Researchers design wind turbine kites to fly at 30,000 feet
Stanford University researchers are designing wind turbine kites that would fly to heights of 30,000 feet to reach powerful winds that could be used as alternative energy sources. Read more...

Update: Oracle launches Fusion Middleware 11g

Cisco plans to offer virtual voice service

Cisco won't take on Amazon in cloud

Oracle offers ISVs monthly SaaS platform pricing

Microsoft to open two mall-sized data centers

Unisys addresses security of cloud computing

Lessons from Carnegie Mellon's in-house cloud

Virtuoso travel network picks Liquid Computing for data center

Germany's auditing board gives nod to NetSuite

More Servers and Data Center Stories

Cloud control systems tame the ether
Signifying a formless haze of computing power and storage that is somewhere "out there," computerdom's current buzzword is as difficult to get one's arms around as a real cloud. A seemingly limitless pool of processors and memory and disk space, and you just scoop out what you need. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Cisco won't take on Amazon in cloud
Cisco Systems won't try to compete with pay-as-you-go cloud computing providers such as Amazon, and instead will sell its infrastructure to those companies and provide its own software as a service.

How Raytheon's IT Department Helps Meet Green Goals
Corporate sustainability programs that address efficiencies throughout an organization will make the greatest impact over time. Following that premise, Raytheon's sustainability initiative involves a green IT strategy as one of several ways the company is reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. The company has realized its initial greenhouse gas reduction goal, with Raytheon IT delivering measurable environmental and operational improvements as part of the enterprisewide effort.

Forrester Bucks Wisdom on Cloud Computing
A couple of weeks ago Forrester released a report on cloud computing, based upon a survey of small and large enterprises located in North America and Europe. I was particularly interested in its findings as it addressed the question of private (internal) cloud computing, given my recent CIO.com blog series, "The Case Against Cloud Computing."

Energy-efficient servers earn a star -- but so what?
The Energy Star program for servers is a good first step, most agree, but it measures energy use only under limited circumstances and does not include popular hardware types, like blade servers -- at least not yet.

How and Why to Create Data Destruction Policies
We are collecting data at ever-increasing rates as the costs of data storage go down. Why get rid of our beloved data when we can always buy more storage space? Some companies like Google love collecting and working with data, and these companies will rarely or never get rid of their data. But odds are your company is not like Google and does not need all of that old data. This column will focus on crafting an effective data destruction policy.

Hands-on with Windows Server 2008 R2: The Windows File Classification Infrastructure
Windows file classification lets administrators set up rules that apply and enforce classifications of data stored on the network, whether it's by file type, name, location or other criteria. Then Windows can automatically apply policy according to those classifications.

Salesforce.com: 6 Areas To Watch After Rollout
By now, most organizations have used some sort of a SaaS application, so there's familiarity with the basics of hosted software. But CRM applications are by their nature much more likely to be integrated with other business-critical applications, either behind your firewall or in hosted data centers, so they present some new challenges. Furthermore, applications with really rich web-services APIs (such as Salesforce CRM) can surface operational, policy, and process issues in your IT organization.

Microsoft SharePoint vs. Enterprise 2.0 Start-ups
This week represents an important inflection point for the Enterprise 2.0 market, a set of software vendors that sell social networking technologies to businesses. Analysts say the number of competitors will consolidate in the coming year as Microsoft captures greater market share. The start-ups that will survive must carve out a longterm place for themselves by building applications that are far more innovative and cheaper than those of the incumbent software giant. In addition, they must convince businesses that Microsoft SharePoint's "good enough" strategy is not, in fact, good enough for today's enterprise collaboration needs

Busting the nine myths of cloud computing
If you're considering a cloud strategy, don't get fooled by these false premises.

Editors' Picks

Don't trash your tired old desktop PC -- pump it up with a few inexpensive upgrades. Microsoft's Windows 7 pricing plans may derail efforts to make users move away from XP and forget Vista. Also see Preston Gralla: Don't believe the $120 Windows 7 pricetag. Trademark owners say cybersquatting on the Web has gone too far -- and they're pushing back. The goal is to have all the original Lunar Orbiter image files processed by February, producing a moon atlas with a resolution higher than anything previously seen.

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