dynamically scale out services across clustered servers for both load balancing to provide additional capacity and also failover at the application and service operation level.” Thus, services and composite applications will be able to automatically scale to meet spikes in traffic or service demand — a key challenge in many SOA sites.

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Seagate CFO to retire, will lead services business

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 (Reuters) – Seagate Technology (STX.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s largest computer disk-drive maker, said Charles Pope would retire as chief financial officer to lead the company’s data-management services business.

Pope will retire from the CFO role on Aug. 25.

Pope, who has been with Seagate for 24 years and was appointed CFO in 1998, will be succeeded by Patrick O’Malley, Seagate’s senior vice president for finance and treasury. O’Malley joined Seagate in 1988.

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TribalGlu eyes Spanish links

Silicon Valley digital media consortium Comunidad M will distribute Tu Yo Ahora, TribalGlu’s hosted mobile social community for Spanish speakers, in a deal that TribalGlu chief executive Roger Grice says will be quite substantial.

Members of Tu Yo Ahora will pay a monthly subscription using a premium text messaging service, and will then be able to chat with each other, create and view user profiles, and access music, videos and images.

TribalGlu parent company Lateral Profiles has about 40 staff split between its offices in Auckland and the Philippines. TribalGlu, which develops software for companies in the communications sector, has three staff and offices in Auckland and Los Angeles. Mr Grice says Lateral Profiles first delivered the platform to Vodafone New Zealand in 2000, which then offered TXTChat services to its customers.

He says the platform offers a range of social networking features such as chat services, photo-sharing and games, and clients can choose which services they wish to offer their customers.

Comunidad M, which specialises in gaming and video sharing applications, will market Tu Yo Ahora – which means “You Me Now” – to its two million subscribers in Puerto Rico, and then look to the Latin American and US Hispanic markets. TribalGlu is expanding into the maturing United States market and expects to announce deals there within the next few months.

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Version 1.0 of Yahoo’s new platform due later this year

During a post-keynote luncheon with a few reporters, Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh and Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS) chief architect Neal Sample shared more details about the inside out rewiring of the Web giant.

Balogh said that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang is taking a personal interest in the project, which began in earnest as part of Yang’s 100-day plan, which he created when he took the helm of the company from Terry Semel in September of last year. He noted that Y!OS was started before Microsoft came knocking on Yahoo’s door. Balogh joined Yahoo from VeriSign just prior to Microsoft’s February 1, 2008 takeover bid.

Y!OS is expected to have material impact on Yahoo’s page growth and time spent on the site, as well as revenue. It was baked into the calculations projecting a doubling of its operating cash flow from $1.9 billion to $3.7 in the three-year span.

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American CareSource Holdings Reports 407% Increase in Revenues for First Quarter 2008

American CareSource Holdings, Inc. (AMEX: XSI) today reported a 407% increase in revenues to approximately $11.5 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008 compared to approximately $2.3 million in the same period last year. The Company’s first quarter revenues also represent a 14% improvement over fourth quarter 2007 reported revenues of $10.1 million.

“Our first quarter 2008 revenues continued the strong upward trend we began last year and are a direct reflection of the ongoing strength in demand for our expanding array of outsourced ancillary services, among both new and existing clients,” noted David S. Boone, Chief Executive Officer of American CareSource. “We are on track to exceed our initial guidance of $50 million for full year 2008 revenues. We are looking forward to future announcements of new customer wins, expansion of our provider network and continued strong organic growth in the coming months.”

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Repealing Tax Changes Before They Take Effect — Is There a Better Way?

In the past year, we have seen both Michigan and Maryland enact new taxes, only to repeal them soon thereafter and before they became effective, due to complaints. That’s a lot of work for no effect. What could have been done differently?

On 12/1/07, the day a use tax on specified services was to go into effect, Michigan repealed the law (see prior blog post). More recently, Maryland repealed its expansion of the sales tax to computer services. In November 2007, the legislature added computer services to a measure designed to address a budget shortfall (see Washington Post article of 12/9/07). The tax was to become effective on July 1, 2008. Fierce opposition by the business community led to its repeal in April 2008. The tax would have mostly applied to businesses since they purchase more computer services than do individual consumers.

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Microsoft Response Point: VoIP For SMBs

Coming up with a list of SMB VoIP vendors is easy, but it can get long and not even include half of the possibilities.And late last year, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) joined crowd with Response Point, a turnkey, small-office, voice-response phone system.

Response Point is a software IP PBX running on Embedded XP, which comes installed and preconfigured on hardware supplied by Microsoft’s OEM partners. Response Point-based systems are currently available from D-Link Systems, Fountain Valley, Calif., and Quanta, Tao Yuan, Taiwan. Aastra Technologies, Ontario, will begin selling them later this year. To get a feel for how the Microsoft VoIP solution works, the Test Center deployed a Syspine Digital Operator System A50 from Quanta. The Syspine system consisted of a base unit with built-in FXO trunk ports for connecting up to eight analog lines and four phones. This particular configuration is priced at $2,490. Additional phones are $149.

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Web tool to help in a crisis

Agencies can log in to WebEOC, supplied by Wellington firm Critchlow Associates, to view situation reports, track emergency services, check resources such as hospital staff and beds, and log and respond to requests for assistance.

Maps, graphics and media updates can be fed into the system and users see only the information relevant to them.

Critchlow emergency management solutions executive director Steve Critchlow says WebEOC mimics the whiteboards traditionally used to coordinate emergency responses. “People who have never seen it before, and who may not have any prior training on computer systems, are up and running in as little as 15 minutes.”

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Mac attack over PC’s Leopard capture

HUA HIN, Thailand – A Miami-based IT company has found itself in the middle of a legal battle with industry giant Apple over its end-user license agreement (EULA) and use of Apple software on its own new line of enterprising products.

Psystar began selling clone Macs this week for just under US$400 using, standard PC hardware and Macintosh OSX. The “Hackintosh” doppelgangers were first marketed as Open Macs, but following some strong-arming by their fruity opponents the name has been changed to Open Computer.

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Are (IT) women from Venus?

A new survey on behalf of Total Recall has found striking differences between the sexes about technology. The research, which examined the attitudes of male and female IT Directors, found that women were more security conscious and confident in their computer systems than their male equivalents but had significantly smaller IT budgets.

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