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Enterprise Linux: How Oracle Support Differentiates Itself in a Commodity Market Oracle

Linux has proven itself to be a versatile solution across a variety of hardware architectures to support workloads ranging from basic infrastructure services to enterprise-class database deployments. Today, Linux is commonly found operating in some capacity within most larger organizations, and over time, it has captured many of the same workloads that previously were deployed aboard RISC platforms running Unix operating systems. Read IDC's report on how Oracle support differentiates itself in a commodity market.

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Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up HP

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IT professionals like the idea of consolidating hundreds of servers into only a few, but it takes a lot more to cost effectively consolidate and virtualize servers. Watch this six-chapter webcast, "Reduce Complexity and Cost - Windows Server Consolidation with Virtualization" to learn how to effectively consolidate your Windows environment. One of the themes explored includes the characteristics of an orchestrated data center, which includes: Resource management, dynamic provisioning, job management, policy management, accounting and auditing and real-time availability. Learn more about orchestration and much more today. Register below to learn more and be entered to win an Archos 605 Portable Media Player.

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Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

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Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost -- and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

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Cloud computing: what it will take for start-ups to succeed

For starters, they'll need to contend with Google, IBM and Amazon
By Ken Elefant , Network World , 05/05/2008
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With Google's recent launch of its App Engine, and with the likes of IBM and Amazon having staked claims, cloud computing is clearly a major development in the IT landscape. The benefits are obvious, enabling enterprises to scale rapidly with a level of performance previously available to only the largest companies — all without adding equipment, software or staff.

It's early in the game — consistent definitions aren't even agreed upon in the industry. Is utility computing really in the cloud? What about managed services? The major companies in the category will certainly drive the definition of cloud computing. But as usual, expect start-up companies to disrupt it.

So far, the market entrants have played to their strengths. Amazon is leveraging its tremendous computing capabilities by providing customers with a virtual computing environment via EC2. Salesforce  is riding its software-as-a-service (SaaS) wave with Force.com — dubbing it "platform-as-a-service" — giving developers tools for creating business applications on-demand and without software. Pile on offerings from Sun, Yahoo, Ariba and more, all doing what they do best.

That still leaves plenty of room on the field for start-ups to do something different, which is what they do best. Unlike slow-moving market leaders, early-stage companies have the uncanny ability to identify beachheads adjacent to the market opportunities being established by the big boys. And more than that, they know how to move fast, growing right along with the niche market need they've chosen to address, turning that into a legitimate market which, in retrospect, looks obvious to everyone else. So what might be those beachheads in cloud computing?

To find their entry point, entrepreneurs will first need to determine what, in the enterprise infrastructure, can be cleaved off, or outsourced -- something the other players are not addressing yet. Cloud computing start-ups should work to find enterprise computing requirements that meet the following criteria:

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Start-ups are behind alreadyBy Michael_Sheehan on May 5, 2008, 6:10 pmGreat article. It's probably one of the first to talk about start-ups tackling cloud computing as an offering rather than as an end-user. You hit it right on when...

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