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  • SAP's Cloud Strategy Evolves With In-Memory Computing Appliance

    SAP announced multiple cloud offerings at SAP Sapphire 2011 around High-Performance Analytic Appliance(HANA) which has occupied front stage in SAP's innovation and strategy over the past year. In this news item we cover basic questions around HANA's architecture, performance and future roadmap.

  • PMI Agile Certification Pilot Starting

    Early adopters who want to be among the first to earn the new PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) designation can apply starting May 23rd for the PMI Agile Certification pilot. Those selected for the pilot will need to take and pass a multiple choice exam on Agile fundamentals to receive the PMI-ACP certification.

  • Introducing the Entity Framework Power Tools

    The introduction of a Code First option in Entity Framework has received quite a bit of praise. While it still has a long way to go before it unseats the reigning ORM, nHibernate, the progress Microsoft is making is quite astounding. In order to keep the momentum up Microsoft is releasing a set of power tools that will take an existing database and create a Code First representation.

  • When to Cease Being an Agile Coach?

    Agile coach Morgan Ahlström recently turned to the Agile Coach Support mailing list to ask how to deal with an organization that said they wanted the benefits of becoming more agile, but was behaving in ways contrary to that goal.

  • The Future of the Web as Seen by Gartner

    Gene Phifer, Managing VP in Gartner Research, and David Mitchell Smith, VP and Fellow in Gartner Research, recently held a webinar entitled How Web and Cloud Computing Will Drive Your IT Strategy (registration required), outlining some of the key characteristics of the future web as seen by Gartner, concluding with a number of recommendation for businesses that want to be prepared.

  • Virtual Machine Test Harness (VMTH): Test Your Configuration Management

    A Google search for “devops” yields tons of interesting postings and even a couple of manifestos. Refine the search further to “devops quality” and the results become less direct; “devops testing” simply doesn’t exist according to Google. That said, things are starting to change. In late April Greg Retkowski released Virtual Machine Test Harness (VMTH), for unit-testing infrastructure automation.

  • Cloud Computing Is Here to Stay

    Cloud computing has become a major priority for enterprises. 60% of CIOs see it as a priority, after BI, mobility and virtualization, while large enterprises have set aside for it 15% of their budged, according to some studies.

  • JetBrains Release IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 With Full Java 7 Support

    JetBrains have released IDEA 10.5 with support for Java 7, Groovy 1.8 and Spring 3.1 as well as further usability improvements. Version 10.5 is a free update for developers with a version 10 license, and the Ultimate version is now offered at a lower price for new licenses and for personal license upgrades.

  • What Agile Architecture and Hurricanes have in Common

    In a recent presentation at SATURN 2011 Eric Richardson has drawn some analogies between architects in an agile environment and hurricane meteorologists. For example, both produce various forecasts respectively documents, use many kinds of data sources as inputs, and employ different techniques to acquire data. The question arises is: what can architects learn from meteorologists?

  • Agile Leaders Weigh in on PMI Agile Certification

    Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber welcomes PMI's establishment of its own Agile certification program, and has recently posted his thoughts.

  • Build Connected Windows Phone Applications Faster with AgFx

    AgFx is a framework for creating Windows Phone 7 applications that simplifies data access and storage. Developers need only to specify the source of information, how to parse it within the application, and expiration rules. After that, data retrieval, caching and refreshes are handled automatically.

  • Spring.NET Gets Visual Studio Add-in, CodeConfig, NuGet Packages

    Spring.NET, the .NET counterpart of Spring Framework for Java has several new features through CodeConfig and a new Visual Studio extension meant for content-assist. The Spring.NET packages are also now distributed via NuGet, making it much easier for developers to manage dependencies when using them in their projects.

  • Bloggers React To Open Virtualization Alliance Announcement

    Yesterday’s announcement that a group of company’s led by Red Hat, IBM, HP and others have formed the Open Virtualization Alliance had bloggers talking. The the goal is to foster the adoption of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). But speculation ran high after the announcement that some member companies may be attempting to break the stranglehold VMWare and Citrix hold on the market.

  • Code is Liability, the Less the Better

    In lean manufacturing, the definition of inventory is pretty clear. It is the extra material, work in progress material and material queued up for the next bit of work. Lean emphasizes on reducing the inventory because there is always an inventory handling costs. In software development, often requirements are seen as inventory, what about the code?

  • Scala 2.9.0 Introduces Parallel Collections

    The latest Scala release 2.9.0 introduces parallel collections to easily utilize multicore processors. Other new features are an improved REPL, ScalaDoc and new packages for interacting with the operating system.

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