James Maguire

The recent merging of two leading open source groups, OSDL and FSG, seems like good news for Linux. With the combined resources of both outfits, the brand new Linux Foundation will have more muscle to fight the good fight and triumph in the never-ending battle against proprietary software. Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation However, out in […]

The entire IT community, it seems, is agog over software-as-a-service (SaaS). The notion of delivering applications over the Internet appears to gain more market steam with every passing quarter. Research firm Gartner forecasts that by 2011, 25% of new business apps will be delivered via SaaS, a jump from 5% in 2005. So while software-as-a-service […]

Talk to anyone who follows hiring trends in IT and they’ll tell you the same thing: having Linux proficiency is growing increasingly important in getting and keeping a job in IT. From sysadmins to help desk workers to database miners, knowledge of open source has moved from being a cutting-edge “gee whiz” skill set to […]

One of the perils of toiling in high tech is that you’re working in a world of constant change. By definition, IT changes every couple years as businesses roll out upgraded (or totally new) infrastructures. The challenge is huge for tech professionals who need to keep up with relentless change. Staying employed in an environment […]

In the old days – say, five years ago – Indian IT firms existed in a kind of tech ghetto. Prosperous American IT companies were the stars of the show, the go-to companies that clients hired when they had mission critical assignments. The Indian companies were the low-cost choice, the place to ship non-essential work […]

Frank Gens is used to peering into a crystal ball. As a senior vice president at research firm IDC, Gens taps into a font of data from vendors, enterprises, and IDC’s legion of analysts. As seen on his blog, Gens takes this information and turns it into portrait of what’s to come – as much […]

Most of the big tech stories of 2006 have already gotten far too much coverage. Does anyone not know that HP hit a serious bump in the road this year due to its snooping on employees and board members? Other stories – with far more long-term importance – have gotten much less ink. One of the […]

The IT job market is “very attractive right now,” says Scot Melland, CEO of tech job site Dice. “Much better than in past years.” Over the last two years, the number of IT job postings on Dice has grown by some 62%, he tells Datamation, with 18% of that growth occurring this year. Recent Tech […]

One of the biggest buzzwords of the last few years has been virtualization. The benefits of this technology are numerous, including lower hardware costs, a streamlined data center, and greater flexibility in allocating IT resources. The core technology of virtualization is relatively simple. Virtualization software turns a server from a box that hosts a single […]

Big shifts are taking place in the software industry. For most of its history, software has been bought much like a load of bread: you buy it, consume it, then at a later date you buy some more. But this model is fading. Large companies, who get some (or much) or their software on a […]