Articles by Charles King

Last week, VMware and Salesforce.com announced a new partnership around VMforce, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering aimed at enterprise Java developers. The companies' CEOs Paul Maritz (VMware) and Marc Benioff (Salesforce) described VMforce as an enterprise cloud designed to serve the needs of more than six million enterprise Java developers, including some two million who are using the Spring framework VMware acquired last August when it purchased SpringSource.

Many IT analyst events qualify as exercises in ridiculous self-promotion, but IBM's recent Smarter Systems for a Smarter Planet event at the company's Almaden Lab had a more sublime goal in mind: to qualify the hot topic of workload-optimized systems and quantify their value to business partners and enterprise customers. Along the way, the company drew a firm line connecting these solutions to its Smarter Planet initiative.

For many years, a clear line has separated the capabilities of servers based on Intel's x86 microprocessor architecture and "enterprise class" systems leveraging RISC, EPIC and mainframe technologies. People may argue over the length and width of that line, but the traditional reliability, availability and security (RAS) of enterprise systems gave them a clear technological edge.

So-called smart grids are among the first real-world examples of what expansive IT vendor initiatives like IBM's Smarter Planet envision. Just what are smart grids? Designed for deployment by utility companies, smart grids incorporate sensors embedded in electric, gas and water meters to communicate usage and performance data to central data centers.

The "trickling down" of enterprise computing features to smaller businesses has long been a part of life in an IT universe governed by Moore's Law. In many cases, this is largely seen in the data center, where SMBs have access to server and storage performance once exclusively reserved for enterprises. ...

In a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., Intel's Paul Otellini announced the Invest in America Alliance, an effort led by Intel and venture capital firms including Bridgescale partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Menlo Ventures, which promises to invest US$3.6 billion in U.S.-based technology companies over the next two years.

Recent IT industry events have created a field day for those who think the news tend to come in "threes": During a 5-plus hours long event highlighting the conclusion of its Sun Microsystems deal, Oracle discussed plans for the company's hardware division and said it would continue investing in Sun's Sparc- and X64-based systems and storage hardwar...

During a five hour event at its Redwood Shores corporate headquarters, Oracle executives, including CEO Larry Ellison and Co-Presidents Safra Catz and Charles Phillips, applauded the completion of Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems and outlined their strategy for the new acquisition for a media and analyst audience. Among the details:...

Not surprisingly, most folks see CES as a watershed event for tracking the latest in current, emerging and future consumer electronics trends. So why did I travel to CES 2010 in search of products related to business IT? Pure contrariness is one reply, but let's also toss in the common, if sometimes subtle, linkages between consumer and business IT...

The past-decade technology wrap-ups populating the media lately have been entertaining for the most part. Reconsidering the technology deals and products that have arisen since January 1, 2000, is like looking at your high school yearbook. "What was I thinking?" seems the most appropriate response. These articles largely focus on consumer technolo...

IBM's recent Connect 2009 analyst conference provided fascinating insights into one of the company's most valuable assets -- its software group (SWG) organization. IBM has long been recognized as a purveyor of enterprise-class computing systems, but during the past decade, the company's global services organization (IGS) has become its prime driver of revenue and profit.

By and large, IT favors grand pronouncements and overheated rhetoric, and the industry abounds with "unprecedented" efforts firmly rooted in precedent and "unique" solutions fashioned from the commonest clay. Is that the case with Cisco, EMC and VMware's new Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition? Decidedly not, and for a number of reasons.

Among Dell's latest new business client solutions and technologies are Latitude Z -- an ultra-thin (less than an inch thick) 16-inch laptop targeting impression makers such as entrepreneurs, attorneys, creative professionals, salespeople and higher education faculty;...

VMworld, VMware's signature annual user and partner event, is kicking off this week in San Francisco, so it seems worth reconsidering the company's recent acquisition of SpringSource. Along with critical human assets, the deal brings a host of tested technologies to VMware, including the Spring Framework, a Java programming model that makes applic...

Last week, IBM announced the new Smart Analytics System, a fine-tuned solution for analyzing both structured information in databases and unstructured, often incompatible data from sources such as blogs, emails, information archives, podcasts, videos, Web sites and wikis. The Smart Analytics System can solve complex business problems as much as th...

"Green IT" has been a tech industry cause celebre for the past few years, first arising as the potential effects of global warming were coming increasingly to the fore and then enjoying a significant boost as the global recession compounded the practical value of data center energy efficiency and power savings. Indeed, green IT remains notable as ...

The recession's effects on technology budgets, corporate belt-tightening and simple business survival have been well-documented, but less attention has been paid to how IT industry client and developer conferences can help end customers stabilize or even improve their situations. Make no mistake -- the economy is affecting attendance and participation at 2009 events. Organizations are trimming spending deeply, even radically, in order to bolster cash reserves and preserve financial resources -- but even a tourniquet needs occasional loosening to avoid severely damaging an already injured limb.

Cloud computing has been a central subject and strategy for IT vendors of every sort, but the actual meaning of "cloud" remains hazy. For Web-based information aggregators like Google and Yahoo, the cloud offers a mechanism for delivering advertising-driven content and services.

Traditionally, IT product marketing emphasizes immediate and short-term technical performance. This week's/month's/year's hot new products are compared side-by-side with those of competitors, benchmark benefits are extolled and shortcomings magnified. However, a confluence of global events is making IT customers much more receptive to hearing about longer-term issues, particularly those related to definable return on investment (ROI).

Industries thrive on competition. The IT industry is a prime example. IT hosts numerous bloody competitions ranging from product-by-product throwdowns, to broader vendor vs. vendor cage matches. Generally, such comparisons, especially at the product level -- pitting PC, handset or networking specialists against one another -- make eminent sense. But often, comparisons at the company level continue long after they should have gracefully retired.