New HP Tool Tracks Open-Source, Free Apps at Work
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The FOSSology Project monitors the use of free and open-source software within an enterprise.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has built a tool to track the daily progress of Scrum-based software development projects.
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Hosted CRM company introduces a new framework for linking analysis tools to its applications.Image: Salesforce dashboard
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems will this week announce an effort they are spearheading to extend the open source Globus Toolkit for grid technologies to commercial enterprise deployments.
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Open source is changing the game by making software free.  About time.
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HP is giving away a lot of value related to open source adoption.  Here's why this is a good strategy.
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Google is releasing a new edition of its hosted applications suite that end-users can bring into the workplace without the involvement of their IT department.It means that IT managers who fret about employees using unauthorized software at work will have another tool to worry about, especially in industries where information management is heavily regulated, like health care and finance.The new release, called Google Apps Team Edition, is due to be available Thursday for free. It is aimed at employees who are interested in using Google Apps but whose employers haven&#39;t signed up for it, said Rajen Sheth, Google Apps senior product manager.Team Edition contains the core communication and collaboration services and applications from other editions, like the word processor, spreadsheet, Start page, Talk instant messaging, and calendar, but not Gmail, which requires IT participation to re-route the company&#39;s e-mail flow.So far, more than 500,000 mostly small organizations have signed up for Google Apps, but the other versions -- Standard, Education, Partner, and Premier -- require IT to implement the suite because its services are linked to an organization&#39;s Internet domain.That changes with the Team Edition, which will let employees set up Google Apps workgroups as long as they have valid e-mail addresses with their organizations&#39; domains, Sheth said.&quot;Google Apps has been, by definition, an IT project, and now we want to let people use it without IT involvement,&quot; Sheth said.Once signed up with Team Edition, people can see who else in their organization&#39;s Internet domain is also a user, and invite those who aren&#39;t, Sheth said.&quot;It provides a quick way for workgroups to start collaborating,&quot; he said.IT departments shouldn&#39;t get angry about Team Edition, according to Sheth, because, unlike other software that employees use without IT approval, it provides an upgrade path to IT-manageable versions.&quot;The IT department always has the option to sign up for the Standard Edition for free if they want to provide control over this,&quot; Sheth said. &quot;This is a solid, happy medium.&quot;Team Edition can also be upgraded to the other editions, like Education, which is free, and Premier, which costs $50 per user per year. Although Gmail isn&#39;t part of Team Edition, Google is exploring ways to make it a part, Sheth said.By its very nature as a Web-hosted software suite, an unmanaged Google Apps deployment can represent a concern for IT departments, since the applications and the data generated are stored outside organizations&#39; firewalls in Google data centers.However, Team Edition will be far from alone among the hosted software that employees use in their organizations without getting approval from the IT department, said Erica Driver, a Forrester Research analyst.The IT department reactions to Team Edition will depend on the organization&#39;s culture, which range from those in &quot;lockdown mode&quot; to those more tolerant and aware that Web 2.0 technologies are seeping in from the consumer world to the workplace, Driver said.Team Edition, with its bottom-up, end-user-driven focus, fits in with Google&#39;s traditional strategy of appealing to individuals, grown out of its consumer services, and will likely boost the adoption of Google Apps in companies, government agencies, educational institutions and other organizations that don&#39;t currently use the suite, said Matt Cain, a Gartner analyst.&quot;The Google model is to prime the well at the end-user level and assist IT somewhere along the way, but the demand generation for the suite will definitely be at the rank-and-file level, not at the IT level,&quot; Cain said.Google needs to make sure it strikes a balance between rallying end-users and giving IT managers a way to enter the picture and exert control, he said. &quot;Google will encourage end-user adoption but it can&#39;t disintermediate the IT staff, which will have to ultimately clean up any mess that&#39;s created,&quot; Cain said.
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One of Hewlett-Packard's enhancements helps IT managers figure out which workloads can automatically access available capacity for key applications.
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Latest version of the open-source suite also adds support for mobile devices.
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Open source enterprise software developer OpenLogic wants open source users to stand up and be counted in a worldwide census -- and is offering a new software tool to help the process.The number of licenses sold gives vendors of proprietary software a pretty good idea of how many people are using their code, assuming there are not too many pirated copies in use, or licensed copies gathering dust on shelves. They can also draw on information about paid upgrades or service contracts, or sell unique license keys, verified by a central server each time the software is installed -- or even used.Open source software developers have no such luck; the very nature of open source licenses makes such verification methods impossible. One clue they have is a count of how many people have downloaded the software from their Web sites. Reaching 1 million downloads is a rite of passage for open source projects.&#160;SugarCRM, for example, passed that landmark in May.Such counts, though, may underestimate the number of users, as anyone who obtains open source software is free to redistribute it by any other means they choose -- as long as they accompany it with a copy of the open source license and make the source code readily available.On the other hand, they may wildly overestimate the number; people may download the software with no intention of using it, since there is no financial disincentive to doing so, or they may download it multiple times if they upgrade it, wipe and reinstall their system, or have several computers.To come up with an accurate figure for the number of users of various open source applications in the enterprise, OpenLogic has released an automated census tool, OSS Discovery, itself available under an open source license.It hopes that businesses will scan their machines using the tool and contribute the data about the applications they are using to an open database.The tool could offer advantages to IT managers too, said OpenLogic, enabling them to build up a picture of the software installed on desktops and servers around their business and compare it with that used in other enterprises.OpenLogic is looking for partners to distribute or deploy the software and wants open source software developers to contribute digital &quot;fingerprints&quot; of their applications that will enable the discovery tool to identify them. Those who help with the project will be offered access to the anonymous data gathered.OSS Discovery 2.0 is based on the company&#39;s OpenLogic Discovery tool and is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. This recently introduced license extends the GPL license to ensure that changes to software used to power publicly available services will be contributed to the free software community, even if the modified software is not itself distributed.OpenLogic hopes to begin collecting census data early next year.
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(Source: HP)  This paper offers a structured approach to planning and implementing HP Quality Center software, an integrated, web-based suite of tools and best practices for automated software quality testing.
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Ziff Davis - HP's worldwide director of Linux marketing sees HP embracing open-source software and exploring the Linux desktop.
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Among new products from 3am Labs is a free tool for accessing a PC via any device with a browser.
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Photo organizing, editing tool emerges from beta test.
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A new product lets workers combine simple bits of software to create business tools.
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Microsoft is launching free software to make it easier for developers to create software compatible with Windows Server 2008.
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TechWeb - A project sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security spotlights defects in popular applications such as Linux and Apache. But there's also good news.