IBM to adopt OpenStack as foundation of its cloud offerings

IBM Makes OpenStack The Cloud Platform To Beat – ReadWrite

Here is the IBM press release about their plans to use OpenStack:

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40519.wss

Also follow IBM Cloud on Twitter to see what they are up to (heh:):

https://mobile.twitter.com/ibmcloud

Interesting news, recent, seen via Twitter.

OpenStack (and its history) are interesting too:

http://www.openstack.org/

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStack

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/openstack/

http://www.wired.com/insights/2012/06/nasa-openstack-amazon/

Parts of OpenStack, including the core, OpenStack Compute (Nova), are written in Python.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/09/openstack-2/

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/citrix-cloudstack/

PyMQI, Python interface to IBM WebSphereMQ (formerly IBM MQSeries)

PyMQI is a Python interface to WebSphere MQ, an IBM middleware product (often called just MQ).

.

IBM WebSphere MQ (MQ Wikipedia page), formerly known as IBM MQSeries. is a Message-Oriented Middleware product.

I had worked for a bit on MQSeries some years earlier, on a project for a large international courier company, when I was at Infosys Technologies. It (MQSeries) was a powerful product.

Basically, it allows creating message queues and then sending and receiving messages on those queues, across machines on a (possibly worldwide) network. Messages can be sent even if the target machine is down sometimes. There is also a concept of queue managers. MQ is available on many operating systems and messages can be sent across operating systems, i.e. from OS A to OS B.

Both queues and queue managers can be accessed programmatically as well as via commands. There is support for programming MQ from different languages. I don't remember Python support being there earlier, but it is now, with PyMQI.

Vasudev Ram

Sun, stars and Red Shift :)

By Vasudev Ram


Saw this article via a post on Hacker News:

Sun Goes Down. Up Comes A Mystery

Pretty interesting.

I initially thought (before I read it) that the article must be about the other Sun (Microsystems), and that the title of the post was some sort of reference to Sun being eclipsed (heh * :) by Oracle.

Turns out that the article is actually about why there are still patches of dark in the night sky, even though there are zillions of stars in the universe.

The answer has to do with the fact that the universe is (supposed to be) expanding. Read the article to get the full picture.

I found this interesting on another level because that other Sun had some time ago created a project called Red Shift. Unfortunately, they did not do well in business some time later and then got acquired by Oracle.

To know more about that Red Shift concept, both in reference to Sun Microsystems and the universe, google for "sun microsystems red shift", or just see this article (the first hit from that search):

Redshift (theory) - specifically, the section "History & Nomenclature".

(*) I had read, long back, when the Eclipse software tool was first being released, that the name was a play on the term "eclipse of the Sun".

.

Eclipse was first created by IBM ...

It's a pity about Sun, really. They had done a huge amount of technical innovation over the years. NFS, Tcl/Tk, Java, the list goes on ...

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Share |

NatGeo goes cloudy with Nirvanix

http://www.nirvanix.com/

IBM and others too.

Vinod Khosla invested in them.

IBM cloud office, like Google Docs

https://greenhouse.lotus.com/wpsgh/wcm/connect/lotus+greenhouse/lotus+greenhouse+next+site/home/labs/ibm+docs

--- Vasudev Ram
www.dancingbison.com

Sending a file to many recipients with IBM WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition

By Vasudev Ram



Just saw this article on IBM developerWorks via their email newsletter which I get:

One-to-many file transfers using WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition (FTE).

The article describes how to do it, and says that before this facility was made available, it was still possible to do it in previous MQ versions, but only via writing complex Ant scripts. Now it is built-in (though you still have to set things up).

I'm not blogging about this because of the article itself, per se (though it is of interest), but more because I think the concept (of sending a file to many recipients - in an automated way) is potentially useful and could be implemented in other environments as well, that do not use IBM WebSphere MQ, whether they are other Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) products like IBM MQ or just custom applications that implement their own file transfer via programmed FTP, sockets or whatever.

I had worked for a while on an app that used IBM's MQ product, before it became a part of the IBM WebSphere product suite; it was called IBM MQ Series then. I had looked a bit into the architecture of the product and thought it was a good one, as were the features it provided.

Speaking of file transfer, check out Sendoid which I blogged about recently:

Sendoid, new file sharing service, a YCombinator startup

- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises


Twitter: @vasudevram

Share |

Hello, Watch - now, a cellphone on your wrist (almost)

By Vasudev Ram

Seen via this TechCrunch post: InPulse Adds A Smartphone-Like Experience To Your Wrist Watch.

Th idea seems rather cool and useful.

InPulse is a Y Combinator-backed startup. It's been reviewed by the New York Times, Engadget, GigaOm and WIRED, according to their front page.

It can be used in a hands-free way to check your email messages, SMS and calls, and that is just a few of the many possibilities.

Excerpts from the InPulse site and/or the TechCrunch article:

[ The device connects via Bluetooth to your phone and will deliver email alerts, SMS messages and calls directly to the watch. The watch can connect wirelessly to all kinds of host devices: computers, laptops, and smartphones and works best with Android, Blackberry, Mac, Windows and Linux (adding iPhone support is in the works, but Apple requires special chips to be built into the watch.) It’s a two way connection, so inPulse can send packets back to the host based on user interaction. ]

[ InPulse has opened up it platform to developers and so far over 30 apps have been created for the watch. These range from making your watch into an iTunes music controller to becoming a PowerPoint presentation remote control (Migicovsky used his InPulse watch to present and pitch during Y Combinator’s demo day a few weeks ago). You can also check-in to Facebook Places from the watch. The beauty of the device is that you can program it to display anything via apps. Another popular use case is to programmers is display real time server stats for programmers on the go. There’s even a site devoted to featuring the watch’s apps. ]

About InPulse

And for why I titled this post "Hello, Watch ...", see here.

Make sure to scroll down a bit on that page ...

Update:

1. The name of the company behind the InPulse product is Allerta, from Waterloo, Canada.

2. Some people may remember that IBM had put Linux on a watch some years ago, after they started getting into Linux in a big way. Here are some links about that:

http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/linuxwatch.html

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/An-interview-with-IBMs-Linux-Wrist-Watch-project-leader/

CNET News - IBM clocks in with new Linux watch:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-254658.html

Papers published about the IBM Linux Watch:
http://www.research.ibm.com/WearableComputing/linuxwatch/papers/papers.html


- Vasudev Ram - Dancing Bison Enterprises

Twitter: @vasudevram

Share |