Theresa Lanowitz

IBM's intended acquisition of Green Hat (announced 4 January 2012) shows commitment to the importance of the lifecycle virtualization category by IBM. As application complexity continues to expand lifecycle virtualization technology is absolutely critical to delivering a faster time-to-market and reducing both capital and operational expenditures. Lifecycle virtualization is defined as the use of technologies such as virtual lab management, service virtualization, defect virtualization, device virtualization, virtualized cloud platforms, etc., to enhance the application or product lifecycle through reducing defects, lowering costs, speeding time-to-market, and increasing customer satisfaction. Lifecycle virtualization is as evolutionary for testing as the advent of the IDE (integrated development environment) was for the development organization. IBM has been abse... (more)

Your Next PC? The Personal Cloud, of Course

Your Next PC? The Personal Cloud, of Course Since the introduction of the personal computer, we all like to longingly think about what our next PC will have. Will it be lighter? Will it have better graphics? Will it be faster? And the biggest question of all, do we really need all of the latest and greatest features. All of these are questions we ponder when a new operating system is released, or when our current PC just decides to quit functioning (usually at the most inopportune of times). Well, what will your next PC be? No, it is not your next Personal Computer, it is your... (more)

Initial Thoughts on IBM Acquisition of Sun Microsystems

Sun has been in a holding pattern since the dot com implosion. And, while Sun positioned themselves as "the dot in the dot com", that was the last innovation we have seen come from Sun.   Sun, while it once had very competitive hardware, had no idea how to productize and implement effective software products.  Sun works on the assumption that all software must lead to Sun server sales - definitely a flawed idea that was proven wrong numerous times.  Sun also was never able to quite grasp the idea of high volume and low margin sales.  Sun continued on in its technology efforts lik... (more)

HP Acquires Fortify: Application Security Finds the Lifecycle

HP has announced its intent to acquire Fortify Software. Fortify represents one of the last standing original independent application security software vendors. Back in 2003, application security vendors were all the rage. The idea that security vulnerabilities occur rather frequently at the application level was 100% accurate. The problem with getting development and QA shops to fully embrace the notion of application security was one of skills and communication across organizational boundaries. Think about developers and testing professionals, they have full time jobs that kee... (more)

IBM Stole the Thunder

The purchase of Sun by Oracle for $7.4 billion has far less industry buzz and excitement than the rumored acquisition of Sun by IBM.  IBM stole the thunder and the impending acquisition of Sun became an imminent and expected event.  While hardware overlap existed in the IBM deal, IBM would have provided a much needed home for Sun's software assets.  Software giant Oracle lacks a hardware portfolio, so the key Oracle / Sun overlaps are far fewer except for the $1 billion acquisition of MySQL by Sun in 2008.  Given Oracle's tendency to be proprietary in its markets, ownership of MySQ... (more)