Anonymous Reader writes “HP Collaboration Delivers a Proven, Affordable Enterprise Database Solution.

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 5, 2002 — HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that it has combined engineering resources with Oracle, the worlds largest enterprise software company, and Red Hat, the worlds premier open source and Linux provider, to certify and deliver Red Hat Linux Advanced Server on an 8-Node Oracle9i Real Application Clusters environment running on ProLiant DL580 servers from the new HP.

Building on the long-standing engineering relationships among HP, Oracle and Red Hat, the partners are able to offer customers of the Oracle9i Database a proven deployment platform for Linux. HP was the first vendor to deliver a Real Application Clusters certified configuration on Linux with the launch last year of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters on ProLiant DL580 servers. HP and Oracle have worked closely together in the areas of scalability and performance enhancements, and this expertise has been leveraged in the work that Oracle has done with Red Hat on Red Hat Linux Advanced Server.

In working closely with HP, Oracle is delivering a proven combination of Oracle9i Database products, including Oracle9i Real Application Clusters, with the Red Hat Linux Advanced Server operating system, said Chuck Rozwat, executive vice president, Database Servers, Oracle. Together we have built a flexible and fault tolerant infrastructure that delivers the high levels of enterprise capabilities that our customers have been asking for, all at an affordable price.

The ProLiant DL580 further reinforces the distinction that the ProLiant server line has earned as the platform of choice for deployment of industry-standard operating systems and applications, said Mark de Visser, vice president of marketing, Red Hat. Red Hat and HP have worked closely together to develop and test all the features of the Red Hat Advance Server. This version was fully tested with Oracle9i RAC on a ProLiant 8-Node cluster.

According to Q1 2002 numbers from IDC, ProLiant servers continue to lead the Standard Intel Architecture Server market in Linux server unit shipments with 25.9 percent market share.(1) The Q1 results mark the 17th straight quarter in which ProLiant servers have led the industry in worldwide Linux server unit shipments.

As the industry moves increasingly toward the adoption of standards-based computing, customers will expect the highest levels of enterprise-class performance, availability and scalability, said Gary Campbell, vice president of strategic architecture, HP Office of the CTO. Together, HP, Oracle and Red Hat are delivering rock-solid solutions along with the economic benefits of industry standards, making it easier and more cost effective for customers to adopt Linux into their IT infrastructures.

More information on HPs Linux initiatives is available at http://www.hp.com/linux or +1 888 HP LINUX.

About HP

HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The companys offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP merged with Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. The merged company had combined revenue of approximately $81.7 billion in fiscal 2001 and operations in more than 160 countries. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.

# # #

(1) IDC, Quarterly Server Tracker, published May 31, 2002.

Oracle is a registered trademark, and Oracle9i is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.

RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in HPs Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HPs annual report on Form 10-K, as amended on January 30, 2002, for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2001, HPs quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2002 (as filed with the SEC on March 12, 2002) and subsequently filed reports. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, HPs results could differ materially from HPs expectations in these
statements. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.”

Editorial
64k
It’s time for UK and other European individuals and companies to act
now or pay later, says Trevor Parsons. A strong response to the
European Commission’s proposal for a directive legalising software
patents could save us all a lot of trouble in years to come
Cover

feature – Free vote 209k
Politicians may think electronic voting is the way to woo
back apathetic young technophiles, but it’s fraught with problems in
security, anonymity and auditing. Richard Hillesley looks at the
issues of e-voting from the free and open source software perspective,
and asks whether it’s really the answer

Powertools

66k
Logical Volume Manager Storage is one of the bigger challenges
confronting the transition of Linux into the corporate data centre.
LVM, the Sistina-backed GPL Logical Volume Manager, provides a smart,
powerful solution

Open

personalities – Miguel, Mono and the monopoly 88k
You need a long spoon to sup with Microsoft, but Miguel de Icaza says
his Mono project, for an open source implementation of the .NET
framework, will provide a ready-made upgrade for development on
Linux

Show

report – Linux World Expo, New York 94k
>From the PDA to the mainframe, the first of the year’s big Linux
bashes demonstrated the unstoppable progress of the free OS. The Linux
Documentation Project’s Guylhem Aznar gives us his personal view

All

you need to know about… Linux on iSeries 75k
McDonalds, Microsoft and most banks depend on a powerful but
little-known proprietary IBM mid-range machine called the iSeries.
Weirdly enough, says Seamus Quinn, one of its major selling points is
that it now runs Linux

The
Knowledge 43k
The latest Linux Training Materials Project release from the experts
at GBdirect gives you three modules for the price of none. PLUS our
directory of Linux training providers in the British Isles

Reviews

– Products and services 115k
Rated and reviewed this month: Borland’s Web Services-ready Kylix 2,
Sharp’s exciting and natively GNU/Linux Zaurus PDA, a Benchmark’s
Linux-friendly ValuSmart 80 DLT drive, and a very capable office suite
from Hancom, a big player in the Asian market

Books
60k
Martin Howse devours the latest crop of Linux-related literature,
finding the last word on security and firewalling, contrasting a brace
of books on using Red Hat Linux to network and serve, passing
judgement on a Linux and Windows interoperability guide, and
conferring instant classic status to a top tome on building wireless
networks

Free

Software Matters – Eben Moglen 38k
Drafted and paid for by Disney, the proposed US laws requiring every
computer to be a ‘trusted platform’ are repugnant to human liberty,
says Eben Moglen. Thanks to alliances with substantial players like
IBM and HP the free software movement may succeed in resisting them,
but will still need to be prepared to defend itself politically all
over the world

LONDON, UK, 6 June 2002. IBM today announced that WesternGeco, a major seismic acquisition, processing and reservoir imaging firm, has selected more IBM xSeries x330 machines to power the company’s sophisticated seismic imaging system. WesternGeco now has over 2,500 IBM x330 based in their Datacentre in London, expanding their ability to help oil companies find potential drill sites.

Continuing the long standing partnership between IBM and WesternGeco, in May 2001, WesternGeco selected an IBM Linux supercomputer comprising of 256 IBM eserver xSeries 330 systems, all running Linux. Today, WesternGeco has bought two further clusters of 1280 IBM eServer xSeries 330 machines powered by 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III Processors all running Linux and Microsoft NT. IBM has now sold three clusters into WesternGeco this year – 642 nodes were purchased in March and now the further 1280 nodes will be installed next month. The existing clusters run OMEGA but the latest to be installed will run WesternGeco’s EDS software.

With the high cost of oil exploration, particularly the drilling effort, companies are turning to sophisticated methods of seismic imaging that allow scientists to create detailed 3D maps of hidden oil and gas reservoirs before drilling starts. WesternGeco is the world’s largest seismic company providing seismic acquisition and processing services to most of the world’s major oil companies..

“Today seismic imaging proceeds virtually all drilling expeditions and it is our goal to continually provide excellent technology solutions within the oil exploration industry,” said Dave Jursik, vice president, Linux emerging technologies, IBM. “We are delighted that our high performance Linux clusters are helping WesternGeco provide that service.”

“The use of IBM systems running Linux has greatly expanded our ability to provide oil companies with detailed images, or to assist oil companies in imaging potential drill sites,” said John Close, WesternGeco’s Data Processing Manager for Europe, CIS and Africa. “With excellent performance, we are now able to more fully utilize our most technically demanding imaging routines to assist oil companies with their oil exploration efforts.”

xSeries-based Linux clusters are highly scalable from 4 to 1024 processors and can be fully adapted to meet the high performance needs of the petroleum market. Linked by a fast network, the clusters can be easily managed from a single point of control and can act as either a single machine or a multiple node system.

About WesternGeco

WesternGeco is a leader in integrated exploration and reservoir imaging services, providing worldwide seismic acquisition, processing, and multiclient surveys. Headquartered in London, WesternGeco is a joint venture between Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.

About IBM

IBM is the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.

The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the following descriptive term “server” following it. The IBM e-business logo and xSeries are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

LINUX is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other company, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. and CANNES, France – June 5, 2002 – StorageTek (Storage Technology Corp., NYSE:STK), the storage services and solutions expert, today announced the availability of SnapVantage, a Web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) software solution that, in conjunction with StorageTek’s Shared Virtual Array (SVA(TM)) subsystems enables a total management platform including rapid deployment and recovery of multiple Linux virtual servers hosted under Virtual Machine (z/VM) on a single IBM mainframe server.

As the cost of managing and maintaining multiple server farms has become high or even prohibitive in many cases, organizations have started to look to server consolidation as a way to regain control of costs and resources. By creating ‘virtual’ server farms on a single mainframe server, businesses can drastically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) per user.

“Probably the biggest single barrier to adopting this technology, until now, has been the lack of skills for a key component of this new virtual server environment: Virtual Machine (z/VM) operating system,” explained Tom Major, StorageTek Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Disk Storage Business. “The launch of SnapVantage means that customers with little or no VM experience can combine SnapVantage with the leading SVA(TM) virtual disk subsystems, SVAA management console and Snapshot software to quickly and easily begin converting physical servers to virtual servers. Users can create virtual servers in seconds using an intuitive interface that does not demand expert knowledge.”

SnapVantage is ideally suited to companies looking for an affordable way to support enterprise-class server farms and data centers. With SnapVantage, IT administrators can create, configure and control Linux virtual servers on demand while eliminating under-allocation and over-purchase of capacity, permitting the use of 100 percent of IT resources.

“Companies continue to look for ways to take advantage of the total cost of ownership savings and improved service levels that enterprise disk storage on Linux provides,” said Michael Vth, StorageTek Vice President and General Manager, Europe, Africa & Middle East. “The release of SnapVantage builds on our commitment to efficient, affordable enterprise disk storage for Linux users and fits perfectly into the fast-growing market space of server consolidation onto the mainframe.”

SnapVantage helps businesses to simply and efficiently manage virtual server deployment in a zLinux environment. The benefits include:

Simplifies Systems Management: single point of control. System expertise unnecessary. Transparent to users.

Faster set-up of servers: reduces the time previously needed to establish a zSeries Linux virtual server by 99.99 percent. Users can create servers in seconds using predefined models.

Maximises IT Resources: uses significantly less capacity. One physical copy can be replicated thousands of times without multiplying the disk space.

Improves Server Uptime and Availability: provides more reliable, non-disruptive backups of zLinux server data via centralised SnapShot backups.

About StorageTek

StorageTek (NYSE: STK), a $2 billion worldwide company with headquarters in Louisville, Colo., delivers a broad range of storage solutions for digitized data. StorageTek solutions are easy to manage and allow universal access to data across servers, media types and storage networks. StorageTek is the innovator and global leader in virtual storage solutions for tape automation, disk storage systems and storage networking and is a voting member of the SNIA. Because of StorageTek, customers can manage and leverage their digital assets as their businesses grow and can maximize IT productivity to ensure enterprise-class business continuity. For more information, see www.storagetek.com, or call 1.800.786.7835.

###

TRADEMARKS: StorageTek is a registered trademark of Storage Technology Corp. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. SVA(TM) and Shared Virtual Array are registered trademarks of Storage Technology Corp.

EuroPython writes: EuroPython interviews more of speakers at the conference, to be held june 26-28 in Charleroi, Belgium.
New interviews include:

• Itamar Shtull-Trauring about
  the python-based Twisted server framework
• Steve Alexander and Stephan Richter, prominent Zope 3 developers
• Paul Everitt, co-founder of Zope corporation

Rob Sutherland writes “A
Canadian Free Software In Government Campaign has been launched, according to an
article on the New Politics Net Outreach Site.

If you’re interested in seeing Canadian governments adopt a ‘Free Software First’ policy, take a look at the material, and start things off with a letter to your MP, MLA or anyone else you can think of.”
The goals of the campaign are to:

• Educate ourselves and others and organize groups to educate and support efforts by individuals, businesses and governments to adopt and use Free Software
• Lobby elected representatives to adopt this policy through email, fax, voice phone and personal contact
• Raise this issue in every election, local, municipal, provincial and federal.
• Log the track record of candidates on this issue and urge voters to consider this issue in casting their votes

Sounds good to me.”

“We are pleased to announce the release of Mozilla
1.0, available for download now. Thanks to everyone
who made this possible. “

Download: http://www.mozilla.org/releases/

Slashdot has a link to an article at FirstMonday.org saying most Open Source projects are created by a small group of people, not dozens or hundreds. The author writes: “Based on a study of the top 100 mature products on Sourceforge … most OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. The median number of developers in the 100 projects I looked at was 4 and the mode was 1.”

Siliconvalley.com interprets today’s Dell/Oracle/Red Hat announcement this way: “A trio of high tech CEOs joined forces Wednesday in a move to unseat IBM as the Linux vendor of choice.”

Infoworld.com follows up on an earlier press release. ” The new Oracle 9i Database Release 2, combined with Red Hat Linux Advanced Server and Dell’s line of Intel-based PowerEdge servers, now gives customers the option of deploying less-expensive Oracle databases using open-source Linux software and inexpensive, clustered Dell boxes, according to representatives at Dell.” IBM might have something to say about that.