Microsoft Stops Fighting Linux, And Tries To Give It A Big Bear Hug Instead
Is Microsoft finally learning to love the penguin? After years of fighting Linux and denying its very usefulness, Microsoft has recently changed its tactics. It is trying to be more open, even if that’s an attempt to appease European regulators. And today, it is announcing the beta of new data center management tools that—gasp!—recognize that some companies might be running something other than Windows on their servers. Now it will support two flavors of Linux (Red Hat and SUSE) and two flavors of Unix (HP-UX and Sun Solaris), all from one management console. The name of the software is System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions. Yeah, I can’t remember that either.
What Microosft is signaling here is a new tactic in the war against Linux, which it realizes is not going anywhere. So if Microsoft can’t beat Linux, it will try to smother it with love by offering a way for IT folks to manage and control all of their servers using Microsoft software. But it is a little late to the game. HP’s Openview, Tivoli, and BMC already offer such capabilities. Microsoft can still make inroads, though, by competing on price and ease of use.
Embracing openness and other software is also a good idea. Microsoft new data center management software supports open standards such as Web Services for Management and OpenPegasus. At the same time, Microsoft is also announcing new virtualization management software (System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008) that will let IT managers control virtual machines running on EMC’s popular VMWare, as well as Microsoft’s own virtual machines. (Virtualization is a big trend in data centers that effectively splits and segregates jobs on one physical server into many virtual ones). For those interested in more, you can read all the gory details in the press release.
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HP Upline? More Like HP Downtime
HP’s new online storage service Upline has been having quite the growing pains over the past few days.
We’ve heard that the service’s web interface went down several days ago, although the backups continued to function. But as of yesterday, everything appears to have gone down except for the telephone support, which doesn’t provide any information beyond an assurance that the engineering team is working on the problem (with no ETA for when it will be resolved).
This isn’t the greatest start for a service that absolutely needs reliability to survive.
Are you an HP Upline user? Please share your experience in the comments.
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HP Provides Unlimited Online Storage with Upline
Hewlett-Packard has just officially announced the release of HP Upline, a consumer online storage service that can be used for both backup and file sharing purposes.
The online storage space has been heating up lately with the release of Dropbox, Sugarsync, and now this offering. These new services seem to recognize that consumers don’t want separate solutions for backing up their files, accessing them wherever they go, and sharing them with friends.
HP Upline is making its mark by providing unlimited storage for $59/year. Free accounts limited to 1GB and one year are also available for those who want to try before buying. Families and small businesses can also take advantage of special licenses and features that allow for central management of multiple accounts.
Unfortunately, the software works only on PCs, which makes it pretty much useless to me (a Mac owner). The technology was designed by Opelin, a company bought by HP last year, and a video demo of it can be found here.
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China’s iPhone Fans Find a Way
As Beijing consumers snap up hacked versions of the popular phone, Apple bides its time in striking a deal with authorized cellular operators
T.J. Rodgers’ Startup Strategy
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