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When it comes to troubleshooting application performance issues, there are two steps you can take to make diagnosis easier, faster and more accurate. First, understand the common causes of application performance problems; and, second, use the right tool to diagnose them. This paper will outline some of these causes and will explain why having the right diagnostic tool can enable network professionals to quickly identify and resolve a problem.

Top questions to ask yourself before choosing a FOSS software package

There's a large selection of free and open source (FOSS) operating systems available these days, and choosing the right one for any given circumstance can be quite a challenge. This article is intended to help you pick the best operating system for your needs and experience level. Although this article is geared primarily toward those who have little to no experience with FOSS operating systems, we've included some pointers for more savvy open source users – say, those who use a FOSS operating system at home and would like to deploy one on the job.

One of the most dispiriting aspects of the ACTA saga is that practically everything has been conducted behind closed doors. What we know is largely from leaks and a few, costive hints from officials when they deign to let us little people peak behind the curtain for a millisecond or two.

Everyone's favourite open source OS is still out in the cold

I'd love to see viable alternatives to the current mainstream operating systems. The PC market stands ready to be revolutionised by something new. But is Linux the agent of change that can do all of that? Not yet, I'm afraid. Every few years I take a fresh look at the question of whether Linux can make it on the mainstream desktop (or laptop). For a while last year, things were looking up for Linux. Many of the early netbook vendors were forgoing Windows licences and instead offering consumers machines that ran some form of Linux. That didn't last long, though. Return rates for Linux netbooks were much higher than for their Windows counterparts, and most netbooks today are sold with some version of Windows, not Linux.

It seems that, having lost its position as monarch of the world of computing, Microsoft has decided to become the industry jester. Last week I wrote about its amusing suggestion that we should all be taxed to clean up the mess its software has caused. Now we have this witty post on Microsoft's Port 25 site, which involves writing about open source software applications and the platforms they run on without mentioning “Linux” once.

Simon Phipps: Open source success wasn't enough to rescue Sun

Sun's chief open source officer, Simon Phipps, has left the company following its acquisition by Oracle, the executive announced in his blog Tuesday.

One of the many sad aspects of Sun's disappearance into the maw of Oracle is that many will see this as “proof” that its strategy of building on open source was a failure. But as Simon Phipps, Sun's former Chief Open Source Officer, rightly says in his valedictory blog post:

With all the noise in the market about cloud computing, how do you know where to begin?

Many CIOs recognise the power of cloud computing and are looking to implement the technology in their own IT realms. By understanding the underlying service-related delivery requirements that are needed, you can successfully take full advantage of cloud computing technology for your enterprise so that you can improve service delivery to the business. Here are some questions to help you get the process started:

Meet ITIL objectives for service operation and manage IT from a business perspective

As discussed in Chapter 7 of this booklet, look for solutions that can help your organisation meet ITIL objectives for service operation and enable you to manage IT from a business perspective. These solutions should cover application management, asset management, configuration management, capacity management, identity management, infrastructure management, and IT service support.

It seems every day we hear about hideous cost overruns on public sector projects in the UK. What makes it even more frustrating is that open source, a real no-brainer for many applications, is rarely given the chance to prove itself here. Which means, of course, that there are no case studies to refer to, so no one gives open source a chance etc. etc.

Slovenia's court of Auditors and Slovenia's anti-corruption authority have received an anonymous complaint regarding the government's procuring of proprietary software licences for computer operating systems and office applications, Slovenian media reported last Month.

This post follows swiftly on from last week's blog in which I touted BECTA's demise. Things in edu-world after this weekend are looking much worse if you believe Ed Balls the Labour Secretary of State for Education and Michael Gove the Shadow Secretary.

Patent litigation has become more than a cottage industry in Silicon Valley

Even so, patent litigation has become more than a cottage industry in Silicon Valley. On the one hand, it protects intellectual property developed by independent entrepreneurs and industry giants alike. But it also wastes untold millions of dollars a year that could be better spent on innovation, says Charlene Morrow, who heads the patent litigation practice of Fenwick & West. "When startup valuations were very high, and a new company got a round of funding, you could absolutely count on a non-practicing entity to file a patent suit," she says.

You might think that's a pretty ridiculous question to ask, since the canard about open source being less secure than closed source has been debunked many times. But it seems that some people didn't get the memo:

Open Source Data Center Initiative wants to pool engineering resources

A new industry group is trying to apply open-source principles to the design and construction of data centres, which it says could accelerate the use of new technologies and increase competition in the industry.

reMail email search relaunched

In February, Google acquired the iPhone mail search app reMail, and promptly removed it from the App Store. On Friday, reMail developer Gabor Csell announced that the reMail codebase is now open source.

Becta and School ICT: end of the line for the gravy train?

The next evolutionary step toward elastic IT

Cloud computing represents the next evolutionary step toward elastic IT. It will transform the way your IT infrastructure is constituted and managed, through consumable services for infrastructure, platform, and applications. This will convert your IT infrastructure from a "factory" into a "supply chain".

Although free software has had huge success at the infrastructural level – it runs most of the Internet, most cloud computing services, and vast swathes of corporate computing – its roll-out to more specialised areas has been slower.

Open source software is one of the great success stories of the past few decades. Could the same philosophy, the free and public dissemination of underlying code and specs with multiple developers from disparate sources contributing to the design, work for tech gadgets as well?

The Apache HTTP Server is the world's most popular web server, Linux has more than held its own against Unix and other proprietary operating systems, and Mozilla's Firefox browser has given Microsoft's Internet Explorer strong competition over the years.