The Little Geeni

According to various analysts, the number one rival for Microsoft is Google, but a strong candidate for the second position is a company that is scarcely known outside the technology industry, called VMware. Both companies provide similar challenge to Microsoft, by potentially undermining the dominance of its most profitable products, desktop software and operating systems.

While Google provides options for the Microsoft’s popular Office products like free advertising-supported software for e-mail, word processing, calendars and spreadsheets online, VMware allows a computer to run two or more operating systems at once. Its software virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, a network adapter and hard disk adapters, and hence helps both the hardware and the operating system.

The feature discusses various reasons for the VMware’s challenge to Microsoft.

Reasons for the threat:

1.    According to various reports, more than 80 percent of virtualized computing workloads ran on VMware at the end of last year. And the remaining share was further divided in Microsoft, Citrix Systems’ Xen, Virtual Iron and others. Hence, in virtualization market, Microsoft has a long way to go.

In July 2009, Microsoft had introduced its HyperV virtual machine in Windows Server 2008 and some new features will catch VMware with October launch. A research firm projected that Microsoft’s share of installed virtual machine software would increase to 29% by the end of 2012, from 8% at the end of last year. But, VMware had announced that it already signed more than 21,000 new customers in the first half of 2009.

2.    Last month, the company had acquired SpringSource at an estimated cost of $420 million. SpringSource is a maker of open-source software development tools, which analyze and tweak the performance of applications. The acquisition of SpringSource would allow VMware to built applications like Microsoft Windows.

3.    Paul Maritz, a former senior executive at Microsoft, took over as chief executive VMware and adds an edge to its bottom-up challenge to Microsoft. In the late 1990s, he was regarded as Microsoft’s third-ranked executive, after Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer. In January, he was joined by Tod Nielsen, former Microsoft executive, who became VMware’s chief operating officer. Hence, the company has an edge over its competitors.

4.    VMware has been also planning to enter the desktop and notebook market. It will introduce new technologies by next year for better handling for high-end graphics and will allow users to do work in the absence of any network connection.

5.    VMware, Intel partner to sell VMware vSphere 4: Earlier this month, VMware Inc has announced an agreement with Intel to sell VMware vSphere 4 with Intel products starting from Q4, 2009. After the deal, Intel will provide VMware vSphere 4 through its worldwide distributor network to resellers and system integrators that service small and midsized businesses (SMBs).

6.    VMware had reported $1.9 billion in revenue last year, while Microsoft reported first revenue drop since going public in 1986.

Conclusion

In 2007, VMware had successfully introduced its initial public offering, which was one of the largest technologies I.P.O. since Google. Now, various PC makers are voting for VMware with the precious asset of hardware real estate. VMware is the market-share leader specializing in virtualization software and its majority owned by EMC Corporation. Hence, VMware is definitely a threat to the software giant.

Information Technology Inc.‏, Latest, Microsoft, threat, VMware

Bangalore, April 5, 2010: Microsoft has announced a slew of new and exciting releases that will help you take your code to the next level in 2010. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.NET at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. At GIDS.NET, 0n 20 April 2010 in Bangalore, expert speakers will address a wide range of topics, including .NET 4.0, Silverlight 3, WCF 4, Visual Studio 2010, REST, Windows Workflow 4, Thread Synchronization, ASP.NET 4.0, SQL Server 2008 R2, LINQ, Unit Testing, CLR & C# 4.0, .NET Patterns, WPF 4, F#, Windows Azure, ADO.NET, Entity Framework, Debugging, T-SQL Tips & Tricks, and more. At GIDS.Web, on 21 April 2010, several more interesting topics such as Silverlight, SL RIA Web services, Microsoft AJAX, ASP.NET Ajax, tips and tricks for building Front-ends for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC, and so on. At GIDS.Workshops, on 23 April 2010, expert trainers hold intensive and interactive tutorials of 3 hour duration each on Silverlight, Ajax, JSON, Agile development and more. Read on for details on the Microsoft computing technologies addressed at GIDS.

On 20 April, Manuvir Das, who took Windows Azure from its first days as project Red Dog to its commercial launch and now heads MS’ Remote Desktop Virtualization team, will conduct a keynote on cloud computing paradigm and what it means for developers. In the second keynote of the day, Amazon Web Services’ Simone Brunozzi holds forth on the fundamental principles of Cloud Computing, and how they apply to work and business.

Stephen Forte, the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, will begin the day explaining how to build data driven, n-tier Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with Silverlight 4.0. In his second talk, he demonstrates how to properly architect and deploy a BI application using a mix of some exciting new tools and some old familiar ones — OLTP, OLAP, ETL, Microsoft Excel’s PowerPivot 2010, data analysis application and data visualization tools are all covered. Stephen’s third talk at GIDS 2010 delves into the various techniques of sharing code between the Silverlight client and its ASP.NET Web server and their pros and cons. Some techniques work better in C#, others in VB while others are simpler with a little extra tooling or code-generation.

In the workshop on 23 April, Stephen, who is also a certified Scrum master, gives attendees a jump start for taking a certified scrum master exam, introducing Scrum, stepping through real world applications of the Scrum methodology, negotiating with the business, estimation and team dynamics, how to use Scrum in small and large organisations and consulting environments, using Scrum with virtual teams and in off-shoring, and the tools we will use for Agile development, including planning poker, unit testing, and much more.

Venkat Subramaniam delves into what the functional style of programming offers and how it can be utilised using the F# language on the .NET CLR.  Mehfuz Hossain build a VS 2010 addin from ground up using the .Net 4.0 Features, Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) and the Visual Studio 2010 Managed Addin Framework (MAF). In his second talk, Mehfuz shows how to access features like taskbar integration, jumplists, libraries, sensor platform to build a Windows 7 application.

Vinod Malhotra explains how Visual Studio 2010 helps testers quickly create complex multi-machine test environments, file rich actionable bugs faster and leverage test impact information to focus on right set of tests, developers replay the code execution to quickly reproduce a bug and find the root cause, and create automated functional tests and automate build-deploy-test automation to catch regressions. Sachin Vinod Rathi explain how VS 2010′s out of the box support for SharePoint templates makes it easy to design, develop and deploy SharePoint Applications, Web Parts from within Visual Studio.

In his session at GIDS.NET Bijoy Singhal shows how to create a service based application in VS 2010 using .NET 4.0 – specifically the advancements in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflows Foundation (WF) targeted at the AppFabric, and covers how to package, deploy and manage the application in IIS/WAS using the new capabilities. Bijoys’s second talk is an in-depther on Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) and how it can be leveraged to quickly build a system based on Workflows to handle the various business rules and processes.

Vinod Jagannathan explains the who, why how and what of SQL Azure and conducts live demo of applications running on the cloud and best practices while Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu explians further about Windows Azure AppFabric.

Vineet Bhatia’s focused session covers what is new in WCF 4.0 and how to configure communications across different protocols and platforms through the use of WCF. Vinod Kumar teaches writing and tuning queries and programming with T-SQL in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Chaitra Nagaraj explains how to leverage the ASP.NET AJAX Library Beta, jQuery and AJAX Control Toolkit in ASP.NET applications.

Harish Ranganathan demonstrates how to take an existing ASP.NET Application that uses a SQL Server backend and migrate the application to Windows Azure. His second session, on 20 April, focuses on creating a 3 tier application with Data Access Layer using ADO.NET Entity Framework, Middle tier using WCF RIA Services and UI layer using ASP.NET Webforms.

Alok Jain presents an overview of the Windows Phone 7 application platform, developer tools, application frameworks, toolsets to rapidly build impactful applications for Windows Phone 7 series, and support for Silverlight and XNA. Reddy Duggempudi delves deeper explaining the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform, what it takes to build phone apps using Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Expression Blend, and the new input paradigms including multi-touch, software keyboard, accelerometer and microphone.

Janakiram MSV explains how a Java developer can leverage the Windows Azure Hosted Services and Storage Services for deploying and running applications on the cloud platform and utilising the storage using Windows Azure storage SDK. Praveen Srivatsa focuses on architecting and designing Java applications to leverage the cloud metaphor and the benefits of cloud hosted services and, perhaps more importantly, where it does not benefit.

Pandurang Nayak shows how to use Silverlight Web Services to build rich Internet apps. He conducts another session on using jQuery and Microsoft AJAX to build rich user experience for ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC based web applications. Nahas Mohammed holds a demo-intensive session on how to consolidate hosting infrastructure by providing a single environment to host ASP.Net and PHP applications side-by-side in IIS.

If you are a developer, programmer, software engineer and/or architect who creates applications, write code, or develops websites leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework, Visual Studio, SQL Server, jQuery, Visual Studio Team System, ADO.NET, Silverlight, WCF, WPF, RESTful Services, and more, Great Indian Developer Summit is one event you don’t want to miss. Attend Great Indian Developer Summit to gain the information, education and solutions you seek. From post-conference workshops, breakout sessions by expert instructors, keynotes by industry heavyweights, enhanced networking opportunities, and more. for more information, visit: http://www.developersummit.com.

About Great Indian Developer Summit

Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India’s software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials – GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore.

At GIDS you’ll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world.

For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/

A Saltmarch Media Press Release
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.htaccess 2010, Azure, Center, Conference, Definitive, India's, Jquery, Microsoft, More, Silverlight, Stage, Take, Technology

Another excellent tool that’s freely available to Windows Vista administrators (or anyone else, for that matter) is the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA). This tool scans a system and quickly identifies security holes such as missing software patches or accounts with a blank or weak password.

Better yet, it recommends corrective action. The only bad news of sorts is that it’s not built into Windows Vista. You have to download this one from the Microsoft web site. The newest version of this tool at the time of this writing was released in May of 2008, Version 2.1. This updated version provides additional features which are detailed at the Microsoft website.

However, legacy Microsoft products are not supported by MBSA 2.1. Because of this, Microsoft has teamed-up with Shavlik Technologies to offer a free companion tool for MBSA 2.1. This will allow users of MBSA 2.01 to still receive security updates.

For the MBSA 2.01, the install steps are straightforward; just follow the steps in the wizard. During installation, the MBSA places a shortcut on the desktop by default. To launch the tool and perform a scan, follow these steps:

Double-click the desktop icon, and then, from the MBSA home page, choose Scan a Computer. Note here that admins can also use the MBSA to scan multiple computers in a network from a central location. In the Computer to Scan page, you should see the local machine listed if you’ve chosen the “Scan a computer” option. (The other selection produces a page from which you can select a range of machines.) Furthermore, the options in this screen let you specify exactly what components get checked during the scan. Once you verify the machine to scan, click the “Start scan” link. You’ll now see a Scanning page with a progress bar that can take several minutes to complete. When the scan finishes, you’ll see a report screen.

As you can see, this provides extremely valuable information to administrators who are interested in doing everything they can to stop problems before they start. For example, the administrator of this machine has been very diligent about installing necessary software updates, it seems, and has gotten passing grades in most areas of computer security. But the MBSA scan generates a failing grade…how is this possible? The MBSA makes it easy to investigate the exact nature of the failing grade by clicking the “Result details” link, revealing the dialog box. In this case it reveales a very significant (yet usually hidden) threat: local user account passwords are weak, thus generating the failing grade.

If you’d like to get my book “Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide” by Brian Culp, (or any of my other books and tutorials), you can pick it up at my website, www.TheAnswerHub.com or at most major book chains. In addition, I’m always happy to provide additional assistance for free (within reason, mind you…don’t go thinking this is some sort of a free ride). Visit me at my website and submit your questions to me. I’ll get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.

Up Next: in the conclusion of this 5-part series, we’ll be discussing the removal of malicious software using the Malicious Software Removal Tool within Windows Vista.

Troubleshooting Analyzer, Baseline, Microsoft, Part, Security, Troubleshooting, Using, Vista, Windows

Computer and Internet without any doubt has made our lifestyle easier and accessible round the globe, but with this boon there is always a threat which has taken the front sheet in out conscious threats regarding the security. Each and every minute if you use your computer for your business presentation, financial details, communicating with your client and what so ever a security concern always raises the alarm. Here in this article we are going to take on the issue and try to explore the ways as of how we can play it safe with Microsoft Windows XP Administrative Tools.

There are several operating system available in the market but the commonly used one is the Microsoft Windows XP. Microsoft Windows XP has 2 versions Microsoft Windows XP Home and Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP professional has more administrative tools as compare to other the one.

There are several Administrative Tools in Windows XP which can be used to impose security on your computer support system lets see them one by one but before that here is a list
User Account .
Computer Management
Event Viewer
Device Manager
Services
Group Policy Management
Microsoft Management Console
Registry Editor

Here is a brief about them

User Account:
One of the major Administrative feature of the Microsoft Windows XP is the User account, only the user with the administrative account has right to create or provide privileges to different user accounts on the computer system ie the Administrator has right to make accounts having administrative privileges. So manage the computer users according to their precedence and what short of rights and privileges to grant.

Computer Management:
Computer management is one of the common admin tool , having a lot of features in it, For Example Event Viewer, Shared Folder , Local Users and Computers, Performance Logs and Alerts, Devices Manager . Here is a brief about Event Viewer and Device Manager

Event Viewer:
With the Event Viewer the Admin can keep track of the event occurring in the computer. This feature helps in keeping track of all this issue , with the computer, suppose the computer gets freeze while installing or doing anything , we can keep track of the possible reason for the issue. And start the troubleshooting according to that.

Device Manager:
This is the another feature available with the Microsoft Windows XP , with the device manager we call keep track of the hardware in the computer , and Troubleshoot possible issues with the hardware for example cases with drivers , etc

Services:
All the applications need some sort of services to work, these services work in the background, we can access this by Run >> services.msc, In a popup windows you will find all the services present in the computer. For Example consider the case of windows update, for windows update there are several services needed, for example RPC ( remote procedure call ) & for the printer services are print spooler . So you can track each and every service running on your system from here and handle any unauthorized or suspicious one. One can also free some memory and CPU usage with checking the services way of starting which can be either set manually or with the windows startup. Starting them manually save your resource allocation for the time frame you don’t demand them.

Group policy Management:
Group policy Management, is one of the most common administrative feature which enable us to impose any of the restrictions at the group level .To get this feature follow the steps Run >> gpedit, this will bring you with a windows popup which has entries like allow or disable to be imposed .this feature is only available in the Microsoft Windows support
.

Microsoft Management Console:
MMC is one of the features which can be used to track and get back any of the default features of operating system which has been uninstalled or has been lost by any of the means. We can access this feature by Run >> mmc >> file >> Add snap in

Registry Editor:
Registry is among one of delegate thing in the operating system and amongst the most important administrative tool in the Microsoft Windows XP. Whenever we are adding or removing any program from the computer either the entry in the registry is created or removed.

Security and threats can be handled and maintained if we are using these admin tools properly.

Troubleshooting About, administrative, Microsoft, Tools, Windows

Computer troubleshooting is in many ways more art than science; it’s more of a marriage between your basic computer understanding and all the peculiarities of your specific environment. Truth be told, this series of articles actually possesses very little capability in terms of helping you troubleshoot your network. What it can do, however, is get you pointed in the right direction so that you have a better idea of the troubleshooting resources that are at your fingertips within Vista.

Of course, there’s no way any computer article can possibly foresee every possible computer troubleshooting scenario. If you want to really know whether a particular troubleshooting approach will work, my best advice is to give it a try. It’s just a machine, after all, and you aren’t going to break it with a few clicks of the mouse.

OK, you might break it, but if you follow some of the advice laid out in this article, you shouldn’t be able to do anything that you can’t undo. Here, we focus mainly on some of the troubleshooting tools that Windows Vista places in the hands of the administrator. As always, the focus is mainly on what’s new: we will examine a new utility called Problem Reports and Solutions, and I’ll bet you don’t need to read much further to guess what the nature of that one is. Also, we’ll explore some tools that an administrator might already know from previous operating systems like the System Restore utility, and we’ll look at situations in which System Restore just might save the day.

In this 5-part series of articles, we will discuss the various tools available for troubleshooting within Windows Vista. As I’m sure you’re aware, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. If you’d like to get my entire book “Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide” by Brian Culp, Publisher: O’Reilly, ISBN-13: 978-0-59-652959-8 (or any of my 20+ other books and tutorials), you can pick it up at my website, www.TheAnswerHub.com or at most major book chains. In addition, I’m always happy to provide additional assistance for free (within reason, mind you…don’t go thinking this is some sort of a free ride). Visit me at my website and submit your questions to me. I’ll get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.

Up next: we start with a look at a troubleshooting task that is meant to prevent many problems from happening in the first place. It’s the Vista Automatic Updates, which Vista admins should absolutely use to enforce good preventive health.

Troubleshooting Introduction, Microsoft, Part, Series, Troubleshooting, Vista, Windows

Most people purchase computers to run programs – whether it is to send email, browse the web, meet friends of girlfriends on msn messenger, do office work or just play solitaire.

People buy computers to use programs for their functionality not to run operating systems be in Microsoft Windows, the new Microsoft Vista product , the Mac Operations Systems or the various Linux Operating Systems – be they Ubuntu Linux , Mandiva , Knoppix or Debian.

At the heart of most computer users is functionality and usability. It is as simple as that. It is an interesting situation that the Microsoft Corporation controls the vast lion’s share of the computer operating system market. Indeed it even has a major share holding of the next player in line – Apple with the Macintosh OS (Operating System).

What are the issues?

1) Linux is not really free. Linux, in its various flavors or distros, is given free of charge, whether it is on a cd, DVD or downloaded. You can install the program on your own compute or various computers , at no charge to yourself whatsoever

This is in direct contrast to a commercial product such as Microsoft Windows or the new Microsoft Vista which you to purchase a boxed version or a valid license which comes with most computer systems purchased. This license which comes on most new computers as a matter of course could be referred to as the “Microsoft Computer Tax” and is not an option you can forego, to reduce the purchase of your new compute – whether or not you wish to use another operating system such as Linux.

Linux is given free of charge to install. This is not a shareware or time limited version of the product which requires a registration fee after a period of time.

If you require product support or training commercial organizations do exist which will charge you for support of that product or for training or both. Indeed it can be said that Microsoft itself charges for product support, Symantec the antivirus / security organization charges for basic support by product, subscription fees – sometimes automatic subscription fees and 900 phone number and charge card “Priority Support”.

Indeed you would not expect your local school or technical college to provide computer and compute software training free of charge.

2) Linux is complex and will force you to learn the Linux command line,

Not true simple as that. The various Linux distros all have GUI (Graphic User Interfaces) just like Microsoft Windows, Windows used to come as command line DOS. Windows users use pull down windows to operate the software. So can and do most Linux users

3) Compared to Windows , Installing Linux is Difficult

- The vast majority of computer users are computer neophytes and beginners.

These computer users purchase computers with the operations system Microsoft Windows or the Macintosh Operating System installed on their new computers. These people could not install the Windows Operating system and the device drivers necessary if their life depended on it. How the situation of a Linux is based computer any different.

It is only a matter of time until new computers come preinstalled with the Linux operating system. Imagine if Henry Ford had been told not to build new cars since there were few good roads available in America.

4) My Computer Hardware Just Works Under Windows

5) Again untrue in many cases and soon to be less of an issue as more and more computers will come preinstalled with a Linux operating system. Already Dell Computer (which was a Microsoft stalwart) is selling Linux based laptops. Interestingly the response to the Ubuntu Linux dell notebooks is quite positive, If you think Linux hardware compatibility is an issue try upgrading to the new Microsoft Vista from your previous Microsoft Windows product. You will find to your surprise that few if little of computer hardware are supported. You may have upgraded to the new Vista and found you have either no sound, good video or even internet connections via your network adapter device or wireless network adapter. And try undoing your upgrade to get back to your working windows version – it cannot be done.

Lastly you may say I run Windows since all of the programs I use are available only on the Windows operations system – since that is the dominant player in the market. You may well surmise that since Windows is the more than dominant player in the computer OS market that software developers write their product almost exclusively for the windows operations system and that market.

This is true. If you are using a specialized product for your job, industry, situation or preference you may well be locked in.

In the end most people buy and use computers for functionality and use. Most people use their computers for internet browsing , communication – whether it by email or messenger services (M.S.N. , Yahoo , Skype , Eyeball Chat) , downloading and burning music and in more than many cases for playing nothing more than computer games such as simple solitaire.

In these cases the functionality of Linux and its program base easily allows for this. Indeed many of the cutting edge programs and computer services come out of left field by computer software developers and enthusiasts whose preference of Computer Operating System is guess what – Linux in its various forms.

Linux Free, Linux, Microsoft, Only, Operating, System, Tell, They, Windows

Microsoft Help is a literal term used by computer support providers to envelop a variety of support options for products including operating systems and office suites offered by Microsoft. These companies offer technical support for PC via phone or online.

Companies dealing in computer technical support have highly trained technicians who get to the root of the consumer’s technical issues and fix them quickly. They hold the expertise to troubleshoot computer or networking errors ranging from simple to complex.

Apart from offering Microsoft help, computer support includes the following services under its umbrella:

Network Setup and Troubleshooting: You may contact computer support providers to establish your home networking system which can certainly be a time-consuming task for any non technical person. However, the experts at computer support companies can set up secure connections to your PC just like magic. Also, their troubleshooting services ensure efficient working of your connections.

PC Optimization: pc optimization services with companies dealing in computer support let you to increase your productivity by tuning your PC to work smarter. The array of services generally include performing a system clean up, cleaning temporary files, start up files, up gradation of existing antivirus and antispyware software programs, browser configuration etc.

Virus and Spyware Removal: Technicians offering computer support treat virus menace in the best possible way by scanning your PC, identifying and eliminating viruses.

Data Backup Services: Prevent the incidents of data loss due to hard disk crash or virus attack by availing the data backup services. Some companies like http://www.iyogi.co.uk are planning to provide data backup facilities for servers in near future.

Software Support: Software errors are highly frustrating and can occur at any time while you are working on your computer. You may consider speaking to computer experts to get powerful solutions for all your issues with software applications. Most computer support vendors offer software support services as a part of their service package.

Green PC Support: Many computer support companies that are working to reduce PC energy consumption and CO2 emissions as part of its commitment to energize the environment and save energy. They help you operate your computer in a more environmentally friendly manner.

Troubleshooting help, Microsoft, Services, Troubleshooting