Middleware makes the holiday bells ring

Posted by on Dec 21, 2010

Happy holidays everyone. How to tie this video in with a middleware blog? Well, the bells are applications and the dominoes are middleware. Sure the bells make the music, but the dominoes make the music possible ...
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But is it web scale?

Posted by on Sep 13, 2010

Messaging guru Kirk Wylie created an excellent (and hilarious) video of what it’s like for an enterprise messaging architect to discuss distributed messaging principles with a 20-something web-startup architect. Watch and...
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Financial regulatory reform is just beginning

Posted by on Jul 23, 2010

The press headlines are (mostly) celebrating passage of the financial reform act. I even got a bulk email from the president saying it was a great day for the little guy and a bad day to be a banking special interest guy. Then he asked me for 5 bucks and encouraged me to send the note on to 6 other people in my town. Wait, did the president just send me a chain letter? But the reality is that...
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AMQP v1.0 to be unveiled in San Diego

Posted by on Jun 3, 2010

When you think San Diego, what do you think of? The beautiful waterfront, the San Diego Zoo, Legoland, and of course, interoperable messaging protocols. Next week the 2nd annual AMQP “face to face” meeting will again be held in San Diego, California. As with last year, the first day will be open to the public (Jun 8), and the next two days (Jun 9, 10) will be for members only. If you...
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Rewind: Solace and Liquidnet keynote

Posted by on May 5, 2010

At the recent Ultra-High Performance Technologies in Financial Services event, our CEO Craig Betts and Liquidnet’s Chief Architect Brett Kotch shared the keynote slot to kick off the conference. Craig talked about how the technology pioneered as low latency solutions in financial services often leads to a better world when applied to challenges like homeland security, smart grids and...
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Back to the future: the return of appliance-based computing

Posted by on Apr 8, 2010

There was a good article on the Enterprise Systems website this week about the increase in popularity of purpose-built appliances on many fronts across the datacenter. The points it makes will be familiar to readers of this blog: IT organizations like the model for the same performance and security reasons vendors do, but also because deployment is a breeze and the initial and on-going costs of...
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Quants on wall street: Revenge of the nerds

Posted by on Feb 12, 2010

I borrowed the headline above from the title of an interview at Yahoo! Finance today featuring Scott Patterson, the author of a new book called The Quants. His book tells the story of how mathematics took over trading on Wall Street. I haven’t read the book yet (just downloaded on Kindle), but based on the teaser text at Amazon, I was disappointed to see that the author felt the need to tie...
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Why power reduction goals are hard to meet

Posted by on Feb 12, 2010

Every firm is concerned about power, but the problem continues to spiral out of control. Here’s a typical scenario that describe why things are the way they are: The CIO makes what looks like the right declaration: “We WILL reduce power, no matter what”. Then good, honest projects come along that boost the top or bottom line and become exceptions to the “no matter...
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An even-handed story on high frequency trading?

Posted by on Dec 3, 2009

After months of reading negative spin pieces on high frequency trading (HFT) in the press, I was pleased to see Reuters publish a fairly even-handed piece on the subject that not only captures the usual criticisms of HFT, but also a few of the positive aspects. For example: “A misunderstood dynamic of high-frequency trading is that it thrives off volatility, thereby reducing it. The clear...
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Is green IT flowing down the same river as water conservation?

Posted by on Nov 18, 2009

The push to conserve power is getting serious. Compute sprawl is out of control and some power companies are mandating geographical maximums. Some forward-looking companies we’ve talked to are tying IT executive bonuses to power reduction targets to make sure managers aren’t just paying lip service to the issue. Regulators are even getting in on the act, creating new pressures as...
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