Financial terms of the purchase were not released.

Intelliden provides network automation solutions, which are becoming more important for enterprises to automate the configuration of thousands of manually managed network devices like hubs, routers and switches from dozens of vendors.

Analysts estimate more than 60 percent of network outages are caused by manual configuration errors. By acquiring this automation technology, IBM aims to help clients improve network service availability, decrease risk through compliance reporting and improve staff efficiency.

This acquisition is expected to further strengthen the IBM service management portfolio by offering, comprehensive solutions for automation and optimization of digital and physical assets. This includes full-service lifecycle management of network devices, IT, data center and physical assets as diverse as water mains, railway cars and even door locks.

“The typical company is managing a more complex and ever changing infrastructure —stretched across digital and physical assets,” said Al Zollar, general manager, IBM Tivoli software.

“Companies are managing a virtualized computing layer that more than ever relies on the network. Intelliden’s intelligent network automation is an important addition to IBM’s portfolio to extend automation across all business and IT assets.”

John Chambers, Chief Exec of Cisco is quite pleased with the numbers, “Our outstanding Q2 results exceeded our expectations, and we believe they provide a clear indication that we are entering the second phase of the economic recovery.” He continues, “During the quarter we saw dramatic across-the-board acceleration and sequential improvement in our business in almost all areas.”

During the economic plummet of 2009, Cisco had to lay off around 2,000 workers but is looking to make up for it with a hire around 3,000 sometime in 2010. With all the good news, Chambers still wants to remain cautious considering the flux the market is still in.

This cautious nature wasn’t seen during the downturn last year as Cisco made key acquisitions in light of the dark economic times. These provisions now look poised to pay dividends during the turn around. The ripple effect of Cisco’s recent success will be felt for component suppliers across the industry.

For many looking for network jobs out there, this can only be seen as good news. As a leading provider of network solutions, the 3,000 job addition will go along way in helping to recover the industry as a whole. Along with Chambers, it’s important to remain cautious in light of good news. Just like the tide of the ocean, when things look good it’s easy to get swept up and caught off guard.

The cloud has always been our target. We architected from the beginning to be an open source, web-based development platform.
If we had launched two years ago as a cloud only product, we would have starved before the cloud market started growing. Instead, we launched a version of our product that you could download and run on your own laptop (in your own private cloud). Another huge advantage of having a download was being able to build an open source community, which now numbers over 15,000 registered developers on our forums.

Now we have both a downloadable product as well as a cloud product. Both support 1-click deployment to the Amazon EC2 cloud.

Apparently WaveMaker’s third round was actually used to build sales, to empower its community and to invest in marketing. The Cloud Quick Start Partnership launched last October with IBM, Amazon and RightScale is promising, along with sell-through from SaaS ISVs and systems integration partners.

Talking about open source licensing, recently WaveMaker 5.0 moved from AGPL to Apache, with a light badgeware approach requiring you either to include an ackwlodgment in in the documentation or the “Powered by WaveMaker” logo somewhere in your application.

I asked Chris to tell us more about the reasons behind such shift.

What we found was that community members are very comfortable with the Apache license but were uncomfortable deploying an application with an embedded AGPL license.

Rather than try to educate the market on the AGPL, we just decided to adopt Apache. It helps that most of the components we embed (Spring, Hibernate) are also licensed under Apache.

Decisions around licensing sometimes are subject to change over times. Despite the fact that over the last year AGPL increment rate is bigger than any other copyleft licenses, WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Server went Apache, while WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio code stayed AGPL. This way ISVs or OEMs are forced either to AGPL their applications or buy an OEM license, and it definitely makes (business) sense.

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Jan Sijp, SonicWALL’s Director of Product Management, said in a statement, “With release 6.0 we have greatly expanded the applicability of GMS to our customer’s networks.  Many customers have been asking us for central management for SonicWALL Email Security and CDP appliances and now they have it - both at the individual device and the group level.”

The product doesn’t just throw electronic locks on everything and slow users down, though.

Sijp explained, “GMS at its core is a productivity enhancement and expense management solution and GMS 6.0 builds on this foundation.  Our new reverse inheritance feature closes the loop with the existing reverse inheritance functionality enabling customers to, among other things, copy configurations from one device to another or from one device to a group of devices.”

This sounds like good news all around for folks who don’t feel like orchestrating quadruple-crosses.

According to USNews.com, Network Architects will see expansive growth going into 2010. Of course, this should leave you with a smile and some hope if you’ve been having trouble finding work as of late. According to their estimates, the occupational section that network architects fall under (computer science) will grow 53.4 percent by 2018.

To couple with this good news, the Wall Street Journal has also written that growth will occur in the computer-network administration field. With this information there’s of course a positive side, but like all things could have unforeseen consequences.

With a highly needed position, competition will undoubtedly grow. This leads to the field expanding, which is a good thing, but it also means you have to appear as more of an asset. Education being your first step in improving your resume. With younger recruits coming out of college, it can seem they might have a step ahead. Network technology is continually growing and changing, therefore staying informed is the key.

There are a slew of options available for keeping informed. Here are a few places to take a look at if you wish to expand your knowledge-base:

Ashworth College
University of Phoenix

While education is a must, experience is more important. Whether you’re out of work or currently have a job, now might be the time to look for an upgrade. With growth going into 2010, jobs with better pay, working conditions, and benefits might be out there lurking. You can search for these jobs by traditional means, classifieds, Monster.com etc…

Somewhere else to keep a look out for networking positions is social media. With LinkedIn being the best example, there’s a huge movement to look for potential talent in social networks. Create a LinkedIn resume, and get your name out there. Before you know it, a new position could present itself all because you took 5-10 minutes to create an online resume.

The networking field expands, and with the right frame of mind, you can stand to profit from it. I’m not talking about money, but expanding your horizons. With numerous amounts of different fields going virtual, they all need an expert.

Miko said he is working on a long paper on cloud adoption and shared some of the thoughts he is working on. He began with a definition of an enterprise as an organization that requires size, and longevity to carry out its mission. This has implications for IT. First longevity tends to create IT segmentation and silos and this leads to complexity in IT supply. Size and growth create organizational fragmentation that leads to complexity in user demands on IT. These factors can impact IT strategies. For example, SOA can be a rational response to simplify the complexity of IT supply but it can fail to address the complexity of user demands in not implemented correctly.

Miko puts these complexity factors in a 2 x 2 grid. Organizations tend to start in the simple supply and demand quadrant. The ideal situation would be a simply IT supply that can meet complexity users needs. However, most organizations have developed a complex IT supply before all of their complex user needs had emerged. So, lacking a green field, this approach becomes difficult. If there is already a complex IT supply, the cloud can add to complexity, rather than simplifying it.

Now I asked Miko how can you be successful in this typical situation. He replied that several factors need to be present. First you need a mature understanding of how the behavior of the organization connects to the mission. This requires strong leadership. Then you need an enterprise IT architect that reflects this understanding. Unfortunately, most IT architectures are limited to IT issues and not business issues. It is not about optimizing IT, but optimizing the business.

This lead us to a discussion of process. Miko said that processes are done at the micro level. Part of the challenge for an organization is to become best in class in the many niches that their processes inhabit. Processes are often done in a silo and not at the enterprise level. The goal should be to align these silos but not to tear them down. Miko said that the goal of enterprise 2.0 is not to break down silos but to align them allow for cross-silo communication and collaboration.

This makes a lot of sense to me. It reminded me of some work I was involved within the early 90s that was done in the spirit of enterprise 2.0 but with the tools of the day. In a property casualty insurance company we created new processes for underwriting, claims and sales. The best practices of the organization where embed in individual applications. Then these applications were aligned and connected. We were trying to break down silos of communication but not silos of processes and applications. These latter two types of silos were essential for efficient processes and should not be destroyed. Now alignment of silos along a value chain is an enterprise level task and can benefit from enterprise 2.0 approaches.

This line of thought took us back to the question of cloud computing. To be successful it needs to recognize and deal with the complexity of user needs and the alignment of silos, but not the destruction of necessary silos. I am sold.

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Chrome OS is currently intended for use on netbook-like devices, which are small and portable. Everything you do, when using Chrome OS, is through the browser (the same Chrome browser Google offers now). There are some resulting benefits from this approach, namely speed in doing anything online, but the tradeoff is simplicity. You can’t run Photoshop or Quickbooks or any other “installed” application on Chrome OS.

Here is one critical review of Chrome OS and one positive review.

And here is a blurb that explains one of the benefits of using a Web operating system like Chrome OS:

…the overhead of managing multiple PCs is too high for a home user. Paraphrased, his statement was that if you have five conventional PCs, it’s a pain to keep them all up-to-date and their data synced. The reason, I would add, is that five conventional PCs each presume that they’re either alone in the universe, or that they “connect” to this thing called a “server.” But five Chrome OS portables are five caches for the same cloud-based user and application data, and as such they resemble five netbooks only in their form factor.

And finally, a video:

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The Verizon Private IP is the bread and butter that Red Ventures is hoping will be able to provide better performance and recover faster from network failures. Private IP has distinct rerouting capabilities that Red Ventures will exercise to speed through downtimes. Due to the company’s reliance on the network to log sales and transactions, this could potentially save the company a lot of money.

Jonathan Desrochers, director of IT at Red Ventures, talks about the Verizon Network partnership, “We are in the business of helping companies acquire customers quickly and securely, using the most sophisticated methods possible, so it is imperative that we use safe and reliable advanced technology to best serve our partners.” he continues, “Verizon Business has become a valued technology partner over the past few years; the account team truly understands our business and anticipates our needs, and it has developed a high-quality solution that has gone a long way in improving our communications. This, in turn, helps our business run smoothly, and helps us attract the best technology professionals in the industry.”

The flexibility of the Verizon Business Network looks like what really attracted Red Ventures to the deal. The company has such a diverse load of work, that various services were necessary when seeking out a solution. It looks like Verizon presented the answer they were looking for.

To be completely honest, none of Oracle’s plans come as a surprise.  And at the end of the day, the FAQ is not legally binding and is not a commitment to deliver products, code or functionality. Oracle clearly states this at the end of the FAQ.  This too is completely understandable.  Oracle, like any other company with shareholders, will have to evaluate and adjust their plans and intentions on a product by product basis over time.  Oracle has a fiduciary duty to do so.

In the FAQ, potentially released to appease the EU and critics of the deal, Oracle tackles its plans for MySQL as follows:

“Oracle plans to spend more money developing MySQL than Sun does now. Oracle expects to continue to develop and provide the open source MySQL database after the transaction closes. Oracle plans to add MySQL to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Berkeley DB, an open source database. Oracle also currently offers InnoDB, an open source transactional storage engine and the most important and popular transaction engine under MySQL. Oracle already distributes MySQL as part of our Enterprise Linux offering.”

This position makes complete sense as MySQL and the Oracle DB are more complimentary than competitive.  I doubt that this assurance from Oracle will help Monty, Florian, RMS and others opposed to Oracle’s ownership of MySQL get past their fears.

Not unexpectedly, Oracle plans to keep GlassFish around, since it is the reference implementation for Java EE:

“Oracle plans to continue evolving GlassFish Enterprise Server, delivering it as the open source reference implementation (RI) of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications, and actively supporting the large GlassFish community. Additionally, Oracle plans to invest in aligning common infrastructure components and innovations from Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server to benefit both Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server customers.”

The plans for NetBeans are somewhat certain.  You’ll notice that Oracle makes no claims about “investing more than Sun does today” or “continue evolving”.

“As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle’s strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle’s next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.”

Finally, Oracle suggests that OpenOffice.org and a commercial offering will receive investment.

“After the transaction closes, Oracle plans to continue developing and supporting OpenOffice as open source. As before, some of the larger customers will ask for extra assurances, support, and enterprise tools. For these customers we expect to offer a typical commercial license option.”

So there you have it.  Oracle’s plans for Sun, well, based on current thinking and subject to change at Oracle’s sole discretion.  Which again, is perfectly sensible.

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The Government Accountability Office recently released a report titled “Information Security: NASA Needs to Remedy Vulnerabilities in Key Networks.”  Not a great start, right?

Then, as a press release on the subject noted, the GAO “reported that NASA did not consistently implement effective controls to prevent, limit, and detect unauthorized access to its networks and systems.”

The GAO cited a number of specific security incidents, too, including the installation of malicious software on NASA machines and instances of sensitive information being accessed.  All of which might make it sound like ordinary companies are doomed, given that they don’t employ rocket scientists and receive all sorts of government funding.

But here’s a silver lining of sorts: the GAO “said that a key reason for these weaknesses is that NASA has not yet fully implemented key activities of its information security program to ensure that controls are appropriately designed and operating effectively.”

Simply following the directions (in a manner of speaking) might have made NASA’s networks a lot safer, then, and is certainly something that run-of-the-mill companies should do.  Safety’s worth a few inconveniences.

Also, you may find it slightly uplifting to know that the GAO didn’t talk about NASA losing any particular tidbits of critical data; the report focused more on what might happen at some point in the future if its current approach to network security persists.  So if even NASA isn’t exactly getting attacked left and right, regular organizations hopefully won’t face many (or any) security threats they can’t handle.