New Products
Wolfram Research's new gridMathematica 7 enables users to utilize the built-in parallelization capabilities of its Mathematica application and, thus, run more tasks in parallel on more powerful hardware and clusters. gridMathematica adds extra computation kernels and automated network distribution tools, allowing users to achieve faster execution “without changing a line of code”, says Wolfram. Three different products are part of the series: gridMathematica Local, gridMathematica Server and Wolfram Lightweight Grid Manager. gridMathematica requires Mathematica and is available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
More so than nearly all its rivals, IBM has made “going green” a core mission. Not only has IBM rolled out its “Big Green” and “Big Green Linux” initiatives, but it also has now published one of the few books on green IT, called The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment. In the book, IBM senior staffer, John Lamb, tackles both macro and micro issues surrounding the reduction of the environmental impact caused by IT operations. At the macro scale, Lamb looks at the role of governments and electrical utilities and the importance of good regulations and incentives. At the micro level, Lamb examines the nuts and bolts of reducing energy consumption in the data center, covering organizational issues, ROI, procurement, asset disposal, measurement of energy consumption, virtualization, cooling equipment and much more. Finally, the author explores case studies of all types and sizes worldwide, including IBM's own $1 billion Big Green initiative.
The crew at Super Talent has been busy preparing not one but two new families of solid-state drives (SSDs), the UltraDrive ME and UltraDrive LE. The company calls the lines “next-generation SSDs” that offer “noticeable performance gains at boot time, application loading and accessing data”. Although both lines offer 32GB, 64GB and 128GB variants, the UltraDrive ME line offers an additional 256GB model. The UltraDrive LE is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230MB/s, while the UltraDrive ME comes in at 200MB/s. Regarding maximum sequential write speed, the UltraDrive LE clocks 170MB/s, and the UltraDrive ME at 160MB/s. Super Talent says that the drives are designed to be “compatible with all known operating systems”, including Linux, DOS and Windows.
Making the area of virtualization even more interesting is ScaleMP's updated Versatile SMP (vSMP) Foundation 2.0 virtualization solution. vSMP Foundation aggregates multiple industry-standard off-the-shelf x86 servers (rackmounted or blade systems) into one single virtual high-end system for the HPC market. This new release of vSMP, says ScaleMP, offers “significantly enhanced performance” through support for the forthcoming Intel Nehalem processor family, as well as enhanced enterprise-class features, such as increased high-availability, partitioning of a single virtual system into multiple isolated environments, extended remote management, enhanced profiling capabilities and support for Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel HBAs.
Compiere ERP—a comprehensive open-source application that automates business processes, such as accounting, purchasing, order fulfillment, manufacturing, warehousing and CRM—is now available on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The new Compiere Cloud Edition is delivered with a complete technology stack—that is, an operating system, application server and database that can be deployed on Amazon EC2 “in a matter of minutes”. Compiere says that the “convenient virtual computing environment” reduces the cost of ERP deployment by eliminating up-front capital costs for hardware and software and reducing ongoing IT infrastructure support costs. The company also notes the advantages of cloud computing, which allows IT departments to increase capacity or add capabilities “on the fly” without investing in new hardware, personnel or software by accessing virtual servers available over the Internet to handle computing needs. A range of subscriptions include application support, service packs and access to Compiere automated upgrade tools.
Publisher No Starch Press touts Justin Seitz's new book Gray Hat Python as “the first Python book written for security analysts”. Subtitled “Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers”, the book explains the intricacies of using Python to assist in security analysis tasks, teaching readers how to design debuggers, create powerful fuzzers, utilize open-source libraries to automate tedious tasks, interface with security tools and more. Gray Hat Python, says No Starch, covers everything from the nuts and bolts of how to use the language for basic code and DLL injection to using Python to analyze binaries and disassemble software. More than anything, however, the book reveals how superior the Python language is when it comes to hacking, reverse engineering, malware analysis and software testing.
The gist behind Black Duck Software's new Black Duck Suite is to give development organizations a comprehensive management platform for taking advantage of open-source components while addressing the associated management, compliance and security challenges. Black Duck says that its new product brings “new levels of automation and efficiency” to these tasks and “enables developers to focus on creating innovative business value instead of 're-inventing the wheel'”. Black Duck Suite is a unified framework of the company's Code Center, Export and Protex enterprise products, plus SDK with Web services API that integrates with other tools and environments. Key product features include a searchable internal catalog, a customizable approval work flow and a comprehensive KnowledgeBase of open-source information.
Rounding out the trio of memorable color + object company names is BlueStripe Software, which recently released version 2.0 of FactFinder, an application for staging, deploying and managing business-critical applications. Now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, FactFinder enables “unsurpassed intelligence into the performance and behavior” of applications, allowing users to understand their structure and relationship to each other, efficiently manage them, identify performance issues and perform triage to resolve issues. Key new features include automatic discovery and mapping, health and performance measurement and service-level driven triage.
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