IT has always paid attention to certifications. Certifications are more important when there are a lot of techies looking for jobs, and less important when there are a lot of jobs, but not a lot of applicants. There are two kinds of programs: those offered by vendors concentrating on their products; and those that provide training and testing in technology that isn’t tied to a specific technology such as project management or Linux. In a survey by Channel Insider and Amazon Consulting, the vendor-specific programs are highly desirable. In fact, 77% of the more than 200 participants from large and midsize companies said that vendor certifications (such as MCSE and CCNA) were more important than general ones (Linux+, PMP). Here are the top 7 vendor programs according to the survey. No surprise as to #1 and #2!
     1. Microsoft
     2. Cisco
     3. IBM
     4. Oracle
     5. HP (Hewlett-Packard)
     6. Dell
     7. VMware

This is to check facebook link

 According to VMware, vSphere is the industry’s first cloud operating system. It transforms IT infrastructures (the hardware environments) into a private cloud, and delivers infrastructure as a service. It was announced in April, 2009, as vSphere 4, and lets customers benefit from cloud computing within their own IT environments. Remember the benefits:

          software and hardware on-demand,
          complete scalability,
          always-on IT,
          reduced costs.

These benefits are achieved as customers create private (or internal) clouds to control how computing is delivered.

vSphere 4 will aggregates (totals) and holistically manages large pools of infrastructure – processors, storage and networking – as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment.  Any application – an existing enterprise application or a next-generation application – runs more efficiently and with guaranteed service levels. It obviously depends on virtualization – Vmware’s  claim to fame. vSphere creates more powerful virtual machines with up to 8 virtual processors per virtual machine, up to 255GB (Gigabytes – billions of bytes) of memory), and up to 30 GB/s (gigabytes per second) of network thruput. In more user friendly terms, vSphere has recorded 8,900 transactions per second which is five times the payment traffic of the entire VISA network worldwide.

Is the name catchy enough to get you reading? Probably not, but keep reading. This is an early version of a new type of database from Google that’s designed to remove the limitations of conventional relational databases and work beautifully in the cloud. It simplifies the integration of data from multiple, heterogeneous sources, and improves collaboration on large data sets. With relational databases, collaborators usually work from different servers which mean data is copied and gets out of sync easily. Fusion Tables uses data-spaces technology, which creates an index that provides access to data in disparate formats and types. This allows Google to add an additional dimension to the relational databases rows and columns, a set of additional elements that could be blobs, product reviews, Twitter messages, etc. In fact, Google talks about an n-cube with four dimensions, rows, columns, these additional elements, and real-time updates.

Fusion Tables is an early version and carries a “Labs” label which puts it in the experimental arena, but …

Keep your eye on Google. With Wave and Fusion Tables there’s lots to be excited about. 

Google’s Wave sounds terrific. It a collaboration tool that’s described as linking computers together and putting a virtual whiteboard in front of everyone. Everyone gets to add to the whiteboard. I love the picture of this. Imagine planning a family reunion. Get a representative from each family branch to get together online, and plan the whole thing out – who will bring what, where, what time, etc.  Save your whiteboard for regular meetings until the whole event is ready to go. And, if someone misses meetings, they can replay it when convenient. Can you tell I’ve helped plan family reunions? This would have been such a great tool.

It’s intended for business use – and of course the applications here are obvious. It’s currently in private beta with a planned release date later in 2009. I’m really eager for this one. I think it’s a winner just from the description.

Much as I use computers and the Internet, I still want to have an actual book to read. I’m not sure this is going to last a lot longer though.  The Kindle (Amazon) is the best know e-reader. It’s a handheld device with a six inch screen that was designed to replace paperback books. Kindle 2, released earlier this year also includes voice capabilities so it can read to you. The Kindle DX, just released, has a larger screen (9.7 inches) and is designed for reading newspapers, textbooks, magazines and business documents. It’s getting more interesting.

Now Google’s getting into the game. Google want to set up partnerships to allow any publisher to sell online books that are downloaded to any Web enabled device – read a book on your iPhone. I’m not sure this is appealing as that’s an awfully small screen for serious reading, but remember Netbooks are Web enabled – now you’ve got a device with a larger screen. And, you’re not tied to Amazon. The Kindle automatically goes to Amazon and users would have to download books or documents not available through Amazon to their desktop and email them to the Kindle to have the broad access that Google is talking about.

Options are growing and I’m thinking about it.

The midmarket has been pretty much ignored for many decades, but that’s changing. One of the definitions of midmarket is “companies with between 100 and 1000 employees.” These companies want the same software large ones use. But.  Maybe not exactly the same, and definitely  much more affordable.

Some growing trends:
1.  Cloud computing. This gives smaller companies access to the same software. Especially CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
2. Virtualization. Virtualization essentially lets one computer do the job of multiple computers, by sharing the resources of a single computer across multiple environments. Much more affordable.
3. Notebook/Netbook. Small, portable. And, with the capabilities of full desktops just a couple of years age.
4. Open source software. Most open source software is available as a free download.
5. Online Social Networking. Surprised by this one? Think free, and think marketing. Good way to build an online audience for your company and products.

There are more small and midsize companies than big ones. So, pay attention to these trends – they’re important. 

In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat reigning World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in a classic machine-vs.-human competition.

Deep Blue’s Now Followed by Watson

IBM now is having its “Watson” computer system compete with human contestants on the game show “Jeopardy.” IBM researchers have worked for two years to create a system that can understand and respond to open-ended, natural-language questions. The goal is to create systems with enough intelligence to understand such questions, figure out exactly what the person is asking for and then find the answers quickly. This really sounds like fun, and can’t you see the plusses for all of us? Natural language searches, fuzzy logic searches, searches using slang, innuendos, puns, riddles, etc. (if you haven’t watched Jeopardy lately, all these take part in the answer/question scenario). This is part of the continuing growth of BI (Business Intelligence) and data mining. “The essence of making decisions is recognizing patterns in vast amounts of data, sorting through choices and options, and responding quickly and accurately,” according to IBM President and CEO Sam Palmisano. 

Watson uses massively parallel processing to instantly understand complex questions. This approach differs from conventional search, and is critical to implementing useful business applications using search. Right now Watson will have to answer questions in the form of a question, just like all the Jeopardy contestants.

The latest is a four-wheeled robot that will be able to jump over obstacles and aid military troops in combat. It’s name is Precision Urban Hopper, and it’s purpose is to help troops engaged in urban combat. The company working on this robot is Boston Dynamics (a spin-off from MIT), which made the BigDog robot. This one has animal-like legs and is designed to move over rough terrain, walking, running, climging, and carrying heavy loads.

Researchers at Tufts University are developing soft, squishy robots that can squeeze into spaces a fraction of their normal size, then morph back into their original size and shape. I want one of these!

Honda’s Asimo is a humanoid robot that can climb stairs, run 4 mph, and may someday help care for elderly and disabled people. They’ve been working on it for over 20 years, and it can walk forward and backward, avoid obstacles, and actually works as a tour guide in museums and as a greeter in high tech companies in Japan.

We’ve got climbing robots that can scale walls and go across ceilings, and robotic penguins that swim as gracefully as the real thing. Work has started on a robotic octopus – a robot that can reach into the nooks and crannies of coral reefs or the rock formations on ocean floors and take pictures for scientists to analyze.

Fun and exciting stuff.

Have you heard about Hadoop? You might. We’re talking about open source and cloud computing – today’s hot topics. The Hadoop Core is a distributed file system. This is important for cloud computing, because relational databases don’t really distribute well. Especially LARGE databases. Which, are necessary for many cloud applications – think FaceBook, eBay, etc. Hadoop Core is the distributed file system that is the base for several products:

• HBase is an open-source, distributed, column-oriented store modeled after the Google’s BigTable. (Yes, Bigtable is built on the Hadoop Core). HBase is often called an implementation of BigTable.
• How about PIG?  Pig is a platform for analyzing large databases and includes a high-level language to expressing data analysis programs, and an infrastructure for evaluating these programs. The language is called Pig Latin.
• I guess Pig led to Zookeeper, which is a high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. It puts common services (such as naming, configuration management, synchronization, etc.)  in a simple interface so developers don’t have to write them from scratch. It’s a subproject of Hadoop.
• And, there’s also Hive, a data warehouse infrastructure. It provides tools to enable easy data summarization, adhoc querying and analysis of large data stores. And, it’s also based on Hadoop.

We’re processing a lot of data – and it’s not all complex! A distributed file system works just fine,  and Hadoop is right in the front lines.