In the mid-1990's, just before the dot-com boom and the growth of the Internet as a platform, virtually all software used by companies and individual consumers was packaged and commercially licensed. In the meantime, we have seen the dot-com boom and subsequent bust, consolidation of packaged software vendors, major advances in software technology, a new wave of technology startups, and a "flattening" of the world. These developments have led to the rise of Software as a Service and open source software, as well as new business models for software companies, and the emergence of new companies based on those concepts. This talk gives an overview of these developments, including their implications for software companies and users, along with some speculation about what's ahead.

Expanding the use of open source software within an organization requires significant changes in software evalution and acquisition policies, often affecting many different groups within the organization. This talk covers some of the key issues, including the determination of whether an open source component is suitable for its intended use, comparative evaluation of proprietary and open source alternatives, adjustment of internal IT processes, and consideration of the business and legal issues associated with such use. Part of the talk describes differences between commercial open source offerings and community-based open source projects, including both managed and unmanaged projects. This includes a description of evaluation frameworks for open source software that provides for evaluation not only of the functionality of the software, but also available support and documentation, as well as the quality of the software and its development process.

Anthony I. (Tony) Wasserman is director of the software management professional MS program at Carnegie Mellon West and executive director of its Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI). He was a co-founder of the Business Readiness Ratings project and serves as its chair. Previously, Tony was VP of Bluestone Software (acquired by HP), responsible for its open source J2EE middleware toolkit for mobile devices. Before that, he was founder and CEO of Interactive Development Environments, Inc. (IDE). Prior to starting IDE, Tony was a University of California professor, where he and his research team developed and released the User Software Engineering tools under the BSD open source license in 1981. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a BA in mathematics and physics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Fellow of both ACM and IEEE. He has written more than 60 papers and edited eight books.

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Third International "Virtualization Conference & Expo" Call for Papers Now Open
Virtualization, the hottest subject in all IT right now, will be center stage in New York City - 23-24 June, 2008, at the next conference and expo in the SYS-CON Events' third international Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, Server Virtualization, and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Submissions on these and dozens of other topics have already begun streaming in. The Call for Papers is as always a 100% online process, found here.

IDC has stated that the virtualization services market alone is going to reach $11.7 billion by 2011 and in general this technology, which has been around for a good number of years, seems suddenly to be on everyone's mind.

In short, Virtualization is fast becoming a key requirement for every server in the data center, enabling increased workloads in server consolidation projects, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application re-hosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.

Help with that transformation: submit your speaking proposal today.

Topics will include:

• Server Virtualization
  
• Desktop Virtualization
  
• File Virtualization
  
• The Future of the Virtual Enterprise
  
• Hosted Virtualization
  
• Para-virtualization
  
• Virtualization Hardware Support
  
• Hardware-level Virtualizatio
  
• Storage Virtualization
  
• Virtualization for Server Consolidation and Containment
  
• Windows Virtualization
  
• Utility Computing
  
• State of the Virtualization Services Market