Wachovia building 'MapQuest for the datacenter'
28822
Wachovia is working on a project of staggering scope:&#160;a 3-D map of the firm&#39;s datacenter operations.The effort has been underway for about eight months, said Jacob Hall, a Wachovia vice president and head of the company&#39;s platform design and datacenter, technology products group.To generate the 3-D models, the financial services company is using geospatial data and also partnering with a pair of vendors, Tideway Systems and Intepoint, as well as the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, which has a visualization center.Tideway makes Foundation, a tool for mapping dependencies among applications and hardware, and this week released version 7.0 of the product. Intepoint&#39;s focus is on visualization and event simulation for IT systems.Right now, Wachovia is rendering 3-D models down to the level of individual servers in buildings, Hall said. Given enough data, the system could eventually generate even more detailed models, according to Hall.Wachovia hopes the project will provide better visualization of IT assets, their power consumption, and other details; the ability to identify &quot;critical nodes&quot; in the network; and the means to predict the business impact of various scenarios, such as a power outage in a city.The company also hopes the 3-D maps will help them run a&#160;greener IT department. &quot;This gives us the facts to go out and rearchitect our systems,&quot; Hall said.However, Wachovia is not collecting data in real time. That is largely unnecessary, Hall said. &quot;It would create too much traffic, and people would just try to shut it off. I think static snapshots are good enough.&quot; One future possibility could be to provide real-time data on demand, he said.Hall said there are plans to make the tool Web-based, allowing for integrations with other data types, such as IT trouble ticket information.Drue Reeves, vice president and director of datacenter strategies with Burton Group, said the value of modeling datacenters in 3-D form probably depends on an organization&#39;s size. &quot;I think it&#39;s for the larger enterprises. For the guys who have NOCs [network operations centers], it&#39;d be very useful. But I do wonder if it would be a little pricey for the average SMB,&quot; he said.Ultimately, Reeves noted, Wachovia&#39;s effort involves system visualization, not the actual instrumentation of IT devices: &quot;It&#39;s more for the person than the machine.&quot; But IT departments should consider any means that could help them run their operations more efficiently, he stressed.
47949
You can look at a U.S. map with a marker for each IT facility and receive instant reporting if there is a problem with the availability, performance or security of one of your systems.
677140
HIGH POINT -- Polo Ralph Lauren wants to build a data center in High Point and has asked the High Point City Council for $240,000 in public incentives.
365505
This article provides an overview of Linux-based tools for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including a quick take on the ESRI's ArcReader.  Future articles will explore this and other individual tools in greater depth. The Story of a Map Lover, GIS User read more
737575
Microsoft will provide the technology that allows visitors to the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) to first take a virtual tour of historic documents and map out what exhibits they want to see, the two organizations announced Thursday.The project will include the Myloc.gov Web site, to be launched in April, linked to information kiosks at the LOC&#39;s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. Interactive galleries will allow visitors to the Myloc.gov site to view and sometimes interact with items such as a rough draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible, and a 1507 map that first used the word &quot;America.&quot;The new technology is designed to assist people who want to visit the library in person, said John Sampson, director of federal government affairs at Microsoft. Visitors to the Web site will be able to bookmark areas of interest, then use a bar code at the LOC&#39;s information kiosks that will point them to more information in person, he said. Visitors both online and on-site can also engage in a game called Knowledge Quest that sends them searching for clues in the LOC&#39;s art and artifacts, Microsoft said.The library has thought hard about how to bridge the online experience with an in-person visit. Sampson said. The on-site kiosks will help visitors build a custom tour of the library, he said.The library&#39;s plan is to cycle online exhibits in and out but gradually make more information available online, Sampson said. &quot;What they&#39;ve realized is they have a vast collection of amazing, historic artifacts, documents and manuscripts that would take far too long to put on display,&quot; he said. &quot;To say they have great content ... is almost an understatement. It&#39;s the nation&#39;s most prized treasures.&quot;Microsoft is donating software, funding, and training to the project, and in return, the company gets to work with one of the premier libraries in the world, Sampson said.&quot;For us, it&#39;s a unique showcase to show the breadth and the depth of the technology,&quot; said Keith Hurwitz, a platform strategy advisor at Microsoft.Microsoft is helping put the library&#39;s &quot;unparalleled educational resources literally at the fingertips of students and lifelong learners alike, both on site at the Library of Congress and virtually through the Web,&quot; Librarian of Congress James Billington said in a statement. &quot;The Library of Congress and the causes of inspiration and creativity will benefit immensely from this act of generosity and expertise.&quot;Interactive presentation software for kiosks will run on Windows Vista and its Web equivalent, built using Microsoft Silverlight. The project will also use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Web content management software.The library&#39;s Exploring the Early Americas&quot; exhibition, which opened Dec. 13, offers a sampling of the new experience.
582718
Thanks to such free mapping sites as MapQuest and Yahoo Maps, it&#39;s been a while since road warriors have had to sketch out a route with a yellow highlighter, guessing which shortcuts to take or avoid.
81452
The leading vendors in the data warehousing market are running scared of new entrants to the market that are offering data warehouse appliances (i.e. pre-integrated hardware, software, storage combinations) that can offer greatly superior performance at a significantly lower price.  In this white paper we will dispel the 'fog of war' that currently pervades the data warehousing landscape, dismissing those question marks that are irrelevant and gratuitous, but highlighting any genuine issues that need to be addressed.
326653
Determining geographic locations based on Internet IP offers localization services and brings together user communities without the need for GPS receivers or complicated configuration switching.
363355
Blog: Thanks to the newest Google Maps feature, I was able to determine just how long it would take to re-route through Death Valley
718258
New service sends color maps and directions to cell phone users.
702834
Pierre-Alain Joye takes a look at building Cairo (a vector-based graphics library for PHP) on a Windows system.    While trying to get the cairo (and pimp) PHP binding ready to be released, I finally sit down and port Wez build cscript to cairo. It still needs some cleanup, a nice summary message but it works already. I tested it with Visual C++ Express Edition but it should work with other versions as well.   My next goal is to add the tests (nmake tests) and fix the nmake instal    He describes the process he went through to try to get things up and running, but is still having a few issues and has required a few tweaks to get it working. He also links to two resources: a ZIP of the development libraries and a ZIP ready to use package.
682524
The data center fabric will at a minimum bring together network, server, and storage administrators. Are you ready? Can you handle it?
179616
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has enhanced its Windows Live Search Maps with a 3D map of New York, the first of several cities in the U.S., U.K., and Canada that will be featured in 3D through the service. Throughout the day Tuesday, Microsoft also plans to release 3D cityscapes of U.S. cities Austin, Texas; Cape Coral, Florida; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Savannah, Georgia; and Tampa, Florida. Northampton, England, and Ottawa, Canada, also will be featured as 3D cityscapes through the service. The free online map of New York provides a photorealistic view of New York, including landmarks like Times Square, Central Park, Wall Street, and Rockefeller Plaza. As with other locations mapped through Windows Live Search Maps, users can get Yellow Pages listing, locations of businesses and other landmarks as well as contact information; driving directions, and reviews for New York businesses, restaurants and the like. In addition, users can get real-time traffic incident information integrated with driving directions in the city and can share and access custom maps and lists of notable places in New York that other users have created. Users also can create their own lists of favorite maps and locations in New York. Users can access the new 3D maps on the Live Search Maps Web site. Windows Live Search Maps is one of the new Web-based services Microsoft has been rolling out over the past year and a half to drive its online advertising business, a segment it is hoping will become a significant source of revenue for the company. Links to businesses or locations found through Windows Live Search Maps include paid-search advertising links, one area where Microsoft is hoping to gain round on Google. In the meantime, the company recently said it would purchase digital marketing services company aQuantive Â to boost its advertising strategy. The purchase will differentiate Microsoft from Google by the acquisition of Avenue A/Razorfish, a full-service design and advertising agency owned by aQuantive.
272671
Server and software company prepares new foray into market for dot-com infrastructure.
411012
MapQuest Audio Directions on Sprint-Nextel Network Like InfoSpace, MapQuest is also launching voice (text to speech) turn-by-turn directions on the Sprint-Nextel network. Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s MapQuest announcement: &#8220;MapQuest Navigator leverages Sprint&#8217;s leading edge location-based services platforms and GPS-enabled phones to acquire wireless device location information, letting subscribers take their navigation system with them at all times and get [...]
159497
This company outsources its data center hosting, so to ride herd on one finicky application, a pilot fish and his team get several admin IDs to manage it remotely. That works well -- for a few months.
109200
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Wachovia Corporation says it will build a 400 (M) million dollar data center off Lakeshore Parkway in Birmingham.