Latest News from Linux

Wiring California with Bob Evans and the Fiber Internet Center

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

Bob Evans always has ideas. Ideas to make his work, and the work of others, more useful and efficient, as well as easier. We first met Bob when he asked if it was “OK” he develop a route server for our young Internet Exchange Point (Any2 Exchange), which would allow the small to medium Internet access and content provider community to find Internet peering easier, and help with introductions within the community that would make Internet interconnections a utility – rather than a high priced value-added service. That little utility now drives one of the largest Internet Exchange Points in the world.

CA Simplifies Mainframe Ownership

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:45:00 EST

CA announced the integration of CA Endevor Software Change Manager (CA Endevor SCM), CA's change management solution, and IBM's Rational Developer for System z (RDz) V7.6, the IBM Rational mainframe development environment. This new integration is designed to significantly simplify the development and management of mainframe software by streamlining application updates, reducing change-related programming errors, and facilitating compliance audits. Many mainframe developers already use both RDz as their integrated development environment (IDE) and CA Endevor SCM for automating software lifecycle management tasks such as code merging, versioning, and change tracking. This integration gives customers the ability to seamlessly link related development and software lifecycle management tasks.

DocuSign CRM Now Available on Salesforce.com AppExchange

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

DocuSign is the seamless eSignature solution allowing Salesforce CRM users to quickly manage and send contracts for e-signing from a single workspace. Contracts can be conveniently signed in the cloud and returned within minutes. The contract signing process is even easier and faster than before with DocuSign Designed for Mobile, which enables customers to sign from any RIM BlackBerry, Apple iPhone, Google Android, Windows Mobile or other mobile device at anytime and from anywhere.

Elastra Helps Enable Managed Private Clouds

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:00 EST

Elastra Cloud Server helps IT organizations leverage the economics of cloud computing, while preserving existing architectural practices and corporate policies. Elastra offers a free edition of ECS running on Amazon Web Services and an enterprise edition for private data centers. I was impressed with Elastra when I was initially briefed in 2007. They have many of the right features for what the cloud market will demand. More data centers will be deploying "private cloud" attributes, and those will become yet larger portions of modern data centers.

New Study Identifies Biggest Threats to Citizen Data and Federal Systems

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:45:00 EST

E-Government initiatives aimed at modernizing federal information systems are fraught with risk, according to a new study sponsored by CA, Inc. and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, Cyber Security Mega Trends: Study of IT leaders in the U.S. federal government. Released CA's IT Government Expo, the Cyber Security Mega Trends study surveyed 217 senior-level IT executives employed by various U.S. federal agencies to identify significant areas of risk to information security associated with government efforts to adopt new technologies such as cloud computing, virtualization, mobile devices, and Web 2.0 tools such as collaboration and social networking applications, blogs and wikis.

IBM Introduces New Cloud Offerings

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:45:00 EST

IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing include a set of ready-to-use application lifecycle management tools for developing and testing in the IBM Cloud, and use infrastructure management capabilities, to help organizations build software applications in the cloud. With these new services, clients can lower costs and respond quicker to organizational demands. For example, organizations can reduce the time it takes to provision a test environment from weeks to hours, and in some cases even minutes.

Arkeia Network Backup: Enterprise Edition for Ubuntu

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:05:00 EST

In one of my older articles, I explained how Ubuntu Server has slowly made significant inroads in many enterprise data centers. Ubuntu has been the favorite distribution of many system administrators, architects and various other IT staff. It was these fans of the Linux distribution that brought Ubuntu into their data centers and slowly deployed [...]

New Members Elected to Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:02:00 EST

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the results of its 2009 Technical Advisory Board (TAB) election, which was held at the Japan Linux Symposium in Tokyo.

Wyse Technology Partners With Citrix Systems on Desktop Virtualization Program

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:30:00 EST

Citrix's new, aggressive program enables businesses to easily identify the best virtualization solutions for use with XenDesktop and their IT environment. The open architecture of XenDesktop 4 gives customers the confidence to make the switch to virtualization and their program includes Data Center, Client Devices and Client and System Management categories. Wyse client virtualization solutions fall under the latter two. The combination of Citrix XenDesktop 4 and HDX technology, and the extreme performance of Wyse client virtualization hardware and software, provides the ideal virtualization solution.

Statement of Oracle Corporation

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

Oracle's acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market. The Commission's Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source.

EMC to Enhance Performance, Security and Management of VMware View Deployments

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:00:00 EST

EMC today announced a range of new products, solutions and services designed to enhance the value of the VMware View(TM) 4 desktop virtualization solutions. These offerings provide organizations with new technology capabilities, along with consulting services and actionable guidance to apply EMC(®) management and security controls for hosted virtual desktop environments. Businesses across many industries and government entities are deploying hosted virtual desktops using VMware View solutions to centralize management, improve security, increase operational efficiencies, and address compliance. Centralizing the management of employees' desktop and laptop environments through virtualization and applying security controls such as strong authentication, data loss prevention, security information and event management along with management controls such as server configuration management, helps ensure key company and government assets remain available, shareable and secure.

EC Objects to Oracle-Sun; Oracle Vows To Fight

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:30:00 EST

The European Commission Monday served Oracle and Sun with a statement of objections (SO) that takes exception to their $7.4 billion combination. Sun immediately told the SEC that "The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission's preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the market for database products."

Citrix Makes Virtual Desktops Enterprise Ready

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:15:00 EST

Citrix Systems today launched the new Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization program to further accelerate large-scale enterprise virtual desktop deployments with Citrix® XenDesktop™. The Citrix Ready Open Desktop Virtualization program includes more than 10,000 products from over 200 vendors that have been validated as ready to deploy in production environments with the recently launched XenDesktop 4. The Open Desktop Virtualization program helps make virtual desktops a safe choice for enterprise-wide deployment by eliminating the guess work and ensuring customers that XenDesktop 4 has been tested to work with the software, hardware and services they already uses in their IT environments today. Products that have been verified to work with XenDesktop 4 include thousands of applications, servers, storage systems, backup solutions, client devices, printers, desktop peripherals, security products, desktop management software and systems management solutions.

Hitachi Gets Serious About Linux

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:15:00 EST

Hitachi has joined Red Hat’s year-old Advanced Mission-Critical Program and offer high-end to mission-critical workloads on Linux to customers in Japan. The program is meant to mimic the kind of workloads, services levels, support and long lifecycles previously thought to be supported only on more expensive legacy platforms and should reduce customer costs. Its expanded support options include a 10-year lifecycle, the ability to standardize on a single update release for up to 18 months and proactive notification to reduce system disruption.

Parallels Makes It Harder To Tell a Windows from a Mac App

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST

It claims the widgetry, which lets Mac users run Windows and Linux alongside Mac OS X, is faster, smarter, easier and more powerful than previous generations. Unlike Apple’s own Boot Camp, which forces people to reboot between operating systems, Parallels users can switch between Mac and Windows seamlessly because of virtualization.

DDN Plans to Roll Out Massive Digital Signage Network with 7-11

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:15:00 EST

This is a deal that has been around for all of this year, and I know the NYC-based guy charged with pulling the technical pieces together. He has been looking at software platforms for months and separating contenders from pretenders based on the criteria he's established. To my knowledge no decision has been made on technology, but if you are not yet aware of it, it is probably pretty pretty darn late to try to get in on it.

Platform Computing and Microsoft Enable Hybrid Compute Environments

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:15:00 EST

Platform Computing announced a partnership and joint technology solution with Microsoft for organizations to take advantage of high performance computing (HPC) clusters independent of a cluster's operating system (OS). The combination of Platform ISF Adaptive Cluster and Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 provides HPC users an efficient and flexible infrastructure management solution that maximizes resources while lowering costs associated with running cluster environments across both Windows and Linux. Customers benefit from a streamlined, hybrid cluster management solution with improved performance and capacity.

Best Practices in the Cloud

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:45:00 EST

Authors of the RSA Security Brief include many of the industry's foremost security and virtualization experts from EMC and VMware, including Bret Hartman, Chief Technology Officer of EMC's RSA security division, Dr. Stephen Herrod, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of R&D for VMware and other senior EMC technologists. In the new Brief, the authors collectively contend that cloud security has vast potential to surpass the levels of information security that are possible today. In the cloud, security protocols can be built into the virtualization layer, not just imposed at the application level where they are typically enforced. By embedding security policies deeper in the technology stack and diffusing them throughout the virtual infrastructure of the cloud, enterprises can establish stronger, smarter security to protect their users and their data.

Oracle VP Maps Oracle's Cloud Computing During Cloud Expo Keynote

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

"We've been fairly quiet," said Rex Wang, VP of Infrastructure and Management at Oracle, this morning as he gave the Morning Keynote at the third and last day of the 4th Cloud Computing International Conference Expo at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Wang was referring to Oracle's relative silence to date vis-a-vis Cloud Computing. His intention, he said, was to share with the assembled delegates Oracle's thoughts on the space...

Maybe Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Makes Cloud Computing Too Easy

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:45:00 EST

With just a few clicks you, too, can create a cloud computing environment. But if you’re like a lot of organizations, you may not know what to do with it after that.

The latest version of Ubuntu Server (9.10) includes the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), which is actually powered by Eucalyptus. The ability to deploy a “cloud” on any server running Ubuntu is really quite amazing, especially given the compatibility of Eucalyptus with Amazon and the plethora of application images available for nearly immediate deployment. It supports both a public and private option, and a hybrid model, and comes replete with management tools designed to make building, deploying, and managing your own personal, private cloud a breeze.

Private clouds offer immediacy and elasticity in your own IT infrastructure. Using Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, you can experience the benefits of cloud computing behind your firewall. Deploy workloads and have them running immediately. Grow or shrink computing capacity to meet the needs of your application.

Too awesome, right? Well, yes and no. It is, apparently, not an answer to how do I build a cloud that would-be cloud computing adopters need, but rather how do I use a cloud? Consider the following query:

I noticed while installing the new version of Ubuntu server yesterday that there is a cloud cluster and node option for deployment. I read through the tutorial on how to set up the cloud, but how does one use the cloud, private or otherwise?

The question comes from a very technically savvy network engineer who, according to a recent survey by web-hosting provider Peer 1, is not alone in asking this question. In the independent study conducted for Peer 1 39 percent of the over 200 IT decision makers surveyed said that their lack of knowledge is preventing them from adopting cloud computing. Security and lack of control also ranked high (24 and 21 percent, respectively) but still fall short of the apparent lack of knowledge regarding cloud computing as an obstacle to adoption.

USING “THE CLOUD”

The answer to the question “how does one use the cloud, private or otherwise” turns out to be both simple and complex. Perhaps at this point it would be a good idea to back up and talk generalities and concepts. Knowing what you have, after all, may help in understanding what it is one does with it.

A cloud computing environment is primarily an architectural framework for automatically managing compute resources in a way that ensures the scalability and reliability of applications. To use cloud computing anything you need to deploy an application into it. Those applications are generally packaged into “images” in a virtual machine format: AMI (Amazon Machine Image), VMWare, Xen, and Microsoft Hyper-V are all options available in general, though EUC appears to have “standardized” on AMI. (We’ll leave that discussion for another day)

It is the virtual image that is deployed into the cloud computing environment, and it is the virtual image that is managed by EUC. Inside the image your application(s) is running, and when the compute resources assigned to that image – not the application, but the image – are in danger of being completely consumed UEC (or appropriate cloud computing management framework in public implementations) will automatically start another virtual image containing your application, assuming there are available compute resources in the “cloud cluster”.

So, a cloud computing environment is comprised of nodes on which images are deployed. Each image runs one (or more, though usually one) application. End users interface with the applications and cloud computing users interface with all the nuts and bolts. It is the management of those nuts and bolts that Ubuntu makes look so easy with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). Mouse click easy, in fact, based on the detailed instructions offered on Ubuntu’s site. So now you’ve got a “cloud” deployed, what do you do with it?

Once the base framework is in place you deploy images of applications.In the case of UEC you either download, select, or bundle an image of an application and then push it into the cloud via the UEC management interface. From there, UEC (or any cloud computing environment really) should take care of automatically scaling that application up or down based on compute resource need. Obviously scaling up requires that you have more than one “node” in your “cloud cluster” or that you’re taking advantage of UEC’s integration with Amazon.

So one use, the primary use, is to deploy applications and ensure scalability. But you can also use cloud computing environments to deploy images of infrastructure solutions such as virtual appliances that provide security or load balancing or logging or a plethora of enterprise-focused functionality. You could use UEC or any other cloud computing environment for testing, development, design of new architectures; use it to evaluate new application products and implement proofs of concepts in an environment that closely simulates your production environment.

Cloud computing is ultimately just a new way to deploy and manage applications and their supporting infrastructure that is more efficient than traditional methods without sacrificing performance or reliability. You use “the cloud” by deploying applications into it, and letting it do the rest.

At least that’s how easy it’s supposed to be. Whether or not that’s true in practice is a completely different story…

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,Ubuntu,Eucalyptus,cloud computing,cloud,Amazon,VMware,Hyper-V,xen,virtualization,application delivery,infrastructure

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Plone and Drupal: Different Approaches, Different Results

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:15:00 EST

Plone and Drupal are two leading open source Content Management Systems (CMS). Both were recognized in the 2009 Open Source CMS awards, run by Packt Publishing. Both also have large installed bases and large developer communities. This is made evident by some quick searching on Google: A search for LinkedIn profiles that mention Plone (search for 'plone site:linkedin.com/pub/') turns up 1350 pages—a large increase from 500 results in 2006.

Unisys Unveils Secure Cloud Computing Strategy at 4th Cloud Computing Expo

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:45:00 EST

“Unisys cloud computing strategy is based on providing industrial-strength security and data protection,” said Rich Marcello, president, Unisys Technology, Consulting and Integration Solutions, as Unisys today unveiled at the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, CA, what it described as "the latest in a series of aggressive moves to expand the full spectrum of secure cloud computing options available to enterprise CIOs."

AWS RDS Rocks!!!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 EST

This time AWS has done it right. The Relational Database Servers in AWS called "RDS" are the "Real Thing". I just transferred over my whole Drupal DB in a few moments to an RDS Instance. Is was very simple. Let me show you the one line command solution.

VMware’s Fusion 3 Stumbles at the Gate

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Fusion 3, VMware’s upgraded solution for running Windows and PC applications on a Mac, although Apple has its own Bootcamp widgetry, tried wending its way out the other day and hit a nasty snag at its upgrade portal. VMware says it was because of larger-than-expected demand and couldn’t keep up. The problem is reportedly fixed now.

‘The Crash is Behind Us’: Peddie

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:00:00 EDT

Third-quarter shipments of graphics processors were up 21.2% sequentially and Q2 was a strong quarter so graphics maven Jon Peddie feels safe in predicting a Merry Christmas for PCs and the industry. AMD showed the biggest jump in quarter-to-quarter growth at 30% followed by Intel at 21%. Intel shipped the most parts at 63 million, over twice as many as its nearest competitor Nvidia. "A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in Q3 2008," Peddie said. "The crash of fall 2008 is now behind us."

Layered Technologies Ranked 60th Fastest Growing Company in North America

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:15:00 EDT

Each year, Deloitte compiles a prestigious list of technology companies pushing the limits of innovation, and this year global Web hosting provider Layered Technologies ranked 60th on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, achieving a position in the top 12 percent for its impressive growth and proprietary technology. Layered Tech earned a position ahead of Internet heavy-hitters Google and GoDaddy and credits its double-digit growth to investing in customized offerings to best meet customers’ infrastructure needs. One such investment was Astro, its ground-breaking proprietary technology, which dramatically accelerates the availability and provisioning of servers for customers and channel partners alike.

Echo3 HelloWorld

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Here’s a Echo3 application in 3 steps

Alfred Poor’s New Video Reviews

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:45:00 EDT

My long-time former PC Magazine colleague Al Poor has begun his own series of video reviews of consumer products on his YouTube channel here. You can find a new Epson photo printer, the Buffalo Terrastation, and other products. Like my WebInformant.tv series, they are sponsored by the vendor and are short, fact-packed five minute pieces. [...]

Drupal Tip to Enable Clean URLs on Mac OS

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:15:00 EDT

Here's a little Drupal Tip O' the Day for our readers. As many of you know, we're platform agnostic here at Orchestra (meaning we run Macs, Linux, Windows and more), so we often end up discovering little tricks and tips about our different OSes. For those of you building a Drupal website from a Mac, this a handy bit of info.

Selecting Your Data Center - Part 1

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

The data center industry continues to evolve with mergers, acquisitions, and a healthy crop of emerging companies. New data center products and services are hitting the street, an aggressive debate on the model of selling space vs. power, and alternatives to physical data center space in the cloud are giving us a confusing maze of alternatives to meet our outsourcing needs.

Novell Denied Stay in SCO Trial

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EDT

SCO may yet get to drag Novell kicking, screaming and clutching at the doorpost in front of a jury to decide who really owns Unix. In the first and only head-snapping legal decision in all the years SCO has been in court, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver denied the bid Novell made Tuesday for a 90-day stay in going to trial back in Utah so it can appeal to the Supreme Court.

Provisions To and From * Cloud with Virtual Application Appliances

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EDT

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Addressing Data Privacy, Residency, and Security with Cloud Applications

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:15:00 EDT

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Dynamic Cloud Fitting

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT

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Building and Managing a Multi-petabyte Storage System

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DoD Clarifies Guidance on Open Source Software

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Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:30:00 EDT

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Open Kernel Labs Completes Extensive Trials

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EDT

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Dialogic Announces New Release of Host Media Processing Software

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What Goes On In The Mind of Employers?

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:00:00 EDT

I would like to start by thanking you for attending this meeting, though it's not like you had much of a choice. After all, attendance was mandatory. I'm also glad many of you accepted my invitation to your family members to be here as well. I have a few remarks to make to all of you, and then we'll retire to the ballroom for a great lunch and some employee awards.

I felt that this meeting was important enough to close all 12 of our tire and automotive shops today so that you could be here. To reassure you, everybody is being paid for the day --- except me.

Since our stores are closed we're making no money. That economic loss is mine to sustain. Carrington Automotive has 157 full time employees and around 30 additional part-timers. All of you are here. I thank you for that.

When you walked into this auditorium you were handed a rather thick 78-page document. Many of you have already taken a peek. You were probably surprised to see that it's my personal tax return for 2008. Those of you who are adept at reading these tax returns will see that last year my taxable income was $534,000.00. Now I'm sure this seems rather high to many of you. So ... let's talk about this tax return.

Carrington Automotive Enterprises is what we call a Sub-S - a Subchapter S corporation. The name comes from a particular part of our tax code. Sub-S status means that the income from all 12 of our stores is reported on my personal tax return. Businesses that report their income on the owner's personal tax return are referred to as "small businesses." So, you see now that this $534,000 is really the total taxable income - the total combined profit from all 12 of our stores. That works out to an average of a bit over $44,000 per store.

Why did I feel it important for you to see my actual 2008 tax return? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric being thrown around today about taxes, small businesses and rich people. To the people in charge in Washington right now I'm a wealthy American making over a half-million dollars a year. Most Americans would agree: I'm just another rich guy; after all ... I had over a half-million in income last year, right? In this room we know that the reality is that I'm a small business owner who runs 12 retail establishments and employs 187 people. Now here's something that shouldn't surprise you, but it will: Just under 100 percent ... make that 99.7 percent of all employers in this country are small businesses, just like ours.

Every one of these businesses reports their income on a personal income tax return. You need to understand that small businesses like ours are responsible for about 80 percent of all private sector jobs in this country, and about 70 percent of all jobs that have been created over the past year. You also need to know that when you hear some politician talking about rich people who earn over $200,000 or $500,000 a year, they're talking about the people who create the jobs.

The people who are now running the show in Washington have been talking for months about raising taxes on wealthy Americans. I already know that in two years my federal income taxes are going to go up by about 4.5 percent. That happens when Obama and the Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. When my taxes climb by 4.5 percent the Democrats will be on television saying that this really isn't a tax increase. They'll explain that the Bush tax cuts have expired ... nothing more. Here at Carrington we'll know that almost 5% has been taken right off of our bottom line. And that means it will be coming off your bottom line.

Numbers are boring; I know ... but let's talk a bit more about that $534,000. That's the money that was left last year from company revenues after I paid all of the salaries and expenses of running this business. Now I could have kept every penny of that for myself, but that would have left us with nothing to grow our business, to attract new customers and to hire new employees. You're aware that we've been talking about opening new stores in Virginia Beach and Newport News. To do that I will have to buy or lease property, construct a building and purchase inventory. I also have to hire additional people to work in those stores. These people wouldn't immediately be earning their pay. So, where do you think the money for all of this comes from? Right out of our profits … right out of that $534,000. I need to advertise to bring customers in, especially in these tough times. Where do you think that money comes from? Oh sure, I can count it as an expense when I file my next income tax return ... but for right now that comes from either current revenues or last year's profits. Revenues right now aren't all that hot ... so do the math. A good effective advertising campaign might cost us more than $300,000.

Is this all starting to come together for you now?

Right now the Democrats are pushing a nationalized health care plan that, depending on who's doing the talking, will add anywhere from another two percent to an additional 4.6 percent to my taxes. If I add a few more stores, which I would like to do, and if the economy improves, my taxable income.... our business income.... could go over one million dollars! If that happens the Democrats have yet another tax waiting, another five percent plus! I've really lost track of all of the new government programs the Democrats and President Obama are proposing that they claim they will be able to finance with new taxes on what they call "wealthy Americans."

And while we're talking about health care, let me explain something else to you. I understand that possibly your biggest complaint with our company is that we don't provide you with health insurance. That is because as your employer I believe that it is my responsibility to provide you with a safe workplace and a fair wage and to do all that I can to preserve and grow this company that provides us all with income. I no more have a responsibility to provide you with health insurance than I do with life, auto or homeowner's insurance. As you know, I have periodically invited agents for health insurance companies here to provide you with information on private health insurance plans.

The Democrats are proposing to levy yet another tax against Carrington in the amount of 8 percent of my payroll as a penalty for not providing you with health insurance. You should know that if they do this I will be reducing every person's salary or hourly wage by that same 8 percent. This will not be done to put any more money in my pocket. It will be done to make sure that I don't suffer financially from the Democrat's efforts to place our healthcare under the control of the federal government. It is your health, not mine. It is your healthcare, not mine. These are your expenses, not mine. If you think I'm wrong about all this, I would sure love to hear your reasoning.

Try to understand what I'm telling you here. Those people that Obama and the Democrats call "wealthy Americans" are, in very large part, America's small business owners. I'm one of them. You have the evidence, and surely you don't think that the owner of a bunch of tire stores is anything special. That $534,000 figure on my income tax return puts me squarely in Democrat crosshairs when it comes to tax increases.

Let's be clear about this ... crystal clear. Any federal tax increase on me is going to cost you money, not me. Any new taxes on Carrington Automotive will be new taxes that you, or the people I don't hire to staff the new stores I won't be building, will be paying. Do you understand what I'm telling you? You've heard about things rolling downhill, right? Fine … then you need to know that taxes, like that other stuff, roll downhill. Now you and I may understand that you are not among those that the Democrats call "wealthy Americans," but when this "tax the rich" thing comes down you are going to be standing at the bottom of the mud slide, if you get my drift. That's life in the big city, my friends ... where elections have consequences.

You know our economy is very weak right now. I've pledged to get us through this without layoffs or cuts in your wages and benefits. It's too bad the politicians can't get us through this without attacking our profits. To insure our survival I have to take a substantial portion of that $534,000 and set it aside for unexpected expenses and a worsening economy. Trouble is, the government is eyeing that money too ... and they have the guns. If they want it, they can take it.

I don't want to make this too long. There's a great lunch waiting for us all. But you need to understand what's happening here. I've worked hard for 23 years to create this business. There were many years where I couldn't take a penny in income because every dollar was being dedicated to expanding the business. There were tough times when it took every dollar of revenues to replenish our inventory and cover your paychecks. During those times I earned nothing. If you want to see those tax returns, just let me know.

OK ... I know I'm repeating myself here. I don't hire stupid people, and you are probably getting it now. So let me just ramble for a few more minutes. Most Americans don't realize that when the Democrats talk about raising taxes on people making more than $250 thousand a year, they're talking about raising taxes on small businesses. The U.S. Treasury Department says that six out of every ten individuals in this country with incomes of more than $280,000 are actually small business owners. About one-half of the income in this country that would be subject to these increased taxes is from small businesses like ours. Depending on how many of these wonderful new taxes the Democrats manage to pass, this company could see its tax burden increase by as much as $60,000. Perhaps more.

I know a lot of you voted for President Obama. A lot of you voted for Democrats across the board. Whether you voted out of support for some specific policies, or because you liked his slogans, you need to learn one very valuable lesson from this election. Elections have consequences. You might have thought it would be cool to have a president who looks like you; or a president who is young, has a buff body, and speaks eloquently when there's a teleprompter in the neighborhood. Maybe you liked his promises to tax the rich. Maybe you believed his promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than a certain amount. Maybe you actually bought into his promise to cut taxes on millions of Americans who actually don't pay income taxes in the first place. Whatever the reason ... your vote had consequences; and here they are.

Bottom line? I'm not taking this hit alone. As soon as the Democrats manage to get their tax increases on the books, I'm going to take steps to make sure that my family isn't affected. When you own the business, that’s what you're allowed to do. I built this business over a period of 23 years, and I'm not going to see my family suffer because we have a president and a congress who think that wealth is distributed rather than earned. Any additional taxes, of whatever description, that President Obama and the Democrats inflict on this business will come straight out of any funds I have set aside for expansion or pay and benefit increases. Any plans I might have had to hire additional employees for new stores will be put aside. Any plans for raises for the people I now have working for me will be shelved.

Year-end bonuses might well be eliminated. That may sound rough, but that's the reality. You're going to continue to hear a lot of anti-wealth rhetoric out there from the media and from the left. You can chose to believe what you wish … but when it comes to Carrington Automotive you will know the truth. The books are open to any of you at any time. I have nothing to hide. I would hope that other small business owners out there would hold meetings like this one, but I know it won't happen that often. One of the lessons to be learned here is that taxes ... all taxes ... and all regulatory costs that are placed on businesses anywhere in this country, will eventually be passed right on down to individuals; individuals such as yourself. This hasn't been about admonishing anyone and it hasn't been about issuing threats. This is part of the education you should have received in the government schools, but didn't.

Class is now dismissed.

10th Circuit Hands SCO a Jury Trial

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:15:00 EDT

It’s been six years, tens of millions of dollars and untold legal delays since SCO first sued IBM for poaching Unix code and putting it in Linux, and without the starch in its collar that its ousted CEO Darl McBride evidently supplied it sounds like it’s folding like a basket of limp washing.

Jeff Miller Speaking at the Cloud Computing Expo

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:45:00 EDT

Cloud Sherpas is proud to announce that our own Director of Professional Services, Jeff Miller, has been invited by the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo to lead the seminar, Migrating Collaborative Applications to the Cloud. The upcoming event held between Nov. 2-4 invites the cloud computing community (developers, software professionals, IT managers, CIOs, etc.) [...]

Fired SCO CEO Fires Back

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:15:00 EDT

The real trustee, McBride says, is a Blank Rome lawyer called Bonnie Fatell who couldn't be bothered calling Cerberus - you know, Cerberus, as in Chrysler Financial and General Motors Financial (GMAC) - which was willing to put $25 million into SCO and get it out of hock because Cerberus has backed McBride before. It gave McBride $50 million back in 1997 to roll up a bunch if Internet companies like, oh, Razorfish (nee Avenue A | Razorfish), MarchFirst (nee US Web) and Scient and that was then sold to, oh, aQuantive, which was then sold to, oh, Microsoft for, oh, $6 billion, Redmond's biggest acquisition to date.

MontaVista Announces Support for Next-Generation LTE

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:24:00 EDT

MontaVista Software has announced the next release of their Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) Linux with over 30 different Linux Support Packages (LSP’s) available immediately. CGE 5.1 adds support for next generation 4G wireless networks including LTE and WiMAX, and includes full integration of the OpenSAF high availability middleware consistent with Service Availability Forum specifications. In addition, MontaVista becomes the first commercial Linux vendor to offer virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) capabilities for secure wireless networks. CGE 5.1 remains the only carrier grade Linux to be compliant with Carrier Grade Linux, IPv6, and Linux Standard Base certifications.

LynxSecure Selected by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EDT

LynuxWorks has announced that FFI (the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment) has selected LynxSecure in support of a program in the field of classified information handling and information flow between security domains. FFI selected LynxSecure due to its unique ability to run Windows as a fully virtualized guest operating system in a secure partition on an Intel x86 family processor. According to Anders Eggen, Project Manager, FFI, "For some military scenarios high assurance systems are required, and products conforming to the MILS architecture are promising platforms on which to implement critical security functions. FFI will use LynxSecure to explore the MILS based technology and to perform research and prototyping activities to examine its ability to solve some of the security challenges raised in the implementation of a future Network Enabled Capability (NEC)."

Recent and Fun California Green Energy Initiatives

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:37:00 EDT

California has always prided itself as being a leader in alternative energy innovation. Driving through the hills around Livermore, Palm Springs, or between San Diego and Yuma bring skylines full of wind turbines.

Dasher Technologies & HP to Exhibit at 4th Cloud Computing Expo

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced today that Dasher Technologies, a leading supplier of high quality, HP Enterprise solutions and complementary technologies, will be Exhibiting at the 4th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, taking place November 2-4, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA. The company – an HP Platinum Business Partner – will be sharing its booth with HP.

What If Darl McBride Gets Fired?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Darl McBride, the CEO of SCO and the industry’s favorite pariah, expects to get fired any minute now. He expects to get fired because he’s adamantly opposed to winding SCO down, laying off its people and settling the company’s litigation against Novell and IBM for chump change, which is the way he sees things going if the Chapter 11 trustee put in charge of SCO keeps going down the path he appears to be going down – despite the fact that the trustee told McBride when he got there that he thinks there is “significant value in the litigation.”

Quest Study Identifies Potential Barriers To Cloud Computing Success

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EDT

CIO survey advises firms to think twice about ROI before diving into the cloud

LONDON, 15th October 2009 – Cloud computing may be the hottest buzzword in IT right now, but enterprises should take a step back to consider the real costs and benefits before diving into such a strategy, according to research published today by enterprise systems management vendor Quest Software.

Cloud promises multiple benefits for enterprise organisations, yet concerns persist over the true extent of the cost savings associated with this technology. Almost 75 per cent of those CIOs surveyed as part of Quest’s study, which encompassed 100 CIOs from UK enterprise organisations with over 1,000 employees, currently feel unconvinced that switching to a cloud-based applications infrastructure will reduce IT costs for their organisations.

Confusion also persists over the current costs of enterprise IT applications, according to Quest’s study. Half of the CIOs surveyed claim they lack a fully-accurate picture of how much their existing applications infrastructure is costing, making it difficult to calculate the potential financial benefits of cloud. As such, just under half (44 per cent) have no plans at this stage to use cloud computing. This figure may be poised for growth, however, with 20 per cent of these organisations already actively using cloud within their applications stack.

“We’re certainly not saying that cloud computing is a false dawn for enterprise IT – indeed, this technology promises a wide range of benefits to organisations large and small,” comments Joe Baguley, CTO – Europe, Quest Software. “What we would say, however, is that companies should not rush head-first into adopting this technology before firstly taking a step back to analyse current costs and potential benefits of a switch to cloud. Packages such as our own Foglight solution application monitoring solution already provide some useful pointers and we plan to integrate even more application-costing functionality in the near future ,” he explains.

Cost-savings aside, security was identified as the next biggest obstacle to widespread enterprise adoption of cloud, with 38 per cent of respondents identifying this area as prime barrier. Other issues highlighted by Quest’s study included worries over the technical complexity of cloud implementation and lack of understanding of this technology’s benefits amongst potential customers.

"For CIOs cloud computing is a typically enigmatic ITC subject - largely undefined, yet increasingly impossible to avoid,” explains Martin Hingley, ITC Market Analyst at ITCandor Limited. “Quest is helping by filtering out the hype and delivering software to enable the interaction between private and public developments. Its survey is interesting in pointing out the business, pricing and technical challenges."

Joe Baguley explains that, “Although enterprises are right to query areas like data security and migration paths, these considerations needn’t be game-breakers for cloud. It simply falls to the vendor community to ensure that customers are fully aware of the options available to them; that the tools exist to deliver seamless migration of mission-critical applications; and to ensure that facilities exist to roll-back cloud migrations where technical glitches do occur. Cloud computing is poised to change the enterprise IT game and Quest is looking forward to helping CIOs face this brave new world,” he concludes.

For more information on Quest’s products, please visit: http://www.quest.com

- Ends -

About Quest Software, Inc.
Now more than ever, organisations need to work smart and improve efficiency. Quest Software creates and supports systems management products – helping our customers solve everyday IT challenges faster and easier. Visit www.quest.com for more information.

Editorial Contact:
Lucy Davies
Edelman PR for Quest Software
+44 20 3047 2304
lucy.davies@edelman.com