Software: Interviews

IT management software vendor, SolarWinds, is about to introduce its latest Synthetic End User Monitor (SEUM) which supports Real User Monitors (RUM) to monitor networks. The company also most recently opened up a new head office, based in Brisbane. SolarWinds senior vice-president and general manager of the Asia-Pacific, Doug Hibberd, spoke to ARN about the company’s achievements, latest product release and future plans.

With the rapid evolution of technology and the gradual expansion of Australia’s NBN, significant developments are taking place in areas such as the digital delivery of medical service. Hot on the heels of CSC’s acquisition of iSoft, ARN spoke to CSC Australia national director for health services, Lisa Pettigrew, on what lies ahead for eHealth in Australia.

TrackITOnline's Phil Lancaster, talks about running a niche distribution company and its future plans

Google shook the search market last week with the launch of Instant, a new feature that lets the company's search engine refresh results on the fly as people type their queries.

Calling itself the 21st century distributor, NewLease is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist with a sole focus on the service provider community. It facilitates and implements SaaS or subscription licensing models in Australia, New Zealand and India. Company chief Doug Tutus said the company - which was initially established as a service provider - is well placed to attack the SaaS market, having positioned itself early in the game and fine-tuned its expertise. JENNIFER O'BRIEN reports.

To some, 13 is an unlucky number. In fact, there are people are so frightened by it that the fear of 13 has been given a name – Triskaidekaphobia. Express Data is not Triskaidekaphobic. Now in its 13th year of trading under its current name, the company has sailed itself through the global financial crisis with a steady hand, and emerged on the other side as ARN’s Software Distributor of the Year for 2009.

CIOs think of Symantec as a company that buys its way into new markets. Over the past decade the Cupertino, California, vendor has snatched up about 30 companies as it's evolved from an antivirus and tools seller to an aspiring enterprise infrastructure vendor.

Microsoft and EMC recently converged in New York City to announce a three-year extension of their alliance to work together on enterprise virtualisation, storage, security and content management products.

On this occasion we speak to Steve Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell, or sh. In the early 1970s Bourne was at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge, England working on a compiler for Algol68 as part of his PhD work in dynamical astronomy. This work paved the way for him to travel to IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in New York in 1973, in part to undertake research into compilers. Through this work, and a series of connections and circumstance, Bourne got to know people at Bell Labs who then offered him a job in the Unix group in 1975. It was during this time Bourne developed sh.

Red Hat managing director, Max McLaren, talks to ANDREW HENDRY about the year that was and what lies ahead for the software vendor in 2009.

When you already have a successful channel model which utilises all the traditional communication mediums, how do boost your ability to impart information and knowledge? Blog and start your own TV show. At least that’s what Microsoft has done.

With hundreds of thousands of software SKUs to manage from a broad range of publishers, the task of distributing software licensing to the channel is a tough one. But for Express Data, it’s a core part of doing business.

SoftGen general manager, Guy Coles, joined the distributor earlier this year and has been steadily expanding the business into new product areas. He spoke to ARN about his background in security, the company’s growth plans and his love of the industry.

Red Hat recently expanded its JBoss certified ISV program, what does this mean?

Recent outages affecting Google Apps have received a disproportionately large amount of coverage from the technology press, resulting in a misperception about the stability of this hosted collaboration and communication suite.

Microsoft this week launched its cloud computing environment, Windows Azure, which is the foundation of the Azure Services Platform for developing applications extending from the cloud to PCs, datacenters, phones, and the Web. Microsoft's goal is to let Windows developers transition from Windows client development to Windows cloud development, using familiar tools, both those from Microsoft and other sources such as Eclipse. Developers would continue to develop apps on their desktops, but the Azure platform would handle the app deployment in the cloud.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie has officially filled the shoes previously worn by founder and Chairman Bill Gates, stepping in as leader of the company's vast developer network, which is its lifeblood and crucial to the enormous success of Windows. Ozzie delivered Monday's keynote speech at the company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, introducing Windows Azure, a cloud-computing development and hosting environment that integrates Ozzie's vision for the future of the Web, which he began building at his company Groove Networks before he joined Microsoft.

Microsoft has been making moves on the licensing front and accommodations with open source, such as its controversial 2006 agreement with Novell pertaining to Suse Linux. Looking to elaborate on Microsoft's activities, Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft vice president and deputy general counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing, met last week with Paul Krill in San Francisco. Companies today, Gutierrez said, have become "mixed source" ventures rather than the world being divided up between open source and proprietary.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered the keynote speech at his company's London conference "Technologies to Change Your Business: How Customers Are Implementing Tomorrow's Strategies Today".

Clearly the health industry is a big focus for Microsoft, why has this come about?