Thomson Reuters looks to climb CRC league table

Business information company is implementing green projects to increase market attractiveness

Thomson Reuters, the business information company, is working on several projects designed to help it secure a leading position in the soon-to-be-implemented CRC league table.

The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, formerly known as the Carbon Reduction Commitment, is the UK’s mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme. Its web site (still branded as CSC) states: “[The] CRC performance league table will rate and compare the participants’ carbon reduction efforts. A high ranking could enhance your reputation with customers, suppliers, business partners, employees and investors alike.” … Continue Reading

Double Negative VFX studio chooses HP HPC blades

New HP servers and cooling technology boost performance while keeping power costs down

As films boast ever more intricate and pervasive digital visual effects, so visual effects houses must invest in ever more powerful computers to create and render them.

Europe’s largest provider of film visual effects, Double Negative, was forced to double its compute power, and chose to buy 256 HP ProLiant BL280 G6 blade servers, 12 HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures and the HP Modular Cooling Systems Generation 2 (MCG G2)

The company assessed offerings from Dell, HP, IBM and Sun initially but Double Negative head of infrastructure Steve Lynne explained that price was the deciding factor.

“For us, rendering kit is commodity hardware, so a lot of the features that the big vendors like to shout about are lost on us,” said Lynne. … Continue Reading

Cloud security alliance releases security certification

Dave Bailey, Computing, Thursday 29 July 2010 at 16:55:00

Scheme will ensure professionals demonstrate awareness of cloud safety

Not-for-profit organisation the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) today released a certification scheme to promote secure cloud computing.

The Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) will ensure professionals have a demonstrated awareness for securing cloud-related services, said the CSA.

A chief concern for IT managers considering cloud computing, especially public-based cloud systems, is the security of business-critical data sitting outside their own firewalls.

CSA executive director Jim Reavis said the CSA would provide a low-cost certification that establishes a robust baseline of cloud security knowledge.

“When combined with existing certifications, CCSK provides necessary assurance of user competency in this important time of transition,” said Reavis.

“We’re also thrilled to have the European Network and Information Security Agency’s support and its agreement to join our certification board,” he added.

The CSA said that online examinations would be available from 1 September 2010. It will offer discount pricing for the course of $195 (£125) for the rest of the year with regular pricing of $295 beginning in 2011.

The announcement follows the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) setting up a Cloud Backup and Restore Special Interest Group (Cloud BUR SIG).

Cloud BUR SIG promotes the adoption of cloud storage as a new delivery model that provides elastic, on-demand storage billed for usage.

Why you might need to reboot your router to see a website

Just at holiday season begins, it looks very much as if various service providers and backbone connection suppliers have been very busy.

Lots of services have had their public IP addresses updated; I am getting calls from clients whose internal systems don’t genuinely use a domain name to get to a service. It’s not uncommon for all manner of software products (including router firmware) to let you type in www.pcpro.co.uk, and then look it up at that moment and convert it to 212.100.242.151 – which is what they then store for future connection attempts. … Continue Reading

EU launches anti-trust investigation into IBM’s mainframe practices

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 26 July 2010 at 18:13:00

Probe to investigate alleged mainframe dominance abuse by Big Blue

The European Commission (EC) has initiated formal anti-trust investigations against the IBM Corporation in relation to its conduct in the mainframe market.

The EC has said it will look at two separate cases of alleged infringement of EU anti-trust rules where it sees the abuse of a dominant market position.

The first case follows complaints by emulator software vendors T3 Technologies and TurboHercules, alleging that IBM has tied mainframe hardware to its mainframe operating system. It was this hardware that the software vendors were emulating; and IBM’s alleged actions have prevented them being able to sell software that runs on the company’s operating system.

The second case sees the EC investigating the company for alleged discriminatory behaviour towards competing suppliers of mainframe maintenance services. It has launched the case on its own intiative.

The EC says that in 2009 about €8.5bn (£7.1bn) worldwide and €3bn in the European Economic Area was spent on new mainframe hardware and operating systems.

Software developer and governmental affairs professional Florian Mueller said: “I’m convinced that customers are being locked in and milked shamelessly by IBM, and I hope that the outcome of the process will result in more customer choice.”

Ironically, IBM made one of its biggest mainframe announcements of the past 20 years last week, unveiling the next generation of its mainframe hardware, zEnterprise.

According to IBM, ZEnterprise allows users to run x86 applications on server blades which could be managed by IBM’s Unified Resource Manager, announced at the same time.

The EC also said it had concerns that IBM may have engaged in anti-competitive practices with a view to foreclosing the market for maintenance services.

The commission has indicated that it may also make public the initiation of proceedings in any appropriate way, although it would inform the parties concerned before doing so.